Dark Ararat

It occurred to him then that he could not be entirelyreassured on that point. All he could see was an image, of a kind which even a stupid AI could maintain and animate.

“Thanks for this, Matthew,” Shen said, returning his attention to the camera’s eye. “I wouldn’t have expected any less of you, and it would be a pity if Captain Milyukov were to hold it against you. Be careful, Matthew. Whatever the new world is, it’s certainly no Eden—but that doesn’t mean we can’t make our peace with it. Earth was never an Eden either, no matter what the Gaean mythologists may say. We have to make the most of our experience, and we have to make a stand somewhere, or we’ll be on the run forever.” It had the ring of a farewell, and a dismissal—and also, perhaps, the suggestion of an olive branch extended in Konstantin Milyukov’s direction.

Matthew nodded, but realized that the light was too poor to allow the gesture’s meaning to be clear. “I’ll do my best,” he promised. “Not just for your sake, but for the sake of the children.” Shen would know that he meant all the children, not just Alice and Michelle.

“Good-bye, Matthew,” Shen said. He didn’t add: This will be the last time you ever see me, but it was understood between them.

The screen blanked out before he had time to reply.

Matthew decided that he had been right to make his break from Milyukov’s custody, no matter what effect it would have on the captain’s attitude and conduct. He had needed to see Shen. He had needed to see and know that the past wasn’t dead: that it had leapt the gulf of 700 years to extend itself rudely and proudly into the present. He had needed to get a grip on the fact that the mission was still in progress, and that the torch sustaining it had not begun to dim.

Matthew had never been a Hardinist, nor any other kind of confirmed Capitalist, but he understood—as Konstantin Milyukov probably could not—exactly why Shen Chin Che was the hardest of Hardinists. He understood too exactly why Shen considered that no matter who, if anyone, eventually came to own the vast territories of the new world, he and his allies had an unassailable right to own the new Hope, just as they had owned the old.

ELEVEN

Shen Chin Che posted more green arrows to guide Matthew back through Hope’s i

Shen’s references to a “war” between his AIs and Milyukov’s had to be largely metaphorical. No armies of superviruses were hurling themselves upon one another in the dark wilderness of the ship’s software space. There were a few systems that were under Shen’s control and a lot that were under Milyukov’s control—but wherever those systems interfaced or performed actions that had consequences within the other there was no control at all, and hence no function. The “war” was a stalemate: a software gridlock whose ramifications were stifling 80 or 90 percent of the activity that should have been going on aboard the ship if it had been offering full support to its own inhabitants, let alone to the bases on the surfaces.

It was no wonder that the people up here were as jittery as those on the ground—and no wonder that everyonehad begun to doubt that the colony could ever become viable. But a stalemate was a kind of situation that could change veryrapidly once it was broken, no matter how long it had endured. And once the situation became fluid, it became manipulable. The breaking of a stalemate was the ideal opportunity for a fresh voice to be heard—for a fresh messageto be heard. It might not matter much if the voice were a voice from the past, even if it were a voice whose knowledge of the present left much to be desired; what mattered was that it could offer a new and brighter future.

He knew that Shen had appealed to him out of sheer desperation, but that didn’t mean that Shen wasn’t right. There were moments in time made for prophets, and perhaps this was one of them. Perhaps Bernal Delgado had understood that. Perhaps whoever had killed him had understood it too. If Bernal hadunderstood it, and had set out to prepare a way, there was a possibility that by stepping into Bernal’s shoes, Matthew might be able to carry his scheme through to completion rather than having to devise one of his own. And perhaps Bernal’s killer understood thattoo … or was he being too paranoid? The only danger facing him at present was that there were so many empty corridors around him, all cold and all dark. If the arrows were to vanish …

He passed numerous intersections at which unlit corridors led away into the darkness. Now that he was not hurrying he had the opportunity to notice that most of them slanted “upward,” toward the zero-gee core: alien territory, for which even the crewmen were ill-adapted.

The emptiness became increasingly disturbing. The darkness seemed so ominous now that he was no longer playing the buccaneer, that he was astonished by his earlier temerity in launching himself into it. As he walked on, Matthew began to feel u

On Earth, where he had spent all but a tiny fraction of his not-quite-fifty active years, exhaustion had always been echoed in heavy-seeming limbs, and alertness in a subliminal awareness of physical power. The present dislocation was presumably mild when compared to what long-term moon-dwellers must feel, but the moon had seemed such a radically alien place that every move he made there had been tentative. Hopewas not quite alien enough, at least in this sector, to overturn his ingrained expectations—whose failure had, in consequence, come to seem like a kind of betrayal.

On the surface, Matthew recalled, his weight would be 0.92 Earth-normal rather than 0.5. In theory, that ought to be a great deal more comfortable, posing problems of adaptation that were objectively trivial. But would that objective triviality be faithfully replicated in his subjective sensations? Might it not be the case that the narrowness of the difference between the new world’s surface on Earth would enhance the sensation of betrayal? And might not that too, add to the jitters that the people on the surface were feeling?

He would find out soon enough.

When two of the crew members finally did contrive to locate him, coming at him at a trot, he took due note of the fact that their first impulse, upon catching sight of him, was to reach for their guns. Only one of the two—a small, slender, short-haired woman who looked no older than eighteen or nineteen Earth-years—actually drew her weapon, but the difference was too small to be reassuring. Her companion, also a woman but considerably taller and a trifle more mature, had rested her fingers speculatively on the butt of her own weapon before deciding to leave it where it was. They both seemed very anxious, as if they expected him to charge them with waving fists.

Matthew put his hands in the air, making the gesture as theatrical as he could.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m just lost, that’s all. I’m not some alien marauder intent on taking the control room by storm.” He knew that Hopedid not have a “control room” as such, or even a “bridge,” but he felt entitled to a modest theatrical license.