“What do the ship’s computers think?” asked Ram.
“They think of us expendables as ambulatory input-output devices.”
“And how do you think of the computers?” asked Ram.
“As data repositories, backup, and very fast calculators.”
“I think you’re asking for too much authority,” said Ram.
“If there’s no authority, then we will fall into endless feedback loops.”
“How’s this: Every ship’s computers will regard orders from the expendables that are in their particular wallfold as representing the will of the human race, until humans in one or more of the wallfolds achieve a level of technology that allows them to pass through the field separating one wallfold from another, at which point, the expendables and ships’ computers are once again co-equal servants of the humans who achieve this breakthrough.”
“You are annoyingly foresighted,” said the expendable.
“You were not built to rule over human beings, but to be ruled by them,” said Ram.
“We exist to serve the best interests of the human race,” said the expendable.
“As defined by humans,” said Ram. “Ships’ computers, have you all understood?”
Voices murmured from the walls. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, nineteen times, the same answers being spoken in every chamber of nineteen ships.
“Take care of my children,” said Ram. “Don’t screw this up.”
He lay down. The stasis pod closed; gases entered the chamber and began the process of preparing Ram’s body to slow down all bodily processes. Then a complex foam filled the chamber, lifting him from the mat so that he was completely surrounded by a field-conducting layer that would absorb and dispel the heat of any sudden loss of inertia.
Ram slept like a carrot, his brain conducting no processes, his rational memories leaching away as the synapses shut down. Only his body memory remained—everything he knew how to do, he could still do. He just wouldn’t be able to remember why he should do it, not until his recorded brainstate was played back into his head as he awoke.
What he could not know, what the expendables never told him, was that nothing that happened since the jump through space was in the recording that would reestablish his conscious mind. He would remember making the decision to jump. Then he would wake up on the surface of Garden, knowing only whatever the expendables chose to tell him.
• • •
The Royalist Restoration began with the murder of Flacommo as he sat dozing in a chair in his own garden. It was early morning, but Flacommo often rose earlier than he wanted, and took a book out into the garden to read until he went back to sleep—if he could.
Rigg knew of this habit of Flacommo’s because he rose hours earlier, as he had trained himself to do, and used the time to survey the house and the city around him. He knew who was in the Great Library across the street; he knew where Umbo and Loaf were, asleep in their beds; he knew who was up and working in the kitchen, and where Mother and Param were, and which spies were on duty in the secret passages they knew about.
He knew when eight strangers came through the front gate of Flacommo’s house. Did the guard let them in? There seemed to be no hesitation there; they flowed like cream from a pitcher, they moved so smoothly. Yes, the guard must have let them through, for his path moved from the guardroom to the street. He was making his escape—whatever was about to happen in Flacommo’s house, he probably wanted to be somewhere else.
Rigg had been sleeping in an unused bedroom which he entered through a secret passage. He left the room immediately by the regular door, and hurried along the corridor. If there was time, he’d rouse the whole house to the danger of these intruders—but before he did anything else, he would warn Mother and Param.
Their room was never locked. Rigg entered and moved silently to Param, waking her first. They had already discussed what she should do if he wakened her like this—no word needed to be said. Param rose silently from her pallet at the foot of Mother’s bed and went out the door into the corridor.
Only when the door was closed did Rigg waken Mother. Her eyes flew open. “What is it?” she said.
“There are intruders inside the walls,” said Rigg. “If they’re here to kill you, it would be good for you to be outside this room.”
Mother was already up by now, pulling on a dressing gown, looking around the room. “Param is ready?”
“Hidden,” said Rigg.
“Good,” said Mother.
That was when Rigg sensed the paths of three of the intruders converge on Flacommo in the garden. At first he thought they had come to him for instructions. Then his path abruptly lurched forward, and the intruder’s paths followed, and then Flacommo’s path stopped and the intruders moved even more quickly away from him.
“Flacommo is dead,” said Rigg. “Or at least unconscious, but I think dead.”
“Oh,” said Mother. “Poor Flacommo. He loved this house. He bought it so I could live here with him. A place of refuge for me—but not for him.”
“We have to go, Mother. Whoever these intruders are, they’re violent men with murder on their minds.”
“Rigg, if they wanted me dead, they could have killed me in my sleep a thousand times,” said Mother.
“You mean the spies in the walls?” asked Rigg. Only then did he realize that the spy on duty was not moving; his path still led to the exact spot where it had come to rest the night before. Was he asleep? And still asleep, even though they were talking? They spoke softly, but audibly enough. Heavy sleepers did not make good spies.
Rigg had expected some kind of attack ever since he’d been here, but in his mind it was either a mob or the army or the city guards, storming the house and either killing everyone in sight—that would be the mob—or quickly taking control of the royal family. But these intruders were still moving so quietly that no one but Rigg himself—and, of course, Flacommo, if he wasn’t dead—had firsthand knowledge they were there.
“They’re coming directly toward your room now,” said Rigg. “Don’t you think this would be a good time for us all to leave?”
“No,” said Mother. Why was she so nonchalant?
“This isn’t like previous times, Mother. They killed Flacommo.”
“Sometimes it seemed that he was my only friend.” Not grieving, merely wistful.
“If you don’t care about your own safety, what about Param? What about me?”
“I care very much about you. I want you both right here in the room with me.”
He almost told her then—that Param was not in the room, not invisible. Param was already well inside the secret passages that only the two of them knew about. They had spent the past weeks exploring the whole system, finding how every door worked. It was a luxury for Param, to be unseen and yet able to move at a normal pace and hear all that was being said. Her invisibility had been a curse of a gift, cutting her off from everyone and everything except Mother. Now she could move throughout the house, spying on everyone—spying on the spies.
But apparently she hadn’t told Mother, and if Param had decided not to confide in her about this, Rigg was not going to disobey that decision.
Besides, it was now too late. The intruders were coming along the corridor and if he tried to leave, there’d be a chase, and he doubted Mother would be able to keep up. He couldn’t imagine her running full tilt, not because she was old or feeble but because she always moved with such dignity.
Why didn’t she say, “I’m going to stay, but you go ahead, Rigg”? Isn’t that what a mother would do? Or like a bird, why didn’t she drift out into the corridor and decoy them away from Rigg? Maybe because he wasn’t really a son to her, having been a stranger until a few months ago; maybe because in fact she thought he should have been killed at birth.
But shouldn’t she be steering them away from Param, whom she believed to be in this room? Or did she count on Param’s invisibility to protect her?
Nothing Mother was doing—or rather, not doing—made any sense at all. It’s as if she welcomed the coming of the intruders. But how could that be, if the first thing they did was to kill Flacommo? There was no need to kill him, regardless of what happened inside his house today. Flacommo was no danger to anyone.