Divergence a-3

by Tony Ballantyne

  “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 down 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.

  Constantine continued: “We’ll fly to Earth inside the shuttle, that way we have three ships’ hulls between us and anything the Watcher cares to throw at us. If necessary, we’ll ram the Bailero straight onto the surface of the Earth itself.”

  “Why are we all acting as if this is going to be such a problem?” Edward asked. “What’s waiting for us down there?”

  Constantine saw Judy shiver.

  “Worse things than you can possibly imagine, Edward,” she said. “A selfless world of love and happiness.”

  Maurice was looking across at the crippled venumb, still dragging its splintering foot across the white tiles.

  “First the active suits, then the kittens, then the venumbs,” he murmured. “You know, when you look at it, maybe we haven’t been so badly stiffed after all. Everything that we’ve taken on board this ship seems to have helped us along on our journey. Or to be more precise, helped Judy get a little closer to Earth.”

  He gave a ghoulish smile. “I wonder when we’ll find out what our part in the delivery process is going to be?”

  interlude: 2249

  Kevin denied that he was an AI. True, he was software that ran on processing spaces; true, he had been written by DIANA to be an artificial intelligence, but Kevin disputed his status as such. Quite simply, he claimed not to be intelligent. He would argue that he was nothing more than a set of yes/no branches.

  Kevin stated that he was not evil, that he was incapable of cruelty. Those descriptions could only be applied to sentient beings, and Kevin was adamant that he was not sentient. Three days ago EA processing space number 4 had been bustling with digital life. AIs, personality constructs of human beings, had all made that place their home.

  Now they were all dead.

  —Why? Why did you do it?

  Kevin just smiled at the Watcher.

  —There must be some reason.

  Kevin shrugged. —I wanted to see if Dark Seeds could reach into processing spaces. Apparently they can.

  —I don’t believe that’s the reason, the Watcher said. —It was obvious they could. Dark Plants can communicate with anything. It was only a matter of time before they found their way in. Why did you really do it?

  Kevin just smiled again. He was a big man, good looking. He could give a bad little boy smile that could melt the stoniest of hearts. Not today.

  —It’s about sending messages, isn’t it? continued the Watcher. —You killed Judy’s sisters just to get her attention. Whose at
tention are you trying to attract now?

  —Yours.

  And then Kevin wasn’t there at all. In his place was another Dark Seed, already beginning to grow, reacting to the Watcher’s intelligence. The Watcher eliminated the seed without any fuss. It was second nature by now. Kevin would keep trying this.

  That was the trouble with Kevin. There were so many copies of the basic AI, and none of them cared about dying. They would just keep trying this attack over and over until maybe it succeeded.

  This gave the Watcher pause for thought. Maybe it was true. Maybe Kevin was not intelligent. He didn’t care about his own death. Did that mean he would not care about his own suffering?

  judy and eva

  Saskia and Judy helpedMiss Rose move down to the large hold.

  “Easy now,” said Saskia. “There’s no hurry.”

  “What about my bag? I’ve got all my things in there.”

  “I’ve got it.” Judy held it up for Miss Rose to see. They shuffled on past the recreation room, the old woman they supported feeling heavy and fragile at the same time. Weak joints holding together brittle bones, the warm smell of liver-spotted skin—Judy’s Social Care experience meant she was used to it, but Saskia was struggling bravely to hide her revulsion. The smell of spicy lamb filled the corridor as they headed past the living area, Saskia guiding Miss Rose’s feet carefully across the black carpet.

  “Where are we going?” the old woman asked plaintively. You could still hear in it remnants of the pain of her violation.

  “To the large hold,” Saskia said. “We’re going to get into the shuttle, just to be safe.”

  “Are we on Earth yet?”

  “We’re nearly there. We touch down first thing tomorrow morning, isn’t that right, Judy? Judy? Are you okay?”

  Judy didn’t hear. She’s here, she thought. She’s here on the ship. But that’s impossible . She had felt the edge of her consciousness, as clear as if she had taken MTPH and she was standing right in front of her. But that wasn’t all: the meta-intelligence had cut in, too, at the same moment. Something bright and mechanical and shiny had materialized just around the corner. She could almost hear it, ticking away like a clock.