Divergence a-3

by Tony Ballantyne

  The spider laughed. “An empty bluff. Social Care doesn’t kill.”

  “You’re not alive, Kevin. Your copies have assured me of that in the past.”

  She meant it, Maurice realized with some surprise. She really would wipe out Kevin. Judging by his reply, Kevin knew it, too.

  “Anyway,” he said, after the smallest of pauses, “are you sure you’ll be allowed to go on your own? The crew of the Eva Rye made a deal using the FE software. They said they would take you to Earth.”

  “Actually,” said Maurice, “we were only supposed to go as close to Earth as was safe. But you do raise an interesting point. We could copy the FE software across to the Bailero ’s processing space, I suppose, but that doesn’t alter the point: who made the deal? Was it the software itself, or us as individuals, or us as a crew? What if one of us dies? What if the crew splits up? Where is the deal held then?”

  “I don’t know,” said Judy. “Aleph? Do you know?”

  A viewing field expanded above the table in which Aleph could be seen floating, a broken swastika clinging to the hull of the Bailero.

  “Where is the deal held?” asked Aleph, a chuckle in its voice. “That’s a matter for individual conscience.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Maurice called out. “You know, the more I think about FE software, the odder it is. Where does it actually come from?”

  “From the very fabric of the universe itself,” Aleph replied mysteriously. Maurice snorted. “Yes, you could say that about anything. Answer me, where did you get your copy from, Aleph?”

  “I was born with it.”

  Maurice smacked his hand on the table in frustration.

  “That’s not what I mean. Where did our copy come from? It was on the ship when it replicated. Where on earth did it come from originally?”

  “Where on Earth?” Aleph asked. “Oh, from some old guy in the past.”

  Saskia looked up at that point. “Some old guy? The Stranger said the same thing. What was his name?”

  “Oh, I can’t remember. Some old guy from a book. There were twelve of them—or was it thirteen?

  They killed him in the end. Nailed him to a tree or something. What was he called?”

  The crew of the Eva Rye looked at one another, puzzled.

  “Let’s get back to the point,” said Judy.

  The Bailero Warped towards Earth, a silver and gold collection of curves that swept in and out on each other in pleasing symmetry. There was a joke to the design of this ship, one understood only by AIs of sufficiently advanced intelligence: the shape of the ship was that of a man, but warped through a Riemannian transform thought up by the AIs behind DIANA. No human had spotted the connection yet, but of such subtle conceits the Human Domain was constructed.

  Inside the Bailero, the sleek black-and-white teardrop of the Eva Rye sat lightly on the blue-frosted interior, looking like the last pea left in the can. Its main entrance ramp had been lowered to touch the cold metal of the host ship, and a stream of silver VNMs totally encircled the black-and-white ship: Kevin’s domain trying in vain to assert its mastery over the re-formed vessel. Occasionally one of the VNMs would venture up the ramp, only to be beaten back by some invisible force. Trailing behind the Bailero, unnoticed yet by anyone save Aleph, two more systems repair robots drifted, following the signal that was being transmitted from the FE software that lurked at the heart of the Eva Rye: a signal that pulsed out for hundreds of light years all around. It was a simple message. It is Time.

  “Maurice, what do you think?”

  Maurice was staring up at the irregular pattern in the ceiling, lost in thought. He sat up in his seat and leaned forward, elbows on the desk. Judy was watching him dispassionately—did she guess his suspicions? He told a lie.

  “Me?” he began. “I’m wondering about how the Eva Rye came back to life. Where did the code for the FE software go when the ship was split into lots of little VNMs?”

  “Is this relevant?” Saskia asked. “We are talking about whether or not we should accompany Judy.”

  “Maybe it’s not relevant. But—” Actually, now he came to think of it, it was an interesting point. Where had the Eva Rye gone when it had been turned into VNMs? And therefore where had the FE software gone? It needed a large processing space on which to run. It couldn’t have continued to exist after being broken up into lots of little spiders.

