Divergence

by Tony Ballantyne

  “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?”

  “It’s not that easy, Edward,” said Saskia firmly. “We used the FE software to agree to this trade, remember. We can’t go back on it.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to anyway,” said Judy, gazing oddly at Edward. She recognized him for what he was, but it was strange. In the past she had felt pity for people like him, now she felt…nothing. It was all just part of the mechanism. Some were bright, and some were not. He was looking at her with a tender expression. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” she added dryly. “Feel sorry for yourselves for being dragged into this without your permission.”

  The concern that this statement generated was visible in the crew’s minds. To the meta-intelligence, it was just another process to be measured. Judy continued.

  “Now, would it be possible to have something to eat? I haven’t had real food for five weeks. The Free Enterprise wasn’t equipped for humans. It constructed everything from the ground up.” She grimaced at the memory.

  “What were you doing on board that ship?” asked Maurice.

  Judy shivered at the question.

  Saskia must have noticed it. “I think there will be time for Judy’s story later, Maurice,” she said mildly. Any thoughts that Judy might have had that Saskia was sympathetic were quickly dashed when she continued—“For the moment, Judy, I want to know what you mean, saying that we’ve been dragged into this. We operate of our own free will. That’s the point of FE software: haven’t you heard of it?”

  Judy inclined her head slightly. “A little, yes. But I’m sorry, Saskia, someone is playing games with you. This ship, the decor—someone is sending me messages.”

  She looked around the freshly made corridor with its black carpet, the black-and-white tiled pattern on the walls and the pearly balls of light set in the ceiling that receded in a line into the distance.

  “You’re a black-and-white woman,” Saskia noted astutely. “And our ship has only just adopted this color scheme.”

  “And then there is the name,” said Judy.

  “Eva Rye?” said Saskia. “But she’s just a story. Anyway, she would have died nearly two hundred years ago.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” replied Judy, and the edge of bitterness in her voice was absorbed by the soft comfort of the corridor.

  “You’ve got something on your neck,” said Edward suddenly.

  “I know,” said Judy. “The Free Enterprise put it there. Please don’t mention it again.”

  Edward looked crestfallen, but at that moment Judy didn’t care.

  “Would it be so bad to go to Earth?” asked Saskia hopefully. “I know you hear stories, but—”

  “It’s worse than you can possibly imagine,” Judy replied. “Imagine everyone acting completely selflessly. Each person only doing what is best for their fellow humans.”

  “That sounds quite nice to me,” Maurice said.

  “Oh, it’s not,” Judy said. “Trust me, it’s not.”

  “Do the Dark Seeds really exist?” Saskia asked. “I wondered if maybe they were just a story.”

  “They exist. I’ve seen them.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hold on,” Maurice said, fiddling with his console again, “you said you haven’t had real food for five weeks. When were you taken on board the Free Enterprise?”

  “On the thirty-first of July.”

  Maurice and Saskia looked at each other.

  “This ship was born on the first of August.”

  “Like I said, call me Jonah. Someone is doing whatever it takes to get me to Earth, and they don’t give a damn about the consequences of that for anyone else.”

  Saskia spoke, not quite concealing her nervousness. “Judy, what are you doing here?”

  Judy lay sobbing in bed. She was forty-one years old and a virgin, but that wasn’t why she was crying.

  —You spend all your days wearing your face like a mask. You should cry more often, Judy.

  “Oh, go away and leave me alone. You’re not even real.”

  —Don’t take it out on me, Judy. Come on, what is th
e matter? What did you see that has you so upset?

  Judy was hugging her knees, her whole body shaking as she cried.

  “That little girl…that ugly little girl…”

  Judy sat on a dining chair in the Eva Rye’s living area. Edward was in the small kitchen, preparing a meal with a clack of pans and a bubbling of water. Saskia and Maurice sat opposite, looking rumpled and confused within the clean newness of the ship. Judy was doing what she had always done, separating her emotions from her memories. She was very good at it. It was only recently that she had begun to suspect that this wasn’t necessarily always something to be proud of.

  “Five weeks ago I was on board the Deborah, traveling to Quantick. It’s a settled world at the far end of the former Enemy Domain. About as far from Earth as you can get.”

  Judy sipped at her water, a picture of composure.

  “That ugly little girl…”

  Judy couldn’t stop crying. There remained that part of her that was always cool and objective; it stood to one side within her consciousness, examining the torrid waterfall of her passions, trying to pinpoint the source of this outburst. She hadn’t cried so violently even when her sisters had died; she hadn’t been so badly shaken when Frances, her best friend, had been nearly destroyed. What was it about the scene in the social room that had upset her so? Such a tiny matter. The girl was an ugly little thing, painfully thin with a deformed face, one eye lower than the other. Her protruding mouth was filled with crooked, irregular teeth. She clung tightly to her mother’s hand as she entered the room, trying to fade into the background, hoping not to be seen by the other occupants, lost in their games of Chess and Starquest, Dominions and Bridge.

  Judy had been sitting in the corner, having politely turned down an invitation to join a game of poker. Where was the sport in playing a game when she knew the thoughts and feelings of her opponents better than they did themselves? She had watched as the little girl was led across the room to an Aeon table. The two people already seated there passed a set of colored counters across to the new players. Nervously, the little girl accepted them. She sat down, clutching the large counters against her pigeon chest.