Then the feeling vanished. Judy registered what Saskia had said.
“No,” said Judy. “I mean, yes, yes. I’m fine. Come on now, Miss Rose.”
Past the open door of the conference room, Maurice was in there, whispering something into his console.
“I thought you were looking after Edward!” Saskia said accusingly.
“He’s okay,” Maurice said, looking up. “He’s down in the small hold at the moment, checking if there is any cargo we should salvage. I’m going there directly to help him.” He glanced at his console. “Listen, we’re approaching the region where the Watcher’s gaze is most intense, hence the flux of Dark Seeds will be most intense. Kevin and Aleph say we’ve got about twenty minutes until we run into trouble, but I reckon it’s only fifteen. Basically, once you’re in the shuttle, stay there! I’ll join you ASAP.”
“Okay, Maurice.” Saskia blushed. “You make sure you and Edward are in there in time. Don’t do anything silly.”
Maurice looked at her, softening enough to give her a tight little smile in return.
“I won’t,” he said. He folded up his console and walked quickly off. At a much slower pace, the three women followed him. They shuffled along, past the conference room and around the complicated junction where the corridors leading to the two holds and the living areas and the exits met. The ceiling there sloped downwards, following the curve of the teardrop hull that lay just beyond it. Saskia and Judy slipped their arms through Miss Rose’s, holding tighter as they stepped forward over the corner of the large hold. Miss Rose gave a little scream as the variable gravity pulled them around through two hundred and forty degrees.
The air of the ship pulsated: it felt greasy and too warm. It felt as if something was trying to snatch hold of them. Judy could half hear distant calls, imagining that someone was speaking to her, trying to catch her attention, an effect of the increasing flux of Dark Seeds.
But there was something else as well.
They had walked a good fifty meters down the corridor when Judy felt it again. The black-carpeted corridor of the ship faded away, leaving her standing in greyness. Now she could smell grass and flavored vodka.
“What is it? Judy, what is it?” Saskia’s thin face wavered into focus. The real world was reasserting itself. Judy felt the bony arm of Miss Rose clasped in her hand. She felt dizzy.
“Saskia, can you go on with Miss Rose? I just need to check on something…”
“We’ve only got fifteen minutes!”
But Judy was already gone. Back up around the kink in the corridor to the twisted knot of the junction. She looked back along to the living area. The smell of spiced lamb still hung heavy in the air. All else was dead. Heavy silence filled the abandoned rooms at the forward end of the ship. The silence of the tomb?
“Maurice?” she called. There was no reply. “Kevin? Aleph?”
They should have been able to hear her. They had senses all the way through the ship. Why couldn’t they hear her?
Five corridors led away from the junction, twisted at strange angles by the geometry of the ship. There was a voice calling to her, but Judy didn’t know from where. She closed her eyes and concentrated, and the silver machinery of the meta-intelligence lit up in her head. She was here, somewhere. There she was again. Only this time her voice was clearer. It was like someone had flung open a window on a summer’s day, to let in the fresh air and the feel of the wind.
Judy opened her eyes.
The geometry of the junction had changed: there were now six corridors. Six corridors seemed to suit the space better; corridors ran up and down and also north, south, east, and west. This was how the junction should be, thought Judy. One of the corridors had been hidden all along, and no one had ever noticed it.
She fumbled at her console, setting an alarm to sound in five minutes, and then in ten, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen minutes. She had to be on the shuttle when the Eva Rye hit the exclusion zone, whatever happened. She didn’t want to be trapped out here in the empty, ghostly decks of the ship, all alone with the Dark Seeds. She didn’t want to be pulled down and tied by BVBs, left shouting into the pulsating air for help that wouldn’t come.
Outwardly calm, her heart pounding, she stepped forward into the sixth corridor.
