“Yes,” Maurice said simply.
Edward felt a pain deep in his stomach. He was surprised to find tears pricking at his eyes.
“But why, Maurice?” he asked.
At first, Edward didn’t think that Maurice was going to answer. When he did, his voice had lost its usual impatience.
“I’ve done my work on the
Eva Rye,
Edward. We all have. Now I’ve bought myself a place on another ship.” He gave a sly smile. “The
Fourier Transform.
”
“You work fast,” said Saskia, a hint of bitterness in her voice.
“Don’t be like that, Saskia. You didn’t expect us to stay together forever, did you?”
“Well, no, but…”
“But what about Saskia?” Edward asked. “I thought you and she were friends!”
He looked from the man to the woman, honestly confused. Maurice smiled back, almost sympathetically.
“No, Edward, it’s not like that. Well, we
are
friends, but…” He hesitated, lost for words. In the end he settled for giving the big man a simple hug.
Awkwardly, they disengaged. Edward looked at Judy for an explanation.
“Are you sure about this, Maurice?” she asked. “Who are you entering this ship as? You, or someone else?”
“As myself,” Maurice said. He held up his console. “Whatever is already on board has been broadcasting its wares for anyone interested. A formal way for determining proof. An even number that is not the difference of two primes. A recursive set for everything. A solution for an NP-complete problem, and all the other NP problems tumbling into P.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mathematical impossibilities. Apparently they’re not impossible on this ship. How can I resist that offer?”
A rainbow ship was now skimming towards them. The
Fourier Transform
. Already the rear ramp was dropping down. The ship was rotating as it flew, bringing the rear ramp around to face them.
“So this is good-bye,” Saskia said sadly. “Will you keep in touch?”
Maurice just smiled at her and gave her a last hug. Clarinet music could be heard drifting from the ship’s interior. Something old-fashioned and complicated.
“Bye, Edward,” he said, holding out his hand, and Edward shook it. The shadow of the big ship slid over them.
“Let me know what happens, Judy,” said Maurice. “What are
you
thinking of doing now?”
Judy just looked tired.
“I don’t know yet. I need to think.”
“Good-bye, Maurice.” That was Constantine. Maurice just nodded in response. Slowly, the great rear ramp of the
Fourier Transform
edged closer. There appeared to be a robot standing on it.
“That’s not a robot,” said Edward, taking a closer look. “What is it?”
“That’s Eric,” said Maurice. “He’s an alien. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of them from now on.”
The ramp came to a halt just by their feet, and they all stared at Eric. Eric was bigger than Edward, with silver skin that looked as if it had been stitched in place. His knees bent the wrong way. He raised a hand in greeting.
“Hello, Eric,” Maurice said.
Eric opened a pink mouth to show yellow needle teeth. An unearthly cackling noise emerged.
Maurice held up his console so they all could see the words that scrolled across it.
Hello, Maurice. So pleased to meet you in the flesh. Please come on board.
Maurice stepped onto the ramp. Almost immediately the ship began to rise into the air.
“Good-bye,” he said, turning to them.
“Good-bye,” Edward said. He raised a hand to wave as Maurice was taken away from them. Already the other man had turned his back and was walking up the ramp. The
Fourier Transform
rose higher and higher, the ramp closing slowly.
“Good-bye,” Edward said sadly.
“Now what?” Saskia asked.
Now the silver sea was receding. The Earth itself was emerging once more, tired and desolate in mud and winter grass. After two hundred years of recursive building, the planet looked bedraggled and forlorn.
They walked on, taking in their new surroundings. Constantine confirmed that they were walking in the direction of the
Eva Rye.
Edward knew it was hundreds of kilometers away, but he walked anyway.
“This is all too sudden,” Judy complained. “There are fourteen billion people on Earth. They have been cared for and guided constantly all through their lives. Most of them won’t be able to handle this sudden transition.”
“Maybe you should do something about it, then,” Saskia said, peering out from under her fringe.
“I’m hungry,” Edward said suddenly.
“There must be plenty of food around,” said Constantine. “There was more than enough on Earth yesterday. It can’t have just vanished.”
