Even the material from which the ship was constructed flowed and changed from room to room. Wedges of grey concrete were driven into blond parquet that was in turn tiled with cream plastic shapes.
And as for the people, you couldn’t have picked a more disparate bunch if you tried.
Nobody seemed to want Michel to be the leader, least of all Michel himself. Maurice agreed with everything Armstrong said and did; he even dressed the same way. Donny hoarded his sour resentment, rationing his formerly sweet nature only for his children. Most people, but especially Saskia and Joanne, looked the other way when Edward entered the room. Only Craig seemed to take the trouble to speak to him, now that Donny had told Jack and Emily to keep away. Only Craig. Oh, and Miss Rose, but she hardly ever left her room, and when she did it was just to hurl, with a careful eye, more bad feeling into the bouillabaisse of hurt that was the
Eva Rye
.
And nobody would tell Edward what was going on. He wandered into rooms just as decisions had been made. He watched on viewing fields as deals were already done, and as other similarly eclectic spaceships slid away from theirs without Edward ever having seen those on board. All of this was something to do with the FE software that lurked unseen in the processing spaces of the
Eva Rye
. Edward was really beginning to resent it. All he wanted to do was to go home to Garvey’s World, to its monotonous greyness and to Caroline.
Now another stranger had contacted the ship. This time
everyone
had been summoned to speak to it. Nobody had been really happy with the trades that had been made so far. Everyone thought that Michel was making bad decisions, and people were beginning to say so out loud. Edward didn’t understand how that could be so, when surely it was the job of the FE software to make the trades, but even so, when the Stranger had hailed the ship, it had been agreed that this time
everyone
should be present for the negotiations. Even Edward. Craig had insisted on that point.
So now Edward sat on the hessian mat, his backside aching, his hands sore and itching, as the mysterious Stranger bargained for delta vee.
“Craig,” hissed Edward. “Craig! What is delta vee?”
“Acceleration,” whispered Craig. “The Stranger is floating in space. It wants us to take it somewhere else, and that requires fuel.”
“Why is it floating in space?” asked Edward.
Craig stared at him for a moment, and a lopsided smile slowly spread across his face.
“Do you know, Edward, I don’t think anyone has actually asked that.” He raised his voice. “Stranger! Why are you floating in space?”
“All communications through Michel,” said Saskia reprovingly.
“It’s okay,” said Michel. “It’s a good question. Go on, Stranger, why?”
The fuzzy x in the viewing field laughed.
“I told you, I work on systems repair. Where else would I be but floating in space, waiting for systems to repair?”
Craig looked down at Edward. “Does that answer your question?” he said.
Edward shook his head.
“No. No, it doesn’t. If it is where it is
supposed
to be, why does it want a lift from us?”
“A very good question!” called the Stranger. “I require delta vee because I’m floating towards a region of Dark Plants. I estimate I will be amongst them in around six hundred years if someone does not help me.”
Edward noted the hungry expression that had awoken in Joanne and Saskia’s faces. Joanne was mouthing, “Pick him up.” At the same time Saskia murmured, “I think you should consider this new information, Michel.”
“Why is the Stranger afraid of Dark Plants?” whispered Edward up to Craig.
“Every intelligent being is afraid of them,” Craig whispered back. “Even AIs stop thinking when near them.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but Dark Plants kill intelligent life. You must
know
that, Edward. You must have heard of Dark Plants before! Anyway, Joanne and Saskia now think that we are in a much better bargaining position.”
“Why?”
“Because…” began Craig. “Look, I’ll explain later. Shhh, listen!”
“I think Joanne is right,” called Armstrong, Maurice nodding in agreement. “We should pick him up. Find out what’s on offer.”
“Be quiet,” hissed Michel. “I haven’t engaged the buffer. It can hear everything we’re saying.”
“Yes, I can hear everything,” agreed the Stranger. It really did have a cheerful voice, thought Edward. Happy and positive: it made you feel good just to listen to it. “Listen, I will give you some advice. Free advice! Remember, as all negotiations pass through the FE software, there is no need to be secretive. All of our intrigues will be as naught once FE takes over.”
“You were already told that by the crew of the
Imagio,
” Saskia reminded a scowling Michel.
