2

For someone unused to the harsh divide between combat and civilian life, a man who lived mostly inside his own head, Marc was coping well. True, there’d been time to relax on the voyage home. Yet he – loathing the very idea of space – had travelled vast distances and helped rescue human pilgrims from an alien race. He’d seen a star die and tiny asteroids drift alone through the cold desert of interstellar space. He had watched a psychic comrade choose suicide over betrayal. A moment later he had looked on with awe as demon-like beings briefly appeared in space, beings with a near god-like technology. He’d been briefly possessed by netherspace itself. Strangest of all, Marc had discovered loyalty, and caring about people selflessly. But right now he was obsessed by the artwork easing into his conscious mind. It would be the expression of everything he’d seen and done over the past few weeks. It would be wonderful.

He arrived home on a sunny afternoon, driving along a Sheperdene Road already merging with a riot of green along its sides. It was an area where most farmhouses had become exclusive homes that stood hidden by lush hedgerows tall as young trees. The road twisted and turned, adding to the sense of being in a private bubble. He passed the ancient post box half hidden by hawthorn and cow parsley. It hadn’t been used for over thirty years but stood as a reminder of a time before the aliens. There was no Post Office any more, no postman, no thrill at the snap of a letterbox, but no one local wanted it removed. Marc suspected that it now housed a worldmesh node beneath its red paint and tin, but he’d never bothered to look.

The road dog-legged to the right and passed through something that was still working – the old flower farm, now larger than ever: acres of greenhouse and, for old times’ sake, a multi-coloured field of dahlias. Marc remembered the owners telling him once that dahlias were the first flower humans had ever grown commercially. There’d always be one field, even if dahlias were eclipsed by all the new varieties from the colony worlds and alien-inspired genetic manipulation. He found that comforting.

He turned into Nupdown Lane as a vague humming in his mind suggested that his personal AI and the house were interfacing, rather than conducting one of their occasional data dump catch-ups.

The house stood facing the Severn Estuary, looking over to the low, blue-grey hills of Wales. The river was dirty brown, as always. One year the winter flooding had been worse than usual and Marc had had the pleasure of watching his house rise gracefully up on its foundation stilts. For a month he’d slept with a mile-wide river rushing beneath him. He’d had his house AI record it and tried to use the recording later as ambient background noise, after the waters had receded, but it wasn’t the same.

He was met by two small house-bots, one holding a bunch of flowers – dahlias – the other a chilled glass of Petit Chablis.

< Welcome home.

“Hi.” Marc spoke out loud, aware the house would now do the same. It would seem as if there was a real person there. He’d got used to people being around. “Thanks for the flowers. Wine: good one. Okay, I need to work. We got any oil paints?”

It had to be oil paints. Like the water, and the AI’s voice, realism still counted for something in this modern world. He’d heard some artists, mostly Retro Conceptual, say that oils were like painting with mud, and he understood their point of view. But the feel and the smell and the physicality still got to him.

“We were sent some by a supplier. Brushes, canvas, palette, white spirit. I did tell you. You never said thanks.”

“Well, do it for me now and get it all up to the studio.

That artwork I was working on? Still alive?”

“Died a week ago. We did our best but… well, you know.” Marc imagined the AI shrugging. “We incinerated it. Seemed like the kindest thing to do.”

Marc nodded. The artificial life forms hadn’t really worked out the way he’d wanted anyway. They were meant to be like living jigsaw pieces, tens of thousands of them scuttling around their habitat on multiple legs, each one hunting desperately for the one and only other piece that it could fit with, but he’d not been able to stop them finding the nearest member of their exclusive species and ramming themselves together, trying to get a fit; blunting the edges of their jigsaw carapaces until they found some kind of match.

“How had they ended up?” he asked, mordantly curious.

“They’d all managed to connect up in a massive ball, except for a couple that were still scurrying around. Not very interesting. Or edifying.”

“Fix some food for a couple of hours. No interruptions except from Kara Jones. Okay?”

