mapped out my life for me.”
Maurice held her dark gaze. “You mean Chris, the all-powerful AI? Or maybe his sidekick, Kevin?”
Judy didn’t blink. She just continued to stare at him, like he was a talking box or a dummy with a speaker wired to its jaw.
“Fine,” he said, feeling badly unsettled by her gaze. “That’s it, then. One against, Saskia and I are for it. Okay, we’re going in. Sorry, Edward. We’ll pick up one of them in the little hold.”
His fingers danced across his console. Edward drummed his feet fearfully on the chair’s legs.
Judy stepped across the knot in the gravity at the junction of five corridors and disappeared around the corner, heading down towards the little hold. Saskia hung back to speak to Maurice.
“What do you think about Judy?” she asked in a low voice.
“I don’t know,” said Maurice guardedly. “Did you see the way she looked at me back then? Like she was a nonsentient robot. It’s like she measures your emotions, she doesn’t react to them.”
“I don’t know,” said Saskia, face now hidden by her hair. “I think that, beneath all that stillness and controlled emotion, the pressure is building up. I don’t think she can keep it all in check for much longer.”
“She’s frightened by something—that AI she mentioned: Chris. I think she’s watching herself all of the time, checking to see if she is changing. She’s wondering if she’s going to suddenly just let go and change all her opinions, just like Chris told her she would do.”
Saskia wasn’t listening anymore. She placed a hand on Maurice’s arm, and he looked down at it, surprised. “Listen,” she said urgently, but Judy had reappeared, peeping around the odd angle of the corner, her body like a reflection in a pool.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” Saskia said, and she headed off, leaving Maurice standing alone.
Judy waited by the black-and-white mosaic frame of the door to the little hold. Saskia glared for a moment at the black-and-white woman, and then she turned and made a show of tapping on the door to the little hold and bringing up an external picture.
A deduced scene sprang to life, built up from the
“I’ll catch them in the dead zone at the middle of the hold,” said Maurice thoughtfully. “They might not be able to take full gravity.”
They watched as the little hold’s external door closed, and then smiled at the elegant way in which the internal floors and walls rearranged themselves into a cube. The floor slid into place last, and they felt a click deep within the ship.
“Okay,” said Maurice, “it’s safe to enter.”
There was a small pop as the door slid open, and they paused a moment. There was a slight chill to the air beyond, meaning some heat had leaked into space across the pressure curtain. They could smell apples.
“Okay,” said Saskia, “follow me.”
Judy had already set off, and Saskia hurried to get ahead of her. Maurice followed as they half walked, half raced across the black-and-white floor of the little hold towards the center of the room. They looked up to see the three orange space flowers hanging in the air above, backs still turned determinedly away from them.
Saskia tapped at her console and a viewing platform began to unfold itself from the floor. Maurice staggered, momentarily off balance, as it lifted the three of them into the air.
“Give us some warning next time,” he complained, but Saskia made no reply, lost in contemplation of the flowers. Maurice felt his anger quickly disappear. He wanted to reach out to touch the spheres as they glided towards them. They really were beautiful: sunshine yellow wove glorious patterns through iridescent orange flames and the deep crimson heart of the pattern shone like blood from a broken heart. The platform rose higher and he felt a familiar wave of nausea as his head and then his shoulders entered the dead zone.
“That pattern,” said Maurice. “You could almost think it’s alive.” He reached out to touch a sphere, half hypnotized. “Do you think—Hey, what’s that?”