  “I don’t know how it was done,” Maurice said. “How could FE software continue running when there was no processing space to support it? The Eva Rye was destroyed, split up into thousands of spiders…” He was thinking aloud now. “But just suppose it worked backwards. Just suppose there was some software that could run on its own, software that didn’t need hardware, or software that could form a supporting mechanism spontaneously?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Saskia said.

  Maurice slumped back in his chair and went back to staring at the ceiling. Is that what FE was? A piece of code that could spontaneously form the mechanism on which it ran? You could use it as a wrapper for anything: a sound, an idea.

  A soul?

  “Where does FE come from?” he asked again. “It just seems to have appeared at the edge of human space. Twenty years ago no one had even heard of it.”

  Judy understood. “Are you saying that maybe it just formed itself?”

  The silence was broken by another voice. Earth was calling.

  In the past five years only point three of one percent of the people that have entered the Earth system have left it again. Do you really want to come here? You are approaching a quarantined zone. Please change your course now.

  Everyone turned to Judy. She folded her arms, looking determined.

  “I told you,” she said. “I will go to Earth on my own.”

  “No way,” Saskia said, glancing at Miss Rose again. “We stick together. I’ve learned my lesson. Edward, what do you say?”

  They all looked at Edward, who had splayed his big hands across the glass tabletop.

  “I think we should get something to eat,” he said decisively. “We haven’t had breakfast yet.”

  They made their way to the living area. On Edward’s suggestion they set the viewing fields to enfold them with an external view from the Eva Rye . They ate scrambled eggs and smoked bacon in a blue ice cavern that was slipping between the stars, diving towards the dark center of the Earth system.

  “I think we should have music,” said Edward. “Maurice, can you choose something?”

  Maurice looked at them, wondering what to play. Then he had a sudden flash of blinding clarity. He wasn’t choosing something for Edward, or Saskia, or Miss Rose, or even Judy. There was no one here that he was trying to impress.

  “Maurice?” said Edward.

  Maurice placed his console on the table next to his plate and thoughtfully stroked it to life. What would he himself like to hear?

  The voice of a choir filled the cold blue space. I Love My Love, sang a capella. An ice cavern, unaccompanied voices, and smoked bacon. And beyond that the cold stars slipping past, while behind them drifted the broken crosses of systems repair robots. Miss Rose was eating her bacon and eggs, and sipping tea that Saskia poured her from a pot. Judy was neatly cutting yellow squares of scrambled egg with her fork and daintily putting them in her mouth. Edward was gulping down apple juice. Look at us, thought Maurice. Who planned all this? I’ve been set adrift amongst these people for a reason. This is the sort of thing that Social Care does, yet it doesn’t feel like Social Care.

  There was a flicker on his console.

  “Another contact,” he said. “The Uninvited. ”

  Saskia laughed. “Someone has a sense of humor.”

  They all looked to Edward. He recoiled under their gaze, hunched around his breakfast.

  “What?”

  “Speak to them,” said Saskia. “You’re the captain now.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Whatever feels ri
ght,” said Judy.

  Edward carefully laid down his knife and fork.

  “Hello?” he began.

  “Hello, Eva Rye . This is the Uninvited . Do you wish to engage in Fair Exchange?”

  Edward held out his hands, palms up, mutely asking the others what to do. They smiled back kindly.

  “Whatever you want, Edward,” Saskia said gently.

  “Er…Yes?” said Edward.

  “Excellent. My name is Miriam. I notice that our two ships are both running on the same time. Would you like to join us for breakfast?”

  “Yes, that would be nice.”

  There was a shimmering, and then the empty spaces around the table were occupied by the virtual crew of the Uninvited. There were seven of them, six humans and one robot. They were all handicapped in some way, missing limbs or suffering from palsy or simply gazing into space with a vacant look. Even the robot looked badly damaged: three long scars ran down the right-hand side of its torso. The derm there was disrupted; it had puckered and deformed into a bubbling black mass that stood out in marked contrast to the rest of its smooth grey body.

