Rye.
Eva and Ivan were rolling home through the awakening smell of growing grass that rose up around the Narkomfin, through the buzz of machinery and the sound of nervous giggling as one of the handicapped ran out from the side of the road. And there was the sweet sound of a cello playing at the edge of evening. Eva recognized the music made by Hilde, child prodigy, gifted resident of Narkomfin 128.
“It looked alive,” insisted Eva. “It looked alive.”
“It was just a result of initial conditions, Eva,” answered Ivan solemnly. “A few simple rules can produce systems of astonishing complexity.”
“I know.”
Ivan waved to a group of people who stood by the side of the road. He shouted something in Russian to them. They laughed in response.
“Oh, Eva, why so sad? Come on, we are home. Look, there is Katya waiting for me.”
Down the road, Ivan’s daughter sat in her wheelchair, her boyfriend, Paul, standing at her side.
“Come on, Eva, we have just a few days left together, and you are worrying about a metal flower. That sort of thing is inevitable when you have VNMs. What’s the matter?”
Eva gazed at nothing.
“What’s the matter?” he repeated. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” Eva bit her lip. “Yes. I don’t know. I’m sad that you are leaving here.”
“Come with me.”
“I can’t. I can’t return to the surveillance world. You know that. You stay here with me.”
“No, I have Katya to think about. I need to take her home.”
“See? We are both prisoners of circumstance.”
“This is life.”
“I know.”
She sighed bitterly. “There is no choice. There is no free will. I thought so once, but the Watcher proved me wrong. It asked me questions, decided how it should operate on this planet, but the questions were loaded. I had no choice in how I answered them.”
“There is always a choice.”
“No, there is not, Ivan. You Russians, with your icons and the Holy Mother and your sentimentality. Out in the middle of this emptiness you hear the echo of your thoughts, and you think it the still small voice of calm. Here you can believe in the soul and free will, yet all there is, is the mechanism ticking away in your skull…”
Ivan frowned. “No, Eva. That is not right. Yes, there is a mechanism that produces your thoughts, but that does not mean that everything is fixed.”
“You have to believe that, Ivan, but it’s not true. It’s like this…”
She lowered her head, as if utterly exhausted. Ivan waited patiently for her to speak.
“Back in England,” she began slowly, “I remember seeing an antique narrow boat in a museum. Most of it— ninety-eight percent of it—was given over to cargo, to profit. This was how the owners made a living, carrying cargo up and down the canals. So much of the boat was given over to cargo that their living quarters were all cramped into one end. They were tiny: the steering part, the kitchen, the cupboards, everything that was not profitable, was cramped into a tiny nook at one end.”
The britzka rocked as it bumped to a halt. The smell of frying onions, drifting out from the open windows of the grey Narkomfin, was like a friendly spirit in the cooling air.
“I thought it terrible that they should live so,” she continued. “The bed was the worst thing, a tiny board laid out
