Recursion

Herb 1: 2210

Herb looked at the viewing field and felt his stomach tighten in horror. He had been expecting to see a neat cityscape: line after line of silver needles linked by lacy bridges, cool silver skyscrapers shot through with pink-tinted crystal windows; artfully designed to resemble the spread of colors on a petal. Instead he saw…bleak nothingness. Cold, featureless, gently undulating wasteland spreading in all directions.

Something had gone badly wrong. Suddenly the cozy white leather and polished yellow wood lounge of his spaceship was not the safe cocoon he had grown used to over the past few months. Now they would be coming to prize him from this warm, cushioned shell to cast him shivering into the real world, all because he had made one tiny mistake.

Somehow he had made a mess of the code that should have told the Von Neumann Machines to stop reproducing and start building.

Herb’s machines had eaten up an entire planet.

But there was nothing to be gained now by crying about it. Herb had known he was on his own when he embarked upon this project. It was up to him to figure out what had gone wrong, and then to extract himself from the situation.

He opened a second viewing field next to the first and called up an image of his prototype Von Neumann Machine. A cylinder, nine centimeters long, with eight silver legs spaced along its body, giving it an insectile appearance. Six months ago Herb had dropped out of warp right over this planet, opened the hatch of his spaceship, and stood in solemn silence for a moment before dropping that same machine onto the desolate, rocky surface below.

What had happened next?

Herb liked to pace when he was thinking, and he had arranged his spaceship lounge to allow him room to do so. Two white sofas facing each other occupied the center of the room. A wide moat of parquet flooring filled the space between the sofas and the surrounding furniture that lined the walls of the room. The smell of beeswax polish and fresh coffee filled the cabin. Herb closed his eyes and ran through the order of events after he had released the Von Neumann Machine.

He imagined that first VNM turning on six of its spindly legs, lifting them in a high stepping motion as it sought to orient itself. The remaining two legs would be extended forward, acting as antennae, vibrating slightly as they read the little machine’s surroundings. It would have walked a few paces, tiny grains of sand sticking to its silver-grey limbs, then maybe changed direction and moved again, executing a random path until it found a patch of rock of just the right composition, then settled itself down, folding its legs around itself to bring its osmotic shell in contact with the surface.

His thoughts on track, Herb began to pace, soft ships’ slippers padding on the wooden floor. He was naked except for a pair of paper shorts. Okay, what next?

In his imagination he saw the first machine absorbing matter from the planet, converting it, working it, and sending it around that half-twisted loop that no human mind could comprehend. Soon there would be two identical machines standing on the rock, their legs waving in an explorative fashion. And then four of them, then eight…

The program was perfect, or so the simulations had told him. When they reached the optimum number, the machines should have begun constructing his city out of their own bodies, clamberering on top of each other using the sticky pads on the ends of their feet. Herb was proud of the design of those pads: each seemingly smooth foot ended in a chaotic branching of millions upon millions of tiny strands. Press one foot down and the hairs would spread out, reaching down and around to follow the contours of the surface beneath them so perfectly that they were attracted to it at a molecular level.

Not that any of that mattered now. This was the point where the error lay. The machines hadn’t paused to build his city. They’d just gone on reproducing, continued eating up the planet to make copies of themselves until there was nothing left. He opened his eyes again to look at the viewing field. Maybe he had only imagined it.

Herb groaned as the view zoomed in on the cold grey shifting sea beneath. He could make out the busy motion of millions of VNMs walking over and under each other, struggling to climb upwards to the surface only to be trodden on and forced down by other VNMs, each equally determined about seeking the light. Wasn’t that part of the end program? City spires, growing upwards, seeking the light in the manner of plants? Everywhere he looked, everywhere the ship’s senses could reach-out to the horizon, down to the submerged layers of machines-it was the same: frenzied, pointless activity.

He paused and felt a sudden thrill of horror. That wasn’t quite true. Something was happening directly below. He could see a wave building beneath him: a swelling in the grey, rolling surface. Thousands of pairs of tiny silver antennae were now waving in his direction. They sensed the ship hanging there. They sensed raw materials that could be converted into yet more silver VNMs. Herb felt a peculiar mix of horror and betrayal.

He croaked out a command. “Ship. Up one hundred meters!”

