of it.
Robert spoke. “You don’t understand, do you? Don’t you remember your history lessons? I imagine that the Enemy Domain is thinking ahead. It’s thinking about what would happen if someone was forced to land this ship with the AIs knocked out. All this is intended for human pilots.”
“Human pilots? Is that possible?”
Again Robert said nothing, and Herb cursed himself internally. Of course it was possible. Isn’t that how all ships used to be controlled? Then another question occurred to him.
“Human pilots? Robert, I thought the Enemy Domain was an alien construction.”
Robert gave one of his enigmatic smiles. “It depends what you mean by alien.”
Herb sat down in one of the chairs. It was extremely comfortable, fitting itself to his body perfectly, except for where the straps dug into his back. He wriggled them aside and relaxed.
“You let me think the Enemy Domain was of alien origin. It’s not, is it? The Necropolis was built for humans, before it went wrong. These ships have spaces on them for human beings. Robert, what’s going on?”
Robert Johnston sat down on the next chair along.
“What’s going on? Let me put it this way.” Robert lifted his feet, resting them on the bank of controls before him, and raised a finger.
“Imagine it like this,” he said. “Look at the first finger of your right hand. Got it? Okay, now look at the first two joints of your finger. Imagine that’s the volume of Earth-controlled worlds. It’s about the right shape, too; we seemed to have expanded more sideways than up or down. Now hold out your hand, just like this, see?”
Robert moved his palm downward, in front of his body. His pale pink nails were reflected in the window just before him. Slowly, Herb copied him.
“Look at the first two joints of your index finger: the Earth volume. According to that scale, the planet we are currently floating above would be at the bottom of your right earlobe. You’ve got to get the idea of the scale of things, yeah? Now contrast the size of the tip of your finger with the size of your head and your neck. Run a line down the front of your body, down past your waist, down your legs, right to the tips of your little toes, and then all the way back up to your right shoulder. Think how big all that is compared to those tiny little joints on your right hand. That volume equates to the Enemy Domain.”
Herb looked down at his feet, seeming so far away on the floor. He looked back to his hand in disbelief.
Robert continued softly. “Now, we’re at your right earlobe. Above a planet that lies at the edge of the wave of expansion of the Enemy Domain. Think about your right arm, down to the elbow, along to the hand, think of the palm of your hand, your knuckles, down that first finger of your right hand, all of that space. All of it now occupied by the Enemy Domain’s machines. Think of all those tiny metallic bodies creeping over each other, feeding, and reproducing in their own image. Hungry metal tendrils reaching forward, jumping from world to world. Searching for something. And there, at the end of that first finger, that tiny little finger joint, Earth, all those people, everyone you ever knew, all happily unaware of that smothering, suffocating tide of machinery bearing down upon them. Imagine a single ant scuttling over the sand on a beach and looking up to see the tsunami bearing down upon it.”
A moment’s silence, and then Robert spoke at his softest.
“Don’t think alien or human. Just think destruction. That’s what we’re talking about.”
Herb stared at his fingernail for a moment; stared at the veins that stood up on the back of his hand, at the whorls that ridged the top of his knuckles, the pale blond hairs that marched up the back of his forearm. He suddenly shuddered.
“You’re shaking.” Robert was speaking at his normal volume again. “All this,” he gestured through the window at the few sparse ships floating here at the edge of the vast fleet, “all these ships, that elevator, the Necropolis, the bumblebee robots that buzz around on the planet, the spiders that creep through the tunnels, all of this system in which our consciousnesses find themselves…”
He paused for breath, easing back into the huge green chair. “All of this system is the tip of the tiniest hair that grows from the most insignificant pore on the very edge of your right earlobe. So, don’t think human or alien, Herb. Just think about being afraid. Being very afraid.”
When Herb spoke there was just the faintest tremor in his voice.
“I
Robert studied him closely, then shook his head. “No. You’re being flippant. Not nervous enough. Do you know what that tower is used for now? The one we just came up?”
“Of course not.” Herb licked his lips nervously. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Launching cannon for VNMs. The Enemy Domain is seeding the galaxy with copies of itself.”
Herb gave a shrug. “Figures. That’s how the Enemy Domain got so big, I suppose.”
“Okay. Have you figured out what all these ships are doing here, then?”
“No. Have you? You said they were going to be filled from the planet below. I think it would be the other way around. These ships are bringing humans to populate the planet. They would unload them onto the space elevator and take them down below to live in the Necropolis. Would have done if everything hadn’t gone wrong, anyway.”
Robert smiled.
“Good answer. The best-” as Herb smiled, Johnston waited just a moment before smashing him right down again “-given the knowledge you have. Your mistake is in thinking of the human beings who would occupy those coffins as individuals. They weren’t. They were meant to be clones. Clones that were being grown on that planet below us until the VNMs building the city we call the Necropolis malfunctioned. They’re still there, but their growth has been suspended. I felt their consciousness, millions of them, semi-aware in the darkness, as we jumped from the top of the elevator. That planet is almost sentient, there are so many of them down there.”
For a moment, Herb couldn’t be sure; it almost looked as if there was a tear in the corner of Robert’s eye. As he tried to look closer, Johnston rose from his seat and went to gaze from the window, out into space. He continued speaking, his voice slightly hushed.
“If you look down on that planet with the right eyes, it’s a dark ball embedded with the brightest little lights. All lost and alone and forgotten at the edge of the Enemy Domain…”
His voice trailed away and Herb felt a sickening lurch of vertigo. He imagined the ship’s floor splitting open beneath him, imagined the long drop back through the silent, empty fleet of ships, passing their hollow, forgotten shells as he tumbled faster and faster toward the planet below, rushing toward the up-reaching, deformed spires. And there, buried beneath them all, like so many unwatered seeds, the half-formed, twisted consciousness of things that would never become people. What were they like? he wondered. Half-grown adults? Children?
It was too much. He finally began to shiver.
“It’s too big,” he said. “You’re right. It’s too big. We can’t fight this.”
Robert turned back to him.
“Oh, yes, we can. Come on. We can use this ship’s communication devices to upload ourselves. It’s time to go back.”
Herb wouldn’t have believed it possible to feel bored and terrified at the same time, but somehow he was. Four days had passed since Robert Johnston had first appeared on his ship, and since then they had done nothing. The ship still floated a few hundred meters above the restless silver sea of VNMs, the mechanical remains of his converted planet. Robert Johnston’s mysterious errands caused him to pass constantly between his own ship and Herb’s. Herb had been told in no uncertain terms not to attempt to look down the passageway that linked the two ships, and Herb was sufficiently frightened of Robert not to attempt it.
Apart from the occasional presence of an agent of the Environment Agency, life aboard Herb’s ship carried on as normal. He spent time preparing elaborate meals and eating them; he played games-chess, Starquest, dominions, bridge-against the ship or alone. He worked out the bare minimum in the gym to stop the ship’s nanny nagging him and he watched entertainments. Apart from the extreme tension that seemed to tie him down to the comfortingly familiar objects of his living room, everything was perfectly normal.
Except for that time, somewhere in the middle of the night, when he had woken up at the feeling of something being pulled from his head. Herb had sat up in bed and begun raising the room’s temperature out of
