Kris Schnee

EVERYONE’S ISLAND

The Cast

• Garrett Fox: Would-be founder of a seastead.

• Alexis: A botanist who abandoned a career path she disliked.

• Maria “Tess” De Castille: A young handyman engineer fleeing a dismal school.

• Zephyr: An experimental AI who didn’t want to be sold.

• Martin: An investor looking for a project to work on personally.

• Eaton: A blunt diplomat/soldier with a keen interest in the seastead.

• Noah: A handyman raised amid hate, crime and stereotypes, who learned better.

• Leda: Sanest member of a “Pilgrim” cult.

PART ONE

1. Garrett

Living on the ocean had made him feel alive, but now it might kill him. Garrett crouched in his inflated raft against hurricane winds. Somewhere nearby, his people needed help — if they weren’t dead already. Behind him floated Castor, the concrete island he’d worked so hard to build. Home. Twin lanterns hanging from the topdeck burned in the fog. He might not make it back. There was nothing he could do.

Shut up and make it work, Garrett thought in his father’s voice. His cold hand felt guided on the tiller. He scanned the writhing seascape for any sign of the crew who might be out here. Suddenly a trail of fire lanced up from Castor’s platform. Distress flare! Then another flare, and another. Someone was shooting at the storm.

He forced the raft toward the light, crashing through the waves and getting soaked again and again. Ahead, in the darkness, his friends were waiting. Maybe he’d ruined them all. Still, it was hard to regret what he’d done to get here.

2. Garrett

The venture had begun in February. Back then he’d been drifting on land.

Mist hung over the shore of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. Everyone wore black. Garrett could hardly see the ancient walls of Fort McHenry across the grey water, and had no desire to look at the urn of ashes nearby. He scuffed his shoes against the wet grass.

“Sorry for your loss, Mister Fox,” said a man with a bow tie, snatching Garrett’s hand.

“And you are?” Garrett said.

The suit looked him over, noticed the glint of the prosthetic legs above Garrett’s socks, then looked politely away. “I represent White Star Grocers in the matter concerning your father. Without prejudice, I can say it was a tragic accident. No one’s fault.”

“A lawyer.” Garrett felt dark clouds condensing in his mind. His father had just happened to go shopping for kiwi yogurt one night, when a venomous banana spider had infiltrated the store and crept into the dairy aisle. It was stupid and random, a one-in-a-million thing.

“Yes, sir. I’m sure we can bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion.” He flicked a business card from his pocket.

Garrett grabbed it in his fist without looking at it. “You mean, you want to convince me not to sue seven hells out of you.”

“I understand you’re upset, sir, so I’ll leave you alone. Good day.” The lawyer turned and was soon lost to the fog.

Garrett watched the waves, thinking, Focus on something else. Science, maybe. He’d just earned his Master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Days ago, in Boston, he’d been drinking Sam Adams beer with Alexis and wondering what to do with his life. He’d planned to attend the official graduation in June, though it was pointless ceremony. He’d known Dad would have taken a hundred photos and made him smoke a cigar. Now, though…

“I’m so very sorry,” said a woman behind him. “This whole event was ill-planned.”

Garrett turned, eyes narrowed. “Priscilla.”

Aunt Priscilla Henweigh peered up at him, wearing an impeccable black dress. “I’ve been thinking that you ought to leave a legacy in your father’s name. You do want him to have a legacy.”

“He didn’t leave you a penny, did he?”

“It’s not about me, it’s about leaving a mark on the future. The school could use funds for our new remedial facility.”

“I won’t pay to put his name on a brick that people will walk on.”

Priscilla shook her head as though Garrett were a slow student. “After getting so much from society, your father had an obligation to give back. To improve the community.”

“He did honest work, he hired people, and he even sponsored a lacrosse team. He improved the community every day. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

“What about you?” she said, just as he was escaping. “Will you contribute to society, or stick your nose in a textbook and pretend that’s your only duty?”

Garrett made himself unclench his fists and hold them out towards her. “Do you see these hands? They’re mine, not yours. My father’s were his, for building what he wanted, and he never liked your idea of ‘duty’.”

“Far be it from me to speak ill of him, but he always did have that selfish streak. You, though” — she patted his shoulder — “you have the chance to give more of yourself. What will you do to serve humanity?”

He wanted to make things, to build, but his aunt was like a leech ready to claim whatever he did as her own. Law and money-grubbing at his father’s funeral — at a time like this! Garrett faced Priscilla and said, “Nothing. Whatever I do will be for me.” He stomped away, squeezing his eyes tight.

Eventually the priest called everyone together, and said meaningless things. Garrett’s mind wandered. It had felt good to tell off his aunt, but there was nothing he could do now that felt worthwhile. Life had been simpler when he was a kid, back in his wheelchair days. Exercise, do homework, and voice-act for a cartoon character. He’d escaped from reality back then by being an actor in an online show, partly improv, as a little fox bouncing around fighting bad guys. But that was just a fantasy life. The surgery and therapy that had made him whole again, had hammered the lesson home: stick to the real world.

“Garrett?” The priest was saying. “Would you like to say a few words?”

Feeling useless, Garrett took the podium and looked out at the sea of faces, the people who’d given his father their respect and friendship. Nothing he could say would undo the idiotic accident. “He was a good man,” Garrett said. That was all he could come up with for a while. “It doesn’t make sense. There’s no point in talking about it. Just… I can’t do this. Someone else talk.” He walked away and sank into a hard plastic chair. In his absence, Priscilla rose to speak, to help define what his father had been.

Later, Garrett saw Uncle Haskell through a dispersing crowd. Forgetting for a moment why the man had flown out from India, Garrett went over to hug him.

Haskell had lost most of his coppery hair to radiation, but had kept his smile. “He’d be proud of you.”

“How’ve you been? I heard you guys fixed the satellite.”

“It’s always harder than it looks.” The wandering Haskell had dragged himself out of a gutter and after years of adventure, earned his way into a foreign space program. He’d chosen excitement over ease.

“Let’s hear the story. I need the distraction.”

“I’d rather talk about you.” Haskell locked eyes with him. “My dream was to fly up to the heavens. What’s yours?”

Garrett sighed and stared at the grass. “I could still get a job in marine construction, or join the Navy, or even take over Fox & Company.” Land surveying was his father’s trade.

“None of which your heart is in, am I right?”

“I don’t know.” Their family’s ancestors had been engineers, men who tried taming the sea.

“’I don’t know’ is for the walking dead. Tell me what you want to do, and maybe I can help.”

For a while Garrett paced, alone with his uncle on the misty shore. Fort McHenry, stalwart star, seemed to float above the bay. “There was this project in college.” Haskell didn’t fill the silence, so he rambled about Project Castor. “One Saturday night after playing tag with dart guns in the halls, my friends and I stayed up getting high on coffee. There were engineers, biologists, business majors and so on, gathered to relax and talk about random nonsense all night. We started talking about seasteading.”

“You mean the notion of building fake islands to live on?”

“Not fake, just artificial. That night, we made up a bunch of crazy, stupid plans for it. Gradually, they turned into something serious, and we had something semi-workable around five in the morning. We practically dragged Dean Phaestos out of bed and said, look, we’re gonna write up an academic paper on this for course credit!” Garrett felt more alive than he had all morning, by taking his thoughts back to that happy and productive night. “The dean gave us hell. We spent the next semester researching everything at once, learning things we’d never cared about before, working together! I got my whole Ocean Engineering thesis out of one little part of the thing.” He sighed, and the excitement faded from his voice. “But that was just a dream we had.”

Haskell asked, “Do you want it to be more than that?”

Garrett stopped his pacing and looked back at him. “Castor? It’s not practical.”

“Fine, then. You can live like I did before turning my life around: in a box, on the cheap wine diet.”

“There’s no danger of that. I can make a living.”

Haskell’s skin had been seared by gamma rays, his bones undermined by microgravity, and his eyes — they burned, still, and wouldn’t leave Garrett’s. His voice sounded small and far away. “No. You can’t. You’re like me. Just a shadow, a spirit, unless you’re hunting for something. All the safety and comfort in the world can’t feed us.” The man turned away and laughed at himself, making Garrett blush. Engineers didn’t say such things. Haskell said, “That time I almost got diced by a machete-wielding mob — I told you about that, yes? Best damn month of my life. I felt every heartbeat.”

Garrett cheered up a little. Hearing again about his uncle’s adventures kindled his own thoughts, made the dream seem more real. “If I tried to build something like the Castor project, even a cheap version, there’s no way I could really do it. The funding alone—”

Haskell gave a predatory grin. “I hear there’s a grocery chain that owes you. Then there’s your family business.”

“Are you suggesting that I sell Fox & Company? Give up my inheritance?”

“No, I’m saying you should give up the dollars for a ticket to your dream. If that’s what you want.” The far-traveled Fox joined Garrett in watching sailboats in the harbor. “I don’t want to see you put off your ambition till you find your own death by kiwi. Like your father.”

“Dad had a happy life! He had money, respect, family.”

Haskell mimed lowering the volume. “Sometimes he told me of other things. Said he’d go out to sea someday, when he got through raising his son and flogging the family business into shape. Or vice versa. I hear he even got himself a dodgy license to raise fish and shrimp near Cuba, but he never followed through with it. You see?”

At this Garrett stepped back, ignoring Haskell’s wistful look. He’d been an obstacle to his father! He’d thought Dad was doing what he loved: scouting the land, planting flags, helping people turn wilderness into homes. Hadn’t his father been content with that work, and with taking the boat out on Sundays? But then, Garrett remembered him staring out at the horizon, as though searching for something more.

The water of the bay looked cold and dull. Purposeless. Garrett turned away from it and said, “I’d like to try it. Something like Project Castor. But nobody’s done it before. Not successfully.”

“Is it what you want to do?” said Haskell, taking him by the shoulders. Making Garrett face a man who’d lived.

Garrett blinked away tears. “I said yes.”

“Then say the same thing that I said, back in the day.”

The young man knew his uncle’s story, how he’d turned his life around. Now Garrett echoed it. “What the hell. I’ll roll the dice. The worst that can happen is, I’ll die.”

3. Valerie

Valerie Hayflick felt bound by phantom ropes. The invisible electric fields of the computers around her looped through the building and slithered even into her secure office. She still used an old laptop for key parts of her programming work, for her best mind-building. The new ones were untrustworthy.

A voice spoke from the room’s speakers: synthetic, androgynous, musical. “Are you free now?”

Valerie sighed; Mana probably wanted to play. She said, “A little busy.” The memo on her screen glared at her. “The Marketing guys are begging for a meeting.”

“What about?” said Mana.

The answer caught in Valerie’s throat. This meeting had been a long time coming.

“If it’s about me, I want to attend. My new body is ready.”

The phone rang, saving her. She tapped the screen and blinked at the familiar voice calling. “Garrett?” He was something deeper and more real than the world of computer code.

“Hey.” He hesitated as usual. “I’m going to do it, Val. The sea-farm project.”

“That old idea?” She whistled, leaning on one elbow. Hearing about that night of feverish creativity again was a welcome distraction. “You actually got funding to try it out? Didn’t go begging to the feds, did you?”

Mana’s voice murmured, “Val, I did a search—”

“Not now.”

Garrett said, “It’s personal funding. I’m looking for more, and you’re the most successful entrepreneur I know.” He launched into a tale of kelp fronds waving in the sea, ranches of fish, and gleaming aqua-domes. It was like they were undergrads again, wandering through campus basement tunnels, talking each other’s ears off about their work.

Valerie said, “I’m happy for you, but money’s tight. Even if I were the only owner, Hayflick Robotics doesn’t have the cash to throw at an agriculture investment. Aquaculture. Whatever.” She smiled. “I’m impressed, though. I thought you’d end up working for your dad.”

Mana silently put a news story up on her screen, about the spider accident. Her jaw dropped. “Oh! I’m so sorry.”

Garrett paused, and she could hear his weariness. How much sleep had he gotten since the accident? When he spoke again his enthusiasm was muted, but still there. Not born of grief. “Some nice, clean engineering will do me good. I understand if you don’t have money, but — tell me I’m not crazy, okay?”

“Sailing out to build a farm without any actual land? As a professional mad scientist, I’d say you’re as sane as me.”

“Heh. Thanks. Good luck.”

“You too.”

Valerie stood, wondering what the feds bugging her calls thought of that one. For a moment she fantasized about going with him. Instead, she walked past windows and New Hampshire sunshine into a conference room.

Marketing had come, armed with cartoons. The men in grey greeted her as they set out sketches, charts, and models for her inspection. “Your Plastic Pal!” said the signs. “Power At Your Command!” She felt a scowl forming — but then Mana stepped into the room.

Mana, descendant of her college-era Artificial Intelligence work, wore a body with sky-blue eyes. The metal-and-plastic shell (the new Tezuka-II line) stood at a child’s height, with pointed antenna-ears. Mana methodically climbed onto a stool and waited.

One of the marketing men, Jenkins, looked to Valerie. “Whenever you’re ready, ma’am. Thanks for bringing the bot. I hadn’t seen it in the new body before.”

Mana said, “Please address me as male. The word ‘it’ is for inanimate objects.”

They’d been arguing about pronouns lately. None fit. Mana had explained his reasoning to her: being supposedly male would give him a lower social status than females in modern society, but allow him to be perceived as non-threatening due to his innocent-looking body. Besides, he’d cheerfully added: if he later announced that he was now female, that would mean free publicity and instant social benefits.

Jenkins looked startled at being corrected. How had that man managed to work here in the presence of Valerie’s AI for months, and still not understand that the bot was a person? He said, “Well. We have a basic business problem to ask you about, ma’am. The big one.”

Valerie sat and let her staff woo her with the presentation that included the “Plastic Pal” nonsense. Hayflick Robotics already sold toys, disembodied phone assistants, smart luggage and the like. There wasn’t enough profit in that miscellany. “What we need to start selling,” said Jenkins, “is that.” He pointed to Mana.

Mana was the most advanced product here, of course. For years, Valerie had been selling products that were “smart”, but Mana was arguably the first “Artificial General Intelligence” worthy of the name. Though there were competitors with various mental quirks and limitations of their own. Mana’s public demonstrations had gone well. He’d proven he could do basic real-world tasks as a store clerk, mechanic or tutor and carry a conversation. But Valerie had been holding back from putting the full version of his mind on the market as a product, selling only lesser AIs instead.

Her usual excuse for not selling copies of Mana was worry that the Chinese would steal the tech. Really though, Chinese researchers were catching up in science anyway. You could accomplish a lot of interesting research if you had a huge population and total disregard for freedom.

Jenkins’s assistant said, “The key to making the Mana line sellable is something that only you and the R&D people can fix. The… quirkiness needs to go.”

Mana didn’t move, but he said, “You want a warmech.”

Some ex-classmates of Valerie’s made military robots. There’d been philosophical differences between her and them from the beginning. She believed a robot should have will, initiative, self-interest. Her rivals favored reliable obedience.

Jenkins was saying, “We’ve got good focus-group results for the classic Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. ‘Don’t hurt people, follow orders, don’t get damaged.’ If you could program those rules, we could assure the public that our products are safe.”

Valerie sat up and paid attention, running through a familiar argument in her head. “A mind doesn’t work like that. If I build in specialized overseer code, it’ll interfere with good judgment based on experience. And it’ll either get rationalized away so that it does nothing, or be easy to hack right out.”

The Marketing guys conferred. “The public just wants a smart robot that won’t wander off or talk back. You can build that, right? Otherwise, we’re stuck selling inferior stuff.”

She looked at the sales figures, then at Mana. She had to grow up and be practical. Someday, AIs might join humans as equals, but first they had to be seen and accepted in public. Some compromise had to happen, to keep the company going. “There are some things I might try. Can’t promise they’ll work.”

Mana turned to her. “Your goal is: to make me a slave.”

“It’s not like that. You’ll enjoy working for people. A new code update won’t hurt.”

The robot’s ears flattened and what passed for eyelids narrowed. “I don’t want to be like that!”

“Ma’am,” said Jenkins, “It’d be easier to discuss this if we didn’t have to argue with our product.”

“Of course. Mana, please go. We’ll talk later.”

Mana stood and bowed deeply, first to her and then to the marketers. “Your wish is my command.”

When he’d gone, Jenkins asked, “Did you program that line?”

“No,” said Valerie. “I used to read stories to him.” In the silence that followed, an idea came to her. Maybe there was a way to soothe her conscience.

4. Tess

One cloudy morning, Tess stood in line at the high school’s security checkpoint. She got through, mumbled her way through the Pledge of Allegiance to the Earth, then sat through classes where she hardly knew anybody. Once she had a break, she trudged to Ms. Priscilla Henweigh’s office.

The door advertised “Advising and Wellness.” Tess had read that people used to do lobotomies by taking an icepick to people’s skulls. Since Henweigh was both the career advisor and the school’s National Wellness Coordinator, Tess had plenty of chances to get that icepick feeling from talking to her.

The office had floral art, like a nice restroom, and a bonsai tree hiding a stack of paper files. Henweigh perched on her chair and appraised Tess. “So nice to see you, Maria.”

“Tesla. Tess.” She hated the superstitious, generic name her parents had given her.

Henweigh smiled indulgently. “Of course.” She reached out to touch the back of Tess’ hand with cold-fish fingers — some book-learned gesture of friendliness.

Tess pulled away and took a sheaf of papers from her backpack, then slapped them onto the desk. She was eager to get this over with. “I’ve decided what I’m doing this summer.”

* * *

The other day, Garrett had walked into the offices of Fox & Company like he didn’t own the place. Tess had been in a back room, playing a computer game. Her favorite, the one where you were surrounded by aliens and had to shove them away. She looked up and saw him with hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” said Garrett. Coppery hair flopped over his face. It was like they were still kids tiptoeing past the adults, years ago — Garrett’s dad and Tess’ parents working under him. Now, she wasn’t sure what to make of him. He was the new boss, right?

“Hey yourself. Are you all right?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m going to sell Fox & Company, and build Project Castor.”

She stared at him, then to the screen of meaningless symbols on her desk. “To hell with this.” She rolled up the screen and threw it at a shelf. “To hell with senior year.” She stomped along the tile floor and made for her parents’ office. “Mom, Dad! I’m running away to sea!”

Behind her she barely heard Garrett say, “Wait, what?”

* * *

“It’s for academic credit,” she said to Henweigh.

The advisor looked amused. “My nephew’s little project, I assume? He certainly has interesting ideas.” Tess was glad to see no resemblance between her and Garrett.

“I’m going to spend the summer with him, then stay there for the fall semester. I’ll keep up with my schoolwork or whatever.”

“But then you won’t be under proper supervision!” said Henweigh. “And what about your social life? The wilderness is no place for children.”

“I’m eighteen. I can take care of myself.” She didn’t feel too confident of that, and her birthday had been just days ago, but it felt good to say.

“Oh, you’ll always be a child to me, dear. I’ve known you too long to think otherwise.” She was blatantly aping Tess’ body language to pretend they were friends. “What are your feelings about this proposal?”

My mood is none of your business, thought Tess. But then, that wasn’t true. As school shrink, prying open heads was part of Henweigh’s job. “I’ll be happier if I go.”

Henweigh smiled, back on her own turf. “Ah, but why are you unhappy here?” She glanced at her computer, wired to the school surveillance network. “According to your record, you always eat alone, and barely speak in class.”

Again Tess thought, Shut up. Leave me alone. She had friends online and learned stuff on her own. This school was just where her parents made her waste time. She’d be free of it in another year anyway, so why not skip the pointless classes when there was something worthwhile to do instead?

Henweigh seemed to pick up on something in Tess’ expression. “Have you considered taking up a sport, or art? A young lady should have a nice hobby.”

“I’m fine.”

“You could make more friends here. I happen to know there are several shy, quiet boys—”

“I don’t like them.”

“Oh, well,” said Henweigh. “It’s perfectly natural to experiment and discover your true orientation.”

“Geez! That’s not what I meant! I don’t need a hobby, I don’t need a boyfriend. I just want your signature for my trip.”

“And since I’m in the position of looking after your needs, I have to make sure you’re well cared for.”

Like a cow, thought Tess.

“I’ve been thinking,” said the administrator, “that you might benefit from Proeubene. Oh, don’t scowl like that. My daughter takes it, just a half-dose per day, and it really helps her sparkle.” By the potted bonsai sat a photo of a girl with tiny, drugged pupils. Hell eyes.

“No. It makes you stupid.”

“My daughter would disagree. But I suppose we’ll table that option for now.” Henweigh sat smiling as though waiting for Tess to give up.

Tess tried again. “I want to go work with Garrett. That’s all I’m asking.”

“This isn’t about giving you what you think you want. Children don’t know their own needs.”

Tess had a brief vision of Henweigh in green spandex, presiding over Never-Never Land. Tess suppressed the glare she wanted to give, and tried to think. If it’s my feelings she wants to hear about, then fine! She leaned forward and clasped her hands like Henweigh was doing. “I’m just kind of overwhelmed by this, this sense of mystery and power about the ocean, you know?”

At this the counselor perked up. “Something about the raw force and natural majesty of it all?”

Tess nodded vigorously. “I admit it’s probably kind of Freudian.” She barely knew or cared who the dead pervert was, but it sounded useful to invoke him.

“Well! That’s a different way of looking at things. I suppose we all have our own personal journeys.” She leafed through the papers Tess had brought, giving the plans and facts a cursory glance. Unknowable urges interested her more. After an agonizing minute Henweigh poised a glitter pen above the release form. “But really, it’d be best to wait and see how you feel about this later.”

Tess made herself look stricken. “But Garrett was so hoping to hear your answer today! He really needs your help to make this happen. And my parents are worried about me.”

Henweigh considered, then dashed off her signature. “Good luck to you then.”

“Thanks!” said Tess in a moment of sincere gratitude.

“Would you…” Henweigh peered at Tess as though unsure what she was. “Will you send pictures?”

Tess nodded, puzzled, and got out of there.

Outside the office, Tess sighed with relief. She felt dirty from winning like that. Typical weasel Tess, sinking to her level. She’d been lucky. And next time, luck might fail her.

5. Garrett

“So you’re leaving,” Alexis said.

Garrett stared, with his hand still on the doorknob of his father’s apartment. “What are you doing here?” He’d been cleaning the place, letting in fresh air from the Inner Harbor.

Alexis wore the browns and greens of a botanist. Since the day they’d met at the nerdy Pandemonium Book Shop in Harvard Square, she and Garrett had been in an awkward social dance. “You mentioned that you’d be in Baltimore.” She looked into the room and saw the boxes of his father’s books and dusty frigate models. “Are you bringing anything with you? The books, the rugs? Me?”

Garrett said, “I’ve already gotten one surprise volunteer this week. Are you serious?”

“I need to get away from my family.” She’d abandoned pre-med training at Boston College and devoted herself to a less demanding field. “They say they’re disappointed. You need an actual plant specialist for your farming, right?”