He worked twenty-four hours straight, only stopping for food or toilet, then slept for twelve as the oil paint dried and the colours deepened. When he woke, he went to view his work nervously, hoping it was as good as he remembered. It was. A three-metre by three-metre canvas, colours blazing from within, but with dark, strange and frightening shapes and lines scattered around. Marc drank it in for several minutes, smiling. It was exactly as he’d imagined it back in Berlin, and very different from the designs he’d played with in space. Totally different from anything he’d done before. He told the house to take a series of holos from various angles and send them to Dara, his agent.

Dara called him, AI to AI, later that afternoon as he was walking along the footpath called the Severn Way, admiring the bare-boned hulks rising from the mud.

“Marc? Darling? Where’ve you been?”

“Went Up,” he said. “What did you think?”

“Up, down, sideways, it’s certainly a departure.”

“You don’t like it,” he said flatly.

“I do. Very much. But I don’t buy your work, darling.”

One truth out of three wasn’t bad, he thought bitterly.

“Not commercial?”

“Unless one of your alien friends...”

“Not around.” He understood that selling the work was only half of it. He was desperate for others to see his soul. “What’s wrong?”

“Darling, before your so-wonderful work was all about control. Like those little beetles mimicking someone’s face. Sheer genius. But this latest… it’s about you. Watching. Being part of. Almost being taken over. Do you see, darling? It’s vulnerable. In places even a touch passive. It’s also highly derivative: I’m thinking Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire without the Temeraire. Not the sort of thing your fans and collectors want.”

“Which is?” For all her crassness and insincerity, Dara had good insights.

“Little living things doing your bidding, Marc. They want to see control. Constraint. Obedience.”

“Thought they only bought because aliens did.”

“Well, there is that… Still, get some more bugs and do something clever with them, darling. Please.”

He didn’t need the money. “Nah. Think I’ll get a new agent instead. So long, Dara. It’s been unreal.” He hung up and told the house to begin streaming artists Marc scarcely knew but whose work now struck a chord. Turner, Picasso, Kiefer, Hodgkin, Hockney. All artists who’d suggested something beyond the obvious scene or pattern of colour. All artists who’d observed by being a part of something, if only in their imaginations.

* * *

Kara was watching the sun set over the River Dart in swirls of red, orange and purple when she got the call.

< Marc wants to talk.

Her AI had decided to sound like an efficient secretary. Kara decided she preferred the Shakespearean declamations it had used previously, but let it ride.

“How’s the art?”

“Not good.” He sounded annoyed. “I did this great canvas, my first oil painting in years. I wanted to show our trip and n-space. And it worked, Kara!” Now he sounded excited. “It’s the best thing I ever did! Sent a holo to my agent, and she said it was crap. Don’t laugh!”

“I never would.” It was difficult not to. “Why?”

“She said it was too passive.” There was mingled disgruntlement and disbelief in his voice. “Said all my other work – the stuff the aliens bought – was all about control. Forcing insects or jellyfish or whatever to do something. This artwork was too pretty. Too fucking traditional and would I please go back to my old style.”

“And now?”

“Now I need a new agent.”

“How about a total change of scene? Come to Dartmoor with me.”

“Dartmoor? I’ve never climbed...”

“I’ll be there from tomorrow. Bring your own tent. And sleeping bag.”

He sighed. “Okay. But it’s your fault if I fall to my death.”

* * *

“Come on, you lazy sod!”

It was two days later. Marc Keislack glanced up at the tanned face smiling down at him. “Just because you’re part mountain goat.”

“You mean ‘lithe rock-climber’,” Kara Jones said and reached for her water bottle.

They were on Haytor, that large granite outcrop lording it over most of eastern Dartmoor. Earlier that morning she’d promised Marc “a dead easy scramble”. He’d checked, and discovered the tor was only thirty-five metres tall, more molehill than mountain. He’d teased Kara for bringing rope and body slings, until it was his turn to carry them in the warm spring sunshine and he could grumble about safety-obsessed women.

They’d been walking for two days on the moor, staying in hotels and robot-catered landscape pods because Marc had flatly refused to camp out. The second night he’d insisted on a hotel with a spa and a bar, intrigued that they actually existed in the Wild. Dartmoor had changed since he had last gone Out. After two hours in the spa Kara stopped complaining about soft-living artists.

