Boss said, “We have always believed that in every crisis there is also opportunity. Could this time of greatest peril also be the moment when we finally show our true strength?”
“I will follow your lead,” Tem answered. “As always.”
“I see the Io deployment is proceeding. Have you been offered escape?”
Tem swallowed. “I was offered, but declined.”
“To remain with your patients?”
“It’s the least I could do.”
Boss nodded. He scratched at the overhanging prominence of his brow, and brushed at his flat nostrils, as he always did when at his most thoughtful. It was some years since Tem had spoken to the leader of the resistance in person. She had time to notice the smoothness of his speech now, inevitably gruff in tone but otherwise convincingly human. Centuries of practice would do that for you, she supposed.
“We had hoped to destabilise this regime, this rotten remnant of the World Government, before it could commit this final atrocity, the fall of Io. Well, we have failed there. But at least we have saved the Machine culture—thanks to you. I can confirm that the logical agent you implanted into Falcon was never delivered. The warning you gave him worked. The Machines were not disabled; there is at least a chance they will survive the Io event. Whatever happens, Lorna—whatever becomes of us—you have acted well. I could not have asked more of you.” He grinned, showing huge, yellowed teeth. “A pricked thumb! I would have not thought of anything so subtle—so human. And indeed, knowing Falcon of old, I might have feared it would be too subtle for him. But it worked—although unfortunately at the cost of Falcon’s own long life itself. Shame. He was a friend to us simps, in as much as any of his generation was.” He grimaced, and reverted to the crude speech of the early simps: “Boss—boss—go!” He grinned and hooted laughter.
And it was as if the years fell away, and he resembled his earliest archive images.
This was Ham 2057a, born as a disposable worker for human society, given a birth stamp and a slave name—Ham, who had risen to be the first president of the Independent Pan Nation—Ham, who had retreated into the shadows in response to the increasing corruption of the old World Government. Ham, a Pan who now led an interplanetary network of simps and humans in resistance against the Springer-Soames regime.
Lorna Tem had been recruited by agents of the underground Pan Nation as a young, idealistic medical student—a student already appalled at how her profession was being compromised by the demands of the military government. She had found she was able to justify working as a medic for the military forces. A doctor was a doctor; a life saved was a life saved, whatever the circumstances—and her patients, mostly broken soldiers, had had little choice about their careers. But in parallel she had treasured her covert links to the resistance.
And she had never met Boss in person—few had.
She asked now, curiously, “What of you personally? Are you—comfortable? Wherever you are. Are you able to live, to raise your children?”
The Pan smiled, a chimp’s toothy grin. “Don’t you worry about me; Boss is fine. We simps have no regrets about the choice we made, our withdrawal from the human world—it was three hundred years ago. We faked our own extinction! Not bad for dumb chimps, huh? Humans were too busy laughing at the bucket-list antics of Eshu the trickster, to notice the Departure. He was a true simp hero. And we got away with it, even as the grip of the new surveillance state took hold of mankind.
“No, we do not regret. The World Government respected the Pan Nation, but how long would that respect have endured as the Machine war escalated? We would have been an irrelevance at best—or seen as a disposable asset at worst. This was the best way. I am still engaged in history, am I not?”
“Yes—”
“Wait, please.” Boss turned away and frowned, at a monitor out of shot. “There is something new. It concerns Howard Falcon.”
She was astonished. “Falcon? But you told me he was gone—lost in Jupiter.”
Boss was distracted by whatever was coming through. “Well, he’s not lost any more. If this is authentic—”
“What, sir?”
“A message. Delivered by a very strange means.” He faced her. “You’ve had some dealings with Falcon these recent days. I need your assessment, Lorna. This message—our agents and assets have word of it, and knowledge has already permeated all levels of government security. They just don’t know what to make of it, or how to respond. I think you ought to hear it for yourself . . .”
“I’ll help if I can.”
Ham nodded to an off-screen assistant.
There was a crackle, and then a human voice started speaking. But Tem needed no more than the first few seconds of it to know that, whatever it claimed, it could not possibly be the man she knew.
Not unless something quite astonishing had become of him.