“Let it all go,” Judy said. “Saskia, you can’t keep bottling it all up.”
“How did it come to this?” Saskia sobbed. “Twenty minutes ago we had a ship and a mission. Now we’re just slaves to this Kevin. What the hell has happened?”
“Shhh.”
“It’s okay for you, you’ll be going to Earth. We’ll be left here with that mad AI. What the fuck is going on anyway? Where is the Watcher? I thought he was supposed to look after us?”
“Shhh.”
But Saskia wouldn’t unbend: she continued to shake, barely holding back the tears.
“Saskia, what’s going on here?” Edward sounded confused. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“Follow my orders,” Kevin said. “You all work for me now.”
“No,” said Edward, “we work for ourselves. That’s the whole point of Fair Exchange. We’re going to Earth.”
“That’s to be decided,” Kevin said in a brisk voice. “I do have a Warp-equipped shuttle at my disposal. I might send it to Earth with you on board.”
“No,” said Edward, “we made a Fair Exchange. We cannot go back on it. You cannot go back on it. You’re our property now.”
Saskia spoke up, and Judy felt her body shaking as the other woman snapped at Edward. “Edward, you stupid gimp. Our ship has gone! Turned into thousands of little VNMs. There is no ship anymore, Edward, no more FE. All deals are off!” She sobbed. “You fucking dummy, what are you going to do here? You poor idiot! You don’t even know how bad things are!”
“Easy, Saskia,” Maurice called. “We’re all upset. Come on, Edward.” There was a moment’s pause, and Judy imagined Maurice touching Edward on the arm. She heard him clear his throat and picked up on the strain in his voice as he spoke: “Judy, we can see you properly now. We’ve been heading in the wrong direction, tricked by these stealth things. We’re coming back now. Be there in five or ten minutes.”
“Stay where you are, Maurice,” Kevin said. “I’m fetching the shuttle inside the hull. I’ll get it to pick you up first.”
“Okay, Kevin. Easy now, Edward.”
“I’m not worried,” Edward said. “I told you, we made a Fair Exchange. You can’t fool FE.”
A sad smile escaped onto Judy’s lips at Edward’s words. She looked at Miss Rose spinning slowly nearby. She was still alive, just. The meta-intelligence could see her essence, weak as a dying firefly, flickering inside Miss Rose’s skull. All around it, the lights of the VNMs could be seen burrowing closer.
Saskia was gazing upwards, her thoughts somewhere in the pale blue distance, lost amongst the Dark VNMs.
Something arrived around the curve of the wall, and a dark shape slid into view. The shuttle. It resembled a blunt arrowhead, a matte grey lifting body design from the last century.
“That looks like an Earth model,” said Judy.
“It is,” said Kevin. “Its crew used to work for me.”
“What happened to them?” asked Saskia.
“That’s between me and them,” replied Kevin.
The shuttle sailed across the pale blue interior of the ship as easily as a cast stone.
“Okay,” said Kevin, “I’ll pick up Maurice first. There is a hatch located to the rear of the ship.”
“Maurice?” said Saskia. “What about Edward?” Her voice was shaking. “Don’t you mean Maurice and Edward?”
“Didn’t you just say it yourself, Saskia?” asked Kevin. Her own words were played back in her ears: “
‘You fucking dummy, what are you going to do here? You poor idiot!’
That’s what you said, isn’t it? Well, be honest, what am I going to do with a fucking dummy?”
“Judy,” pleaded Saskia. “Judy?”
But Judy had slumped forwards, her hands clasped to her head.
“Judy? What’s the matter?”
Judy was looking through a mosaic of impressions that had suddenly engulfed her, pushed into her mind by the meta-intelligence. She was being swamped by half-understood images and impressions. Saskia was pushing at her, pummeling her shoulders, but that was just one window on reality lost among the many. There was also the smell of fire and the feel of fur between her fingers, the sound of whistling and an image of two tall buildings, their windows filled with people staring out at each other. She heard the voices of the others:
“No! I’m not leaving you, Edward.”
“It’s okay, Maurice, I’ll be all right. You can’t fool FE.”
“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.”