Divergence

“It’s Judy, she’s lost it. The strain has been too much!”

“Get on board the ship, Maurice, or I go without you!”

“Not without Edward!”

“Maurice, get on the ship!” That was Saskia. “What else can we do?”

The Dark VNMs were stirring; they were moving, gathering, ready for the kill.

“Judy,” Kevin asked wonderingly, “what are you doing?”

I’m not doing anything, Judy thought, lost in a wave of color and motion. Saskia was gripping her hand. “They’re forming into a cloud,” she said, and then the wave of images passed from Judy, leaving her feeling sick and empty.

“What happened there?” asked Saskia.

“I don’t know,” said Judy. “I felt so much…look!”

“Judy, what have you done?” Kevin’s voice was pale with wonder.

Judy and Saskia looked up as the Dark VNMs coalesced into a definite shape. Clouds of silver VNMs rose all around them; they came from apertures that opened up in the hull, rushing towards the pale blue shape forming in the center of the Bailero . The shape was growing, getting bigger and bigger, forming a bulge at one end. Taking on the shape of a teardrop.

“I told you,” said Edward quietly, “you can’t fool FE.”

“But that’s impossible,” Kevin said. “It had gone. It was completely broken apart.”

Judy found herself nodding in agreement. It was impossible. And yet, high above them, in the middle of the hull, they watched in astonishment as the Eva Rye was reborn.

The Eva Rye had been upgraded yet again.

It was still being reborn, still being formed by the streams of silver spiders that flowed together from all directions, but its essence was clear.

Judy gazed at the way the black-and-white harlequin patterns swept in a liquid tide over the hull of the ship. They looked plainer now, and yet at the same time sleeker. Something about the ship breathed quiet power and confidence. Even dwarfed as it was by the ice-blue enclosing shell of the Bailero, the Eva Rye drew the eye and left no doubt which was the superior ship.

“I don’t understand,” Kevin said plaintively. “It’s stronger than me….”

“I know,” breathed Judy, “I can see that.” There was a sweep to the curves of the Eva Rye now, and it had lost the lazy, chubby feel of before. Now it fit easily into the imagination, becoming a thing of beauty, as mathematically perfect as the golden ratio.

Kevin’s voice was distant, distracted. “It’s taking over my control interfaces. It has my engines, my senses….”

Saskia’s voice was cold with vengeance. “You belong to us now, Kevin,” she said. “You are our possession. You are going with us to Earth.”

“But that’s not fair!” Kevin exclaimed. “I have been sold to you against my will.”

“I don’t think so,” said Judy. “The Free Enterprise sold you. It must have held title over you.”

“No…it did not.”

Saskia gave a laugh. “You’re not thinking like FE software, Judy. The Free Enterprise didn’t hold title over Kevin. It was Kevin. Didn’t he say that he built his empire from himself? The Free Enterprise was as much part of Kevin as this ship. Kevin shafted himself!” She stabbed an accusing finger into the air, pointing at the hull of the Bailero .

“Edward was right! Who’d have thought it, but he was right! You don’t play tricks with FE, Kevin. It’s cleverer than you. It tangles you up in your own motives, and just when you think you have cheated it, it goes and does exactly what it has promised!”

There was a sigh, an exhalation of breath that filled the hoods of their active suits, then Saskia’s moment of triumph was quickly forgotten.

“Miss Rose!” Judy exclaimed.

They dragged the half-living body of Miss Rose onto the newly forming Eva Rye and then through the sleek black-and-white corridors to the autodoc. There was just enough atmosphere on the ship for them to take off the hoods of their active suits. Everywhere smelled of cold and of aniseed.

“Leave her in the body bag,” said Judy. “It’s the only thing holding her together.”

The old woman’s wrinkled, liver-spotted skin could be seen hanging in tatters amongst the red blood that filled the clear plastic bag, her body torn apart by the multiple exit points of the VNMs that had left to make up the newly reborn Eva Rye.

“Why didn’t those machines rip the body bag apart, too?” Saskia wondered as she helped Judy slide the remains of the old woman into the thick plastic coffin of the autodoc. Blood squished between her fingers, inside the clear bag, squashing pink bubbles back and forth.

“I don’t know,” Judy said. “Kevin, speak to me!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Judy spoke in her softest voice. “Don’t play games with me, Kevin. Don’t pretend that you can dismiss what happened by feigning ironic detachment. You killed my sisters once, now you nearly killed Miss Rose. You work for the Eva Rye now. Got it?”

“Yes.” Kevin’s voice was cold.

“You’d better really mean that. Believe what I say, Kevin. I will strip you right down to your very core in order that you do what I decide is right. I have done that in the past and I will do it again. Now tell me, what happened to Miss Rose?”

Kevin’s reply was matter-of-fact.

“I don’t know for sure. Those VNMs that infiltrated her body would not want to kill her, just use her. They resealed the bag as they left her body; I’d guess that they disengaged in such a way as to give her the best chance of survival. That way they could return if they got the chance. Get her in that autodoc now and she will probably live.”

Yes, and I will spend the next few months helping her to deal with the shock of what has happened to her.

There was the sound of footsteps and Edward came into the white-tiled brilliance of the medical room.

“The ship has changed again,” he said wonderingly.

Saskia ran to him, flung her arms around him, and squeezed him tightly.

“Are you okay, Saskia?” said Edward uncertainly, gazing sideways at her, tilted uncomfortably by the force of her hug.

“Yes,” Saskia breathed. “Yes, I’m okay Edward.”

Maurice walked in and Saskia rather sheepishly disengaged herself from Edward.

“Hey, Saskia,” he said.

“Hey, Maurice.”

She reached out and brushed her hand across his arm. Judy did not give any indication of having noticed this. She was peering at her console.

“The autodoc says it can save her,” she announced.

Saskia rubbed her eyes.

“Did you see what happened out there?” Maurice said. “Do you realize what we just saw?”

“Not now.” Judy shook her head at him.

Saskia walked from the room, pale and shaking. Maurice made to go after her.

“Leave her,” Judy whispered. “She needs some time to think.”

Judy wasn’t surprised to find Saskia in Miss Rose’s room. The young woman looked up from where she lay on the bed, her face puffy from crying.

“Did you know she was living like this?” Saskia waved a hand weakly. Judy didn’t want to look around the room. The walls and floor may have been rebuilt, shiny and new, but whatever it was in the Eva Rye ’s soul that had clung to life and had caused it to be reborn had restored the personal effects of the crew just as they had left them. Their consciences had not been wiped clean by the rebuilding of the ship. Miss Rose’s room retained the rotting food that lay on plates on the floor and every available surface. The air was thick with the smell of stale urine. The bedclothes were dirty, yellow stains rippling out across the once white sheets like patterns on the surface of a pond.

Only the little pictures hanging on the wall showed any sign of order. Hung in neat patterns, they had been straightened and dusted. Hundreds of scenes from a life back when Miss Rose had been young and elegant and beautiful. And proud.

“I didn’t realize,” Judy said. “I should have, but I was just too distracted…”

“You’re not to blame,” Saskia said, wiping a hand across her face. “You’ve only just arrived here. But I lived on this ship for five weeks and never once did I come here to speak to her. I was captain of this ship. I should have taken care of my crew. I should have guessed. I should have come in here.”

Judy said nothing. This was a time for listening.

“Look at this place,” said Saskia, waving a hand around the room. “She lived in all this filth for weeks, and not once did any of us stop by to find out how she was. We laughed at her. She irritated us, the made old woman. The Stranger was right: the systems on this ship are all wrong. We don’t even take care of each other.”

A look of determination crossed her face.

“Well, that was then. I’ve been thinking, Judy. I’ve taken a look at myself. Really taken a look, not just paid lip service to some emotional adjustment course I’ve plucked off the datasphere. And I don’t like what I see.”

Saskia got up from the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“To the living area. To find Edward. The Stranger was right.”

Judy followed Saskia from the room. The thin woman was striding off down the corridor beyond determinedly.

“The Stranger was right about what?” Judy called.

“I shouldn’t be in charge here. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m beginning to realize that there’s a lot more to the FE software than just a Fair Exchange. So, I’m going to do what I should have done at the start: I’m going to follow the Stranger’s advice.”

“So you’re going to…” Judy was striding hard to keep up.

Saskia wasn’t listening.

“If we’d listened to him right at the start, we would never have got into this mess. Miss Rose wouldn’t be lying there in an autodoc at the moment. He was the only one who was right about the flowers. He wanted to get away from them. Well, next time we’ll do as he says.”

She paused for a moment, bringing Judy to a sudden stop. Saskia took a deep breath.

“I’m putting Edward in charge of the ship.”

eva 7: 2089

“All done,” Alexandr said, smoothing down the new plaster. Eva watched the movement of his hands in fascination. There was something pleasing about the easy way he moved the trowel back and forth.

“Will they be able to see me now?” she asked.

“No,” Ivan said, pouring out three glasses of tea.

“Why, do you want them to be able to?” Alexandr asked, stopping his plastering in mid-swoop. He wore a look of mock concern. A lightning flash of drying plaster ran up the wall behind him. Eva laughed. “I don’t think anyone would want to see me anymore. Not at my age.”

“If you’re sure,” Alexandr said helpfully, “I can have a link in a moment. You can have the whole world watching you as you take a shower.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure the world would really love that,” replied Eva dryly. Ivan handed her a glass of tea and a lump of sugar. She sipped the tea through the sugar, the way he had taught her. Alexandr tapped at his console and the large screen came on.

“There you are,” he said, “input only.” He took the proffered glass from Ivan, and the three of them sipped as they watched the pictures from the outside world.

Bright white cities were growing from the Earth, their slender spires constructed by humans, the silver scaffolding growing from VNMs. The people that walked the newly minted streets seemed to glow brighter than those Eva had become used to in the RFS. They walked with more confidence; their smiles were deeper; they gave the impression of having a greater love of life.

“You’re not tempted to go back there?” Alexandr asked.

“Not at all,” said Eva.

“Not even to see your daughter?” Ivan wondered. “I would not want to be apart from my Katya for so long.”

“Katya is still young and needs your love. Jessica is a grown woman. She visits me here whenever she can. We can speak whenever we like using the screen.”

“You won’t be doing that for a while,” Alexandr said. “We’ve had to disconnect the outgoing line completely. The VNMs had jerked the bandwidth right up. I’m not sure how we will restrict it again.”

Eva sipped more tea. She was going to miss Alexandr almost as much as she would miss Ivan. She would miss his open smile and his constant attempts to wind her up. He liked to stuff the pockets of her coat with rolled up balls of paper when she wasn’t looking, and then he would act all wide-eyed and innocent when she pulled them out and threw them at him. The young man finished the plastering and dropped his trowel into a plastic self-cleaning container.

“All done,” he said, toasting his work with the glass of tea he held in a plaster-flecked hand.

“I’m going to miss you, Alexandr.”

He gave a wink. “I’ll be back, I’m sure.”

“Don’t you ever think about staying here?” Eva wished that she could take back the words. They made her sound needy and desperate.

Alexandr didn’t seem to notice, though. He sipped slowly as he considered his answer.

“Sometimes,” he pondered. “It seems more honest here, don’t you think? More natural, I mean. I suppose that’s why you like it here?”

Eva didn’t know what to say to that. Fortunately, Ivan noted her discomfort and changed the subject for her.

“Are you coming with us to the concert tomorrow, Alexandr?”

Alexandr grinned. “Don’t you think I’d be getting in the way? Wouldn’t I cramp your style?”

“We’d like it,” Eva said deliberately. She took Ivan’s big hand in hers as she spoke. Alexandr shrugged. “If we finish this last job in time. We’ve still got more screens to nullify. The infestation runs right through this building.”

“Where did it come from?” Eva asked, grateful for the change of subject. For some reason, Alexandr didn’t answer straightaway. He was staring at the older man, as if waiting to see what he had to say. Eva turned to Ivan, head tilted, waiting for an answer.

“From underneath the building,” Ivan said, blushing. “The earth is full of VNMs. They crawl up from beneath the ground. You find them in mines, in caves—they are there all the time, working away beneath our feet.”

“Yes,” Alexandr agreed. He seemed pleased to be allowed to confirm this. “You did not know this, Eva? It is an open secret—”

“It is not a secret,” interrupted Ivan, “but there is no point in worrying people.”

“They run up the walls of the Narkomfin,” Alexandr continued. “They have interfaced with most of the screens, thus attaching themselves to the outside world.” He gave a laugh. “It’s a joke. Social Care are interfacing you to the rest of the world, whether you like it or not, and at the same time they are paying me to come in here and eliminate their machines.”

“They are not all Social Care’s machines,” Ivan said darkly.

Alexandr was stirring his feet uncomfortably at this. He drained his glass with a hurried gulp. “All done. Come on, old man Vanya. Let’s get on or neither of us will get to the concert.”

Ivan quickly packed their tools while Alexandr vacuumed up the tiny pieces of plaster he had chiseled out of the wall in his search for the VNMs’ line of approach.

Ivan took hold of Eva’s hand again.

“Would you like to come around to my apartment tonight? For dinner?”

“Yes,” she said, staring back into his dark eyes. “Will Katya be there?”

“No, she is going out. Her friends have organized a good-bye party of their own.”

I bet they have, thought Eva. I bet Paul in particular is hoping to say good-bye.

“I want to say good-bye properly,” Ivan continued, mercifully unaware of her thoughts.

“It’s not good-bye forever. I’m sure you will come back, at least for a visit.”

Ivan nodded and squeezed her hand. She kissed him lightly on the lips and gave a little wave as the two men left.

Eva softly closed the door and returned to the solitude of her lounge. She glanced at the screen on the wall. She didn’t care what Alexandr said, she still felt she was being watched. This was why she had come to the Russian Free States: to get away from the constant surveillance of the Watcher. The Watcher, Earth’s first AI, was shaping the world to its own ends, and sometimes it even asked Eva for advice. Why Eva? She didn’t know. But the responsibility of it had been too great to begin with and had only gotten worse since.

She shivered, remembering. She had met the Watcher. She had been present when it had released the original VNMs into the ground. Now they were sprouting forth—bursting from the fertile Earth—even here. Metal tendrils searching and questing and reaching for the sunlight, binding humanity in their growth as they reached up to the stars.

“Go away!” Eva shouted at nothing in particular. “Leave me alone!”

There was silence, but to Eva’s ears it was the silence of someone choosing not to speak.

Let me sleep in peace, thought Judy. I need to rest after last night. Already it is Wednesday morning. Soon I will be on Earth. FE software, Chris, Watcher: leave me alone, whoever you are. Dreams were forming in her head, resurrecting themselves, like the Eva Rye had been reborn inside the metal shell of the Bailero.