This corridor felt cooler than the others. The walls and floor seemed to retain the coldness of space, and the air felt as if the chill was still being warmed off it. Had this part of the ship been sealed off completely from the living spaces, until its awakening? Tentatively, she padded on. The black-and-white patterns on the walls faded, leaving only bare metal, and Judy had the impression she was approaching the heart of the ship. The carpet thinned to nothing, there was nothing but the beat of her footsteps and the claustrophobic feel of grey metal closing in around her.
Eventually, the corridor came to an end at a black-and-white striped hatch. Judy contemplated a koan, trying to calm herself.
The hatch slid open.
It made sense when she thought about it later. Spaceships were built by AIs; in fact, they were VNMs that reproduced themselves. They came therefore in two parts: a machine part, and a part for humans to live in. There were no access hatches for humans to reach the processing spaces or the engines. Why should there be when the machines constructed, maintained, and repaired themselves? So the corridor that led to the processing space of the Eva Rye had been constructed specifically for her use. Judy realized she had never even seen a processing space before. She lived in a world designed, built, and run by processing spaces, but she had never actually seen one in the flesh, as it were. And now she was right in the presence of one. A silver sphere, half her own height, it floated in the middle of the room. Not just any processing space, this one housed the FE software that resided in the Eva Rye: that strange, unliving thing that even now the meta-intelligence was straining to see. The room was not much larger than herself. If she were to stand in the middle, her head where that shimmering globe hung, and if she were to reach out her arms wide, she would almost be able to touch the walls.
She cleared her throat, wondering if she should speak. Something else spoke first.
“Five minutes gone.”
It was her console. She relaxed, feeling both relieved and disappointed. Five minutes had elapsed since she had left Saskia and Miss Rose. In ten minutes from now she had to be on the shuttle.
“Er, hello?” she called.
She wasn’t used to feeling such hesitation. Her voice sounded dull and empty; it did not echo back from the leaden walls of the chamber.
“Why have you brought me here?”
No response. She looked at the shimmering sphere with her eyes; it seemed almost transparent, a series of silverishly clear layers built one on top of the other, gradually obscuring the processing space’s interior. She looked at the sphere through the meta-intelligence and she saw…exactly the same thing, a silverish sphere. There was a lump in her throat as she realized the implication: this processing space was defined in terms of itself. The processing space hardware was written out of the software that ran upon it. What did that mean, though? She strained to understand. What had Maurice been talking about earlier, about the way the Eva Rye had re-formed itself? About software forming its own hardware—was that possible? Understanding seemed to hover, teasing, just out of her reach. What now, then?
She looked at the processing space through MTPH.
Judy was standing in Eva Rye’s apartment, just by the dining table. Through the window she could see evening settling over the landscape of the Kamchatka peninsula. A half-full glass of tea steamed on the table beside her, its rim speckled with yellow crumbs from the half-eaten golden madeleine that lay beside it.
Judy reached out and felt the warmth of the wood of the table, and in doing so she noted her white hand, her black fingernails. She was here as herself, not as Eva Rye. The door to the bedroom clicked open and Eva Rye walked into the room. She stopped when she saw the stranger in her lounge. The two
women stared at each other.
“I know you,” said Eva. “You’re Judy, aren’t you? I dream about you sometimes.”
Eva had had her long silver-grey hair done; it was clipped back neatly with a silver clasp. She wore lipstick and mascara and smelled of perfume. She wore a long yellow dress over dark tights and pair of patent leather shoes. Judy suddenly felt very frumpy, standing next to her in her black passive suit.
“I dream about you, too,” she said.
“But which one of us is real?” asked Eva.
“We both know it’s me,” Judy said.
Eva tilted her head as she tried to put in a silver earring.
“Let me,” said Judy, taking it from her.
Eva winced as Judy inexpertly threaded the silver loop of the earring through the pierced hole in her earlobe. That made Judy feel even more inadequate. There had been a time in her life when she too had taken great care with her appearance, but that had been about show, not about making herself desirable.
