“Tell me about Justinian,” Judy said, bringing him back on track.
“Justinian.” Schummel shook his head. Judy could feel him trying to clear it of the memory of the hypership. She wished she could help him; his thoughts were making her feel nauseated, too. “Justinian,” he said again, and then added more harshly, “You know, when people tell me about the Watcher and its great plans for humanity, I just think of Justinian and the baby.”
David Schummel glared at Frances as he spoke.
“When I first saw Justinian, he was walking through one of the recreation lounges, accompanied by Leslie. That robot never let him out of its sight; it was constantly controlling him, twisting his thoughts. It mapped out his life for him, and poor misguided fool that he was, he never saw it. Then again, who am I to call him a fool? AIs can do that to anyone. There but for the grace of the Watcher go I.”
He shuddered once more, took another sip of water.
“I didn’t know all that at the time, of course. If I had, I wouldn’t have felt so ill-disposed towards him when we first met. There he was, scheduled to go down to the planet, and what did he have along with him? His son. The baby.
“I hated him for that. Let Social Care understand and forgive me, but I hated him. By then we knew why we were going to Gateway, you see. We knew how dangerous the place was. If AIs were committing suicide without any reason, what was to stop humans doing the same?
“That’s before I discovered the truth. There were other babies on the ship. I remember one in particular: Emily, Mareka’s daughter. Mareka was meant to stay on the hypership at all times; she was never allowed to travel down to the planet. It was too dangerous, since there were BVBs down there. Black Velvet Bands that appeared from nowhere and then just shrank away to nothing. Once you had one of them around you, there was no getting it off. Can you imagine what would have happened if one of them had formed around the soft bones of a baby’s skull? I remember Mareka telling me about that as she was holding Emily. Pretty little thing, nine months old. I could see her fontanelle moving through her thin blond hair as she spoke, and I felt sick.
“I asked Mareka what she was doing here. She said she was an expert in human-AI psychology. She was to stay in orbit around Gateway and monitor the ship’s AIs. She had the authority to pull the mission at any time. On her say-so, the ship, the crew, everyone would make the jump back to Earth right away. I remember, I looked at Emily, and her alert little blue eyes stared straight back at me, and I thought that no way would I bring my own daughter here.
“That got me thinking about Justinian. ‘And what’s he doing here?’ I asked. ‘Will he be staying on the ship?’ I knew the answer of course, but I was just stirring things up. I was asking just so that she would confirm what I already knew, so I could strengthen my disapproval. I regret that now. I really do. I think Mareka knew what I was doing, too. Her answer was toneless. ‘No, he’ll be going down to the planet,’ she said.
“Then she looked at me. She was an odd woman. You’d think that she was rather plain: she had this cool way of looking at you, appraising you, putting you in your place. Then she would suddenly smile and move just so, and you’d realize she had this long lithe body…” He smiled. “That was a long time ago. I was too old even then. Anyway, I pushed the point.
“ ‘Will Justinian be taking the baby with him?’ I asked.
“ ‘He will,’ Mareka said. ‘I have offered to look after it for him, but he insists that the baby stays with him.’
“ ‘Is that safe?’ I asked.
“ ‘I don’t know,’ Mareka said. ‘It’s not the choice that I would make.’ And then she paused. I don’t know. Later on, we actually became good friends, me and Mareka, but at that time we were still strangers. Even so, I realized that she wanted to tell me something.
“ ‘Go on,’ I said.
“She looked down at Emily, those little blue eyes staring back at her, and then she spoke again.
“ ‘I don’t think that it’s his choice to keep the baby with him,’ she murmured. I didn’t press it any further. If she wanted to tell me, she would. And she did, although when she spoke it was so softly I could barely hear her. ‘It’s that robot. It’s making his choices for him.’ ”
David sat back in his chair and fished the lemon slice out of his glass. He placed it on the floor.
“Did I say she was an expert in human-AI psychology? I did, didn’t I? I checked her profile later in the public records and discovered she was very highly respected. After she had said it, of course, it was obvious. I watched Justinian and the baby around the ship. That robot kept them apart from the rest of us and, to my eternal shame, we let it. Well, for most of the time, anyway. Some of us tried to tell him, but that robot had a way of warning us off. And I get the feeling it wasn’t just the robot. The pressure came from the ship’s AI, through the EA, to the very top. The Watcher.
“There was a time when Justinian tried to leave the planet, but I persuaded him to stay. As I said, I had this little vice back then. I thought it was secret, but SC knew. They had always known, even before they signed me up for the trip. I think they wanted to make sure that they had a way to buy my cooperation.
“Anyway, that’s how it was. We were on that ship for just two weeks. Two weeks to travel nearly three million light years. Two weeks with a chilled heart and waking dreams. Two weeks with the feeling that your thoughts weren’t quite keeping up with your body. You know, someone told me that the ship was flying at only point zero eight percent of the speed it could achieve. That it had to slow down to accommodate human minds. I can believe it. Thinking was…different on that ship.
“But I’m wandering off the point again. We arrived at Gateway eventually. That was exciting. I flew the first twenty humans down to the planet in the shuttle. That’s when I saw the hypership for the first time. But I’ve told you about that-we don’t need to go over it again. I saw Gateway. It was a pretty place. Blue and white, just like Earth, but the blue is milkier. It reminded me of being a boy again; something to do with that shade of blue, I think. That feeling of innocence. The skies around Gateway were spectacular, too. Caught between the galaxies, the stars seem to separate into two sheets…
“We touched down, and Justinian left the shuttle. And that was the last I saw of him for three weeks.”
David drained the rest of his water.
“I’m sorry, could I have some more?”
“Of course,” Frances said. She looked down at Judy, still kneeling motionless before David, her kimono tucked under her knees. “How about you, Judy? Do you want something?”
Judy shook her head. David coughed and resumed his story.
“The mission was a failure from the start. I don’t think any one of us had realized how much humans have come to depend on AIs. It’s the human fantasy, isn’t it? We all think that we are strong enough to hack it on our own.
“Believe me, it’s just a fantasy. We cannot do it anymore. I found that out on Gateway. The human race has been housetrained; it’s been broken and domesticated and totally institutionalized by Social Care. We can’t react to new circumstances anymore. We think that we are sophisticated and worldly with our knowledge and accomplishments and appreciation of culture…” He paused to gaze significantly at Judy, resplendent in her wafuku. “We pick apart our past like connoisseurs, reveling in the myriad variety that is humankind, but it’s all in our imagination. When we encounter something truly new, we don’t know how to react anymore.
“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; we were terrified on that planet. Without AIs and Social Care, we felt lost, alone, abandoned. When we first saw the Schrödinger boxes dancing across the floor, we were scared. We awoke every morning patting at our bodies, wondering if we were going to find one of those BVBs wrapped around us-”
“How do we know this is real?” Judy said suddenly to Frances. “He certainly believes the truth of what he is saying, that’s obvious, but even so! It could be a trick. Chris could have set this up. How can we believe what Schummel is saying?” She eyed the old man. “I’m sorry, but you must understand.”
“
He fumbled at the buttons of his shirt: white plastic buttons, glittering in the light. He pulled open the front to reveal a pale, liver-spotted body. There was something wrapped around his chest, just above his purple nipples. Something black and unearthly. Something Judy and Frances had heard about, but had never actually expected to