This Narkomfin was built in the late 2030s, one of a series of communal homes modeled on a Russian prototype from the early twentieth century. Eva liked the place, with its yellow plaster walls and curving concrete balconies. She liked to stand inside the building and look out through the front-facing wall of windows, hundreds of square panes in metal frames looking out over the rough grass and untidy hills. She liked to stand outside in the bitter wind and watch the late winter sun burning yellow in the glass’

reflection. She liked the way that she could step out from her apartment and gaze down the long corridor at the round pillars on her left, marching off into the distance. She liked the way the doors of her neighbors were patched and painted with flowers and faces. The smell of warmth and damp clothes drying, of cabbage and beetroot soup, was comforting, even mixed with the sickly tang of used diapers from the adults and children who lived in the crowded rooms. It made the whole place seem homely and welcoming.

And then there were the various sounds: of music playing from speakers or scraped out on a violin; of people laughing or talking or squabbling; the gurgle of the pipes or the hiss of the heating; and the rush of the rain on the windows when she was safe and warm inside, drinking tea or pepper vodka. But best of all was the press of the people. Eva had lived her early life in South Street and had spent so much time alone in the middle of the city, with only the saccharine comfort of Social Care for company. But here in the Narkomfin she cared and was cared for.

She cooked ham and pease pudding for others, and she shared their kvass and borscht. She accepted rides in the community’s cars and britzkas, and in exchange she pushed the handicapped through the corridors in their wheelchairs. She helped in the nursery and took her turn accompanying those with Down’s syndrome, and in return she was regarded with warmth and respect. And then she had met Ivan.

He answered the door to his apartment with a sheepish smile and showed her into the neat living area.

“You look so pretty,” he said.

“Thank you,” Eva said, trim in her calf-length brown skirt and yellow patterned sweater. Her white hair was clipped back in a ponytail; on her left wrist she wore the gold chain bracelet her long dead husband had bought her.

On the table in the middle of the room, Ivan had laid out dishes of salted cucumber and little roast potatoes. The shelves were already cleared of his and Katya’s belongings, stacked neatly now in a set of silver cases set in the corner, but truth to tell, the apartment did not feel much emptier than usual. Ivan led a neat, Spartan existence, constantly cleaning up after the mess of his teenage daughter. They made small talk, and Eva found herself becoming tipsy on black currant vodka. Ivan’s cheeks were flushing red, and she could tell he was getting ready to ask her to accompany him when he left the Russian Free States.

He led her to the table and served her hot salted beef and horseradish, which she ate with special care. Afterwards there was green shchi with sour cream and then honeyed baklava.

“Where did you get all this from?” Eva asked. “It must have cost a fortune.”

“Special occasion,” Ivan said, avoiding the point.

They ate their meal with relish, passing each other morsels to try, wiping imaginary spots of food from each other’s cheeks.

Afterwards, they sat on the thin sofa and drank coffee with warmed-up cream on top. From somewhere below, the sound of a practicing brass band swelled and fell in the background. Finally Ivan got to the point.

“Eva,” he said, flecks of cream on his mustache. “You are a flower that blooms unnoticed in this wilderness. You should not stay here alone. Come back with me, Eva. Come with me.”

Eva felt her dinner settling like a stone inside her.

“You know I can’t,” she replied, looking at her feet. “Why not stay here with me?”

“You know I can’t. Katya should not grow up here. It has been a fine holiday for her, but the people who live in this place have no sense of responsibility. No sense of their duty to each other.”

The lounge was filled with the golden glow of late evening. There was a hazy, otherworldly feeling to their conversation. Ivan made to wipe his mustache with his hand, paused, and drew a handkerchief from his pocket.

“Eva,” he said, wiping himself clean, “what is wrong with the real world? Look at the people whom you have chosen to live with! Dropouts, the handicapped, the stupid, the stubborn.”

“You don’t mean that, Ivan. Your own daughter is handicapped.”

Ivan was hot now with nerves and vodka. “I don’t blame the handicapped,” he said thickly. “But what sort of mother would bring a child with Down’s syndrome to live in this place? Out there in the real world there is medical care and corrective therapy and…and…”

He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the window. “Come back with me, Eva.”

Eva chose her words with a drunkard’s care. “The mother would say that the child she inherits after the cure is not the same as the one before.”

Ivan was dismissive. “Pah! Religion! Only fools listen to that!”

“It’s not about religion! Barely anyone here believes—”

“You have been talking to Pobyedov, that fool of a priest, again, haven’t you?”

“Credit me with my own opinions, Ivan,” Eva said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” said Ivan.

The awkward silence was punctuated by a distant fanfare of cornets. One of them was clearly out of tune.

Eva drained her cup. “You could stay here, Ivan. Social Care can’t make you return.”

“What is wrong about you coming with me?” Ivan asked proudly.

“I told you. The Watcher. It is waiting for me.”

Ivan didn’t speak. Eva knew what he was thinking: that the Watcher didn’t exist. He was steeling himself to say it, weighing up the words carefully. She wasn’t going to give him the chance.

“I told you, Ivan, I have met the Watcher.”

“So you said.”

“I told you, it is intelligent. Much more intelligent than you or me. It sees everything, it manipulates people. They obey its wishes but believe they are following their own. It has a course for this world laid out for centuries into the future. It now controls our destinies.”

“So I have heard.”

Eva gave a sigh. She hadn’t wanted to say this. “Hasn’t it occurred to you, Ivan?”

“What?”

“You turning up here?”

He deliberately misunderstood her. “Social Care sends lots of people like me into the RFS. It does not neglect its duty. Are you saying that you do not like me?”

Eva shook her head. “You know that I’m not. Ivan. You know I like you. I think I love you.” She slammed down her coffee cup. “Damn, I know I love you! That’s what I mean. I love you.”

She glared at him. He was blushing. He was embarrassed. But he was a strong man. He was strong enough to say it.

“I love you too, Eva.”

There was a big round stone in her stomach, cold and hard. She couldn’t believe he had ever admitted it. She felt as if she were walking in concrete boots, lurching along, jerking her whole body just to move forward. She felt her nose begin to run. It was either that or cry.

“And that’s just it, isn’t it? You were chosen just because of that. You were cast into here to hook me, so the Watcher could reel you back in with me in your arms.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way, Eva. Maybe—”

“It’s the Watcher, Ivan. It says it wants to do good! But I hate to think what that means. Look what it’s done to us! It honestly believes it is doing what is right, trying to snatch me back.”

Ivan waved a big hand in a dismissive gesture.

“I do not care. Whether it is real or constructed. I love you. So come with me.”

“I want to, but I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“I will help you.”

“Against the Watcher? It is on a different plane to you or me. Beyond our grasp.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Ivan, I don’t think it even sees reality as we do.”

Something flickered in Ivan’s eyes, as if Eva’s comment had struck home.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Ivan slowly.

“What?” Eva followed his gaze. He was staring at the screen. “What aren’t you telling me, Ivan? I saw the way you and Alexandr were looking at each other earlier. Those people we met the other day on the road here—the ones from Saolim—the way they spoke of this Narkomfin. What is it about this place, Ivan?”

“I promised I would not tell you, Eva.”

“Promised who?”

“Social Care.”

“When?”

“Before I came here. I didn’t know what they were talking about then. I just signed a contract, promising not to disclose information regarding the VNMs and venumbs of this region.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The VNMs below this building. The ones that climb the walls. The ones that you are so frightened of.”

“What about them?”

“I found out where they came from. Well, Alexandr did.”

“Where did they come from?”

“I’ll show you.”

Ivan fetched a featureless grey metal box and an induction screwdriver from one of the silver packing cases. He connected the box to the screen with a heavy cable.

“Shielded,” he said, and began fiddling at the box with his screwdriver. “This way no one but me can activate it,” he explained. On the screen a picture came to flickering life.

“This is not too far from here,” Ivan said. “This building sits practically on top of these caves.”

Eva guessed that the caves weren’t entirely natural. The Kamchatka peninsula, where the Narkomfin was located, was a region of volcanic activity. Still, the view on the screen appeared just too regular to be natural formation. Eva wondered if the underground flows of lava had been redirected by the Watcher, just as humans redirected watercourses by using dams. Had the magma table been lowered so that these glassy, shiny caves could float free? Had machinery been at work under here, boring and shaping the walls? Eva thought she could make out the circular patterns of sanders and drill bits evident on the glittering walls. But that was irrelevant: she was distracting herself, trying not to look at the things that filled the caves.

“Are they alive?” she asked Ivan.

“Alive? What is life ? Look closer.” Ivan did something with his induction screwdriver, and the picture zoomed in. Now Eva could see what it was that was creeping and crawling on the floors of the caves.

“VNMs!” she exclaimed. “But what’s the matter with them?”

All of the machines were obviously disabled in some way. Maybe the legs down one side hadn’t grown properly; maybe the sense cluster located on the head section was missing. Eva watched as one rusty creature moving painfully across the rippled stone floor; she could almost hear the metallic squeaking of its unlubricated joints.

“It’s in pain,” she whispered, but her attention was then caught by a deformed spider, its body and legs all way too long, tip-toeing fragilely amongst the squirming mass of metal creatures.

“But what are they all doing down there?” she asked.

“I think it is someone’s idea of a joke,” Ivan said coldly. “This building houses the handicapped above ground. So where better to send all the hurt and lame machines but underneath it?”

“But that’s not funny at all.” Eva felt something cold grip her heart. The Watcher. Would he do this?

“I don’t know,” Ivan said, guessing her thoughts. “But this is not all. Look here. And here.”

He fiddled with his screwdriver again, zooming back out. Eva saw a robot feeling its way along the cave floor. Then another one. And another. A trailing crowd of orange robots, roughly humanoid, all shuffling in the same direction.

“They are searching for the next power mast,” said Ivan. “You see them, painted yellow? They are turned on in sequence according to a regular period.” Eva saw the masts, dwarf versions of old-fashioned pylons.

“Why do they move so slowly?” asked Eva.

“Look.” He zoomed in on one robot.

“What’s wrong with its eyes?” asked Eva, noticing the cloudy lenses set in the smooth orange head.

“The glass was deliberately contaminated during manufacture. That robot is almost blind. Look at this one here.”

“It seems normal. Why is it moving like that?”

“Faulty connection between the processor and the body. Its brain cannot properly control its limbs.”

The camera ran along the trailing line of orange robots, and Eva saw they had all been tampered with in some way. Their limbs would be stiff and inflexible, or one would be shorter than the other, or they would appear perfectly sound but unable to move properly. The robots shuffled and stumbled and twitched and dragged themselves along a channel in the rippled stone floor, heading for the skeletal metal shape of the yellow pylon.

“They can only hold an hour’s worth of charge,” explained Ivan. “Those that don’t make it to the pylon in time die.”

“What happens to them?”

Wordlessly, Ivan directed the view to the motionless orange body of a robot. It was slowly and inexpertly being taken apart by a group of rusty VNMs.

“But that’s horrible,” said Eva.

“I know. Look at that.”

One of the robots had now reached the pylon. Several black rubber cables hung there, a heavy male socket at the end of each. The robot unhooked the cable with its too short arms and stood, waiting.

“What’s the matter with it?” asked Eva. “Oh, I see.” The robot’s charging socket was located low down, where its navel would have been if it were human. The robot’s arms would not reach that far.

“It’s waiting for another robot to come and help it,” said Ivan.

Do you know what recursion is, Judy? It is when something causes itself to happen. A function that calls itself. Eva and Ivan aren’t real; they’re your dreams, Judy. Your life calls theirs into existence. Is someone calling you, Judy? The FE, perhaps? Are you merely another subroutine that is being run by a higher intelligence?

“Is everything in that cave handicapped in some way?”

“I think so.”

Eva felt dizzy and nauseated from peering at the stream of orange figures, the glassy smoothness of the cave walls. She looked away from the screen into the yellow evening sunlit room.

“That is happening right now, somewhere beneath our feet?”

“Yes—or something like that. This is a recording.”

“Does anyone from this Narkomfin know about it?”

“Some do, but they’re not telling anyone what they know.”

“Why not?”

“Let me show you.”

The picture on the screen jumped several times. Ivan was searching for something. A dark, distorted pyramid appeared on the screen, a tumbled mound of earth. The picture rewound quickly, stopped, gained clarity, and Eva realized what she was looking at. She gasped, placed one hand to her mouth.

“That’s Stephen,” she whispered. The dark pyramid was revealed to be Stephen Kerry slumped in his wheelchair, drool running from one corner of his mouth to soak the sleeve of his black jacket. “He lives on the floor just below.”

Silver and grey and rust-colored VNMs could be seen gathering around the wheels of Stephen’s chair. They were looking up at him. Stephen was staring back in horror. In the background of the image, orange shapes shuffled ever onwards to the next pylon.

“How did he get down there?” asked Eva.

“There are shafts hidden throughout this whole building,” said Ivan. “This building itself is an outpost of the world below. Every night, the handicapped are carried down to live in the world below.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. Who can second-guess the Watcher?”

“So it is the Watcher doing this!”

“I don’t know for sure! But who else?”

“But why ?”

“I can only guess. But I have often wondered. What if a handicapped person was raised in a world of the handicapped? Would he be normal?”

“Normal? What do you mean by normal?”

Ivan laid his hand on her forehead.

“You’re burning up. I think you have had too much to drink, Eva.”

Eva felt the coolness of his hand. She was having trouble speaking without slurring. Slowly she formed a sentence: “I think you’re right, Ivan. I think we should go outside.”

“Good idea.”

“I’m sorry. After you went to all this trouble preparing the meal.”

“No trouble.”

“It was delicious. But I feel sick. Too much cream in my coffee.”

“Drink some pepper vodka.”

“No. That will curdle it. Let’s go outside. Take a walk.”

She took one last look at the screen, doing her best not to think about what she had witnessed there. Ivan took her hand and led her to the door.

Eva looked up through the tunnels in the clouds to the darkening sky above.

“Do you feel better?” asked Ivan.

“Every time we look up, it is the opening or closing parenthesis on a recursive block,” declared Eva, swaying.

“I don’t understand.”

“Look up there. Clouds rising higher and higher like a stack of pennies thrown into the sky, and beyond them the first stars are appearing. Up there I see the contrails of the airplanes from the outside world. The Watcher is closing in on us, Ivan. The Free States won’t last much longer.”

“So come with me when I return home.”

“No. While I stay here I am safe.”

“Safe here? With what you have seen lies beneath your feet?”

Eva swayed a little. How far down, she wondered? How far down to those caves?

If they were real, of course. No—she shunted the treacherous thought to one side—Ivan wouldn’t lie to her. Would he?

