Divergence

kimonos.”

Eva didn’t seem to hear her. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. “Only Ivan will be here any minute. He said seven thirty, and he’s always exactly on time.”

“Is he bringing Katya?”

“Oh, yes,” Eva said, “poor little Katya.” Her expression hardened. “Don’t look at me like that, Judy. You don’t know what it’s like to have to deal with her.”

So she feels the need to apologize, too.

“I never said anything.”

“Look, Judy, ten more minutes or so and you’ll be back on the ship, but I’ll be left here, still living this life.”

“You’re not making sense, Eva. Are you real or not?”

Eva put her hands to her head, as if to run them through her hair, and then she remembered that it was set for her night out. She settled instead on smoothing down the yellow fabric of her dress around her hips.

“Am I real? Look, you saw how the ship was put back together, didn’t you? The Eva Rye has resurrected itself in the hold of the Bailero. I think somebody has done that to my life. My mind has come alive again in yours.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. MTPH? That’s the sort of thing it does. The Watcher said something to me years ago.”

She hesitated. “Years ago in my life, I mean. He said that MTPH was going to play a major part in human development. I’ve often wondered just what he meant. I always guessed he meant the way that it was made use of by Social Care, but now I’m not so sure. Maurice said that, didn’t he? He said, What if there was some sort of wrapper you could place around code which made it persistent? What if the Watcher did it to my mind, all those years ago?”

“But why?”

“Because it is the Watcher. Didn’t you ever wonder about the name? There are some who watch, and some who listen, and some who do. That is the basic flaw in its personality: it watches above all else. It watched me, it still watches me. It has based all its life and its work on what it perceived in my emotions, all those years ago.”

“What did it see?”

“That’s what we’re about to see. The moment is coming, Judy. Live it out with me.”

The assembly hall of the Narkomfin had been poured from concrete. It made a rectangular box that muffled sound, light, and spirit.

Still, the residents had done their best to bring it to life, draping banners and bunting over the walls, laying plastic tablecloths over the trestle tables and sprinkling them with metal confetti, setting flimsy bimetal motors in the heart of huge arrangements of balloons so that brightly colored clouds and rocket ships and baskets of flowers wobbled slowly past overhead.

The air was filled with the smell of baked potatoes and black peas, hot coffee and pies and cakes and sausages boiled in brine. The atmosphere in the hall was warming; the people could not yet generate enough bonhomie to fill the grey space, and yet they pressed on, creating little bubbles of jollity in the echoing building.

Ivan entered the room, wheeling Katya in her chair, Eva at her side. Katya wore a pair of embroidered blue jeans and a white peasant blouse. That style had been the fashion back in the outside world when she had first come here to the Russian Free States.

Three of the more severely handicapped were parked in their own wheelchairs by the door, handing out programs to those coming in. One of them was having an episode, his head banging rhythmically against the back of his chair. Eva and the rest politely ignored him.

“There’s Paul,” said Katya, waving to a young man in a striped shirt who was standing near a table set out with two great samovars. “You can leave me over there, Dad.”

Ivan gave a grunt and pushed his daughter towards the young man. Eva walked along beside, proud to be with him. Ivan had put on a white shirt that he wore open-necked beneath a patterned black waistcoat. He had carefully pressed his trousers and polished his shoes. Eva even felt a sting of obscure affection for the ridiculous thick gold chain he wore on his right wrist. He was so obviously doing his best to look smart for her.

Paul gave a big smile of delight and knelt down to kiss Katya on the cheek.