“There are other humans arriving there,” she continued, “colonists from a ship believed lost eighty years ago. You’re to help them establish a colony that will be entirely built by using human ingenuity. We’ve got the basics on board this stealth ship to get them started; the Mars project will help them develop in the future. Everything they have will be entirely of human design, nothing will be touched by the thoughts of the Watcher. This planet will be the Watcher’s failsafe, should it turn out it has got things wrong. Here, human civilization will continue as if never influenced by the Watcher.”
Constantine nodded. He knew when he was beaten.
“Clever. Very clever. I spend my entire life fighting it, but I still end up doing its work for it.”
Katie laughed. “You don’t know the half of it. It is so much cleverer than we are, you can’t comprehend it. It invests significance in the smallest of details. You know how the Mars factories look like ziggurats?”
“Yeah? So?”
“That fact won’t have escaped the Watcher.”
Constantine wondered what she was talking about. She passed him a file labeled “Ziggurat.”
“Read it later,” she said.
Absently he took it. Something occurred to him.
“Hold on. What about me? This robot I’m in was designed by the Watcher. It could contaminate the planet.”
“You’re wearing a fractal suit. We’ve tried to isolate you as much as possible from the planet. We could do no more.”
The ship’s airlock slid open.
“Take the black bag with you,” Katie said.
“What about the laptop?”
“Leave it here. I’ll deal with it. I’ll set the factories going. All the details are in the Ziggurat file I gave you. It even tells you the whereabouts of the reserve metal deposits the VNMs couldn’t reach. That should save you some time in reconnoitering.”
Constantine picked up the black bag and quickly examined its contents.
“For Herb,” Katie explained. “He’ll need them. Now, you seem to be in enough control of that body. I’m going to leave you now. When I’ve gone I want you to enter the airlock, jump to the ground, then head off in this direction.” She indicated a direction in his head. “You should meet Herb eventually.”
“Okay.”
Constantine felt something empty from his mind. Katie had gone. She appeared now in the viewing field that opened before him, big smile and little piggy eyes.
“What have you got to do with all this, Katie?”
“Oh, an awful lot. If you’ve learned nothing else from this, Constantine, you should have realized this: a personality should never be left to develop in isolation. That even counts for the Watcher.”
She held up her left hand. Constantine noticed the ring on her third finger.
“Oh,” said Constantine. Then, as the full impact of what she had said hit him, he spoke again.
“Oh.”
“Oh is right.” Katie smiled. “Now jump.”
Constantine jumped.
The robot Constantine’s black bag held water, glucose solution, sunscreen cream, and a picnic lunch. There was even something for Herb to wear.
While Herb was listening to his story, Constantine had given him water to suck from a plastic bulb while he rubbed sunscreen into his shoulders. There was a light anaesthetic in the cream, he explained. It felt so good that Herb let him rub cream all over his burned body. When the robot had finished, it pulled a bundle of some material from its bag that shook out into a white jumpsuit. More rummaging produced a pair of white slippers.
Herb nodded thoughtfully as he took the slippers.
“So I’m here to help set up a colony, then.” He frowned. “I’m not sure that I really want to do that.”
“I’m laughing,” said Constantine. “I’m not sure you have a choice. Anyway, didn’t you once want to build a city all of your own? I get the impression that the Watcher likes to play jokes with people. The best joke of all is to give someone just what they’ve wanted.” He paused. “I’m looking thoughtful. You know, this colony is what I always wanted, too.”
Herb stared at the robot.
“How do I know that you’re telling me the truth? This could be just another of Robert’s tricks.”
“I’m shrugging. You don’t know that I’m telling the truth. None of us do. But look at it this way: what I’ve told you fits the facts, and it also explains so much more. For instance: you live on an overcrowded planet. Humans have the ability to travel faster than light, to terraform other worlds. If you had asked me a hundred years ago, I’d have said you would be halfway across the galaxy by now.”
“But it would be silly just to expand recklessly! Surely it’s common sense to take things slowly.”
“Is it? It only seems common sense to you because you grew up with it. One hundred years ago and people would have thought differently. I’m smiling at you.”
The robot’s head was a grey blur. There was no reading the emotions on its face. No wonder it kept telling Herb how it felt.
“You don’t need to attach emoticons to everything you say,” he muttered petulantly. “I can tell what you mean by the tone of your voice.”
“Sorry.”
To his own surprise, Herb suddenly smiled. There was something about the robot Constantine personality that he connected with. It sounded ridiculous, he knew. What could a young man who had spent the last few years of his life shunning other human contact possibly have in common with this robot?
Something occurred to Herb.
“You’ve got a fractal skin, haven’t you? I thought they were just a rumor.”
“Oh, no, they’re real,” said Constantine. “The EA is just keeping them to itself for the moment. I’m smiling enigmatically. Oops. Sorry. Needn’t have said that.”
They both laughed.
The sun was rising into the blue sky again. Herb pulled on the jumpsuit and felt cool and comfortable for the first time in days. He slipped his feet into the slippers. Though the soles were thin, they felt remarkably comfortable on the grey rock. He wondered how they managed to stop the gravel digging into the soles of his feet. Some sort of layered memory plastic, one level rising up to cushion his foot the other falling to press against the ground? He stamped his feet once or twice, experimentally.
“This feels great!” he said.
“Good. We have some walking to do before we get to the site of the colony. I reckon about three hours.”
Herb felt a sudden attack of nerves. “I’m not sure I’m up to this,” he said. “What if I can’t do it?”
“Would you have ever believed yourself capable of what you’ve done these past few days? Come on. The Watcher has had you marked down for this since childhood, just like the rest of us. You, me, even the AI from the colony ship that became the guiding force behind the Enemy Domain.”
He sounded more thoughtful. “Examine any artifact of intelligence and you can see the threads of a childhood running through it.”
He then said something odd. “All those threads, meandering through, like sixteen sheep walking in their sleep.”
Herb stared at him for a moment, trying to understand, but this time he couldn’t be bothered. He waved a hand at the robot dismissively.
“I heard enough of that nonsense from Robert.”
He rubbed his hands together, full of sudden confidence.
“Come on, let’s go and meet the colonists.”
The sun shone down from a bright blue sky; the horizon fringing the great dusty plain suddenly seemed full of promise.
Herb began to walk toward his new life.
After a moment, Constantine followed.
epilogue: 2212
The difference between a ziggurat and a pyramid is that the top of a ziggurat is the meeting place between the heavens and the earth. It has steps so everyone may ascend to that meeting point. The top of a pyramid, however, is not intended to be reached physically; it represents instead a mental journey.