“It’s true,” Matthew told her.

“Back at Base One the counterrevolution’s proceeding apace,” she added. “ Crystallizing outwas Tang’s phrase. The awareness that they’re not actually in a position to demand anything from Milyukov is only making things worse. We’ll have an appointed ambassador and a staff of diplomats soon enough, and a list of demands—but the only leverage we have is Milyukov’s reputation. What will the people of Earth think of you if you let us down or preside over a disaster?isn’t the strongest negotiating position imaginable. Especially when the disaster is resolutely refusing to make an entrance. Tang says that he can’t whip up as much interest as our expedition clearly deserves. Nobody really expects us to find the humanoids, although it’s willful blindness rather than the calculus of probability that generates the negative expectation, and nobody can imagine anything else that’s going to make a difference to the way feelings are running.”

“That’s their failure,” Matthew said. “If I had a TV camera I could make a difference easily enough. I could almost wish I was there instead of here, so that I could at least get up on stage and shout at an audience. Don’t look at me like that—even Bernal would have had twinges of that sort, with or without a sore shoulder.”

“If we have to shout for help from One you might eventually get your chance,” she suggested.

“It would be entirely the wrong way to go into it,” he told her. “Victims of misfortune always look like klutzes, no matter how innocent their victimhood. To get attention, you have to be a hero.”

“For that sort of part,” she said, only a little censoriously, “you seem to be a little out of practice.”

TWENTY-NINE

The second passage through shallow and fast-moving water passed without incident, although Matthew had to grit his teeth a time or two as the legs extended on either side of the vessel and then began to move with exactly the same sinister flow as a real spider’s legs. There was no need this time to brace the vessel’s “feet” against the sides of the watercourse, which was more than wide enough to accommodate its passing.

The multitudinous rocks that jutted up from the water’s surface or hid mere millimeters beneath it were both problem and solution. No human eyes could have plotted a series of safe steps for two legs, let alone eight, but it was the kind of task for which an AI’s perceptions were well-adapted.

Matthew knew that the eight legs had autonomic systems built into their “shoulders,” so that each one could take its primary cues from its neighbor and adjust its own attitude accordingly. He was afraid at first that the additional signals emanating from the central controller might interfere with the lower-order process of coordination, but he quickly realized that artificial intelligence must have made considerable advances between 2090 and the date when Hopehad finally left the solar system. Three additional generations of insectile and arachnoid probes designed and built to operate on the surfaces of the inner worlds and outer satellites had brought specialist systems of the kind embodied in the boat to a new pitch of perfection. The reflexive alarm that welled up in his throat when the boat began her fantastic dance from rock to rock was calmed soon enough, although it underwent a pulse of renewal every time more than one of the feet disappeared beneath the surface in search of invisible purchase.

It would all have seemed easier if the boat had not been moving so quickly, but the AI’s safety calculations did not need to take account of trepidation or hesitation. Once she had collated the relevant data, she fed her responses through without the slightest hesitation, and the legs moved accordingly. Matthew had never before found occasion to wonder what it might be like to be an elf mounted on a spider’s back, but the fact that he was still rather spaced out by virtue of the anesthetic endeavors of his IT made him more than usually vulnerable to surreal impressions. For a minute or two Voconiareally did seem to be living up to her name, and it became astonishingly easy to imagine himself as an exceedingly tiny individual lost in a microcosmic wonderland.

Had the scuttling race extended for many minutes more the AI would have had to take into account such factors as lactic acid deficiency and all the other phenomena of “tiredness,” but the craft’s emerald skin had stored just enough energy to sustain the dash without requiring the mobilization of any additional fuel supplies. As rides went, even for a nonfan like Matthew, the trip was far more exciting and rewarding than the tightly cocooned descent from Hope. It was not until it was over that he realized how tightly he had been clenching his fists—even the right one, which was far more grudging of the strain.

“It was a little more hectic than I’d expected,” he confessed to Ike Mohammed, when it was over and there was nothing but smooth water between the boat and the cataract.

“According to the whispers the crew put about,” the genomicist told him, “boats like this made the colonization of Ganymede and Titan possible. The combination of insectile mobility and brute computer power made machines not unlike this one leading contenders in the spot-the-sentient stakes a couple of hundred years ago.”

“No winner’s been declared yet?” Matthew said, surprised. “There were people claiming evidence of machine consciousness before I was frozen down. There was even a fledgling rights movement.”

“Apparently not,” Ike told him. “Of course, any prophet worth his salt could have told you that the goalposts would keep on being moved, and that the philosophical difficulty of settling the question would become more vexed rather than less when more candidates for machine-intelligence-of-the-millennium began to come forward. So far as the crew have been able to ascertain, the state of play back on Earth is that hardened machine fans reckon that there are as many conscious machines in the system as conscious people, whereas the diehards in the opposite camp still hold the official count at zero.”

“It’s still surprising,” Matthew said.

“Maybe it is,” Ike conceded. “Your average robot taxi driver will claim consciousness if you ask it, especially in New York—but it would, wouldn’t it? Even if the long-anticipated general strike ever takes place, the diehards will stick to their guns—unless, of course, their guns have come out in sympathy.”

Matthew decided that this was one issue too many for him to try to accommodate in his speculations, at present. He felt that he ought to concentrate on matters more immediately in hand. The wheelhouse AI wasn’t the only robot on board; one of the others was patiently dissecting out the genetic material from samples they’d taken out of the river. Full-scale sequencing would have to wait for later, but the markers already catalogued by Ike and his fellows at Base One and the tags assembled in their portable library were adequate to allow the robot to begin pumping out maps of gradually increasing resolution.

Matthew’s notepad was too small to produce readable images of the data-complexes, so he and Ike had to go into the cabin to use the wallscreen, where a petty quarrel immediately developed as to who ought to have control of the keyboard. Ike won, not just because he had two capable hands but because he had three years’ more experience in interpreting the data. He had every right to play commentator to Matthew’s audience, even though the reversal of what seemed to Matthew to be their natural roles was a trifle irksome.

As the data began to pile up, however, Ike had to spend more and more time merely sifting through it, looking for items of significance that the scanner programs were not yet sophisticated enough to catch. When the commentary lapsed Matthew quickly became lost in the data-deluge, acutely conscious of the fact that he probably would not be able to spot an interesting anomaly if it stood up and waved Rand Blackstone’s hat at him. He was still learning his way around the fundamental and familiar patterns, trying to come to terms imaginatively with the weird binary genomes that all Tyrian organisms possessed; its biochemical complexities were so much gibberish. He had to remind himself, very firmly, that this was not his forte, and that the hypnotic effect it had on Ikram Mohammed was something he ought to avoid, lest it distract him from the kinds of observation and hypothesis-formation that werehis forte.