Edward didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. They must have intended upon doing the deal, else why waste fuel flying out here to make contact? Certainly, Earth was dangerous, but they didn’t have to go that close, did they?
Saskia appeared to reach a decision.
“Okay,” she said, “we’ll put it to the vote. Maurice?”
“You’re the boss.” Maurice shrugged. He gave a thin smile. “I’m happy to go with you.”
“Fine. Edward?”
Edward nodded his head vigorously.
“Yes. I’d like to go to Earth. Are you going to ask Miss Rose?”
Miss Rose wasn’t there. She still spent most of the time shut up in her room, rearranging her things, only making occasional trips out to eat her meals and steal small items from around the ship.
“I would if she were here,” said Saskia briskly. “Okay then,” she raised her glass of apple juice, as if in a toast, “we trade. Are you ready to interface?”
“Yes,” replied Maurice and the
Free Enterprise
simultaneously.
“Then let’s go.”
“Uploading circumstances,” said Maurice. “What the hell?” He gazed at his console, mouth hanging open.
“What’s the matter?” asked Saskia, squinting to see what was scrolling across his screen.
“That’s never happened before,” said Maurice. “I’m going to run a check.”
“What?” asked Saskia. “Speak to me! What’s never happened before?”
“The trade—it’s completed already. I don’t understand it!
Free Enterprise,
are you getting the same?”
“I must admit, it does seem very unusual.” The other ship sounded genuinely puzzled. “Still, occasionally circumstances are such that two trading partners find themselves almost perfectly matched.” There was a fluttering noise. “Even so, I have never heard of an Exchange taking place quite so quickly.”
Saskia was visibly fretting. Edward took the glass of apple juice from her hand and placed it on the low coffee table nearby.
“I’ve run the check,” said Maurice. “It’s a Fair Exchange.”
“I concur,” said the
Free Enterprise.
“Very well, I am dispatching your passenger now. She should arrive with you in four minutes.”
A shuttle detached itself from the image of the spaceship that floated in the middle of the living area.
“It will have to go into the large hold,” said Maurice, gazing at a dimension reading. “There should be plenty of room, even with the venumbs in there. I’ll open the hatch now.”
“You may keep the shuttle,” said the
Free Enterprise
. “It is part of the Exchange. As to the rest, my price includes disclosure of the information that I have just downloaded to your ship. I will give you a quick summary as your passenger approaches. Have you heard of DIANA?”
Maurice shook his head.
“I have,” said Saskia. “They were one of the old commercial organizations. They controlled quite a bit of human-occupied space until the Watcher and the Environment Agency took over the running of human affairs.”
“A fair summary,” said the
Free Enterprise
. The pod in the viewing field was growing larger. The
Eva Rye
slid into view, looking like a Harlequin’s teardrop, its opening hangar door masquerading as one of the dark checks, not immediately apparent. The
Free Enterprise
continued.
“Yes, a fair summary. However, it is not true to speak of DIANA in the past tense. I myself still work for DIANA, as do many others.”
“How can that be?” asked Saskia. “The Watcher made it its business to infiltrate all those large organizations—and then to destroy them. The age of large-scale capitalism is past.”
“Some of us managed to escape the Watcher’s gaze. The first Warp Ships were built by the commercial organizations before the Watcher had completely infiltrated them. No one was surprised when some of those experimental ships failed to return home. Some of them, no doubt, malfunctioned. Others, such as my own manufacturers, chose to stay hidden in space.”
Comprehension dawned on Maurice’s face.
“That explains your unusual appearance,” he said. “The first Warp Ships were robots, they had no direct connection with human beings. Your development was completely independent of human needs or intervention.”
“Very astute,” said the
Free Enterprise
. “As to the rest of your payment: now that the Watcher’s control is waning, the need for us to remain in hiding is lessening. I have relayed the coordinates of the Warp Ship
Bailero
to your console. It is the experimental ship that gave rise to me and my kind. FE suggests it is of great value to you, and our contract permits you to first collect the ship before taking the passenger to Earth.”