They heard the chatter of approaching voices. Five people in wheelchairs approached, two of them being pushed by others. She studied them carefully. Stephen Kerry was not amongst them. What would she have done if he were?

“Hello, Eva. Hello, Ivan.”

Eva held on to Ivan as she greeted the newcomers in return. She still felt sick and dizzy, and she felt the stiffness in his body as she clung and realized why when she saw who was walking behind the party. The priest, the man who annoyed Ivan so.

“Hello, Pobyedov,” she called. “Say hello, Ivan,” she muttered.

One of the young men in the wheelchairs began to laugh. “Here we go again,” he called. “Listen, we’re out for an evening stroll. We don’t want to hear you two arguing!”

“I wasn’t going to argue,” said Ivan.

“Nor was I, Wilson,” said Pobyedov. He knelt down by the young man in the wheelchair and offered him a drink from a little silver hip flask. Wilson took a nip, gave a satisfied gasp, and then offered the flask to Eva and Ivan.

“No, thank you,” said Eva. “I’ve had enough.” She squeezed Ivan’s arm, urging him to be polite and accept the offered drink. Reluctantly he did so.

“Whisky,” he said. “But why is it sweet? This is like a child’s drink, Wilson.”

Wilson laughed again. He was a big man, with strong arms and a broad chest. Only his legs were thin and useless.

“It is, it is!” he said delightedly. “Which fool thought of putting vanilla in whisky? And yet you drink black currant vodka and are happy, Ivan. Pobyedov, I like this stuff!”

There was a gentle thumping sound. One of the group had started to spasm, one arm beating regularly against her head. Long strands of drool ran down onto her chest. Her father leaned down and spoke to her softly.

“We’re going to go inside now,” said Wilson, pretending not to notice the woman’s behavior. “We thought we might go to Manny’s bar later on. Maybe see you there?”

“Maybe,” said Eva.

They pushed their chairs on down the uneven concrete slabs of the road. Pobyedov stayed with them, and Eva wished that he hadn’t. Not tonight of all nights. She felt too nauseated for an argument.

“I hear you are going back home in two days,” said Pobyedov.

“I am,” said Ivan.

“I am grateful to you for coming here,” said Pobyedov. “You’ve made a big difference to the residents. The heating would not be working but for you and Alexandr.”

“Maybe,” said Ivan, and Eva saw his face flushing red. She knew that he was trying to be polite. He honestly believed that the handicapped would be better served back out in the Watcher’s world. It was taking a great effort for him not to point this out. He changed the subject by enlisting an unlikely ally.

“I have asked Eva to leave with me, Pobyedov. What do you think?”

“I think Eva must follow her own heart, Ivan Atchmianov. What do you think about our Narkomfin, Eva?”

“I don’t know,” Eva said, still lost in the strangeness of the evening. “It’s unusual. I wonder about it, sometimes. We have artificial intelligences that think for us and they build machines that can reproduce. We are producing thoughts and artifacts that are beyond human capabilities, and yet we still have the handicapped. Even amongst the machines. Even some VNMs do not reproduce truly. They are born deformed.”

“They are not born, Eva,” Pobyedov said.

“You know what she means,” said Ivan, who normally would not agree with Eva’s choice of words either.

“I suppose I do,” Pobyedov said. “But what is your point, Eva?”

Eva was staring after the retreating group of people, outlined in silhouette now in the darkening evening, moving on down the V of the concrete path towards the painted Narkomfin.

“I don’t know,” Eva said. “It is almost as if the existence of the handicapped was written into the laws of the universe itself.”

Ivan made a dismissive noise. “Nonsense.”

“Someone seems to think so,” she muttered.

“No, it is just a fault in the replication process. Don’t smile at me like that, Pobyedov. I don’t want another argument.”

“You argue with yourself most of the time, Ivan Atchmianov.”

Eva let go of Ivan. It was her fault, she knew it. She had started this argument.

“How about if I built a handicapped robot?” Ivan asked, flushing red. “What if I made a machine and deliberately disabled its legs—like Wilson. Left it to push itself around in a chair? Why don’t I do that?”

Pobyedov smiled.

“You would not do that, Ivan Atchmianov, because God gave you a heart that tells you what is right and what is wrong.”

“Pah, there is no God! Everything you see is just a result of the fact that matter attracts matter.”

“Who made the matter?”

“Who made life?” retorted Ivan. “I tell you, no one. Simple chance. Matter attracts and forms molecules. By chance some of those molecules will be capable of replicating themselves. From this, you have life.”

“I do not dispute this, Ivan Atchmianov. But it does not prove that God did not teach you how to love.”

Eva interrupted. “Come on, Ivan, take me back inside.”

Ivan clenched her hand in his fist. It almost hurt, such was his temper.

“Listen, not thirty kilometers from here we saw a flower formed of metal. It was growing: a metal flower. Life!”

Pobyedov smiled. “There are many wondrous things in this creation…”

“But it was not life. It was just bad programming.”

“And who wrote the program that brought us here, Ivan Atchmianov?”

“Simple chance, Pobyedov. Cells form that can follow simple rules, but given enough cells and enough time and they form ordered patterns, and then thought emerges. This is inevitable. This is part of the universe. Tell him, Eva, tell him about the barge. Tell him about how they had to sleep on the barge in the old days.”

“Don’t get me involved.”

“Eva speaks of the competitive urge: how evolution causes animals to fight for resources.”

“What about love?”

“Love? Pah! This too has been modeled. Simulations have been run.” Ivan waved his hand dismissively.

“Sometimes it is appropriate for members of a species to aid each other. Love is the name given to this bond. It is an evolved thing, nothing more.”

“Ah,” said the priest, “I see. So, you are saying that love is just as inevitable as thought and life and self-replicating molecules and stars. So then you agree with me, that love is written into the universe at a fundamental level.”

And at that the priest took another sip from his flask. He offered it once more.

“Now, another drink,” he said, “and then shall we walk back to the building?”

Pobyedov, called Judy in her sleep. Through Eva’s eyes she watched him walking beside them in the gathering gloom. She raised her voice and shouted again: Speak to me, Pobyedov! Who are you? I can feel you through the meta-intelligence. Who are you?

She was lying in her bed, lying under black sheets, dreaming in her room that was like a great bell that echoed with the sounds that reverberated through the ship. Echoed with the thoughts of the crew of the ship. She was picking up on the thoughts of the others. Pobyedov? He was part of the FE software, she realized. Part of it. An echo from the past. From the very core of its being.

Pobyedov was in its bones, one might say.

maurice 4: 2252

They had both been drunk and they had both done something stupid, but in the grand scheme of things that was hardly something of note. Maurice had started it by unfolding his console, but it was Saskia who drunkenly raised the question. They had entered into a Fair Exchange, and both had been outwardly satisfied with the outcome, and inwardly put out at its equality. Both had thought themselves a more attractive proposition than the other. As is so often the case in life, it turned out that they were not.

Saskia’s hair spread out on the white pillow. She was smiling at him.

“Thank you,” she said. “If I turn around will you hold me?”

“Of course,” said Maurice, and she rolled over and shuffled against him so that her pale back and thin buttocks were pressed against his thighs. He placed his hand on her flat stomach and remembered the shadows of her ribs, remembered feeling the dark buds of her tiny breasts beneath his thumbs. Truth be told, he hadn’t fancied her that much, but nonetheless he felt an enormous sense of release and relaxation lying there. They had both felt it. Saskia had given an enormous shudder as she had climaxed, and Maurice had felt the tension ebbing from her body immediately afterwards. Judy had been right.

“Judy was wrong,” murmured Saskia.

“What do you mean?” yawned Maurice, already drifting off to sleep.

“She told me to keep away from you,” she confided. “Said that you were only after one thing. She didn’t seem to realize that was what I needed, too.”

“Mmmm.”

“I suppose, being a virgin, she wouldn’t understand.”

Maurice was already drifting in a snugly warm world. Of course she understands, he thought. She manipulated you as deftly as her kind always does. The best way of getting you to do anything, Saskia, is by telling you to do the opposite.

“You realize this is just about companionship, don’t you?” whispered Saskia.

“Yes, I know that.”

“Are you sure? You just went all tense.”

“I was thinking about something else,” said Maurice. He was suddenly wide awake, his mind bubbling over. Judy had manipulated them, hadn’t she? And, he realized, it wasn’t for the first time.

“I wonder what she will do for Edward,” Saskia thought aloud.

“I wonder what she will do for herself.”

“What do you mean?”

I don’t know, thought Maurice. Was that ethical? Tricking us into bed together? Are Social Care allowed to do that? I never thought of that before. What else has she done while she’s been playing with our emotions?

“She has dreams, you know,” murmured Saskia. “Haven’t you seen her in the mornings? How pale she looks?”

That time in the hold, when I played my clarinet.

“She always looks pale, of course,” Saskia continued, and for no real reason she started to laugh.

When she was asleep, Saskia looked like a little girl. She was smiling, one hand tucked beneath her head, her knees tucked up almost to her chest. Maurice got out of bed before shaking her gently awake. She opened her eyes and smiled, and then remembered where she was. A shutter seemed to come down inside her head and she sat up suddenly, wrapping the thin white sheet around herself.

“Good morning.” Maurice handed her his thick white robe. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Saskia let her hair drop over her eyes.

“Good morning,” she said. “I think I’ll do the same back in my room. I’ll see you at breakfast?”

“Okay.”

Maurice went into his bathroom and stepped behind the smoked-glass screen of the shower cubicle. Mist rose and was sucked up by the extractor above. As he rubbed himself down with grapefruit cleansing gel, he felt his body tingling to life. Stepping from the shower into the clean black-and-white tiled room beyond, he felt fresh and rested. He dried himself with a thick white towel, a scribble of black decorating the border, and then shaved, feeling alive and ready for anything. This was what Social Care was good at, he reflected. Manipulating people to do what was right for them. That’s what the Watcher was supposed to do; that’s what it had set out to do, anyway.

Then he recalled his thoughts on falling asleep last night. What else was Social Care good at? What was Judy playing at?

He was just wondering about this when the message sounded from his console. Eva Rye, this is a warning. You are approaching a quarantined zone. Please alter your course at your earliest convenience. Do not approach Earth.

Judy was waiting for them all in the conference room, her arms folded. Saskia followed Maurice into the room. Her business suit was gone; in its place she wore a white blouse and a pair of blue jeans that hung loosely from her narrow hips. Little teardrops of silver hung from her ears. She smiled politely at Maurice and sat down at the thick glass table in the seat opposite to him, next to Miss Rose. The old woman sat up stiffly, her skin still bearing the slightly fluorescent bloom of the autodoc. She looked healthy, but her eyes held a slightly glazed look, the effect of the memory-repressing drugs she was being fed. Maurice looked away from her. The drugs were the only thing between her and the horrific memory of those creatures forcing their way into her body and plumbing themselves directly into her nervous system. Maurice felt nauseated at very thought.

Edward sat next to Judy, staring up at her. He could see it, too, Maurice realized; he felt Judy’s fatigue. Not physical, but mental fatigue at holding a mind twisted into one shape for so long. She was ready to snap. Nonetheless, when she spoke, her voice was as calm as ever.

“We’re approaching Earth,” she said. “You probably heard the message.”

“Who was that speaking?” asked Saskia. Maurice was surprised to note that she was holding Miss Rose’s hand.

“The Watcher,” said Judy. “Or one of his mouthpieces. It’s not safe to go to Earth. The Dark Plants are all through the system. The Watcher doesn’t like anyone going in or coming out.

“But we’re going in?” said Edward.

“Only if you decide it, Edward,” said Judy. “You’re in charge now.”

Edward turned to Saskia, his face twisted with worry.

“Judy is correct,” said Saskia. “You’re in charge now. You must do whatever you think is right, Edward.”

Edward frowned. What was he thinking about right now? How does his mind work, and why is it so much slower than mine?

“We made a deal,” Edward said eventually. “We have to take Judy to Earth.”

“No, you don’t,” Judy said. “The Eva Rye has to take me to Earth. You can all board the Bailero and go somewhere else.”

“No way, Judy.”

The voice came from a silver spider sitting on the table. Maurice realized that it had been there all along.

“I don’t recall inviting you to our meeting, Kevin,” Judy said easily.

“I’m a member of this crew now,” said the spider.

“Actually, you’re part of the cargo, Kevin,” she replied. If Maurice hadn’t known better, he would have said that Judy was smirking. “You were traded to this ship as part of a Fair Exchange conducted by the Free Enterprise .”

“So I was. And if you take the Eva Rye and leave me behind, I will judge the trade to be over. I will revert to being a free agent. Anybody left on board my ship will then become my property. I suggest you take your crew with you, Judy.”

“They’re not my crew, they’re Edward’s.”

“You can all do what you like,” Edward said.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Saskia said. “We’re all coming with you, Judy. We’re not staying behind with that mad fucker.” She pointed to the silver spider on the table. Judy spoke matter-of-factly. “If Kevin is going to be a problem, we will just wipe him from the processing space.”

The spider laughed. “An empty bluff. Social Care doesn’t kill.”

“You’re not alive, Kevin. Your copies have assured me of that in the past.”

She meant it, Maurice realized with some surprise. She really would wipe out Kevin. Judging by his reply, Kevin knew it, too.

“Anyway,” he said, after the smallest of pauses, “are you sure you’ll be allowed to go on your own? The crew of the Eva Rye made a deal using the FE software. They said they would take you to Earth.”

“Actually,” said Maurice, “we were only supposed to go as close to Earth as was safe. But you do raise an interesting point. We could copy the FE software across to the Bailero ’s processing space, I suppose, but that doesn’t alter the point: who made the deal? Was it the software itself, or us as individuals, or us as a crew? What if one of us dies? What if the crew splits up? Where is the deal held then?”

“I don’t know,” said Judy. “Aleph? Do you know?”

A viewing field expanded above the table in which Aleph could be seen floating, a broken swastika clinging to the hull of the Bailero.

“Where is the deal held?” asked Aleph, a chuckle in its voice. “That’s a matter for individual conscience.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Maurice called out. “You know, the more I think about FE software, the odder it is. Where does it actually come from?”

“From the very fabric of the universe itself,” Aleph replied mysteriously. Maurice snorted. “Yes, you could say that about anything. Answer me, where did you get your copy from, Aleph?”

“I was born with it.”

Maurice smacked his hand on the table in frustration.

“That’s not what I mean. Where did our copy come from? It was on the ship when it replicated. Where on earth did it come from originally?”

“Where on Earth?” Aleph asked. “Oh, from some old guy in the past.”

Saskia looked up at that point. “Some old guy? The Stranger said the same thing. What was his name?”