The ship smoothly gained altitude and Herb began to pace again. He needed to think, to isolate the error, but he couldn’t concentrate because one thought kept jumping in front of all the others.

He was in serious trouble.

Herb didn’t exactly fear the EA. Why should he? The EA was like a parent: it cared for and nurtured all its human charges. The EA wanted Herb to become the best that he could be. No, Herb did not fear the EA: he respected it. After all, it watched everyone, constantly monitoring their slightest action.

And it acted to correct the behavior of those who transgressed its boundaries.

The EA would have been upset enough by the thought of a private city being built on an unapproved planet. Never mind the fact that the planet was sterile and uninhabited, they would still point out the fact that a city wasn’t part of this planet’s natural environmental vectors.

“We are uniquely placed to manipulate not only our environment, but also that of other races as yet unborn. It is our responsibility not to abuse that privilege.”

The message was as much part of Herb’s childhood as the smell of damp grass, the dull brown tedium of Cultural Appreciation lessons, and the gentle but growing certainty that whatever he wanted was his for the asking. Everything, that is, but this. Everyone knew the EA’s philosophy.

So what would the EA think when they discovered that in failing to build his illegal city he had accidentally destroyed an entire planet instead? Did they know already? Had something in his behavior been picked up by the EA’s monitoring routines? Was someone already on their way here to arrest him?

Herb didn’t remember setting out a bottle of vanilla whisky on the carved glass slab that served as a side table. Nonetheless, he poured a drink and felt himself relax a little. His next moves began to fall into place.

First he had to try and destroy any evidence linking this planet with himself.

Next he had to get away from here undetected.

Then he had to slot back into normal life as if nothing had happened.

Then, and only then, could he pause to think about what had gone wrong with his prototype.

The first objective should be quite straightforward. The original VNM had been designed with anonymity in mind: standard parts, modular pieces of code taken from public libraries. The thought that someone might accidentally stumble across his planet had always been at the back of his mind. He gulped down some more whisky and an idea seemed to crystallize from the alcohol. He prodded it gently.

As far as Herb knew, no one else even knew that this planet existed. He had jumped across space at random and set his ship’s senses wide to find a suitable location. What if this planet were just to disappear? What if he dropped a second VNM onto it-one with a warp drive and access to a supply of exotic matter? Set it loose converting all the original machines, and then, when that work was done, just jump them all into the heart of a star?

Could he do it?

Getting hold of enough exotic matter to build the warp drives of the modified VNMs would be a problem, but his father had contacts, so that could come later. He had to get away first.

He could do that. A random series of jumps around the galaxy, eventually returning to Earth. Enough jumps, executed quickly enough, and nothing would be able to retrace his course.

Good. Now, how about slotting back into normal life? Would anyone suspect him? More to the point, would the EA suspect anything? Their senses were everywhere. They said the EA could look into someone’s soul and weigh the good and evil contained therein to twenty decimal places, and yet…and yet…

Herb was different. He had known it since he was a child. Sometimes it was as if he was merely a silhouette. Like he was there in outline, but they couldn’t fill in any of the specific details.

If anyone could get away with it, it was Herb.

A gentle breeze brushed his face and he felt his spirits lift. He took another gulp of whisky and felt a flood of warm relief as he swallowed. The plan was good. He could get away with it.

“I can get away with it,” he whispered to himself, his confidence growing. Another sip of whisky and that familiar sense of his own invulnerability swung slowly back into place. Get back home, and he would be able to examine the design of his VNM and discover what had gone wrong with it. He drained the glass and began to stride around the room, feet padding on the wooden floor, energy suddenly bubbling inside him.

“I’m going to get away with it!” he said out loud, punching at the air with a fist. And then, once he was home, once he had found the error in his design, he could find himself another planet. Build his city there instead.

“I will get away with it!” he cried triumphantly.

“No you won’t.”

The glass slipped from Herb’s fingers. He spun around and fell into a crouch position, ready to run or fight, though where he would run to in a three-room spaceship his body hadn’t yet decided.

A slight, dark-haired man with a wide, white, beaming smile and midnight-black skin stood on the sheepskin rug between the facing sofas. He wore an immaculately tailored suit in dark cloth with a pearl grey pinstripe. Snowy white cuffs peeped from the edge of his sleeves; gleaming patent leather shoes were half hidden by the razor-sharp creases of his trousers. The man raised his hat to Herb, a dark fedora with a spearmint green band.