“I know! I know! So, Stranger, what do we get if we take you to safety?”
“System repair, of course. It’s what I do. Even from here, I can see many things that are wrong with the systems on the
Eva Rye
.”
“Could you fix the Self-Replicating Mechanisms?” asked Armstrong suddenly. “I’m fed up with rubbing up knives by hand.” By way of illustration, he picked up the template of a katana, a tiny carbon crystal the size of his finger, just ready to be grown.
“Could I fix the Self-Replicating Mechanisms?” repeated the Stranger. “You are very new to this, aren’t you? I wonder if you really understand the implications of what you have taken on?”
“Of course we do,” said Joanne smoothly, neat and efficient in her trim suit. Green eyes looked keenly down at the Stranger. “We heard what you said earlier about openness. Are you trying to bargain the price down now?”
“Not at all,” said the Stranger primly. “I will not offer anything more or less than that which is agreed by FE. It will decide what the appropriate fee will be for you to take me where I wish. Now, do we have a deal?”
Joanne nodded emphatically. Michel turned to Saskia, who was looking out under a fringe of aubergine hair at Joanne.
“It’s your decision,” said Saskia. “You’ve heard enough evidence to realize that we should pick it up.”
Michel nodded. “Okay then,” he said, “we’ll give you a lift. Would you like to interface with our processing space now?”
“Certainly,” said the Stranger. “May I suggest that you begin your intercept? It could take some time for the FE protocols to complete. The longer you wait, the more fuel you will expend in catching up with me.”
“I’m on it,” said Craig, unfolding his console. Edward got up to look over Craig’s shoulder as he touched the screen of his console, moving around the colored lines that told the ship where to go.
“Donny, could you open up the pipe to the Stranger?”
Donny tapped sourly at his console, and the FE software initialized in a bloom of peach and gold.
“Handshaking now,” he said without enthusiasm. “Okay, we’re uploading our circumstances. It will take about five minutes.”
Everyone relaxed a little. The decision had been made; now it was up to the FE software to sort out the details. A doll carrying a fairy cake walked towards Michel, stepping from the hessian carpet onto a plastic tarpaulin that for a few preposterous centimeters was part of the weave.
“Thank you, Emily,” he said, taking the cake.
“Do you think we’ll get a good deal?” asked Maurice.
“Bound to,” said Armstrong. “Its needs are greater than ours. After all, we don’t
have
to pick it up. We could just leave it floating towards its doom.”
“It will be nice to have the Von Neumann Machines working again,” said Maurice complacently. “I’m fed up with my tiny room. I can get myself a copy made of yours.”
“Hmm,” said Armstrong, rubbing carbon into the blade of his panga.
Now that everyone was a little calmer, Edward got up and walked across the living area to the kitchen space in the corner. He was thirsty, and he thought there might still be some apple juice in the fridge.
“Leave it,” snapped Saskia.
“What?” asked Edward, nervously dancing on felt tiles.
“The apple juice. You’ve already had more than your fair share this morning.”
“I wasn’t getting apple juice,” he lied. Edward frowned as he poured some milk into a glass. How come Saskia always seemed to know what he was thinking? Behind him, Jack’s doll turned the corner, paused as it saw Edward, and then went running back to its owner.
Edward took a big drink of milk and sat down on a glass chair that stood by the pine breakfast bar. He wiped the wetness from his upper lip and felt the roughness there. He hadn’t shaved in two days. Caroline used to remind him every morning. He looked down at his bracelet, a big balloon of misery swelling in his stomach.
Edward and the rest of the crew of the
Eva Rye
had grown up in the twenty-third century, where AIs worked at speeds far beyond those of human thought. The incredible slowness of FE software was frustrating to them all. Even now, after five weeks of use, it was trying their patience to wait for the twenty or thirty minutes it took the routine to complete. Add to that the sense of nervous expectation that awaited the results of the transaction, and tempers, already high on the ship, were pushed past breaking point.
It all started innocently enough.
“We’re approaching point oh five lights,” said Craig. “The resolution on the viewing field is improving already. We should be able to get a proper look at the Stranger soon enough.”
“How long until we get to it?” asked Joanne.