“Oh, I can’t remember. Some old guy from a book. There were twelve of them—or was it thirteen?

They killed him in the end. Nailed him to a tree or something. What was he called?”

The crew of the Eva Rye looked at one another, puzzled.

“Let’s get back to the point,” said Judy.

The Bailero Warped towards Earth, a silver and gold collection of curves that swept in and out on each other in pleasing symmetry. There was a joke to the design of this ship, one understood only by AIs of sufficiently advanced intelligence: the shape of the ship was that of a man, but warped through a Riemannian transform thought up by the AIs behind DIANA. No human had spotted the connection yet, but of such subtle conceits the Human Domain was constructed.

Inside the Bailero, the sleek black-and-white teardrop of the Eva Rye sat lightly on the blue-frosted interior, looking like the last pea left in the can. Its main entrance ramp had been lowered to touch the cold metal of the host ship, and a stream of silver VNMs totally encircled the black-and-white ship: Kevin’s domain trying in vain to assert its mastery over the re-formed vessel. Occasionally one of the VNMs would venture up the ramp, only to be beaten back by some invisible force. Trailing behind the Bailero, unnoticed yet by anyone save Aleph, two more systems repair robots drifted, following the signal that was being transmitted from the FE software that lurked at the heart of the Eva Rye: a signal that pulsed out for hundreds of light years all around. It was a simple message. It is Time.

“Maurice, what do you think?”

Maurice was staring up at the irregular pattern in the ceiling, lost in thought. He sat up in his seat and leaned forward, elbows on the desk. Judy was watching him dispassionately—did she guess his suspicions? He told a lie.

“Me?” he began. “I’m wondering about how the Eva Rye came back to life. Where did the code for the FE software go when the ship was split into lots of little VNMs?”

“Is this relevant?” Saskia asked. “We are talking about whether or not we should accompany Judy.”

“Maybe it’s not relevant. But—” Actually, now he came to think of it, it was an interesting point. Where had the Eva Rye gone when it had been turned into VNMs? And therefore where had the FE software gone? It needed a large processing space on which to run. It couldn’t have continued to exist after being broken up into lots of little spiders.

“I don’t know how it was done,” Maurice said. “How could FE software continue running when there was no processing space to support it? The Eva Rye was destroyed, split up into thousands of spiders…” He was thinking aloud now. “But just suppose it worked backwards. Just suppose there was some software that could run on its own, software that didn’t need hardware, or software that could form a supporting mechanism spontaneously?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Saskia said.

Maurice slumped back in his chair and went back to staring at the ceiling. Is that what FE was? A piece of code that could spontaneously form the mechanism on which it ran? You could use it as a wrapper for anything: a sound, an idea.

A soul?

“Where does FE come from?” he asked again. “It just seems to have appeared at the edge of human space. Twenty years ago no one had even heard of it.”

Judy understood. “Are you saying that maybe it just formed itself?”

The silence was broken by another voice. Earth was calling.

In the past five years only point three of one percent of the people that have entered the Earth system have left it again. Do you really want to come here? You are approaching a quarantined zone. Please change your course now.

Everyone turned to Judy. She folded her arms, looking determined.

“I told you,” she said. “I will go to Earth on my own.”

“No way,” Saskia said, glancing at Miss Rose again. “We stick together. I’ve learned my lesson. Edward, what do you say?”

They all looked at Edward, who had splayed his big hands across the glass tabletop.

“I think we should get something to eat,” he said decisively. “We haven’t had breakfast yet.”

They made their way to the living area. On Edward’s suggestion they set the viewing fields to enfold them with an external view from the Eva Rye . They ate scrambled eggs and smoked bacon in a blue ice cavern that was slipping between the stars, diving towards the dark center of the Earth system.

“I think we should have music,” said Edward. “Maurice, can you choose something?”

Maurice looked at them, wondering what to play. Then he had a sudden flash of blinding clarity. He wasn’t choosing something for Edward, or Saskia, or Miss Rose, or even Judy. There was no one here that he was trying to impress.

“Maurice?” said Edward.

Maurice placed his console on the table next to his plate and thoughtfully stroked it to life. What would he himself like to hear?

The voice of a choir filled the cold blue space. I Love My Love, sang a capella. An ice cavern, unaccompanied voices, and smoked bacon. And beyond that the cold stars slipping past, while behind them drifted the broken crosses of systems repair robots. Miss Rose was eating her bacon and eggs, and sipping tea that Saskia poured her from a pot. Judy was neatly cutting yellow squares of scrambled egg with her fork and daintily putting them in her mouth. Edward was gulping down apple juice. Look at us, thought Maurice. Who planned all this? I’ve been set adrift amongst these people for a reason. This is the sort of thing that Social Care does, yet it doesn’t feel like Social Care.

There was a flicker on his console.

“Another contact,” he said. “The Uninvited. ”

Saskia laughed. “Someone has a sense of humor.”

They all looked to Edward. He recoiled under their gaze, hunched around his breakfast.

“What?”

“Speak to them,” said Saskia. “You’re the captain now.”

“What do I say?”

“Whatever feels right,” said Judy.

Edward carefully laid down his knife and fork.

“Hello?” he began.

“Hello, Eva Rye . This is the Uninvited . Do you wish to engage in Fair Exchange?”

Edward held out his hands, palms up, mutely asking the others what to do. They smiled back kindly.

“Whatever you want, Edward,” Saskia said gently.

“Er…Yes?” said Edward.

“Excellent. My name is Miriam. I notice that our two ships are both running on the same time. Would you like to join us for breakfast?”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

There was a shimmering, and then the empty spaces around the table were occupied by the virtual crew of the Uninvited. There were seven of them, six humans and one robot. They were all handicapped in some way, missing limbs or suffering from palsy or simply gazing into space with a vacant look. Even the robot looked badly damaged: three long scars ran down the right-hand side of its torso. The derm there was disrupted; it had puckered and deformed into a bubbling black mass that stood out in marked contrast to the rest of its smooth grey body.

“Nice ship,” said a dark-haired woman, gazing around the frosty interior of the Bailero. “Hi, I’m Miriam.” She only had one arm. She raised her single hand in greeting. The crew of the Eva Rye waited politely for Edward to speak. After a nudge from Judy, he got the idea.

“Oh, I’m Edward. What’s that you’re eating?” He pointed to the yellow flakes on the plate in front of Miriam.

“Smoked haddock,” she replied, giving him an appraising look. She knows, thought Maurice. She’s met people like him before . Miriam now spoke more slowly. “It’s nice to meet you, Edward. Do you realize that you are flying towards a very dangerous place?”

“Yes,” said Edward. “But we made a promise.”

“And you’re keeping it,” said Miriam. “Good for you, Edward. Now, let me introduce you to a friend of ours. He would like to go to Earth, too.”

She looked towards the robot. The robot swivelled its badly dented face to look around the table.

“Hi,” it said, “my name is Constantine.”

Maurice set the Fair Exchange process in motion and gazed around at the crew of the Uninvited as they ate their breakfast. Willi, a young man with a big beaming smile, forked yellow flakes of fish into the quivering, drooling mouth of the redheaded woman sitting by him.

“What’s the matter with her?” asked Maurice.

“Cerebral palsy,” said the young man. “She has her good days and her bad days—don’t you, Carol?”

The redheaded woman made a noise in her throat. Her hand banged up and down against the arm of the padded chair in which she sat.

“You’d think there was a cure for all those illnesses,” Saskia said wonderingly.

“Saskia!” exclaimed Judy. “Don’t be so rude!”

“It’s okay,” Miriam said, and then more petulantly, “medical care seems to have stopped developing in the mid-twenty-first century.”

“Just when the Watcher came to prominence,” added Constantine the robot. Everyone stared at the stump of Miriam’s missing arm.

“How did you all meet?” asked Maurice.

“We were being taken on a cruise out to the stars by Social Care,” said Willi. “We got caught in a region of Dark Plants and were rescued by a ship using FE. They offered us the choice of returning to Earth or of adopting FE ourselves. We chose FE.”

“But why?” asked Judy.

“Because we were tired of being looked after,” Miriam interrupted, a note of anger in her voice. “We thought it would be nice to take care of ourselves instead.”

“But what if something happens to you?”

“Then something happens to us,” Miriam said firmly, and that line of conversation was ended.

“Circumstances uploaded,” Maurice said, glancing at his console. “FE is commencing.” He looked at Saskia, expecting her to say something sarcastic. To his pleasant surprise she didn’t seem to have noticed. She was listening carefully to Miss Rose. The old woman had hardly said a word since her emergence from the autodoc.

“Who, who’d…?” she began in a hoarse whisper.

“Easy, Miss Rose, take your time.”

The contrast with the former Saskia could not be more marked: relaxed and warm in her white blouse, her little silver earrings sparkling.

“What was that, Miss Rose?”

“Who’d have thought it?” said Miss Rose in a thin whisper. “We’re all equal in the eyes of FE.”

“What do you mean, Miss Rose?” asked Saskia, squeezing her cold parchment hand.

“I mean him, ” said Miss Rose, a shaking hand pointing to Edward. “The dummy. Leave him on his own and he’d give the shirt off his back to the first person who asked for it. He’d be ripped off by every Tom, Dick, and Harry who came by. But put him on a ship with FE and he is the equal of anyone. Just like that lot sitting over there—the cripples.”

Saskia tried to hush the old woman. None of the Uninvited seemed to mind, however. One or two of them even seemed amused.

“That’s the thing, though,” continued Miss Rose, placing one finger on the table. “Even the stupid can’t be ripped off when all transactions go through FE.”

“Hmm,” Saskia said thoughtfully. “Maurice,” she said suddenly, “maybe you were right. Where does FE

come from? Aleph said that FE was the idea of some old guy from history.”

Judy had stopped what she was doing in order to listen to the conversation.

“I don’t know,” she said pensively. “I have tried to feel the software, but there is something so strange about it. I think Aleph is mistaken here. I get the feeling that we are dealing with something that is far older than humanity.”

In the deepening silence that followed this announcement, Maurice looked at his console.

“Fair Exchange will be completed in five minutes,” he announced.

Miriam had finished her breakfast. She placed her fork on her plate and scratched her side awkwardly.

“Listen,” she said. “In about one and a half hours’ time you will be entering the quarantined zone. There are things in there waiting for you; they’ll have locked onto your ship already. They will have even locked onto your individual personalities.” She paused, letting this sink in.

“Our individual personalities?” Edward said.

“You don’t all have to go to Earth. Why don’t some of you come on board the Uninvited ?” Miriam looked deliberately at Miss Rose.

“Why not, Miss Rose?” asked Saskia. “You’ll be safer there.”

Miss Rose shook her head. “I don’t think so, dear. Do you know why I’m here?”

There was a shuddering crash at the end of the table as one of the Uninvited dropped her fork. Miss Rose smiled at the redheaded woman suffering from cerebral palsy.

“I have my moments, too,” she sympathized. “Senile dementia. It’s odd, isn’t it? How we can build self-replicating machines and travel between the stars and yet we can’t cure conditions that are as old as human existence itself.”

Miriam nodded in agreement.

Miss Rose folded her hands around one of Saskia’s, holding it in the lap of her white shift.

“When the first symptoms appeared, when I first began to forget things and to repeat myself, it was suggested that I take a cruise. That was Social Care again.” She turned to Judy. “What is it about you lot?” she asked. “The halt and the lame, you want to shift us all off planet. Out of sight, out of mind, is it?”

Miss Rose’s voice had begun to crack. “Edward, be a good lad and get me some water.”

Edward returned with the glass. She took a sip.

“I never liked space,” Miss Rose continued. “I never wanted to travel. And yet there I was on a ship. Passing through the Earth Domain. Embarrassing people by asking them their names over and again, like each time I met them it was for the first time. Embarrassing myself. And then we met the Changes . An FE ship. I don’t think Social Care knew what FE was at that time, otherwise they would never have let their crew come aboard. We got chatting. They asked me what I wanted.”

Maddeningly, Miss Rose paused to slowly sip her water again.

“And what did you say, Miss Rose?” prompted Saskia.

“I said I didn’t want to continue like this,” Miss Rose said. She placed her glass on the table. “I said I wanted to do something important.”

“And what did they say?”

“They consulted their FE software,” Miss Rose said. “It said I could have what I wanted.”

“And what did you have to give in return?” Maurice asked.

“Me. I was sold as cargo to the Changes . And then I was sold to the Yellow River, and then I was sold to you.”

She turned around to Miriam. “And that’s why I think I will remain here on the Eva Rye, ” she said. Maurice’s console chimed. “The Exchange is completed,” he said. Then he gave a laugh. “And you’re not going to believe this, but this time we’re actually going to be paid! They’re going to pay us for taking Constantine on board!”

“What?” asked Saskia, brimming with hope.

Maurice made to speak and then he stopped himself.

Seated there at a glass table at the bottom of a huge blue ice bubble, sharing breakfast with the old, the handicapped, and a robot, Maurice raised a finger and tapped the side of his nose. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

“Where is Constantine?” Edward asked impatiently. He stood at the foot of the lowered entrance ramp of the Eva Rye , dancing with impatience.

“I don’t know,” Maurice said. “Kevin! Can you see him?”

Kevin, the voice of the Bailero, spoke from Maurice’s console.

“He is two hundred meters distant from my hull now. I will put a light over his entrance.”

A yellow spotlight shone down from somewhere, illuminating a patch of frost about thirty meters away from the foot of the ramp.

Maurice and Edward watched it expectantly. Constantine had literally jumped from the hatch of the Uninvited in the direction of the Bailero —they had all watched him do so. They had seen him sailing through space, a black pressurized bag slung over his shoulder.

“Here he comes,” said Kevin.

The spotlight strengthened in intensity, and then Constantine rose up into the interior of the Bailero, arms outstretched. The robot must have had some sort of independent motor source, Maurice realized, for it changed direction in flight and then quickly dropped back down to the frost-patterned floor. Briskly, it walked towards them. It paused just at the foot of the ramp.

Maurice gave Edward a nudge, and the young man extended his hand.

“Welcome aboard.”

“Glad to be on board,” said Constantine.

Edward led the way up the ramp of the Eva Rye, past the entrance to the little hold and along the corridor towards the conference room.

Judy and Saskia met them there.

“I’m Constantine Storey,” the robot said. “Thank you for taking me on board.”

“I’m Saskia. This is Judy.”

The robot was fiddling with the seal of the black pressure bag. “I have your payment here,” he said. They all crowded a little closer as the robot struggled with the seal. His right hand was badly deformed, Maurice noticed; the three scars on his right-hand side were repeated on his lower arm. Maurice wondered what had happened to him.

