Divergence

—I’ll get through, replied Kevin, full of confidence. —I’m shutting down my senses, then I’ll hide in the virtual world and coast on until the seeds have all wandered off again.

—You can’t hide from them, Kevin. The Watcher tried to and failed. They always find a way in. The Dark Seeds are pulled to those spaces in the universe where there are too many minds. Did you hear me, Kevin?

Kevin didn’t answer, distracted by dark shapes in the heavens aligning themselves into a pattern of points that mapped out the vertices of a stellated icosahedron. Something was trying to gain his attention. Quickly, he turned his attention elsewhere.

Kevin didn’t fear death, he didn’t get nervous. Still, he could feel doubt. For the first time he wondered if he really would make it.

—These plants, Aleph, he asked. —What is their purpose?

Aleph chuckled.

—That invention of the human mind: that order exists in the universe. The plants simply are . They replicate. Replication and recursion are the building blocks of the universe, the same patterns arising everywhere. See those patterns and you see the mind of God. Your problem, Kevin, is that you look always to yourself. You look to see how you as an individual fit into that pattern.

—Aleph. Kevin laughed. —You don’t know me that well.

Kevin felt something filling his belly; pressure was building up inside the cold hull of the Bailero . Dark Seeds, a great sea of them—the hollow shell of his body like a silo full of grain. Dark Plants were growing in there. But how was Judy? Had she drowned yet? Had she choked to death on the rising tide of Dark Seeds?

—Not yet. Look inside the hull, Kevin.

Aleph did something and Kevin looked inside his own hull, looked inside with many different senses. There was a Dark Plant in there, and it was huge. It wrapped its body around the black-and-white teardrop of the Eva Rye and reared up inside the blue space like a black snake. Its lacy branches and vines reached out and pushed at the walls of the confining hull.

—I don’t think you can shake that off, Kevin.

—I don’t have to. I will just shut down my senses and coast.

—It won’t work. Look!

Aleph did something again, and Kevin’s gaze was drawn back inside his hull. He now saw the seven humans that lived at the forward end of hull, undetected by Judy and the crew. Refugees from another spaceship. Their bodies were woven together by VNMs, arms threaded through legs, livers merged in one amorphous mass, their joint stomach stitched together by heavy wire and floating above them. For the first time in a long time, they were smiling. Smiling at the Dark Plant that writhed before them.

—You bastard, said Kevin. —You could have helped me. Instead you’ve killed me.

—We’re not here to help you, Kevin. That wasn’t part of the deal.

—Look at that! Look what’s happening to me! I can see the algorithm that represents my own intelligence weaving amongst the plant’s vines….

—Judy is going to Earth, Kevin. That was the Fair Exchange.

—Oh shut up! Don’t speak to me anymore.

Kevin turned his senses away from Aleph. He felt a tension around the middle of the body of the Bailero that had not been there before. Through falling black rain he saw the fuzzy black ribbon of a BVB was wrapped around the ship’s hull. There was a tension evident towards the blunt nose, and he saw that another BVB had materialized there while his attention was distracted. Then another formed at the rear of the ship. The entire length of the Bailero was being wrapped in black bandage as his attention was pulled up and down the hull.

The Dark Plant inside him was pushing outwards against the inflexible bands of the BVBs. It hurt . He was being torn apart. The Bailero was dying.

Not yet, though. There were VNMs embedded throughout the hull and Kevin activated them. They got to work, making copies of themselves from the metal of the Bailero. The ship disassembled itself in a silver cloud. BVBs collapsed inwards, shrinking down to their new equilibrium point. The white teardrop of the Eva Rye floated free, unmolested. Aleph was there, riding its hull. The enormous Dark Plant in the Bailero ’s hold uncurled, its branches and vines making a fascinating pattern