The reproductive procedure followed by the
Eva Rye
was one of fission. A seam had developed along the back of the teardrop-shaped vessel, giving it the appearance of a deformed peach. Metal and plastic was flowing into the seam and then dividing itself, tearing in tissue layers, half going this way, half going that. A double bulge was slowly inflating into space and already two
Eva Ryes
could be seen taking shape, each half the mass of the original.
The procedure was satisfying to observe, pleasing in its elegance and engineering. The reproductive program was well thought out: the Stranger measured both of the ships to be of almost exactly equal mass. There was a music to the separation, too, the singing of materials in harmony with themselves as they rent apart, and underneath it all the deep bass throb of the engine warping space into the gradient down which the ship slid. Even that warping was separating into two distinct bubbles of space.
And then, a question appeared in the Stranger’s vision. The fission process paused for a moment, the two nascent bulges wavering, anchored by an indissoluble mass within the ship. The stranger looked closer and saw the two cargo holds, and in them the goods carried by the ship. Apples and colored pebbles, crystal and china, bales of paper. And the two huge wooden venumbs that occupied the large hold; pacing back and forth with prehistoric fortitude.
The Stranger consulted the results of the Fair Exchange and noted the division of the goods between the two ships.
Just for a moment, it could have sworn that the venumbs were gazing in its direction as it did so.
Edward lay staring up at the ceiling of his new room. For the past hour everything had been blessedly still. Cold silence leaked from the vacuum of space into the walls and floors of the ship; it deadened the air and choked the hum of life from the crew. Silence was pooling in the room, drowning Edward in emptiness. Edward was terrified; he almost wished that he was back in the seemingly endless snapping, shifting maelstrom of the replication. Just when it seemed that he could take no more, a violent double wrenching had shaken the whole ship and sent Edward tumbling across the room and onto his bed.
He tried to understand what had happened. He had seen the ship tearing itself apart, moving over and under itself and reshaping itself like a gigantic piece of origami. He had gazed awestruck as the colors and textures of the ship had separated themselves out and rationalized themselves. He had sat in his room, arms clenched tightly around his body, watching as things like jeweled beetles tore themselves free of the floor and scuttled up the walls to the ceiling. Then the Stranger’s voice had called out, telling Edward to move back out into the corridor. He had found Miss Rose already waiting there; she was watching as black-and-white tiles spilled along the floor and down the walls. They had tumbled around and about them like lines of dominoes, and Edward had suddenly needed to go to the toilet, but all the doors had vanished.
Edward had stood there with Miss Rose, his bladder aching, for what seemed like ages, and then the Stranger had spoken again, telling them to go back to their rooms.
Edward had stood open-mouthed as he took in the changes. It was still his room, but different. As if he had been living in a room where the walls had been great scabs, now peeled away to show smooth healthy skin beneath. It was as if all the extra bits had been stripped away to leave the real room, all picked out in black and white.
He looked at his neatly made bed, a black cover stretched over it, his black desk with white ornaments on top, at the regular pattern of black-and-white lozenges on the walls, and then his aching bladder regained his attention and he went running into his new black-and-white bathroom.
After that he had returned to his bed. He still lay there now, wondering if everyone else was okay.
There was a knock on his door.
“Craig?” Edward called. “Is that you?”
He jumped off his bed and trotted across the new black wool carpet to see who was outside.
His face fell as he saw the blue eyes and blond eyelashes of the man beyond the threshold.
“Oh, hello, Maurice,” he muttered.
“You’d better come back to the living area,” said Maurice, looking paler than usual. He had fastened his padded combat jacket up to the neck, even though it was as warm as ever on board the ship. Maurice turned on his heel and marched away down the new black-and-white corridor. Edward bent for a moment to run his hands across the beautifully soft wool of the black carpet and to breathe in its sweet lanolin scent, and then he straightened up and followed Maurice, a big smile spreading across his face.
Everything smelled new and looked clean and freshly made. The black plastic bumpers around the doors were so shiny you could see yourself there inside them. The round white lights set in the ceiling shone with a pearly glow, and the walls were covered with the same pleasant pattern as those in Edward’s bedroom.
