{"product_id":"spin-control-isbn-9780553586251","title":"Spin Control","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn this stunning follow-up to the critically acclaimed novel \u003ci\u003eSpin State,\u003c\/i\u003e Chris Moriarty depicts a grim future in which the final frontier may well be extinction. For as far-flung planets are terraformed and Earth’s age-old conflicts are contracted out to AIs, humanity is losing the only war that counts: the war for survival. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCall Arkady a clone with a conscience. Or call him a traitor. A member of the space-faring Syndicates, Arkady has defected to Israel with a hot commodity: a genetic weapon powerful enough to wipe out humanity. But Israel’s not buying it. They’re selling it—and Arkady—to the highest bidder. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the auction heats up, the Artificial Life Emancipation Front sends in Major Catherine Li. Already drummed out of the Peacekeepers for “war crimes,” Li has now literally hooked up with an AI who has lived many lifetimes and shunted through many bodies. And while they each have their own definition of victory, together they have only one chance at survival. . . .\"[T]his richly textured second novel explores issues of identity and loyalty, swapping quantum mechanics for complexity theory and mystery for suspense.\"—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The characters have the complexity of motivation and backstory to make this more than just another dire-future thriller.... Tension-riddled.\"—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003eChris Moriarty was born in 1968 and has lived in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.  A former environmental attorney who has also worked as a ranch hand, horse trainer, and backcountry guide, Chris is the author of \u003cb\u003eSpin State\u003c\/b\u003e and \u003cb\u003eSpin Control\u003c\/b\u003e.She was probably no more than thirty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was hard to tell with humans. They all looked old to Arkady, and they  aged fast out here in the Trusteeships where people lost months and years  just getting from one planet to the next.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This human looked like she'd lived harder than most. Her skin was ravaged by  decades of unfiltered sunlight, her face lined by wind and worry, her  features gaunt with the gravity of some heavy planet. Still, Arkady didn't  think she could be more than a few subjective years beyond his twenty-seven.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Act like you're picking me up,\" she said in a low husky voice that would  have been sensual had it not been ratcheted tight by fear. She spoke  UN-standard Spanish, but her flat vowels and guttural consonants betrayed  her native tongue as Hebrew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She flagged down the barkeep and ordered two of something Arkady had never  heard of. When she gripped his arm to draw him closer, he saw that her  cuticles were rough and ragged and she'd bitten her nails to the quick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He bent over her, smelling the acrid fungal smell of the planet-born, and  recited the words Korchow had taught him back on Gilead. She fed him back  the answers he'd been told to wait for. She was pulling them off hard  memory; her pupils dilated, blossoming across the pale iris, every time she  accessed her virally embedded RAM. He tried not to stare and failed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   \u003ci\u003e This is your first monster\u003c\/i\u003e, he told himself. \u003ci\u003eGet used to them\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He studied the woman's face, wondering if she was what other members of her  species would call normal. It seemed unlikely. To Arkady's crèche-born eyes  her features looked as mismatched as if they'd been culled from a dozen  disparate genelines. The predatory nose jutted over an incongruously  delicate jawline. The forehead was high and intelligent . . . but too flat  and scowling to get past any competent genetic designer. And even under the  dim flicker of the strobe lights it was obvious that her eyes were  mismatched. The right eye fixed Arkady with a steel blue stare, while the  left one wandered across the open room behind him so that he had to fight  the urge to turn around and see who she was really talking to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Why did you come here?\" the woman asked when she was satisfied he was who  he said he was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You know why.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I mean the real reason.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003ci\u003eYou have to ask for money\u003c\/i\u003e, Korchow had told him during the interminable  briefing sessions. He could see Korchow's face in his mind's eye: a spy's  face, a diplomat's face, a manifesto in flesh and blood of everything  KnowlesSyndicate was supposed to stand for. \u003ci\u003eYou have no idea what money  means to humans, Arkady. It's how they reward each other, how they control  each other. If you don't ask for it, you won't feel real to them.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I came for the money,\" he told Osnat, trying not to sound like an explorer  trading beads with the natives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"And you trust us to give it to you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You know who I trust.\" Still following Korchow's script. \"You know who I  need to see.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"At least you had the wits not to say his name.\" She glanced at the shadowy  maze of ventilation ducts and spinstream conduits overhead to indicate that  they were under surveillance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Here?\" Arkady asked incredulously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Everywhere. The AIs can tap any spin, anytime, anywhere. You're in UN space  now. Get used to it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkady glanced at the sullen and exhausted drinkers around him and wondered  what they could possibly be doing that was worth the attention of the UN's  semisentients. These weren't humans as he'd been raised to believe in them.  Where were the fat cat profiteers and the spiritually bankrupt  individualists of his sociobiology textbooks? Where were the gene traders?  Where were the slave drivers and the brutally oppressed genetic constructs?  All he saw here were algae skimmers and coltran miners. Posthumans whose  genetic heritage was too haphazard for anyone to be able to guess whether  they were human or construct or some unknown quasi-species between the two.  