On the comlink, Munk hears Jumper Nili's defiant cry and begins his drop-dead flyby. Mars glides past the viewport; small with distance, its sharp rays cut the darkness like a star of blood. Its clear silence illuminates an uneasiness
in the androne. What if Aparecida kills Mei Nili? The future becomes pointless then. Where can he go? Without the archaic brain, Solis will have nothing to do with him, and finding work in the Belt will be degrading, for none of the Commonality companies tolerate rogue behavior. To return to Apollo Combine or even lapetus Gap where he began would mean certain ligature of his
self-directive functions: His brain would be bound to a work governor that would inhibit all future independence.
That possibility is untenable to him, not after the pleasure he has derived from his anthropic studies, which he would lose once his C-P program is shunted by a work governor. But the other options available to him seem little better. The best he could hope for would be to wander the Belt, seeking bandit operations, salvage jobs that he could get to first before any company vessels show up.
Even then, he would have to rely on markets outside the Commonality to credit him for the materials he salvaged. Then he would have to transfer his credits to independent brokers among the colonies so that they could be converted to the power cells he requires to continue functioning. At any time he himself could be set upon by bandit salvagers or legitimate company crews who would be within their rights in dismantling him and brokering his components.
Of course, the Maat would grant him sanctuary from bandits and the Commonality companies in Terra Tharsis, their vast community on Mars. They would take him
in, their creation hammered out of nothing. They would accept him as they accept all who come into their communal presence, and he would be changed, as all are changed in the grand thetic fields of their recondite being, changed and made anew, no longer Munk but Munk-of-the-Maat, naked before the infinite, at the
foot of the dream that mind has named existence-and he would be made again mysterious even to himself.
Fear twines in him at that prospect. Is this some subprogram installed by his creators? Perhaps. He does not want to dwell on it. The Maat are too strange to contemplate, and he would rather live as a bandit in the void than submit himself to their unknowable whims.
For a similar reason, Munk has not dared consider Jumper Nili's request that he override his primary programming and blow up Phoboi Twelve. If he does that, he compromises the only stability he has, the certainty of his own mental being. Carbon minds, having evolved from organic accidents, know madness. But the silicon mind is singular and thus secure from insanity. It is clarity itself, crystal become mind.
The andrones constructed by the Commonality are such truly pure silicon entities that they are incapable of defying their cybernetic natures. But a Maat construct, imbued with a contra-parameter program as he has been, is subject to the possibility of continual redefinition. Such randomness is the very threshold of madness.
Munk fears that. His primary program-to serve as a patrol and salvage androne for lapetus Gap-was immutably altered by the activation of his C-P program-to acquire all the anthropic data he can. That diverted him from his work station in the Saturn ring system and brought him to Apollo Combine. Since then he has suffered flutter-gaps in his attention whenever he even so much as glimpses
holo-images of the rings or hears data blurbs about the gas giants. Studying the anthropic psyche, he has learned that these attention gaps are experienced by people as pangs of remorse, guilt, nostalgia. Why, he has often wondered, have the Maat instilled such an inhibiting inefficiency in their creations?
Whatever the reason-if it can be called reason at all-Munk dreads all further deviation from his primary program. He has gone so far as to question the merit of his C-P interest in humans. Yet question is all he can do, since he is incapable of terminating his C-P file. As he cuts the magjets and commits The Laughing Life to its plunge toward Phoboi Twelve, he knows his fate is locked. Mei will either be there with the archaic brain, or she will be dead.
A tendril of fern floats by, and he plucks it out of the air, enduring another
flutter-gap in his attention. When he arrived in the Belt, this was the first bioform Munk saw. All the jumper ships are festooned with them-flowering lianas, crimson-leafed creepers, emerald bracken, and glossy jade plants. His initial lesson in human behavior was to learn that the human psyche relishes the
presence of this early ancestor.
He takes the fern leaf between his digits and marvels again at its delicacy. The microvoltage of the phosphorylation of adenosine diphosphate to adenosine triphosphate in the cells' chlorophyll tingles his fingersensors when he feels for it. This is the photosynthetic process that has evolved spontaneously billions of years ago on Earth, releasing the free oxygen that made the evolution of respiring organisms possible.
How eerie it seems to him that this being appeared automatously out of the molecular frenzy of life. No creature manufactured it as he was manufactured. It emerged of its own accord, nascent, replete. As did the archaic brain that Mei Nili carries in the plasteel case. Mr. Charlie was not shaped in the vats. His genetic structure manifested without benefit of Maat or androne guidance. And that fills Munk with wonder as he tunes into the code-privileged band of the
comlink.
He hears nothing, for Mei has shut down her link. The static that fills the enclosed space is the thin wind of the sun nagging at the electrons of the ship's antenna. It is a cold and unfailing sound.
Mei Nili fires her jetpak and, with a whooping cry, is flung through the hatch of the command pod and across the vault, Charles hugged tight against her. Aparecida, squatting atop the pod, lashes her spiked tail at the streaking
figure and misses.
Shooting through the smashed gap in the geodesic dome, Mei skids to a stop at the entry to the gigantic bore tunnel. A charred screech from the demolition androne sends Mei fleeing through the dark corridor, using short kicks from her jetpak to bound as far ahead as her cowl light permits her to see. She must find a vent that ascends to the surface. The plasteel case in her arms whispers through her comlink, "Mei Nili, Mei Nili, are you still with me?"
"Yes, Mr. Charlie, I'm here. Calm down. I can't talk now. Aparecida is after us."
Charles hates not knowing what is happening. He wants to help, to participate in his own salvation, and he rakes his mind for some worthy counsel. "Do you have a weapon?"
"No. Nothing that would stop a demolition androne."
Mei dares not even glance behind. Her full attention is ahead of her, among the numerous escapes in the rive rock wall-the vent holes and sludge chutes. Some, she knows, must be dead ends, terminating in dross bins and catch chambers. Very few will lead to the surface. Desperately, she strives to bring forward in her memory the bore-tunnel pattern that is the model for the ore
processors she has helped install. But she has lost track of where she is in the tunnel.
Jarring vibrations quake the thin air with Aparecida's hammering stride, and the whipstroke whistle of her tentacles lashes its screeching echoes like a slicing siren. At any instant, Mei expects a shatter-blow to slam her into blackness. Stifling her terror, she fixes her gaze on a likely cavity directly overhead. A tight burst of the jetpak launches her upward, and she curls about in midleap and slides into the opening feetfirst.
Below her, she sees Aparecida lunge at the rock wall, talons biting into the stone, tentacles hoisting her along the sheered surface with weightless agility, her long head tilted back, fixing Mei with a pulsing, fireshadow glare.
"Where are we?" Charles asks. "What's happening now?"