“Do you want to walk up to the ceiling with me?” Maurice asked. “Or maybe go alone? We can look up at each other while we wait for the FE to complete.”
“No, thank you,” Judy replied tiredly. “I’d like it better if you played your clarinet again.”
Maurice touched the black case and it snapped open. He was reaching into the green baize interior just as his console chimed.
“FE is done,” he said, closing the case again. He looked at the console and laughed coldly.
“
There’s
a surprise,” he said. “We get nothing from the deal again. We just pick up the cargo and take it to Earth. It seems that will be our reward.”
He tapped his teeth thoughtfully and muttered to himself.
“Saskia will be upset, I suppose. But I wonder…I’m beginning to suspect there might be a teleological element to FE. Are we being badly dealt with by FE, or are we just not seeing the benefits yet? Are they still to come?”
Judy wasn’t listening. She was hugging herself, her arms tight around her body. Maurice reached out to touch her, then paused.
“Should I hug you?” he asked.
“Why do you ask? We know that you are only doing it to comfort me.”
“You’re a virgin.”
Judy smiled tensely. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like people to touch me,” she said. She stood up straighter. “But I am in control of myself again. Thank you, anyway.”
They stood in silence in the hold.
“I’d still like you to play for me, though,” Judy insisted.
“What’s the matter? Every time you see the FE software you go all tense.”
“I dreamt…” she began. “I can feel…”
She reached out, opened the clarinet case, and ran her finger across the green baize lining the interior. Carefully she took out the clarinet and held it inexpertly in her hands.
“It’s very nice,” she said. “It feels like it’s been well made.”
“One of the best,” Maurice confirmed. “So you couldn’t sleep? You came looking for company.”
“I miss Jesse,” she said. “I miss him. And this thing on my neck”—she touched herself, gently—“the
Free Enterprise
called it a meta-intelligence. It took away Jesse, and it replaced him with this thing. I can now see life in places where it never existed before. Yet the life I can see is nothing more than a set of reactions.”
She blew on the clarinet: a note emerged, thin and reedy. “I wish you would play for me.” Her voice was so desolate that Maurice felt chilled to his stomach.
“What do you mean, nothing more than a set of reactions?”
Judy rolled the clarinet in her hands. “I see the way you all react to one another, you and Saskia, Edward and Miss Rose, and it’s nothing more than a set of rules. I can’t see any love or friendship or feeling anymore.”
“I think that pretty much sums up this ship.” Maurice laughed uncertainly.
“No, you don’t understand.” She held up the clarinet. “I hear you play and I see another aspect to your personality, one that you keep hidden. I listen through the meta-intelligence, and all I hear is a sequence of notes.”
She dropped her voice.
“And I then use the meta-intelligence to look at the FE software and I see something there. Something in the processing space on this ship.”
“Something alive?” asked Maurice.
“No, not alive. There is no movement. Whatever is in there is something still and deep. Maurice, I don’t think we have the first beginnings of an idea of what you have welcomed on board this ship when you signed up with FE.”
She shivered. “It doesn’t think, it’s not alive, and yet”—her eyes widened—“I tried to look at it, Maurice, and it pushed me away.”
He touched her gently on the shoulder.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Judy.”
She was hugging herself again. “Play for me?” she pleaded.
He raised the clarinet to his lips and moistened the reed.
Another voice spoke in the hold.
“Hello,
Eva Rye,
this is the
Petersburg.
Do you wish to engage in Fair Exchange?”
“Two in half an hour?” Maurice muttered, putting his clarinet back in its case. “What’s going on here?”
Saskia was tired and even more bad-tempered.
“Is there anybody in the galaxy who doesn’t know our business, Maurice?”
“Saskia, how should I know? The FE software is obviously capable of more than we were told about.”
“And you say they’re telling us to change course. Have you any idea why?”
“They say it’s dangerous. It makes sense, I suppose. We’re heading now to the location of the ship given to us by the
Free Enterprise
. That’s our payment, our reason for going to Earth. If the
Bailero
is located in a restricted area, it would explain why no one else has found it before.”
