Still Wahram was uneasy, and he read the files on all the humans and humanoids they held captive, which at this point came to a few thousand pages. When he was done, he came back to Genette more upset than ever.

“You’ve missed something here,” he said sharply. “Read the interviews and you’ll see that there was someone in that lab in Vinmara who was letting some of these qubanoids loose and sending them off to people elsewhere in the system who helped to hide them. The ones that Swan ran into in the Inner Mongolia, and at least four more—they all tell similar stories. Whoever was doing this told them they were defective, and that they needed to go on the lam if they wanted to keep from being demolished. The qubes didn’t know what to make of that, and some of them acted strangely after they got loose. Maybe they weredefective, I have no reason to disbelieve it. Anyway, this person in the lab was getting them away from Lakshmi! So does that person deserve exile also? And do the defective qubanoids that got away deserve exile?”

Genette frowned at this and promised it would get looked into.

This was not satisfactory to Wahram. He had been involved with Genette and Alex in the problem of the strange qubes from the beginning, and now felt he was being somewhat shunted to the side. He rolled his wheelchair into a meeting of the Interplan investigators and other members of the group as they discussed the situation, and again made the case for these innocents caught up with the rest of their captives. In the end it was not unanimous, but a strong majority agreed: all the qubanoids were to go into exile; the lab assistant who had been setting the defectives loose would not. It turned out that this lab assistant had not only let them go, but also erased them from the lab’s records, in quite a clever bit of work, Genette informed Wahram—as if it were the cleverness that justified the pardon. Wahram, still deeply unsatisfied, let the matter drop. The Venusian lab assistant, a young person scarcely older than the lawn bowler, would be free to go. And the poor defective qubes might be better off among their own kind.

So when the time came, Wahram sat in the viewing chamber of the Interplan cruiser and watched with the rest of the people there as the matter-antimatter engine fired up, and the First Quarter of Nixbegan its trip to the stars. It looked like any other terrarium on the move, maybe a little bit bigger. Ice formed a fair percentage of its mass, and the exterior looked like an ice statue of something like a great white dolphin, flying on a tail of lightning.

“What about the people who built it?” Wahram asked. “Wasn’t that their starship?”

“We have to replace it. They intend to send four in a kind of fleet, so we will make another one for them out of Hydra. We can take some of Charon too if we need it. So they will still have their four ships.”

Wahram remained troubled. “I still don’t know what I think of this.”

Genette did not seem concerned at that. “Best we could do, I’m afraid! It was a hard thing to manage offline and in utter secrecy. Quite a nifty little operation, if you ask me. Amazing what you can do with paper and synchronized watches. Every person involved had to behave with the utmost secrecy and completely trust the people they knew in the network, and they all had to be right about that for it to work. It’s quite an accomplishment when you think about it.”

“Agreed,” Wahram said, “but will it be enough?”

“No. The problem remains. This just gives us a little breathing room.”

“And… you are confident you got all of them?”

“Not at all. But it looks like the facility on Venus was the only one making them, or so Wang’s qube believes. And we’ve got enough records from their energy use and input of materials to get a maximum count of how many could be made, and we got almost exactly that many. Possibly there are one or two still out there, but we’re thinking they will be too few to do any harm. They may be more of the defectives let free by that young lab assistant. Anyway, we will try to catch them if they are out there.”

Meaning, Wahram thought, that right now somewhere in the system there could be machines in human form, escaped into the crowd, doing their best to stay free, perhaps, when any X-ray machine or other surveillance device would reveal what they were—out there hiding, trying to accomplish the goals they had been given, perhaps, or new ones they might choose for themselves, according to some self-invented algorithm of survival. Damaged, dangerous, detached from any other consciousness, solitary and afraid—in other words, just like everyone else.

Quantum Walk (3)

on the edge of the marsh the frogs croak the fecundity schedule concerns how often and when during life one procreates and how many offspring morphogenesis is the process by which an organism creates itself growth curves with a time lag results in oscillating patterns the predators always a quarter cycle behind the prey

these new humans are taking you to be destroyed fat gun in your face commanded to walk between them away from your helpers out there on the Jersey shore Manhattan skyscrapers topping the east horizon on the run on the hunt

kick the gun and run humans hilariously slow on the uptake dash into cinder shadows of dun brake duck and turn jump a creek green meadow crumpled with moss pads were Persian carpets ever green?

almost stride directly into another person looks human

I need help some people just mugged me and I think they’re still after me

human stares at you pure blue iris marbled by a darker blue come with me then

off on a path human stops, points white-tailed deer frozen in place ears facing them a febrile temperament they’re back the human says

You say Would you like to play chess?

Human says Sure come on

To a little shack another human already there they talk in the kitchen go outside at sunset the red on the hill taketh away my will needles on the conifers prick silver deciduous leaves flush on their western sides a moment comes when a distant streetlight casts a glow against the sunset and a space of light is set up without shadow exceptionally clear and articulate to the sight there’s a fox at the edge of a clearing flowing through weeds russet and white the propagule rain falling both ways from Earth to space then back again a symbiogenesis lifting both blue of sky slightly veiled by white transparencies

Swan it’s Zasha from inside the house I’ve got a thing here a chess player it seems kind of confused

black birds banner back to town land in a tree on the horizon black dots flopping lazily getting settled at end of day

birdcalls talking to each other maybe fifty birds of various kinds making a sonic sphere it’s all together that make it music the continuo is the hum of the cars trucks generators engines motors a jet so big it looks nearby its sound far behind it in the sky bird chorus at sunset surcharge and overlap civilization in the open air avian wisdom conserved in archaic parts of brain not apparently programmable a leap of the imagination

near midnight a third human arrives tall graceful Hi Zasha what’s up

introductions hail the reality of the other namasté I salute the spirit within you

I’m Swan tell me about yourself

summarize events since coming to consciousness shoved out the door into the street departure from Venus transport by humans in a private system land on Earth all began as part of an attempt to end the eclipse on Venus not immediately but as a project to be enacted safely hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul ignorant of details of plan helpers somehow actually against the larger project helpers arrested or kidnapped forced departure mention of being put down escape