Initially they’d barely talked about rescuing the pilgrims from the Cancri aliens. Both wanted to forget the past month, knowing that all too soon they’d be out in space again, on Anton Greenaway’s business. Instead they simply enjoyed the wild countryside during the day and three-star comfort at night and discussed anything other than netherspace, aliens, pre-cogs… and that while Tatia, the society celebrity who’d become a leader and saved lives, could be annoying, they both wished she was there with them. But Tatia was back in Seattle City. They wouldn’t meet again before Kara and Marc set off to find the Gliese homeworld. And once there, hopefully made direct contact with whoever originated all the alien tech. Sure as hell it wasn’t the Gliese or the Cancri. And along the way they might even discover what lived in netherspace and why the Gliese would only trade the star drive for human beings. A big ask, even epic, but they had clues to follow. All these questions should have been asked and answered decades ago, but the shiny stuff had kept on rolling in. Once humanity got a taste for space there was no holding it back.

But for now they were on Dartmoor and Marc was wondering if he could climb the last twenty feet without falling off.

From a distance, Haytor erupted from the flat, grassy Dartmoor landscape like an abandoned castle weathered by the elements. The east-facing pitch was called “Don’t Stop Now”, Kara had explained with a faux-innocent smile. That was the general idea: keep going because if you stopped, you’d probably fall off. Kara had swarmed up the rockface, hanging by her fingertips and toes; free-climbing to the top. Marc had tried not to look impressed – or worried, because the pitch was far from being an easy scramble. Once he’d have thought she was testing him, and once he’d have been right. This time, he knew, she was merely taking the piss. He’d managed the first half well enough but then the rock got tetchy; the crack he’d been climbing faded to a dent glinting with microscopic feldspar crystals embedded in the granite. He couldn’t remember Kara’s route, felt his left leg starting to shake when a dollop of water splashed onto his head. He shivered slightly as it ran down his back, and was about to curse her when he understood. He’d been on the point of freezing, unable to go up or down. Kara had seen it and, unable to slap his face, had poured water on his head. From a great height, too.

“You looked hot,” Kara called down. “Go to your right.”

Marc bit back a retort and found the span with his foot. “Give us some slack!” he shouted, although he’d have preferred to traverse across the face with the security of a rope holding him tight. The crystal occlusions in the rock seemed to him, as he moved sideways and the light struck them, part of some deeper picture, and if he just moved far enough back and refocused his eyes he’d be able to see what secrets the tor was hiding. The trouble was that there’d be half a second to appreciate the truth before he fell.

Marc thrust the thought to one side and kept moving.

Ten minutes later he scrambled to the top, his fingertips bleeding, and stood transfixed.

It was too early in the year for mass tourism. They were alone on the tor. The sun was setting over the Devon Wild, turning green countryside and purple moorland gold.

As a line of darkness travelled towards them across the landscape, Marc felt for a moment as if he were outside himself, absent from his own body and floating in space. Perhaps it was merely the blood draining from his head as he finally managed to stand up straight and stretch, but he felt as if he and the landscape were connected, that it was watching him at the same time as he was watching it. For a second, the last rays of the sun caught on shiny objects in the grass and were reflected or refracted towards him – rock flecked with feldspar, he hoped, but more probably smashed bottle glass left behind by long-vanished tourists.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Kara said quietly from behind him.

He nodded, wordless.

“Have you heard of the ‘stone battery’ theory of supernatural phenomena?”

Marc frowned. “Sounds vaguely familiar.”

“It was suggested, over a hundred years ago, that old stones can sometimes, somehow, absorb events that happen around them. Especially if those things involve strong emotions or trauma. And the stones can replay these events under the right circumstances. It’s rubbish, of course, but an attractive thought.” She paused for a moment. “I often wonder, when I’m here, what recorded memories this stone might have.”

He shook his head. “I don’t get that. It’s more like… there’s something conscious here. No memories, but a kind of perpetual awareness of what’s happening, without actually caring about it. Something that knows we’re here, but regards us like fleas. Or even bacteria. Something solid, while we’re ephemeral.”