  “Nice ship,” said a dark-haired woman, gazing around the frosty interior of the Bailero. “Hi, I’m Miriam.” She only had one arm. She raised her single hand in greeting. The crew of the Eva Rye waited politely for Edward to speak. After a nudge from Judy, he got the idea.

  “Oh, I’m Edward. What’s that you’re eating?” He pointed to the yellow flakes on the plate in front of Miriam.

  “Smoked haddock,” she replied, giving him an appraising look. She knows, thought Maurice. She’s met people like him before . Miriam now spoke more slowly. “It’s nice to meet you, Edward. Do you realize that you are flying towards a very dangerous place?”

  “Yes,” said Edward. “But we made a promise.”

  “And you’re keeping it,” said Miriam. “Good for you, Edward. Now, let me introduce you to a friend of ours. He would like to go to Earth, too.”

  She looked towards the robot. The robot swivelled its badly dented face to look around the table.

  “Hi,” it said, “my name is Constantine.”

  Maurice set the Fair Exchange process in motion and gazed around at the crew of the Uninvited as they ate their breakfast. Willi, a young man with a big beaming smile, forked yellow flakes of fish into the quivering, drooling mouth of the redheaded woman sitting by him.

  “What’s the matter with her?” asked Maurice.

  “Cerebral palsy,” said the young man. “She has her good days and her bad days—don’t you, Carol?”

  The redheaded woman made a noise in her throat. Her hand banged up and down against the arm of the padded chair in which she sat.

  “You’d think there was a cure for all those illnesses,” Saskia said wonderingly.

  “Saskia!” exclaimed Judy. “Don’t be so rude!”

  “It’s okay,” Miriam said, and then more petulantly, “medical care seems to have stopped developing in the mid-twenty-first century.”

  “Just when the Watcher came to prominence,” added Constantine the robot. Everyone stared at the stump of Miriam’s missing arm.

  “How did you all meet?” asked Maurice.

  “We were being taken on a cruise out to the stars by Social Care,” said Willi. “We got caught in a region of Dark Plants and were rescued by a ship using FE. They offered us the choice of returning to Earth or of adopting FE ourselves. We chose FE.”

  “But why?” asked Judy.

  “Because we were tired of being looked after,” Miriam interrupted, a note of anger in her voice. “We thought it would be nice to take care of ourselves instead.”

  “But what if something happens to you?”

  “Then something happens to us,” Miriam said firmly, and that line of conversation was ended.

  “Circumstances uploaded,” Maurice said, glancing at his console. “FE is commencing.” He looked at Saskia, expecting her to say something sarcastic. To his pleasant surprise she didn’t seem to have noticed. She was listening carefully to Miss Rose. The old woman had hardly said a word since her emergence from the autodoc.

  “Who, who’d…?” she began in a hoarse whisper.

  “Easy, Miss Rose, take your time.”

  The contrast with the former Saskia could not be more marked: relaxed and warm in her white blouse, her little silver earrings sparkling.

  “What was that, Miss Rose?”

  “Who’d have thought it?” said Miss Rose in a thin whisper. “We’re all equal in the eyes of FE.”

  “What do you mean, Miss Rose?” asked Saskia, squeezing her cold parchment hand.

  “I mean him, ” said Miss Rose, a shaking hand pointing to Edward. “The dummy. Leave him on his own and he’d give the shirt off his back to the first person who asked for it. He’d be ripped off by every Tom, Dick, and Harry who came by. But put him on a ship with FE and he is the equal of anyone. Just like that lot sitting over there—the cripples.”

  Saskia tried to hush the old woman. None of the Uninvited seemed to mind, however. One or two of them even seemed amused.

  “That’s the thing, though,” continued Miss Rose, placing one finger on the table. “Even the stupid can’t be ripped off when all transactions go through FE.”

  “Hmm,” Saskia said thoughtfully. “Maurice,” she said suddenly, “maybe you were right. Where does FE

  come from? Aleph said that FE was the idea of some old guy from history.”