“Hmmm,” said Saskia, “will it be safe for us to go there?”
“Saskia, how the fuck should I know?”
Maurice looked across at Judy. She was on the other side of the hold, picking green apples one by one out of their paper nests, feeling them for bruises. In the viewing field, Saskia was squirming angrily on the bed, bedclothes rucked up around her feet.
“
Petersburg,
who are you to tell us where we should go?”
“Nobody,” said Fyodor, the
Petersburg
’s captain. “But you are heading towards a dangerous region. You would do better to fly around it.”
Fyodor was a relaxed-looking man. He reminded Maurice a little of Claude.
“We thank you for your advice,” snapped Saskia. “Now what do you want?”
“Just a shot in the dark,” interrupted Maurice, “but you wouldn’t want us to take something to Earth, would you?”
Fyodor gave a big white beaming smile. “Just a processing space.”
Saskia was past caring. “Listen, all I want is some decent coffee,” she said. “Or preferably some brandy. You haven’t got any of that on board, have you? I will gladly take your processing space, along with any other shit you want to off-load on us, if you can promise me just one decent cup of coffee. At least that way we will have got something out of a deal for once. Failing that, I just want to go back to sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” said Fyodor, “I did not mean to wake you. We drink tea on board this ship, for preference, and I’m not sure how much coffee we have. We do have some vanilla whiskey on board, if you are interested in that?”
“Ignore her,” said Maurice, from the hold. “She’s just in a bad mood.” Something caught his attention. A visual representation was pulsing in a soft spiral at the edge of his vision. He slid his fingers over his console, adjusting his view.
“Is that a systems repair robot I can see on your hull?” he asked. The console was zooming in on the pencil-shaped hull of the
Petersburg
to focus in on a curved swastika. Four glassy eyes stared back at him.
“It is,” said Fyodor. “The processing space I want you to take is located in that robot. His name is Aleph.”
“You want me to take the processing space inside that robot to Earth?”
Fyodor looked amused. “No, it is the robot itself that wants to travel to Earth, but it is afraid to ask you directly.”
“Not afraid,” said Aleph. “I just thought you might be a little suspicious if I approached you myself. My brother tells me that you did not appreciate the Fair Exchange you made with him.”
“Oh, whatever you think is best, Maurice,” snorted Saskia. “I’m putting you in charge for the next eight hours. I’m going to back to sleep. Don’t wake me.”
Again the viewing field faded to nothing.
Maurice shrugged. “We’ll take the deal.”
“Good,” said the robot. “I’m detaching myself now. I will meet you at the rendezvous point, with the crates from the
A Capella
.”
For the second time in half an hour, Maurice began the process of Fair Exchange. From behind him, he heard a crunching sound as Judy ate her apple.
Time passed in the little hold.
Judy ate three apples, one after the other, and showed no sign of wanting to return to her room.
The FE software chimed to announce another contract. The
Eva Rye
would carry the robot and receive nothing in return.
Maurice gave a grunt at the arrangement. Judy shivered again and hugged herself.
And eventually, lulled by the silence and the unspoken companionship, Maurice lowered his guard. He picked up the clarinet and began to play. Eyes closed at first, he lost himself in the melody. Then, when he felt confident enough, he looked around to see Judy watching him, staring at his fingers as they flickered up and down. She smiled at him, and he inclined his head a little and listened to the music inside his head. He closed his eyes again and reached inside himself and tried to think what music to play for virgins and nonbelievers, and a melody that seemed to be written in nothing more than the bloom of fresh apples and the reflection of light from pebbles awoke inside him. And then he lost himself, and he was no longer thinking of Judy.
Eventually he finished playing. He opened his eyes.
Judy was staring at him. “That was very good,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“What do you mean?” Maurice said defensively.
“You had your eyes closed as you were playing. Maybe you were lost in a dream, I don’t know.” She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t read your mind, Maurice, but I can see the beauty: an empty space, filled with the music of your clarinet.”
Maurice looked down, almost embarrassed. Judy pressed on.
