As he stared at the pod, silver light shone all around, reflecting from the water. White grass seed rolled in the red mud.
The pod spoke haltingly. “Listen, before you go, maybe you should know…”
It paused. It seemed unsure if it was doing the right thing.
“What is it?” Justinian asked, hardly daring to breathe. This had never happened before. The blurred shape of Leslie appeared on the ramp. It was looking over in the pod’s direction. Listening.
“Well, I don’t know if this is important,” said the pod hesitantly, “but…there are some irregularities in the setup of this pod that may be of interest to you.”
“Irregularities?” Justinian licked his lips. “What irregularities?”
The pod hesitated again. “I’m not sure that I should tell you.”
Justinian licked his lips again. “Why not?” The pounding in his ears was increasing. The first clue since he had arrived on this planet, and it was threatening to slip from his grasp. “Why can’t you tell me?”
“Think about it logically, Justinian. If my former self had wanted me to know why it reduced itself so drastically, it surely would have told me. It didn’t, and so we must assume there is a reason for that. And don’t you think we ought to trust an intelligence far greater than our own?”
“I don’t know. Should we?”
Justinian felt as if he was at the top of a huge building, tiptoeing along the ledge, looking down at the street far below. He could feel the drop, sucking him over.
“Surely I could decide if the information is valid…” he suggested.
The pod laughed. “Come on, Justinian. Humans have allowed AIs to guide their actions for the past two hundred years. You can’t wrest back responsibility now just because it suits you. I really do wonder if I should tell you-”
Justinian forced himself to wave a dismissive hand. “Oh, I don’t care. I’m cold and tired; I’m going back to the flier. I need a hot drink…”
He knew that was a mistake as soon as he did it. The pod could read his personality too well to fall for such a playground trick.
“Don’t try to bluff me,” it said scornfully. “Look, think about this: if I can see clues, maybe the other AI pods you have spoken to have also seen the same clues. Do you think that is possible? Yes, you do. I read it in your body language. I can read your pulse and the electrical patterns in your brain.”
Justinian cursed himself again. Once more he had allowed himself to be misled. These pods acted like children, but they weren’t.
The pod continued to speak. “And if those pods have seen the same clues, which it seems reasonable to assume, why didn’t they tell you?”
Justinian didn’t know. Then an idea occurred to him.
“Good point. But none of them mentioned the fact that they knew anything. The fact that you have suggests that you may think differently. Why would that be?”
The pod was silent. The sun was now well clear of the horizon. The water that slurped and sucked around the base of Justinian’s mud bank had turned a rather pretty shade of turquoise. As the silence stretched out, Justinian felt his heart racing. What else could he say? And then, at last, the pod spoke.
“You’re right. I’m confused. My original intelligence destroyed itself before this pod had grown a full sense array. Most of the long-distance senses are barely formed, hence, I suppose, the necessity for your visit here to be made in person. However, one of the deep-radar arrays is fully formed, and I can see no reason for that to be. It is pointing in the direction that I have just relayed to your flier’s TM.”
“Thank you,” Justinian said, smiling.
“Just a moment. You’re too impatient, Justinian. I have to ask myself, why did my former intelligence grow this deep radar and nothing else? It must have wanted me to notice it, even though it knew I would be able to do nothing with it.”
“Okay,” said Justinian. “Do you know why it’s there?”
“No! That’s what I’m saying. Listen, the deep-radar array is a physical device. There are a few kilobytes of data left inside it.”
“Okay…?”
Another pause.
“I’m not sure that you will like what the data represents.”
Justinian frowned. The sun was rising higher and the day was promising to be a good one. If one could ignore the foul smell of the mud, there was a certain bleak freshness to the scene before him: red mud and turquoise water spreading out in lazy curls to the horizon. He had just had his first lead after three weeks on this bizarre planet. Why did the pod have to spoil it with such a roundabout way of speaking?
Justinian replied in the most uninterested tone he could manage. “Pod, I can assure you, I don’t care what the data represents. I just want to find out what happened here and then get off this planet.”
A silence seemed to stretch on and on in the glittering morning, and then-finally-the pod spoke.
“At first I thought it was just a random array of bytes, but then I noticed that when arranged in a grid they offered an old-fashioned way of representing images: a 2-D picture format. A bitmap.”
“Fine. So the deep-radar array contains a picture. Of what?”
The pod gave a passable rendition of an embarrassed cough.
“Of you,” it said.
The Atomic Judy 1: 2240
Morning rose over the old DIANA complex to the sound of birdsong. They were walking hand in hand through the grounds when Kevin saw the cat.
“Look, Bairn,” he said, pulling her down to a crouch beside him. She leaned close, feeling safe to be so close to his strong, gentle body. He had this power over women, she knew it. She had seen him use it, time and time again, all through the virtual worlds.
A young blackbird lay in the dust of the path, wings stretched outwards for warmth. The cat was nothing more than a suggestion of a shape amongst the shrubs that had taken root in the still growing, smoke-blackened ruins. Its yellow eyes fixed on the bird.
Bairn bit her lip and looked from the cat to Kevin.
“Oh, Kevin, can’t you stop it?” she whispered, knowing the answer even as she spoke.
Kevin tightened his big hand around hers. “You know the answer to that, Bairn. If I save this little bird, the cat will only find another creature to kill. It’s hungry. It needs to eat. Just look around you.” He waved his hand around to indicate the black stumps of buildings, the new VNM growth bursting forth from the tops of the broken walls, like teeth from gums. “DIANA is dead as a commercial organization, but
Bairn shook her head. “The cat doesn’t have to eat meat. It could be fed a vegan diet. It wouldn’t know the difference.”
Kevin gently patted her hand. “It’s feral, Bairn. Look at it. Am I to spend my time rescuing birds until this cat dies of starvation?”
As he spoke the cat pounced, one tabby paw pushing the bird’s head down onto the ground, the other slicing through feathers to the flesh underneath in one fluid movement. There was a brief fluttering, then, stillness.
Bairn looked away, and Kevin continued in his deep, matter-of-fact voice. The terms he used were anachronisms. “It’s basic economics, Bairn. Where there is limited supply, a decision has to be made on how resources are to be distributed. Sometimes that decision must be to simply let nature take its course.”
Bairn stood up, a pale morning sky showing above the blackened edges of the living building around her. She felt sick.
“Food is not in limited supply,” she said.
Kevin smiled tolerantly up at her and then slowly, deliberately, rose up so that he towered over her. He
