“Is that it?” Saskia asked incredulously.
“Why don’t you ask that young man?” Judy said quietly.
“She’s not dead yet,” Saskia sobbed.
They walked on, following the eerily silent crowd, walked away from the dark region that had opened up behind them. The first of a series of brilliant flashes came from behind, lighting up the surrounding buildings, sending their shadows briefly flickering into the distance before them. The flash was followed by an electric sizzle. Sterilization had obviously begun.
The streets were widening. A cold breeze picked up the snow and sent it blowing across their suits.
“I think we’re out of danger now,” said Maurice. “The flux is almost gone.”
Anna muttered something under her breath.
“Gott sei dank…”
“What was that?” asked Saskia.
“Nothing,” Anna said. “I can see the fliers up ahead. The evacuation point! They will whisk us to safety. Then we can…Ow!”
Anna stopped and began rubbing her right arm. Awkwardly, she bent it back and forth at the elbow.
“BVB,” she explained, “on my arm.”
“Aggh!” That was Edward. Saskia looked up to see the big man rubbing at his wrist. There was a black band wrapped around it.
“Run,” shouted Maurice and Judy at the same time.
“Come on,” Saskia called, pulling at Anna and turning to see why she hesitated so. She screamed at the sight of her. Three BVBs had formed around the young woman’s face, one forcing her mouth open. She was scrabbling at it ineffectually with her black velvet gloves.
Maurice grabbed at Saskia and pulled her away.
“We’ve got to run now. Get to those fliers! The BVBs are forming fast!”
“No, we must help her!” She turned back to Anna and grabbed at the young woman’s arm and pulled. The young woman toppled over, her legs bound together by more BVBs.
Saskia screamed.
“Come on, Saskia,” Edward called.
Saskia couldn’t stop screaming. Something smarted on her ankle. She felt her arms being taken, felt herself being pulled away down the street, saw the patiently shuffling crowd of Earthlings, saw individuals now gripping at their own arms, toppling over themselves. The sight was enough to make Maurice and Edward loosen their grip. Saskia pulled herself free and set off back towards the black-bonded shape of Anna struggling in the road, the crowd stepping patiently over her. Hands grabbed Saskia again and dragged her away, dragged her kicking and screaming up to the evacuation point. A flier sat waiting on the grass there. They pushed their way past the uncomplaining queue of people to a place on the ship, and safety.
everybody: divergence
A long silver wire
cut across the blue sky. It stretched through the cold air in a kilometers-long arc that threaded its way in between the silver needles of Freiburg.
The flier was attached to one end, sliding silently through the sky, away from the sterilization zone. Somewhere in the belly of the ship, clockwork mechanisms, cut and bent into fractal shapes, ticked over one another in exotic dances, guiding the ship to safety. Save Constantine and the human passengers, there was no intelligence on board: nothing to look out at the skittering explosion of Dark Seeds and fix them in place as the flier was reeled into safety.
The ship was filled with sleeping gas, fine enough to even penetrate the filters of the active suits. The crew of the
Eva Rye
slumbered in a deep sleep, their intelligence beyond the reach of the Dark Plants all around.
But only just. Dark shapes bloomed just beyond their dreams. In his head, Maurice wandered through the rooms of the
Eva Rye,
clarinet gripped tightly in hand, searching for the listener that always lurked just beyond the next door. Saskia stood behind a lectern, images of grand designs projected behind her in graphs and charts, and looked out over a dark hall at an unseen audience who were listening for her first slip, ready to pounce on her tiniest mistake. Edward, as usual, sat at the edge of a conversation, folding his hands together and biting his lip as he tried to understand what everyone was talking about.
And Judy stood in a brightly lit room, wrapped in a vibrant orange silk kimono, and peered through the window at the darkness outside, trying to get a better look at the twelve figures that flitted amongst the lime trees out there. A white hand would catch a branch in passing, a white foot would press brown leaves into the ground, the curve of a white neck could be seen passing into the distance, but try as she might, she could never see enough parts to fit together to make up a full body.
