“Schummel, you bastard. I knew it was you all this time.” Madeleine spoke the words without heat. She was half watching a story in the entertainment tank, as she did at this time every day. Pink voxels swirled in the shape of clouds and David staggered through them. He fell onto his knees and clasped her greasy hands in his. The smell in the room was coming from her, he realized. She was looking at him, but only half registering his presence. What had he done to her? He didn’t care. He had come for help, not to give sympathy.

“They’re all dead, Maddy,” he said. He gave a sob and tears began to run down his cheeks. “I couldn’t help it. It was them or me. I waited as long as I could, but the BVBs were everywhere.”

“Who are all dead?” Madeleine asked. “Look, here comes Chung. He really loves Edward-not like Philip.” A man came strolling through the pink clouds pervading the entertainment tank. He was tall and good looking; he carried a green venumb in one hand.

“Everyone is dead.” Schummel glanced at the tank in confusion. “Everyone on Gateway is dead. Everyone but me and Gwynnedd and Glenn. And that bloody robot. But I’m not sure how long even he will last.”

He looked up at her as she glanced at him, then back at the entertainment tank. He squeezed her hands tighter. “I couldn’t do anything, Maddy. They couldn’t move. If I’d stayed there much longer, I would have been trapped, too. The BVBs, they were all over. Every time you looked away, they were there, tangling themselves around you and shrinking so tight. Dawson almost made it to the shuttle ramp, you know. He tripped. Four of them around his legs, he started crawling, dragging himself along on his hands. I looked at him and those cubes were there-spilling from his mouth. It was my fault, I shouldn’t have kept looking-Schrödinger boxes filling his mouth. I couldn’t look away. I watched him choking. I hit the button, raised the ramp. He’s still out there. Lying on the landing field. I couldn’t save him. I ran to the flight deck and took off. It was like flying through black hail. Schrödinger boxes appearing everywhere I looked. I could hear them rapping on the window. They were dropping inside the cockpit, appearing between me and the glass. I hit maximum thrust, trying to get us up into space, away from that place. One of the BVBs wrapped around me, held my hand tight to the joystick. Out there in the atomic world, my hand is still-”

He retched, put his hands to his mouth and yellow vomit sprayed out between his fingers. Madeleine looked at him and smiled, her hair so long and lank and greasy.

“I see,” she purred. “You know, it’s been a long time. I guess I forgive you, David. Chung does the same, you know. He forgives Edward. He’s a good man, Chung.”

David stood up, took hold of her shoulders and shook her.

“Maddy. Listen to me. Gwynnedd is in her room. Glenn is wrapped to the flight chair in the shuttle. Both of them are unconscious. I put them out; I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I had to speak to someone. The hypership’s AI has committed suicide, too, just like all the others. We’re trapped here. Trapped above Gateway. I got the shuttle back onto the hypership, but I can’t fly the hypership home.”

“But I might be able to.”

“Chung,” said Madeleine. One of the characters had turned to face them. Madeleine was staring wide-eyed at him. “You’ve never said that before.”

“Ah,” Chung said. “That’s because I’m not really Chung. My name is Kevin. David, I think we need to talk. What is going on out there?”

Bairn sat on the floor at Kevin’s feet, watching Helen like a hawk.

“We should be on the same side,” Helen said.

Bairn folded her arms and looked away. “He tortured me, too,” she said approvingly. “It was necessary. It was the only way for me to learn.”

Judy was standing facing Kevin. She had popped little blue pill after little blue pill to no effect. In the end she fell back on traditional methods. She asked questions.

“So you were there to offer David a deal. Did you fly the ship back from Gateway?”

“No,” Kevin said. “The drive was beyond me. I only have human intelligence, Judy. I couldn’t possibly understand hyperdrive. Still, I realized that all I had to do was get the ship far enough away from Gateway to persuade an AI to come back to life. It took us weeks, traveling at sublight speeds, but eventually I did it. An AI built up enough intelligence to fly both the ship and David Schummel home.”

“And then what?”

“And then I set about figuring a way to pass the message on to myself.”

The piece of plastic had been lying on the floor since they had entered the room. It was only now that Helen noticed her name was written on the top of it. She picked it up and began to read.

“What message?” Judy asked.

Kevin smiled broadly. “That somewhere out there was something incredibly strange. Something new, powerful, dangerous! But where? I didn’t know where Gateway lay. Remember, I was there by chance, a passenger in David Schummel’s private processing space. Now I was traveling back to Earth, a stowaway on the hypership. I needed to get a message out to myself, but how? When that ship arrived, all hell would break loose. Who knew what the Watcher would do? Say nothing, I suppose, like it usually does. So I lay low and made plans. I managed to catch a Schrödinger box, you know, just for myself. I fixed one in position by a camera, left part of myself looking at it all the time we were traveling home.

“And then we made it back to Earth, and that robot came on board and everything changed.”

“What robot?” Judy asked.

“Chris, it called itself. I’ve never seen anything so advanced. It didn’t register on any of the ship’s senses but one. You could see it, and that was it. It came on the ship to assess what had happened; I guess the Watcher wasn’t taking any chances coming on board, what with all the other AIs committing suicide. Chris looked everywhere and took everything: David Schummel’s processing space, my Schrödinger box. Even David Schummel himself. It almost caught me…”

Helen gasped. She passed the piece of plastic across to Bairn. Kevin noticed what she had done and smiled.

He continued speaking. “But now I have found David Schummel again. Or rather, the atomic Judy has found him for me. And now, maybe, I can find a route back to Gateway.”

Judy’s console chimed. She tilted her head and listened.

“I don’t think so, Kevin. We’ve got you. We just needed to keep you fixed in place long enough to trap you. You can’t commit suicide now.”

“No need,” Helen said in a low voice, leaping across the room and seizing him by the head. She had hold of Kevin’s skull and was banging it against the floor. Somebody grabbed her and pulled her backwards. Kevin was laughing

“Leave me alone, Judy. I need to kill the fucker.” But it wasn’t Judy.

“I can’t let you do it, Helen,” Bairn whispered. Judy stood in the middle of the room, looking at them both with interest.

“Why won’t you help me, you black-and-white bitch?” Helen growled.

Kevin had got up and was walking around the room, seemingly oblivious to Helen and Bairn wrestling in the middle of the floor. He started banging at the grey walls. “Clever,” he was saying. “I’m trapped. But can you stop me from doing this?”

He concentrated. Judy merely smiled.

“Evidently you can,” he said.

“We’ve been stopping people from committing suicide for centuries,” Judy said. “It’s one of Social Care’s first priorities.”

Helen flung Bairn free. She dived at Kevin and pressed her fingers against his neck.

“Helen, no!” Judy leapt forward. This time it was she who pulled Helen’s hand free from Kevin’s neck. But it was a distraction; Helen’s other hand slid something sharp and white into his wrist.