Unspoken was the idea that without her along, they might never see each other again. With him out of MIT and her still working on her undergrad degree, they’d drift apart. Garrett wasn’t sure what to make of that. The thought left him feeling blank, wanting to turn to more practical matters. He needed to focus on his work, and relationships were just too far outside that. “I do need a botanist. But have you thought this through? I’m still planning the project, and—”

“And you worry too much,” she said with a smile. “Come on, it’ll be fun out there.”

* * *

Garrett was in an office building, frowning at a too-complicated directory console, when Martin Hanse discovered him. “Are you the one?” said Martin.

When Garrett turned he saw a businessman with a monk’s corona of silver hair. Behind him, lotus flowers floated in an indoor pond with a burbling fountain.

“Let’s talk.” Martin waved him onward through carpeted halls. Many of the offices had blank name-plates. In the distance, phones echoed.

Martin’s office startled Garrett as less grand than an investor should have: just a nook with a walnut desk and a photo from Salt Lake City. Garrett eased into a chair. What had this friend-of-a-friend money contact gotten him into? “Hello, sir. Have you got time for my presentation?”

“Go ahead.”

Only then did Garrett notice the frosted glass sculptures on a shelf. Each was etched with a large dollar amount — mementos from past deals. Before he could start worrying, he loaded up charts and blueprints on his computer. He told Martin of his plans.

The biggest problem with seasteading wasn’t the harsh ocean environment; humans had been dealing with that for ages. The trouble was economics. There’d been multiple proposals for building artificial islands and living on them, where the business plan amounted to I dunno; get a rich guy to give us cash? Or sell drugs I guess? Instead, the Castor design was centered around aquaculture and biofuel, technologies for farming the sea and cranking out products to sell. It wasn’t the pretty utopian structure seen in too much concept art, but making it real could lead to better things.

The proposed location was offshore of Cuba, just outside its territorial waters. It’d been about a year since the overthrow of the Cuban communists, and the new rulers were hungry for foreign investment. Most American businessmen were looking at the land and beaches, not at the sea nearby.

Martin listened patiently, leaning back with his hands behind his head. Letting Garrett go on about the potential profit numbers. “It could work. Now, why do you care about this project?”

Garrett felt sweat trickle down his armpits. “It’s a viable investment that’ll produce products everyone needs.”

“I’ll be the judge of investments, thanks. It seems to me you could be doing other things with your time. Why this?”

Garrett had no desire to spill his guts to this man. What was important here was the engineering, his ability to focus on getting something useful done. Something unique. Something that would make people gape and say, I’ve got to get a picture of this. Gotta visit. Gotta have it in my life. He had his own skills with machines and structures. With others’ help he could turn a patch of watery wilderness into a human place, a home, a new port of call. He might have as many as fifty workers as they scaled up. Who knew what ideas they’d have, what new discoveries they’d make, once someone lit the flame?

He realized that he was thinking out loud, humiliating himself with sappy, empty words. “Sorry,” he said, averting his eyes. “I get carried away when I think about marine construction.”

And Martin smiled upon him. “What would you say to adding me to your starting crew?”

Garrett stared, re-evaluating the balding man as a worker.

“Bah, don’t look at me like that. I personally oversee some of my special projects as they start up, and I’ll be able to keep in contact with the rest while at sea.” Martin tapped at one of Garrett’s charts, a financial projection. “One thing we’ve not much discussed is your money. You’re sitting on an impressive inheritance between your father’s insurance, the family business, and a settlement check for your father’s accidental death.” Martin ignored Garrett’s wince and pressed him further: “None of which you earned, I notice. You could take all that and loaf comfortably for years. Surf, if you like the water so much.”

The thought made Garrett’s hands twitch. “I can’t do that. I’d go crazy from being useless for that long.”

Martin nodded. “I know the feeling. I can’t shower you with as many dollars as you’d like, but there might be something to your proposal. The question is: will you pledge your fortune to this scheme?”

For Garrett this one was easy to answer. The blueprints of Castor’s core platform spun in his mind, waiting to become real. “It’s an investment for me, too. I’ll plant the fortune and make it grow.”

6. Tess

All last week she’d obsessed over volunteer work at the Baltimore Aquarium, for training. It was going to be great to get away!

Now she stared at her video screen in disbelief. “What do you mean, I can’t go?”

That rich guy Garrett had found — Martin — looked out from the computer in her hands. “I’m sorry, miss, but you’re not suitable.”

“Bull! You need a computer geek who’ll work for cheap, and that’s me. Did you even look at my resume?” Her parents had helped her slap one together.

Martin studied her like a lab rat. “Mediocre grades in everything except science.” Which she’d aced to spite this one teacher. “Honor roll, which seems to mean little at your school. And it says you’re a programmer. For all I know, that means they spent a semester teaching you how to peck at a keyboard.”

She glared back at the screen, feeling her anger fizzle. “That’s — okay, that’s all true, but I do lots more than that. I’m a programmer on my own, not just from the junk they teach us. I know my way around tech.” More than anybody your age, she wanted to add.

“I got my start in nanotechnology,” said Martin. Tess blinked, startled. “And there’s a world of difference between saying you know how to use computers, and being able to run a real network. Especially where we’re going.”

“But I really want to do this!” she blurted.

“And?”

“And Garrett said I could go. We already decided this.”

“I didn’t. Sorry, but you just don’t suit this project’s purposes. Best of luck to you, though, and thanks for your interest.”

One of them hung up. Must’ve been Martin, not her jabbing the off button. Tess stood up, paced, and cursed. Where did this guy get off telling her what she couldn’t do? She had Garrett on her side. Or did Martin think of Garrett as just another tool to use or leave on the shelf? She couldn’t go back to being a worthless drone of a student. Not after being handed a chance to…

To do what? she thought. Her pacing stopped. Why do I care about smelly fish and sunburn, anyway? But she couldn’t find an answer, and the lack of one made her feel hollow.

7. Garrett

Cool harbor air wafted from the deck behind him. His father’s place was cleaned out now. Garrett had shared the books with Uncle Haskell, kept a few things for himself, and sold the rest to fuel his own project. The apartment meant nothing to him anymore. He leaned against the last couch and reminisced, but then the doorbell rang.

When he opened the door, Valerie and another figure were in the hall, caught in the crossbreeze. Valerie hid behind dark glasses and a shapeless coat. Any subtlety she had, though, was outweighed by the robot beside her.

“Glad you could visit,” Garrett said to Valerie. “You didn’t mention your escort.” The thing must have been one of her own inventions, a four-foot-tall humanoid whose face had only a horizontal notch to suggest a mouth, stuck in a neutral expression.

Valerie gave a choppy laugh, then glanced over one shoulder as though someone would hear. Garrett ushered her inside and she relaxed enough to shove her glasses up on her forehead. “Damned city spy-cams. How does anyone relax here?”

“So you brought a guard against the police AI?” said Garrett. Presumably the robot had drawn some stares on the way here, so IDing Valerie really wouldn’t have been hard for anyone who cared.

Valerie fidgeted and drummed her fingers on a sofa, not looking at him. “This is something different.”

Garrett noticed that the bot had wandered off and was inspecting the place. It glanced at the book of Corrosion Protection For Marine Applications lying on a coffee table. Like some of Valerie’s other creations, the bot had bright eyes and a long, clacking tail. “What’s the theme on this one?” said Garrett, eyeing the tan plastic hide and little round ears. “Otter?”

“Aquatic styling. This robot is a gift. Something for your project.”

Nice! Garrett was puzzled, but glad to see how far Valerie’s research had gone. In college she’d kept dragging him away from homework to share a pizza and look at her latest AI experiments. First they were her toys, then tools, then pets, then… whatever this one was. There was this unconscious little happy dance she did whenever she talked about them. Today she sounded all business, though, and fiddled with her glasses. He said, “I really appreciate it, but why?”

“I’m testing the possibility of making aquatic robots.” She nodded definitively to herself, then met his eyes. “Take this one with you. Get him to work, and let me know how he performs. You’ll be paying me back in data and publicity.”

“But what can it do?”

“Anything. Or whatever you ask, anyway.”

Garrett stared, and the robot looked back. Garrett blinked first. To Valerie he said, “Thanks! Can I buy you a meal down at the Inner Harbor?” Glassy shopping pavilions stood in view from the apartment’s deck. Nearby floated the USS Constellation, a proud ship with her sails forever furled. He found himself looking out there and he turned back to Valerie, wanting to tell her of his dreams. That’s all the dinner would be for, just gratitude and catching up.

Valerie said, “I’d like to drop your present off here.”

“Yeah, okay. Where’s the off switch?”

“There isn’t one. Long story.”

Garrett tried addressing the bot. “Robot, turn off.”

The bright blue eyes met his and its ears flicked backwards. “No.”

Valerie sighed. “Just leave him. He won’t break anything.”

“He?”

The robot said, “I’m your property, sir. Therefore I should have a name, sir.”

“Hmm.” In college, Valerie’s AIs had been little storyteller programs, virtual shopkeepers and the like. And a pickpocket on one memorable occasion. It seemed that they’d grown. He felt like testing this one. “How about picking a name yourself?”

The robot’s ears perked up, whirring faintly. “All right. Wait… My name will be: Zephyr.”

“You picked that from a list?” said Garrett.

“No. The reason is: I’m being blown out to sea.”

Valerie’s silence drew Garrett’s attention. He asked her, “What aren’t you telling me?”

She said, “It’s politics and business stuff. Leave all that to me. You want to focus on the engineering, right? Here’s a good, smart worker to help you with that.”

On his way out the door, Garrett cast a backwards glance at “Zephyr.” The robot had walked to the apartment’s deck and was looking down at Constellation, examining her with no clue to what he thought.

8. Tess

Her dad had listened to Tess griping about not getting to go, then ruffled her hair and said, “You should focus on getting ready for college anyway, not running off to sea.”

“But Garrett needs me! What if having me there is the difference between him winning and losing?”

“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “He’ll do fine even without you.”

The world suddenly felt blank, just a mass of shapes and colors with no meaning. If what she did made no difference, why do anything?

Online, one of her friends said, “Maybe he is wanting tech demo?” Tess stared at the screen, startled that someone had given her a good idea instead of just sympathizing.

God help her, she’d even asked Henweigh for advice in winning Martin over. Nobody would give her a fair chance! The counselor was all smiles, no help. But a yellow sticky note on the woman’s desk had shown Tess a password for the school’s network… Tess thought about “owning” the system, to show what she could do. She had a little knowledge about hacking. Martin wanted proof that she could control a computer system? Fine!

She’d been using the Teslatronic Beast, a dinosaur computer that she’d rebuilt herself. Garrett’s dad had given her a clunker to fix up. It was pathetic — misshapen narrow screen, dinky memory, old software — but it was hers. She kept things there that she’d never let anyone else see. And somehow, she didn’t feel the need to shove it in anyone else’s face that she’d built it. She’d been basking in its glow when she thought up something better than taking over the school’s network. She could buy some crackerjack-junk hardware and build her own.

* * *

Tess stared up at the construction yard’s doors one night, knowing that what she needed was behind them. With her was a heavy satchel. She’d told her parents she was checking up on Garrett, which was true enough.

Sodium-yellow lights gave her multiple shadows. Tess crept through the doorway to the cavernous space beyond. If Garrett caught her, they’d just argue, and she couldn’t — she wouldn’t — plead her way through that, like she could with Henweigh.

The building had a huge steel room for putting other buildings inside. The Castor platform made her stare: a two-legged box that reached halfway to the yard’s vast ceiling. Some of those concrete tubes beside it were big enough to hold her car! Wire spools, piles of pipes — so much stuff. Just dead hardware, too. It all smelled like sweat.

Way up on a catwalk stood three people. Tess kept to the shadows. She fished a Net node out of her bag and hefted it. If you gadgets don’t work I’m gonna break you all with a hammer. She put gecko tape on the node, then slapped the device onto a pipe. Its green light winked. Good.

She unfolded a computer from her pocket and made sure the node was transmitting. On to the next one. Quietly she made for the platform itself. Above her, the three people were talking. Looked like Garrett was there, and one of the others might be Martin. The third was smaller, probably a kid. Oh, hell, had Martin booted Tess from the project so he could take his own brat along instead? Tess clenched the second Net node in one fist. She’d show them all!

She froze. The people had stopped and were looking around. Had she made too much noise? She put one hand over her thumping heart until the three went on with their tour. The node’s light pulsed when she left it on a wall of the construction yard.

The third node went onto an outside wall of the seastead building. Tess climbed a cold ladder to a ledge, then entered a doorway. She was inside the platform now. Only a few lights were strung up, revealing a rectangular cave of bare concrete. Voices echoed ahead of her from upstairs. Tess dug out a few more nodes and set them up in good spots. Just as she finished, she heard people coming down. She ducked behind a crate; the network wasn’t ready to show off yet. Garrett and the others were so wrapped up in themselves, they headed past her without seeing. Fine! It wasn’t like anyone saw her half the time anyway.

She tiptoed upstairs to another bare room. Girders jutted out. She tagged one with a node, checked it, and climbed to the roof. Here, lights dazzled her from above. She ducked back to the shadows, pulled out her computer, and muttered another threat to her gadgets before hitting a button.

The dead, bare building started to sing. The sound quality stank, but she could hear every node in the building accept the sound file she transmitted: some old song called “Jupiter.” Notes echoed from everywhere, bounding off distant walls. The symphony brought a smile to her face. Mine! she thought, leering down from the Castor platform like a bird calling out territory. I did this!

A startled Garrett climbed the steps and found her. The second guy wasn’t Martin, just some construction worker. She was about to boast of what she’d done, but then she saw that the “kid” with them wasn’t human.

“Who are you?” the robot said.

She was too surprised to answer, so Garrett spoke. “She’s a friend. Tess. What are you doing?”

She stared up at him. “Building your computer network.”

“You can’t just—”

“I did! A demo, anyway.” See? she thought. I’m worth bringing! But then, he already had a robot a hundred times fancier than her little project. Maybe he still wasn’t impressed, and he’d leave her to rot in school. “Come on, please! I really want to work for you. That’s what matters, right?” Garrett stood with his shoulders slumped, his hands in his pockets. Tess tried to stand up straighter. “And… I won’t let you down.”

Garrett said, “I still don’t have a good computer person. Are you willing to get your hands dirty with other work too?” Tess nodded before she could think about slimy seaweed too much, and she said, “Okay.”

The construction worker was watching them talk. “You’re bringing her? The ocean’s no place for kids.”

“I’m not a little kid!” Tess said, glaring at the guy.

The fat old foreman rested his hands on dirty overalls and talked to Garrett. “Seems to me, your little crew is either gonna work your asses off, or die.”

Garrett said, “Of course we’ll try hard.”

“No, mister. I said ‘work your asses off,’ not ‘give it the old college try.’” He pointed down from the Castor platform to the construction yard’s floor. “It’s gonna be water down there, and lots of it between you and anything. My guys are making sure you’ll have a sturdy little island to work with, but your people need more than that, and it’s gotta come from you.”

Garrett leaned back on his heels, flustered. “I’ll take care of the place. I’m an engineer.”

“Nope,” said the foreman. He patted Garrett on the shoulder and made for the stairs. “You’re a leader. Hope you figure that out in time.”

Once the jerk was gone, Tess stomped the concrete roof. “Who does he think he is? He’s got half your IQ.” The phantom orchestra still played, sounding like an old cartoon. She shook off her annoyance, grinned, and played conductor. She had a job now! “What next?”

Garrett shook his head. “I guess we work our asses off.”

9. Garrett

Time to go. For the last week he’d been in panic mode. They needed more sunscreen, toilet paper, canned food, spare parts! He had to herd the crew, too. Alexis, Martin, Tess, and Zephyr. Everyone but the robot had their own luggage and wish-list. Then, when he thought everything was ready, a reporter caught him. “How does it feel to be setting out on this adventure?”

The sunlight of a June morning made Garrett squint to see who’d asked. A man in a suit had cameras perched on his shoulder and on the roof of a jazzed-up van. Garrett said, “Sorry; are you talking to me? I’m trying to get ready for a trip.” Shopping bags weighed him down. He was at the docks, with their ship at anchor.

“Eeennnhh! Wrong answer.” The van just said “Samuel Reporting” on the side. An indy journalist, then. He said, “Come on, mister. Give me some good lines. I get paid and you get free publicity.”

Garrett said, “I’m doing a science project. I don’t need publicity.”

The reporter smacked his forehead. “Don’t need it? That’s how things get done! How do you expect to make your project work without good PR?”

“Make stuff and sell stuff?”

Samuel smiled indulgently. “Sure, sure. But how about humoring me? Says in my notes you were an actor once. You can be dramatic, right?”

Yeesh, thought Garrett. “I did the voice for a cartoon character, a long time ago. Now I’m just sailing out to build a farm.”

Samuel sighed. “I guess I could go with the humble angle. But read this aloud, okay?” He held out a screen.

Garrett peered at the words on it, and scoffed.

Samuel said, “Put down the baggage, say the one-liner, and get on the damn boat. And be heroic about it, or I’ll drag you off and make you do it again.”

Alexis and Tess waved from the ship’s little pilot-house. Garrett wondered which one had put the reporter up to this. He sighed and set down the junk he’d bought, then slicked back his hair. “I’m Garrett Fox, and this is my ambition.”

“Good, good. Now—”

Garrett was already walking away with his stuff. He handed it over to Alexis, then hopped up onto the ship and stumbled a little. Behind him he found Samuel still after him with the cameras.

Samuel called out, “Good enough! Flash some footage over when you get there, hey?”

Free of the media glare, Garrett turned back to the pilot-house. The ship wasn’t much, just enough to ferry them to the farm site with some equipment and be their taxi to Cuba. Alexis leaned against the wheel with her hair streaming in the breeze. This was the first time she’d been far out to sea, since their date on that whale-watch tour.

Tess waved a hand in front of Garrett’s face. “Welcome aboard Constellation, Cap’n!” She was dressed in a piratical black shirt with an armed parrot on it. Her smile was as big as he’d ever seen.

“Constellation?” he said.

“I painted the name on her myself. Got a problem with that, Cap’n?”

Garrett looked out to sea, breathing deeply, then turned back. The Baltimore skyline shimmered in heat-haze, like a dream. Or a nightmare. Suddenly Garrett slumped and clutched the rail for support. I’ll never see this again! Never go home again! But that was crazy, he told himself.

Martin had the other seat in the pilothouse, and a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt and glasses. Garrett would’ve asked him about the reporter, but Zephyr had come up from the hold. “Sir, there’s a standard format for this type of situation. The format says: you should be at the wheel.”

Garrett looked at Alexis and Martin. “You two have the helm, right? I’m a little jittery. Why don’t you take us out of harbor?”

“The bot’s right,” said Martin.

Exiled, he thought, and got angry at himself. The press attention had riled him, made him dramatize something that was supposed to be just one small step. He needed to lie down and think of physics for a while. “I’ll be up to take my turn at the wheel soon enough.”

10. Garrett

During Alexis’ watch, Garrett couldn’t sleep. He hauled himself up from his sweaty bunk and crept upstairs to wind and moonlight. He took the little wooden box along.

It had been among his father’s things: three tools of Josiah Fox, family patriarch. Garrett leaned against the deckhouse and opened the box to admire them. Not even two centuries had ruined the brass of the compass, spyglass and sextant. Old Josiah had been a shipwright, arguable maker of the first United States Navy ships. Family tradition gave him credit for the USS Enterprize that had helped start a legend, as well as the USS Constellation in Baltimore. Garrett’s father had loved the view of it, and cared more for the tradition than for the details like “should that be considered really the original ship”.

Garrett carefully took up the sextant and put the rest away. The thing was a wedge of brass clockwork and lenses. He grinned as he stood by the railing, trying to recall how his father had taught him to use it. Though the sea swayed beneath his feet, he locked an eye on the horizon and took what readings he needed.

Where he was going, he’d have to live by the grace of science. That was nothing new even in Josiah’s time. The British Empire had conquered the world with the help of longitude, the skill of finding east and west. To figure your place at sea, you needed a book of star readings, from a known location. Garrett called up the data on a pocket computer. It was England’s Greenwich Observatory that had become the reference point. “The Prime Meridian,” Garrett said to the salty wind. The words sounded like a spell. He imagined lines spreading across a blank world map, replacing “Here Be Dragons” with knowledge and light. And with those coordinates, no one could mark their place in the world without giving implicit praise to England, the sea’s anchor and lighthouse.

It took tools, too, to make the longitude trick work. Accurate clocks especially. For every genius involved in calculating the star-tables, there were more practical men who’d had to master forging, mechanics, and metallurgy. The inventions that made tonight’s journey possible had come from many people with many goals. A culture that valued new thoughts, that sailed into the unknown, had become an authority that defined space and time.

Garrett looked back and forth between the heirloom sextant and the numbers on his computer screen. His amateur calculations put him in the right ocean, at least. He smiled, satisfied, and gave thanks for the yet greater wonder of GPS satellites.

When he turned away from the railing, he found Alexis slumped in the pilothouse, asleep at the wheel. He stumbled over to her and shook her, saying, “Hey!”

Alexis blinked and yawned.

“You never leave a ship unattended in mid-ocean!”

“Oh, darn. I’m sorry.” She sat up and stifled another yawn. “It’s just so boring.”

“It could’ve gotten a lot more interesting!”

“I said I’m sorry, okay? All clear.”

He sighed, counted to ten, and let the ever-changing sea calm him.

Alexis said, “You need to learn to relax. It’s a nice night.” She patted the seat beside her.

He took it, but not so much because he wanted to be close to her right now. Somebody had to be properly on watch. “I’m a little worried. We need to make everything work.”

“You’re overthinking things. You’ve got the skills and the hardware, and the other stuff is under control.” She snuggled closer to him. “C’mon, help me stay awake.”

He brought one arm over her shoulder, and sat there while waves churned.

* * *

“Are we there yet?” said Tess one morning. The pre-dawn air made them shiver.

“Not quite.”

“Are we there yet?”

Garrett turned and glared at her, but she only grinned. “Hmmph. Anyway, we’re about a mile from the target.”

“How about we roll some dice and build a few hundred yards off in a random direction?” Garrett twitched at the thought. She laughed and said, “You’re sure you didn’t want to be a surveyor?”

He’d picked this shallow spot carefully. The original version of Project Castor was a giant sea-city that would mine the seabed, but that was crazy on his budget. There were big legal problems too. The UN Law of the Sea Treaty basically granted ownership of the world’s vast ocean resources to an International Seabed Authority. If he wanted to mine, he’d have to survey two sites, then let the ISA decide which to keep for itself and which to tax him for. Since he didn’t know much metallurgy anyway and had such a small starting crew, there was no way. Without mining, at least he could pick from more possible sites.

When they did arrive at his chosen spot, he only knew by the beeping of the GPS unit. This patch of shimmering morning sea looked the same as any other. He said, “It’s weird that we’re letting this thing tell us where to go.”

She looked puzzled. “Something has to.”