People who scratched out a living from stones and mud and carried the dirt  of planets under their fingernails. Throwaway people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkasha would probably have said they were beautiful. He would have talked  passionately about pre-Evacuation literature, about the slow sure currents  of evolution and the vast chaotic genetic river that was posthumanity. But  all Arkady could see here was poverty, disease, and danger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The bartender slapped their drinks down hard enough to send sour-smelling  liquid cascading onto the countertop. The woman picked up hers and gulped  thirstily. Arkady just stared at his. He could smell it from here, and it  smelled bad. Like yeast and old skin and overloaded air filters: all the  smells he was beginning to recognize as the smells of humans.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"So.\" The woman used the word as if it were an entire sentence. \"Who really  sent you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I'm here on my own account. I thought you understood that.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"We understood that was what you \u003ci\u003ewanted\u003c\/i\u003e us to understand.\" She had a habit  of hanging on a word that gave it a weight at odds with its apparent  significance and left Arkady wondering if anything in her world meant what  it seemed to mean. \"It wouldn't be the first time a professional came across  the lines posing as an amateur.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkady played with his drink, buying time. \u003ci\u003eDon't explain, don't apologize\u003c\/i\u003e,  Korchow had told him. Right before he'd told him what would happen to  Arkasha if he failed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I'm a myrmecologist,\" he told her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Whatever the fuck that is.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I study ants. For terraforming.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Bullshit. Terraforming's dangerous. And you're an A Series. You reek of it.  No one who counts ever gets handed that raw of a deal.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"It was my Part,\" he said reflexively before he could remember the word  meant nothing to humans.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You mean you \u003ci\u003evolunteered\u003c\/i\u003e?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I'm sorry.\" Arkady's confusion was genuine. \"What is volunteered?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Her right eye narrowed, though the left one remained serenely focused on the  middle distance. An old scar nicked the eyebrow above the lazy eye, and for  the first time it occurred to Arkady that it might not be a birth defect at  all, but the product of a home-brewed wetware installation gone wrong. What  if it wasn't internal RAM she was accessing but the  spooky-action-at-a-distance virtual world of streamspace? What was she  seeing there? And who was paying her uplink fees?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A movement caught Arkady's eye, and he turned to find a lone drinker staring  at him from the far end of the grease-smeared bartop. He watched the man  take in his unlined stationer's skin, his too-symmetrical features, the  gleam of perfect health that bespoke generations of sociogenetic  engineering. They locked eyes, and Arkady noticed what he should have  noticed before: the dusty green flash of an Interfaither's skullcap.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    You were supposed to be able to tell which religion Interfaithers hailed  from by the signs they wore. A Star of David for Jews; two signs Arkady  couldn't remember for Sunnis and Shi'ites; a multitude of cryptic symbols  for the various schismatic Christian sects. He gave the Interfaither another  covert glance, but the only sign he could see on him was a silver pendant  whose two curving lines intersected to form the abstracted shape of a fish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Interfaithers scared Arkady more than any other danger in UN space. It  had been Interfaithers who killed an entire contract group right here on  Maris Station and mutilated their bodies so badly that all their home  Syndicates ever got back were diplomatic apologies. The rest of the UN had  made peace with the Syndicates--if you could call this simmering cold war a  peace--but the Interfaithers hadn't. And when anyone asked them why, they  used words like \u003ci\u003eAbomination\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eJihad\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCrusade\u003c\/i\u003e--words that weren't  supposed to exist anymore in any civilized language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkady glanced at the bar-back mirror, trying to reassure himself that he  fit in well enough to pass safely. But what he saw didn't reassure him at  all. Korchow's team had broken his nose and one cheekbone, a precaution that  had seemed barbaric back on Gilead. But it took decades at the bottom of a  gravity well to get the lined and haggard look of the planet-born. And it  would have taken a lifetime--someone else's lifetime--to mold Arkady's frank  and open crèche-born face into the aggressive mask most humans wore in  public.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkady gave the Interfaither another surreptitious glance, only to find the  man still staring at him. Their eyes locked. The Interfaither turned away,  still holding Arkady's gaze, and spit on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Creature of magicians,\" the woman muttered, \"return to your dust!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What?\" Arkady asked, though he knew somehow that the words were a response  to the Interfaither.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"It's from the Talmud.\" Again that black inward gaze as she tapped RAM or  slipped into the spinstream. \"\u003ci\u003eThen Rabbah created a man and sent him to  Rabbi Zera. Rabbi Zera spoke to him but received no answer. Thereupon he  said to him: 'Creature of the magicians, return to your dust!\u003c\/i\u003e' That's how  the first golem died.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"What's a golem?\" Arkady asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"A man without a soul.\" Her laugh was as hard-bitten as everything else  about her. \"You.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkady heaved a shaky breath that ended in a bout of coughing. He was  running a fever, his immune system kicking into overdrive to answer the  insult of being stuck in a closed environment with thousands of unfamiliar  human pathogens. He hoped it was just allergies. He couldn't afford to get  sick now. And he didn't even want to think about what the UN's human doctors  would make of his decidedly-posthuman immune system.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He lifted his glass and sipped cautiously from it. Beer. And not as bad as  it smelled. Still he didn't like the cold skin of condensation that had  already formed on the glass. It was a sure sign that the station was  underpowered and overpopulated, its life-support systems dangerously close  to redlining. A Syndicate station whose air was this bad would have been  shutting down nonessential operations and shipping its crèchelings to the  neighbors just to be on the safe side. But people here were carrying on as  usual. And on the way to the meet Arkady had passed a group of completely  unsupervised children playing dangerously far from the nearest blowout  shelter. You could spend years listening to people talk about the cheapness  of life in human space, but it didn't really come home to you until you saw  something like this . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003ci\u003eYou were wrong, Arkasha. They're another species. We're divided by our  history, by our ideology, by the very genes we hold in common. All we share  is the memory of what Earth was before we killed it.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e       * * *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e       Her name was Osnat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hebrew? German? Ethiopian?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkasha would have known which half-dead language had spawned such a name.  It was exactly the kind of thing Arkasha had always known. And exactly the  kind of thing Arkady had never learned for himself because he'd always  thought Arkasha, or someone like Arkasha, would be there to tell him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Osnat guided him through the back passages of the station as surefootedly as  if she'd been born there. When she finally ducked into the shadowy alley of  a private dock, the move was so unexpected that Arkady had to backtrack to  follow her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The gate's monitor was either broken or disconnected. Outside the scratched  porthole a dimly lit viruflex tether snaked into the void. At its far end,  looking as if it had been cut out with scissors and pasted against a black  construction paper sky, floated the impact-scarred hulk of an obsolete  Bussard-drive-powered water tanker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Osnat palmed the scanner. Status lights flickered into life as the gate  began its purge and disinfect cycle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"No one said anything about getting on a ship,\" Arkady protested, though it  was far too late to back out or demand answers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"So your employers don't seem to be keeping you too well informed. What do  you want me to do about it?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Arkady didn't answer, partly because she was right . . . and partly because  he was wracking his faded memories of pre-Breakaway history trying to figure  out what \u003ci\u003eemployers\u003c\/i\u003e were.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The purge and disinfect cycle ended. The airlock irised open and a bitter  breeze wafted over them, smelling of space and ice and viruflex. Arkady  peered down the long tunnel of the tether, but all he could see were scuffed  white walls curving away into darkness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Osnat put a hard hand to the small of his back and pushed him into the  dazzling spray of the gate's antimicrobial cycle. By the time he blinked the  stinging liquid from his eyes she was in the tether with him, riding its  movements with the ease of an old space dog. It took Arkady a curiously long  time to notice the gun in her hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You're a piss poor spy, pretty boy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I'm not a--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Yeah yeah. Ants. You told me. Well cheer up. You'll get plenty of ants  where we're going.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Where \u003ci\u003eare\u003c\/i\u003e we going?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Just suit up. They \u003ci\u003edid \u003c\/i\u003eteach you how to use your NBC gear, didn't they?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The nuclear-biological-chemical suit was supposed to be just for allergies,  according to Korchow. Which had seemed reassuring until Arkady actually  stopped to think about it. He pulled the unit out of his pack and tried to  activate it. His fingers fumbled on the unfamiliar controls. Osnat shifted  from foot to foot impatiently, cursed under her breath, and finally grabbed  it from him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He thought briefly of grappling with her now that her hands were occupied.  He imagined himself disarming her and slipping back through the airlock into  the relative safety of the station. But one look at Osnat's hard body and  strong hands was enough to discourage him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She slipped the mask over his face and demonstrated the filter's workings  with quick gestures of her ragged fingers. \"This line connects to an  auxiliary air tank if you need one. The tank clamps on here and here. You  brought spare filters?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He checked. \"Yes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"You'll need 'em. You're not engineered to survive where we're going.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Are you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She squinted at him, lips pressed together in a bloodless line. Somehow the  question, as ordinary to him as asking about the weather, had offended her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She shrugged it off. \"Guess you could call it that. Few million years of the  best engineering no money can buy. What about the shots we told you to get?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There'd been dozens of shots, starting with a bewildering array of  antiallergens and intestinal fauna, and ending with cholera, tuberculosis,  polio, yellow fever, and avian influenza. Arkady had spent hours in his bare  white room on Gilead Orbital--a prison cell for all intents and purposes,  though there was no lock on the door and he would never have thought to call  it a prison before Arkasha--trying to guess where he was going from the  shots Korchow had given him. But no immigration authority anywhere in UN  space required that battery of inoculations; if such a hellhole existed in  the vast swathe of the galaxy that still belonged to humans, they were  ashamed enough to keep it secret.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Good,\" Osnat was saying. \"An allergic reaction doesn't mean sniffles and a  runny nose down there.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Down where? Where are we going? Please, Osnat.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"Haven't you figured it out yet?\" She sighted down the barrel of her gun at  him, and the smile that drifted across her face was as thin as the clouds in  a terraformed sky. \"We're going to run you through the blockade, golem.  You're going to Earth.\"","brand":"Spectra","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304738214117,"sku":"NP9780553586251","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553586251.jpg?v=1767737095","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/spin-control-isbn-9780553586251","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}