“It will be in the ships,” Judy said, pointing upwards. Colorful ships now filled the sky like so many balloons. Layers and layers of ships cast circling shadows over the ground.
“What about all the people still left down here?”
Edward saw Constantine was pointing to a group of people standing nearby on a terrace of grey stone marooned in a sea of mud. After some hesitation, Edward led his group through the mud to reach them.
“Hello,” said a woman of about Saskia’s age. “Have you played the n-strings game?”
“Oh, yes,” Saskia said, and she shivered. “Why, have you?”
The woman nodded, pale blue eyes looking out from a pinched white face.
“About two hours ago. I didn’t understand it. What is going on now? Where is the Watcher? Why isn’t he sorting all of this out?”
“The Watcher has gone,” Saskia said. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“But my mother is ill!”
Edward saw a woman curled up on the cold grey stone, her head in the lap of a man he guessed was her husband.
“We can’t stay here,” the woman said. “There are Dark Seeds about. We closed our eyes and they went on their way this time, but what if more appear?”
“There won’t be so many seeds now,” said Judy. “The Watcher has gone. You did the right thing, though. Just ignore them.”
“Ignore them? We’re supposed to just ignore them? I don’t think I can ever do that.”
“I don’t think you have a choice. There is no Watcher anymore. You’ll have to learn to stand on your own two feet now.”
Saskia spoke up. “You need to get on your console and trade for help.”
“
Trade
for help?”
“I know, it takes a bit of getting used to. It’s the new thing.”
“Judy,” Edward interrupted. “Why don’t these people have a ship of their own?”
“We did,” the young woman said, “but we sent it away. We thought it was a trick.”
“What these people need,” Saskia said suddenly, “is advice.”
“
You’re
looking happier,” said Judy. “I think you’ve found your purpose.”
Edward noticed the smile on Saskia’s face flicker for the merest instant. Then she dropped her fringe forward, becoming purposeful and businesslike. “There must be thousands, millions of people like these on Earth—wondering what’s going on. Who’s going to help them now? Social Care?”
“I suppose we would, for the right price,” Judy replied dryly.
“Can you help us at all?” the young woman asked.
“I think so,” Saskia said. “I’ll see if I can arrange a lift to our ship. You can use our autodoc.”
“Putting together a crew, are we, Saskia?” Judy asked.
“I don’t know,” Saskia said. “That’s down to Edward, isn’t it? I’m just helping out for the moment. Do you have a better idea?” She unfolded her console and began to tap at the keys. “I’ve seen Maurice do this often enough,” she muttered. “It can’t be that difficult.”
Edward stared over her shoulder. “I think you drag the request into the public area there.” He pointed. “That’s what Maurice used to do.”
Saskia gave him a sideways glance, then did as he suggested. Immediately a number of offers to trade appeared.
“Which one, Edward?” she asked.
“That one,” said Edward, pointing to a rose-shaped icon that he rather liked the look of. Saskia tapped it, and a face appeared in the console: a young man, good looking, with dark skin and darker eyes. Saskia passed Edward the console.
“Go on, boss, do your thing.”
“Hello there, I’m Saeed,” said the man on the console. “Would you like to engage in Fair Exchange?”
“Yes,” Edward said, “we’d like a lift to our ship.”
“How many of you are there?”
Judy was busy counting the people assembled on the stone terrace.
“Fifteen,” she said, and Edward relayed the number.
“Fine,” Saeed said, then his eyes lit up. “Isn’t this amazing!” he exclaimed. “Do you understand what’s going on?”
“No,” Edward said honestly. “I think I preferred it the old way. I miss my old friends. I miss Craig.”
“Then why don’t you ask if someone will take you to him,” Saeed said. “That’s what FE is for!”
“Oh,” said Edward, a smile slowly spreading across his face. Not only Craig, he realized, but Caroline, his sister, too. What would it be like back on Garvey’s World? Would everything there have been broken up into spaceships, like the
Eva Rye
? But there would be time to think of that later—now there were people here to help, and Saeed was impatient to begin.
“Well, shall we start FE? Do you still want a lift?”
“Yes,” said Edward.