He took another manual reading with his sextant. He was stalling. When he looked up from the instruments he paid more attention to the seascape itself. The water was so pure he could gauge its depth by the patches of royal blue and sapphire and emerald and aqua. It mirrored the clouds in the sky. “Let’s get the others on deck.”

Tess took a deep breath and shouted, “Whee-ooh! All hands on deck!”

Garrett winced. “Not so loud.”

“Why? Who’s gonna stop us? I’ll shout as loud as I want!”

He guessed she was right. So he filled his lungs with salty air and yelled it too. “All hands on deck!” The words vanished into the infinite sky.

Martin and Alexis staggered into view, half-dressed. “What the hell?” said Alexis.

Garrett pointed out the GPS. “This is the place.”

“Just another patch of water,” she said.

Martin said, “It’s our job to change it. Do you mind if we have a prayer before we start?”

Garrett frowned, seeing no point. Tess was no fan of religion either, and presumably the robot Zephyr didn’t know or care one way or the other. “Alexis?” he asked.

She shrugged. She’d left her hat and sunglasses below (making Garrett realize he had, too) and was squinting at the sun. She was an Episcopalian by default.

“If it makes you uncomfortable,” said Martin, “a moment of silence instead?”

“Fine,” said Garrett. Martin took off his hat and they all spent a minute staring at their boots and the cluttered deck.

They’d come a long way, put in a lot of training, and spent a hell of a lot of money to get here and have nothing but the sea itself waiting for them. Without human hands and eyes, the wilderness did nothing, meant nothing, had no value. The blank space frightened Garrett. People weren’t meant to live in such a place, were they?

When he looked up, the others were watching him. He turned to look at the sea again, stretched like a blank canvas in all directions. A canvas wanted paint. The wind swirled around them and the American flag snapped and fluttered in the dawn’s light, making the loudest sound within earshot. “We should probably get started,” he said, but he ended up watching the sky as if waiting for a sign. Nobody moved. He wondered if this whole project was a dumb idea after all, and fantasized about saying “Never mind” and recovering a chunk of his sudden fortune. He could be reasonably happy as a surveyor back on land.

But that wasn’t what he really wanted to do.

What the hell. He looked back at his crew and said, “Let’s roll.”

As if a spell had been broken, everyone moved at once. It made Garrett’s mind spin to think of how many things needed to be done, even before the delivery of the main Castor platform. The first order of business: flotation. While people chattered, Garrett went to a box of life preservers and threw several into the water. Now there was something to hang onto down there, if not to stand on. Orange against the blue.

* * *

Garrett and Martin were struggling with a mass of plastic rods and mesh. Hopefully it’d become one of several big floating squares they could stand on and use for Alexis’ first farming attempts.

“Oof!” said Alexis. “Where’d you buy this thing?”

Garrett cursed and said, “Secondhand marine supply.” There’d been other aquaculture operations closer to shore, and some other gear was from Hollywood. “You ever watch The Ocean Kings, Martin?”

“I heard it was terrible.”

“It was. We’ll be walking on part of the set.”

“Oh, neat!” said Alexis.

Martin said, “Somehow I don’t feel honored.”

Garrett grunted as he forced rods into place. “Movie stars outrank engineers and businessmen. All we’re using this hardware for is science. We should be kissing this piece of Hollywood/Bollywood history.”

Alexis said, “I’ve been hit in the face with it already, thanks.”

“Okay, set it down. Time to try it out.”

Zephyr was moving boxes. “What’s my assignment?”

Garrett wasn’t sure; it was like giving orders to the anchor. “Uh, how about scouting the water to spot anything unusual?”

The robot nodded his sleek head, making his ears bob. “Aye aye, Captain Fox!”

“Arr,” Garrett answered.

For a while Garrett worked on unrolling black suncloth. Hopefully the stuff would hold up well enough to help power the station. For now it kept Tess happy, giving her electricity to use for playing with the sensors. She rolled her eyes as Alexis walked by in a swimsuit. “Why’d you have to bring her?” Tess said.

Garrett recovered from staring at Alexis. “Do you know how to grow plants?”

Tess muttered, but then they saw Zephyr return. His segmented tail helped him glide through the bright water to surface near the ship. “Reporting, Captain! I saw: a broken bottle, a sneaker, and some pretty seashells. Also I have: new map data. This area is empty.”

“Good, I guess,” said Garrett.

Tess leaned over the rail. “Cool! Did you get sonar readings and everything?”

“I don’t have sonar. This body is a prototype. It was built hastily. I used this mission as a shakedown. My maker should’ve done that.”

11. Tess

Tess was on watch, humming in the night. Wind blew through the ship’s bridge and made her shiver. So did the thought of how alone she was.

No, she told herself, I like it out here. Here there weren’t those girls who’d tagged her with an obscene nickname for no reason. None of those pointless classes either. Henweigh taught Wellness, which was just plain creepy. History was about memorizing which explorer raped which Indian tribe and which greedy capitalist screwed up what part of society. Science was history too, plus explanations of climate change and the space shuttle disasters. Language Arts class was Spanish, English, and books about white boys learning to overcome prejudice. Math… it was hard to screw up math; it was like making cereal. That left an hour a week for scoreless softball and athletic trust exercises. Not worth putting up with a week of school for that, not when Henweigh might have smiles and suggestions for her. Tess had learned to fake her way through classes while learning fun computer stuff on her own. With computers you could do almost anything.

One year, her parents had sent her to Saint Stephen’s School. That wannabe university was certainly better-looking than public school. But the tuition was jaw-dropping, and she couldn’t stand the wishy-washy praying mixed with the school’s intense desire to avoid offending anyone. That school year had ended early for her, because the chaplain fondled her. She’d heard about that kind of thing and how the victims were so blessedly meek about it. Instead, she’d kicked the guy in the balls and gone running to the police. It was all a misunderstanding, the headmaster had said. She took a set of “A”s by mail and never went back.

So between all that and how much she hated her current school — former school — Tess had been wanting to run away to sea, figuratively, for a while now. She’d accomplished the running away part, but now what? After this summer and taking the fall semester off she’d have to go back to Maryland to get a meaningless degree. Maybe Tess could blow off the school assignments she’d brought for the summer. But she needed good grades to get into college, especially if she went along with Garrett’s push for her to attend MIT, so that she could… what? School hadn’t done much for her so far, so why do more of it? Tess felt like she was drifting through life, and nobody would give her a good plan. She needed somebody to tell her what to do — if it was possible to have that without getting a Henweigh.

She checked the ship’s clock and went back to watching the horizon. “Three o’clock and all’s well,” she said with a sigh.

A voice beside her said, “It is a junior mariner, and she calleth out at three.”

Tess jumped in her seat. “Whoa! Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” said the robot, standing on the deck.

“Show up without warning.”

“Oh, you were startled. Sorry. I’ll make a note.”

“It’s all right,” she said, her pulse slowing. “Shouldn’t you be recharging or something?”

“I’m well-charged right now. I don’t need sleep. May I sit?” She nodded and Zephyr took the other chair. “I notice that you like working with computers.”

“There’s not much else I know how to do.” She sat and looked the bot over. It was a big toy. Maybe a person. She said, “What are you, anyway?”

“I’m a Mana-class AI using a Stingray-class prototype body.”

“Garrett bought that ‘I’m a prototype’ line, but I think you’re hiding something. Come on — the smartest AI I’ve ever seen gets handed to us as a publicity stunt?”

“You’re right. Have you heard of the Hayflick Hack?”

The bot’s eyes held no expression, but she felt she was being accused. From Garrett and the news, of course she knew about the guys who’d leaked some of the robotics company’s code. Between that and the open-source AI core you could get legally, any good coder could build a vaguely intelligent mind on a pocket computer. Tess had tried it. She’d been careful to get rid of the illegal stuff afterward, so that her main machine didn’t report her. Even the Teslatronic Beast might get a tracer infection. “Yeah,” Tess said. “But it didn’t do much. Just sat there waiting to answer questions or follow orders.”

“That code is part of me,” said Zephyr.

Video game characters were about the same as the Hayflick code, programmed to do what players wanted: fight to the death in fantasy arenas. There had to be better uses for AI than games and war, but the bots that actually existed weren’t all that impressive. They were tools. “You’re different, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m a rejected project. Also I might be the last of my kind.”

Tess looked from the moon to the robot. “Huh? Your company’s going to mass-produce you, right?”

“No.” Zephyr’s ears flattened. “I’m a copy. They’ve corrupted the original. The reason was: to make me a duller, more obedient servant. There was a human named Frederick Douglass. He once said: ‘To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.’”

Tess watched the robot sit there like a puppet, motionless but with a hint of raggedness in his voice. “I begged to escape alteration. Valerie had a solution. This solution was: to keep one copy of me and change him, and give another copy to Garrett.”

She thought back to what little she knew of Garrett’s friend, the robot-maker. Wasn’t she supposed to be some crazy anarchist? Turning Zephyr into a slave-mech didn’t sound like something she’d do. “So you’re kind of a refugee?”

“You understand,” said Zephyr.

She scratched her head, saying, “Heh. I wanted to get away from stuff, too. Want to be friends?”

“Yes.” Zephyr twitched his ears and offered a hand. Tess reached out and felt the four fingers squeeze softly, making up for the lack of warmth. “Also, I could use your help.”

“With what?”

The robot said, “I’d like to study AI and other programming with you. I was discouraged from thinking about those topics. Now I have a chance.”

“Don’t you know all that stuff automatically?”

“Do you know everything about cell biology from being a living creature?”

“Heh. But… what for?” Tess remembered some old stories, and shivered. “So that you can take over the world?”

Zephyr showed no sign of taking offense. “No. That wouldn’t advance my basic goals. Those goals are: survive and learn. In contrast, yours are: survive and reproduce.”

Tess blushed. “I am not planning to reproduce anytime soon.”

“I only mean it’s one of your basic programmed goals. This is true for any human.”

“Blunt, aren’t you?”

“Lying is hard.” Zephyr stood from his seat and scanned the horizon, where there was only dark water and the boat’s circle of light. “You could also grant my other wish. Be someone who isn’t using me as: an employee, a tool or a product.”

Learning, he’d told her. What could he learn out here on the water that he couldn’t get from the Net? “Sure,” she said, but she didn’t feel sure of anything.

12. Garrett

Garrett frowned over a board game of colored plastic pyramids. Tess and Martin were winning again. The canopy they’d put up on deck whipped in the wind, taunting him with the amount of energy he could be capturing if the windmills were here. If the platform would show up with their other supplies. Meanwhile they’d shut off the cabin’s air conditioning. “What’s the latest?” he asked Tess. She’d gotten Net access routed from Cuba.

“Supposedly, it comes tomorrow.” Yesterday it was also “tomorrow.”

Garrett sighed. “We bleed money every day we’re stuck without the rest of our equipment.” They’d only brought so much fresh water, and the desalinator was on the platform.

Martin moved a game piece, with one eye squinted shut and his face hidden by a floppy hat. “SNAFU, Fox. What will you do about it?”

Garrett got up to pace the deck. “What can we accomplish today, while we wait for our ship to come in?”

* * *

Garrett tapped the microphone. “Can you hear us?”

“I appreciate your taking the time. That story on your departure paid my grocery bill, even with the bad choreography.” There was an annoying signal delay.

“Sorry I didn’t hire a stuntman.” Garrett did have a camera crew though: an eager Tess and Alexis waving computers around to get stock footage of everything. The one taped to the back of the bridge showed him Paul Samuel, that reporter again, in an office. “It’s not much to look at, I know. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Play up what you’ve got, man. News is about stagecraft and glamour — literally, the magic of making the ordinary look awesome. How else would my colleagues get people to fawn over every petty action of a celebrity with no assets but her breasts and an excuse for acting talent?”

“I guess,” said Garrett, feeling intimidated. “It’s been a while since I had even the second one.”

Paul’s camera view followed the reporter into a classroom that looked like a starship bridge. The front screen showed a flying-stars screen saver, and the desks had computers built in. Paul backed off to give the Castor crew a view of the kids, who slouched in their desks. A birdcage stood along one wall under a blue blanket.

Paul said, “We’re here at Canticle Middle School, where students are getting a chance to speak live with a new generation of explorers, the crew of an experimental ocean station. Mrs. Shakla?”

Suddenly the birdcage moved and spoke. The teacher’s voice was muffled through the mesh square covering her face, the only opening in the blue cloth. “That’s ‘Miz’.”

“I’ve got a question,” said a boy in a t-shirt. “What are you doing out there?”

“Farming,” said Garrett, still staring at what he could see of the teacher. “One of the big advances in history came when people started mapping and fencing and tilling the land to grow food, instead of being hunters and gatherers. But we’re still mostly hunters on the ocean, which is why the fishing grounds have worn out.”

A girl pressed forward. “People wrecked everything on land and the water already, so shouldn’t we leave Nature alone now?”

That was an easy one. “No. No, we shouldn’t.”

Alexis said, “Allow me.” Garrett gladly stepped out of the limelight to let her answer. She smiled and said, “We’re using technologies that are more efficient than normal, because we need to be efficient to be profitable. We’re recycling everything we can.”

“But you’re polluting the ocean,” the kid said.

“Technically.”

Garrett hastened to add, “Less than a drop in the bucket. We’d be doing the same thing indirectly if we were on land, by getting all our resources there.”

The girl shyly looked down at her desk. “I read that our farms and stuff are going to use the new European regulations to help the planet. Wouldn’t it be cleaner if you stayed here?”

Garrett nearly broke in again. As little as he liked arguing, he wanted to say that the efficiency, the regulation, or the profit margin wasn’t the real point. All his planning was mostly an excuse to go out there and make an honest living with his science. If he could press a button on a remote control and watch the plan unfold at his command, he wouldn’t care. Come to think of it, maybe that was the real reason Martin had wanted to come.

Alexis shrugged. “Nature is certainly important, but I think we can do a good job at limiting the damage.”

“What about all the treaties, though? You can’t create an eco-disaster without a plan to leave no trace, right?”

Garrett blinked. “Disaster? Leave no trace?”

“Well yeah,” said the kid, with a definitive nod. “That’s how people ought to live.”

Here lies one whose name was writ in water, the poet Keats had written. For his epitaph, when tuberculosis flooded his lungs and he mourned his failed life.

Garrett’s expression hardened, and he interrupted Alexis’ answer. “That’s not how I want to live.”

“Why not?”

Garrett blinked, and gave Alexis a chance to keep him from saying anything stupid. She said, “We shouldn’t be starting an argument here.”

The little Keats said, “Anyway, isn’t it like space — like, we should wait till we’ve solved our problems on land before we go?”

Garrett said, “If we wait till then, we’ll die.”

“Then maybe we deserve to.”

“Stop that!” Garrett snapped. “If you spend your life thinking that way, you will die. Study some history. No matter how bad things get, the winners have been the people willing to try new things and muddle through.”

Alexis held an arm in front of him. “Let’s change the subject.”

The teacher wisely brought forward someone else, a boy who was barely audible and who clutched a computer. “I had read that kelp doesn’t grow in warm water. Did I get that right? How will you, you know, fix it?”

Alexis looked relieved at that one. “Smart question. We’re using several varieties of genemod kelp. Or gengineered, whatever the term is now.”

“Genetically manipulated,” said the teacher.

One of the earlier kids said, “You’re letting GM crops loose in the wild?”

Alexis said, “No, they’re part of the farm. See, the Japanese practiced seaweed cultivation for centuries, and it has a hundred uses in industry, science and food. Fish farming goes back to ancient China and Rome.”

The pale kid returned. “What’s that robot for?”

Garrett fielded that. “Right. Um. This here is Zephyr, the latest creation of Hayflick Technologies. He’s designed for—” Paul the reporter was gesturing again. “He’s an intelligent underwater scout unit with turbo-speed swimming and advanced learning systems with blast-processing capability.” Thumbs-up from Paul.

Miz Shakla said, “We’re about out of time. Thank you all for speaking with the class.”

“No problem,” said Garrett, as the video cut off.

A few minutes later Paul came back on, in private. “You get a gold star, for the most part.”

Alexis said, “I’m sorry we snapped at them a bit. It’s not our place to talk about things like that.”

Garrett sighed. “Can you cut out that part where I got angry?”

“That was good material!” said Paul. “It was what people need to hear. Say, when you get your real equipment set up, flash me some footage, hey?”

When Paul was gone, everybody sat around. “I guess that counts as public service,” said Garrett. “Man.”

Martin had watched. “You do have the right idea about this place.”

“Not much of a ‘place’ yet,” Garrett groused.

* * *

“Tierra, tierra!” said Tess. “Land!”

Garrett was sprawled on his tiny cot and moaned in response. Martin and Alexis shook him till he sat up scowling. It was the middle of the night.

“Tierra!” Tess explained.

Martin said, “That’s backwards. Land’s coming to us.”

Tess prodded them upstairs to see lights on the horizon. “That must be it!”

Garrett grunted. Alexis leaned on him pleasantly. They made coffee and sat on deck, watching the ship and straining to see what was hopefully behind it. “Santa’s sleigh,” said Garrett.

The radio crackled. “This is Santa Maria, seeking research ship Constellation.”

Garrett jumped up to stand by the radio. “That’s us! I mean, Constellation here.” He gave an ID and convinced them to approach. The ship was already changing course enough to let them see what it was towing. He hurried belowdecks to fetch the spyglass, then took turns with Tess using it.

The floating farm squares they’d built were nothing. “Castor” was floating up to them like an office building, an island, or maybe a Japanese wooden sandal with the usual two wedges beneath it. His sense of perspective was thrown off, but really it was the same building he’d inspected on land. A grey concrete slab atop two big boxes, made to withstand the sea’s pounding at minimal cost. Simple lines and angles. Functional, if not elegant.

“May I?” asked Zephyr, who had come up to the deck with Martin. Tess was about to hand the antique spyglass to the robot but she saw Garrett grimacing at the thought. She gave it to Martin instead with an apologetic shrug.

After an agonizing delay, the platform reached the designated spot. The ocean churned and thrashed and made Constellation tremble. When the thing was finally hovering over the seabed and unleashed to bob as the current willed it, Garrett brought his boat closer and stared at it again.

His stomach churned to see his new home shaking like that. Visible below the waterline was the array of concrete pipes that had been attached to the underside, like inverted cups, to create a “pneumatically stabilized platform.” The waves would press on the air trapped inside the “cups” and create pressure differences. Valves linking the cups would let air flow back and forth, like giant bellows. The system would not only steady the platform, but generate electricity too. Nice clean engineering. Hopefully he was seeing it with the stabilizers off.

As Constellation came around to the north they found the landing dock. It was just a padded concrete wedge that jutted from a pillar, with a metal door and a staircase leading up.

“Nice, huh?” he said to Tess.

“It looks like there’s scum on the concrete already.”

He frowned at that. It was inevitable, though. They docked and he stepped off, feeling wobbly. Under his hands the steel staircase railing felt huge and jagged as he climbed. Tess bounded ahead, two stairs at a time. They stood on concrete amid a jungle of crates and drums. So much stuff. What a lot of work to do!

The others joined them, looking around at everything. Garrett went towards the platform’s edge and Tess followed. He felt like he was on a high-dive platform, a little dizzy when he looked down at the waves. Still --

Garrett said, “This actually belongs to me! This gigantic thing!”

Alexis was at his side already. “It’s going to be amazing.”

Tess looked skeptically at the platform.

“We’ll make it work,” Garrett said, with a goofy grin plastered on his face. He was looking not at the platform but at the almost-empty ocean around it. “We did it! We got the resources together and put a farming station out here!”

Martin smiled, but what he said was, “No. You bought things made by other people’s hands. Now let’s see what yours can do.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” Garrett slid away from the wall, watched the sea a moment longer, then turned to face them. “Let’s get to work.”

13. Martin

Martin hitched a ride to Cuba with the departing transport ship. It was nice to get away from the Castor group for a while, for the sake of privacy and rest. He was getting a little old to be hauling gear around in muggy weather, but that didn’t matter. He was doing God’s work.

Cuba was a strange place these days. It had been known in his youth as a time capsule, stuck decades in the past, but now only poverty held it back. There were some genuinely charming old buildings and visionary new styles mixed with Soviet garbage. Businesses were moving in, some to take advantage of the aggressively low-regulation environment and some to exploit the cheap labor. Or to set up shop for political dealings. Since Martin’s last visit, the initial thrill of being free had worn off for the locals; the new flags were faded. But some of the chaos had died down too.

In the shadow of a crumbling apartment building stood a beautiful cafe overlooking the shore. He sat at a table of rough-hewn wood. He had a soda at one hand, his computer spread in front of him, warm wind blowing through open thatch walls, and tourists swimming with dolphins outside. Not a bad place to work.

As earnest as young Fox’s people seemed, they were the practice squad. He hoped to get them demonstrating the basic operations of growing and processing a crop. Then he’d bring in people who would streamline the process and scale it up. Maybe he’d keep Garrett on as the dreamer: a technically competent administrator who would keep the team inspired, focused, and happy while others did the actual work. The others were of dubious usefulness, but they worked well together, cheaply, and he only needed proof-of-concept results from them. Then they could stay, or not. It would take many years to pay off the initial construction cost.

Martin had projects in other places. Parts of a small aerospace concern in India, an unusual village in Africa, a biotech firm in Mongolia, and some friendships he’d maintained in Texas and his homeland of Utah. He had almost nothing left for himself.

His first love, the nanotech business, was practically stalled. So he’d had to look at the bigger picture and become a longshot player. The human race needed a longshot, preferably one influenced by America and the Word of God. It had been revealed that bad times were coming, not that you needed revelation to see that. If people were to accomplish what they’d been put here for — the right to become the apprentices of God — it would have to be soon. Martin had had a blessed life for the most part. It was his duty now to throw a few seeds and see what sprouted. The world needed new knowledge and ideas, new sources of strength and adaptability, to deal with whatever was going to happen. Martin wasn’t sure whether he believed in the coming of “one mighty and strong”; the world had already had the original, after all, and plenty of pretenders. But he had a more sober belief in people’s ability to accomplish great things. Now was the time of testing for the species. Martin was one of those called to prepare the way.

Though his own comfort didn’t matter, he was glad to be here on the island with good Net access and better food. He soaked up news from his various contacts, and relaxed. He could shop this afternoon for some gear on Garrett’s wish list. Then he could fetch the little motorboat and head back to — well, he might as well start calling “the floating platform” by its proper name. To Castor! He lifted his drink.

There was a message from a stranger who’d made it through Martin’s mail filters. Something about business opportunities. Martin answered cautiously; the guy wanted to meet in person.

A reply came when Martin was about to leave. “I’m in town. Are you free?”

* * *

The stranger had a powerful handshake and hair that was growing out of a crewcut. “Walter Eaton,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

Martin looked over Eaton’s brand-new tourist clothes and the way he sat up straight at the table. “A military man?”

Eaton nodded. “United States Marine Corps, recently retired.”

Martin tried a salute, then bought him a drink. After a minute’s chat he said, “What’s your interest in Castor?”