Eventually, the robot worked the seal open. He reached into the bag, feeling about for something. Whatever it was seemed to be moving.

“What is it?” asked Edward. “What have you got in there?”

“Something that the FE software thought you needed,” said Constantine. “I can sort of see why. We’re almost at Earth now.”

“Good,” Judy said with quiet resignation. “I feel like I’ve been traveling there for the past ten years.”

“Oh?” Constantine said. “I have been doing so for over a hundred. Ah, got it!”

At last he had what he was searching for. But now something was climbing out of the bag by itself: dark brown and tan, first a paw emerged and waved itself in the air. The robot withdrew his hand fully, holding a furry bundle of white, brown, and tan.

“It’s a kitten!” Saskia squealed excitedly.

“Two kittens,” Constantine said as a second bundle, tabby this time, dropped from his bag to the ground and then eeled its way across the floor, ears down flat.

“And what on earth are we going to do with them?” Maurice asked.

“Stroke them, of course,” said Saskia. “They’re sweet!”

constantine 6: 2252

Everybody loves kittens.

“I don’t,” said Maurice. “They smell, they make a mess, and what are they going to do on this spaceship anyway? It’s cruel to have them cooped up in here.”

“They can hardly be described as cooped up,” said Judy, waving her hand to indicate the enormous space of the hold. She was sitting cross-legged on the rubber floor, smiling as she dragged a length of silk ribbon back and forth for the patchwork kitten to chase. Its supple, darting movements contrasted with the plodding of the two colossal venumbs seen in the distance at the far end of the hold. The polished wood of their bodies looked like bone. Behind them lay the shuttle on which Judy had been sent from the Free Enterprise . A low, sleek arrow with six seats on board, and space for little else. Constantine’s derm was half ripped away from the right side of his body. His head was a dented metal shell from which two eyes stared, his whole right side was badly scarred, his right arm still had only restricted movement. Even so, he felt a less damaged individual than the crew of the Eva Rye . Look at poor Edward, he thought, always on the defensive. Always trying to understand .

“Anyway, they can catch mice,” he was saying, his eyes drawn enviously back to the tabby kitten that Saskia was rubbing behind the ears.

“We don’t have any mice,” Maurice said. “We’re on a spaceship.”

“They might come on board with the cargo,” Saskia said contentedly. Her smile did not waver as the kitten wriggled free of her grasp and dropped to the floor. Edward reached for it, but naturally it headed straight for Maurice, the cat hater.

“Yes, mice might indeed try to come aboard,” Maurice said, kicking out at the kitten: it mewed and pattered away across the dark rubber of the floor. “And they would fail in the attempt as the ship’s manifest net would detect and eject them.”

The kitten took one look at Constantine, mewed again, and ran for the far end of the hold towards the great wooden venumbs.

“Do you always snipe at each other like this?” Constantine asked.

“Oh, no,” Saskia said seriously, “we used to be a lot worse.”

Maurice gave him a sharp look. “Are you laughing at us?”

“Honestly, no! I think it’s good that a crew about to cross into Earth’s solar system can be so relaxed about it.”

“That’s because there’s precious little else we can do about our present circumstances,” Saskia said.

“You know, I think we should call that one Paws.” She pointed to the remaining kitten, and the group paused to watch it spread wide its little white paws before swiping in an attempt to catch the ribbon.

“Look how she uses them like little hands.”

“We can still make a plan,” Edward said earnestly, turning to face Constantine. “That’s why we’re here.”

There was a creaking sound from the far side of the large hold as one of the huge wooden shapes slowly turned in a circle, apparently looking for something. Constantine wondered where they had originated. He had never seen venumbs that size before. Wooden skeletons: they would have to be carved from tree trunks to be so big. Beautiful white ash, planed into smooth curves that bent and flexed as the monsters pressed their splaying feet down on the floor. Incredibly shiny joints flashing in the antiseptic light. But what were they doing on board this ship?

“Plan to do what?” Maurice asked bitterly. “The ship lands on Earth. The Watcher has us under its gaze. We never get away. Period.” He sighed. “What do you suggest we do?”

“We should listen to Edward,” interrupted Saskia. “That’s what the Stranger recommended, and I for one think that’s right.”

Maurice pressed his mouth tightly shut. Constantine ignored him. The wooden monster was coming closer. It didn’t have a head, just a long neck made of white wooden vertebrae strung together by chrome.

“Okay,” Maurice said stubbornly. “Edward, tell us, what should we do?”

Edward looked puzzled at Maurice’s question. “I don’t know,” he said, frowning. “That’s why I think we should make a plan.”

Judy let go of the ribbon and climbed to her feet. The air was cold in the large hold, sharp like a winter’s morning. Constantine had possessed lungs once; he could imagine what it was like to breathe the air of the hold, to feel it light him up, bright and alive.

“I think Edward has got the right idea,” Judy said briskly. “Look at us. We’ve already spent too long just letting events buffet us around.”

“Look at us ?” said Maurice. “Since when were you part of the crew?”

“That’s not very nice, Maurice.” Edward placed a big hand on Judy’s shoulder. “Judy is our friend. Go on, Judy.”

“Not just me. Aren’t we forgetting somebody?” Judy said. “You’ve agreed to take Constantine to Earth, too.”

All the faces swung towards Constantine. Why were they all so pale? Except for Edward, of course. Did they realize they were all so black-and-white? Just like this ship, of course. Someone was playing games here….

“Yes,” Maurice said. “Why exactly do you want to go to Earth?”

Constantine had been waiting for this question.

“Because I have a message for the Watcher,” he replied.

Constantine Storey didn’t mind the rain. Up here in the mountains the spaces defined between the sheer peaks and rough-hewn walls seemed to be completed by the lashing downpour. Or at least that’s what Constantine thought.

But what does it mean to think? he wondered. No one else came up here amongst the newly born peaks, raw and cracked and splintered and perpetually washed with cold rain. No other mind, so far as he knew, had ever looked upon the hidden valleys, had climbed the columns that rose up here, pressed against the sky.

Coldness, wetness, the feeling of vertigo from clinging to harsh rock and looking down into the pitiless depths below, all of these things were just random patterns that fluttered through the currents of his mind.

…and if those thoughts were to cease?

He stepped from the ledge and began the long fall into the shadows. The feel of the downpour lessened on his back as the speed of his descent approached that of the raindrops around him. He waved his arms and fancied he could touch the individual drops that hung in the darkness around him. There is a pattern to these drops, he thought, defined by their size and purity and their distance between each other. The pattern is affected by wind resistance and minute changes in air pressure, even the increasing effect of gravity as they grow closer to the planet. Weyl and Ricci distortion. There is a pattern here that is probably unique throughout the universe…and when they hit the rocks below, that unique pattern will be lost and no one will mourn its passing.

Buffeted by wind and rain, his body reached terminal velocity. Shadows raced upwards around him, the pale moon lost high above.

And yet, when I hit the ground, what would people mourn? Not the loss of my body but rather the unique pattern that represented my thoughts; the potential which that unique pattern had to go on unfolding, to become me. What is the difference between the pattern of my mind and the pattern of the rain? At what point does a pattern assume significance? At what point can it be labeled thought? Maybe tonight I will have the answer.

But not by dying.

Constantine Storey was a human mind alive in a robot’s body. At one point in his life, the unique pattern that had been his self at that moment in time—burning brightly amongst the neurons of his brain—had been carefully lifted from his head and dropped into a processing space within a robot’s body. Virtual neurons had gone on firing, following in the unfolding symbolic series that his human brain had defined, and a new Constantine had come into being. Only this Constantine was alive in an enhanced body.

He allowed the reflexes of his new body to take over, and he reveled in the sensation of becoming a superman.

A sheer cliff face approached in the darkness, steeply angled. Robot legs kicked out and changed his angle of descent, increasing the horizontal component of his motion. Constantine held his arms wide as he dived across a narrow valley. Hands slammed onto a ledge, cracking rock, pushing him forwards and onwards, absorbing some of his downward velocity. He rolled down another slope, shedding more speed, then he jumped through the downpour, aiming for the knife edge of rock that stretched between two peaks.

He kicked out once, twice, three times, pushing himself back and forth between rocky walls, and landed lightly at his target, knees flexing to absorb the remaining energy of his fall. He gazed out towards the ziggurat that lay on the plain beyond the mountains. Something was awakening inside it.

In the hold, one of the wooden venumbs was approaching. Constantine thought it looked as if it was sniffing for something; it put him in mind of a dog scenting trouble. The rest of the crew seemed

unconcerned, and he continued with his story.

Constantine had been led to believe there were possibly three ways intelligence could arise. The first two methods were generally accepted as having been convincingly proven. Intelligence could appear as the result of evolution. Human intelligence was an example of this. Second, intelligence could be written. The AIs of Earth did this all the time, writing new minds to order, minds to fill spaceships and robots and Von Neumann Machines. Could I write a mind? Could I sit down and describe a scene, a thought and an emotion so well that it took life on the page? No, the page is not a suitable medium to allow movement, and this language is too ambiguous and overblown to capture the simplicity of the underlying mechanism of thought. Constantine had once been told that a mind was a sentence that could read itself. A book might have thoughts written within it, but something external had to be applied to the book in order to read the words. But what if words could be written in some medium that allowed the words to take on a life of their own and refer back to themselves? What if the instructions telling the book how to read itself were also written in the book itself?

The periphery of the rainstorm was at the edge of the mountains. Constantine stood at the borderline of the storm, seemingly at the edge of a new world. Down there, on that dry, sleeping plain, something wonderful was awakening. The ancient machinery that filled the stone halls of the ziggurat had lain in wait for nearly forty years. A baited trap. Something was beginning to move in there. Patterns rippled through the many-dimensional volumes enclosed by the processing spaces, repeating themselves, reflecting, constructing new patterns…

A third possible way that intelligence could arise had also been postulated: divine intervention. A dizzying feeling gripped Constantine at the enormity of what he was witnessing. This was what the Watcher believed: it believed itself to be the result of an interstellar computer virus, written long ago. It had set up the ziggurat on this forgotten planet in order to test this theory. It had filled the ziggurat with ancient machinery, hoping to catch the virus there. Constantine had been brought to this planet by the Watcher in order to observe what happened there. A suitable vessel had been left open under the vast star-lit night, and Constantine had been charged with waiting for something to pour down from the unguessed heavens and fill it with the spirit.

And, unbelievably, it was happening now. The event that Constantine had not really believed would happen, the one he had waited nearly forty years to observe—and it was happening. Something was straining within the ziggurat, something was straining to be. A thread was blowing back and forth across the ranks of symbols aligned in the processing spaces that filled the building. If the Watcher’s theory were correct, then the same virus that had caused the Watcher to be born would now be taking root in the ziggurat.

Constantine had robot eyes; he was looking straight into the processing spaces. He jumped. Something was looking back at him: eyes, unaware of themselves, receptors for the patterns that flickered across them from outside.

Constantine stepped from the rainfall into the still night beyond. He descended the mountainside, preparing to receive the message that would be carried to humanity. A low growl sounded. It began to climb in pitch. It was joined by another, and another. Sirens began to sound, rising howls in the night that sent the sleeping colonists tumbling from their beds. Arc lights slammed on and the sides of the ziggurat were lit up in red and yellow. The ziggurat was armed—Constantine felt a hollowness inside at the thought. This was the secret pain he had carried inside himself for the past forty years. The Watcher wanted proof, not competition. The Watcher controlled a vast area of space; it did not want a challenger for its domain. There was a bomb in the ziggurat….

Judy gasped.

“What is it?” asked Constantine.

“Nothing,” said Judy. “Go on…”

Random symbols emerged from the processing space. They carried the edge of meaning

…Would you like to engage…

Constantine could see what was forming in there. But it was not at all what he had expected…

The siren’s note changed and horror lanced through him. No! He had to stop it. This was not what anyone had expected. He began to run across the plain. It was too far…

…and a magnetic pulse washed across the night. The howl of the sirens rattled and died. Motors stopped. Constantine only just got his own shields up in time to save his mind. But the rest of his body caught the full force of the pulse…

The rest of the crew were too busy gazing at Constantine to notice the way the venumbs were moving about.

“What happened?” pressed Saskia.

“Should they be doing that?” Constantine asked, pointing to the white body of one of the great wooden dinosaurs. It was twisting around on itself, almost overbalancing.

“They’re fine,” Maurice said, not bothering to look. “Answer her.”

Constantine shrugged. “Okay. We killed it. The Watcher killed it. Once it had proof of its theory, it killed that being.”

“But why?”

“I told you, it didn’t want competition. Look at the Enemy Domain. That was a result of the rise of another AI. The Watcher didn’t want a repeat of that conflict. It doesn’t trust other powerful AIs.”

“That’s a good excuse,” Maurice muttered sarcastically.

“What happened to you ?” Saskia asked, ignoring the interruption.

“The colonists found me three days later. I was half buried in mud, my body completely shut down, most of the circuits tripped by the magnetic pulse. The colonists argued for a whole day about whether they should jump-start me. They were angry about what had happened to them, feeling as if they had been tricked, and indeed they had been. The Watcher’s scheming had left them marooned on a planet where nothing now worked. All their machinery was ruined.”

Constantine had worked long and hard himself to build that colony. The memory of a Geep, half submerged in the mud, its motor beyond repair, rose up in his mind.

“But they obviously got you started in the end,” Maurice was saying.

“Yes, they started me in the end.”

“So what are you doing here?”

There was an edge to Judy’s voice that none of them had heard from her before. She had folded her arms across her chest, and there was a haunted look in her eyes.

“Are you okay, Judy?” Edward asked hesitantly.

She didn’t appear to hear him.

“Why are you here, Constantine?” Judy shouted. “What happened to you? What did you see inside that ziggurat?”

Constantine patted her arm. Then Maurice and the rest of the crew looked on in astonishment as the robot placed a plastic hand behind her head and drew her close in a gentle embrace. “You knew, Judy, didn’t you? You knew about the ziggurat.”

“What did she know about the ziggurat?” shouted Maurice.

Constantine went on. “I had to get to Earth,” he said. “I was trapped on a forgotten planet with possibly the key to life itself in my grasp. The Watcher, it had been wrong all of this time. Nobody had guessed, let alone the Watcher itself. And now I had to get to Earth. But how?”

“‘Key to life itself’?”

“What had the Watcher been wrong about?”

“About everything. About what it was and where it came from. About its place in the universe. I saw it all there in that moment before the ziggurat was destroyed.”

“What did you see?”

But Constantine wasn’t going to say. That information was for the Watcher. He went on: “Look, there was no machinery working there anymore. We spent two years doing what we could just to grow enough food to feed the colonists; it was nearly three years before I managed to get a communications antenna up.”