“Good afternoon, Henry Jeremiah Kirkham. My name is Robert Johnston. I work for the Environment Agency.”

Herb slowly straightened up. He felt naked and exposed.

“What are you doing on my ship?” he said, the faintest tremor in his voice.

Robert Johnston gave a sad little shrug of his shoulders.

“Oh Herb, I don’t like this any more than you do, but, well, I have no choice. You have put me in this position; your actions have led me to this juncture. I’m afraid that I am going to have to punish you for the destruction of this planet.” He shook his head in regret.

Herb frowned back at him. “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, how did you get on my ship? You can’t have stowed away; it’s too small. I’d have heard the alarms if you tried to come through the airlock.”

Herb bit his lip in thought. “Ergo, you can’t be here,” he murmured. “What are you? Externally projected V-R?”

“Sorry, Herb, no.” He suddenly became more animated. “I’m as real as the next man. I’m here in person, in the flesh. Accept no substitutes, the One and Only, the real McCoy, the Cat in the Hat.” At this he skimmed his broad-brimmed hat across the room toward Herb, who ducked quickly to avoid it. The hat spun over Herb’s head and hit one of the glass ornaments on the sideboard, knocking it over. It fell to the floor and shattered. Herb ignored the noise. His anger was building, his arrogance asserting itself. He fanned it, forced himself to hold Johnston’s gaze and speak with a level voice that belied the tension that was building in his stomach.

“Okay, if you’re real, how did you get in here? The ship’s integrity has not been breached since we left Earth, or I would have known about it. Every particle of onboard matter will have been tracked by the ship’s AI since it was loaded, and you are to be found nowhere on the manifest. You cannot be here. I can only surmise that I am hallucinating.” He looked thoughtfully for a moment at the bottle that sat on the floor near his feet and murmured to himself, “Possibly drugged by this vanilla whisky that I don’t remember putting out here on the table…”

He frowned. Robert Johnston tilted his head back and laughed. His neatly knotted green-and-pearl tie shimmered in the light.

“The lengths some people will go to to avoid the simple truth! The whisky has been tampered with, but only to the extent of adding a mild sedative. That is what allows you to stand there arguing rationally with me, rather than following the more natural urge to crouch shivering in the corner. Anyway, if I’m a hallucination, how could I have put the whisky bottle there in the first place?”

Herb frowned thoughtfully. He did feel a lot calmer than he would have expected to under the circumstances.

“Why have you drugged me?” asked Herb, after a pause.

“The EA is concerned about your health. The shock of me suddenly appearing in your ship could have had severe consequences.”

“Good for the EA. So how did you get here? Matter displacement?”

“No. Nothing so exotic. I came down the secret passage.”

Herb was silent for a moment as he considered the statement. When he spoke, it was with icy calm.

“You don’t have secret passages on spaceships.”

“Yes, you do. There’s one underneath that armchair. Look.”

At that, Johnston walked across the room, the heels of his shoes clicking on the polished wooden floor. He seized the armchair by its back, his fingers making deep dimples in the soft white leather, and pulled it to one side. The outline of a trapdoor could be seen, a knife line through the contrasting colors of the parquetry. Johnston pressed one corner of the outline with an elegantly manicured finger and the trapdoor popped up with a soft sigh. He pulled it back to reveal a long metal tube dropping away into the distance. Herb felt the gentle pull of air leaving his lounge, sighing its way down the dark, yawning passageway.

“I don’t believe it,” whispered Herb softly. “Are you sure you’re not a hallucination?”

“I feel it in my bones,” said Robert Johnston.

They both crouched down by the edge of the secret passageway, staring into its depths.

Johnston stroked his chin. “The floor of your lounge is built into the port wall of your ship. I attached my ship to yours just after you completed your first jump from Earth. The pipe you can see is the connection between us. A simple deep scan ensured that the hatch was located beneath your armchair for concealment.”

Herb gazed at Johnston in disgust. He hated being patronized. “What are you talking about? How could you attach your ship to mine without me noticing it? I’d have picked it up the first time I scanned any system on reinsertion from warp.”

Johnston shook his head sadly. “Oh, Herb. And you’re supposed to be quite intelligent.”