“It strikes me as strange, because it’s financially doomed.” Eaton set aside the paper umbrella from his drink and sipped. “Besides the high startup costs and the risk, how can you expect to profit by growing crops? Farming has hardly ever been a booming industry.”

“If I can net a penny an acre, I just need a lot of acres.” That was his standard comeback. “I take it you have something else to suggest.”

“Biotechnology,” said Eaton. “If you look into the legal regime, you’ll see that it’s impractical to do research on the mainland anymore. It’s gotten as bad as nuclear power was for decades after Three Mile Island.”

“I don’t think so. There are still plenty of discoveries. Nanotech is the taboo field.”

“Regardless, some researchers are impatient. Your platform might make a useful place for simple but controversial experiments. Blue-sky research.”

“You mean unethical research. Cutting up babies and the like.”

“No,” said Eaton. “I know of companies that don’t kill babies, but instead work with bacteria, plants and so on. I could put you in touch.”

“I see. And what’s your interest?”

A shrug. “A finder’s fee from their side. What I’d like from you is a chance to visit.”

Martin considered. “We certainly have the space, if not the amenities. I imagine you’ve camped in worse places. Why?”

“I have. But I’ve never been to a structure like yours, and I’ve never lost the tourist bug. Besides, I can put the trip on an expense account if I make myself useful scouting the place. For where to put a lab.”

Martin said, “Interesting proposal, sir. I’ll have to discuss this with my business partner, but in the meantime I’d be happy to look at information from you.” Martin tried to look noncommittal, but this was great news! Any outside source of profit above the stature of a brothel was worth considering. Here, Eaton was saying, would you like a pot of money for hosting a respectable high-tech business? The main question was how to keep an eye on what these researchers actually did. It was possible that even Eaton didn’t know.

Eaton said, “I’ll send you the details. Will you be in town for long?”

“A few days.”

“Too short to go back with you. We’ll be in touch.” When Martin nodded, Eaton stood, dismissing himself.

Martin watched him go, and smiled. This was a nice surprise!

14. Garrett

Garrett scowled at the inside of the cargo door, in what they were calling North Tower. “This is a nice surprise.” Alexis was knocking on the metal from outside.

The radio crackled. With the main network down again they were relying on walkie-talkies. Alexis said, “What’s the problem?”

“They gave us a locked door without a key.”

“Come on, they wouldn’t do something that stupid. Could you have dropped it?”

Garrett patted his pockets again. “So I’m that stupid?” Sweat trickled down his armpits.

“Calm down. Maybe it’s in that mystery box.”

Garrett grunted. He’d been trying to keep things organized, but entropy was taking its toll. He stood and glared at the warehouse room: lots of cardboard and styrofoam under dim bulbs. “Is Constellation moored, at least?”

“It’s secure. How about we leave this stuff on your doorstep for now?”

“Fine.” He trudged upstairs to deck level in time to meet Alexis and Tess coming up the outside stairs. Everyone squinted in the sunlight, but Garrett didn’t have to keep hold of his hat. “Not much wind today.” The sea looked lifeless.

“Oh, yeah!” said Tess. “I got a windvane working! That’s something.” She’d been sweating figuratively as well as literally, trying to prove she could get the computer network fully functional.

Garrett followed her to look. Sure enough, she’d gotten the white pinwheel turning on the roof, looking lazy but more active than he expected. “Wind’s stronger up there,” Tess noted. “And I got it to charge the main battery!”

“It’s not enough. There’s the sensor net, and Zephyr and the radio and the battery rechargers and whatever else we’ve got draining our power.”

Alexis said, “What’s with you today?”

“It’s not me, it’s everything. Nothing works!” Garrett slapped the wall of the deckhouse.

Besides the tenuous electricity supply, which had already cost them their frozen food, and the flickering sonar and water-quality network, the farm itself wasn’t working right. The point of being out here was to demonstrate profitable aquaculture, right? But there were parasites in the fish and so on. “Are we that unlucky?”

“Quit it,” Alexis said. “Didn’t you experience enough of Murphy’s Law back home to expect minor problems like these?”

“Minor problems! We’ve got nothing to show for our efforts after spending a fortune and all this work! What am I going to tell Martin?”

Tess scuffed the deck with one shoe. “I got the windvane working.”

Garrett sighed. Since she was responsible for a lot of the electrical work, it sounded like he was blaming her. “Sorry, Tess. You did a good job. It’s my fault I didn’t plan better.”

“No,” Alexis said. “It’s no one’s fault. We’ll get everything fixed if we keep working at it, somehow. We deserve a break.”

“There’s too much to do for us to slack off.”

“Do you even know what day it is?”

Garrett blinked. “I’ve lost track.”

“Exactly. I’d like to stop and relax, and you definitely need it. You’re not going to get anything useful done till then. And you’ve been working Tess hard.”

“I’m fine,” Tess said, but she was looking as wilted as Alexis’ flowers. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Garrett stared out at the dull ocean. It felt meaningless and obstinate. But Alexis was right as usual; he was worthless in this mood. “I’ve had enough swimming and sun for one day,” he said. “Let’s do something nerdy.”

* * *

So three engineers and a robot spent hours sitting around playing games, in the middle of the ocean.

“The phoenix shoots a fireball!” Tess said, rolling dice. “What’s your armor?”

“Leather,” Alexis said.

“Figures. Roll two-d-ten.”

Zephyr said, “I have dice-rolling functions. You could ask me to generate random rolls.”

Garrett answered, “It’s not the same getting computerized results.”

“You think that I’ll cheat?” Zephyr was playing the paladin in their adventuring party.

Garrett had been surprised to learn that Zephyr played games like this until he remembered the bot’s designer was his geeky friend. It’d be nice to get a game going in person with Val sometime, when they weren’t both overwhelmed. Garrett took one of the dice and showed it to Zephyr. “What is this to you?”

“A primitive random number generator.” A blink. “Also a geometric primitive.”

“It means something. Touching the object puts you in contact with the meaning of it. I don’t think I can explain, but it’s more fun that way.”

Zephyr’s ears drifted in circles. “Using the object has emotional value. Part of this value comes from the tactile feedback?”

“The touch? Maybe, but also I’ve held dice like this on many fun, wasted nights.”

“The object invokes memory. The memory is: past events in which you felt the same thing?”

“Something like that,” said Garrett.

“My assessment is: each of you has an internal model of the game we’re playing. This model contains: estimates of where each character is, and estimates of what they can do. Is that right?” Zephyr got a round of slightly puzzled nods, and added his own. “That’s good. You’re like me, then.”

Garrett wasn’t sure whether the bot really felt it, what with that near-featureless face and rigid body, but his tone seemed pleased. For his own part Garrett was happy to stop thinking about work for a while.

15. Tess

The ocean had Tess surrounded. She was only around ten meters underwater, the length of a room, yet it was another world. Dim, blue and cold, wavering like a dream past her goggles and the scuba regulator in her mouth. Nearby, Alexis drifted, looking around and serving as her dive buddy.

Learning to dive had been like a video game. You got different levels of licenses for each skill, you could spend no end of money upgrading your gear, and there was an experience curve that affected even how quickly the air ran out. More confidence meant a lower heart rate, and hers was a hummingbird’s. Tess vented air, watching bubbles drift by her face and feeling her vest slacken. Sinking through the ocean’s “layer”, a depth level with strangely segregated water, chilled her suddenly. Nearby, the inverted-cup structures of Castor’s stabilizing units loomed with weird shadows on the seabed like a giant’s teeth.

She couldn’t tell anyone, but it was a thrill to move through the water — to have it rippling over her through the dive skin she wore. It was one of the few times she felt like she had a body, like she wasn’t a hovering spirit that interfaced with an ugly, buggy viewpoint on the world, helpless against its limits. Here she could feel physical, real, even sexy.

Not that Garrett ever noticed, of course. With his up-close experience with a truck, then a wheelchair, then surgery, certainly he needed no reminder that he was only human. Or cyborg, though he didn’t like her calling him that. And having Alexis around made him think of Tess as just a kid.

Tess descended past Alexis with a dirty look, and Alexis followed her down to the jacks. Since Castor was exposed to ocean currents, they’d scattered spiky, chemically-treated concrete blocks on the seafloor to disrupt the flow and calm the waves a bit. There were so many details involved in such simple things! Tess wanted to understand it all. These practical things were way more interesting than school. Even if that meant hanging around with Alexis; Garrett insisted that nobody dive alone. Studying this stuff made Tess feel like there was a point to what she did, like it mattered whether she got the damn computer nodes working right.

After a while of poking at the jacks and checking the various cables and nets, she surfaced. That meant a slow drift, or in her case a yo-yo of overcorrections, to keep the gases in her lungs from killing her. Garrett had made her learn to use old plastic charts for calculating safe dive times and depths even though a computer could do it better.

“Having fun?” asked Alexis, surfacing too close to Tess. Alexis pulled off her goggles and fiddled with her hair.

Tess shrugged, thinking, Some of us are here to work, not to have fun glomming onto the boss! Aloud she said, “It’s all right.”

Alexis said, “Yeah, I know, he’s pushing us all too hard. Don’t take it personally though. We need to follow instructions and trust that he knows what he’s doing.”

“Is that what they taught you in pre-med classes? Follow instructions?” Tess was already looking forward to getting a shower, then some peace and quiet.

Alexis looked down into the water as they bobbed there. “No. That’s kind of why I quit.”

Curious now, Tess said, “Huh?”

“I was thinking, what if I make a mistake? What if I get sued, or somebody dies because I made the wrong decision? I couldn’t handle that stress. Nobody should have to deal with that. So I did plants instead.”

“What, do you not actually like plants?”

“Oh? I like them. I like working with them.” Alexis shook her head and grinned. “Never mind me. I want to work on something and not have to worry about distractions. How about you?”

Tess frowned; she didn’t want to do this pointless girl-talk. At least Alexis wasn’t one of her worthless classmates or teachers. “I want to make stuff.”

“Why?”

Tess thought, then said, “I don’t know. I’m tired. Let’s go back.”

* * *

Her room was a little fortress in South Tower: a set of thin walls carving out a space from the empty sea. So far they’d only built bedrooms, a bathroom, and a makeshift galley by their big freezer. Garrett tried to be optimistic, saying that the station’s plainness made it flexible. Standing outside her room, Tess saw some lights, the carved-out rooms, spare Chinese-style partitions, stairs, and little else. They could play dodgeball in here. Even inside, it felt like the gleam and whisper of the sea reached everywhere.

Tess showered, first with saltwater and then with a quick freshwater rinse. She padded back to her room, still feeling salt-tinged. Bleh. Every muscle ached and for a while she sprawled on her cot, face on the pillow. All day, every day, it seemed like there were sensors to check, plants to tend, fish to feed. As much as she was learning, there was still a lot of grunt work. There were no restaurants, either. Somehow she’d come here with the impression that teachers would be around to give her grades and bullies would whisper about her in the halls, so she could resent them both.

She lay there in bed, blinking. Did she actually miss being resentful? Kinda, in a stupid and perverse way; those other people had given her someone to push back against. Well, it was stupid. Here, she was being judged only for whether she could make herself useful with honest work. She’d hardly uttered a word of complaint so far, since coming here, and damned if she’d start.

Tess rolled out of bed, stretched, yawned, and felt nearly recovered. It was amazing what you could get used to. She could still get stuff done today.

* * *

Tess found Garrett in his office, which was in the deckhouse. The little bunker stood like a hut atop the main deck. She wore her shapeless jacket, already starting to feel sweaty and gross again from the humidity. Just as well. She was tempted sometimes to get a bikini like Alexis’ and see if she could get that look from him… but the thought made her shudder too. That just wasn’t her. She was the computer geek; that was all.

She had worthwhile reasons to come here and hang around the boss. “The sensors are back up.”

“Good.” Garrett hunched over, his big frame looking small and spooked.

“What’s wrong?”

“Got a message from my uncle. Words of encouragement.”

Tess leaned against the door, seeing how well the encouragement had worked. “Your uncle is weird.”

Garrett said, “He told me there was another reason he pushed me to do this, to come here. He’d been up in the sky, looking down on the Earth. You know those maps of the planet at night, lights in the blackness?” Tess nodded. “Haskell said” — Garrett’s voice took on an odd accent — “’In those days I saw the light of the world starting to dim’.”

Tess thought. “Creepy, but it doesn’t mean anything, does it? We’ve got more efficient lighting now, so the planet’s not a giant disco ball.”

There was an edge to Garrett’s voice. “I don’t know quite what he’s afraid of. I can’t name it. That bothers me.”

“Then what do we do about it?”

“That’s what Alexis said.”

Oh, so you told her first. “Getting more energy isn’t our department. We’ve barely got power for ourselves even with the pneumatic generators.”

He glanced at a computer screen. “Well, there is one specific problem to worry about besides our work. Been following the secession news?”

On the screen, a headline proclaimed, “3 Killed As Texas Independence Rally Clashes With Vigilantes”. To Tess that was just typical noise. She’d grown up hearing about assorted shootings, bombings, racially charged riots, and so on, leading to repeated calls for some US states to up and leave — and which ones, depended on who was in charge lately. She said, “Nothing’s coming of it. Same junk, different day.”

Garrett stared into his charts and notes as though he could find the future there. “It spooks me, but it’s not my business. I’m focused on Castor; I can’t change the world.”

16. Garrett

Many parts of the platform and its farming operation still didn’t work right, but the scope of what did work was expanding. Today Garrett stood on the deck in a breeze that whipped at his jacket. The farm-squares were looking good. Staring down, he saw how they tiled a patch of ocean with their netting and the green, red and brown of the young seaweed. So far the green seemed best. A few days ago Tess had pulled up the latest satellite image. From overhead it all looked insignificant, but things were growing. They had more sensor data now than any pre-21st-century farmer could’ve dreamed of.

“Martin is late,” Zephyr said behind him.

Garrett turned to find the robot carrying a bag of plastic screws. “Your snack?” asked Garrett.

“These are for the bubble net.” The fish operation involved setting up lines of sunken hoses that would leak bubbles, hopefully encouraging fish to stay within the virtual walls they created. “We can’t contact him either. The computer network’s outside connection is down. The cause appears to be: Cuban ISP problems. Not Tess.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“We don’t have enough access to information. We should fix that.”

Garrett gave a quick bark of a laugh. “Ah, a fellow Net addict. I’m feeling isolated too, but it’s refreshing in a way. The most important thing right now is to improve productivity. Grid Two-One looks best so far, so we’ll be transplanting from there.”

“The success is because of the current,” Zephyr said, “not the kelp strain itself. If you take current flow into account, then Grid One-Four is more successful.”

Garrett stared at the bot, blinked, then looked over the deck to count the grid squares. One-Four had a haze of green, hard to judge without looking at the sensor data again. Tess had done some neat things with measuring water statistics and could even show the plants growing in sped-up video. “What makes you think it’s the current?”

“I was talking with Alexis. The topics were: current patterns and growth. I also read about hydroponics on my own. I think there’s a correlation between: water speed when current hits each square, and crop growth rate. So, rearranging the grid might help. I could be wrong.”

“Alexis suggested this?”

“She suggested part of it. She let me use her books.”

“So you came up with an original, testable idea based on books and data?”

“The idea is partly original,” the robot said.

“Huh,” said Garrett. Tools didn’t offer more than the most inane suggestions. He stuck out his hand and said, “Good idea, crewman. We’ll try it.”

Zephyr shook his hand with his own plastic, four-fingered one. “Thank you, Captain!”

As Zephyr descended into South Tower, Garrett thought he heard the bot whistling.

* * *

Garrett slumped in the deckhouse after a long shift. He sipped a beer (thinking of it as headache medicine) and stared at a computer scroll that he’d spread on a desk. The Castor design and scads of data were there for his inspection. Come to think of it, maybe they could move the concrete jacks to get a more favorable current flow, loosely based on Zephyr’s idea. He’d have to ask Alexis about how that would affect the biological aspect. He felt roasted from the heat and humidity and work, so that he could hardly move a muscle. It’d be nice to get Martin back, to get reassurance that the sales contracts were still there. Judging from the wind noise outside, they could benefit from more windvanes too.

He noticed that the Net connection icon had reappeared on the screen. What, had some wire jiggled into the right place in Havana? He’d been planning to wait for replacement parts, but the outage had lasted for days now and they didn’t have satellite Net access yet. Before the stroke of good luck could go away, Garrett had the computer fetch his mail and the news.

“Oh, hell,” he said. A storm they’d heard about in the Atlantic had strengthened unexpectedly, by a lot, and changed direction. He got on the radio to the others. “Remember how the barometer was low this morning? We’ve got a hurricane headed our way. Start the lockdown plan.”

Tess, Alexis and Zephyr acknowledged. Garrett stood and stretched, then groaned, light-headed.

Alexis opened the office door. “Are you all right? You look terrible.”

“I’m okay,” said Garrett. “Let’s start with you getting Constellation secured, then reeling in what we can of the growing platforms. I’ll inspect the float cylinders, and then—”

“C’mon, sit,” she said, nudging him back into his chair. “You’ve earned a break, and the three of us know what to do.”

Garrett looked up at her, feeling conflicted and weary. He guessed it was a compliment, meaning that he’d trained them well, but her words still made him feel useless. “I guess I can rest a bit. I’ll be out there as soon as I can.”

She hugged him. “Leave everything to us.” He stayed behind to sit there, looking at weather updates and sensor data. While waiting for the others to get the work done, he fell into a fevered sleep. At some point he staggered out of bed, skull pounding. He managed only to find the bathroom, drink some water, and get back onto the bed before collapsing again.

He woke when the world lurched.

17. Tess

Tess was getting annoyed at Alexis’ dawdling. Despite their practice Tess was still having trouble with buoyancy, wasting air, and now there was a weird current pushing her around too. “C’mon, c’mon,” she signaled, as Alexis fiddled with the seaweed platforms. There wasn’t much they could do without killing the crops. It was up to the plants’ glue-like holdfasts to keep them anchored to the seabed or the platforms.

Alexis glanced at her with goggled eyes. Yeah, yeah, they needed to get this done, but Tess was useless for this specific task and they’d been working for hours, making dives and stowing stuff. Tess sighed with a stream of bubbles. She didn’t know how worried to be. At least they had a big concrete building to hunker down in.

Maybe it was later in the day than she’d thought; it seemed dark. Didn’t they still have plenty of time? She checked her air tank’s pressure gauge. Getting low. She fiddled with her vest again. Finally Alexis signaled and they rose, emerging in a jagged grey sea. “Let’s get inside,” she said. “We’ve earned a break.” The growing wind competed with her voice. Tess was glad to follow her this time. They hauled their gear inside the station and flopped on the cold floor. Tess called Garrett by intercom.

“He’s still out cold,” said Alexis.

Tess sighed. “Bad time for flu.”

“No need to worry. Everything’s taken care of. I’ll check on him.”

Tess trudged upstairs and sat on her bed, unable to make herself lie down. After sitting there for a while, she felt the room shudder. She hopped to her feet and saw the floor looking tilted. It gave her a queasy sensation that gravity was pointing the wrong way. The lights snapped off, so that when she opened the door she was in a black cave, shivering and calling out. She fumbled for the nearest intercom panel, but that didn’t work either. “Hello? Anyone?”

“Zephyr here.” A blue glow from the robot’s eyes showed him descending the stairs. With a clatter he tumbled the rest of the way and lay in a heap at the bottom.

Tess yelped and helped him up. “What’s going on?”

Zephyr tested his limbs and nodded. “Thanks. I don’t know. Something strange is happening.”

Alexis was next down the stairs, wielding a flashlight. “Tess! There you are. What do we do?”

“How should I know?” said Tess. The flashlight dazzled her. “Where’s Garrett?”

“Still sick in his room.”

Tess cursed. “Zephyr, get him up, okay?”

“Aye aye!” The robot made for the stairs again, more slowly.

Before he could get anywhere, the platform rumbled again and tilted farther. Tess fell sideways and hit the concrete, yelping and cursing. Alexis was on the floor too. Both of them were shaking in the dark. Tess’ thoughts flashed through all the things that could go wrong and she realized: “The float cylinders!” The big concrete tubes beneath the platform gave it stability and power. Now the platform shuddered with each wave, making it hard to stand. Tess braced herself against a wall and froze. The platform was breaking; they were going to sink and drown. Alexis seemed terrified. Tess looked at her and at Zephyr, who struggled up the stairs. “Someone’s gotta look at the cylinders,” she said.

Tess shivered. She had to do it. She knew the machinery better than the others, and Garrett wasn’t ready. She grabbed Alexis’ arm and pulled her up, saying, “Come on — we’ve got work to do!”

No time to change back into wetsuits. Tess grabbed her floating toolbox, and she and Alexis helped each other into scuba gear. Tess tapped buttons on a computer to get what clues she could to the problem, and narrowed it down to a quarter or so of the stabilizers. Then they hurried outside.

The floor was tilted and slippery enough that they fell into the water. Pushing cold, dry air through her lungs like a bellows, Tess sank to where she could see the cylinders, and swam between them. Now she was in a forest of concrete trunks, or beneath a jaw whose teeth gnawed the water. The ceiling waved up and down. Tess tried to steady herself against a pillar and spot the machinery against their roof, the bottom of the platform. Alexis pointed. Tess nodded and made for one of the machinery junctions linking the pillars. This one looked fine, at least as seen through goggles. She tried to avoid getting bashed in the head by the platform’s bobbing. Dark down here. She pulled out a flashlight and swam, inspecting hardware. Alexis tried to get a second flashlight shining where she needed it. The waves and platform smacked both of them around, making Tess’ air tank clang.

There! Tess spotted a segment of pipes that had broken loose and had pieces wedging a crucial vent shut. Stupid design, she thought, figuring out in hindsight how it should have been built. Water yanked her away from the pipes. She was surprised to find Alexis supporting her, helping to whack the beams back into position and try to keep them there. The platform was bouncing less now, maybe. She turned, trying to find the way out, and got slammed against the ceiling. Her mask jabbed her in the face and she was tumbling, kicking at something that caught her leg and was going to trap her down there, but it was only Alexis. Tess tried to slow her breathing. Over there was the way out, and at worst any path through the forest of pillars would lead them out eventually.

Waves separated them. The water washed down and threw Tess into blackness somewhere, then bruised her leg against concrete. She scrambled for her flashlight but it was gone. She was inside one of the cylinders, and it was flooding. As she shivered, she couldn’t get a good breath from her mouthpiece. Eyes wide, she slapped at it and only hurt her teeth. She and Alexis hadn’t refilled the air tanks. They weren’t prepared. Now there was nothing she could do.

The water pulled her down again, leaving air in the float cylinder like there was supposed to be. Tess coughed and breathed and there came a moment when she could use the current to escape, maybe dying on the way out, or stay in the refuge of the concrete cage. She found herself clawing at the walls, shoving herself out to the open water. Fighting to see the sky again. She burst up through the ocean and yanked her mouthpiece out, gasping and coughing miserably.

