The yellow carbon discs woven into the n-string bracelet on Miss Rose’s wrist jangled as she took a sip of apple juice.
“We always get ripped off,” she said with finality. “That last ship we met was barely functioning. With half of its life system down, we should have cleaned up on that deal. So what happened? We gave it Douglas and a spare set of nanotechs to fix their life support, and got what back in return? A warning about Earth and two useless wooden dinosaurs that are currently taking up all the space in the large hold.”
“They’re not dinosaurs,” said Michel weakly. “They’re venumbs. Half plant and half Von Neumann Machine…”
“Hah. And what are we going to do with them? Like I said: we gave them Douglas and we got two venumbs and a warning.” She spoke in an affected, screechy voice. “Don’t eat the food on Earth! Don’t drink anything! The Watcher has drugged everything to keep the people there compliant!” She shook her head. “Like we were planning to go to Earth anyway. I don’t call that a good deal.”
Michel looked at the floor. He didn’t really have an answer to that. Saskia leaned in closer.
“You really need to think about our track record,” she said. “People are beginning to talk.”
“And then look what happened on Garvey’s World,” continued Miss Rose.
Edward knew what was coming next.
“Leave him alone,” said Craig warningly.
Miss Rose took a sip of apple juice. “I wasn’t going to mention the dummy,” she replied. “I just wanted to point out that we gave a lot of n-strings away there, and what did we get in return? Some apple juice and an apple juice disposal unit.”
“I said, leave him alone,” repeated Craig in an icy tone.
“At least
you
got something out of the deal,” observed Miss Rose sagely.
Craig leapt to his feet. “I’ve told you before, you vicious old hag…”
“Leave it, Craig,” said Armstrong easily, slowly rubbing carbon along the blade of his knife.
“Come on, let’s just calm down,” agreed Maurice.
“You need to do something here,” Saskia whispered loudly to Michel. “Stop them arguing amongst themselves.”
“What would you suggest he do, Saskia?” asked Joanne sweetly, as Michel’s eyes darted this way and that.
“People, people, let’s all calm down a little,” said the Stranger, spinning easily in space. “Not in front of the children.”
At that all eyes turned towards Jack and Emily, who were huddled by Donny’s legs, looking around the room with big eyes.
“Okay,” said Michel, and a gentle calm descended. “The Stranger is right. Donny, how much longer with the correlation?”
“Almost done,” he said, rubbing at his unshaven chin.
“Maurice,” said Miss Rose, “I’ve finished with my juice. Be a darling and take it for me, will you?”
“Of course, Miss Rose,” said Maurice, and Edward watched despondently as Maurice took the half-full glass to the little kitchen and poured it down the sink. He was sure that Miss Rose was laughing at him.
The
Eva Rye
turned off its motors. It would coast for the next hour or so, before turning and beginning the process of deceleration that would end in them matching courses with the Stranger.
In the living area, the process of Fair Exchange was approaching completion. The crew watched the shrinking blue status bar at the base of the viewing field. Above it, the Stranger gradually gained resolution. More and more yellow letters came into view. Edward could read the sentence
I never saw a purple cow.
“Twenty seconds,” announced Donny.
“Fingers crossed, Eddie,” said Craig.
“Fifteen seconds—”
“Waste of time if you ask me,” said Miss Rose.
“Ten seconds—”
“Now, are you sure you’ve done the right thing, Michel?” asked Saskia
“Five, four, three, two, one. Transaction complete.”
Donny looked around the waiting faces on board the
Eva Rye,
a sour humor awakening in him at the thought of the likely disappointment that awaited them.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” he said, and the room held its breath.
There was a lengthening pause as he tried to make sense of the verdict. The Stranger spoke up first.
“Well, this seems all in order. Pickup will be in just over ninety minutes, but I don’t see why I can’t start work right away. System repair will now commence.”
There was an air of hushed expectation. Edward hoped that the food generators would get fixed.
The Stranger spoke: “Michel, you are not the right person to be the commander of the
Eva Rye.
That position should go to Joanne.”
With an air of utter professionalism, Joanne stood up, fastened the button of her jacket, and glided across the room towards Michel. Saskia glared at Armstrong, Craig, and Maurice. They were watching Joanne’s elegant stride, the swaying of her hips in her fitted jacket and skirt, the way her pretty little face betrayed no sign of triumph.