They passed the recreation room, black exercise machines glistening on the white floors, before shiny mirrors. Edward wanted to go in there and smear fingerprint marks onto the chrome handles; he wanted to be the first to run on the shiny black ribbon of the treadmill. He longed to explore the ship further, but Maurice was already walking into the main living area, and so he followed.
Saskia was waiting in there, purple-black hair falling around her pale face, and Edward was hurt at the expression of disappointment that crossed her face when she saw him.
“That’s it,” Maurice said. “Miss Rose won’t leave her room. She says she is rearranging her things after the mess that was made of them in the separation. Apart from her, there’s just you, me, and Edward left on board.”
Saskia closed her eyes and put a hand to her head.
Edward moved his lips, working things out.
“Just
us
left?” he said. “Where’s Craig? Where’s my friend?”
Saskia wasn’t listening.
“What the fuck is happening here?” she said. “How are we supposed to go on without Donny and Armstrong?”
Maurice looked uncomfortable. He pulled his console from his pocket and started to fiddle with it. “I can operate the systems,” he said.
“You?” said Saskia. “I thought you were a combat man, like Armstrong.”
Maurice flushed red. “I trained in systems,” he said quietly. “Combat is just my hobby. I understand the FE software better than Donny does.”
Saskia gazed at him appraisingly, her dark eyes like slits. “Okay,” she said, “we’d better hope that you do. Because at the moment it’s just you and me.”
“And me,” said Edward. “What’s happened? Where is everybody else?”
Saskia looked at Maurice who gave a bitter laugh.
“Why don’t you tell him, Saskia? Meanwhile, I’ll try to figure my way through the mess that Donny made of our systems.”
Saskia held his gaze, her lips thin with annoyance. “You’d better be able to,” she said darkly, and then she turned to Edward and gave him a big beaming smile.
“Edward,” she said, “come over here.”
Feeling more nervous than ever, Edward followed her to the new chessboard-patterned table that stood near the kitchen area. Saskia could be pretty, Edward thought as he anxiously looked at her, with her big dark eyes and her wide mouth and her black hair that curved around her thin face; it was just that she never seemed to want to. She rarely smiled. She wore nice clothes, just like Joanne, but she seemed to wear them in a different way, as if they were just part of a uniform, something that had to be done. Joanne looked like
a woman
in her clothes: she had glared at Edward more than once for staring at her breasts or her bum. But Saskia, she just looked like someone wearing nice clothes.
Edward felt confused. He wasn’t used to thinking thoughts like these.
“Edward,” said Saskia, taking one of his big hands in hers. “You know that the Stranger tricked us into a bad deal?”
Edward nodded, not quite sure if this was true or not. Hadn’t Michel said there was no such thing as a bad deal where the FE software was concerned?
Saskia was still smiling. She looked like a big doll, sort of pretty but hollow inside.
“Well, Edward, the last thing that the Stranger did was to set the ship to copy itself. You understand that? Yes? Self-replication happens all the time in the Earth Domain. Well, for some reason, one of the conditions of accepting FE software on board seems to be that the self-replication no longer happens when you want it to.”
“I know that,” said Edward.
“Of course you do,” said Saskia. “Well, somehow the Stranger managed to make our ship replicate. There are now two
Eva Rye
s. We are on one: you, me, Maurice and”—her smile froze a little—“Miss Rose. And it would appear that Joanne, Craig, Donny, Armstrong, and Michel are on the other one.”
“Oh,” said Edward. “And Donny’s kids?”
“Yes.”
Edward inhaled a deep shuddering breath. “So why can’t we go and dock with the other ship?”
Saskia gave him a very odd look. “Because, Edward, I didn’t realize that anyone on board this
Eva Rye
knew how to fly the ship until a few moments ago.” She glared across at Maurice, who ignored her and continued to tap away at his console.
“Oh,” said Edward again. “So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” said Saskia. “That’s why I want to ask you to do something important for me. Do you think you can do that?”
Edward nodded.
“Good,” beamed Saskia. “Good! Now, Maurice and I have to do a lot of talking. I want you to stay over here and not disturb us while we try to figure out what to do next. Do you think you can do that?”
