“What did you think was happening, Iokan?”
He looked tired, but not embarrassed; just worn out on a level deeper than the body. “I thought she’d come for me.”
“She can’t do that, Iokan. She’s not even in this universe. And she won’t come for you. You remember what she said as well as I do.”
He didn’t answer. He looked away.
“Iokan?”
He shook his head, despairing. I feared we would lose him to a bout of depression, and didn’t notice Elsbet sneaking up and looking over my shoulder. “Well hello there…” she said, suddenly seeing the image of a very naked Iokan.
He looked back up at the ghostly video image projected into the fog. “Who was that?”
“This is private,” I snapped at her. Too harsh, and I regretted it instantly.
She didn’t care. She waved merrily at the pad. “Hi there, Iokan! Remember me?”
He looked up, confused. “Katie?”
“No!” she cried. “It’s me!’
His eyes went wide. “Elsbet…?”
“That’s the one!”
“You came back…”
She grinned at me. “Oh, he’s clever, isn’t he?” She looked back at him, and his naked body. “Bloody hell, did I really turn you down?”
Iokan looked down at himself, and quickly hid his genitals.
“Okay, Elsbet, I think that’s enough, don’t you?”
“Aw…” she backed off with a disappointed pout. I looked back at Iokan.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m glad she’s well. Did she have the treatment?”
“She did.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“The medical staff will be with you in a moment. Do you think you’ll be able to sit down and have a chat once you’re inside?”
He paused, and I thought for a moment he would withdraw again. But then he looked up at me and said, “I will.”
10. Iokan
Iokan sat in the remote meeting room, swaddled in blankets, sipping at a warm drink and looking introspective. Not depressed, though certainly tired. I activated the link between the centre and the room I was in at the hospital. “How are you doing?” I asked.
“Well enough,” he said.
“Do you mind if I sit down?”
“How could I?”
“Thank you.” I took one of the seats next to him.
“How did Elsbet come back?” he asked.
“You remember how Katie attempted suicide? Well, we had to do a lot of reconstruction work on her brain. I suppose whatever neural issue set off the change in the first place did the same thing again. When she woke up, she was Elsbet… and Elsbet agreed to the treatment.”
“You refused her before.”
“With all the brain damage, we couldn’t be sure if the change was permanent. We, ah, erred on the side of caution.”
He absorbed that with a nod. “Will Katie come back?”
“Probably not. It’s hard to tell, though.”
“You don’t like to let us go, do you?”
“We would have, in your case. But it wasn’t up to us. Szilmar made that choice.”
He put his head in his hands. “I still don’t understand…”
“I know it’s difficult. But if you’re willing to listen, there’s more I can tell you.” He looked up. “Szilmar had a long discussion with the Diplomatic Service. She gave us a rough outline of what happened.”
He closed his eyes and looked away. I went on.
“It seems the Antecessors were escaping from attacks on your world, three thousand years ago. They made a lot of enemies — you were right when you said they weren’t very nice people. At the time, your species had gone beyond the human form. But there was a fashion for dressing up in human bodies from time to time, and when the attacks came, a lot of people were trapped in those bodies. Those were your ancestors. Some of the others chose to escape using energy forms that were meant for interstellar travel. But they hadn’t had time to set up colonies, and there weren’t any machines out there to turn them back. So they were stuck in those forms, and they weren’t designed for long term use. Over the centuries, entropy took a toll, and by the time they came back, they were like children looking for someone else to play with. They didn’t understand that what they were doing was wrong.”
He was quiet for a long time, eyes still closed.
“I can give you the report to study, if you like.”
He opened his eyes again, and there were tears welling up in them. But he wiped them away and spoke. “Was it all… artificial?”
“What you felt about the Antecessors was real. But the way they started it was artificial, yes.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m… I…”
“It might take some time for you to come to terms with it. I think you still have some therapy to do.”
He put his head in his hands and sighed.
“But there’s something for you to think about.”
He looked up from his palms.
“The Antecessors, the new ones, are in discussions with the IU to see if we can help them rebuild your world. It’ll take time, with everything that’s happening at the moment. But we think we can give them back their bodies.”
There were tears in his eyes.
“And not just the adults. It’ll be harder, but we think we can bring back the children as well. Even the very youngest.”
And then he couldn’t control himself at all. His chin trembled and sobs came out.
“You’re not alone.”
11. Elsbet
After seeing Iokan, I decided I ought to look in on Elsbet again. I found her in her room, having lunch, with copious dessert: a sweet pudding smothered in syrup.
“This is incredible!” she said with her mouth full. “D’you want some?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said.
“Can’t anyway. It’s all mine.” She crammed in another mouthful. “Why does it taste so good?”
“Brand new tastebuds. Whatever you did to them in your old life, that’s gone now.”
“Balls. We didn’t have anything like this in general population, or the army. Only sugar we got was pills to keep us going…”
“You should be careful, you know. You don’t want to get overweight.”
“Who cares?” She licked her spoon to get every last trace from it.
“What kind of food did they have in the asteroids?”
Her look soured. “Fucking algae. Grew it in tanks, then they put flavour on it. Nothing like this.”
“You didn’t like living there, did you?”
“Nobody likes living there. Fucking machines.”
“What do you think will happen now they’re gone?”
She shrugged. “We were supposed to go back to Earth, so that’s not happening. I don’t know. Maybe they’ll build some proper space stations.”
“Was it so bad because you had to hide from the machines?”
“Course it was.”
“And you think it’ll get better now they’re gone?”
“Bound to.”
I nodded. “There might be a problem.” She put her spoon down and looked at me. “Katie told us a lot about how things went from the machines’ point of view…”
“She was lying. They always lie to us.”
“I don’t think so. You see, one of the things she said was that they sent expeditions to other star systems. It took decades for them to get there. But sooner or later they’re going to find out what happened. And when they do, they’re going to head back. There’s going to be another war. A Fourth Machine War.”
She didn’t answer.