‘I gave you a few days to learn the ropes, so to speak, and there has been much here to divert me. But our business is only just beginning. You must still be undecided to have come all the way out here.’
‘Time is not an issue,’ said the sail.
‘I disagree. It very much is an issue.’
‘It might be for you, but I am a complete entity. I owe nothing to how I was made.’
‘Then death is an issue,’ said Wade.
The Golem sail hissed and swung its head away, then abruptly swung it back, stopping only half a metre from where Wade sat. He was uncomfortably aware that not only was he the focus of a pair of emerald eyes, but also the focus of a particle cannon. It was utterly illogical that an entity so hating death would carry such potent means of delivering it. Wade turned his head away and peered down towards the activity on the deck.
‘And it is certainly very much the issue aboard this ship, hence our interest. Are reifications dead, and once dead can they live again? Why do Hoopers value the potential of death, then bank it?’
‘They know Death, and they fight to defeat it.’
‘Then we are in agreement. You understand, and it is time to tell your other self.’
‘We are not in agreement. Reifications are truly dead. Hoopers are alive.’
‘So you believe, as humans once did, in a soul?’
‘Life is the totality: body and mind, and their sum, their synergy. Death is the antithesis that must be destroyed. I will begin that destruction and… live.’
Zephyr’s eyes were flickering like faulty lamps, and Wade sensed some of the turmoil the Golem sail was suffering. He knew that turmoiclass="underline" the war fought between emotion and intellect inside all conscious beings… even sane ones.
‘You are not alive,’ he said.
‘I am alive,’ Zephyr growled.
‘No. You claim reifications are dead, yet how are they different to you? They are minds loaded to crystal, just like you are, and just like our progenitor could be, if you could persuade yourself of that fact.’
‘Am alive!’
Zephyr swung his head away, then cracked it back hard. Wade went backwards off the spar, then was hurtling down towards the midship deckhouse. Human emulation made him grab air as if trying to slow his descent, then he overcame this reflex and relaxed. Hitting the bubble-metal roof of the deckhouse with a crash, he cratered it. Lying there, reflecting on the changes the real world had already wrought in Zephyr, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. As they halted, one of the Hooper crew leaned over to peer down at him.
‘That were a hard landing. What happened?’
Heaving himself out of the man-shaped dent, Wade looked around as if dazed. He noticed the rails all around the roof; the tables bolted to it ready to take umbrellas and be surrounded by chairs. After a moment he realized he was not fooling this Hooper. For some reason they had known what he was almost immediately. He guessed that the sizeable dent was also a bit of a giveaway.
‘Just a little disagreement.’ He winced.
‘Your evidence is not entirely satisfactory,’ said the Warden.
Hovering a hundred metres above the sea, with the two smaller drones on either side of him, Sniper repressed his frustration. Returning to the search after locating the Vignette, he tried repeatedly to convince the Warden that its sinking should be investigated further, but the Warden had a hornet in its bonnet about this hive-mind agent, and considered finding that intruder a lot more important. Sniper disagreed; Prador, as far as he was concerned, were a lot more dangerous than stinging insects.
He protested, ‘I ain’t trying to convince a legal submind. I just think this is something I should investigate. And we’ve looked under every rock in this area, and checked every ship—but no agent.’
‘Then it is time to widen the search.’
Sniper hissed and spun about like a coin.
The Warden continued, ‘If you believe Prador are down there, did you neglect to record their ship’s arrival while you acted as Warden, or did they come by runcible?’
‘No need to be sarky. There’s another possibility.’
‘Yes, the newly adult Prador that left the Seagre island ten years ago. It would perhaps have been better if you had ensured its demise at the time.’
‘Well. I set a molly carp after the bastard, and he was at least fifteen kilometres from its dad’s ship,’ Sniper replied grumpily. ‘Anyhow, I was busy, and most of the SM shells were scrap by then.’
‘Busy?’
‘Well… it took me a while to take on your role. It’s complicated up there.’
‘Complicated,’ the Warden repeated flatly. Then after a long pause: ‘Actually you were right. The chances of the Prador surviving the molly carp were slim, but the chances of it surviving aboard its father’s ship were utterly remote.’
‘There, y’see?’
‘So where did the Prador come from that supposedly sank the Vignette?’
‘Bollocks,’ Sniper muttered.
‘Precisely, as you say, “Bollocks.” Now let us look at the facts. The Golem agent of an ancient hive mind is loose down there for as yet unknown purposes. Has it not occurred to you there may be a connection?’
‘Why would a hive mind want to sink a ship and take its crew?’ Sniper asked. ‘That’s the Prador way of operating—taking the human crew to use as blanks.’
‘I don’t know, but some connection does seem likely.’
‘Nope,’ said Sniper stubbornly. ‘I still think it’s Prador.’
‘Then what do you propose?’
‘Check out Ebulan’s ship. I can get there in a few hours.’
Again a long pause. Sniper sensed something like confusion through the link. It occurred to him that the Warden’s long confinement might have sapped the AI’s confidence.
‘Very well, do so. But I want the geological drones to continue the search, and you to return to it the moment you’ve ascertained the position.’
The Warden then cut the connection.
Sniper did not try to analyse why the Warden had now changed its mind. He dropped out of the sky, then engaged his fusion engines. As he shot away he sent back to Eleven and Twelve, ‘Come on slowpokes, get those burners on.’
As Ambel peered through his binoculars, what he saw evinced in him some surprise, and for the Old Captain that was no common occurrence.
‘Definitely a ship’s boat, and there’s someone waving from it,’ he announced.
‘Can’t have been out at sea here for long—wouldn’t have survived the first rhinoworm to come along,’ observed Boris.
‘Well let’s pick ‘em up before one does happen by,’ Ambel replied.
Boris eased the helm over, and Galegrabber eased himself and his fabric brethren to the optimum angle. The Treader curved in towards the smaller craft, foaming out a white wake in the stiff breeze. The men in the boat began rowing hard to intercept the ship’s course.
Climbing up to the bridge, Anne observed, ‘We’ll have to reef to pick them up—it’ll slow us.’ Down below, Peck had already unwrapped his shotgun.
‘That’s as maybe,’ said Ambel, ‘but we can’t leave the lads to die. Anyway, we’re out over deep water now, so there shouldn’t be any problem with big angry molluscs.’
‘That’s good.’ Anne turned to stare behind them.
As they finally drew in beside the small boat, Boris shouted at Galegrabber, ‘Reef ’em!’ after the sail seemed a little reluctant. Muttering to itself, it pulled the reefing cables that wadded the fabric sails up against their spars, then climbed high up the mast, peering nervously all about. Ambel frowned at it, then climbed down to the main deck.
‘You all right there, lads?’ he asked, leaning over the side. He vaguely recognized the two men in the boat, which probably meant they were juniors, as he clearly recognized every senior crewman. How could he not, having known them for centuries?