And, unbelievably, it was happening now. The event that Constantine had not really believed would happen, the one he had waited nearly forty years to observe—and it was happening. Something was straining within the ziggurat, something was straining to be. A thread was blowing back and forth across the ranks of symbols aligned in the processing spaces that filled the building. If the Watcher’s theory were correct, then the same virus that had caused the Watcher to be born would now be taking root in the ziggurat.
Constantine had robot eyes; he was looking straight into the processing spaces. He jumped. Something was looking back at him: eyes, unaware of themselves, receptors for the patterns that flickered across them from outside.
Constantine stepped from the rainfall into the still night beyond. He descended the mountainside, preparing to receive the message that would be carried to humanity.
A low growl sounded. It began to climb in pitch. It was joined by another, and another. Sirens began to sound, rising howls in the night that sent the sleeping colonists tumbling from their beds. Arc lights slammed on and the sides of the ziggurat were lit up in red and yellow.
The ziggurat was armed—Constantine felt a hollowness inside at the thought. This was the secret pain he had carried inside himself for the past forty years. The Watcher wanted proof, not competition. The Watcher controlled a vast area of space; it did not want a challenger for its domain. There was a bomb in the ziggurat….
Judy gasped.
“What is it?” asked Constantine.
“Nothing,” said Judy. “Go on…”
Random symbols emerged from the processing space. They carried the edge of meaning
…Would you like to engage…
Constantine could see what was forming in there. But it was not at all what he had expected…
The siren’s note changed and horror lanced through him. No! He had to stop it. This was not what anyone had expected. He began to run across the plain. It was too far…
…and a magnetic pulse washed across the night. The howl of the sirens rattled and died. Motors stopped. Constantine only just got his own shields up in time to save his mind. But the rest of his body caught the full force of the pulse…
The rest of the crew were too busy gazing at Constantine to notice the way the venumbs were moving about.
“What happened?” pressed Saskia.
“Should they be doing that?” Constantine asked, pointing to the white body of one of the great wooden dinosaurs. It was twisting around on itself, almost overbalancing.
“They’re fine,” Maurice said, not bothering to look. “Answer her.”
Constantine shrugged. “Okay. We killed it. The Watcher killed it. Once it had proof of its theory, it killed that being.”
“But why?”
“I told you, it didn’t want competition. Look at the Enemy Domain. That was a result of the rise of another AI. The Watcher didn’t want a repeat of that conflict. It doesn’t trust other powerful AIs.”
“That’s a good excuse,” Maurice muttered sarcastically.
“What happened to you?” Saskia asked, ignoring the interruption.
“The colonists found me three days later. I was half buried in mud, my body completely shut down, most of the circuits tripped by the magnetic pulse. The colonists argued for a whole day about whether they should jump-start me. They were angry about what had happened to them, feeling as if they had been tricked, and indeed they had been. The Watcher’s scheming had left them marooned on a planet where nothing now worked. All their machinery was ruined.”
Constantine had worked long and hard himself to build that colony. The memory of a Geep, half submerged in the mud, its motor beyond repair, rose up in his mind.
“But they obviously got you started in the end,” Maurice was saying.
“Yes, they started me in the end.”
“So what are you doing here?”
There was an edge to Judy’s voice that none of them had heard from her before. She had folded her arms across her chest, and there was a haunted look in her eyes.
“Are you okay, Judy?” Edward asked hesitantly.
She didn’t appear to hear him.
“Why are you here, Constantine?” Judy shouted. “What happened to you? What did you see inside that ziggurat?”
Constantine patted her arm. Then Maurice and the rest of the crew looked on in astonishment as the robot placed a plastic hand behind her head and drew her close in a gentle embrace. “You knew, Judy, didn’t you? You knew about the ziggurat.”
“What did she know about the ziggurat?” shouted Maurice.
Constantine went on. “I had to get to Earth,” he said. “I was trapped on a forgotten planet with possibly the key to life itself in my grasp. The Watcher, it had been wrong all of this time. Nobody had guessed, let alone the Watcher itself. And now I had to get to Earth. But how?”
“‘Key to life itself’?”
“What had the Watcher been wrong about?”
“About everything. About what it was and where it came from. About its place in the universe. I saw it all there in that moment before the ziggurat was destroyed.”
“What did you see?”
But Constantine wasn’t going to say. That information was for the Watcher. He went on: “Look, there was no machinery working there anymore. We spent two years doing what we could just to grow enough food to feed the colonists; it was nearly three years before I managed to get a communications antenna up.”
“And then what happened?”
Constantine looked at the slowly flexing fingers of his right hand. “Lots of things,” he murmured. “And then one day an FE ship arrived on the planet.”
“What’s the matter, Maurice?” Judy asked.
“You know, don’t you?” Maurice said.
Judy scowled. “I know? What do I know?”
“You know what he’s talking about.”
“Come on, Maurice. What’s the matter with you? You’ve been in a foul mood ever since yesterday morning.” She gave a nasty smile. “I would have thought that sleeping with Saskia would have relaxed you a little bit.”