* * *

“But does it want to be friends?” Kara joked as she coiled her rope neatly, wondering if it was the artist who stood before her like a visionary prophet, or just the man. Could you even separate the two?

As Marc pondered she sat down cross-legged and breathed slowly, deeply, merging with the world around her. She felt Marc sit next to her and automatically reached for his hand, as a friend, as someone who, thanks to the simulity, knew him as well as if not better than Marc knew himself.

“I have no idea,” Marc whispered, still staring out into the approaching darkness as if he could see things she couldn’t. “I don’t think it even knows what ‘friendship’ means. Or cares.” He shook his head, and turned around. “I had no idea you could climb like that.”

“Why are you surprised?”

“I thought the simulity meant I’d be able to climb as well as you. I thought I’d at least know the theory.”

Kara smiled. “It’s not forever, Marc. It wears off.”

“You never said.”

“You never asked. But this one’s lasting longer than usual.” Then she fell silent as the atmosphere around them changed, the sense of peace giving way to something more powerful. She felt his hand grip tighter, knew he was also affected as the tor worked its magic, sharing ancient memories and emotions that, despite her external disbelief, she knew at a deep, instinctive level had seeped into the very rock. Stone recording or stone intelligence; it didn’t matter.

Kara closed her eyes and saw in her mind’s eye a vision of worshippers standing naked, arms outstretched as they celebrated the marriage between life-giving sun and fertile earth.

She imagined the feel of warm, rough granite against her naked back so perfectly that it was almost real. We always said we wouldn’t, but surely just the once, here and now; homage to life and all that. She turned her head and saw Marc staring intently at her, understood that he was also captured by a pagan force… no, that he’d been captured long ago and this for him was a reawakening. Kara gently reached out to touch his cheek as the excitement built inside her.

< Sorry to bother you, said Kara’s AI. < Emergency override.

Kara made a face. “My AI’s gone hysterical. Sorry.” She let go of his hand.

A cloud drifted across the sun.

Marc shrugged. “Better listen, then. Otherwise it’ll sulk.” Beneath the casual air there was a sadness, both of them knowing that the moment was gone.

Two people, friends, sitting on a lump of granite as the sun went down in an orderly sort of way, the land darkening as it always did and always would, until the sun finally died.

< Not me. GalDiv AI. Or more precisely, the GalDiv building. Also known as the Twist.

> All right – patch it through.

There was a pause, presumably while the two AIs swapped virtual identity and security certificates, compared notes and maybe chatted about the weather for a while.

< Sergeant Assassin Jones. A seemingly deeper voice than the one programmed into her own AI; brusquer, more businesslike. No apparent sense of humour. < A situation has arisen.

> Situations always arise. History is a set of situations, all linked together.

< Noted. Another pause – microscopic. Infinitesimal. Maybe it was trying to work out if she was being funny or literal. < Director Greenaway is missing.

She knew a moment’s irrational relief. It wasn’t Tatia.

< You must find him, it went on.

> Why us?

< He left his office and the building at 1030 hours yesterday. There is evidence he was with a young woman. I have no record of her.

> That doesn’t answer my question.

< Then let me be more obvious: I cannot trust anybody within the building or, by extension, the organisation.

> Because someone screwed over your memories, and you don’t know who or how.

< Not memories. Or, at least, not an erasure of something observed and recorded. Someone has learned to be invisible to an AI. To all AIs, and to all electronic surveillance. They left no trace of themselves that needed to be erased.

> Again, you’re not answering my question. You must have access to many freelance agents who aren’t on the books. Why us?

< I have traced Director Greenaway and his companion to London, where they vanished. Earth Primus and various anti-alien religious groups are also based there. These are the main suspects.

> Traced how?

< Ripples. Spaces in crowds where there shouldn’t be spaces. Empty seats in jitneys that are obviously travelling towards a destination. Virtscript transactions that appear to benefit nobody.

> Clever.

< You know London. Also, Director Greenaway trusts you. He considers you very skilled.

