positive sign and withheld further judgment for the moment.
“So, how did you get in here, then? How come you haven’t been detected?”
Jay gave a little smile and looked down at her feet. She wriggled her tanned brown toes on the cool marble of the balcony and then allowed her gaze to travel up the long dark side of the tower above her. She finally spoke.
“The program that runs this simulation is full of bugs. Not surprising when we’re talking about something so complex. All programs contain memory leaks: objects get created but not destroyed. Like when you get a bit of a picture left behind on a computer display after you move things around?”
Constantine nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Good,” said Jay. “That’s why you sometimes see two of things, or why the scenery doesn’t always hang together like it should.”
She jerked her head in the direction of the tower behind her.
“This is an object that didn’t get destroyed. The program doesn’t even know it’s here. There are no pointers to it; only termination of the program itself will lead to its resources being returned to the heap. A DIANA tempest device managed to locate the object and then effect a transference of my personality construct into it. Basically, this is my little island of friendly consciousness in a sea of hostility.”
“Oh,” Constantine said. He had temporarily forgotten the cold. Jay’s words washed over him. Something she had mentioned earlier was just beginning to sink into his awareness. He licked his lips and whispered hoarsely.
“Something you said. You said the real Constantine passed on a message to give to me.”
Jay said nothing. She simply fixed her dark gaze on Constantine and waited for him to work it out for himself.
Constantine looked back at her. She was very thin, he suddenly realized. Big, dark eyes with a slightly desperate “love me” expression. Maybe the cool, irreverent talk he had heard yesterday in the meeting was just an act. Or maybe the computer simulation hadn’t got her quite right. He was evading the subject at hand and knew it. If what Jay had told him was true, he wasn’t the real Constantine. The real Constantine was out there somewhere, sleeping in the real Stonebreak, visiting the real DIANA Arcology. What had happened at the real meeting yesterday? Had they discussed the project there? Maybe even come to some conclusion?
Would he see his wife again?
“What’s going to happen to me?”
Jay shook her head slowly. “We don’t know. We’re working on a way to get you out of here, but it will take time. The best thing you can do, to be honest, is to act normally. The resources required to generate this virtual world are significant. If they think that you’ve caught on, well…”
Constantine was suddenly incredibly cold again.
“I need to go inside,” he said.
“It’s probably just as well that you do. If we stay talking too long, it will arouse suspicion.”
“Aren’t they suspicious at the moment? Can’t they see me?”
“Not when you’re within range of this tower. There is a ghost signal emanating from here, making it look as if you’re just standing on the balcony.”
“I don’t really understand any of that. Are you coming back?”
“I will.”
Constantine nodded again. Something suddenly occurred to him. “You’re just as much a prisoner in here as I am, aren’t you?”
“I’ll see you when I can,” Jay said.
The tower was already slowly spinning, taking her back out of his virtual life. Constantine gazed after her, lost and alone.
He awoke to find a yellow stripe of sunlight streaking his body, looking like an exclamation mark. His room was fresh and clean and smelled of hot coffee and freshly baked croissants. He felt surprisingly healthy and positive, ready to take on anything. That was when the memory of the previous night settled upon him. Blue was already awake.
– Fresh coffee? Good idea.
Constantine rolled out of bed and began to pour coffee into a curiously shaped cup.
“Where were you last night?” he muttered.
– Sleeping, said Red.
– White has filled us in with all the details, said Blue.
Constantine sipped his coffee. It was a little too bitter this morning, the grounds seeming to settle on his tongue. If this was a computer simulation, it was an extremely good one. The attention to detail was incredible.
Red spoke up.
– We don’t think it would be a good idea for you to speak to us about last night. If what Jay said was true, they’ll be able to monitor you subvocalizing. You can’t afford to let them know you suspect. If you agree with us, scratch your leg.
“Spare me your spy games, Red. It’s too early.”
There was a pause. Constantine took a croissant and started to butter it. He knew that Red would be examining his last sentence to see if he had given anything away.
– Okay, said Red.-Maybe we are being too mysterious, but we can’t afford to take any chances.
“Do you think it’s true?” asked Constantine.
– Will you stop it? Okay. We think it is. Grey is saying nothing, as usual. We are assuming that he is hovering around in the background somewhere. White keeps announcing the authentication code, just in case he didn’t hear it. We’re guessing that if there were something wrong, he’d say so. As he hasn’t, we’ll carry on as normal.
– It does seem the safest course of action, said Blue. All we have to do is keep quiet about the final destination of the Martian construction. That’s what we’ve been doing so far anyway. If Jay had suggested we do anything counter to our normal course of action, then we would have had to discuss things further. As it is, we’ll just carry on as we were.
Constantine nodded and took a bite of the croissant. It tasted delicious.
“Okay. I agree. What are we doing this morning?”
– Nothing. The second meeting isn’t scheduled until late this afternoon, remember? said Red.-It seems pretty obvious that whoever has caught us already knows an awful lot of things that were supposed to be top secret. You just had to look around the people in that meeting yesterday to deduce what they already know. They knew that the plan involves the hyperdrive-
– Warp drive, interrupted Blue.
– The warp drive, continued Red testily, — plus it has something to do with the AIs. Most importantly, they have figured out that Mars is involved. The big question is: what don’t they know? There must be something, otherwise they wouldn’t have us in here.
– Agreed, said Blue.-Our problem will be going along with them sufficiently so as to not raise their suspicions, while simultaneously not giving anything away.
– We have got one advantage, of course, said Red.-Grey. They probably don’t know about him, or what he is capable of.
– Pretty much the same as us, then, said Blue.
The quorum never met in the same place twice. The level of paranoia among the group could never be high enough, not when you considered what they were conceivably fighting. Constantine appreciated the irony of their second meeting place. They were in the balcony of a concert hall, looking down to the stage where the black-and- white-clad musicians of an orchestra were tuning up. Glancing around the room, he could not recall ever seeing such sensitive recording equipment before. There were devices here that could record the noise made by the Brownian motion of dust in the moisture of his eyes. The whole room was strung with directional microphones that could build up a sound picture of the local environment that was almost perfect in its reproduction. It was the ideal place to hold a meeting where secrecy was paramount.
Marion Lee had been waiting for the signal to show that the microphones were switched on. As the signal
