Divergence

“That one,” said Edward, pointing to a rose-shaped icon that he rather liked the look of. Saskia tapped it, and a face appeared in the console: a young man, good looking, with dark skin and darker eyes. Saskia passed Edward the console.

“Go on, boss, do your thing.”

“Hello there, I’m Saeed,” said the man on the console. “Would you like to engage in Fair Exchange?”

“Yes,” Edward said, “we’d like a lift to our ship.”

“How many of you are there?”

Judy was busy counting the people assembled on the stone terrace.

“Fifteen,” she said, and Edward relayed the number.

“Fine,” Saeed said, then his eyes lit up. “Isn’t this amazing!” he exclaimed. “Do you understand what’s going on?”

“No,” Edward said honestly. “I think I preferred it the old way. I miss my old friends. I miss Craig.”

“Then why don’t you ask if someone will take you to him,” Saeed said. “That’s what FE is for!”

“Oh,” said Edward, a smile slowly spreading across his face. Not only Craig, he realized, but Caroline, his sister, too. What would it be like back on Garvey’s World? Would everything there have been broken up into spaceships, like the Eva Rye ? But there would be time to think of that later—now there were people here to help, and Saeed was impatient to begin.

“Well, shall we start FE? Do you still want a lift?”

“Yes,” said Edward.

“Okay, exchanging circumstances. There, all done.”

“That was fast,” Saskia commented.

“Isn’t it always?” asked Saeed.

“I think it will be, for the next few days at least,” Judy said. “At the moment, all humans are pretty equal.”

“And with FE, they should stay that way,” Saskia added.

The sky was slowly emptying of ships. After a two-hundred-year period of stagnation, Earth was finally developing as it should.

Saeed’s ship settled in the mud near their stone island and dropped the rear ramp. Other ships did the same nearby.

Saeed and three other men came down the ramp to meet Edward and the rest of them. Gently, two of them picked up the young woman’s mother and carried her to their ship’s autodoc.

“Which of you are Najam and Jackie?” Saeed asked.

Two young women raised their hands.

“FE said you were going to be part of our crew. Are you happy about that?”

“I don’t know,” one of the women said. “We’ll have to see.” But she smiled at him as she spoke.

“That used to be my job,” Judy said, so softly that Edward only just heard her.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Matchmaking. Healing personalities. Now I suppose it just gets thrown in as part of a business deal.”

She turned to Constantine. “You know what,” she said, “I never really doubted, but now I’m convinced: the Watcher was FE that developed a mind of its own.”