“You are upset,” said Maurice. “Look at you, you’re arguing with me. Showing emotion, not hiding in impassivity.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Judy, her emotion evaporating into the wide-open space of the large hold. Saskia and Edward stood still, not wanting to interrupt. They wanted answers, too. Constantine noted the faintest suggestion of a twitch at the corner of Maurice’s eye.
“You’ve been lying to us from the very start, haven’t you, Judy? You’ve been playing with us. You see, it wasn’t until yesterday morning that I realized, not until I understood the way you manipulated Saskia into sleeping with me.”
“What?”
“Stay out of this, Saskia.”
Saskia blushed hotly. “Don’t you tell me what to do, Maurice. She didn’t manipulate me. I make my own decisions.”
Maurice threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, she lets you think that, Saskia,” he said. “We’re all doing what she wants. She’s been manipulating us ever since she came aboard this ship. She’s been putting us off guard, catching us at our most vulnerable moments, doing what she can to keep us thinking only about ourselves and to stop us thinking about her.”
A cold breeze. Suddenly a venumb was towering over Judy, swinging its headless neck back and forth, as if searching for something. How had it got so close so quickly? What was it doing? Judy didn’t seem to notice, a still black shape with a pale face.
“I was trying to help you,” she explained softly. “It’s what I do.”
Judy’s reply seemed a measured moment of calm amidst the torrent of emotions. Constantine could see that it only infuriated Maurice more.
“Hah, it’s what you did,” Maurice corrected. “Of course you were trying to help. But you were manipulating us, too. You’re Social Care.”
Judy made no reply to this.
“Is this true
?” asked Edward.
Judy was a silent china doll, black eyes glittering in a porcelain face.
“Of course it’s true, Edward.” Maurice laughed. “Social Care are experts at it. Just because she’s retired doesn’t mean she can give it up—especially when she has reasons for wanting to hide something. And she does. Come on, Judy, tell us the truth. How do you know him?” He pointed at Constantine.
“I don’t,” Judy said, “or at least, not firsthand. But I have heard about him.”
“How?”
What was going on with the venumbs? What could they hear? Constantine had half an ear trained on the space around the ship, listening for whatever it was. The other ear, however, was fixed firmly on Judy’s story.
“At night I dream of a hand over my face—”
“What do you mean by that?” Maurice demanded.
“It’s an anxiety dream,” Judy explained. “When I’m feeling stressed, I dream of a hand hovering just over my face. It reaches down from the ceiling, like it’s trying to smother me.”
A long creak echoed through the large hold. The farthest wooden venumb looked as if it was crouching, ready to spring. Slowly the humans turned back to face Judy.
“You’re changing the subject. How do you know Constantine?”
And it all came out. Judy spoke.
“I told you most of it already when I first came on board. Twelve years ago I met a robot called Chris. It told me that the Watcher had actually killed someone. It told me that it was going to kill again in the future.”
“That’s silly,” Edward protested. “The Watcher doesn’t kill.”
“He does,” Constantine said. “I witnessed the murder. I felt the EM pulse that ripped through that ziggurat.”
A spasm of pain crossed Judy’s face. “Chris told me that was going to happen. I was supposed to prevent that murder.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because I’ve spent the last ten years running. Trying to get away from Chris and the Watcher! Both of them want me to help them—”
“Why? Why you?”
“I don’t know why me! Chris wants me to help him to destroy the Watcher. He says that I will help him in the end. What if he’s right? He is more intelligent than I am. I feel like a puppet. I am a puppet!”
And at that, the first little crack in the dam that had held back forty years’ worth of emotion appeared. A tear ran down Judy’s white face. She wiped it away. The dam held steady.
And then, in perfect synchronicity, both of the venumbs pounced.
There was a cracking explosion of wood. White splinters crackling across the floor. Saskia yelped and slapped a hand to her cheek, blood welling through her fingers, a white sliver protruding. Constantine was behind her, his body arched as he absorbed the force of three larger pieces of wood.
“How did you get there so quickly…?” she began.
Constantine didn’t answer; he was now thinking and moving in quick time. He could see that the furthest venumb, now missing its front leg, was trying to make its way across the floor to a second huge wobbling grey-black mass that had suddenly appeared inside the large hold. It was a Dark Seed, but swollen, mutated until it was bigger than Constantine himself.
—Constantine, this is Aleph. Can you hear me?
—I hear you.
A rain of smaller, though still misshapen, Dark Seeds were beginning to fill up the hold. The nearest venumb was swinging its head this way and that. Wherever it looked, the seeds instantly vanished.
Aleph spoke. —Kevin has brought us within range of something huge and dark. I think some battle must have been fought here between the Watcher and…something else.
Beneath the wooden feet of the venumb, the kittens jumped and pounced, catching Dark Seeds beneath their paws.
Judy was staring at the huge wobbling grey-black mass of the mutated seed. Maurice was meanwhile helping Saskia to pull the splinter from her cheek.
—You have a disintegrator built into your body, Constantine. Use it.
—A disintegrator? I didn’t know such things existed.
—You mean you didn’t know you had it? But it is there in your left arm.
