Divergence

called his reply over his shoulder as he went.

“I’m getting on board. You heard what Donny said. He’s right. I’m fed up with Social Care always telling me what to do.”

But Saskia ignored him. She was following Craig down onto the sand.

“Craig, wait! Are you sure that really want to do this? You won’t be welcome in the Enemy Domain when you come back. They’ll send you back to Earth.”

Craig turned and thrust his face close to hers.

“And what are you going to do when I’ve gone, Saskia? Whose life are you going to organize when Donny and the rest of us are off flying through the stars? What if we even make a go of it out there?”

Maurice pushed past them, eager to be on the ship. Michel walked on thoughtfully, Stephanie’s wheel rolling alongside him.

“There will be a flier here in five minutes. Why not wait for its arrival? Talk things over with the atomic Stephanie. You can still go with this ship tomorrow.”

Michel paused. Saskia suddenly appeared at his shoulder. She made a little noise that sounded something like a sob.

“Don’t listen to her, Michel. Come on, we’re going to need you to tell us what to do.”

She took him by the arm and led him up the ramp.

“And that’s it?” asked Judy.

“And that’s it,” said Maurice. “It was just like a game of dare. We all thought that we were going to give up at any moment, but somehow we just went on playing. Claude and his crew took us up into space, where they triggered the self-replication routine on the Borderlands, and the Eva Rye was born.”

Judy frowned. “I thought that you weren’t allowed to use self-replication. I thought that wasn’t in the rules of the game.”

Maurice shrugged. “We’re still learning the rules of the game, Judy. I think that you’re allowed to use VNMs when you bring in new players. The Borderlands got an upgrade, I guess. The original Eva Rye was very basic. A complete hodge-podge of styles, most of which didn’t work.” He cast a thoughtful eye around the black-and-white interior of the room. “So now we just go around trading, though we don’t do very well. I suppose if we had an AI, then we wouldn’t keep making mistakes. But I suppose if everyone had AIs, then we’d be right back to where we started.”

“No,” Edward said suddenly, “that’s not it. We don’t need AIs when FE keeps everything fair. Listen to what Judy said about that person Chris, about him trying to get her to go to Earth. It’s the AIs that mess everything up. They bend the rules and tell you what to think, and you’re left with nothing to do. AIs aren’t fair to humans like us.”

Maurice was more than a little shocked at the way Edward had suddenly spoken up. It wasn’t like Edward to express himself so surely.

“But the deals aren’t fair…” Maurice began, but at that point Judy let out a moan.

“Are you okay?” asked Saskia.

Judy was rubbing the back of her neck. “Yes. Yes, just a twinge.”

For a moment, her face had been lit up with expression; it had made her seem much more human. Now she returned to her habitual calmness.

She looked down the table, and paused. The rest of the crew held their breath, waiting to hear what she would say. Nobody was expecting her next words.

“I’ll have my last roast potato back, thank you, Miss Rose.”

eva 6: 2-89

On an early July morninga battered robotic britzka—one of those modern britzkas found in plenty just outside the borders of the Russian Free States, and so beloved of the thieves and supposed Free Spirits that dwelt therein—rolled out of the little town that had grown up around the Pekarsky Narkomfin and went thundering down the road running alongside the Arctic data cable. In the britzka sat two residents of Narkomfin