“Thank you,” Eva said. She stood checking her appearance in the mirror.
“I used to get dressed up as well,” Judy said apologetically. She needed to explain to Eva. “I used to wear silk kimonos.”
Eva didn’t seem to hear her. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. “Only Ivan will be here any minute. He said seven thirty, and he’s always exactly on time.”
“Is he bringing Katya?”
“Oh, yes,” Eva said, “poor little Katya.” Her expression hardened. “Don’t look at me like that, Judy. You don’t know what it’s like to have to deal with her.”
So she feels the need to apologize, too.
“I never said anything.”
“Look, Judy, ten more minutes or so and you’ll be back on the ship, but I’ll be left here, still living this life.”
“You’re not making sense, Eva. Are you real or not?”
Eva put her hands to her head, as if to run them through her hair, and then she remembered that it was set for her night out. She settled instead on smoothing down the yellow fabric of her dress around her hips.
“Am I real? Look, you saw how the ship was put back together, didn’t you? The Eva Rye has resurrected itself in the hold of the Bailero. I think somebody has done that to my life. My mind has come alive again in yours.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. MTPH? That’s the sort of thing it does. The Watcher said something to me years ago.”
She hesitated. “Years ago in my life, I mean. He said that MTPH was going to play a major part in human development. I’ve often wondered just what he meant. I always guessed he meant the way that it was made use of by Social Care, but now I’m not so sure. Maurice said that, didn’t he? He said, What if there was some sort of wrapper you could place around code which made it persistent? What if the Watcher did it to my mind, all those years ago?”
“But why?”
“Because it is the Watcher. Didn’t you ever wonder about the name? There are some who watch, and some who listen, and some who do. That is the basic flaw in its personality: it watches above all else. It watched me, it still watches me. It has based all its life and its work on what it perceived in my emotions, all those years ago.”
“What did it see?”
“That’s what we’re about to see. The moment is coming, Judy. Live it out with me.”
The assembly hall of the Narkomfin had been poured from concrete. It made a rectangular box that muffled sound, light, and spirit.
Still, the residents had done their best to bring it to life, draping banners and bunting over the walls, laying plastic tablecloths over the trestle tables and sprinkling them with metal confetti, setting flimsy bimetal motors in the heart of huge arrangements of balloons so that brightly colored clouds and rocket ships and baskets of flowers wobbled slowly past overhead.
The air was filled with the smell of baked potatoes and black peas, hot coffee and pies and cakes and sausages boiled in brine. The atmosphere in the hall was warming; the people could not yet generate enough bonhomie to fill the grey space, and yet they pressed on, creating little bubbles of jollity in the echoing building.
Ivan entered the room, wheeling Katya in her chair, Eva at her side. Katya wore a pair of embroidered blue jeans and a white peasant blouse. That style had been the fashion back in the outside world when she had first come here to the Russian Free States.
Three of the more severely handicapped were parked in their own wheelchairs by the door, handing out programs to those coming in. One of them was having an episode, his head banging rhythmically against the back of his chair. Eva and the rest politely ignored him.
“There’s Paul,” said Katya, waving to a young man in a striped shirt who was standing near a table set out with two great samovars. “You can leave me over there, Dad.”
Ivan gave a grunt and pushed his daughter towards the young man. Eva walked along beside, proud to be with him. Ivan had put on a white shirt that he wore open-necked beneath a patterned black waistcoat. He had carefully pressed his trousers and polished his shoes. Eva even felt a sting of obscure affection for the ridiculous thick gold chain he wore on his right wrist. He was so obviously doing his best to look smart for her.
Paul gave a big smile of delight and knelt down to kiss Katya on the cheek.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked, doing his best not to catch Ivan’s eye.
“Yes, white, please.”
Ivan’s voice was filled with gentle menace. “If you get my daughter drunk I will break your legs.”
Katya rolled her eyes. “Oh, ignore him,” she said. “He just thinks he’s being funny.”