—This body has many features I don’t know about. The Watcher planned for everything, but told me very little.
—Go to the mutated seed. It is not reacting so far, but it may yet do so. Disintegrate it, just like the Schrödinger kittens are doing to the other Seeds.
—Schrödinger kittens? I didn’t know…
—Why do you think you were given them? Use the disintegrator.
—How?
—Let me show you…
This wasn’t the first time another consciousness had entered Constantine’s mind to guide him. He felt Aleph’s presence, and he turned to look at its representation. He was surprised at what he saw.
—Shhh, said Aleph, placing a finger to its mouth. —Don’t tell anyone yet.
There was a pulsing in the air, regions of pressure that squeezed the soft human bodies. Distant sensations insinuated their way into the shivering space of the large hold: the smell of vomit and the sound of seagulls crying.
Something was awakening in Constantine’s body, new potentials arising in his arm. An inequality appeared in his vision.
Constantine recognized it. —Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
—Well done, said Aleph. —The disintegrator measures the positions of the individual particles within its field to an accuracy of a nanometer. This renders the momentum of those particles to such a level of uncertainty that they are excluded from being within 100 meters of here.
—Very clever, said Constantine, and the disintegrator woke up in his arm in a rainbow of colors and with the feel of flowing honey. He felt dizzy at the measurements that the device was already performing as he waved his arm around. Space wavered as the device seemed to plug him into the universe at some basic level.
A tall, good-looking man appeared in Constantine’s mind. He walked with a cocksure swagger.
—Who are you?
—Kevin. The mind of the Bailero. Kevin did a double take as he appeared to notice the device in the robot’s arm. —That looks interesting, Constantine. Do you mind if I take a look?
Kevin was already reaching towards the device, following through the circuitry in Constantine’s body. Constantine swatted the AI’s virtual arm away.
—Leave it, he said. Constantine took aim at the huge seed and concentrated…
…The mutant seed vanished. Edward was staring at the space it had occupied, mouth open wide in amazement. Events were moving so quickly in human time that, to his eyes, the seed must have appeared and disappeared in an instant.
—Nice, said Kevin.
—What do you want here? asked Constantine. —Get out of my mind.
—Hey, I’m only trying to help. The man looked hurt. —Listen, he said. —There is something strange up ahead. I’m going to need your help, Aleph, to get me through. Constantine, I suggest that the humans collect their things and then get into the shuttle in the large hold for safety. That way they’ll be shielded by both me and the Eva Rye. Tell them they’ve got thirty minutes to collect anything they need from their quarters.
—Why should you try to help? wondered Constantine. —I’d have thought you would prefer not to be the property of the Eva Rye.
—I wouldn’t, Kevin agreed. —The sooner I can get them to Earth, the better as far as I’m concerned. So tell them this: things are getting weird out here. They can’t count on the Eva Rye still being there by the time we get to Earth. They’d be safer in the shuttle.
A full AI would have been able to multitask, but Constantine could only think about one thing at a time. He had to slow his mind back to human speed in order to rejoin their world.
“Easy, Saskia,” Maurice was saying. “I’ve got the last piece now.” He drew a final splinter from Saskia’s pale cheek.
“I can see patterns in the floor,” Judy said, staring do
wn at the white tiles. “Reflections of things that aren’t there. The Dark Plants are getting hold of our minds.”
“What did you do to that great big box?” Edward asked Constantine. “I saw you point at it and it vanished.”
“No time for that.” Constantine raised his hands in the air. “Listen to me!”
The crew quieted down immediately. Behind them, the two kittens were criss-crossing the floor in stop-frame motion. They seemed to go from position to position without actually moving. What were they?
Constantine spoke. “It’s time. I can see the Earth system ahead; I can see the source of a pattern of intelligence that is swirling out from Earth and reaching into the galaxy. The Watcher. Its senses are everywhere, fixing the flux of Dark Seeds as it passes through the solar system. What’s the matter, Judy?”
“Nothing,” Judy said.
“I know what she’s thinking,” Maurice said. “Everything is coming together. Look at the venumbs, the kittens. All helping to get Judy to Earth. There’s no escaping it. We’re taking you to the Watcher, aren’t we Judy? We’re taking you all the way, whether we like it or not.”
“I guess so,” Judy said. “And then, if what Chris told me was true, I will want to destroy it.”
“Do you want to destroy the Watcher?” Constantine asked.
“No. Never. Why should I wish to do that?”
“Okay,” said Constantine, “we have twenty-seven minutes left before we hit trouble. Go to your quarters and collect anything you need, then return here to the shuttle. I’ll go and fetch Miss Rose.”
“No, I’ll get her,” Saskia said.
“Fine,” said Constantine. “This is the arrangement. We fly to Earth with the Eva Rye safely inside the Bailero. Any Dark Seed or BVB will have to make its way through the observation sphere of both of those ships. We should therefore be as safe as we can be inside the shuttle.”
“What about Kevin?” Edward asked.
“What about him?” Judy replied.
“Will he be safe?”
“I hope not,” Judy said coldly.
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