Free Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod Page B

it on this thing, but ... " I patched it over to the big screen so we could both follow it comfortably, and resumed clicking through the pages, more or less at random. Some of them were text, with the elaborate numbering system of tech spec -- some individual lines within paragraphs had their own version numbers -- and some, which took just a fraction of a second longer to resolve onscreen, were deep three-dimensional diagrams and schematics optimized for looking at, and through, with VR glasses or contacts. Most of these were matched either to a photograph or an indistinguishably hyperrealististic rendering of the final object.
    "Y'know," Jadey pondered aloud, "I can't claim to be an expert on asteroid mining, let alone whatever equipment you'd need to talk to an alien hive-mind or whatever, but that sure doesn't look like mining equipment, or a scientific research establishment either."
    I snorted. "You're right, there. You do need something like a refinery for asteroid mining, but this is more than that. Looks to me like some kind of automated factory cannibalized out of parts that might have passed muster for either that or a research station. They're building something out there, or planning to."
    "Any indication what it might be?"
    "Could be in there," I said with a shrug, "but it would be a devil of a job to find it. There's more data here than in the Encyclopedia Britannica."
    "Well." She gave me a funny look. "I don't think it's for us to try and figure this out." Scratched her head. "Like, I don't think we should even be looking at it."
    "Oh." I clicked it off. "Especially not me, huh?"
    "Especially not you. For your own peace of mind."
    "That is one way of looking at it." I somewhat resented the idea that I had less business rummaging through possible state secrets than she had, but I realized this was irrational -- the E.U. was no more "my" state than it was hers, and I was in my own way as much its enemy. Just not as well-trained an enemy. Not that we had torture to worry about -- this was Scotland, a happy little Socialist Democracy, after all, not some Third World client-state of either side -- but we both knew what the Federal Security Bureau's truth-drugs could do, and the less we knew, the less trouble we were likely to be in if we were caught.
    Jadey fetched more coffee and we sat for a few moments warming our hands on the mugs and not saying anything.
    "So," I said at last, "what do we do now? You still want to go to America?"
    Jadey stroked her lower lip with the upper teeth, put down the mug and shoved her hands under her armpits, rocking back and forth a little. "Oh shit, I don't know," she said. "If it wasn't for the suspicion that all our codes are crackable in real time now, I'd just zap that lot through on the fast pipe and make my way home clean. Hell, if they pulled me at the airport or wherever I'd still be out in a few weeks."
    "A spy-swap? But you're not -- "
    "Ah, some kinda analogous deal. The private sector has its ways too, okay? But as it is, I have to get that thing back physically, and it has to go separately from me. And you know what? I don't think we can rely on the mail."
    "Take it to the U.S. consulate?" I suggested brightly. "Diplomatic bag?"
    "I don't know if I want the statists to have it either," she said gloomily. "I don't think my friends in the Russki apparat down south wanted that. They wanted this sent to the people in the U.S. who could make the most use of it. And that means our people, not the spooks."
    I refrained from asking further who "our people" were, and not just for security reasons. Not having been born yesterday, I already had a shrewd suspicion. One of the arguable advantages of living under the Right-Wing Communist variant of state capitalism was that the official media carried quite sensible materialist analyses, of other countries' affairs, anyway. The split in the U.S. capitalist class was a staple of Europa Pravda punditry. At the bottom of it, beneath all