And somewhere in Judy’s body the meta-intelligence went on turning, stripping apart whatever it could observe into its constituent parts.
It, at least, could safely observe the Schrödinger boxes; it possessed no intelligence to which they could react. It could observe them, and yet it did not pay them any attention. The Dark Seeds held no interest to the meta-intelligence, devoid as they were of any sign of artificial design themselves. They were natural artifacts, something that had evolved over time without external artifice.
The meta-intelligence turned its attention to Constantine. The robot had separated its thought processes into strands that ran independently. At the moment, it would not be true to say that the robot was thinking, but the potential of thought was there amongst the processes that were undoubtedly taking place. Situations were being observed, events were being recorded, simple relationships were being established. Nothing more. Constantine was thinking without thought.
What a fascinating thing for a meta-intelligence to observe.
Judy sat up, her hand to her face.
“What’s the matter?” asked Maurice.
Judy was gasping. “I had a dream,” she said.
Maurice was dismissive. “We all had dreams.” Judy was getting on his nerves, the way she bottled up her emotions so that no one knew what she was thinking and then got upset when others didn’t show her any sympathy.
Judy’s reply was predictably cool. “This came after, Maurice. A hand pressing down over my face.” She brushed her hands through her hair and gazed back into his blue eyes.
We accuse others of what we don’t like in ourselves,
she thought.
Why are you looking at me like that, Maurice? Why are you copying me and running your fingers through that crew cut of yours? You are clever and strong minded. So why don’t you adopt a personality of your own?
“Hey,” said Judy, “you’ve taken your hood off?”
“No point keeping them on,” Maurice said. “The Watcher showed it could bypass our suits when it put us all to sleep.”
Your voice always sounds so sulky, Maurice,
thought Judy.
You don’t like being caught out
.
“The flier is landing,” announced Constantine.
“We need to get off straightaway,” one of the other passengers said urgently. “The flier needs to return to the evacuation area as quickly as possible. There will be others there waiting to escape.”
“How often do these attacks happen?” Saskia asked, neatly tucking her hood away into the collar of her active suit. It was clearly displacement activity: she didn’t want to think of Miss Rose and the other seed carriers silently walking to their death in those eerie, snow-filled streets.
“These attacks? Once every few days. But we fight on.”
The flier landed with a bump and the rear exit ramp dropped down.
There were people waiting outside dressed in wasp-striped tabards.
“Out out out!” they called, even before the ramp had touched the ground. Maurice and the rest charged out into the light, their feet bouncing and clapping down the flimsy plastic of the ramp, before slipping and skidding onto the cold mud outside.
There were more fliers sitting in a rough semicircle around them and yet more personnel in wasp-striped tabards hurrying the evacuees along.
“This way, this way…come on, come on, come on.”
The crew of the
Eva Rye
pressed close together, anxious not to lose one another in the crush as they were herded across the torn and rutted surface of a once smooth lawn. The horde of shocked evacuees was growing by the minute, but someone was obviously well practiced in dealing with these situations. Maurice and the rest were quickly and efficiently processed: they were funneled between hastily erected plastic strip-fencing and sent over to a trestle table where they were met by the delicious smell of chocolate. Big mugs were set ready on the table, steam rising from them into the cold January air. Mugs were pressed into their hands and thin foil coats draped over their shoulders by willing helpers.
“Thank you,” Edward said happily. “Thank you, thank you!”
“I don’t need that,” Maurice complained, shrugging off his foil coat, which went fluttering to the ground. “I’m wearing an active suit!”
A flier rose into the air behind them, the rear exit ramp closing as it went. It turned, seeking the source of the infection, then flew off trailing its long silver tether behind it. Another flier was returning from the same direction, coming in low over the black-and-white watchtower that stood at the edge of the field.
“Come on,” Judy said. “Let’s get out of here before Social Care really get their hooks into us.”
“I think we should head in that direction,” Constantine said, pointing at a stream of people walking from the field. “The fliers haven’t brought us that far. We’re close to DIANA now.”
“Good,” Judy said unemotionally.
