“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?”