“What do you mean, quite intelligent?” snapped Herb.

“Do you find that offensive? I’m sorry.” Johnston gazed at the tips of his fingers for a moment, an enigmatic smile playing around his lips, then continued.

“What I mean is that I’m surprised you haven’t worked it out. Surely you have heard of stealth technology?”

“I have. I don’t believe it is sophisticated enough to fool my scanners,” replied Herb shortly.

“Oh, it is,” Robert Johnston said softly. “It is.”

They crouched by the hole for another moment in silence. Herb’s pale blue eyes locked with Johnston’s dark brown gaze. Herb was used to playing this game, and usually he was the last to look away. Not this time. He blinked and looked back down into the shadows.

“Okay,” he muttered softly, “I believe you. You attached a stealth ship to mine.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Johnston.

Herb jumped to his feet in anger. “Hell’s teeth!” he shouted. “What is your problem? Why do you keep playing games with me?”

The smile vanished from Johnston’s face, and Herb found a very different person looking at him. There was no emotion in his face, just the cold certainty that Robert Johnston-and only Robert Johnston-was in charge of the situation.

Johnston spoke in the softest of tones. “I just wanted to establish, right at the beginning of our relationship, that I could. I’m not one of your father’s lackeys, paid to be pushed around.”

The smile snapped back onto his face, and Herb felt a rush of relief.

“However, let me explain. I did not say that I used a stealth ship, I merely pointed that out as a possible solution to the problem: namely, how did I attach my ship to yours without you noticing?”

Johnston rose to his feet and walked across to the sofa facing the viewing field that Herb had opened earlier. Herb paused to run his finger along the rim of the hatch Johnston had opened in his ship. The parquetry was joined to the metal of the hatch like the crust on a loaf of bread: one material faded into another without any definable boundary. However the join was achieved, Herb had not seen the effect before. Reluctantly, because Johnston was waiting, he pulled the hatch shut and went to sit on the sofa opposite him.

When Herb had designed the lounge of his spaceship, he had intended it to be light and airy. White leather furniture and slabs of glass sat above the nonrepeating, tessellating pattern of the parquet floor. The walls were left quite plain, only the occasional tall ornament or sculpture set out around the perimeter of the room acted to relieve their blankess. The ceiling was hung with the fragile white balls of paper lanterns that gently illuminated the room. To Herb’s eyes, Robert Johnston, sitting on the white sofa, stood out like a turd in cotton wool. His dark suit may have been immaculately tailored, his sharp starched cuffs may have slid from the sleeves of his jacket as he smoothed a crease on his trousers, but as far as Herb was concerned, there was something jarringly wrong about the man sitting opposite. As he was thinking this, the answer to the problem occurred to him.

“You suppressed my ship’s AI, didn’t you?” Herb said. “My ship is completely under the control of your ship’s AI. Your ship has processed every command I’ve made and filtered out any information it didn’t want me to see.”

“Very good. You are intelligent, but I knew that. However…I want you to understand that everything you have done over the past six months has been catalogued by the EA. We have the proof you destroyed this planet.”

“It was an accident.” Herb narrowed his eyes. “If you’ve monitored everything that I’ve done, you will realize that.”

Johnston smiled sadly.

“Oh, I realize that. But Herb…it’s not an excuse. You’ve still destroyed a planet.”

“It was completely lifeless. I checked first.”

Herb knew that it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left his lips. Johnston’s eyes darkened and the smile snapped away again to be replaced by an expression of pure anger.

“You checked, did you? Ran a full spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere for airborne plankton? Performed a high-resolution deep scan in case microbes were clinging onto life beside hot vents deep at the heart of the planet?” He flicked his right hand in a dismissive fashion. “Or did you just run a five-minute local sweep for Earthlike life-forms?”

Herb opened his mouth to speak but Johnston interrupted.

“Don’t!” he shouted, holding up a hand. “We both know the answer to that, don’t we?”

Herb cringed. Johnston remained perfectly still, his arm raised as if to strike, the edge of one perfectly pressed and gleaming white cuff emerging from the sleeve of his jacket, the tide line between the pale and the midnight black skin that traveled around his hand, dead center in Herb’s vision.

Johnston held that position, held it and held it, then his eyes moved slowly to the left to gaze at his own hand. His mouth creased back into a wide smile and he relaxed. The upraised hand was dropped.