“I’m sorry,” said Joanne, shaking Michel’s hand.
“That’s okay,” said Michel, a look of resignation and relief spreading across his face. One could almost hear birdsong.
“Saskia,” said the Stranger. Saskia was staring at Joanne with loathing.
“What you do is dishonest. If you truly believe in what needs to be done, come out and say it for yourself.”
“What?” said Saskia. “I beg your pardon…”
“And lastly,” continued the Stranger, ignoring the interruption, “Miss Rose. You are now, and will always be, exactly right. The rest of you would do well to listen to her. And that’s the main work done.”
The crew of the
Eva Rye
gazed at one another, blank incomprehension fading into annoyance and then anger. Joanne spoke first, glowing with her new sense of command.
“I’m terribly sorry, Stranger, I believe there must be some mistake. What do you mean
that’s it
? What about our Self-Replicating Mechanisms? What about the recycling units and the long-range senses? I thought you were offering system repair?”
“I was, I am, and so I have done,” said the Stranger. “The systems that were most obviously failing on your ship were the command structure and the group dynamic. That has now been rectified. Or it will be if you follow my advice.”
“What?” called Armstrong. “No! No way!”
Donny wore an air of acerbic satisfaction.
“So we’ve been tricked again. Nice one, Michel.”
“You have not been tricked,” said the Stranger indignantly. “Besides, I still have one last service to perform. When you pick me up, I will…”
“What if we don’t pick you up?” said Armstrong coolly.
“All comments through me, please, Armstrong,” murmured Joanne. “Still, it’s a good point, Stranger. I don’t think this is a Fair Exchange.”
The Stranger contracted its legs, irised them closed so that for a moment it was simply a black-and-silver disc, then straightened them out to form an elongated cross. It appeared agitated.
“Not a Fair Exchange?” it said. “But it is, by definition. We ran the software routine. You agreed to the trade.”
“That’s because we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into.”
She gazed at the Stranger, stillness crystallizing around her body.
“Yes,” said Maurice. “We…” He stopped as Joanne raised a finger, indicating that he should shut up. She was creating a silence for the Stranger to fill. It did so.
“Well, the deal has been done. I am sorry it is not to your satisfaction.” It sounded hurt. “Perhaps as you gain more experience in the use of FE, you will understand just how rude you are being.”
“Perhaps,” said Joanne. “For the moment, though, I am canceling the deal.”
“Just a moment, Joanne,” said Michel, “I don’t think that we can…”
“And who’s in charge here?” asked Joanne, 1.4 meters of icy calm, turning to face her former boss.
“Well,” interrupted Saskia mildly, “if the deal has been broken, I rather think Michel is in charge again. We can hardly be seen to act on the Stranger’s advice if we are breaking the deal.”
Donny was looking down at his console. He gave a sudden mirthless laugh. “When you’ve finished,
ladies,
I think you should see this. I’ll put it on the main viewing field.”
Pale gold letters sprang to life in the middle of the living area, flowing across the floating shape of the Stranger.
Violation of Contract?
Are you sure you wish to disengage from a Fair
Exchange?
Yes/No ?
“That looks ominous, Joanne,” said Saskia softly. “What are you going to do?”
Joanne bit her lip.
“If I could just give you some advice, Joanne,” said Michel softly, “we were warned at the start. Once you break a deal, that’s it. You are off the Fair Exchange network for good. My advice is that we just grit our teeth and learn from this one.”
Yet again.
The unspoken words were picked up by everyone present.
Joanne’s face remained calm; even so, the rest of the crew could feel the fury boiling within her. Edward moved around Craig’s chair, trying to get farther away from her. Jack picked up his doll and held it tightly in his hand, its little legs kicking pitifully as it tried to get free.
Finally, Joanne spoke. “All right. We accept the deal.” She glanced at her console. “Of course we do. Stranger, we will be with you in eighty-five minutes.”