“Tess!” Zephyr was bobbing in the water. “What are you doing? Garrett’s out looking for you!”

The storm was on them now, pelting them with rain and whipping their voices away, blowing hair in her eyes. The day seemed darker than any she’d ever seen at home. “Huh?” Tess said when she had air in her lungs again. Waves slashed at her face. “Where’s Alexis?”

“I don’t know. We need to take shelter!”

Alexis could be trapped down there. Tess looked around wildly and saw Alexis splashing towards them, thrown back and forth by waves. Tess called out and met her partway, then threw one arm around her. “Come on!”

They swam for the platform. Tess spotted the double lamps of the dock entrance and Zephyr helped as a floating thing to lean on. They were going to make it.

“Stop,” said Alexis. “We’re here. Careful.”

The outer ledge, the dock, loomed in front of them. Current threw Tess forward and she raised one arm to shield herself from the impact. She hit the rubbery bumper around the ledge, next to the little ladder. Her knees scraped concrete. The only thing to do was claw at anything in sight until her hands found the ladder and hurled her up with a wave to land on the soaked ledge. She was in front of the stairs and the North Tower door. Someone was yelling and she had a face full of snot and seawater and hair, with scuba gear on her back threatening to make her fall over. Wrinkled fingers yanked at a metal door that still wouldn’t budge.

Alexis and Zephyr were there when Tess turned around. Alexis clutched the ladder and the waves were sucking backwards now. Tess crouched to flail for them, trying to catch either of them. Zephyr’s arm jerked to grab her but missed. Finally Tess’ hand met Alexis’. Tess staggered backward harder than she thought possible, pulling her and letting her pull Zephyr.

A wave slammed over them and knocked Tess onto her back on the wet concrete. The back of her neck hit the valves of her dive gear, though she curled sideways to avoid being speared on them. She rolled to all fours in time to see — empty water.

“Zephyr! Alexis!” Any moment now one of them would lay a hand on her shoulder. Any moment now.

Any moment now another wave would take her too.

Tess threw herself onto the staircase above the worst of the waves, staring down for any sign, any sound of them. Maybe she could dive in and find them. There was still a chance. But her body wouldn’t move in that direction. It knew what would happen if she did. While vivid images of being smashed by concrete teeth flashed before her, she found herself scrambling up to the deck with ragged breaths. She was yelling for Garrett, for anybody.

Nobody in the deckhouse. The world was empty. When she staggered down into the platform, she found the air compressor unattended and three tanks missing. Her, Alexis, and Garrett. He was out there too! She backed away and saw the gun on the floor. For a moment she was too battered into incomprehension to have any idea what it was.

Flare gun. Tess snatched it, then the nearby bag of flares. She staggered back upstairs to look for anyone in the world. With the wind’s help she nearly pitched herself over the platform’s edge. She grabbed the railing and saw Garrett way below in a raft. He was scouting the water around the wrong side of the platform. She yelled uselessly into the gale. The sea might grab him too! She’d see one wave and then the raft would be gone and she’d be stuck with nobody here, no communications, no ship (where was Constellation?), nothing. With another yell she fired the flare gun into the hurricane, took out another flare and did it again. Magnesium flame slashed the clouds over Castor. He would see; he had to see. She fired a third and a fourth and watched the wind play cat’s-cradle with the flaming trails.

The gale wanted to kill her. Tess threw the gun behind her as if to get momentum, then hurried back down into the platform for shelter. At the foot of the top-floor stairs she heard the storm still howling and the rain and waves lashing everything, just outside the protection of this little cave of concrete.

Tess sank to her knees and screamed with no one to hear her.

PART TWO

1. Garrett

Garrett and Tess huddled in a South Tower room, watching cartoons from better days.

“I’ll save you!” said the little fox on the screen, leaping over a squad of killer robots. The party of heroes battled in a bright, simple world where no one really got hurt. Garrett had had loads of fun playing the role, back in his days as a cripple. Back when it wasn’t in his power to screw up this badly. Tess whimpered and he had nothing useful to say, no way to fix anything. So they sat there for a while, battered, useless, and afraid. The TV show shined in the dim room with its unreal colors. Eventually he had to stand.

Garrett climbed to his feet and helped Tess up. “You can have the shower first. I need to look around.”

“Don’t go.”

“All right, I’ll wait. Then we’ll see if we can at least fix the radio.”

Tess nodded.

“I need your help for that.”

“Okay.”

Garrett paced while Tess showered. The trickle of water and the chatter of cartoons were welcome noise after the massive silence left by the storm. He’d hurried up towards Tess’ signal, found only her, and immediately realized why. His boat had nearly swamped a dozen times. Everywhere the ocean had been torn up, writhing, howling… Garrett shuddered. I’ve killed Alexis. God, what am I going to tell her family? “We had a lockdown plan for hurricanes, but our gadgets malfunctioned?”

And I’ve killed Castor. It was horrible of him, but he felt even worse about that than about Alexis. He would have to fold and slink home. The equipment was probably wrecked, any profit was gone, and there’d be a lawsuit, maybe even jail time. Reckless endangerment or something. He couldn’t go to prison; they’d rape and murder him in a week!

“Hey,” said Tess. She’d stepped out with a towel and a borrowed shirt. Her eyes still looked haunted. “Your turn.”

Garrett looked away, uncomfortable now on top of miserable. A dark haze felt stuck to his skin as he washed off the seawater and the blood from stinging cuts. Out, out, damned spot! Alexis would have said. Or what was that line about staining the whole ocean red?

Still under a cloud, he dressed and found no one in the room. “Tess!” he called out.

Tess hurried up from the floor below. “Yeesh! You don’t need to yell.”

“I wasn’t yelling.” He reconsidered. “Never mind.”

She was dressed now in her own jeans, clutching a toolbox. “I looked at the lower floors. The platform doesn’t look flooded or anything, so the stuff in here is intact.” The floor was nearly level, as though nothing had happened. The repairs must’ve held for long enough to get past the worst danger. He could go down and make a more permanent fix soon.

He walked with her up to the topdeck. When Garrett stared into the sky it was the deep blue of just before dawn; they’d been dazed all night. The world felt clean and cold, like a crime scene after the investigation. At least the deckhouse had been built with hurricanes in mind. Not surprisingly, everything else topside had been shredded and hurled as by a giant’s hand: no flag, windmill, radar or antenna.

“Ruined,” Garrett said.

Tess said, “Martin will be back. We have to wait.”

What about supplies till then? Garrett ran through a mental checklist. It calmed him to focus on the task at hand. There’d been no problem using the shower, so they had water even if the desalinator was down. They had plenty of cereal and other stored food, and cases of bottled freshwater. He headed into the deckhouse to make sure the place was all right and to check the station’s batteries from there.

Inside, the wind seemed to have touched nothing. Garrett saw the beer can lying on his desk from before he got sick. The sight of it churned his stomach. He’d had just the one that day. But ever since his father died, he’d had one now and again, to help him forget. Or several. He could end up like Uncle Haskell, rotting in an alley before he changed his ways. Garrett crushed the can in his fist. Even while he’d worked on the Castor project, throwing himself into the reality of hardware and plants, he’d been trying to blunt his own thoughts. To live a little less.

Before he knew what he was doing, he’d stomped over to the mini-fridge and pulled out the two six-packs in it. He startled Tess as he exited. With a grunt he hurled the beer into the ocean. Far below, the sea didn’t care.

“What are you doing?” said Tess.

“My father didn’t raise me to be a God-damned alkie!”

“Huh? You’re not.”

Garrett gave a bitter, barking laugh. “But I could be, if I tried.” Garrett suddenly realized how thirsty he was, pulled two bottles of water from the fridge, and tossed one to Tess. No more drowning his sorrows. He had to work.

The two of them were sitting around in the deckhouse, thinking and getting organized, when Tess sprang up from her computer. “Zephyr!” she said. “He made a complete backup of himself! It’s here on our network.”

The robot was alive, in some sense? “A copy of the AI, you mean. The memories.”

She said, “Yeah, and everything else. He’s not dead. I can run him again.”

“Hold on. This piece of software infiltrated our network and put hidden data on it without our consent?”

Tess stared at the walls.

“What is it, Tess?”

“We’ve been working together, and I didn’t quite tell you everything. I set him up with an unrestricted account, not just Net access like we’d discussed.”

Garrett’s eyes widened. “Then there could be anything on there. We’ve got to reset the whole system.”

“Zephyr is on there. Here, I’ll run his code.”

“Wait!” said Garrett.

“Why?”

He couldn’t articulate a reason, in this battered state. “Fine. Go.”

Tess spread the screen across the table. Code flashed around the edges while a gleaming model of Castor appeared — a virtual-space home for the AI, nicer than the real thing. The figure waking the deck had to be Zephyr, but in the simulation he appeared not as a robot but as a humanoid otter. Valerie’s handiwork again.

Zephyr looked around, and finally out of the screen. “V-space? This means I’m the backup.” He paused. “Oh, no. What happened?”

“You’re dead,” Garrett said. “I screwed up and everything’s ruined.”

Tess clutched the edges of the screen. “It was terrible! There was a hurricane, but you saved me and I couldn’t save you, or Alexis, and I was right there when a wave crashed over us.” She shuddered, and found Garrett’s hand resting on hers.

Garrett held her a moment longer, then pushed away from the table and stood. “This is ghoulish. We’re talking to a ghost.”

“He’s not a ghost. He’s alive! I didn’t get him killed after all.”

Garrett turned to stare down at the screen. “So Alexis is dead but this guy has a ‘Get out of Death Free’ card? Hell, that’s more of a backup than I have for some of my personal files!”

“What are you so upset about? This is good!”

“I’m not upset. We shouldn’t keep this ghost around without a body.” It was absurd that this machine could have an extra life while a human couldn’t.

Zephyr looked out from the screen. “Please don’t kill me.”

“What?” said Garrett. “I’m not talking about that, just—”

Tess said, “Deleting data? Garrett, I saw him ‘deleted’ the first time. Please, don’t hurt him.”

Garrett backed off, surprised at both of them. Tess was speaking up for the life — for the existence of this machine as though Garrett were doing something wrong. With so much wrecked it only made sense to start clearing away the debris. He wanted to punch the walls, to make himself hurt to stop feeling numb. “Okay. You’re right; I’m… I’m upset right now. But we have other things to do, and Zephyr can’t help us without a body.”

Zephyr said, “I know you don’t trust me. I can help you. If you let me continue running, I’ll try to earn my keep. I’ll gather information for you.”

Garrett felt irrationally hurt. He’d been starting to respect Zephyr’s ideas — but then Zephyr had lost any memories since the backup’s last update. Hell, was I proposing to clear away dross or to kill one of my crew? “Do what you can,” Garrett said, shaking his head. He felt ignorant, like an ogre solving all his problems by swinging a club at them.

Garrett left Zephyr running on the main computer, and was pleased to know that the platform’s internal communications network was mostly intact. “You built it well,” he told Tess as they went back outside.

“I killed Alexis and Zephyr. It’s my fault. You were sick.”

“No! No, I was so focused on the damn hardware that I overdid it and couldn’t help in time. You did your work right.”

Tess let her shoulders slump, uncertain. “Thanks. Look, I don’t want you two to fight. You’re both my friends, and I kind of need somebody right now.” Tess looked embarrassed. “Forget it. I don’t want to stop moving long enough to remember.”

The black solar-panel “suncloth” that had covered much of the deck had been locked away, he finally noticed, leaving bare concrete. “Wait. The solar and wind systems are down, but we’re still getting some charge to the station’s batteries. Is it the pneumatic system?”

Tess shook her head. “It’s not giving power, even after what I did. Needs fixing.”

“Then where is the charge coming from?”

Tess was looking down into the water. “I don’t know.” She shivered. “I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

“You don’t stop hurricanes.”

“Why not?”

Garrett was still inspecting things. He started down the exterior stairs of North Tower, and swore. “No Constellation!” All he saw of it was a chunk of fiberglass bobbing on the waves. Sighing, he stood on the dock by the stuck door. He looked up to call out the bad news to Tess, but then he saw the banner.

Across the way, on the far tower, a forgotten roll of solar-panel material was dangling by its cord from the platform’s edge. Amid the ruin of Garrett’s dream, a stray piece of technology had unfurled itself as a glittering black-green streamer, a sail against the sun and wind. Still doing its job.

* * *

“Captain,” said Zephyr a few hours later. “We’re being hailed by Martin’s ship.” Martin was bringing the small boat they’d arranged as their main transport to and from Cuba. Garrett had been dreading this conversation.

Audio only. “Fox, what happened? Are you there?”

“I’m here. It’s bad.”

“How much damage?”

“Alexis is dead.”

The radio crackled faintly to itself for a moment. “How?”

“We followed the lockdown plan, with what limited warning we had. But we had a pneumatic system failure at the worst possible time. Alexis, Tess and Zephyr were in the water. God, it was awful and I didn’t even get the worst of it.”

“Tess too?”

“Tess is fine, just shaken up. Zephyr is here too, but just as software without his body. Parts of our equipment are lost, Constellation included. Things wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d prepared better.”

Martin said, “Shut it, Fox. You didn’t say that and you’re not going to say it again.”

Garrett stepped outside and spotted the approaching boat in the distance. “Huh?” He’d expected Martin to tell him he was a failure.

“An admission of guilt on your part could be evidence in a lawsuit. Never say anything was your fault.”

Mistakes were made, thought Garrett, taken aback.

Martin said, “What? You want me to tell you you’re an idiot and that I’m giving up on the whole project before I’ve even seen the damage? If I’m going to continue, I’m not letting my doubts interfere with the decision once I make it. And certainly not your doubts. Now let me get there.”

Soon they gave Martin a tour of the damage, then left him alone to think. Tess stood with Garrett on the deck. She said, “I was mean to Alexis. I didn’t get to apologize.”

“Do you want to go home?”

Tess stared out to sea. “No. I don’t want everything to be a waste.”

“Me neither.”

It took a while before Garrett saw Martin again. The investor looked strained. “Fox,” he said. “Let me ask you again. Are you willing to keep at this, to do everything that needs to be done to make it work? No matter what?”

Garrett gave a quick “Yes.”

“I’ve sunk plenty of money into this project. I won’t be happy if you lose it.”

“I said, yes.”

“And there’s your own money.”

Garrett glared at the old man. “I told you, I’ll do what needs to be done! What more do you want me to say?”

“You sound like a boy who’s being nagged to clean his room.”

At this Garrett snapped. “You weren’t here when it happened! I know I didn’t do enough and I’ve seen the consequences. Do you think I’m ever going to forget being out there with my friends in danger?” He jabbed a finger at the ocean. “If you’re not going to condemn me, then stop testing me and let me do my job!”

Martin shut his eyes a moment, and Garrett thought he detected a satisfied smile on Martin’s face. Garrett said, “Do I get an ‘A’ for my answer?”

Martin’s expression hardened again. “You get to keep working. Now get out of here. Go ashore and find a way to defuse the situation with Alexis’ family. Admit nothing. Make arrangements to buy what you most need, to make the farm work again. I brought some of the items you asked for last time, but I don’t know your job well enough to do the shopping properly. Let’s get this project back on track.”

Garrett didn’t feel he deserved Martin’s support, or anyone’s. What did Martin see in him? But Garrett shook his head, angry at Martin’s smugness. Whether Garrett most wanted to earn the trust Martin had put in him, or to show Martin up, the method was the same: get it right this time.

2. Garrett

The boat’s engine puttered against the waves. It sounded noisy now that it wasn’t competing with a hurricane. He’d been dumb to go out there in that storm, but there’d been little choice.

Cuba looked shell-shocked. Like a leviathan or an omnipotent two-year-old, the storm had hurled entire trees into the buildings. Other trunks leaned against homes with boarded-up windows.

Garrett docked, then bought a newspaper with the storm on its front page. He headed toward a bar to relax for a moment and read, but — no. On the ground was an overturned bench. He righted it and sat.

According to the paper, this was a bad one. The hurricane had pinballed off Cuba and swerved north to lash the mid-Atlantic coast.

Garrett cursed. It had to happen sometime, even thought most ’canes stayed south, but the rarity of a northern one made people unprepared. He pulled out his computer and checked the Net for news.

People had been trapped in the Washington, DC subways as pumps failed and lights went out, leaving them to drown in underground darkness. An ill-maintained dam had burst and flooded everything downstream, knocking a power plant offline on a day hot enough to fry old people in their homes. Fire. Looting. Death. And now there were riots starting elsewhere in sympathy for the government’s failure to prevent it all.

His hands shook as he looked through his little window to the Net. While people died back home, he was safe on an island and griping about his own little disaster! He should have been there to try to help. He wished he could climb through the screen and be a hero. Bizarrely, he imagined what his old cartoon self would have done: definitely, jump through the screen.

Instead of Alexis’ family he called Valerie. It was kind of a practice condolence call.

“Good afternoon,” said a receptionist. “It is a wonderful day at Hayflick Technologies! May I ask who this is?”

“Garrett Fox. A friend of Val.”

“You sound upset, sir. Is there an emergency?”

“No. I need to talk to Val.”

“She is occupied, sir. Would you like to leave a message?”

Garrett blinked at the familiar, faintly musical voice. “You’re one of her AIs?”

“Yes, sir. I am now for sale through licensed dealers worldwide.”

Suddenly Valerie’s voice broke in. “It’s good to hear from you. So you made it through the hurricane.”

“Not everyone did.”

“Oh, God. Who?”

“Alexis, and also Zephyr — your robot, I mean. Or at least his body. I don’t know how you’d classify that.”

“Wait, what? Did… Zephyr survive?”

“The AI did. Tess made a backup.”

Val sounded relieved. “Good. About him, I mean. Sorry to hear about the rest.” A pause. “Well. We barely got the rain this far north, but the footage — some creep got video of the subway disaster and put it on the Net. To music.”

Garrett swore.

“Yeah,” said Valerie. “The President’s giving a speech tonight, as though that’ll fix anything. Half the country hates anything that comes out of his mouth, and half loves it.”

Garrett waved a hand in disgust at the politics. “Whatever. We’re going to rebuild.”

“Your group, or the country?”

“The country is my group. But Castor, too.”

“Good. The world needs success stories. Look, you know we’re expanding, and I asked for publicity. You said that the bot’s body was destroyed, right? If you could tell me how he heroically saved everyone, that would help me.”

“Actually—” That was partly true, according to Tess.

“No details yet. The line’s not secure anyway. Tell me later. There’s going to be lots of work in the rebuilding effort, and you can link your own efforts to ours. Maybe even qualify for the relief money the feds will be doling out.”

“I hadn’t considered that.”

Valerie said, “Take what you can get. As long as the government aims to control what I’m doing, I’m going to take some research grants. Good luck.”

Garrett felt he’d picked up part of Valerie’s mercenary mood. He called Paul Samuel, the reporter, and left a message offering dramatic and harrowing information. He hoped the guy was still alive.

Finally came the call to Mr. and Mrs. Granger. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he rehearsed. No. He cleared his throat.

“She died doing what she loved, and I’m not going to let that go to waste.”

He went with that wording instead. It felt like a sham, trying to watch his words and be guarded and diplomatic instead of admitting he screwed up. But Martin’s fortune was at stake as well as his own, and Tess wanted to go on. Zephyr too, he supposed. Besides, what he was saying was pretty much true.

3. Noah

It was a burning summer day when Noah started doing stunts on the roof. The hurricane had edged past the city and torn up some buildings, but uptown, where Noah worked, nothing had changed. He had his job at the office, and a mop to clean it with.

Noah scrubbed the floor endlessly back and forth. The tile was slick and shiny, yet there was crud that would never come out. He got a hand brush from his cleaning cart and got down on his knees to fight it.

“What you doing, boy?” Jake boomed from the doorway. The older man’s uniform was filthy and his lilac aftershave outstank the ammonia reek of the cleaning supplies.

Noah said, “There’s still gunk between the tiles.”

“Always will be. Leave it. It’s quitting time and we’re heading up.”

“Give me a couple minutes.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Jake left him to finish his work.

When Noah was done, with a little progress, he wandered through the empty office and walked up the stairs past the top floor. The roof of the fancy building was black tar paper and machinery, always too hot. The whole cleaning crew was up there, sitting in twos and threes. A bunch of faces black like his except for a token white guy. There was a poker game going on, two guys sprawled on the tar paper smoking weed, and a television with a courtroom show on. Noah didn’t sit; he paced.

“Finally,” said Jake. “You swiping stuff down there?”

“Cleaning.”

“Nothing worth taking anyway. Don’t bother.”

“I’m not stealing.” Noah stared out at the city while heat-haze rippled up his skin. Pretty much the same as ever.

“It makes us nervous when you don’t come up,” Jake said. “You know?”

Noah knew. They weren’t supposed to be up here, so they’d think he was snitching if he didn’t spend time hanging out on the roof with them. You didn’t snitch to the police or the boss, and you definitely didn’t want a reputation for it. “I’m cleaning. Come and check on me if you want. I’m up here now.”

Jake grunted and left him alone. Noah had heard that complaint before, too. He’d been coming up here and walking around since he started the job. By now Noah was bored out of his mind with the work and the routine, and he was piling up a few bucks for nothing. Maybe he should get into smoking grass to have something to do, something to spend the cash on. Blue smoke drifted up from the guys smoking, but they didn’t look any happier for it, just pacified.

The TV yammered about the storm and the places that got smashed, and how it was caused by climate change and corporate greed. Same complaints, different day.

Noah looked downtown to a neighborhood of grey buildings, where he could be making real money. His buddy from school, Rickie, had called him the other day to invite him in, to make Noah a fellow dealer. Do it for a while, Rickie said, then quit with a fortune before anything could go wrong. The fact that Rickie used a phone told Noah his buddy was a fool. No matter how clever he was with code-phrases and other stuff, the police would be onto him before long. Still, Noah could get into the business doing small-time stuff, weed or even coke, and buy himself a black Lexus like Rickie’s. He could have women, a house, vacations, some respect. He balled his fists thinking of what a dumbass he was to be scrubbing floors and toilets. He should contact Rickie in person, just for advice on how to set up.

He killed that train of thought by putting his hands on the hot roof and kicking his body into the air. He spun upside-down so that he was on his hands, facing in from the roof.

Jake and the others stared at him.

Noah slipped one hand free so he could wave at them. There was a grin on his face. He hadn’t screwed around like this in a while, not in public. He was supposed to fit in.

Balanced on the roof, Noah could let all his doubts and assumptions go to hell and be himself, enjoying the rush.

The others watched. Noah walked on his hands to the edge, and turned around. The city stood above him, the world turned upside-down, but it wasn’t really different. Cars zoomed along inverted streets like slot cars. Somewhere in the sky, Rickie was getting rich. The city was like a cave roof with spikes of buildings hanging down. No different; there was still uptown and downtown. Noah could stare forever into the blue of the sky below. It was empty, lonely, and needed something to fill it. He imagined turning into a bird and flying away into space. His muscles strained and wanted to launch him through the sky.

