It isn’t you who will have to take the risk, Patti thought, but she knew that it wasn’t quite accurate. The Technical Faction would be intimately involved with examining the captured ship — if it were captured — and if the Killers arrived to recover their ship, they’d be caught in the firing line. She made a mental note to ensure that the starship was flown well away from any inhabited human settlement, just in case, before waiting for the next person to speak.
“I believe that this is futile,” Father Sigmund said, tightly. Patti wasn’t too surprised by his stance. The Deists believed the life was sacred and not to be risked, ever. Their beliefs would make very little difference if the Killers attacked, just as they had slaughtered most of humanity’s religious adherents on Earth. “I cannot in good conscience support this crazy plan.”
“I must agree with you for once,” Matriarch Jayne said. The Rockrat leader stared at Brent harshly. Her ancient face refused to budge. “This plan risks far too much for a very chancy reward. We cannot afford another High Singapore so soon.”
Patti smiled. The Rockrats had formed the basis of much of the Community — and one of their traditions was female leaders. After Earth had been destroyed, the women on the asteroid belts had suddenly become worth far more than their weight in gold and had been prevented from going outside sheltered accommodation. While the men struggled to build a new society, the women had quietly taken control of the asteroids and ended up running the original Community. They were generally more careful than men in their dealings with the Killers. They knew what was at stake.
“So does certain death,” Tabitha said. Her voice hardened slightly. “I cast my vote in favour of this plan.”
“As do I,” Brent said, unnecessarily.
“Four in favour, two opposed,” Patti said. She sighed, heavily. If she cast a vote now, it would be useless, whichever way she moved. Her constituents would not be too happy, but there was little choice. “I choose, therefore, to abstain from the vote. Admiral, you have your permission to proceed. Good luck.”
“Thank you,” Brent said. He looked down at the image of the Killer starship for a long moment. Patti wondered if he was having doubts now about the wisdom of his plans. “We won’t fail you.”
Chapter Three
As soon as the meeting ended, Tabitha Cunningham translated herself out of the meeting perceptual environment and back into her own apartment — or what she thought of as her apartment. It looked like her old apartment back on Earth — nothing more than radioactive dust now — even to her enhanced senses, but she knew that it was not. It was an image, formed in her mind and given a certain trace of reality by the MassMind, yet it was nothing more than the tiniest tiny section of the network that linked the human race together. Tabitha knew that the illusion was an illusion and could never give herself completely to it, but she needed the comfortable to remind her that there was something worth fighting for, even if it was a dream long gone.
Was she human? It was something she had struggled with for centuries, ever since the Endeavour — a starship only called a starship by the grace of semantics — had reached a new star and encountered humanity’s first warp-capable starship. The aging Tabitha had dreamed of a new world, but instead she’d been warned that no Earth-like world was safe for humans, and she could seek a kind of immortality as a ghost in the machine. Her mind, her personality, perhaps even her soul, had been transcribed into the growing MassMind… but was she human? Was she still Tabitha, who had captained a Bridge Ship and led humanity’s desperate struggle to survive, or was she nothing more than a tiny computer program that dreamed it was a woman?
She wasn’t the only one to have those doubts, but as humanity grew older, it seemed to her that the number of humans who had those doubts fell. She had been Roman Catholic on Earth, but humanity’s religions had been almost completely exterminated by the Killers. By becoming part of the MassMind, she had wondered at the time, was she trying to cheat God? Was she doomed for punishment on the Day of Judgement? And yet, she thought from time to time, could anyone cheat God? If He wanted to summon her, He could do it with ease, no matter where she hid. He could certainly reach into the MassMind for her.
Her eyes closed as she slumped into a chair that was not a chair. It would have been easy to lose herself within the MassMind and thousands of human patterns did so every year. She could hear the faint whispers of the collective MassMind at the back of her head — everyone in the MassMind would hear them — and she knew that one day she would succumb to the song herself. She was the oldest personality within the MassMind, over a thousand years old, and she was tired. The illusion of being tired was the only link she had to being human. There were people — personalities — in the MassMind who never grew tired, or bored with their games. They could do anything in the MassMind; it never failed to shock her, even after a thousand years, how far people could go. The MassMind never judged, for no one was hurt, but she still struggled with her own morality. Was it right to lose oneself in a rape fantasy, even if no one was actually hurt? Was it right to take part in a paedophilic encounter if the child was nothing more than a computer-generated illusion?
She remembered her own early days in the MassMind and shuddered. She’d explored all of the possibilities. She’d been a man for a few dozen years, learning what it felt like to be the opposite sex, before reconfiguring herself back into a woman. She’d been a child again, and then an animal, and then creatures out of modern myth. It hadn’t been real, yet it had felt real, and when she had finally pulled herself out of the endless illusionary luxury, she had realised the truth. The MassMind existed to keep the human race distracted from the truth. If the Killers stumbled across the MassMind and its remote nodes, they would wipe out billions of human personalities without a second thought.
A magazine appeared on her coffee table and she picked it up thoughtfully. It claimed to be a listing of various entertainments, but none of them drew her attention. She was perhaps the only personality still active that would have recognised the origins of some of the entertainments, the programs and illusions that distracted humanity from the truth. It still astonished her how much had been lost over the years, but the latest version of Star Wars, in which the heroes went up against the Galactic Empire, was still going strong. She didn’t think that there were so many nude scenes in the original though — and she would have given her soul to only fight the Galactic Empire. Humanity faced a far worse foe.
She shook her head impatiently as the MassMind transmitted a signal to her, informing her that someone would like to enter her personal environment. She nodded, transmitting an acknowledgement, and smiled ruefully as the door opened, revealing Administrator Arun Prabhu. In the MassMind, he reassembled a Sikh from Old Earth, although Tabitha was probably the only person who recalled what the Sikhs actually were. It was even more of an illusion than her own personality; Arun lived outside the MassMind, in reality. She envied him more than she could say.
“Captain,” he said, in greeting. Tabitha rolled her eyes inwardly. Her title of Captain was the only one she’d kept over the years, even though she’d been Administrator of the Asteroid Belt, President of the Community and Matriarch of the Rockrats in her long life. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
Tabitha scowled at him, knowing that she was being teased. “To business,” she said, tightly. The environment could quite easily have been a nude steam bath, or a simple Government-Issue conference room from her own time; her apartment was merely a matter of personal choice. “I trust that the Admiral is on his way?”