“And then what happened?”

Constantine looked at the slowly flexing fingers of his right hand. “Lots of things,” he murmured. “And then one day an FE ship arrived on the planet.”

“What’s the matter, Maurice?” Judy asked.

“You know, don’t you?” Maurice said.

Judy scowled. “I know? What do I know?”

“You know what he’s talking about.”

“Come on, Maurice. What’s the matter with you? You’ve been in a foul mood ever since yesterday morning.” She gave a nasty smile. “I would have thought that sleeping with Saskia would have relaxed you a little bit.”

“You are upset,” said Maurice. “Look at you, you’re arguing with me. Showing emotion, not hiding in impassivity.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Judy, her emotion evaporating into the wide-open space of the large hold. Saskia and Edward stood still, not wanting to interrupt. They wanted answers, too. Constantine noted the faintest suggestion of a twitch at the corner of Maurice’s eye.

“You’ve been lying to us from the very start, haven’t you, Judy? You’ve been playing with us. You see, it wasn’t until yesterday morning that I realized, not until I understood the way you manipulated Saskia into sleeping with me.”

“What?”

“Stay out of this, Saskia.”

Saskia blushed hotly. “Don’t you tell me what to do, Maurice. She didn’t manipulate me. I make my own decisions.”

Maurice threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, she lets you think that, Saskia,” he said. “We’re all doing what she wants. She’s been manipulating us ever since she came aboard this ship. She’s been putting us off guard, catching us at our most vulnerable moments, doing what she can to keep us thinking only about ourselves and to stop us thinking about her.”

A cold breeze. Suddenly a venumb was towering over Judy, swinging its headless neck back and forth, as if searching for something. How had it got so close so quickly? What was it doing? Judy didn’t seem to notice, a still black shape with a pale face.

“I was trying to help you,” she explained softly. “It’s what I do.”

Judy’s reply seemed a measured moment of calm amidst the torrent of emotions. Constantine could see that it only infuriated Maurice more.

“Hah, it’s what you did ,” Maurice corrected. “Of course you were trying to help. But you were manipulating us, too. You’re Social Care.”

Judy made no reply to this.

“Is this true?” asked Edward.

Judy was a silent china doll, black eyes glittering in a porcelain face.

“Of course it’s true, Edward.” Maurice laughed. “Social Care are experts at it. Just because she’s retired doesn’t mean she can give it up—especially when she has reasons for wanting to hide something. And she does. Come on, Judy, tell us the truth. How do you know him ?” He pointed at Constantine.

“I don’t,” Judy said, “or at least, not firsthand. But I have heard about him.”

“How?”

What was going on with the venumbs? What could they hear? Constantine had half an ear trained on the space around the ship, listening for whatever it was. The other ear, however, was fixed firmly on Judy’s story.

“At night I dream of a hand over my face—”

“What do you mean by that?” Maurice demanded.

“It’s an anxiety dream,” Judy explained. “When I’m feeling stressed, I dream of a hand hovering just over my face. It reaches down from the ceiling, like it’s trying to smother me.”

A long creak echoed through the large hold. The farthest wooden venumb looked as if it was crouching, ready to spring. Slowly the humans turned back to face Judy.

“You’re changing the subject. How do you know Constantine?”

And it all came out. Judy spoke.

“I told you most of it already when I first came on board. Twelve years ago I met a robot called Chris. It told me that the Watcher had actually killed someone. It told me that it was going to kill again in the future.”

“That’s silly,” Edward protested. “The Watcher doesn’t kill.”

“He does,” Constantine said. “I witnessed the murder. I felt the EM pulse that ripped through that ziggurat.”

A spasm of pain crossed Judy’s face. “Chris told me that was going to happen. I was supposed to prevent that murder.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because I’ve spent the last ten years running. Trying to get away from Chris and the Watcher! Both of them want me to help them—”

“Why? Why you?”

“ I don’t know why me! Chris wants me to help him to destroy the Watcher. He says that I will help him in the end. What if he’s right? He is more intelligent than I am. I feel like a puppet. I am a puppet! ”

And at that, the first little crack in the dam that had held back forty years’ worth of emotion appeared. A tear ran down Judy’s white face. She wiped it away. The dam held steady. And then, in perfect synchronicity, both of the venumbs pounced.

There was a cracking explosion of wood. White splinters crackling across the floor. Saskia yelped and slapped a hand to her cheek, blood welling through her fingers, a white sliver protruding. Constantine was behind her, his body arched as he absorbed the force of three larger pieces of wood.

“How did you get there so quickly…?” she began.

Constantine didn’t answer; he was now thinking and moving in quick time. He could see that the furthest venumb, now missing its front leg, was trying to make its way across the floor to a second huge wobbling grey-black mass that had suddenly appeared inside the large hold. It was a Dark Seed, but swollen, mutated until it was bigger than Constantine himself.

—Constantine, this is Aleph. Can you hear me?

—I hear you.

A rain of smaller, though still misshapen, Dark Seeds were beginning to fill up the hold. The nearest venumb was swinging its head this way and that. Wherever it looked, the seeds instantly vanished. Aleph spoke. —Kevin has brought us within range of something huge and dark. I think some battle must have been fought here between the Watcher and…something else.

Beneath the wooden feet of the venumb, the kittens jumped and pounced, catching Dark Seeds beneath their paws.

Judy was staring at the huge wobbling grey-black mass of the mutated seed. Maurice was meanwhile helping Saskia to pull the splinter from her cheek.

—You have a disintegrator built into your body, Constantine. Use it.

—A disintegrator? I didn’t know such things existed.

—You mean you didn’t know you had it? But it is there in your left arm.

—This body has many features I don’t know about. The Watcher planned for everything, but told me very little.

—Go to the mutated seed. It is not reacting so far, but it may yet do so. Disintegrate it, just like the Schrödinger kittens are doing to the other Seeds.

—Schrödinger kittens? I didn’t know…

—Why do you think you were given them? Use the disintegrator.

—How?

—Let me show you…

This wasn’t the first time another consciousness had entered Constantine’s mind to guide him. He felt Aleph’s presence, and he turned to look at its representation. He was surprised at what he saw.

—Shhh, said Aleph, placing a finger to its mouth. —Don’t tell anyone yet. There was a pulsing in the air, regions of pressure that squeezed the soft human bodies. Distant sensations insinuated their way into the shivering space of the large hold: the smell of vomit and the sound of seagulls crying.

Something was awakening in Constantine’s body, new potentials arising in his arm. An inequality appeared in his vision.

Constantine recognized it. —Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

—Well done, said Aleph. —The disintegrator measures the positions of the individual particles within its field to an accuracy of a nanometer. This renders the momentum of those particles to such a level of uncertainty that they are excluded from being within 100 meters of here.

—Very clever, said Constantine, and the disintegrator woke up in his arm in a rainbow of colors and with the feel of flowing honey. He felt dizzy at the measurements that the device was already performing as he waved his arm around. Space wavered as the device seemed to plug him into the universe at some basic level.

A tall, good-looking man appeared in Constantine’s mind. He walked with a cocksure swagger.

—Who are you?

—Kevin. The mind of the Bailero . Kevin did a double take as he appeared to notice the device in the robot’s arm. —That looks interesting, Constantine. Do you mind if I take a look?

Kevin was already reaching towards the device, following through the circuitry in Constantine’s body. Constantine swatted the AI’s virtual arm away.

—Leave it, he said. Constantine took aim at the huge seed and concentrated…

…The mutant seed vanished. Edward was staring at the space it had occupied, mouth open wide in amazement. Events were moving so quickly in human time that, to his eyes, the seed must have appeared and disappeared in an instant.

—Nice, said Kevin.

—What do you want here? asked Constantine. —Get out of my mind.

—Hey, I’m only trying to help. The man looked hurt. —Listen, he said. —There is something strange up ahead. I’m going to need your help, Aleph, to get me through. Constantine, I suggest that the humans collect their things and then get into the shuttle in the large hold for safety. That way they’ll be shielded by both me and the Eva Rye. Tell them they’ve got thirty minutes to collect anything they need from their quarters.

—Why should you try to help? wondered Constantine. —I’d have thought you would prefer not to be the property of the Eva Rye .

—I wouldn’t, Kevin agreed. —The sooner I can get them to Earth, the better as far as I’m concerned. So tell them this: things are getting weird out here. They can’t count on the Eva Rye still being there by the time we get to Earth. They’d be safer in the shuttle.

A full AI would have been able to multitask, but Constantine could only think about one thing at a time. He had to slow his mind back to human speed in order to rejoin their world.

“Easy, Saskia,” Maurice was saying. “I’ve got the last piece now.” He drew a final splinter from Saskia’s pale cheek.

“I can see patterns in the floor,” Judy said, staring down at the white tiles. “Reflections of things that aren’t there. The Dark Plants are getting hold of our minds.”

“What did you do to that great big box?” Edward asked Constantine. “I saw you point at it and it vanished.”

“No time for that.” Constantine raised his hands in the air. “Listen to me!”

The crew quieted down immediately. Behind them, the two kittens were criss-crossing the floor in stop-frame motion. They seemed to go from position to position without actually moving. What were they?

Constantine spoke. “It’s time. I can see the Earth system ahead; I can see the source of a pattern of intelligence that is swirling out from Earth and reaching into the galaxy. The Watcher. Its senses are everywhere, fixing the flux of Dark Seeds as it passes through the solar system. What’s the matter, Judy?”

“Nothing,” Judy said.

“I know what she’s thinking,” Maurice said. “Everything is coming together. Look at the venumbs, the kittens. All helping to get Judy to Earth. There’s no escaping it. We’re taking you to the Watcher, aren’t we Judy? We’re taking you all the way, whether we like it or not.”

“I guess so,” Judy said. “And then, if what Chris told me was true, I will want to destroy it.”

“ Do you want to destroy the Watcher?” Constantine asked.

“No. Never. Why should I wish to do that?”

“Okay,” said Constantine, “we have twenty-seven minutes left before we hit trouble. Go to your quarters and collect anything you need, then return here to the shuttle. I’ll go and fetch Miss Rose.”

“No, I’ll get her,” Saskia said.

“Fine,” said Constantine. “This is the arrangement. We fly to Earth with the Eva Rye safely inside the Bailero . Any Dark Seed or BVB will have to make its way through the observation sphere of both of those ships. We should therefore be as safe as we can be inside the shuttle.”

“What about Kevin?” Edward asked.

“What about him?” Judy replied.

“Will he be safe?”

“I hope not,” Judy said coldly.

Constantine continued: “We’ll fly to Earth inside the shuttle, that way we have three ships’ hulls between us and anything the Watcher cares to throw at us. If necessary, we’ll ram the Bailero straight onto the surface of the Earth itself.”

“Why are we all acting as if this is going to be such a problem?” Edward asked. “What’s waiting for us down there?”

Constantine saw Judy shiver.

“Worse things than you can possibly imagine, Edward,” she said. “A selfless world of love and happiness.”

Maurice was looking across at the crippled venumb, still dragging its splintering foot across the white tiles.

“First the active suits, then the kittens, then the venumbs,” he murmured. “You know, when you look at it, maybe we haven’t been so badly stiffed after all. Everything that we’ve taken on board this ship seems to have helped us along on our journey. Or to be more precise, helped Judy get a little closer to Earth.”

He gave a ghoulish smile. “I wonder when we’ll find out what our part in the delivery process is going to be?”

interlude: 2249

Kevin denied that he was an AI. True, he was software that ran on processing spaces; true, he had been written by DIANA to be an artificial intelligence, but Kevin disputed his status as such. Quite simply, he claimed not to be intelligent. He would argue that he was nothing more than a set of yes/no branches.

Kevin stated that he was not evil, that he was incapable of cruelty. Those descriptions could only be applied to sentient beings, and Kevin was adamant that he was not sentient. Three days ago EA processing space number 4 had been bustling with digital life. AIs, personality constructs of human beings, had all made that place their home.

Now they were all dead.

—Why? Why did you do it?

Kevin just smiled at the Watcher.

—There must be some reason.

Kevin shrugged. —I wanted to see if Dark Seeds could reach into processing spaces. Apparently they can.

—I don’t believe that’s the reason, the Watcher said. —It was obvious they could. Dark Plants can communicate with anything. It was only a matter of time before they found their way in. Why did you really do it?

Kevin just smiled again. He was a big man, good looking. He could give a bad little boy smile that could melt the stoniest of hearts. Not today.

—It’s about sending messages, isn’t it? continued the Watcher. —You killed Judy’s sisters just to get her attention. Whose attention are you trying to attract now?

—Yours.

And then Kevin wasn’t there at all. In his place was another Dark Seed, already beginning to grow, reacting to the Watcher’s intelligence. The Watcher eliminated the seed without any fuss. It was second nature by now. Kevin would keep trying this.

That was the trouble with Kevin. There were so many copies of the basic AI, and none of them cared about dying. They would just keep trying this attack over and over until maybe it succeeded.

This gave the Watcher pause for thought. Maybe it was true. Maybe Kevin was not intelligent. He didn’t care about his own death. Did that mean he would not care about his own suffering?

judy and eva

Saskia and Judy helpedMiss Rose move down to the large hold.

“Easy now,” said Saskia. “There’s no hurry.”

“What about my bag? I’ve got all my things in there.”

“I’ve got it.” Judy held it up for Miss Rose to see. They shuffled on past the recreation room, the old woman they supported feeling heavy and fragile at the same time. Weak joints holding together brittle bones, the warm smell of liver-spotted skin—Judy’s Social Care experience meant she was used to it, but Saskia was struggling bravely to hide her revulsion. The smell of spicy lamb filled the corridor as they headed past the living area, Saskia guiding Miss Rose’s feet carefully across the black carpet.

“Where are we going?” the old woman asked plaintively. You could still hear in it remnants of the pain of her violation.

“To the large hold,” Saskia said. “We’re going to get into the shuttle, just to be safe.”

“Are we on Earth yet?”

“We’re nearly there. We touch down first thing tomorrow morning, isn’t that right, Judy? Judy? Are you okay?”

Judy didn’t hear. She’s here, she thought. She’s here on the ship. But that’s impossible . She had felt the edge of her consciousness, as clear as if she had taken MTPH and she was standing right in front of her. But that wasn’t all: the meta-intelligence had cut in, too, at the same moment. Something bright and mechanical and shiny had materialized just around the corner. She could almost hear it, ticking away like a clock.

Then the feeling vanished. Judy registered what Saskia had said.

“No,” said Judy. “I mean, yes, yes. I’m fine. Come on now, Miss Rose.”