Saskia was gazing sadly back towards the descending fliers. Maurice made no move to comfort her. Neither, he noticed, did Judy.
The DIANA complex wasn’t there. Where it should have been was a wide empty square paved in round cobbles, the sinister shape of a watchtower rising from the center.
“I don’t understand,” Judy said. She was close to tears. She had wound herself up for this confrontation, only to be cheated now at the end. “Where is it?” A thought struck her. “Is it disguised?”
“No,” said Constantine, “there is nothing there but the watchtower.”
Without even thinking, they crossed the wide square to stand at the foot of the tower. Judy looked up to the honey band circling the top. She had to tilt her head and body right back to see it.
“We should have checked,” Maurice said, gazing at his console. “All that time spent on the ship and we never thought to check. It’s been like this for years.”
He was the only one not captivated by the faint horror of the tower. This close the watchtower loomed over them like an adult towering over tiny children. Perpendicular to the wall, millions of needles emerged bristling from the tower’s interior, fine hairs sensing the cold air that filled the empty square. Saskia reached out and brushed her hands across some of them.
“Uggh! They’re horrible!” she yelped, recoiling. “They suck at you!”
“Keep away, Saskia,” Edward said, close to panic. “Judy, I don’t like it here. It’s
listening
to us.”
The cold wind blew harder. It brought the smell of winter ice and the faintest hint of spices. The city resumed at the distant edge of the vast square, and over there human beings could be seen walking about, drinking spiced wine or eating chocolate-dipped fruit. All those human activities: laughing and arguing, smiling and frowning, shaking hands and flirting.
And every one of those activities was being tasted and smelled and felt and heard and observed by towers just like this one.
Maurice felt someone at his side. Saskia was huddling close to him for comfort.
“What’s the matter with you?” she hissed at him. “Why do you keep pulling away from me?” She blushed deep crimson. “I’m frightened,” she whispered.
Her words cut through Maurice. It was such a huge admission from Saskia that he felt dizzy and ashamed. Holding his console in one hand, he placed an arm around her shoulders. They adjusted their active suits so they could feel the warmth and comfort of each other’s bodies.
He doesn’t know what to do any more than I do
, Saskia realized.
We have so little in common
. She thought back to the night they had spent together. It seemed like months ago now.
The only thing we really share,
she thought,
is that we’re so emotionally fucked up that we can’t even take a moment’s comfort from each other without putting a price on it.
Sadly, she let go of Maurice.
“Sorry,” she said. “But thank you.”
Maurice was blushing, too. To cover it up, he turned back to his console. He began to speak in an overly loud voice.
“This tower was built six years ago, at the same time as all the other ones. Before that it was residential flats. They were constructed from VNMs out of the ruins of the DIANA complex.”
Edward was tugging at Judy’s arm now. “Judy, I really don’t like it here. Please, let’s go somewhere else.”
Judy didn’t appear to hear Edward, she just continued gazing up the tower’s side.
Maurice cleared his throat. “Edward just made a suggestion, Judy. I shouldn’t have to remind you, but he is leader, after all.”
Judy’s eyes kept darting back and forth. “What do you suppose those black bands do?” Her voice sounded wobbly. She was still ignoring Edward, tugging frantically at her arm.
“What’s the matter, Judy?” Saskia asked.
Judy felt sick. She could see Edward beside her, but she could also see Eva. She was back in the concert hall in the Russian Free States, all those years ago, realizing suddenly what Eva had understood.
That there was a huge difference between Edward and herself. Edward barely grasped what was going on, and yet he stood here beside her at the end of a journey that had taken them both across the galaxy. There were Maurice and Saskia, wanting to hold on to each other but too proud to do so. They understood things so differently that they may as well have lived in different worlds. But their differences were nothing compared to hers with Edward. Edward who could barely read, who never really understood anything, yet was a positive genius when measured against those people in the concert hall whose bodies didn’t even work properly, the ones who drooled as they sat there twitching and who couldn’t even keep time on a drum.
All of us so different,
thought Judy,
and yet all of us human
.