03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding by Peter David - (ebook by Undead) Page A

Cylon when you, in fact, cannot.”
    “Yes. A terrible pity.”
    “You know what you should do…”
    There was a mischief in her voice that he really didn’t like. Nevertheless he
asked out of morbid curiosity, “What should I do?”
    “You should tell them that his test came back positive. That he’s a Cylon.”
    The very notion was appalling to him. “Why in the name of the gods would I
want to do that?”
    “Do you know what they’d do to him if you said that?”
    “I honestly don’t, no.”
    “Well then,” she said challengingly, “isn’t that all the reason you need to
do it? You said it yourself: If you don’t know something, you find out. It would
be an interesting test of just how much veracity you have, and how willing they are to believe what you say Oh,
come on, Gaius,” she prompted when he still seemed reluctant. “Don’t you want to
watch them eat their young?”
    “Why did you laugh before?”
    “Before?” She was walking around the lab, her long legs in a sure, measured
stride. “When did I laugh before?”
    “When I said that he was no more a Cylon than I was. What are you hiding?”
    “Nothing, Gaius, I swear. I was just amused by the—”
    “By the what? By the suggestion of my not being a Cylon? Is there…” He
gulped. He was having trouble catching his breath, as if it had become far too
hot in there. “Is there something I should know?”
    “I just find it interesting that you’ve dismissed the idea out of hand,” she
said. “After all, back on Caprica you crouched behind me and thus survived a
nuclear explosion. That doesn’t strike you as odd? Your house blew apart around
you. I was destroyed right in front of you. Yet you survived? Isn’t it far more
likely that we were both destroyed, and your memories were simply transferred to
a new body?”
    Baltar felt as if he’d been hit in the face by a crossbeam. The fact that her
casual explanation of his survival… or perhaps nonsurvival… made perfect
sense wasn’t what horrified him. Or, more correctly, it wasn’t what horrified
him the most. What horrified him the most was that it hadn’t occurred to him
before. He was a man of science, and as such it was part of his very nature to
question, to probe, to seek answers not only for questions that already existed,
but questions that others hadn’t thought to ask. For someone of that mindset
never to consider something as possible as that… it was such a shocking
omission that it almost made him wonder if…
    What?
    He’d been designed never to wonder about it? Preprogrammed?
    Baltar shook his head, his mouth moving but no words emerging.
    Number Six walked over to him and, extending a finger, ran it along the line
of his jaw. “Poor Gaius,” she sighed. “You know so much about so many things.
The resident expert on Cylons. And yet you don’t even know yourself.”
    “It… makes no sense,” he said sharply, rallying against the unthinkable.
“If I were a… what you say… you wouldn’t have had to seduce me and
trick me into betraying humanity. I would have just done it.”
    She kissed his cheek. “Tell them the test has come back positive. Tell them
the boy is one of us. For that matter, how do you know he’s not? Maybe I’m
trying to help you out.”
    “Why…” He paused, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. “Why would you
do that? What possible reason would you have for turning over one of your own?”
    “Perhaps I’m feeling generous. Or perhaps—since our god made us in his own
image—perhaps we, like He does, move in mysterious ways.”
    “You weren’t made by any deities. You were made by humans. Humans are not
gods by any stretch of the imagination.”
    “And perhaps, ultimately, that’s the difference between us. You can never be
any more than you already are. Our possibilities are unlimited.”
    “Is that why you try to destroy us?” he asked grimly. “Because in the event
of your ‘ascent’ to divinity, you want