“…but that’s all in the past now. A crime has been committed, and now we must decide upon the punishment.”

Herb felt his stomach tighten again. Maybe the effect of the drugged whisky was wearing off, because he felt more panicky than before.

He began to babble. “We don’t have to do this, you know. My father is a very important man. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement. Besides, I’m sorry. I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t do anything like this again. Look, face it, I’ve got a lot to offer society. I put together those VNMs to my own design. My technical skills have got to be worth something; it would be a real waste to lock me away where I couldn’t achieve anything worthwhile…”

“Preemptive Multitasking?” said Johnston, innocently.

Herb paused in mid flow, his mouth moving soundlessly.

Johnston began to adjust the viewing field. The greyish square hanging in the air above the coffee table began to grow.

“I mean, I know that it reduces the overall intelligence slightly, but it does mean that a perfectly good brain can work on five or six different jobs at the same time.”

The viewing field had now expanded to a square about three meters across the diagonal. Johnston began to apply a slight curve across its surface, continuing to speak as he did so.

“So, we could have your body locked up in a nutrient vat in a station in the Oort cloud, while we apply your intelligence to controlling five or six different maintenance craft.”

The viewing field darkened and a few stars began to appear.

“We could leave you a time slice of consciousness for your own use: a time for you to think and dream, to be yourself. Depending on how you cooperate, we could locate that consciousness inside your body, in the vat…though that would be very boring-” Johnston turned from the viewing field to smile at Herb “-or maybe controlling a robot with the run of the station. That way you could get to mix with some members of the crew.”

Depth was added to the picture in the viewing field. A section of a black sphere grew in the lounge, diamond stars winking into existence inside it. Herb was looking at a star field. His mind, however, was far away across the galaxy, trapped in a tight-fitting metal coffin filled with lukewarm nutrient soup, while his eyes stared into infrared and the empty drones under his control crept and crawled beneath the cold remnants of starlight.

“I don’t want that,” Herb said softly. His eyes were filling with tears.

“What makes you think you have a choice?” Johnston asked. “You’re not a child anymore; your father isn’t going to come along and say, ‘Okay, maybe not this time if you really, really promise not to do it again.’ We’re dealing with cause and effect here. You do the crime, you do the time. That’s it; you can’t go back, any more than we can restore the life to this planet that your self-replicating machines have just spent the last few months destroying.”

“Oh.” Herb couldn’t think of anything else to say. He looked around the lounge of his spaceship and already it seemed to belong to someone else. He had passed from one world to another. He sat down heavily on one of the sofas and put his head into his hands.

“Will you tell my father?”

“You will have the opportunity to do that yourself. You will have access to a public comm channel. That’s a basic right of any intelligent being.”

Johnston continued to manipulate the viewing field. Stars began to move across it. He appeared to be searching for something. Herb said nothing. He began to run his fingers over the soft white leather of the sofa, enjoying the sensation of luxury while he still could.

Johnston paused in his search and glanced toward him. “Don’t you want to know how long your sentence is?”

The thought that a finite sentence made any difference to his current circumstances hadn’t occurred to Herb. The thought of going to the Oort cloud was too big. Coming back was too remote a possibility, be it in ten or a hundred years’ time. He just shrugged.

Johnston grinned as he brought the stars’ movement to a halt.

“That’s an unfair question, of course. We don’t know the answer. How long will it take for you to atone? Only the EA knows. We don’t get that many cases of planetcide-one a year, if that. I’d guess your sentence would probably be more than your natural lifespan. We’d probably have to take an e-print of your consciousness.”

“Are you deliberately tormenting me?” asked Herb, a feeble twist of anger gently uncurling in his stomach. Johnston turned toward him again with an approving smile.

“Good. You do have some spirit, don’t you? No, Herb, I’m not tormenting you. I’m just trying to impress upon you the seriousness of your predicament.”

There was a silence, and Herb had the first inkling that maybe his fate wasn’t yet decided. He paused, wondering if he dared hope otherwise.

Eventually he had to speak. “Why?” he asked.

Johnston grinned in response. If Herb hadn’t known better, he would have thought the other man was pleased with him.