Saskia and Maurice were smiling. For the first time, it seemed they had made a satisfactory trade. Even Edward understood that: an old ship, that had to be worth something?
“May I say, it has been a pleasure doing business with you!” said Saskia, unable to keep the delight from her voice.
“And I with you,” replied the
Free Enterprise
. “And now, I note the shuttle is entering your ship. Perhaps we will meet again. Until then, good-bye!”
And at that there was a complex unfolding in the viewing field, and the
Free Enterprise
changed shape into something else equally indescribable, before shimmering out of view.
Maurice stood up, beaming.
“We’d better get to the large hold to meet our passenger. She might be disturbed by the venumbs in there.”
“I’ll come, too,” said Edward.
Saskia was clearly in a good mood. “Yes, that would be nice, Edward.” She was smiling. “I know what you mean about the venumbs, Maurice. She might think she’s being attacked by dinosaurs!”
They left the living area in good spirits and marched past the conference room. Edward looked inside as they walked by. Gone was the mismatched, eclectic jumble. Everything in there now matched: big comfortable white leather chairs set out around a shiny black oval table.
They came to the twisted knot of the junction where five corridors met. Even after the upgrade to the smart new
Eva Rye,
this junction still looked odd to Edward. It was from here that you accessed the big and little holds, and the geometry of the ship had been twisted about to accommodate their shapes. You had to step around a protruding corner of the large hold to take the path that led to the cargo areas, and you felt the gravity change direction as you did so, felt an odd tug in the stomach. Edward didn’t like that. Still, he bravely stepped forward, felt the open mouths of the five corridors looking at him as he hung for a moment in space, and then set off with the others down the black-carpeted path to the large hold’s entrance. It was still a long walk.
They met their new passenger on the way; she was following the map patterns set on the walls, heading back to the living space.
Edward guessed that she was older than Saskia. The woman looked similar, with shoulder-length black hair and a very pale face, but there was a difference in her stance, an air of quiet confidence. As they drew closer, Edward realized she was wearing white makeup on her hands as well as her face. Her lips and fingernails were colored in black, to match her simple black passive suit.
Beaming, Saskia stepped forward and held out a hand.
“Welcome aboard the
Eva Rye,
” she said. “My name is Saskia. This is Maurice, my systems man. This is Edward.”
The woman shook their hands absently. “The
Eva Rye
?” she said, smiling faintly. “I suppose it
would
be. I’m sorry about this. I am very sorry about this.”
The expression drained from Saskia’s face. “Sorry for what?”
“Sorry for involving you in all this.”
“Look, I’m sure things aren’t that bad,” said Maurice.
“Yes,” agreed Saskia. “Come back to the living area and you can explain what’s going on. What’s your name?”
The woman gave another faint smile. “My name is Judy,” she said. “But you might as well call me Jonah.”
interlude: 2247
AIs have a different way of looking at the world.
The Watcher and Chris stood on a beach, on either side of a flat stream of water that had cut a meandering channel through the sand. Sand blew in thin yellow ribbons from the grass bound dunes that loomed behind them; the flat sea threw little waves onto the shore below them.
“What do you hope to achieve, Chris?” asked the Watcher.
The water was tainted; a black tendril of ink ran down the stream at their feet, thickening.
Chris dipped a hand in the running water, stirring the ink into a grey cloud.
“I don’t know,” said Chris. “Just seeing what happens.”
Or to look at it another way…
The Watcher didn’t invent MTPH. It was a meme that had evolved at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It was a drug that had found favor with a significant proportion of the population, a drug whose effects could be engineered by those with the necessary know-how. The Watcher had that know-how.
In its original state MTPH caused hallucinations. Phantom personalities arose in the user’s mind. Personalities that appeared to have minds of their own. Users would say they did have minds of their own. You had to be a user to understand.
The Watcher had uses for MTPH.