“About two hours.”
“Wouldn’t it be faster if we made a jump into Warp?”
“Yes, but it would take more fuel.”
“Ah, we never used to have to worry about that sort of thing,” said Joanne wistfully. “I’d never even heard of the concept of fuel until we began Fair Exchange.”
The image of the Stranger in the viewing field gradually resolved itself. It wasn’t a ship. It was a robot. But a robot like no one had ever seen before.
“Who built you?” asked Armstrong, rubbing at his panga.
“That information does not come for free,” said the Stranger. “Do you wish to trade?”
“No, thank you, I was just making conversation. I think I’ve seen something like you out in the Dawlish sector. That’s where the old Sho Heen company finished up, if I remember correctly. They used to build repair craft that look a bit like you.”
“They look nothing like me,” said the Stranger indignantly. “They are a completely different class of robot: no symmetry, no artistic line to their structure.”
The Stranger had reason to be proud, thought Edward. His body did look rather beautiful, in its odd way. It rather resembled one of Armstrong’s throwing stars. Edward had never seen a swastika, but if he had he would have said the Stranger looked a little like that. Four black and silver legs curved out from the center of the robot, their ends branching into an array of tentacles, some incredibly fine, some thick and powerful, no doubt for heavy-duty repairs. The Stranger was spinning slowly in space, allowing the crew of the
Eva Rye
to see all eight of its eyes: four on top of the central section to which the legs joined, four beneath. Yellow letters and numbers could just be made out, written across the whole of the black and silver body. Edward could just make out some of the larger letters, the rest were lost in the fuzzy uncertainty of the viewing field’s resolution.
“What’s that you have written on you?” asked Donny, squinting to make out the words
Jeu de Vagues.
“Oh, just verses, epigrams, things that I like the sound of.”
Donny glanced at his console.
“Circumstances uploaded for both us and the Stranger. Correlation is now running. It’ll take about ten minutes.”
“What’s going on?”
At the sound of Miss Rose’s voice, Edward put down his glass of milk and went to sit down again at Craig’s feet. The old woman stood in the carved wooden doorway leading to the living area, wearing a white shift over a dove-grey passive suit. Her white hair was brushed back to cover the balding patch at the back of her head.
“What’s he doing?” she said, pointing at Edward. “Drinking all the apple juice, I bet.”
“I had milk, Miss Rose,” said Edward defiantly, but Miss Rose ignored this and shuffled into the middle of the room, staring at the Stranger’s eerily beautiful body, still coming into focus in the viewing area.
“What’s that thing?” she asked.
“The Stranger,” said Michel. “We’re giving him a lift to safety. In return he’s going to repair some of the failing systems on this ship.”
“Good. He can fix the AI in my room. I haven’t been able to get a peep out of it since I boarded this ship.”
Michel raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I’ve told you this before, Miss Rose. There are no AIs on board this ship. You know that. We can’t have anything to do with them if we are to run the FE software.”
“So you said. But I can’t see one little AI in my room hurting anybody. It would give me someone to speak to. Are you going to give an old woman a seat?”
Despite the fact that there were plenty of empty seats around the room, she made Maurice move to another place.
“And who is this?” asked the Stranger. “Why hasn’t she spoken before?”
“This is Miss Rose,” replied Michel, “the last member of our crew. She’s…older than the rest of us.”
“He thinks I’m senile,” said Miss Rose. “Is one of you going to get me a drink of apple juice?” She looked accusingly at Armstrong and Maurice.
“I’ll get it,” said Armstrong easily.
“No, let me,” said Maurice, leaping to his feet and heading for the fridge. Edward watched sullenly. She was the one who drank all the juice, and when she blamed Edward, everyone believed her. It wasn’t fair. She said Edward could drink beer like the other adults, but Edward didn’t like beer. Everyone drank apple juice on Garvey’s World. They drank cider when they were hot, and they distilled it into apple brandy to keep out the winter chill. Edward wasn’t used to beer.
“Thank you,” said Miss Rose, accepting the cold glass that Maurice gave her. “So, are we going to get ripped off again?”
“We haven’t been ripped off,” said Michel. “The FE software stops that happening.”