Divergence

by Tony Ballantyne

  “Okay.”

  Maurice went into his bathroom and stepped behind the smoked-glass screen of the shower cubicle. Mist rose and was sucked up by the extractor above. As he rubbed himself down with grapefruit cleansing gel, he felt his body tingling to life. Stepping from the shower into the clean black-and-white tiled room beyond, he felt fresh and rested. He dried himself with a thick white towel, a scribble of black decorating the border, and then shaved, feeling alive and ready for anything. This was what Social Care was good at, he reflected. Manipulating people to do what was right for them. That’s what the Watcher was supposed to do; that’s what it had set out to do, anyway.

  Then he recalled his thoughts on falling asleep last night. What else was Social Care good at? What was Judy playing at?

  He was just wondering about this when the message sounded from his console.

  Eva Rye, this is a warning. You are approaching a quarantined zone. Please alter your course at your earliest convenience. Do not approach Earth.

  Judy was waiting for them all in the conference room, her arms folded.

  Saskia followed Maurice into the room. Her business suit was gone; in its place she wore a white blouse and a pair of blue jeans that hung loosely from her narrow hips. Little teardrops of silver hung from her ears. She smiled politely at Maurice and sat down at the thick glass table in the seat opposite to him, next to Miss Rose. The old woman sat up stiffly, her skin still bearing the slightly fluorescent bloom of the autodoc. She looked healthy, but her eyes held a slightly glazed look, the effect of the memory-repressing drugs she was being fed. Maurice looked away from her. The drugs were the only thing between her and the horrific memory of those creatures forcing their way into her body and plumbing themselves directly into her nervous system. Maurice felt nauseated at very thought.

  Edward sat next to Judy, staring up at her. He could see it, too, Maurice realized; he felt Judy’s fatigue. Not physical, but mental fatigue at holding a mind twisted into one shape for so long. She was ready to snap. Nonetheless, when she spoke, her voice was as calm as ever.

  “We’re approaching Earth,” she said. “You probably heard the message.”

  “Who was that speaking?” asked Saskia. Maurice was surprised to note that she was holding Miss Rose’s hand.

  “The Watcher,” said Judy. “Or one of his mouthpieces. It’s not safe to go to Earth. The Dark Plants are all through the system. The Watcher doesn’t like anyone going in or coming out.

  “But we’re going in?” said Edward.

  “Only if you decide it, Edward,” said Judy. “You’re in charge now.”

  Edward turned to Saskia, his face twisted with worry.

  “Judy is correct,” said Saskia. “You’re in charge now. You must do whatever you think is right, Edward.”

  Edward frowned. What was he thinking about right now? How does his mind work, and why is it so much slower than mine?

  “We made a deal,” Edward said eventually. “We have to take Judy to Earth.”

  “No, you don’t,” Judy said. “The Eva Rye has to take me to Earth. You can all board the Bailero and go somewhere else.”

  “No way, Judy.”

  The voice came from a silver spider sitting on the table. Maurice realized that it had been there all along.

  “I don’t recall inviting you to our meeting, Kevin,” Judy said easily.

  “I’m a member of this crew now,” said the spider.

  “Actually, you’re part of the cargo, Kevin,” she replied. If Maurice hadn’t known better, he would have said that Judy was smirking. “You were traded to this ship as part of a Fair Exchange conducted by the Free Enterprise.”

  “So I was. And if you take the Eva Rye and leave me behind, I will judge the trade to be over. I will revert to being a free agent. Anybody left on board my ship will then become my property. I suggest you take your crew with you, Judy.”

  “They’re not my crew, they’re Edward’s.”

  “You can all do what you like,” Edward said.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Saskia said. “We’re all coming with you, Judy. We’re not staying behind with that mad fucker.” She pointed to the silver spider on the table.

  Judy spoke matter-of-factly. “If Kevin is going to be a problem, we will just wipe him from the processing space.”

  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 right,” 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.”