“The air in this hangar resonates with the sound of music—it dances. It’s almost like a mind and then, beyond it, emptiness. Outside the metal walls of the
Eva Rye,
hard vacuum. Oh…”
A scale of tiny popping sounds came to life as Maurice’s hand clenched itself around the silver plastic of the clarinet, opening the keys.
“That’s private!” he said. Judy had her eyes closed now. She didn’t seem to have heard him.
“Oh! Yes! A little bubble of life, enclosed by the hard metal walls of the ship.”
“Stop it!” said Maurice. “Fucking Social Care! Always telling us how to live our lives! What good have you ever done anyone?” He gripped her arms tightly, though still holding the clarinet in one hand. It dug into Judy’s flesh and she gave a little whimper. “Sorry,” he said, releasing her.
She held his gaze.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “Maurice, you have a little devil in your head that is whispering to you all the time. It turns you away from everything that gives you pleasure and persuades you that there are better things to do. It tells you that others have far more value as people, and that you must emulate them if you are to be accepted. That’s why you sneak off here to play by yourself.”
She turned and walked out of the little hold.
Maurice watched her go. “Judy!” he called. “I’m sorry.”
She reappeared at the door, face calm. “I know,” she said.
The
Eva Rye
dropped out of Warp.
Maurice, Saskia, and Judy sat in the white leather chairs of the conference room, looking at the viewing field that floated over the table. Edward brought them coffee, thin and watery. Maurice watched him, saw the look of concentration as the tall man placed the thin white cups and saucers before them.
“I can’t see anything,” complained Saskia irritably. She needed more sleep.
“They’re out there somewhere,” said Maurice, sliding his fingers over his console. “Ah, got them.”
He zoomed in on the crates, floating through space in neat lines, two by two.
Ben, the eleven-year-old captain of the
A Capella,
hailed them. “Hello there, Maurice.”
“I’ll deal with this,” said Saskia. “Hello, Ben. Is your dad there?”
“I’m captain of the
A Capella,
Saskia,” Ben said disapprovingly. “Anyway, my dad’s gone to bed with Mum.”
“Should you be saying things like that about your parents?” asked Maurice.
Ben waved his hand in an airy gesture. “Dad says he’s never felt so relaxed since I became captain. I don’t think he’ll want you disturbing him.”
“How do you suggest we pick up these crates then, Ben?” asked Saskia.
“Open the doors to your large hold, slide yourself around them, and then gradually dial up the gravity,” said Ben. “That’s what we usually do.”
“I can do that,” said Maurice, “no problem,” and he noticed the way that Saskia looked at him. Not exactly approvingly, but at least she had lost her earlier hostility. He wondered at what Judy had said to him earlier in the hold about the pair of them.
“Why don’t you get down there now?” suggested Saskia. “Check that they arrive okay.”
“I will,” said Maurice.
He picked up his console and walked from the room. He still felt slightly ashamed of his behavior earlier.
Then he heard Judy’s words from the corridor. Later on, he wondered if he was supposed to.
“He’s very competent,” said Judy. “Maurice, I mean.”
“Yes,” said Saskia.
“A word of advice, though. Don’t do something stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t, whatever you do, end up doing something stupid like sleeping with him.”
Maurice stopped, fists clenched. And then the door to the conference room slid shut on their conversation.
Seething, he walked on down the corridor.
interlude: 2245
—Judy has gone, said the Watcher. He and Chris communicated oh, so carefully. Any message, any scrap of information that passed between them had the potential to be a weapon. A Trojan, a virus, a recursive meme. A message could also be an arrow, a pointer to the other’s location. Chris’ reply was days in coming, written in the arrangement of a pattern of asteroids. Their subsequent conversation danced in dust motes; it was written in the stars.
—So? Chris said. —She will come back.
—You really think that she will help you defeat me? the Watcher replied. —She hates you. You killed her sisters.
—That was Kevin, not me.
—Kevin works for you. You gave him control of the processing spaces. Judy had twelve digital copies of herself living in cyberspace and you allowed him to kill them all.
—Where has she gone? Chris asked, changing the subject.