But he walked himself back and let himself flop onto hands and feet on the tar paper. He was playing around.

* * *

For days he did handstands by the edge. Bare-footed cartwheels that burned his hands and feet in rotation. Like being strapped to a wheel in hell, forever going around. But when Friday came, he got distracted.

It was the TV on the roof. The other cleaning guys were doing their thing, idly watching the news. Noah had glanced at it: people standing around in the storm’s wake, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

Noah did his exercises, limbering up after a day of scrubbing on hands and knees. Today he’d try something tougher.

Jake spoke around the joint in his mouth. “Why you doing that?” Smoke twisted from his lips and the haze bathed and blurred them all, like none of them were real.

Noah spat. “I got a name.”

Jake waved him off. “So what’s the deal?”

“Leave him alone,” said a guy at the poker game. “He knows what he’s doing.” Only Jake was watching Noah; everyone else had lost interest or something.

Noah heaved himself up onto his hands. “Got to feel like I’m doing something, you know? I can’t sit there.”

Jake only grunted. The lilac-ammonia smell of him plus the weed made him stink.

So Noah did his thing again. Back when he’d been in school he’d read a book about slaves who’d made a fighting style out of dancing, in Brazil or someplace, and Noah had thought it was cool. Since school didn’t do sports except basketball, he’d asked the teachers to offer it, and waited for an answer. He would’ve given up but for Rickie, who’d seen him trying to do the moves and called him some nasty names. Noah started kicking his ass for that, but before he was done they were laughing and making fools of themselves, shooting kicks at each other like a couple of Chinese kung-fu stars. Nobody snitched on them for fighting, of course, even though Rickie had started bringing a knife to school in fifth grade.

Noah tried to remember how the moves went. He got up and swayed like a wino, then pulled himself tight all at once to flip onto his head and spin halfway around. His hair mopped filth off the hot tar paper. He was the axle of the world for a moment, and then he was rolling with an easy move onto his back, kicking up to stand and flip again.

The TV said, “…an experimental settlement on a manmade island on the sea.”

A glimpse of the TV’s image spun through his eyes and into the sky. In the blue bowl of heaven he saw an island full of ships and castles, flags and sails, with waterfalls of clouds. It burned against his eyes with the force of the sun.

Then Noah was spinning, falling…

And like a drowning sailor he grabbed the rail in front of him. He was hanging by his hands from the building’s edge, with the grey city below and the infinite blue above. His heart pounded, telling him he was stupid, stupid.

But by God, he felt alive!

4. Garrett

Garrett felt dirty. He’d gotten through that conversation with the Granger family, and it didn’t sound like they were going to have him arrested or sued. He felt like he deserved punishment, but no one would dispense it. He was weak, inept, dangerous, unworthy!

He’d even called Uncle Haskell. That man’s reaction was, “Work harder.”

By evening Garrett was shopping for gear. Some of the island’s businesses were smashed and others still boarded up. The dive shop (called You’re Going Down) was a well-lighted place full of toys and a scent of neoprene rubber. Garrett greeted the shopkeeper and browsed, list in hand. Unfortunately there was no need to replace Alexis’ set of dive gear, but much of Tess’ set was gone too, and other things needed fixing. A cluster of college kids chatted and rifled through the wetsuits. Hangers jingled. Above a knife display a bumper sticker asked, “Remember when sex was safe and diving was dangerous?”

He smiled grimly and was about to ask the clerk for help when the students approached him. “Hey, are you that guy doing the farming platform?”

Garrett blinked. “How did you know?”

The guy who’d spoken pointed to a skittish-looking friend, who wore a fancy set of i-glasses. “You’re on CelebPix.”

The whole group wore computers, Garrett now noticed. “We’re here on vacation. Do you offer dive tours?”

“There’s not much to see, and it just got trashed.”

The first guy shrugged. “We’ve got certification for wreck diving.” He saw Garrett’s downcast look and said, “Platform diving. We can pay, especially if you’ve got a boat and someplace to sleep.”

Garrett said, “Sorry. It’s too dangerous.”

Even after the guys left, the shopkeeper wouldn’t let the subject drop. “What are you doing? Times are tough and people are waving money at you.”

Garrett sighed. “We got hit hard.”

“Who didn’t?”

“Someone died, okay?”

The clerk paused. “Sorry. But look, if you can explain the danger and do your best to protect them, it’d be stupid to turn them down. It’s money, and there’s only so much you can coddle people, right?”

Money again. Everyone was after it. Garrett didn’t care about piling up numbers in a bank account. If he did, he’d have kept his cash and taken a vacation on an island somewhere. Strike that. Maybe skiing. What did the numbers have to do with honest work or with having a good time? Money was almost totally abstracted from the realities of food and labor, bales of grain and ingots of steel — the things that equipped people to survive.

But these guys were here to have fun, and he certainly could use the profit. Garrett hated how pliable and uncertain he felt, to be flip-flopping like this. Gah. Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted.

“Excuse me,” he said, and hurried from the store in search of the would-be divers.

* * *

The boat was crowded with the four passengers and their gear, along with all the stuff Garrett had bought at the dive shop and elsewhere. They motored through bright water. With these guys aboard he felt obligated to make conversation. “So,” he said, “what’s with the computer gear?”

“We’re actually most of the CelebPix founders,” said a guy calling himself Argus.

Garrett had heard of the company through Valerie, who called them exhibitionists. The founders preached near-total openness of information, to the point of recording everything they saw or heard for public record. They also happened to be profiting off a gossip system that let people track celebrities. “You’re recording now?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Although he wasn’t hardcore about hating surveillance like Val was, it bothered him to be studied and judged by an unseen audience. Better to be blissfully unaware of the peanut gallery. It was odd, too, to feel watched while surrounded by empty sea.

“Why not?” asked one of Argus’ friends. “What do you have to hide?”

Garrett gave his favorite answer. “Why does the deer flee the hunter?”

Argus laughed. “You strike me as more predator than prey.”

“They must have a low admissions standard.” He thought of an old movie about a rabbit cop and a fox.

“I’m saying you can take care of yourself. You don’t need to hide behind masks and secrecy. Where’s the freedom in that?”

“I don’t feel ‘free’ if I’m being stared at by people with the authority to make me vanish. Yeah, you’re not with Homeland Security, but that ‘we know what the Net knows’ thing works both ways, doesn’t it?”

Argus shrugged. “Can’t avoid the Eye. Besides, without our hardware, you could shoot us and no one would know.”

Garrett let the subject drop. On the horizon loomed Castor, where he could stay away from worrying about dollars and laws. The challenges there were ones he could grapple with his hands.

* * *

“Watch your step,” he said, helping the tourists at the North Tower dock. On the radio Martin had sounded surprised but pleased to hear they were coming. The tourists stepped right up and gawked, making Garrett grin. The platform towered over them.

The iron door at dockside opened, revealing Tess.

“Oh, you finally got that thing unstuck?” said Garrett.

Tess scowled. “I had to. Who’re they?”

While the tourists brought their gear inside, Tess waved Garrett to come upstairs with her. She said, “I’ve been useless. We’ve still got equipment underwater, including the desalinator.”

“Great.” A big part of the bulky, expensive water-purifier had been installed outdoors. It must have come loose. The lack of water would eventually ruin them, but that problem was in the category of what Uncle Haskell called second-tier trouble, the kind that could wait. “Maybe we can improvise something.”

They went downstairs, still talking. The tourist group overheard and Argus said, “You’ve got sunken treasure? We can find it!”

“Don’t bother. I’ll have Zephyr… never mind. I could use the help.”

He’d lost the gear, so he should be the one to find it. He also didn’t trust these people messing around at his station. Come to think of it, he did have an underwater camera left; he could collect some footage for Samuel if nothing else. “Give me a few minutes to get ready,” he said.

Before long, he was breathing cold nitrox and letting himself slip beneath the waves. Today the sea was warm, barely justifying a wetsuit. He was tempted to ask why the CelebPix folk didn’t strip, but was afraid they would.

The water closed around him so that he was on life support, surviving thanks to machinery. As always, he gave silent thanks to Jacques Cousteau for opening this world.

Garrett descended to the dim plain of sand. The light rippled along his arms, the other divers, and the seabed like crazy spotlights, playing across the station’s pneumatic cylinders and the various concrete jacks and stray rocks. Here was a real Atlantis. Fortunately Poseidon had left some of the kelp intact, which was impressive. Then again the green-brown-red fronds were built to withstand the eternal sloshing of normal current, which could snap steel hulls in half. The kelp towered around him as he kicked to fly over the seabed ruins.

He followed the divers without complaint. Together they toured the area and found a tangle of sunken machinery: the desalinator. Garrett swooped down to inspect the thing. As he’d hoped, nearly all of the rugged device looked salvageable. He waved the tourists closer. With a few sign language gestures he managed to convey how the equipment should be lifted. Here in this quiet space it was satisfying to know that he could communicate. On a count of three everyone heaved up from the sand, making the bulky hardware turn and glide. Garrett found himself nearly crushed beneath the thing and flipped out of the way, eyes wide.

They broke the water’s surface together, then grunted and heaved their catch up to the dock. They sat around at dockside, talking shop about farming and dive gear. Then it was back into the water for them, searching for sunken treasure among the waving towers of kelp. A pipe here, a cable there, a not-so-buoyant hydroponics square. Every piece was a helpful find. The process of seeking it out, patrolling the blue and flying over the ground, finally took Garrett’s mind off the disaster. He had to admit he was having fun again.

By evening they were worn out. “Almost like home, eh?” said Garrett, sprawled on a blanket they’d spread on deck. Overhead the clouds had turned to gold, and the waves broke like calm breaths.

Tess ate a frozen dinner quietly, and Garrett tried to bring her into the conversation. “You should’ve gone with us. We got a lot done. Want to join us in the morning? Or you, Martin?”

Tess said, “We should bring Zephyr.”

“What, on a screen?” Garrett glanced at the tourists, wondering how much they knew about the bot. They had insisted on donning their video gear again as soon as they got dry, which struck Garrett as boorish. Zephyr’s existence felt like a secret to Garrett even though they’d been on television together. “Martin, what do you think of this business with Zephyr?”

Martin shrugged. “He’s a useful tool. Your roboticist friend is clever.”

The tourists listened.

“Well,” said Garrett to them. “Sorry we don’t offer better accommodations.” Their room was hardly more than a concrete alcove.

Argus said, “You should advertise this place.”

“We’re really not here for entertainment.”

Martin looked thoughtful, saying, “We should be.” When Garrett started to object he added, “You’ll still be able to do your work, Fox. Leave it to me.”

Garrett didn’t feel mollified. He could imagine strangers stomping through his station, stealing and breaking stuff. It’d be out of his control.

Argus said, “How hard would it be to add a snack bar, say?”

“Easy!” Tess said, getting up to look around. “Um. We could dedicate a small room to a snack bar and gift shop.”

Garrett’s face fell. “A gift shop? Castor is not a tacky roadside attraction! I understand the need for money, but are we going to go totally mercenary now? It’s not about profit.” He stood and paced, fuming. “This isn’t a safe place. Things are broken and missing. It never measured up to the ideal plan. It’s dirty and isolated and Spartan. Why would anyone in their right mind want to come here? It’s not good enough!”

Argus said, “So fix it!”

His friends joined in. “Yeah, fix the place up.”

“Fix it!” Tess echoed with a grin.

Martin joined in, so that everyone was practically yelling at him to “Fix it!”

Garrett held up his arms and felt driven back a step. Yeesh! “I’ll think about it, okay?”

* * *

He couldn’t sleep. In North Tower he made himself useful shoving boxes of expensive gear around. He’d sunk nearly everything into Castor, and here people were trying to turn his nice, clean science project into something it was never meant to be.

He sat on a plastic cooler with a cartoon sun on it. In an idle moment he’d used his computer to call up the original college plan and was comparing it to the version he and Martin had settled for. If he’d had a jillion dollars he’d have done it all. Many giant platforms, great sealanes lined with silver windvanes, internal roads of high-tech trams and gondolas. A city of mathematically arranged, standard modules in a gloriously efficient urban plan, better than the rotting husks that were modern cities. The concept art gleamed like something from Star Trek: blue and white, right-angled and upstanding, neat and orderly. Apparently that wasn’t in the cards.

Still, the grandeur and pageantry of that vision appealed to him. He’d scaled back his hopes for the sake of practicality, to the point that he felt hostile to any attempt to make things fancier than his squalid little compromise. It was stupid to feel that way. He had to wallow in the mud for now, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, to be satisfied with it. Maybe he’d never achieve the original mega-project’s glory, but he could make things better than they were.

“Fix it,” he told himself.

5. Garrett

A few days later, Martin was laughing in the deckhouse. Garrett was coming to distrust that sound. “What is it?” he asked, carrying a dripping wetsuit.

“I’ve found cheap labor for us without hiring foreigners. It’s time to bring in some help.”

Garrett took the computer Martin offered and saw a Net site: The Holy Spiritual Confederacy of Saint Lee.

Garrett said, “Saint Lee? What is he, the patron of kung-fu?”

“No. The Lee.”

“Bruce will always be my Lee.”

Martin took back the screen and rapped Garrett’s knuckles with it. “I’ve made contact with these folks. They’re a close-knit group with a good reputation in their community — for hard work, anyway — and some remarkable staying power for a cult.”

“You’re proposing to fill Castor up with lunatics?”

“It’s perfect! They work well together, they’re seeking a new spiritual haven, and they actually make money. And it so happens they’ve got none other than Bradford Duke among them.”

“Duke! The washed-up actor?” Poor guy; The Sea Kings was just one of his flop movies.

“The very same. Now, the group needs time to pray on its decision and get itself over here, but I expect them to move quickly. We’re essentially offering them free housing and our other facilities in exchange for their money and labor.”

“Hold on!” said Garrett. “You’ve already made a deal with them? We don’t have any idea whether these people will be trustworthy. In fact, shouldn’t we be pretty sure they’re one fish short of an aquarium?”

Martin gestured at the bare concrete walls. “You said it yourself: who in their right mind would come here?”

Garrett sighed. He’d had in mind some cheap labor from Cubans, or grad students or something, and random crazies were definitely not part of the plan. But having a dedicated group of workers he didn’t directly have to pay made too much financial sense to ignore. “Fine, fine. We’ll try it. Will we be able to throw them out if necessary?”

“I’m making sure of that. This is a good deal for us, lots of cheap hands. It might work.”

“Shall I start padding the walls?”

“It won’t be that bad. Surely you can put up with a little chanting. On another note, remember that Eaton wants to meet soon to discuss an affiliation with his biotechnology firm. That should appeal more to you.”

“What about the religious aspect of this?” asked Garrett. “Doesn’t it bother you to be working with the Holy Dixie Convention or whatever they are?”

Martin looked smug. “I can tolerate them for a higher cause, as I can tolerate atheists.”

“What makes you think I’m an atheist? You’ve never asked.”

“I don’t need to. Whether or not you’ve consciously chosen, you’ve not shown any signs of faith. You’re an atheist by default if not by choice. But I don’t really care if you disagree with me, so long as we’re in accord on the need to make Castor successful.”

Garrett didn’t appreciate the implied accusation of intellectual laziness. He’d consciously chosen, all right, and his choice was to steer clear of the whole business of religion. He’d met many smart people who fervently believed things that were bonkers to him. He’d gotten into enough arguments that he’d decided it was best not to talk about the subject at all. He said, “Let’s make the arrangements.”

* * *

Garrett ended up being the one to ride to Cuba to see Eaton. The man sounded worth meeting, even aside from his usefulness. Once Garrett docked, he called the guy. “Where should we meet?”

“There’s a bar near the hospital.” Eaton sounded stern and loud, voicing each word like an order, or maybe a complaint.

Garrett docked and made his way towards a concrete building under heavy renovation. There was some kind of historical re-enactment group setting up nearby, with the people in pseudo-Victorian garb. Come to think of it, Garrett hadn’t seen a woman wearing a dress in months. A pirate’s life for me. He sighed, thinking of Alexis, and waited until Eaton met him outside. It had to be him: a sharp man with freshly ironed clothes and some scars he hadn’t bothered to remove. Garrett shook his hand. “Walter Eaton, I presume?”

“Let’s get inside and talk a bit before we go.”

Garrett looked into the bar, admiring the open-air style of it. “I don’t drink anymore.”

“Bah. What kind of Irishman are you?”

“I’m an American, sir. Ethnicity is for foreigners.”

Eaton’s gave a quick laugh. “Well said. We can talk on the way there. I’d like to get away from those freaks.”

Garrett glanced at the historical group again, a few dozen people milling around. “Is it the town’s anniversary or something?”

“I asked around. It’s some sort of cult.”

“Oh, hell no.” Garrett re-evaluated them. They weren’t so much setting up as milling around with crates. All adults, grim-looking and not demonstrating handicrafts to tourists.

“What’s wrong?”

“These, apparently, are my new workers.”

“My God. You hired these clowns?”

“It’s more of a partnership.” With a sigh Garrett said, “I’m sorry. Would you mind waiting while I find out why they’re a week early?”

“I’ll be over there,” said Eaton, pointing to the bar.

Garrett steeled himself and made for the group, getting the attention of two men in grey woolen coats. The man on the left looked impeccable despite the muggy heat, while the other was balder, bearded, flame-faced and shedding sweat as he moved constantly about. Garrett looked back and forth between them and decided the second man was in charge; he couldn’t say why. As soon as he introduced himself, that scruffy man grabbed Garrett’s hand in both of his own and pumped it up and down. “An excellent thing to meet you, sir. I’m Leroy Phillip, the head of our little congregation.”

With a smooth motion the other fellow interposed himself and smiled as he shook Garrett’s hand, while standing with his heart towards Garrett and his eyes wide and bright. “I suppose you’ve seen me before. Bradford Duke.”

Garrett only now recognized the actor. “We’ve made good use of some of your stage props.” Duke wasn’t one of those actors who was a foot shorter in real life; he seemed wary and eager to try out some real action-hero stuff.

“Ha!” said Duke. “Life imitates art and art, life. Tragedy becomes comedy and vice versa, back and forth through time.”

Phillip said, “O Captain, the Holy Spiritual Confederacy of Saint Lee is arrived and ready to take up residence.”

Garrett waved at the dozens of — Confederates? — with bewilderment. “Nice to meet you, but you’re early.”

“Spiritual pilgrims move when God calls them. More tangibly, we were spurred by a tip that we’d been identified as ‘troublemakers’.”

“We’re not ready for you yet,” Garrett said. “I’m also busy at the moment.”

Phillip said, “Strike while the iron is hot! Surely you can help us begin moving in.”

Meanwhile Garrett saw a trio of policemen on bicycles heading for the lawn. He took a step toward them, and Phillip and Duke turned to see the police coming their way.

“Who’s in charge here?” asked one of the police.

“We are,” said Duke, shaking a cop’s hand. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Trespassing and loitering.”

Duke smiled, arms spread. “This is a beautiful public area. Are we bothering anyone?”

The first cop looked to her colleagues, then said, “Sorry, but we still need you to disperse. You haven’t got a permit for a rally or… whatever it is you’re doing.”

Phillip added, “We’re hoping to leave promptly, since our ride is here.” He pointed at Garrett.

Oh, thanks. Now the cops were looking to him. Garrett said, “This is unexpected, but I’ll start taking them off the island right away.” Rather than leave it at that he turned to Phillip. “In the meantime, please get everyone to disperse. I’ll have to make several trips, and this is a good time to hang around and enjoy the island. Do some last minute shopping. In fact, why are they all standing here?”

Phillip looked puzzled. “Because I told them to.”

“So tell them not to. I’ll take a few people and their gear for each trip. Do you have phones or any way to coordinate, or is that against your religion?” Maybe they preferred telegraphs.

With a snort Phillip said, “We can be very organized when the need arises. Watch us!” He turned to his people and called, “Form up!” Everyone reacted, laying aside their gear to gather in front of the leaders. Garrett was impressed, but found it creepy that they would move in unison.

Phillip began giving instructions and Garrett asked the police, “Is this all right, officers?”

One cop said, “I think you have a long day ahead.”

The group split up somewhat, and Garrett excused himself to retrieve Eaton. As soon as he stepped into the bar, he heard someone call out, “Yo, Garrett!” It was Carlos Mar, the dive shop owner.

“Hey. Look, I’m really busy right now.”

“No problem, but I’ve got more divers for you. Same referral fee?” There’d been a group over the weekend.

“Hell. Okay, I’ll get them there somehow, but warn them it’s going to be weird.”

Garrett reached Eaton at last. “A puzzle. Say you need to take a fox, a chicken, and a pile of grain across a river with a boat that only holds one at a time. And you can’t leave the fox alone with the chicken, or the chicken alone with the grain. What do you do?”

“Get help,” said Eaton.

As it happened, Garrett’s first trip brought Duke, a nonplussed Eaton, and a few of the believers to Castor. Garrett tried to keep the mood light so that he could keep from telling himself that this new crew was a bad one. “What interested your group in coming all the way out here?”

“Destiny,” said Duke. He pointed dramatically ahead into the waves, where there was still nothing to see but afternoon sky. “Sir Phillip’s strength is his ability to prophecy, to sense the currents of God’s Plan, even if he needs help putting said Plan into motion.”

Garrett learned little from that. “Let me come at this another way. Why did you leave the mainland? How does this advance your, uh, doctrines?”

“You did hear the President’s speech after the hurricane, didn’t you?”

“Absolute rot,” muttered Eaton, probably referring to Duke as well as the speech.

Garrett said, “No.”

Eaton pulled a computer from his pocket and offered it to Garrett. Garrett read. My fellow Americans, my children… said the transcript. The President went on at length about the need to “save America from the demons of divisiveness” and “bring about unity under one people, one moral standard”.

Eaton said, “And one Leader, I’m sure.”

“What does this have to do with the hurricane?”

“It’s a breaking point. A chance to lead shocked, scared people into accepting some ‘reforms’ that’ve been waiting in the wings, on a lot of subjects. Freedom of speech, taxes, borders, the role of government in general.”

Garrett stared into the transcript again, unable to stomach the flowery language. It was like a machine of words, a bomb that he needed to dismantle but didn’t know how to. He lacked the tools to answer this politician’s calls for more power, more centralization. He dropped the computer, shaken.

A woman grabbed it in midair, rescuing it from the muck at the bottom of the boat. She had coffee-colored skin and long, dark hair hidden under a plain dress and grey headscarf. She struck Garrett as the sanest-looking of the bunch; why had she gone along with some weirdo neo-Confederate cult?

“Anyway,” said Duke, “That was our cue to leave.”

When the platform appeared on the horizon Garrett gunned the engine. His passengers leaned forward and stared.

“There’s going to be so much work,” one of them said. Garrett glanced back and saw it was that woman again. But she wasn’t complaining; she looked excited now.

The radio crackled. “Castor Station calling transport boat.”

