– Do you think it might be a good idea to get off the duckboards? asked Blue.

“A very good idea,” agreed Constantine. He didn’t like the idea of being converted.

– Hold it, said Red.-Something’s happening.

There was a slow sucking noise, and something large and rectangular emerged from the reddish mud. An oversized yellow plastic refrigerator, by the look of it. The door swung slowly open.

– It looks like an elevator. I think you should get in.

Constantine shivered. The interior of the yellow box looked cramped and dangerously short on air. He preferred to stand out here in the blazing sunshine. Nonetheless, he knew that Red was probably right.

“All right, I’m going,” he muttered.

– Rather you than me, said Blue.

Sitting in a chair in the large conference suite, a glass of chilled water at his elbow, Constantine had to admit that it was a clever idea. Building the research center right in the middle of the VNM construction site guaranteed privacy. It wouldn’t be a secret, of course, in today’s world very little was, but anyone wishing to approach the center uninvited would have to go through a tank of hungry VNMs. And anyone trying to slip a stealthy spy leech up close to the center would quickly find that their resources had been converted into building blocks for the new DIANA Arcology. Blue had approved wholeheartedly. The setup did have a certain poetry about it, he suggested.

– And there is something else as well. Did it occur to you that there is a certain Eastern aspect to our deceptions? Lies within misdirections within frauds. We sit here within what appears to be a construction site for an arcology, ostensibly to discuss its real purpose as a Space Colony Preparatory Center, and all the while we are plotting our own deeper schemes.

– Recursion, said White.-Each lie calls for another lie. How far do we have to go until the final deception is revealed?

– And will we ever know that what we find is not just another lie? said Red.

– How trite, Blue said rudely.

Grey, as ever, said nothing.

The meeting began without ceremony. Each member introduced themselves in turn.

“Marion Lee. Chairperson.” A red-headed woman in a severe grey suit, she blinked rapidly as she spoke.

“Gillian Karajan. Oort cloud.” She was an elongated woman with a spacer’s fake tan that somehow managed to complement her fashionable white shift. Silver and gold bangles decorated her arms.

“Constantine Storey.” Constantine added nothing else. He noted Gillian Karajan looking at him inquisitively. The other members of the group showed no surprise at his reticence.

– She’s the one, said Red.-She’s the outsider to this group. Look at the way she’s sitting, nervous, as if she doesn’t belong. I wonder what they told her to get her here?

The introductions continued.

“Masaharu Jones. Mars.” A young man barely in this twenties, full of complacent self-confidence.

“Jay Apple. Orbital.” Another tanned spacewoman, this time with a broad grin and clear, piercing eyes that swept around each member of the group in turn. Introductions over, the group nodded to each other. Marion Lee began the meeting.

“Good morning. For obvious reasons, this meeting maintains no record. Everything that is said must exist in our memories only. Nonetheless, I hereby state that we are now quorate.”

Constantine felt a mixture of excitement and relief. It was true. The moment had finally arrived. His two long years of being alone were coming to an end. Marion had paused for effect. Now she continued:

“I now remind you. The quorum will meet three and only three times. The final decision must be made by the end of the third meeting. That was deemed necessary when plans were first laid down over two years ago. There can and will be no variation from this course of action.”

Constantine found himself nodding in agreement. He had been part of the original meeting: it had made perfect sense then and it still made sense now. The longer the plan existed, the greater its chance of discovery. They had all agreed that speed was of the essence. Two years had seemed such a short time in which to achieve anything back then; it seemed an eternity now.

“Gillian Karajan will begin with a brief summary of progress out in the Oort cloud.”

Gillian nodded. She was blinking quickly; Marion’s words had clearly meant nothing to her and she was trying to conceal that fact.

“Hello. As I already said, my name is Gillian Karajan.” She twisted one of the bangles on her wrist nervously for a moment and then gathered herself together. “I work at the superluminal research center. Superluminal, for those who don’t know, means faster than light.” She took a deep breath, gaining confidence. “We’ve hit big-decision time. It looks like warp drive works…”

She paused for effect, looking round each member of the group in turn, then continued in self-important tones, “…but only up to a point. Our robot ships are vanishing into deep space, they’re just not coming back. The AIs are saying that we’ve almost cracked the drive mechanism; a few more weeks and we’ll have ships that can make the return journey. The question is…”

Again, she looked significantly at each member of the group before finishing. “…should we trust them?”

Silence. Constantine half raised his hand. “A working hyperdrive? That’s not what I heard.”

Gillian Karajan frowned at Marion the Chairperson, who nodded at Gillian to answer. She shrugged.

“Obviously we don’t advertise our progress to our competitors. Capability estimates suggest that only three companies are currently working on warp drive.” She stressed the penultimate word in the sentence, pointing out Constantine’s incorrect use of terminology. “They are the newly merged company 113 Berliner Sibelius, Imagineers, and us. We believe that we have had the edge on them throughout the development period, but that advantage has probably been eroded while we sat around wringing our hands and wondering what to do next.”

She turned back to face the group at large and opened her mouth to continue. Constantine interrupted.

“Sorry, but I’m interested in something you just said when you mentioned ships vanishing but not coming back. You asked if we should trust the AIs?”

Jay Apple grinned and raised her hand slightly.

“I’ll take this one, Gillian.” She turned toward Constantine, slouching comfortably back in her chair.

“It’s like this, Constantine. The AIs sketched out the basic design for a hyperdrive; the problem is, no one can understand it. The concept is far beyond human understanding. You want to hear an explanation I was given? Start by imagining a four-dimensional section of an eleven-dimensional sphere. Now deform that section over any non-Euclidean space…I mean, I won’t go on; you get the picture. The human mind can’t contain the concepts. Anyway, the AIs say, “Okay, let’s build a warp drive first. After all, it was a human mind that first formulated the equations for a warp drive. Let’s build one of those.” And so everyone says, fine, we’ll do that. But the warp drive doesn’t work, and the AIs say, “Well, just give us a little more money, and maybe it will work.” And so we put in a bit more money and it gets better, but it still doesn’t do everything it promised, so we put in a bit more. You get the picture? Soon a four-billion credit venture has ended up costing one hundred billion with still no end in sight. And then people get to thinking: If these AIs are so intelligent, why didn’t they see this to begin with? And of course the answer comes back, maybe they did. Maybe they’re just stringing us along to get what they want. Which gets a person to thinking, in that case, just for whose benefit are these AIs working? You get the idea?”

“Oh, yes,” said Constantine.