“Saskia,” Edward replied in his deep voice, “I’m not a kid. I’m just not very clever.”
Saskia’s eyes widened slightly, as people’s eyes often did when Edward said this.
“I know that, Edward,” she said, regaining her poise. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you make us all some tea? You’re good at that, aren’t you? You make nice tea.”
Edward thought about it for a moment and nodded. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll make the tea.”
“Good!” said Saskia. “That will help us think.”
At that the smile drained from her face and she rose from her chair to rejoin Maurice, who was sitting on one of the newly grown white leather sofas, his console on his lap.
“Well?” she snapped.
Maurice didn’t bother to look up from his console.
“No luck,” he said. “They’re already in Warp. I think they’re taking the Stranger on his way.”
In the kitchen, Edward slowly, carefully took down the teapot from the shelf. Ever so gently, so he could hear what Maurice and Saskia were saying. He didn’t need to keep that quiet. Saskia was shouting.
“Damn! Well, what about us?” She gave a hollow laugh. “I suppose we’ve just been discarded now the Stranger has got what he wants.”
“Mmm,” said Maurice. “It’s odd, that. I don’t think we’ve just been discarded. Don’t you even wonder how I know that the other ship is in Warp? The long-range senses are back online.”
“What?” said Saskia. “You’re telling me that they were fixed during the separation?”
Maurice bit his lip. “No. Not exactly fixed. More like improved. They are better now than they ever could have been before. It’s like that with the rest of the ship. Have you taken a look around? Haven’t you noticed? Everything is nicer than before. Feel this sofa, feel the carpets. Everything is softer, better quality; it’s not just like we’ve separated. I’ll tell you what it’s like. It’s like we’re playing a video game and our ship has just had an upgrade.”
Saskia sat down on the sofa opposite to Maurice’s. She tilted her head forward so that her hair covered her eyes.
“I never play video games,” she said.
“Oh, I do,” said Maurice.
“Good practice for combat, are they?”
Edward slowly spooned tea into the beautiful white teapot. He noticed Maurice was blushing as he explained. “Look, don’t you wonder what is going on here? Why did the Stranger have to separate the ships? Surely one
Eva Rye
would be enough to take him to wherever he was going?”
Saskia leaned back and sighed. “You’re right. Maybe there was more to the deal after all. Maybe we should have a little more faith in the FE software.”
She closed her eyes to think. Carefully, Edward poured boiling water into the pot, steam swirling about his hand.
“Saskia,” said Maurice urgently.
“What?” she said.
“I think you’d better look. It’s the Stranger. I’ll put him on the main viewing field.”
Edward put down the kettle and came forward. There was a shimmer in the air between the white sofas and another
Eva Rye
appeared there. It was not quite the old
Eva Rye,
just as their ship was no longer the old
Eva Rye
. The ship that floated in the middle of the room was still a rainbow of colors, only now there was some pattern to them. A glorious reproduction of the Mandelbrot set trailed along its teardrop hull, the squashed heart and wandering branches of the shape defined in heartbreakingly beautiful silver and rose.
“Oh, not the bloody Mandelbrot set again,” muttered Maurice. “We’ve wandered into a twentieth-century SF novel.”
Edward was leaning forward to get a better view. “It’s nice, but I think I like our ship better,” he breathed.
“Shhh,” hissed Saskia, waving a dismissive hand at him. “Maurice, zoom in on the front of the ship, between the two main lobes of the Mandelbrot set.”
“I was doing that already,” grumbled Maurice, sliding a finger along the surface of the console.
The
Eva Rye
expanded, centering on the twisted cross of the Stranger, his four legs twisted downwards with tendrils spread out to grip the multicolored pattern of the hull.
“Hello there, Edward, Maurice, Miss Rose, Saskia!”
The Stranger twisted the four glassy lenses on its upper surface to face them as it spoke. Edward supposed Miss Rose must be watching this scene from her room.
“What’s going on?” asked Saskia. Edward thought she sounded annoyed at being mentioned last.
“Merely fulfilling the last part of our deal,” said the Stranger. “The
Eva Rye
was never going to work with the mix of people you had on board. I’ve merely rationalized your systems.”