This AI seemed curt, almost – ironically – machine-like, Kara thought, but it got to the point quickly and seemed only to mention relevant features and facts, unflavoured with any of the standard faux-personality traits that AI designers preloaded as options, or the rather more unique ones that hackers created. She rather liked it.

> So we’re your choice?

< You are. This is my decision based on all available facts, yes.

She had to ask. > And if I refuse?

The answer came immediately. < Then you will never discover what happened to your sister.

Kara froze.

< The project initiated by Director Greenaway involving the Gliese and the Originators will cease. You will no longer have any help from GalDiv. You need us, just as we need you.

Kara thought for a moment.

> Suppose we don’t find him? Or suppose we do and he’s dead?

< Then I will provide help on an unofficial and unrecorded basis.

> Not an average AI, are you?

< Director Greenaway gave me a measure of autonomy not available to most commercial AIs. Another nanopause. The AI didn’t need time to think, and had no reason to hesitate, so it was pausing to allow her to contribute. Subtle.

> Shall I tell Marc? she asked. Or will you talk to him directly? He’s barely on speaking terms with his own AI.

< Marc Kieslack will undertake his own mission. It concerns rumours of an alien translation device in the Wild. Inform him the information has been uploaded to his AI in a file that cannot be copied. It will delete itself three minutes after accessed. A momentary pause. < He should not stop reading halfway through to make a cup of tea.

Ooh, a flash of weak humour. That was interesting.

> We’ll do it.

< Of course you will. The AI didn’t seem even remotely relieved, or surprised. < One other item you should know. There was a casualty during Director Greenaway’s abduction. His personal assistant. Killed by a nerve agent. There are traces of what might be another human’s DNA on the victim’s face and within her breathing system—

> You’ve not identified that DNA? Kara interrupted.

< We have not. Neither do we know how the nerve agent was administered, but it is probable the attacker had to be within close proximity to the victim. May probabilities fall in your favour. Or, as you say, good luck.

She felt GalDiv’s AI, and her own AI, disconnect. They were alone again.

Kara blinked, readjusting. The sun had slipped below the horizon, leaving a sky the colour of an old bruise. The tor was still solid and unchanged beneath her feet.

She looked at Marc. “Change of plan, I’m afraid. We’re heading off in different directions. Business.”

Kara gave Marc a quick précis of the mission she’d been assigned.

He shook his head in disbelief. “Oh. Shit.”

“Yup. Nasty nerve agents, too.”

“How is it possible to avoid AI surveillance?”

Kara shook her head. “That’s what worried the Twist. Suddenly it and its mates are vulnerable.”

Marc frowned. “They’re based on alien tech, right? Like the simulities.”

Kara nodded. Not alien programming or architecture, but actual alien tech: data storage on a quantum level. It made the average human-built computer as powerful as an antique Cray, and allowed AIs to appear intelligent. Although, based on her last conversation, Kara suspected that maybe some of them really were. If the Twist’s AI was happy to make decisions and take action without anyone in its organisation knowing, didn’t that mean it was acting autonomously? And if it was acting autonomously, didn’t that mean by definition that it was self-aware? Meet the new boss: definitely not the same as the old boss.

“And what about me?” Marc asked plaintively.

“Check your AI,” Kara told him. “Some rumour originating in the Wild. The Twist seems to be in charge, now. The revolution happened without us noticing.” She looked around at Dartmoor deepening into darkness. “Hey, I enjoyed the last couple of days.”

He obviously intuited what lay behind the remark. They were still simulity-linked at some level. “You mean just as well we didn’t…”

“We’re operational now, Marc. I can’t work if I’m worrying about you.” She grinned. “More than usual, that is.”

He pushed up his sleeve and typed instructions into his input tattoo. She watched as his face settled into the defocused expression that people unconsciously adopted when they were looking at something only they could see.

“I did say ‘shit’, earlier on, didn’t I?” he enquired eventually, rolling down his sleeve.

“Did you get to the end before it deleted itself? It’s just that I know how slowly you read.” She grinned. “Your lips were moving, you know?”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. Means you know what my mission is without me having to tell you.” He stared at her, seemingly daring her to ask for the details. “Oh, all right then,” he said eventually. “Apparently, a day before he was abducted, Greenaway received intelligence reports about a possible translation device created by researchers in the Wild that simplifies communication between humans and aliens. He wants me to find out if it’s real. And, if so, how does it work?”