  Judy had stopped what she was doing in order to listen to the conversation.

  “I don’t know,” she said pensively. “I have tried to feel the software, but there is something so strange about it. I think Aleph is mistaken here. I get the feeling that we are dealing with something that is far older than humanity.”

  In the deepening silence that followed this announcement, Maurice looked at his console.

  “Fair Exchange will be completed in five minutes,” he announced.

  Miriam had finished her breakfast. She placed her fork on her plate and scratched her side awkwardly.

  “Listen,” she said. “In about one and a half hours’ time you will be entering the quarantined zone. There are things in there waiting for you; they’ll have locked onto your ship already. They will have even locked onto your individual personalities.” She paused, letting this sink in.

  “Our individual personalities?” Edward said.

  “You don’t all have to go to Earth. Why don’t some of you come on board the Uninvited ?” Miriam looked deliberately at Miss Rose.

  “Why not, Miss Rose?” asked Saskia. “You’ll be safer there.”

  Miss Rose shook her head. “I don’t think so, dear. Do you know why I’m here?”

  There was a shuddering crash at the end of the table as one of the Uninvited dropped her fork. Miss Rose smiled at the redheaded woman suffering from cerebral palsy.

  “I have my moments, too,” she sympathized. “Senile dementia. It’s odd, isn’t it? How we can build self-replicating machines and travel between the stars and yet we can’t cure conditions that are as old as human existence itself.”

  Miriam nodded in agreement.

  Miss Rose folded her hands around one of Saskia’s, holding it in the lap of her white shift.

  “When the first symptoms appeared, when I first began to forget things and to repeat myself, it was suggested that I take a cruise. That was Social Care again.” She turned to Judy. “What is it about you lot?” she asked. “The halt and the lame, you want to shift us all off planet. Out of sight, out of mind, is it?”

  Miss Rose’s voice had begun to crack. “Edward, be a good lad and get me some water.”

  Edward returned with the glass. She took a sip.

  “I never liked space,” Miss Rose continued. “I never wanted to travel. And yet there I was on a ship. Passing through the Earth Domain. Embarrassing people by asking them their names over and again, like each time I met them it was for the first time. Embarrassing myself. And then w
e met the Changes . An FE ship. I don’t think Social Care knew what FE was at that time, otherwise they would never have let their crew come aboard. We got chatting. They asked me what I wanted.”

  Maddeningly, Miss Rose paused to slowly sip her water again.

  “And what did you say, Miss Rose?” prompted Saskia.

  “I said I didn’t want to continue like this,” Miss Rose said. She placed her glass on the table. “I said I wanted to do something important.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “They consulted their FE software,” Miss Rose said. “It said I could have what I wanted.”

  “And what did you have to give in return?” Maurice asked.

  “Me. I was sold as cargo to the Changes . And then I was sold to the Yellow River, and then I was sold to you.”

  She turned around to Miriam. “And that’s why I think I will remain here on the Eva Rye, ” she said. Maurice’s console chimed. “The Exchange is completed,” he said. Then he gave a laugh. “And you’re not going to believe this, but this time we’re actually going to be paid! They’re going to pay us for taking Constantine on board!”

  “What?” asked Saskia, brimming with hope.

  Maurice made to speak and then he stopped himself.

  Seated there at a glass table at the bottom of a huge blue ice bubble, sharing breakfast with the old, the handicapped, and a robot, Maurice raised a finger and tapped the side of his nose. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Where is Constantine?” Edward asked impatiently. He stood at the foot of the lowered entrance ramp of the Eva Rye , dancing with impatience.

  “I don’t know,” Maurice said. “Kevin! Can you see him?”

  Kevin, the voice of the Bailero, spoke from Maurice’s console.

  “He is two hundred meters distant from my hull now. I will put a light over his entrance.”

  A yellow spotlight shone down from somewhere, illuminating a patch of frost about thirty meters away from the foot of the ramp.