The
Eva Rye
was decelerating, matching velocities with the black-and-silver swastika of the Stranger. Four glassy lenses gazed through emptiness at the rainbow colors of the ship that would save it from the region of Dark Plants. It was silly, the Stranger knew, but it imagined it could already feel the aching of oblivion to be found in the region ahead. The Stranger had once plunged into a gravity well, fallen headfirst onto a planet. Its body had burned brightly, the plasma formed by the speed of its entry into the planet’s atmosphere whipping out from its limbs in long swirling strands. It had felt the rising pull of the mass below, drawing it down and down.
That’s what the region ahead felt like: six hundred years away, the region of Dark Plants was an inescapable emptiness, working on the bright star of the Stranger’s intelligence, pulling it inwards. The Stranger had written words on its own body, a quotation from a classic text.
“Do you know how I see the Milky Way? As a glow of intelligence. AIs such as myself have spread throughout the galaxy. Humans have piggybacked their way along, parasites, living off our greater intelligence…”
Maybe someday the Dark regions would swallow up the entire universe.
When the Stranger had first seen the
Eva Rye,
it had felt a huge wave of relief. Now the ship was coming closer, invisible black lightning arcing about its gaudy teardrop shape as it displaced its momentum to the free hydrogen around it. The Stranger reached out with its senses and stroked the mismatched patterns on the ship’s surface, followed the seams between the materials, teased them apart and reached into them to touch the ship deep inside, interfacing with the dormant mechanisms it knew to be there. Sensually, it set about waking them up.
“Donny, what’s that?”
Joanne pointed to the red band that had begun to loop around itself, in a figure eight, inside the viewing field.
“I know what that is,” muttered Michel.
“It’s the Stranger,” said Donny hoarsely. “He’s activated the Self-Replicating Mechanisms. The ship is copying itself.”
Suddenly all were on their feet.
“What’s going on?” said Edward.
“Not now,” shushed Craig, and Edward watched in confusion as his only friend on board ship stood up and stared intently at the walls.
“Stranger, what are you doing?” called Joanne.
“The last part of our bargain. I’ve activated the Self-Replicating Mechanisms of your ship.”
“But we’re still on it! We could be killed.”
“You’ll be perfectly safe. I suggest you go to your rooms. I will move you through the ship as fission proceeds.”
“Craig…” said Edward.
“Go to your room, Edward,” ordered Craig. “Go to your room.”
“But…”
But Craig wasn’t listening. He was shouting at Donny, who wasn’t listening either; he was too busy bundling up his children and pushing them towards the door. The floor shuddered and Edward looked down. Miss Rose hurried past, something half hidden in her hand.
“She’s got my knife!” yelled Armstrong. “She’s taken my bloody knife.”
“Get out of my way,” muttered Donny, hurrying past with his children.
“Joanne, don’t you think we should go to our rooms now?” Saskia stood up and took the arm of the person nearest to her.
“Come on, Edward,” Saskia said sweetly, and she guided him out into the corridor that led to the bedrooms. The garish walls there were already peeling apart like a snake shedding its skin. There was a cracking noise that seemed to travel the length of the ship, as indigo glass shook itself free of iron sheets.
“What’s happening?” asked Edward again, in a tinkling cloud of sparkling violet shards. Michel came hurrying up behind them.
“I think you should take Edward to his room,” said Saskia, passing him over.
Edward watched as she hurried away. Beneath their feet, the wooden tiles of the parquet floor had risen up and were walking away all in one direction, like leaves being carried by ants. A tumbling river of glass blocks started to flow in the other direction.
Dancing over the shifting floor, Michel pushed Edward into his bedroom. The door slammed shut and Edward looked around to see that his collection of holopictures above the bed was migrating to one corner as the wooden frames of the doors and windows peeled themselves away from the walls and began to descend into the floor.
“What’s happening?” asked Edward again, but there was no reply. He was all alone.
edward 2: 2252
Just like the
Eva Rye,
the Stranger was itself a Von Neumann Machine—a self-replicating machine. It was aware of the mechanism within its body which, when triggered, would begin the reproductive process. The Stranger lived with the constant possibility of triggering that mechanism: the reasons why it did not do so at any given time were as fascinating as the reasons that would cause it to do so. In activating the
Eva Rye’s
Self-Replicating Mechanisms, the Stranger had imposed itself upon that object in a most fundamental way.