“But you,” his mother said at last. “Are you ready for this?”
There was a wariness in her tone. He'd always been closer to his mother than his father, but there was a wall between them now. A distance. He understood why. In the privacy of their own home his mother had always been candid with him, talked openly about Concordance, and everything and anything else. Now she knew she had to watch her words. Her son was no longer her son; he was an Augur, and she couldn't say all that she might want to say. There were things he couldn't be allowed to hear, because an Augur's first duty was to Omn, not to family. The loss of that connection felt like something once-solid in his mind fraying and breaking.
“It will be strange at first, but within a few days I'm sure it will all seem normal. I will communicate with you as much as I'm able, and of course I'll be able to see you even if you are not able to see me.”
She summoned up the courage to ask. “Do you have doubts, though? Don't you worry whether this is the right path for you to take? To stop being Aevus and become this Malleus?”
Malleus. The name that would be given him once he was on the Cathedral ship. He was to be Augur Malleus, not Aevus Magision. It felt like he was becoming a different person.
Once he was on the ship, also, he could not admit to having misgivings. But for now, in this moment, he allowed himself to. It was, perhaps, the last moment of his childhood.
“It worries me what I might become when I am on the Angelic Gaze. We all know the stories; I do not want to become like that.”
“You are a good person, Aevus. You will be changed, yes, but you will not be corrupted or marred.”
“I hope so, but I also don't know if that's really possible. We fear those on the Angelic Gaze, but we don't love them.”
His mother sighed, and something like a sob shook through her body. She said, “I can't bear to lose you, but I'd rather it was you up there than anyone else. I'd trust you to stay true to yourself more than anyone I know. When it comes to it – if it comes to it – you will do the right thing.”
“I hope so.”
“I know you will. Now, come inside and eat, we have a few hours before the lander comes. Let's spend it together, shall we?”
“Yes,” said Aevus. “I would like that.”
2. The Seer Stone
Selene tracked down Eb in the cocoon of his sanctum at the heart of the Radiant Dragon. He lay in his customary position, floating in mid-air, but he was no longer physically connected to the vessel.
His skin looked more alive, blemished and lined, marked with veins and hairs, although the was still a pallid tint to it. His eyes flickered open at her approach. “Surtr is gone?”
“He is. He took the entire Concordance battlefleet with him. He achieved that.”
Eb's words were little more than a croak, as if he still spoke to her over vast distances, from deep within the layers of his protective shells. “It was an abrupt end after waiting for so long. I'm pleased you opened his eyes, showed him the wider galaxy, but to have it all taken away just as he was glimpsing what he might do and be … that is hard to swallow.”
“He wouldn't be dissuaded. He saved billions of people on Periarch and perhaps other planets, too. I think it went deep within him.”
“I understand.”
“Is it the same with you? I need to know you're not going to do the same thing at a critical moment.”
Eb's mouth moved a few times before the words appeared. “Surtr's nature was purer, while my existence has been … complicated. My roots are clearly biological, not technological. This ship is my vessel, and I am tied up with it in something like the way Surtr was entangled with his ship, but my nature is different. I have changed much over the gulfs of time.”
“You were altered radically and embedded in the core of a metaspace ship. Why was that done to you?”
The question appeared to amuse Eb. “I don't believe it was done to me. As far as I recall, it was a path I willingly took. I set aside my nature as a Tok to become what I now am. I have flown the galaxy all of this time, visited wonders and marvels, watched civilisations rise and fall and rise again. Before you, and Ondo, and Aefrid, I travelled with many others. I think the original Eb, the person I was, sought that out. A sort of immortality, I suppose. He didn't wish to die.”
Eb's eyes opened wide for a moment, and Selene had the clear impression that there were suddenly no barriers between them, that she'd finally dismantled all his defences and was now staring into his innermost soul.
“The same choice could be yours,” he said.
“I don't see how.”
“You are already more of a hybrid than I was at the start. I became this biotechnological entity, this person-who-is-a-starship, but once I was simply a man. I recall it took me a long time to properly inhabit my carbon-metal flesh, to coordinate metaspace drive limbs and sensor senses. But you will understand that; you went through a similar process yourself. It took time for your artificial and natural halves to become whole.”
“Do you think of yourself as divided now?”
“It's a long time since I gave the matter any thought, but no. I do not. I can do more than any person inhabiting a natural body can do. More than any constructed starship can, too. AI Minds are creations of staggering computational complexity, but they are barely alive in the organic sense. I was and am alive. It gives me a perspective that I would not lose for anything.”
“Surtr's