Johnston had finally found what he was looking for. He set the viewing field to full locale. Herb was floating in interstellar space on a white leather sofa. A star rushed toward his face, growing in size. It veered to one side just before hitting him and a smaller, darker object swam into view. A planet with the size, and the apparent intent, of a fist now hung in front of Herb’s nose.

“Take a look at it,” said Johnston. ‘I’ve enabled the tactiles.’

Herb reached for the planet and turned it around in his hand, the rest of the universe spinning around the room in a dizzying pattern of lights as it maintained the correct orientation with Herb’s viewpoint. The planet was a grey featureless sphere, like an old ball bearing Herb had once seen in a museum.

“What is it?” he asked, fascinated. As he stared at the object in his hand, the surface of the planet seemed to ripple slightly.

Herb frowned. “Those ripples must be hundreds of kilometers high. What’s going on?” As he spoke, an answer occurred to him. For a moment he had thought he was looking at his own planet, the one that seethed just outside the door of his ship. Then he had noticed the patterns of the star field.

“It’s the remains of another planet, isn’t it? Someone else has done what I’ve done here.”

Johnston’s smile loomed in the blackness of space, his teeth glowing blue in the reflected starlight.

“A few people, actually. Oh, don’t look so disappointed, Herb. I thought you were sorry for what you’ve done. Look at that planet, though. Look at the way it’s writhing in your hands. Think about the sheer power behind those machines. Just compare them to yours.”

“Mine were designed to build a city. Raw power is all very well-”

“Oh, Herb. Don’t be so sensitive. I was only making a point.”

Herb bristled. “Not necessarily. As I was trying to say, power isn’t everything. It all comes down to the design of the original machine. If that hasn’t been thought through properly, all the power in the world won’t insure its integrity.”

Johnston was silent. Herb let go of the planet and tried to see the man through the darkness, without success. He started at a sudden movement beside him. It was Robert Johnston, sitting down beside him.

He leaned close to Herb’s ear and spoke softly. “So what you’re saying is that you’re not worried by what you can see before you? If I asked you to, you could neutralize those machines?”

Herb said nothing. He breathed in and out slowly, gazing at the planet. So that was the deal.

“Yes…” He hesitated. Johnston was staring at him intently. Herb took another breath, and his habitual confidence rekindled.

“Yes,” he said again. “Yes, I could do it. I’m sure I could. I know I could.”

“Excellent,” said Johnston, slouching back in the sofa. “I hoped you could. I knew you could. Set a thief to catch a thief, that’s what I said to them.” He crossed his legs, his left ankle resting on his right knee, and began to tap out a rhythm on his thigh.

Herb stared at him. “So?” he said.

“So what?”

“So we have a deal. I neutralize those VNMs that have converted the planet, and you let me off?”

“Oh, Herb.” Johnston shook his head sadly. “I can’t let you off. Your crime is much too great for that.”

Again, Herb felt a great weight descend upon him. He slumped forward, all energy draining from his body. Johnston leaned forward quickly and placed a hand on Herb’s knee.

“That doesn’t mean that we couldn’t cut a deal, though.” I could have you transferred to an Earth prison, instead. Get your sentence cut to about a year. Even arrange for some remedial training in the responsible applications of self-replicating machines.”

Herb sat up straighter, though without as much enthusiasm as he would have expected. His constantly changing fate was making him feel drained and passive.

As it was supposed to.

He gave a weak smile. “Would you?” he said.

“Oh, yes,” said Johnston. “If it was anyone else but you.”

He rolled out of the chair easily before Herb could seize him by the throat and then backed casually around the room, ducking and dodging as Herb tried to catch him. Herb was incoherent with rage: shouting and swearing as he tried to punch, kick, scratch and bite his tormentor. Eventually Johnston tripped him up with one elegantly shod foot. Herb curled up on the floor and began to cry.

“Why are you doing this to me? Why are you playing with my life?” he sobbed.

Johnston looked puzzled. “I’m not. I’m sorry. I’m not explaining myself very well. Come here.” He reached out and took hold of Herb by the hand. Gently, he led him back to the sofa and sat him down.

“I think you need some more vanilla whisky.” He filled a new glass and pressed it into Herb’s hand. Herb gulped it down, staring into the star field that filled the room.