Kara nodded. “Makes sense. Play to our strengths. The city states are my natural habitat, while you’re more of a country bumpkin.”

“You can take the boy out of the Wild but… what is it?”

Kara stopped staring at him. “Sorry. One of your memories surfaced. That bloody simulity. You have relations in the Wild. You’re not an orphan.”

“Adopted relation,” Marc corrected. “Haven’t seen him in years. Lives up in the Scottish Wild. Used to be influential.”

“Sounds apt,” Kara said. “Me down and dirty in the Smoke. You back to nature.”

“Know what’s a pisser?” he asked sourly. “When Greenaway first came to see me, I said how those bloody AIs ran everything. That it was wrong. And now I’m apparently working for one.”

* * *

A few minutes later Marc paused from packing his climbing gear and straightened up, hands bracing his aching back. He looked at the darkening horizon: purple light bleeding out of the sky and leaving scattered stars behind. He’d been to one of those stars. Hard to believe. Still couldn’t tell which one.

He was going to miss the freedom of the rock face, despite his stinging fingertips. Free to climb, to fail, to fall. But oh! that oneness with the world. No, that oneness with the universe, like when I was in space and witnessed a star go out.

Something moving across the moorland caught his attention. For a moment he thought it was a jitney, and he felt anger well up at this crass intrusion into the oneness with nature they’d experienced; then he realised it wasn’t mechanical. It wasn’t a person or an animal either. It looked like a tree, perambulating casually across the soft grassland.

“Can you see that?” he asked Kara.

She glanced up from where she was crouched, packing her own stuff. “What?”

“That.” He pointed. “Over there.”

She followed the direction of his finger. “Fucking hell!”

“That’s a tree, right? I’m not going mad. A walking tree!”

“No,” she said, “that’s an alien, but it’s not any kind I’ve ever seen before.”

Marc tried to make out the details of the thing that was wandering across his field of view. Kara was right – it wasn’t a tree, even though it looked strangely like one. It had a central trunk, or bole, about the same size as a muscle-bound man, but where a man would have shoulders and hips the bole split into several narrower sub-boles that diverged from the central mass in asymmetric ways. Each sub-bole ended in a knobbly mass of something fleshy, from which numerous thin stems emerged. The ones pointing downwards seemed to operate like multiple legs, while the ones pointing upwards might have been thin arms, thick antennae or something else entirely. The thing’s skin looked warty. Marc couldn’t tell what colour it was in the gathering darkness.

“Where’s its GalDiv minder?” he asked.

“Don’t ask me.” Kara stood upright. “GalDiv don’t operate in the Wild. Not our monkey; not our circus.” She crouched down again and resumed stowing her kit away.

Marc watched, incredulous, as the alien creature moved across the landscape, becoming more and more indistinct as the last light of the sun seeped away. “It’s going somewhere. It’s not just wandering around, it’s heading in a straight line.”

“Accept it, Marc – we’re never going to know. You’re only irritated because it’s not trying to buy art from you. Now come on. We need to go.”

Marc bent down to where his stuff was still scattered around. Simulity training ensured that he packed his rucksack with military care.

“You don’t have to do any of this,” Kara said as they both stood up again, ready to go. “She’s my sister, not yours.”

“Not just my dog-like devotion to you pushing me along,” he said. “Nor the unrequited lust. Boss.” Now they were operational Kara was in charge, and he needed to acknowledge that. “It’s about why I’m still on the payroll. Any decent AI would have retired me when we came home.”

“True. You’re okay as infantry, but no way special forces.” She smiled, taking the sting out of it.

Marc half-smiled in response. “Yeah. I’d fail the stupidity test.” He stood up and hefted his rucksack with an athletic flowing movement impossible before simulity training, when muscle memory was implanted. “Tse would never explain why he chose me. I do have to find out why.” On impulse he bent and picked up a small piece of rock.

“Taking a memory home?” Kara teased.

“Lucky souvenir.”