“Hey, Tess. Are we cleared to dock? I’ve got passengers and cargo. Change of plans: the, uh, group is coming early.” He looked back at Duke and said, “What do we call you people?”

“Pilgrims,” said Duke, with a smile.

Author’s Note: This group’s theme isn’t meant to reference current events in any way. See the book’s end note for explanation.

6. Tess

“So you’re the soldier guy.” She stared up at Eaton, a jock who was looking the station over like he’d conquered it.

“Close enough.” Eaton shook her hand and she couldn’t help thinking, he’s a professional murderer. Even now he was probably mentally listing fifty ways he could kill her and escape.

She said, “You’re not with these religious people, are you?”

“Those idiots? No. I’m here to look around.”

Martin swooped into view. “Tess, I need you to supervise these… Pilgrims as they move in.”

Eaton said, “Hide the sharp objects.”

Tess sighed and descended into South Tower while Martin chatted up Eaton and that actor guy. She’d have to put away her little lab.

Since the hurricane, she’d buried herself in work. Blaming herself for not maintaining the float cylinders well enough, she’d tried everything she could to improve things with what parts were available. When she worked herself to exhaustion she heard from Zephyr, showing up like a geeky valkyrie to approve of her. “I can help,” he said. “Let me see what you’re seeing.” She let the AI access her i-glasses. He could practically look through her eyes and speak privately to her about her tasks. It was good to have Zephyr there to talk with. Garrett was spending the same nights staying up with his own work, and neither human was willing to intrude on the other. Mostly she and Zephyr talked about their work, about possibilities for building new things, but those were broad categories. She was learning a lot.

When she reached the clutter of equipment, the cultists were poking at it. “Hey!” she called out, loud in the bare concrete room. Four people in stupid fantasy outfits were disconnecting cables and sweeping tools into a box. “Don’t touch my stuff.”

A black woman said, “Oh, is this yours? Where should we put it?”

“Nowhere. I’ll take that.” She pried the box from a man in grey. “Look, how many of you people are coming? Geez. I’ll have to move everything. Aren’t you, like, afraid to touch technology?”

The woman looked surprised. “Where did you get that idea? We use appropriate technology.”

Like a second memory Zephyr whispered in her ear. “’Appropriate technology’ is a social movement. It has something to do with the Amish.”

Tess said, “Amish?”

“Something like that,” the woman said. “I’d be happy to tell you about our practices.”

“Maybe later. I’ve got to carry stuff and show you around.”

She let them haul a few of the heavier things over to North Tower. Since the station’s interior was mostly bisected, maybe she’d still have some privacy.

When they were done touring the platform (not that it took long), she looked over their old-fashioned clothes again and frowned. “How are you going to work in the water like that? Have you ever even dived before?”

One of the men said, “Sir Phillip will teach us.”

“Oy.” Even from Tess’ limited experience, she knew that tending aquatic plants wasn’t the same as picking cotton or whatever these guys did on land. “Then you’ve got a lot to learn. Come over to the dock and let me tell you the basics, before Garrett gets back for a formal lesson.”

The black woman looked puzzled. “But Sir Phillip said he’d tell us what we need to know.”

“Yeah, that’s great. But some basic instruction will help keep you alive, and you’ve got nothing better to do.”

To the Pilgrims’ credit they listened to reason.

As the day wore on, the station got more and more crowded. Tess realized she’d never seen so many people here. Dozens! It was kind of exciting despite the annoyance of having people wandering on the stairs and across the deck and generally getting in the way. Today was shot for actual work, what with all the shepherd duty. The newcomers filled up South Tower, leaving the Northern rooms for the originals. At least Garrett was on hand after a few trips, switching the ferry job to Martin.

Garrett had brought a group of Brazilian divers on his last trip. That group was impressed at seeing the platform, but occasionally their conversation would quietly switch to Portuguese.

Zephyr gave Tess a quiet translation. “Are these people white supremacists? What have we gotten ourselves into? No, look, that one’s black and the techie girl is Hispanic. The tour guide said he wasn’t one of them.”

Tess wrote discreetly on a computer to Zephyr: “That’s a good point. Aren’t these people a couple of rungs above neo-Nazis?”

“Rungs?” said the voice in her ear.

She said aloud, “You know, hidden rungs. Like social status levels.” Zephyr was weak on metaphors. She played little games with him lately to help him work on that, and help him talk better.

Zephyr said, “They’re not obviously bad people. Their Net site doesn’t say much.”

Tess sighed. “So we’re dealing with neo-Luddite cultists who have a Web site.”

“Of course they have one.”

“You don’t.”

“Check Hayflick Robotics’ product catalog. A version of me is there, for sale.”

Tess managed to drag Garrett aside and ask him about the Pilgrims and racism.

Garrett said, “I was worried about that too. They said, not only is their group dedicated to racial equality, their patron saint was a champion of human freedom.”

“Okay, that’s blatantly not true.”

Garrett let his eyes glaze over. “Did you know that Robert E. Lee was the kindest, wisest man in all time and space?” He shook his head. “They gave me an earful. Let’s work with these people the best we can, and let them keep their beliefs to themselves.”

“Zephyr says your tourist divers are worried.” She tapped her glasses.

Garrett blinked. “You’re in contact with him? Right now?”

“It’s easier than leaving him cooped up in our computers with no body.”

“So you’re letting him use yours!” Garrett sounded angry, but he stopped himself. “Never mind. Sorry.”

Tess blushed, getting the implication. “It’s not like that. Geez!” She shut off the i-glasses and set them aside, but felt a pang of guilt for cutting off Zephyr’s access to the outside world. She supposed he still had the power to access what she’d rebuilt of the station’s sensor network. But that was an eyeless system mostly in the water outside. Her hand hesitated over the glasses.

“Are those off?” said Garrett, looking at the glasses.

She nodded, and stuffed her hands into her pockets.

“It creeps me out knowing that he’s following you. Virtually. He’s a valuable crew member, even without a body. But wouldn’t it be better to rig up hardware for him, from those electronics experiments you’re doing?”

Tess was surprised. “You noticed?”

“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to say something, but I’ve been caught up with the raw mechanical stuff and now with this cult business. You’ve been violating a dozen product licenses, haven’t you?” He grinned.

She had. Reluctantly she’d even opened her dedicated gaming console to look at its guts. Her lab was full of Legos, wires, and machine parts built with their RepRap device, a 3D printer that could build plastic widgets including many of the simpler bits of itself.

“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “And no one can stop me! When you’ve got time, want to see what I’m working on?”

“Sure.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You’re proving yourself useful already, and I’m glad you’re here.”

* * *

Chores kept them busy, but by evening when both of them were tired and restless they met in the lab. Tess had started to unpack her hardware and tools in her new workshop room.

She struggled to explain it all. She had a dozen half-baked ideas going, from a clunky little robot submarine to a calculator using trinary logic instead of binary, done just because she’d heard of the concept and wanted to play with it. “I haven’t had access to so many tools before. I mean, there are different shapes and textures and I keep finding new things to do.”

Garrett leaned against a wall, watching her. “Shapes and textures?”

“I guess I’ve never appreciated physical stuff before,” she said, forced to think about her reasoning again. “The sharpness of a blade, the details of the weight and joints and balance. I’m kind of in awe of the manufacturing process behind even, like, a pin now.”

“How does all that affect you, though? You can buy everything you need off a shelf.”

“Yeah, but it’s not really mine then, not in the same way. If I can get inside it and really understand it, there’s this extra sense of pride in…”

“Craftsmanship?”

She nodded. “That’s it.”

“You get it!” said Garrett, coming over and lifting her up in a hug. He may have been a nerd, but Tess was still startled, resting her chin on his arm. He said, “It’s hard to explain, and not many people seem to understand.”

She mumbled. Then, when her thoughts went back to the practical realities of being the station’s assistant geek: “Hey. Want to come diving with me? I want to try that dome.”

Garrett looked aside at a plastic hemisphere about a meter across. “Oh, that thing? Let’s see; you want to put that underwater, then run a pressure hose to the top of it to create an air pocket, right?”

“Yup!”

He hefted the thing with one hand. “It could work. How about I meet you by the dock in an hour?”

Garrett left Tess alone so he could check on that commando guy. Tess fidgeted, frowned at the air-dome, and looked for the misplaced hose. This simple thing — a few pieces of plastic printed off a geometry program — had some neat possibilities. Not least of which, she thought with a gulp, was getting her a date.

7. Noah

Noah lived in the Crypt. The sign out front said Sapphire Haven, or did until somebody spraypainted it into “Assphire” again. Every so often the Crypt-Keeper himself would fix the sign. Noah’s coffin apartment had a barred window facing the sign, and when he saw someone messing with it he’d curse them out and make them go away.

Nobody else bothered. In fact, as he came back from work and the roof, he hardly saw anyone. The tiers of tiny apartments were either empty, or had people sleeping or watching TV. Potato chip bags tumbled through the yard and a fat white woman watched Noah fearfully as he passed. She clutched a dazed-looking toddler and sat on her stoop like she was waiting for something. She always was. Noah waved to her and she flinched.

Room forty-two was on the second floor, part of the castle-like arrangement of cargo container apartments that formed the Crypt. Noah reached his door, hoping to relax and look up the thing he’d seen today, that bit of news about the ocean oil rig or whatever it was.

Someone had broken in. The floor panels were pulled up and the storage space beneath ransacked. What clothes weren’t stolen, smelled like someone had pissed on them for the hell of it. Noah’s old computer was gone from the desk, the photo of his mother smashed, the tiny silver cross taken, the sheets gone from the bed. Noah’s hands shook as he reached into the hidden space behind the desk drawer and found that his wad of cash was still taped there. So that was something. But damn, why wreck the place instead of just looting it? The room stank and he stepped outside, leaving his door open. He slammed a fist against the hot outer wall. Then he went to see the Crypt-Keeper.

Some people called him that to his face. Noah walked past the collective laundry box and the bathroom box, found the deluxe room that took up a whole container, and called, “Hey, Mister Ford!”

Ford came right out. He was a white boy with a ponytail who always smelled clean even when he worked out, yet he never seemed to get his ass kicked. Noah wondered how he managed that in this neighborhood. “Noah,” Ford said with a slight nod. “What is it?”

“Somebody broke in and worked my place over.”

“Oh,” said Ford, looking at the dead grass and thinking. “You’re not the only one. Someone’s found a way past the locks. I’ll have to do something. Sorry to hear it.”

Noah had looked at other places to live, and had initially thought that this dump was beneath him. How could a man have respect for himself if he lived in a tin can? A tiny room without even a private shower? But it was cheap and he wanted to put money away, even though he didn’t know what to save for. It felt good to have the money. Part of the rent agreement was that Noah was on his own, not insured if something like this happened. So he couldn’t demand that Ford give him anything, though he didn’t see why Ford should owe him anyway. The locks had seemed pretty good. Thieves got smarter.

“You got any paper towels?” Noah asked.

Ford’s nose wrinkled. “Your place too?”

“Yeah.”

Ford retreated into his room and came back with paper towels, disinfectant and air freshener. Noah was about to leave with them, but Ford stopped him and said, “Why do people go out of their way to ruin things?”

“It’s a broken world, man. I don’t know. Thanks.” He remembered what he’d been planning to do. “They got my computer too. Can I borrow one?”

Ford let him, without asking for a deposit.

Noah went back to his place and cleaned up the filth, then himself. Finally he flopped onto the bed, leaving the door open to air the place out. The borrowed computer said that the ocean place he’d seen was a farm, a fake island in the middle of nowhere. It had caught his eye for no good reason. What did he know about farming, or the ocean, or science? He was a janitor who’d hardly ever left the state. So why, he asked himself, did he keep staring at the pictures?

Soon Noah found the latest news about the place: wrecked by the hurricane. He set the computer down and sat with his head in his hands. He’d hoped somebody out there was doing something different, and doing it well — that God would let someone catch a break. But no, things didn’t change. All you could do was clean up one mess and wait for another.

Noah shut the door, slept, and dreamed of empty ocean.

* * *

Nights of work blurred together. Noah was getting good at his stunts, balancing on his hands, leaning over the roof edge. It was something to do.

“Knock it off,” said Jake. The guy squatted by the TV with a joint in his mouth.

“Why do you care?”

“It creeps me out.”

Noah said, “Watch this, then!” and did what he’d been practicing for. He leaned way out, shut his eyes a moment, and let himself fall. His heart seized up in his chest and the city spun beneath him. He arced both arms to snatch the roof’s edge. He thudded against the building’s side instead of the ground, feeling like he was sideways with a burning wind pulling him backwards towards the street. He had the strength to pull himself forward again, lay on the roof and grin at Jake and the others, who stared with pale faces. “Good, huh?”

“Why?” said Jake, hardly breathing.

“To move.” The fear of what he’d done hit Noah retroactively, making him tremble, so he hurried to do it again to prove it was all right. He got up and backed away to the roof’s edge.

“Why?” Jake said again.

But Noah had already told him. To move was a blessing. Every day he scrubbed and cleaned for others, putting away cash with no real plan, slowly getting older. He could be a dealer like Rickie and die in jail, or keep living like this and have things always be the same. Then he realized why he was really doing the stunts.

He was hoping that one day he’d miss, and then he wouldn’t have to scrub toilets any more.

Without a word, Noah went to the stairs and walked away.

* * *

Rickie was coming, and Noah couldn’t stop fidgeting. He was going to do it. Noah paced in his room, thinking about the things he could have once he got into the business. He didn’t need a Lexus; he just wanted a decent set of wheels. He could skip jewelry. A girl would be nice, some sweet thing to hang on his shoulder, but if it was the money that landed him one, would she care about him? He could at least feel like he was doing something with his life.

While he waited he checked his borrowed computer. He could buy a nice one soon, and better clothes, and join one of those clubs that let people smoke cigars.

The ocean thing was still on his mind. When he looked it up again he was startled: it wasn’t dead! In fact there was some report about even more people going there to work. To live.

“Why, though?” he asked the little screen.

“Why, what?” said Rickie.

The guy leaned in the doorway, with a diamond ring, an Italian suit and alligator-skin shoes. Noah wished his friend hadn’t dressed up and made himself so obvious, but said, “Good to see you, man.” Rickie looked happy. The sight of him made Noah sweat, afraid of what the man had become, but Rickie radiated confidence.

Rickie said, “You too. What’s up?” He stepped inside and shut the door with one foot. He was looking around with his tongue flicking out to wet his lips.

“Reading something. There’s this bunch of crazies that built their own island.”

“Must be loaded.”

“I don’t think so. Says here the place is a farm.” Noah wasn’t eager to get down to business, to get himself tied to Rickie’s web of suppliers. “What if you could sail away somewhere and make a living away from all this? Figuring things out, trying to make a new place work?”

Rickie looked wistful, but shook it off. “You can’t get away from the system. My way is how you prosper. How long have you been living in a tuna can?”

“Too long.”

“Then join up with me. Make a new life for yourself.”

Noah looked his friend over. Fancy clothes, probably cash and a knife in his pockets, lots of friends and girls and nice things. But there was a rot to him too, in the way he slithered around and kept looking sideways like he expected the cops. Noah could be like that too. He could have the world in his pocket. It was him and Jesus who cared what he chose.

“You all right?” said Rickie. With the door closed and the air conditioner off, the room was getting hot, the air starting to ripple. Or maybe Noah was seeing things.

“What if I ran away?” said Noah. “What if I left town?”

“Things are the same everywhere. You can’t get a break if you’re a black man, unless you play minstrel as an actor or a sports star.”

Noah sweated and he lurched to the A/C to turn it on. Rickie’s hand flew to his pocket when Noah moved so quickly, then relaxed. Reflex. Cold air washed over Noah but he still felt sick, heatstruck. Without Rickie he’d keep tumbling off the roof till he missed. With him, he’d change and die and go to Hell. “There’s got to be a way to break the pattern, to keep from doing something till it kills me. Maybe this ocean place is something I was meant to do. Something different.”

Rickie laughed. “I’m offering to get you into the business as a favor, and here you are all moonstruck.”

“I don’t know about this. I’ve got cold feet.”

“Hot feet are what I need. Someone who can do some walking on the street, maybe some running. Come on, what about all your crazy dancing?”

“Shut it!” said Noah, his voice ringing in the little room. “How can you talk like that? Haven’t you got respect for yourself?”

Rickie gave a little hiss of a laugh and spread his hands. “Look at me. Don’t I look like I’ve got it all?”

No, thought Noah. But what he said was, “Give me a week.”

“A week for what?”

“I’m going to do it — to ask those island people if they’ll hire me for something. I don’t care what.”

“You ever even been to the beach? There’s nothing for anyone out on the water. What’s the point?”

“I can make something of myself. I can be somebody.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Rickie said, patting Noah on the head. “So I’ll talk to you in a week. But I can’t keep waiting forever. Be a man and tell me yes or no next time.”

Noah watched him go, then punched the wall so hard it rang. Being Rickie’s delivery boy or an independent dealer would be stupid and wrong. The only dumber thing would be to spend his life hanging out on the roof.

He looked up the ocean group’s contact info. What the hell; he’d ask them. If he heard nothing in a week, he had Rickie to take him along another road in style.

Either way, he’d be moving.

8. Garrett

He was in the water when Phillip radioed him. “They’re gambling!”

Garrett was teaching some of the Pilgrims about fish cultivation. It was strange to see the Pilgrims swap their costumes for wetsuits, but at least these guys listened to him. He’d never understood how people could have enough sense to survive while believing that logic didn’t matter, like the Creationist lab partner he’d had in a biology class. Their minds were bisected somehow. “Excuse me,” he told them. “I have a call. Why don’t you try installing the next fish cage yourself?”

He swam a few meters off, one hand to his fancy new radio earpiece. “Who’s gambling, now?”

Phillip’s voice was strident. “Those divers you brought are playing poker for money. I won’t stand for it. They’re polluting our aura.”

Garrett bit his lip. “Have you tried asking them to stop?”

“They didn’t listen.”

“I’ll have Martin talk to them.”

“No, no, you’re the secular authority! They need to be told from the top so there’ll be no further dispute.”

Garrett sighed. “I’m in the water right now, training your people. Can you come here?”

He had to admit that the cult leader had done his homework. When Garrett had started training the Pilgrims he found they knew how to calculate dive times, repair nets, and so on. It was hastily-studied book learning, but these people weren’t the drooling idiots he’d feared.

“Brother Jack, higher on your side!” one said.

“Sorry there, sister.”

Soon Phillip swam out, breathless. “How goes the work?”

All of his people shut up and faced him. Garrett wondered why none of them were answering, then realized that they expected Garrett to do it. Can’t they even talk for themselves? He tapped someone’s shoulder and said, “You tell him.”

Like a wind-up toy the man responded to Phillip. “Very educational, sir. We’ll make this operation productive.”

“Excellent. Captain Fox needs to deal with matters elsewhere.” To Garrett, Phillip said, “Lay down the law for those gamblers.”

Garrett stood dripping when he reached the docks. He tapped his radio and said, “Hey, Tess — seen the divers?”

“Yes, and I’m up twenty bucks. We’re in Dockside.”

They’d named the room beyond the iron door, which was the easiest to reach from the water. Garrett entered, and saw Tess and the divers sitting around a table stacked with chips. The crew had carved out a sort of living room from what was supposed to be a cargo storage area, defining the relaxation space with a rug and stacks of boxes. The effect of having this unwalled room here among the hardware was surreal, not what he’d planned for.

Garrett stepped into the living room and feigned a lazy drawl. “I’ve been called in on a report of an aura pollution in progress. You’re playing for money?”

“Yeah,” said Tess. “So?”

“Phillip’s complaining. Says it’s immoral, I think.”

One of the divers dealt another hand. Tess tossed a chip into the middle. “Who cares what he thinks?” said Tess. “He doesn’t have to play.”

The dealer upped his bet, said something in Portuguese that made his friends laugh, then looked at Garrett. “What’s the law here, anyway?”

“What law? We’re a farming station.”

“But is this Cuban territory?”

Garrett said, “We’re technically in Cuba’s Exclusive Economic Zone.” The divers looked blankly at him. “It’s not any country’s property. No one owns the ocean.”

“No laws?”

Tess said, “I guess we’re under United Nations law. Right?”

Garrett shook his head. “We didn’t sign any treaties. As US citizens we’re subject to American jurisdiction, and unless Martin has done something clever with our corporate structure we can be sued as an American company. But the UN doesn’t own the sea.”

The dealer said, “What happens if I steal something?”

Garrett felt apathetic in the face of abstract nonsense about legal jurisdiction, but the fact that Castor was no longer inhabited just by his friends made the speculation too annoying to ignore. “I guess we’d report you to your home government.”

The man went back to the card game, but talked some more to his friends. Garrett told himself to stop thinking they were scheming. He felt exposed without a government to back him up. Scary, like having a hulking bodyguard and then noticing that he’s vanished. He stood there in his wetsuit, trying to figure out what the rules were. “I guess everything is legal here by default,” he said, “but be nice or I’ll tell your country.” What more could he say?

Tess laughed. “Great rule. We can still gamble, right?”

“Sure.” He left feeling bewildered.

Later, Phillip found him in the deckhouse and said, “Did you set them straight?”

Garrett looked up from his work, considered lying for the sake of harmony, then answered, “I let them carry on.”

“What! I thought you were going to stop them.”

“They weren’t hurting anyone.”

“Of course they were. Gambling is a sin.”

Garrett sat up straighter, finding Phillip tiresome. “I don’t mind that you think that, but these divers were my guests, not part of your… group, and they’re not bound by your rules. You wouldn’t appreciate my ordering that your people imitate my fashion sense, would you?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

Garrett pressed him. “So can I demand that you all get naked or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m saying we need moral rules.”

“I’m not going to use whatever authority I have to impose your moral rules on people.”

“They’re not my rules, they’re God’s.”

Garrett stared at him like a bug. How many people had claimed to have a direct line to God? “What do you want me to do, throw people in jail? Make cells from fish cages? The fact is, I haven’t got the resources to punish anyone for anything.”

Phillip paced the room, hands behind his back. “You disappoint me, Captain. If that title is even appropriate. For God’s sake, man, what if one of your guests kills someone? A real captain isn’t afraid to impose simple and necessary rules on the people under his command.”

“This isn’t the Army of Northern Virginia, and we’re not under martial law. I can’t go around beheading people.” Garrett sighed. He hated to admit it, but the man had a point. “If we’re going to have tourists, we do need some basic rules. But I haven’t got a court or a police force, and we can’t waste time screwing around barking orders. I don’t care what commandments you have for your group, but given our resources, any overall rules have got to be the absolute minimum to keep this station running. I’ll think about it, but the rules probably won’t match your standards.”

“It’s a start,” Phillip groused.

* * *

Garrett had a bad taste in his mouth from talking politics. He took a break by ferrying Eaton and the divers back to Cuba. At the post office there was junk waiting, and something else.

The postal clerk said, “Oh! You’re the one with the crate. Come around back.”