The Watcher planned a world of fairness and tolerance. It wanted a world where everyone could achieve their full potential. It saw MTPH as a means to achieve this. With a few subtle twists, MTPH became a drug that helped users to experience other people’s points of view. Administered through Social Care, a group of humans trained in the use of MTPH and the care and protection of clients, the drug became a delicate instrument, wielded in the manner of a surgeon’s scalpel, a way of subtly restoring the balance when things weren’t running as they should.
It wasn’t until later, under the constant onslaught of the Dark Seeds brought about by Chris, that the Watcher dispensed with subtlety. The human population of Earth needed to understand one another completely. They needed to understand what was right. It was then the Watcher sent MTPH flooding Earth, tainting the water and the air and the food.
Or to look at it another way…
A clear stream of water flooded down the beach. And now Chris had corrupted it. But not for long.
The Watcher waved a hand and the water ran clear again.
On the opposite side of the stream Chris gave a shrug.
“I will always be your superior. I
made
you,” said the Watcher. “I don’t know why you continue with these futile attacks.”
“Just seeing what happens,” said Chris.
judy 1: 2252
Judy had wondered
what it would be like to be away from the sterile corridors of the
Free Enterprise
and back amongst humans again. Now she knew.
Cold and bleak and utterly hopeless.
There was a slightly raised fleshy cross growing on her back: the
Free Enterprise
had done something to her to make it appear. She felt it now, rubbing against the material of her passive suit. It ran across her shoulders and down her spine, the top vertical running up the nape of her neck. There was something living inside there, she knew. It had no presence, and yet it could experience everything that she did, and it spoke to her of what they both saw.
Judy had worked for Social Care. She had taken the drug MTPH to boost her ability to empathize with others. The
Free Enterprise,
however, had replaced that faculty with something far more cold and clinical. The shifting webs of emotions that she would once have discerned in the three humans now standing before her were gone. Instead, she saw nothing more than the ghostly glow of the mechanism that lived in their heads. She couldn’t read their thoughts; no, what she saw was at a lower level than that. She was observing the mechanism that produced thought.
Judy pushed her despair down deep. So this was her reentry to the world of humanity. It all seemed so much less than she remembered.
The woman who had introduced herself as Saskia was gazing at Judy from under a fringe of purple-black hair. She spoke hesitantly.
“Well, Judy or Jonah or whatever you want to be called, I’m sure we can make you comfortable here. There are plenty of spare rooms on board the
Eva Rye
…”
“I’m sure there are.” Judy gave a bitter laugh. “I’m sure if you look there will be one made just to my liking, with lacquered furniture and tatami matting and white paper screens for doors.”
The smaller of the two men was checking his console, the pale ghost of his mind moving in patterns as he processed what he saw there. It was all so ordered, so objective. Where was the emotion? Where had it gone?
“She’s right,” he said. “That’s Donny’s old room. It’s decorated just like she said, some sort of Japanese style from the last decade.” He suddenly gave a smile. “I’m Maurice.”
Judy’s mind read the smile, but all the warmth that it transmitted was diluted by the meta-intelligence that she carried in the cross on her back. A smile is just a signal, it was saying, just another way of transmitting information.
She had to speak, so she forced herself to smile back. It was hard.
“I told you,” she said. “Someone is choosing a path for me. His name is Chris. He doesn’t care that I don’t want to go back to Earth.”
Saskia frowned. She looked upset, but all Judy could see was the ghost of her thoughts assigning reactions. Saskia’s voice was tentative, apologetic.
“But we thought you
wanted
to go to Earth. We were told that the
Free Enterprise
had a passenger. That’s right, isn’t it, Maurice?”
Maurice nodded, but Judy cut across his answer. “A passenger, maybe, but not a willing one.”
The tall black man who stood in the middle of the group was moved to speak. There was a difference to
his
mind, Judy noticed: a simplicity and a complexity that tangled over each other to make the movement of his thoughts difficult to follow.
“We don’t
have
to take her, do we?” he said to Saskia. He turned. “Where do you want to go, Judy?”