“Okay, exchanging circumstances. There, all done.”
“That was fast,” Saskia commented.
“Isn’t it always?” asked Saeed.
“I think it will be, for the next few days at least,” Judy said. “At the moment, all humans are pretty equal.”
“And with FE, they should stay that way,” Saskia added.
The sky was slowly emptying of ships. After a two-hundred-year period of stagnation, Earth was finally developing as it should.
Saeed’s ship settled in the mud near their stone island and dropped the rear ramp. Other ships did the same nearby.
Saeed and three other men came down the ramp to meet Edward and the rest of them. Gently, two of them picked up the young woman’s mother and carried her to their ship’s autodoc.
“Which of you are Najam and Jackie?” Saeed asked.
Two young women raised their hands.
“FE said you were going to be part of our crew. Are you happy about that?”
“I don’t know,” one of the women said. “We’ll have to see.” But she smiled at him as she spoke.
“That used to be
my
job,” Judy said, so softly that Edward only just heard her.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Matchmaking. Healing personalities. Now I suppose it just gets thrown in as part of a business deal.” She turned to Constantine. “You know what,” she said, “I never really doubted, but now I’m convinced: the Watcher was FE that developed a mind of its own.”
Edward and the rest of them walked up the ramp into the interior of Saeed’s ship.
“What is this ship called, Saeed?” Saskia called out.
“It hasn’t got a name.”
“It needs a name,” said Najam, one of the two new members of its crew. “How about the
Ophelia
?”
Edward looked around at familiar surroundings. The
Eva Rye
had looked like this not so long ago. Maybe its colors had been slightly less bright, maybe they had not been so mixed up, but this ship reminded him of Craig. He wondered again at what Saeed had said and decided that as soon as they made it to the
Eva Rye
he would try to make contact with Craig again. And then on to his home planet—if his family were still there, of course. Then he heard shouting behind him.
“It’s a robot!”
“It’s a venumb!”
“Close the ramp!”
“Too late, it’s already coming on board!”
Something big was moving up the corridor behind them: something like a cross between a snake and a Lite train made of lead-colored metal, stamping along on heavy legs. Edward and the rest flattened themselves against the corridor walls of the ship as the thing pounded past. Edward saw the rough-hewn metal sides of the animal sliding by just before him, he smelled mud and cold, felt the floor pounding beneath the great feet that propelled the beast forward.
And then it was past them. The shaking died away. The rainbow patterns in the carpet swirled as the ship cleaned itself.
“Where has it gone?” someone asked.
“Into the large hold,” said someone else.
“What was it?”
Judy guessed first. “It’s part of the big share-out,” she said. “It’s these people’s stake in the planet, and it’s going to follow them around until they damn well use it.”
Time passed. The passengers were taken to the
Ophelia
’s living area and offered coffee and sandwiches by the vessel’s proud crew. A buzz of excitement filled the air, but it was cut through with a tinge of nervousness. Everything was changing so quickly.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Edward.
Saskia glanced across at him. “Yes?”
“About Judy.”
Judy and Constantine were chatting together in the other corner of the
Ophelia
’s living area. All the while Judy kept fiddling with her console.
“What about her?” asked Saskia. She seemed so much more relaxed now. She was being taken seriously, Edward realized. The new passengers they had helped on board respected her.
“What about Judy?” she repeated. They looked across to see her smiling as she tapped away at her console.
“Oh,” Edward said, regaining the thread of his thoughts. “Well, we did a trade to have her brought here. We thought that we’d get a really good price, because Earth was so dangerous. Instead, we got nothing. But really, we got a good price after all. Look what we did: we set everyone free.”
“What if they don’t want to be free?”
The
Ophelia
settled to land near the
Eva Rye
. Edward was shocked at the change in the ship’s surroundings. The parkland remained, its neat lines of trees marching through snow-covered lawns, but all else was gone. The parkland was now a little area of order amongst the sea of pock-ridden mud where the buildings of the city had once stood. There were noticeably fewer ships up here in the cold wastes of what had once been St. Petersburg. Already the sea breeze was coming in to reclaim the land. The setting sun cast pale shadows across the desolate scene.