“That’s right,” Ivan growled. “I’m only joking. Come on, Eva.”
He held out his arm and led her across the floor to a seat with a view of the stage. As they sat down Ivan caught Paul’s eye. Unseen by his daughter, Ivan brought his fists together and twisted them in reverse to make a snapping motion.
Eva elbowed him in the ribs. “Leave him alone. You were his age once.”
“Yes, that is why I threaten him.”
The brass band had been playing onstage. Now they sat down, shiny cornets and horns laid on their laps as a young girl of about seven or eight walked to the front. The audience stilled. Eva heard one or two Aaaws as the child raised a cornet that seemed two sizes too big for her to her lips. She paused and looked uncertainly to the conductor of the band, her blond hair patterned in brown and gold under the lights. There was a nod, she took a breath and began to play “Away in a Manger.”
“But it’s not Christmas,” Ivan said.
“Shhhh,” Eva said. “She’s very good.”
“No she isn’t,” Ivan replied, looking up at the little girl. The cornet was so big, relatively speaking, that she had to tilt her head downwards and rest the instrument on her chest to play it. “She isn’t quite in tune, she keeps splitting notes. What you mean to say is she is very good for a seven-year-old.”
“Pedant,” said Eva. She squeezed his hand, the big gold chain around his wrist knocking against her knuckles.
Ten minutes. That was Judy’s console alerting her again. Out in the real world, the spaceship Eva Rye was approaching danger .
I have to go soon, said Judy. What are you trying to show me?
Wait and see, we’re almost there.
The little girl finished playing and there was a huge round of applause. The brass band began to play again, a bright, lively tune that seemed to stumble and pause every so often as it progressed.
“I do not recognize this tune,” Ivan said.
“I do,” said Eva. “It’s called ‘Hail Smiling Morn.’ They used to play this in the North West Conurbation, back in the spring. I remember the words….”
She tilted her head and listened carefully, finding her place in the tune. “ … who the gay face of nature doth unfold…” she sang.
Ivan tapped his foot in time. “I like this,” he said. “Very good.”
Eva felt so happy. They were sitting comfortably together, Ivan’s hand gently holding her own in her lap. They squeezed each other’s hands at exactly the same moment, and then looked at each other, both of them at a loss for words. Eva suddenly wanted to blow her nose. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief. Ivan studied the program again.
“It says it is Mr. Meyer’s group now,” he said.
Mr. Meyer walked onto the stage, carrying a shiny brown guitar. He was already speaking and there was a moment of silence while the directional microphone searched for him.
“…practicing now for the past three months. Let’s give them a round of applause.”
Eva clapped loudly as Mr. Meyer’s group limped, stumbled, or were wheeled onto the stage. They carried drums and tom-toms and maracas and tambourines and cymbals. They shook and drooled and clattered and rattled like a decrepit steam engine, a complete contrast to the sweetly controlled pressure of the brass band that had gone before them. One of them was beating at his cymbal before Mr. Meyer had even begun to strum on his guitar, beating it harder and harder…
Twelve minutes! Come on, Eva…
I’m getting there.
What do they look like, those people on the stage? I can’t see them properly, just their outlines. I can hear the awful noise they are making, the way they’re never on the beat. There is one there who is getting so excited it’s embarrassing; he’s beating at that drum harder and harder like he is going to come, and everybody in the audience knows it but no one wants to admit it. I can see their fixed smiles, all of them sitting around us. I can hear them whispering to each other, “Isn’t it nice that they are involved, isn’t it nice what Mr. Meyer has done with them? Look how happy they are!” Only I can’t see how happy they are because you never looked properly, did you, Eva?
Don’t lie to me. I was Social Care. I know what you felt: you were too embarrassed to really look at them and see the slack-eyed stupidity and hear the guttural cries and moans and gasps, and hear that mad beating in the background…
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