Robert Johnston’s voice was low and comforting. “You see, Herb, I didn’t mean that I wouldn’t cut a deal with you. No. Any time you want me to cut a deal, just say so, and it’s cut. You can trust me. But Herb, I have your best interests at heart and I don’t think you could handle this. You have to believe me: there is more to that planet than you think; a lot more. If you agree to make a deal with me, there is no going back. You can’t change your mind. You have to see this through. Do you understand?”

Herb nodded.

“I don’t want to go to the Oort cloud,” he said.

“I know that,” said Johnston, patting his hand. “But there are even worse things than service in the Oort cloud. Are you sure you want me to go on?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.”

Johnston sat back in the other white sofa, facing Herb, the converted planet they had been looking at still hanging between them. He placed the tips of his fingers together, gazing at Herb over them. The universe wrapped itself around him in trails of brilliant stars and black depths. His voice was rich and low.

“Herb, listen to me. You, me, this planet we see before us, the planet below us, we are all linked together. The roots of the events that bring us together here today run deeper than you might guess. You are at the end of a process that started when an ape first picked up a bone to use as a weapon. When humans began to bury their dead and to raise ziggurats so that they could speak to their gods, they hastened this process. When the first electronic counting engine was built, humankind knew that someday they would end up in this situation, with people like you and me sitting together in a room looking at a planet like that one before us in the viewing field.”

Herb looked at Johnston suspiciously. The whisky was calming the dull edge of his fear, helping him to think clearly.

“Are you sure?” he said carefully, expecting Johnston to flare up in anger. To his surprise, Johnston remained calm.

“Trust me, Herb. If we get to the end of this you will see that I am right.”

“If?”

“Yes, if. Were you not listening? This goes deeper than first impressions would suggest. This planet we see before us is just the first pebble skittering over the scree at the foot of the cliff. Bouncing down behind, you may hear the clattering of other pebbles and rocks, and you may be fooled into thinking that this is just a minor slippage, and that soon everything will come to a halt and the balance will be restored. Don’t think that. That silence you can hear will just make the ensuing avalanche sound that much louder.”

Herb licked his lips, trying to understand what Johnston was saying.

“You mean there are other planets like that one?”

“Oh, yes. Something in that region of space has begun reproducing. We don’t know what it is, but it has taken root and is growing fast; faster than anything we have so far encountered, faster even than us. Just as your VNM destroyed this planet, whatever is at work in there is viciously converting whole systems. If we live in the Earth Domain, then that region of space is the Enemy Domain. In a very short time it has grown from nothing to something that threatens to totally engulf us and everything we know.”

Johnston leaned closer. “I’m putting together a team to do something about it and I want you to be part of that team. Do you think you will be useful? Could you help us fight it?”

“I can fight it,” said Herb. “Yes. No problem.” He paused, gazing contemplatively at the glass in his hand.

“Are you sure? Because I want you to understand, I cannot guarantee that you will return to Earth at the end of this.”

Herb sighed. Pushing through the smothering wall of the whisky that he had drunk, Johnston’s words had a sobering effect. Following them came the thought of the Oort cloud: years spent living as multiple copies of himself at the edge of nothingness, cold and forgotten. Better that he should take his chances out here.

“I understand,” he said.

“Again, I ask, are you sure? The EA picked you for this team because of certain qualities that you possess. Those qualities may enable you to complete your role as a team member, but nothing more. Are you willing to take that risk?”

“I am,” said Herb.

“Excellent.” Johnston proffered his hand. “We are about to shake on a contract. There will be no going back.”

“No going back,” echoed Herb. He placed his whisky glass on the floor and shook Johnston’s hand firmly.

Robert Johnston beamed widely. “We’ve got a deal.”

Herb felt himself relax a little. It was going to be all right, he thought. Anything was better than the Oort cloud. Anything.

The feeling of relief that welled up inside him was so intense that he went quite limp. Johnston switched off the viewing field and set some gentle music playing. Herb listened and drank more whisky. It helped to kill the growing feeling of unease.

For Herb was dimly aware of how expertly he had been distracted by Robert’s entrance; he had a vague appreciation of how he had been kept off balance by the rapid pace of events and the constant changes of direction in Robert’s approach.

He refilled his glass and gulped down some more of the sweet alcohol, wondering at how carefully Robert had worded the terms of his agreement.

Herb was beginning to suspect that he had been suckered.