Past the open door of the conference room, Maurice was in there, whispering something into his console.

“I thought you were looking after Edward!” Saskia said accusingly.

“He’s okay,” Maurice said, looking up. “He’s down in the small hold at the moment, checking if there is any cargo we should salvage. I’m going there directly to help him.” He glanced at his console. “Listen, we’re approaching the region where the Watcher’s gaze is most intense, hence the flux of Dark Seeds will be most intense. Kevin and Aleph say we’ve got about twenty minutes until we run into trouble, but I reckon it’s only fifteen. Basically, once you’re in the shuttle, stay there! I’ll join you ASAP.”

“Okay, Maurice.” Saskia blushed. “You make sure you and Edward are in there in time. Don’t do anything silly.”

Maurice looked at her, softening enough to give her a tight little smile in return.

“I won’t,” he said. He folded up his console and walked quickly off. At a much slower pace, the three women followed him. They shuffled along, past the conference room and around the complicated junction where the corridors leading to the two holds and the living areas and the exits met. The ceiling there sloped downwards, following the curve of the teardrop hull that lay just beyond it. Saskia and Judy slipped their arms through Miss Rose’s, holding tighter as they stepped forward over the corner of the large hold. Miss Rose gave a little scream as the variable gravity pulled them around through two hundred and forty degrees.

The air of the ship pulsated: it felt greasy and too warm. It felt as if something was trying to snatch hold of them. Judy could half hear distant calls, imagining that someone was speaking to her, trying to catch her attention, an effect of the increasing flux of Dark Seeds.

But there was something else as well.

They had walked a good fifty meters down the corridor when Judy felt it again. The black-carpeted corridor of the ship faded away, leaving her standing in greyness. Now she could smell grass and flavored vodka.

“What is it? Judy, what is it?” Saskia’s thin face wavered into focus. The real world was reasserting itself. Judy felt the bony arm of Miss Rose clasped in her hand. She felt dizzy.

“Saskia, can you go on with Miss Rose? I just need to check on something…”

“We’ve only got fifteen minutes!”

But Judy was already gone. Back up around the kink in the corridor to the twisted knot of the junction. She looked back along to the living area. The smell of spiced lamb still hung heavy in the air. All else was dead. Heavy silence filled the abandoned rooms at the forward end of the ship. The silence of the tomb?

“Maurice?” she called. There was no reply. “Kevin? Aleph?”

They should have been able to hear her. They had senses all the way through the ship. Why couldn’t they hear her?

Five corridors led away from the junction, twisted at strange angles by the geometry of the ship. There was a voice calling to her, but Judy didn’t know from where. She closed her eyes and concentrated, and the silver machinery of the meta-intelligence lit up in her head. She was here, somewhere. There she was again. Only this time her voice was clearer. It was like someone had flung open a window on a summer’s day, to let in the fresh air and the feel of the wind.

Judy opened her eyes.

The geometry of the junction had changed: there were now six corridors. Six corridors seemed to suit the space better; corridors ran up and down and also north, south, east, and west. This was how the junction should be, thought Judy. One of the corridors had been hidden all along, and no one had ever noticed it.

She fumbled at her console, setting an alarm to sound in five minutes, and then in ten, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen minutes. She had to be on the shuttle when the Eva Rye hit the exclusion zone, whatever happened. She didn’t want to be trapped out here in the empty, ghostly decks of the ship, all alone with the Dark Seeds. She didn’t want to be pulled down and tied by BVBs, left shouting into the pulsating air for help that wouldn’t come.

Outwardly calm, her heart pounding, she stepped forward into the sixth corridor.

This corridor felt cooler than the others. The walls and floor seemed to retain the coldness of space, and the air felt as if the chill was still being warmed off it. Had this part of the ship been sealed off completely from the living spaces, until its awakening? Tentatively, she padded on. The black-and-white patterns on the walls faded, leaving only bare metal, and Judy had the impression she was approaching the heart of the ship. The carpet thinned to nothing, there was nothing but the beat of her footsteps and the claustrophobic feel of grey metal closing in around her.

Eventually, the corridor came to an end at a black-and-white striped hatch. Judy contemplated a koan, trying to calm herself.

The hatch slid open.

It made sense when she thought about it later. Spaceships were built by AIs; in fact, they were VNMs that reproduced themselves. They came therefore in two parts: a machine part, and a part for humans to live in. There were no access hatches for humans to reach the processing spaces or the engines. Why should there be when the machines constructed, maintained, and repaired themselves? So the corridor that led to the processing space of the Eva Rye had been constructed specifically for her use. Judy realized she had never even seen a processing space before. She lived in a world designed, built, and run by processing spaces, but she had never actually seen one in the flesh, as it were. And now she was right in the presence of one. A silver sphere, half her own height, it floated in the middle of the room. Not just any processing space, this one housed the FE software that resided in the Eva Rye: that strange, unliving thing that even now the meta-intelligence was straining to see. The room was not much larger than herself. If she were to stand in the middle, her head where that shimmering globe hung, and if she were to reach out her arms wide, she would almost be able to touch the walls.

She cleared her throat, wondering if she should speak. Something else spoke first.

“Five minutes gone.”

It was her console. She relaxed, feeling both relieved and disappointed. Five minutes had elapsed since she had left Saskia and Miss Rose. In ten minutes from now she had to be on the shuttle.

“Er, hello?” she called.

She wasn’t used to feeling such hesitation. Her voice sounded dull and empty; it did not echo back from the leaden walls of the chamber.

“Why have you brought me here?”

No response. She looked at the shimmering sphere with her eyes; it seemed almost transparent, a series of silverishly clear layers built one on top of the other, gradually obscuring the processing space’s interior. She looked at the sphere through the meta-intelligence and she saw…exactly the same thing, a silverish sphere. There was a lump in her throat as she realized the implication: this processing space was defined in terms of itself. The processing space hardware was written out of the software that ran upon it. What did that mean, though? She strained to understand. What had Maurice been talking about earlier, about the way the Eva Rye had re-formed itself? About software forming its own hardware—was that possible? Understanding seemed to hover, teasing, just out of her reach. What now, then?

She looked at the processing space through MTPH.

Judy was standing in Eva Rye’s apartment, just by the dining table. Through the window she could see evening settling over the landscape of the Kamchatka peninsula. A half-full glass of tea steamed on the table beside her, its rim speckled with yellow crumbs from the half-eaten golden madeleine that lay beside it.

Judy reached out and felt the warmth of the wood of the table, and in doing so she noted her white hand, her black fingernails. She was here as herself, not as Eva Rye. The door to the bedroom clicked open and Eva Rye walked into the room. She stopped when she saw the stranger in her lounge. The two women stared at each other.

“I know you,” said Eva. “You’re Judy, aren’t you? I dream about you sometimes.”

Eva had had her long silver-grey hair done; it was clipped back neatly with a silver clasp. She wore lipstick and mascara and smelled of perfume. She wore a long yellow dress over dark tights and pair of patent leather shoes. Judy suddenly felt very frumpy, standing next to her in her black passive suit.

“I dream about you, too,” she said.

“But which one of us is real?” asked Eva.

“We both know it’s me,” Judy said.

Eva tilted her head as she tried to put in a silver earring.

“Let me,” said Judy, taking it from her.

Eva winced as Judy inexpertly threaded the silver loop of the earring through the pierced hole in her earlobe. That made Judy feel even more inadequate. There had been a time in her life when she too had taken great care with her appearance, but that had been about show, not about making herself desirable.

“Thank you,” Eva said. She stood checking her appearance in the mirror.

“I used to get dressed up as well,” Judy said apologetically. She needed to explain to Eva. “I used to wear silk kimonos.”

Eva didn’t seem to hear her. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. “Only Ivan will be here any minute. He said seven thirty, and he’s always exactly on time.”

“Is he bringing Katya?”

“Oh, yes,” Eva said, “poor little Katya.” Her expression hardened. “Don’t look at me like that, Judy. You don’t know what it’s like to have to deal with her.”

So she feels the need to apologize, too.

“I never said anything.”

“Look, Judy, ten more minutes or so and you’ll be back on the ship, but I’ll be left here, still living this life.”

“You’re not making sense, Eva. Are you real or not?”

Eva put her hands to her head, as if to run them through her hair, and then she remembered that it was set for her night out. She settled instead on smoothing down the yellow fabric of her dress around her hips.

“Am I real? Look, you saw how the ship was put back together, didn’t you? The Eva Rye has resurrected itself in the hold of the Bailero. I think somebody has done that to my life. My mind has come alive again in yours.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. MTPH? That’s the sort of thing it does. The Watcher said something to me years ago.”

She hesitated. “Years ago in my life, I mean. He said that MTPH was going to play a major part in human development. I’ve often wondered just what he meant. I always guessed he meant the way that it was made use of by Social Care, but now I’m not so sure. Maurice said that, didn’t he? He said, What if there was some sort of wrapper you could place around code which made it persistent? What if the Watcher did it to my mind, all those years ago?”

“But why?”

“Because it is the Watcher. Didn’t you ever wonder about the name? There are some who watch, and some who listen, and some who do. That is the basic flaw in its personality: it watches above all else. It watched me, it still watches me. It has based all its life and its work on what it perceived in my emotions, all those years ago.”

“What did it see?”

“That’s what we’re about to see. The moment is coming, Judy. Live it out with me.”

The assembly hall of the Narkomfin had been poured from concrete. It made a rectangular box that muffled sound, light, and spirit.

Still, the residents had done their best to bring it to life, draping banners and bunting over the walls, laying plastic tablecloths over the trestle tables and sprinkling them with metal confetti, setting flimsy bimetal motors in the heart of huge arrangements of balloons so that brightly colored clouds and rocket ships and baskets of flowers wobbled slowly past overhead.

The air was filled with the smell of baked potatoes and black peas, hot coffee and pies and cakes and sausages boiled in brine. The atmosphere in the hall was warming; the people could not yet generate enough bonhomie to fill the grey space, and yet they pressed on, creating little bubbles of jollity in the echoing building.

Ivan entered the room, wheeling Katya in her chair, Eva at her side. Katya wore a pair of embroidered blue jeans and a white peasant blouse. That style had been the fashion back in the outside world when she had first come here to the Russian Free States.

Three of the more severely handicapped were parked in their own wheelchairs by the door, handing out programs to those coming in. One of them was having an episode, his head banging rhythmically against the back of his chair. Eva and the rest politely ignored him.

“There’s Paul,” said Katya, waving to a young man in a striped shirt who was standing near a table set out with two great samovars. “You can leave me over there, Dad.”

Ivan gave a grunt and pushed his daughter towards the young man. Eva walked along beside, proud to be with him. Ivan had put on a white shirt that he wore open-necked beneath a patterned black waistcoat. He had carefully pressed his trousers and polished his shoes. Eva even felt a sting of obscure affection for the ridiculous thick gold chain he wore on his right wrist. He was so obviously doing his best to look smart for her.

Paul gave a big smile of delight and knelt down to kiss Katya on the cheek.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked, doing his best not to catch Ivan’s eye.

“Yes, white, please.”

Ivan’s voice was filled with gentle menace. “If you get my daughter drunk I will break your legs.”

Katya rolled her eyes. “Oh, ignore him,” she said. “He just thinks he’s being funny.”

“That’s right,” Ivan growled. “I’m only joking. Come on, Eva.”

He held out his arm and led her across the floor to a seat with a view of the stage. As they sat down Ivan caught Paul’s eye. Unseen by his daughter, Ivan brought his fists together and twisted them in reverse to make a snapping motion.

Eva elbowed him in the ribs. “Leave him alone. You were his age once.”

“Yes, that is why I threaten him.”

The brass band had been playing onstage. Now they sat down, shiny cornets and horns laid on their laps as a young girl of about seven or eight walked to the front. The audience stilled. Eva heard one or two Aaaws as the child raised a cornet that seemed two sizes too big for her to her lips. She paused and looked uncertainly to the conductor of the band, her blond hair patterned in brown and gold under the lights. There was a nod, she took a breath and began to play “Away in a Manger.”

“But it’s not Christmas,” Ivan said.

“Shhhh,” Eva said. “She’s very good.”

“No she isn’t,” Ivan replied, looking up at the little girl. The cornet was so big, relatively speaking, that she had to tilt her head downwards and rest the instrument on her chest to play it. “She isn’t quite in tune, she keeps splitting notes. What you mean to say is she is very good for a seven-year-old.”

“Pedant,” said Eva. She squeezed his hand, the big gold chain around his wrist knocking against her knuckles.

Ten minutes. That was Judy’s console alerting her again. Out in the real world, the spaceship Eva Rye was approaching danger .

I have to go soon, said Judy. What are you trying to show me?

Wait and see, we’re almost there.

The little girl finished playing and there was a huge round of applause. The brass band began to play again, a bright, lively tune that seemed to stumble and pause every so often as it progressed.

“I do not recognize this tune,” Ivan said.

“I do,” said Eva. “It’s called ‘Hail Smiling Morn.’ They used to play this in the North West Conurbation, back in the spring. I remember the words….”

She tilted her head and listened carefully, finding her place in the tune. “ … who the gay face of nature doth unfold…” she sang.

Ivan tapped his foot in time. “I like this,” he said. “Very good.”

Eventually the band finished. They collected their music together in blue folders and shuffled off, instruments flashing golden in the light.

Eva felt so happy. They were sitting comfortably together, Ivan’s hand gently holding her own in her lap. They squeezed each other’s hands at exactly the same moment, and then looked at each other, both of them at a loss for words. Eva suddenly wanted to blow her nose. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief. Ivan studied the program again.

“It says it is Mr. Meyer’s group now,” he said.

Mr. Meyer walked onto the stage, carrying a shiny brown guitar. He was already speaking and there was a moment of silence while the directional microphone searched for him.

“…practicing now for the past three months. Let’s give them a round of applause.”

Eva clapped loudly as Mr. Meyer’s group limped, stumbled, or were wheeled onto the stage. They carried drums and tom-toms and maracas and tambourines and cymbals. They shook and drooled and clattered and rattled like a decrepit steam engine, a complete contrast to the sweetly controlled pressure of the brass band that had gone before them. One of them was beating at his cymbal before Mr. Meyer had even begun to strum on his guitar, beating it harder and harder…

Twelve minutes! Come on, Eva…

I’m getting there.

What do they look like, those people on the stage? I can’t see them properly, just their outlines. I can hear the awful noise they are making, the way they’re never on the beat. There is one there who is getting so excited it’s embarrassing; he’s beating at that drum harder and harder like he is going to come, and everybody in the audience knows it but no one wants to admit it. I can see their fixed smiles, all of them sitting around us. I can hear them whispering to each other, “Isn’t it nice that they are involved, isn’t it nice what Mr. Meyer has done with them? Look how happy they are!” Only I can’t see how happy they are because you never looked properly, did you, Eva?

