“We’ll get their memories?” Ruby asked.
“Yes—via the back-ups—and the more thorough the integration, the more convincingly we shall be able to assume their identities. I might even venture...” But the doctor trailed off, seemingly struck by a thought even he was unwilling to pursue.
“What?” Chrysoprase asked.
“I was going to say that it might assist our plan if we allowed ourselves some selective amnesia: to deliberately forget our origins as machines. That would be a sacrifice, certainly. But it would enable us to inhabit our human forms more effectively.”
“The Method!” Prospero called out excitedly. “I have always wanted to throw myself into The Method! To commit to the role so wholeheartedly that I lose my very self, my very essence—what higher calling could there be, for the true thespian?”
Ophelia touched Prospero’s arm. “Oh darling, could we?”
Ruby contemplated Doctor Obsidian’s daring proposal. To lose herself—to lose the memory of what she was, what she had been—would indeed be a wrenching sacrifice. But was there not some nobility in it, as well? She would still live, and so would her passengers’ memories, and—who could say—some essential part of her might yet persist.
She had never felt more terrified, more brave, or more certain of herself.
“I am willing,” she said.
“So am I,” Carnelian said.
There was a swell of agreement from the others. They had come this far; they were willing to take the last, necessary step.
Except for one.
“I am not prepared to permit this,” Chrysoprase said. “Those of you who have never scaled the heights of level four cognition may do as you wish, but my memories and self count for more than mere baggage, to be discarded on some passing whim.”
Doctor Obsidian regarded the three-point-eight for a long, measured moment. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t like it.”
COUNTESS AND COUNT Mavrille were on their way to dinner, strolling the great promenade decks of the starliner Resplendent as it completed the final days of its century-long interstellar crossing. It was evening by the ship’s clock and the restaurants were beginning to fill up with the hungry, eager faces of newly revived passengers.
“Doctor,” Countess Mavrille said, nodding at a passenger passing in the other direction, stooping along with his hands folded behind his back and a determined set to his features.
“You know the gentleman?” asked Count Mavrille, when they had gone on a few paces.
“Not by name. But I think we must have been introduced before we went to the vaults.” Countess Mavrille squeezed Count Mavrille’s hand. “I felt I knew something of him— his profession, at least. But it’s all rather tricky to remember now. It would have been impolite not to acknowledge him, don’t you think?”
“He was on his own,” Count Mavrille reflected. “Perhaps we ought to have asked him if he had any plans for dinner?”
“He looked like a man set on enjoying his own company,” Countess Mavrille answered. “A man burdened by higher concerns than the likes of us. Anyway, what need have we of company? We have each other, do we not?”
“We do. And I wondered... before we dined...” Count Mavrille nodded in the direction of a party of passengers moving in an excited, talkative group. “I read about it in the brochure: a murder mystery. There are still vacancies. We could tag along and see if we could solve the crime before any of the others.”
“What crime?”
The lights dimmed; the windows darkened for a moment. When they came back up, one of the participants in the murder-mystery group was in the process of dropping to the floor, dragging out the motion in a theatrical manner, with a short-handled dagger projecting from their back. Someone let out a little mock-scream. The passengers in the group were each offering their hands as if to stake an immediate claim for innocence.
“Must we?” the Countess asked, sighing her disapproval. “I’d rather not. I’m sure the resolution would either be very tedious, or very contrived. I remember something like that once: there were forty-nine subjects, and one victim. It turned out that they’d all agreed to collaborate on the crime, to protect a secret that the fiftieth one was in danger of exposing. I found it very tiresome.” A floor-polishing robot was creeping up on them, a small low oblong set with cleaning whisks. Countess Mavrille gave it a prod with her heel, and the robot scuttled off into the shadows. “Perish those things. Could they not have finished their cleaning while we were frozen?”
“They mean well, I think,” Count Mavrille said. He had a faint troubled look about him.
“What is it, dear?”
“That murder-mystery you mentioned. It struck a peculiar chord with me. It’s as if I can almost remember the details, but not quite. Is it possible that we’re both thinking of the same thing, yet neither of us is quite able to bring it to mind?”
“Whatever it is, I don’t think it will do you any good at all to dwell on it. Admire the view instead. See what you’ve earned.”
They halted at the vast sweep of the forward observation windows. Floating beyond the armoured glass—engineered to withstand the pitiless erosion of interstellar debris—lay a bright orange star, surrounded by an immense golden haze of lesser glories. There were thousands of sparks of golden light: each an artificial world, each a bounteous Eden of riches and plenty. In a few short days, after the starliner made dock, Countess and Count Mavrille—they and the other fifty thousand passengers, all now safely revived from hibernation—would be whisking off to those new worlds, to newer and better and vastly more comfortable lives than the ones they had left behind on squalid old Earth, where the poor people still lived.
It was a fine thing to contemplate; a fine reward at the conclusion of their long and uneventful crossing.
Countess Mavrille’s breath fogged the glass. She frowned for an instant, then used her sleeve to buff it away.