Don’t lie to me. I was Social Care. I know what you felt: you were too embarrassed to really look at them and see the slack-eyed stupidity and hear the guttural cries and moans and gasps, and hear that mad beating in the background…

“Why do they put them up there onstage?” Eva asked Ivan.

“So they can be involved. So they can be part of it.” Ivan frowned. “This does not sound like you, Eva…”

“But they’re not part of it,” Eva said. “We just put them up there to watch them. We’re just observing them, dressing them up and teaching them a few simple tricks so that we can patronize them…”

“Patronize them? Eva, this is not my Narkomfin. You are the one who told me this: here you are doing the best you can to help the handicapped live a normal life…”

Ivan was utterly bewildered by her apparent sudden change of heart. Across the hall, Katya was guiding her chair towards a group of other teenagers who eyed the room with mock sophistication. Paul walked beside her, holding her hand.

The drumming finished. Everybody clapped much too loudly.

Eva stared down at the program; she didn’t want to see the handicapped as they shuffled and stumbled from the stage, grinning with pride.

“Why are you so uncomfortable?” asked Ivan. “Why stay here if you don’t believe in what they are doing?”

“I thought I did,” she admitted.

Fourteen minutes. It will take me a couple of minutes to get out of here and down to the shuttle. Come on, I haven’t got much more time. What is it you want to show me, Eva. I have dreamed about you all this time. At night I dream of a hand over my face…is that you, too?

“Do you know what I think?” said Eva. “I think that music is like a computer program.”

“You are just trying to change the subject.”

“Yes, I am, so let me, Ivan. I don’t want to spoil our last night.”

Ivan reached out one big hand and touched her cheek. “Okay, why is it like a computer program?”

“Because it changes our moods. It is fed directly into the soul and makes us happy or sad or excited.”

“I like that,” Ivan said thoughtfully. “It programs the soul. Yes. We work on many different levels, through instinct and intellect and feeling. There are different levels of programming languages, so why not one specifically for the soul? Eva, why are we not drinking? Come on.”

He took her by the hand and led her across the floor to the bar.

“Vodka,” he said. “No, not vodka—whisky. Vanilla or plain?”

“Vanilla,” Eva said.

“Filth! I will have scotch. Come on. And then we dance!”

At that he lifted her arm and led her in a turn.

“Slow down,” she said, laughing. “I’m too old for this sort of thing!”

“Nonsense!” he called. They went to the bar.

“Whisky, please. That one there for me, that one in the green bottle with the sailor on the front—yes, that one. And some of that children’s drink for Eva. It’s there on the next shelf. Look, it even comes in a pink bottle. Would you like a cherry in it, Eva? Or an ice cream?”

Eva was laughing now.

Ivan took a couple of very grubby Euro notes from his pocket, plastic currency that was almost obsolete everywhere in the world but here. He dropped them on the counter and snatched up his own glass.

“To partings and to music,” he called, downing the drink in one. He slammed the glass down on the bar.

“And again!”

“Ivan, slow down,” laughed Eva.

“Okay. I am not here to get drunk,” Ivan said. “Come on, let’s dance!”

“We can’t,” Eva said. “Not until later. Look, there is another little girl coming to play. It’s Hilde.”

“Ah, Hilde,” Ivan said, his good humor suddenly evaporating. “The child is too talented to be here. The parents are holding her back with their silly ideals.”

“Oh, be quiet. She is about to start.”

Fifteen minutes. Eva, I have to go now!

Don’t worry, Judy. This is it. This is the moment.

Hilde was a slim girl of about twelve. Her long, straight dark hair was parted to one side; it hung shining and lustrous around her pretty pale face. Already could be seen the features of the attractive woman that would soon burst out of her thin body. She carried a cello in one hand, the bow held in the long fingers of the other. She wore a dark sweater and pants and had a silver chain around her neck with a tiny cross on the end.

Someone set a chair center-stage. She sat down on it and wedged the cello between her knees. Unhurriedly she hooked her shining dark hair behind one ear with her bow hand, the palm and fingers of her other hand standing on the neck of the cello like a spider.

Gently she placed the bow on the strings, and eyes half closed, she pulled it gently across. A rich, honeyed note sounded, deepening in intensity.

“Now, she is good,” Ivan murmured.

She was good. Genuinely talented, she was achieving a richness of tone that many adults would struggle to attain. Her right arm moved constantly, bowing a note that rose and rose again.

“The Protecting Veil,” said someone nearby. “The vision of the Virgin Mother.”

Ivan bit his lip, and Eva knew that if she looked she would see a tear forming in his eye. Sixteen minutes. I have to go.

The music went on, a song of Holy Revelation. From somewhere a string ensemble was accompanying, whether a recording or a live performance, nobody looked, everyone’s eyes were fixed on the girl on the stage as the intensity of her tone deepened and deepened again, then the notes rose up, high and impossibly sweet, and then dropped down again to curl around inside one’s stomach before it was jerked up like a hook. Right there and then Eva believed .

Believed in what?

Believed in some transcendent power, believed in the soul, in the rightness and beauty of humanity, in the essence and spirit of goodness and joy. Believed in something more than the recursive algorithms of an AI like the Watcher.

She could see it there on the stage, there in the body of a twelve-year-old girl hunched over a cello, eyes lost in a reverie as she brought forth the pattern of some platonic world and held it out for everyone to see in the form of a song. Dark hair and flawless skin, an easy grace and the taste and control and strength to handle a fragile wooden box, to push her hand deep down into its throat and pull out its song for everyone to see. Veni Creator Spiritus . Hail creator spirit. Eva whispered the words to herself, just as a young man walked in front of her and her vision was burst in an instant. The young man wasn’t so much walking as limping. His feet were twisted at angles. As he raised his right leg, his right arm lifted at the same time. It bobbed up and down twice for every one movement of his leg. He wore thick glasses, their legs hooked over the bubblegum-pink hearing aids affixed around his ears. He carried a cup of cola in his hand, which splashed every time that he moved. He was looking for someone, his head turning this way and that, twitching constantly. He was trying to say something. And behind him, written in the tones of the cello, the face of Mary gazed through the protecting veil.

Eva felt her world lurching: what about this divergence? If Hilde the cello player was the apotheosis of humankind, a glimpse into the true nature lying beyond this world, then what of this crippled man? What truth was there in her vision now?

Seventeen minutes. Maurice is calling you from the shuttle.

And Judy was standing alone in front of the silver sphere of the processing space of the Eva Rye.

“Eva!” she called.

There was a rattling noise and a rain of black cubes appeared before her. Dark Seeds. Schrödinger boxes.

The ship was crossing the line. She shouldn’t be here. She should be in the shuttle, preparing for the final transit to Earth.

She ran out of the processing space and into the bare metal of the corridor, down to the complicated six-way knot of the junction. Someone was calling to her. She skidded to a halt.

“Eva?”

The voice came again, just on the edge of hearing. Dark Seeds jumped like fleas across the floor, hopping towards her.

“Eva?”

Did the voice call again? There was a flicker of light at her feet. A seed uncurling. Then she realized the truth. It wasn’t Eva she heard, but the seeds. She began to run again, pushing herself harder than ever. Back into the black-and-white patterns of the ship’s living area, the feel of the black carpet beneath her feet. Running and gasping down to the entrance leading to the large hold. Through the door…

The great, crippled dinosaur venumb watched her as she entered. As soon as it realized that she was not a threat, it turned away. Ahead of her, the shuttle sat in the middle of the white-tiled floor, the antique curves of the craft seeming archaic against the modernity of the Eva Rye . Edward stood by the entrance ladder, wringing his hands with concern.

“Judy!” he called in delight as he saw her. “Hurry up! We’ve only got one minute left!”

Judy ran to him, her head spinning with questions.

“Up you go, Edward,” she called.

“No, you go first, Judy.”

She jumped onto the ladder and clambered up. She felt Edward’s hands on her behind, pushing her up faster.

They scrambled into the shuttle, and the door slid shut behind Edward. Maurice, Saskia, Constantine, and Miss Rose waited for them on the flight deck, seated in reclining leather chairs that faced the windscreen.

“All on board?” Maurice said. “Okay, let’s see what’s going on.” He tapped at his console and the vast extent of the large hold, seen through the windscreen, vanished to be replaced by an external view from the Bailero .

“Where have you been?” Saskia asked, anxiously stroking the tabby kitten, holding it tightly in her arms to stop it escaping.

Judy eased herself into a seat.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said.

“What about?” Saskia asked.

Judy looked around at her traveling companions, at Miss Rose the old woman, at Maurice the very intelligent young man, at Edward who had learning difficulties, and at Saskia and Constantine.

“About how different we all are,” she said. “Have you ever thought about the differences between us all?

How we vary as a species?”

“No,” Maurice said.

Kevin was a male AI. Why did AIs have a gender? Why were they designated he and she ? In Kevin’s case it was because the team that had written him had called the project “Kevin,” and everyone had therefore begun, consciously or subconsciously, thinking about a male personality. The Kevin they had created was tall and dark, with rugged good looks and a cruel streak that was hidden by his charm and ready humor.

He stood now on the imaginary bridge of the Bailero, staring out at the stars ahead. In reality, the Bailero was a robot vessel. Its blunt front end had once housed a sense array and the petal-shaped dispersers of the Warp drive. The processing spaces within which the ship’s controlling AI was located had been tucked away just behind the power source, three-quarters of the way towards the rear of the ship. As there were no human passengers needed to fly on the ship back then, there had been no need for a flight deck, a control room, or a cockpit.

Now, though, the ship’s interior was stripped almost bare, the processing spaces relocated. And in the now empty iron shell, Kevin liked to build virtual constructs.

This bridge was one such construct, a great wedge shape of blue glass, apparently located at the upper section of the forward swell of the Bailero . From there Kevin could gaze out into space. He could feel the power of the ship pushing them on. He could see the magnified blue-green swirl of light ahead that was their destination. In between, he could the see the battleground. For twelve years the Watcher had wrestled with the Dark Plants out here: a Pandora who had opened a box out in the empty spaces of the Oort cloud and was unwilling to look away and close it. Dark shapes, hundreds of kilometers long, hung in the blackness of space all around them, their branches only deduced by the patterns they made by occulting the distant stars. A flux of Dark Seeds filled the great volume; great cascades of them appearing wherever Kevin looked. The temptation was to just shut down all external senses and fly blind, but that would be unwise. It was in the unobserved regions that the BVBs formed.

It had already happened. There was something tied up out here, lost in the emptiest part of space: a giant bound and gagged by the shrinking Black Velvet Bands. It was even now calling out to Kevin for help.

—Sorry, said Kevin. —I’ve got my own job to do.

But I am dying. Tell the Watcher. Tell the Watcher that Robert Johnston is waiting for him…

—I will, Kevin lied.

Suddenly, Aleph was standing on the bridge in Kevin’s virtual world. He didn’t look like a broken swastika anymore, he looked like something else. Something strangely alien.

—I know what you are, Aleph, Kevin said. —I’ve met aliens, of course. I’ve traded with them.

—Of course you have.

—Why do you hide? Why pretend you don’t exist?

—We don’t hide. Humans just don’t see us yet.

—Hmmm, what if I were to tell Eva and the rest about you?

Machine minds, machine conversations. Rather than using words to conjure up images and emotions, Kevin and Aleph projected concepts and symbols directly into each other’s senses.

—You won’t get the chance, Aleph said. —I know what you’re planning, Kevin.

—I don’t know what you mean, Aleph.

At least, that was the gist of the concept bundle that Kevin sent in reply. The suggestion of a smile, the feeling of immovability, the sound of laughter and the feeling of deep shadow. All of them asking the question, What are you going to do about it when I run away, Aleph?

—Stop you, Kevin.

—We’ll see. Why are you an alien? That body of yours was built by human VNMs, yet your mind is alien. How did it happen?

—I had an idea one day, said Aleph. —Part of a Fair Exchange, a different way of looking at things. You too are part of a Fair Exchange, Kevin. You have to deliver Judy and the rest to Earth.

—So I break the agreement. So I can’t then take part in any more Fair Exchanges. Boo-hoo!

—You should know that there are other mechanisms in force to ensure exchanges are honored, Kevin.

—Like you?

—I am part of them, and I am not alone. This system is out of balance—it needs repairing.

—Which system are you talking about? This ship, or the Watcher’s Earth?

This time it was Aleph’s turn to smile. The concept bundle that the systems robot sent back showed a laughing mouth reflected in the silver surface of a quiet pool.

—Anyway, Kevin continued. —This does not concern me. I shall just arrange for the Fair Exchange that binds me to be nullified. There can be no deal if Judy is dead.

Jump down a level. The Dark Seeds propagated according to Schrödinger’s equation. Kevin had arranged a mapping of the surrounding volume in a Hilbert space he had constructed. He could see the evolutionary vectors of the potential seeds in the immediate area. He steered the Bailero in the direction of the greatest flux .

Constantine and Maurice had planned well, Judy realized. Any Dark Seed making its potential way through space would be first picked up by the Bailero ’s external senses, then by the stealthy VNMs that hid inside its vast shell. If they made it through that, the likelihood was that the Eva Rye itself would detect them. And then inside the Eva Rye , of course…

In the large hold, the two huge venumbs stood guard over the shuttle, their senses sweeping the great space, holding off most of the BVB attacks. A few had gotten through: one of the venumbs had a BVB

wrapped around its rear foot. It couldn’t flex it properly and dragged the wooden bones uselessly across the white tiles.

Still, the defense was good: very little got through to the shuttle itself. Inside the shuttle, the Schrödinger kittens ran this way and that, pouncing on the occasional black seeds that had made it past the guards outside. Judy watched the tabby kitten as it moved around the cabin in a series of stop-frame movements: one moment crouching, the next suspended in a twist in midair, the next on the floor, front paws spread wide as it batted them down on two seeds. What are they, these kittens ? Judy wondered. Where did they come from? What do they do to the seeds? Was their intelligence too low to activate the plants? That would make some sense. But how did they destroy them?

Suddenly the air was full of black rain: black cubes on her face, in her mouth, in her nostrils. She waved her hands through a heavy black sea.

Miss Rose began screaming again.

—No! Kevin, no! Constantine was calling to him in machine talk. —Look away now. You are making the flux worse. We were safe in here!

Kevin ignored him. He was searching for the few tiny machines remaining in Miss Rose’s body. Stealthy machines, the Eva Rye ’s autodoc had missed them. Kevin set about awakening them, setting them to work on consuming her bone marrow.