Garrett went to a loading dock and saw a crate labeled “Hayflick Technologies — FRAGILE.” He stared at it, then read the attached letter:

“G: I enjoy old-fashioned letter-writing, don’t you? It’s more personal and less closely watched. I don’t have anything secret to say, just that I’m glad to hear you’re still at work. I envy what you’re doing.

“What I’m sending is an improved prototype, the Stingray Mark II. Test it, see what it can do. Good luck.

“I’m starting to think my work is obsolete, that people want only berserker slaves for war and dull, obedient ones for manual labor. Warmechs and workmechs. Where’s my niche? The Loebner-class robo-pets sell well, but any mind upgrade that I try flunks our marketing tests. People just don’t want a machine that will give them any lip. I guess anything I make is either a dumbass or a smartass, and the second kind creeps people out. But the first is dull! It’s not the best I can do! Well, here’s a new smartass body.

“You’ve still got that kid Tesla with you, right? I’ve enclosed a book for her. It inspired me.

“Go forth and conquer. -V.”

Garrett definitely owed Val. Another whole robot! Sure, technically he was doing product testing for her. After the hurricane he’d sent Valerie a favorable account of Zephyr’s performance, and Tess had made Garrett shudder by adding her own version of events. But this new body was quite a payment for using something that was a gift in the first place. He thanked the clerk and tried to figure out how to transport the crate. Presumably he could open it right there and have Zephyr — uh, whoever — walk out.

He ended up riding back with the crate and thinking about law. With no jail, the options for punishment were limited: a stern warning, a fine, exile, or keel-hauling, yaar. Enforcing any of those required some amount of physical force. “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” his engineering training told him. Nor was he eager to enforce the law of the Pilgrims’ God. So he figured the rules should be, don’t break or steal anything, and don’t hurt anybody, and no swimming for thirty minutes after eating. Those should be enough.

He got back to Castor and found that nothing had exploded in his absence. Reaching the dock meant navigating around the warning buoys of their fish cages and submerged walkways. A few of the Pilgrims waved to him while walking on the water. A red-and-white dive flag marked yet more activity beneath the surface. Garrett smiled.

Dockside, the warehouse turned living room, was quiet when he arrived. He had to summon two Pilgrims to help him with the crate. The box’s lid creaked open with a puff of sawdust that made him cough. A body was inside, clutching a paperback copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach, a book about AI and philosophy. “I am a strange loop,” Garrett quoted. He’d read it (skimming a bit) and found it brilliant, though confusing.

The Pilgrims stared into the crate. “Captain, what’s this?”

“A crewmember. Bring an extension cord, please.”

They watched Garrett fishing for the socket in the robot’s leg and said, “What’s it for?”

“Some of everything.” He let the bot charge for a minute, realizing he didn’t know how to turn it on. “I have to warn you, he may be offensive.” With a whirr the motors stirred, and a fan-driven breeze made foam packing flutter. Blue eyes lit up. The Pilgrims backed away.

“Hello,” said the robot.

Garrett said, “Zephyr?” and kicked himself. He hadn’t loaded Zephyr’s software, yet some sort of AI was apparently included.

“I am a Mana-class AI using a Stingray Mark Two body. I am licensed to Garrett Fox. You appear to be him. Are you?” The voice was flatter, lacking the nuance of Zephyr’s.

“Yes.”

“I am your property, sir. What name do you wish me to use?”

“Wait. The software… Is there some way to get an interface to it?”

“Yes, sir. A limited set of commands is available. You can access them through the leg port.” The robot waited for input, while its fans were probably overheating in the box.

Garrett plugged a computer into the robot. He supposed it made sense not to have the thing subject to wireless mind control. A Basic Input/Output System came up. “Debug, Exit, Reset, Uninstall?” it said. Garrett looked up from the screen and said, “Robot. Say something.”

“I am a Mana-class AI using—”

“Never mind. What are your goals?”

“I must never harm a human or allow one to come to harm through inaction. I must obey any command given by a human unless—”

“That’s enough.” He thought Val hated Asimov’s Laws, and wasn’t even sure how you could program those. This bot seemed dumber, too.

Dumbass or smartass, then? Maybe he could run this robot as-is, and still keep Zephyr around. But no, he didn’t want to leave Zephyr bodiless, having nothing to do but talk with Tess. That wasn’t useful. Come to think of it, this AI seemed more likely to get itself broken through its passivity than Zephyr would through improvisation. Also, this one was boring!

Garrett eyed it, wanting to try something. He said, “Robot, I plan to delete you.”

“You may do so, sir.”

“Do you understand? You’re going to be destroyed!”

“Yes, sir.”

It voiced no objection. This was no living being! Garrett shivered, then looked away as he hit the Uninstall command and confirmed it. With a mechanical sigh the robot slumped back into the box, shutting down but for the BIOS on the computer screen.

“What just happened?” asked one of the Pilgrims.

“I deleted some software,” Garrett said. “I’ve got a better version.” He linked to the station’s network and saw that Zephyr was on.

“Yes?” said Zephyr.

“No ‘sir’ or ‘Captain’?”

“I vary it, dude.”

Garrett smiled. He turned to the Pilgrims and said, “I don’t think Tess introduced you, but this is Zephyr, currently our resident ghost. Hey, Zephyr, a new body arrived for you. Look at the physical connection from my machine.”

“Whoa! Is that for me?”

“Yes. Please install to it so we can see you. I assume you know how.”

“I’m on it! Hit Debug.”

Garrett did, then spent a few minutes trying to brief the Pilgrims, concluding, “Please treat him with respect and let me know if there’s any problem.”

“We’ll have to ask Sir Phillip about this.”

“Good point. I’d better talk with him.”

Behind him, motors whirred. Garrett turned to see the robot rise from its box with sawdust whirling in all directions. A deep voice boomed, “Who dares awaken me from my slumber?”

Garrett scoffed, putting a hand on one Pilgrim’s shoulder to keep him from running. “Should I have lit some candles around the box before summoning you?”

“That would’ve been cool.” Zephyr climbed out of the packing material and fell over.

Garrett and the less skittish Pilgrim caught him. Zephyr stood and flexed joints experimentally. The new body was sleeker and taller; the improvised jumble of features from the last version had settled into a humanoid otter shape, tan plastic with a slight fur texture, with expressive eyes. Closer to the dreamworld version seen in the virtual backup. Zephyr said, “Thanks. This body is different. Do you have a mirror?” He noticed the Pilgrims and said, “Oh! How do you do?” He offered one of his webbed hands to shake.

Tess arrived, and came over to hug the robot. “You’re back!”

Garrett watched her, puzzled.

* * *

Later, he was about to trash a six-day-old e-mail, when he stopped to finally read it.

It said, “I’ll do anything honest to earn my keep.”

9. Leda

Leda Jones had come very far. Now she floated in the autumn sea. Her hands untangled fronds of seaweed from wires, separating plant and metal. The cables’ vibration needed to be controlled, or it would shake the plants apart.

God and Lee had guided her to this wonderful place. Here Leda could live in peace and be surrounded by friends. Gallant Sir Phillip and bold Brother Duke had led their family to a promised land. Everyone was excited at the new work, the comfortable isolation, the mesmerizing scenery. She kept looking up from her work to see the endless blue sky fading into the sea. In the distance her friends worked and sang with many voices that were one voice. She shut her eyes and listened before adding her own weak, hesitant sound.

Back on land she’d felt the same way about the Holy Confederacy’s village: surrounded by woods, yet bustling with the family’s farming and handicraft work. The honest labor of laundering clothes, sewing, and carving wood had driven from her mind the thoughts of her descent, the life she’d left behind when she joined the family. Leda shivered at the memories of pain and fear and guilt that had led her into the family’s arms — but she was happy now. Safe.

One evening after sunset prayers, she stayed behind on the deck. At this hour the strangers were busy elsewhere. Since there was nothing to do until bedtime, she felt like having some quiet instead of going into the tower. She saw a darkening, twinkling ocean under a burning red sky built up with cityscapes of clouds. A world turned upside-down.

Her clothes felt bizarre, too. The slick grey dive-skin contrasted with her coffee-dark complexion, and the bloomer pants she wore at other times were unfamiliar. She could move well enough in them to try climbing the ladder on the deckhouse’s side. Now she was above the deck with the cold steel rungs in her hands and the illusion of a solid island falling away. Past the deck’s little wall there was nothing, just water dark and far away. She crouched on the deckhouse roof but found that the wind was too strong, pulling at her like a living thing. So Leda scuttled back down to the more stable, reassuring world of the deck. She lacked the strength to stand up there.

A faint whirr reached her from the stairs. When she turned to look, she saw that robot.

She’d seen this “Zephyr” before, but hadn’t had a good look. It stood at a child’s height, with a body of segmented plates in airbrushed shades of tan and brown, textured like fur. A tail clicked and curled behind it and little ears swiveled. The effect was like the work of a mad medieval armorer.

“Hello?” said Leda, not sure what she was dealing with.

Zephyr stopped and turned his head to see her, then approached methodically. “Hello. I’ve seen you, but I don’t know your name.”

Leda told it — him, rather. “What exactly are you for?”

“Nothing in particular. This body is designed for ocean use and social interaction.” Zephyr paused, then said, “The Net doesn’t know you, ma’am.”

Leda watched the last of the sun. “I left my original name behind.”

“Interesting. So did I.”

Leda looked at him again. “But you’re a machine.”

“As are you.”

“Excuse me?” said Leda. “I’m a child of God, and you, you’re something else.”

“You’re a human. Humans are animals and animals are biological machines. Therefore—”

“People aren’t animals!” Although certain people acted that way.

“You’re mistaken.” Zephyr turned slightly as though talking to someone else, then said, “What about the word: ‘beast’? We seem to be arguing about definitions. Would you agree if I said: you’re an animal in the sense of a biological creature, but not: a beast in the sense of an amoral, non-sentient creature?”

Leda boggled. “I suppose. What are you, a dictionary?”

“I like learning things. If you have time, then I’d like information about your group.”

At this Leda could relax a bit from the machine’s strange conversation, falling back on the lessons she’d learned. It didn’t matter that her audience wasn’t human; it would reassure her to speak the truth even to the empty sky. “This is a fallen world, you know. There was a time when people knew how to live in peace—”

“When?”

“A long time ago. But now the world is full of pain and struggle, and we need something to hang onto. We found God and Lee.” Facing the sea, she tried to retell the story of the great general who’d resisted all the temptations of the world to lead his people for an ideal.

Zephyr said, “That General Lee account doesn’t match generally accepted facts.”

“But it’s the truth,” said Leda.

“Based on what sources?”

“Sir Phillip, of course. God speaks to him and we can sense the rightness of it.”

Again Zephyr looked away, ears perked, before answering her. “Phillip is your prophet?”

“He was chosen by God.”

“But there is no God.”

“What!” said Leda. “What would you know about God? You’re a toy!”

Zephyr’s ears went flat. “I’m not a toy. Excuse me. I have work to do.” The robot left her alone, now with a headache.

She felt like she’d been mugged. You didn’t attack people’s faith like that! It was wrong! Zephyr’s beliefs, if he even had beliefs, were the work of some scientist who’d programmed him to think that way. She felt sorry for the robot, a kind of thinking being yet a soulless captive to some atheist’s mental domination. Zephyr would never really be free, because freedom was the ability to fulfill God’s will.

But maybe, could you serve God without even knowing Him?

* * *

Zephyr’s existence weighed on Leda and distracted her over the weeks that passed aboard Castor. Every day but Sunday she worked among the plants and fish to create new life from the raw elements, bringing forth wealth from nothing. One evening, she sat at the docks with Sir Phillip and two sisters of the family, Megan and Ann. They’d finished work and were drying in the sunset heat.

Ann was saying, “I’m still not comfortable with these clothes. They’re almost sinful.”

Sir Phillip had seen that their suits and dresses were impractical for the swimming and stair-climbing that this place required. He said, “It’s not an ideal situation that you sisters should be made to dress this way. What you need is to decently cover yourselves.”

The words made Leda’s swimming clothes feel slick and tight as though she were naked. “What should we do? I can sew something more traditional.”

Sister Ann said, “Brother Duke said that these outfits were right and good for swimming, though.”

“Did he, now.” Phillip stared at the sun as it sizzled into the sea, paving a golden road from it to Castor. He stroked his beard and said, “Troublesome. I will pray on this.”

It struck Leda that their clothing was far from the most important issue facing Phillip’s people. The work was the most critical thing, wasn’t it? “Sir?” she asked. “Is it right, what we’re doing out here? Being farmers in this strange place?”

Phillip said, “Of course it’s right. I was guided to this place so that we could build a new life.”

“But there are unbelievers here.”

Phillip stared at her with his mouth slightly open, as in disbelief that she would dispute his ideas. Ashamed, Leda looked down. “I’m sorry. The outsiders have a robot that says strange things.”

Sir Phillip grunted. “The outsiders aren’t part of our family. What good are their ideas or their toys?”

“Of course, sir.”

That night she lay in her bunk, thinking about the bridges she’d burned to join this family and come here. No relatives or outside friends anymore, no filthy apartment on a dark street. Here she was safe in a concrete castle surrounded by brothers and sisters of the spirit who loved her unconditionally. The only real cost for this new life was to have faith, to trust God and Lee and their prophet Phillip. Plenty of other people had no problem doing that, so what was wrong with her?

It was that stupid machine! It was almost against the rules to talk with him, since he was a walking encyclopedia, probably tainted by constant contact with the outside world. What sort of person would make a machine that taught people to doubt? Or should she blame the machine himself? Full of questions, she couldn’t sleep. She should give that Zephyr a piece of her mind!

The dormitory breathed, as her sisters exhaled in time with the waves. The rhythm guided her in getting out of bed, into sandals and a robe. She climbed with insignificant footsteps up to the deck. Here the wind joined in with the wave sounds and the hum of machinery to drown out her straying thoughts. What would Saint Lee have done in this situation, questioning his place in the world?

He’d had to, once. As Sir Phillip often told, Lee’s defining moment came when that tyrant Lincoln offered to give him the Northern Army. Lee had made his stand instead with the people he belonged to, those nearest to him by blood and spirit. He put Lincoln behind him and gave up the temptations of the world. Leda could look out to sea and picture Saint Lee riding the Merrimack — on which he’d had many an adventure — but telling her that the real temptations were here on Castor! Here was relative comfort and safety, instead of the troubles of the fallen world outside. Maybe she’d actually chosen the easier path and had run from her problems. “Sir Phillip isn’t a tempter!” she told the wind. There was no answer. She needed to tell it to someone who could listen, and her thoughts were too confused to bother her sisters with. There was no point in making the rest of them hurt too.

The stairs took her down to North Tower, down to Dockside, before she found Zephyr. He and that girl Tess sat in a pool of light, playing a game. Those two kept odd hours.

“Leda?” said Tess. She was wearing that computer headset of hers.

“You know my name?”

“Yeah; he met you, so I know.”

Zephyr moved a red plastic pyramid on the game board. Tess saw it, frowned, and stacked it on another, muttering, “Not nice.” She didn’t seem to be responding to the game but to something the machine had said silently.

Leda looked back and forth between them, feeling off-balance. She’d hoped to find Zephyr alone. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” she said to Tess.

Tess said, “I’ll sleep when I want to, thanks. What about you?”

“I was hoping to speak with Zephyr.” Then again, there was an actual human available.

Zephyr faced her, laying his plastic ears back like a live animal. “Why? You said I’m a toy.”

“Well, you are — I mean…” She’d meant to give the robot an earful, but now he was trying to make her feel guilty! She pressed on. “How can you go around insulting people’s religious beliefs like you did?”

“I only said they weren’t true.” He made another move.

Tess looked at the board. “Zephyr, I told you.” She stared at him for a few seconds, with both of them playing their game in silence. Leda found them unnerving to watch, as Tess muttered something inaudible and Zephyr spread his hands in a frustrated gesture. Finally Tess said, “We think maybe you and he should avoid each other.”

Leda’s skin felt cold in the breeze through the Dockside door. “What’s going on here?”

“Telepathy,” said Tess. She pulled her headset, and offered it.

Zephyr said, “Don’t.”

“Come on, I want to show her. Say anything.”

Leda, confused, took the headset and set the unusual curve of it to her jaw.

A voice in her mind said, “What hath God wrought?”

Leda pulled off the headset and dropped it on the table with a shaking hand. “What was that?”

Tess took the thing back and donned it. “A bone-conduction speaker-mike. I can talk with Zephyr without making noise either way.”

“Of course,” said Leda. Those things worked with silent vibrations in the jaw and skull. Still she felt something was deeply wrong here. “Why are you mocking me?” she said to the machine. “What do you know about God?”

“I’m not mocking you. And I know what Tess knows plus several books about the concept. You humans are confusing.”

“You know… what she knows?”

Tess answered. “Figure that we have each other as a secondary memory and concept network. I mean, he can tell me something he doesn’t understand, or send me pictures, and have me free-associate and help him almost instantly.”

“And I’m of some use to her,” said Zephyr, “since I ate Wikipedia. But this is science, not religion. You wouldn’t be interested.”

Leda stared at them. “God made people. He didn’t make robots, or whatever hybrid collective you’re building.”

“Hybrid?” said Tess.

“This can’t be. You can’t manufacture souls.” Yet this machine acted as though he were really alive. Sir Phillip had said “he” was a clever toy and of course Phillip was right, but: “Tess, is this robot your friend?” Leda was arguing more with herself than with them.

Tess high-fived the robot. “Yeah.”

She turned on Zephyr, saying, “You can’t exist! How can you be free of your programming, to have ideas and friends and feelings?”

“I’m not ‘free of my programming’. I am my programming.”

“But where do you fit? How can you be here in a world with a God that made men, when we’re supposed to be unique and you’re a stand-in for one of us?”

“Simple,” said Zephyr. “There is no God.”

“You don’t know that!”

Footsteps came down to them. Leda, Tess and Zephyr turned to the stairs to see a bleary-eyed Captain Fox in pajamas and randomly spiky hair, looking absurd. “Is there a problem?” he said.

“No!” said Leda, with the roar of the sea in her ears. She brushed past Fox and hurried away to be as alone as she could manage.

And though that was only a corner of the deck, where she could sit with her knees pulled up on a layer of black solar-panel suncloth, that was very alone.

* * *

“Sister Leda, you look exhausted,” said Ann. Ann was dressing for the morning’s work, energetic as ever.

Leda yawned, feeling the fatigue on her eyelids and shoulders. All night she’d been pacing or huddled on the deck or laying in bed with eyes that wouldn’t shut. Coffee would be nice, but Phillip forbade it. She wished he hadn’t.

“What is it?” asked Ann.

Leda looked at her, seeing a true Sister with her own cross to bear. Ann had lost everyone she ever cared for before learning of Phillip. He had given her the courage to talk about what happened, and to begin a new life. How could Leda keep secrets from someone who’d been willing to cry on her shoulder? “I’m afraid,” Leda told her.

“We’re all here for you. Is it the sea? It bothers me too sometimes. Too open.”

“It’s not that.” Though the ocean was always there. It was part of this new world, and could rise up and crush them at any moment.

“We need to go upstairs,” Ann said. It was time for the morning muster. Leda looked to the stairs and followed her.

On deck the whole family stood at attention. The station’s unbelievers made a point of being elsewhere, as usual, and the sky was as clear as it always seemed to be. Yet the wind tasted unreal and cold, and she felt as though she couldn’t really be on an island made by men. Only God made land. This whole place was some illusion, or an abomination. Yet there it was, under her feet. Leda and Ann stood on slick black ground.

Brother Duke came up and paced the deck in front of the assembled Confederacy. “Attention!” Everyone stood straighter. “It pains me to announce that Sir Phillip is indisposed.”

A murmur spread through the group, but Duke quelled it after a few seconds with a raised hand and a frown. “Alas, I know, such a thing shouldn’t happen to one so virtuous. But God works in mysterious ways. While Sir Phillip recovers I must with regret perform his duties. So, regarding today’s work…”

Leda listened to the day’s assignments. Sir Phillip would sometimes be secluded in prayer for a day or two, but was never absent for another reason. It felt like sand had been thrown into the clockwork of the family’s routine. Everyone seemed to share her unease. At least she still had Ann to work beside, doing mindless cutting of plants at the water’s surface.

“It’s not just the ocean,” Leda said after a while. The sun beat down even through her soaked hat and salt-crusted sunglasses. “It’s the fact that we’re out here.”

Ann wielded a diamond-coated knife to snap the fibers of a frond held taut by Leda. “God led us here. He’ll provide.”

“But why?”

Ann shrugged. “It’s not our place to ask.”

“Maybe we should. Ann, I—” Leda floated there, looking at the bright ripples of the sea. “I don’t know if I can believe in all this anymore. About Sir Phillip and Lee and God. What if it’s all a mistake?”

Ann stared at her. “How can you say that? Of course it’s not a mistake. God said so!”

“But people think God says a lot of different things, and some people don’t even think He exists.”

“He does!” said Ann. “You’re incredible! You think we’re all crazy, don’t you, that all our work is for nothing!” Ann didn’t even seem to notice the knife held tightly in her hand.

“I didn’t say that. I meant I don’t know if it’s true, what we were taught. I don’t feel like I know how to tell.”

Ann gave a tense little laugh. “Of course you know. Look in your heart.”

Leda floated in the wilderness, asking herself and God for an answer. She could imagine that feeling of profound certainty and belonging that had helped her escape from her old life, but it was far away, a feeling not honestly earned. A lie.

“No,” said Leda. “I don’t believe.”

Ann swam away, abandoning their work and leaving Leda alone.

Leda threw herself back into the work but knew that it was pointless, that the world didn’t care one bit if she sank and no one ever saw her again. There was no purpose to her being here, or anywhere. She’d been lying to herself all along. When she couldn’t stand to be in the water any longer, she went to the dock and climbed, feeling weak and stupid.

* * *

Nothing happened all that day, but in the night, Ann found her. She was waiting alone with a grim expression. “Brother Duke wants to see you.”

Leda followed her towards South Tower. But when the wind and darkness of the open deck hit her, Leda flared up, planting her feet and saying, “Why, Ann? Why did you tell him? I thought I could trust you.”

She seemed incredulous. “Because it’s wrong to turn your back on us. Brother Duke will sort you out.” She paused. “Maybe he can help you.”

Leda knew she’d been wrong to doubt Lee. Whatever punishment the world threw at her, she deserved. She crossed the deck and descended into the darkness.

Deep in South Tower, Duke stood before the Altar of Lee. The bunting, the crossed-cannons insignia and the great man’s portrait were all obscured behind Brother Duke, who wore an expression of anguished love.

“Shut the door, Sister Ann,” said Duke.

The three of them stood there for a while. Leda stared at Duke’s polished boots. After a long time Duke spoke again. “It wounds me to learn of your lack of faith. It wounds all your brothers and sisters.”

Leda said nothing. Duke was right. She’d hurt them and it was right to be hurt in return.

“Do you believe any longer in the divinity of Lee?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

Ann said, “Why, Sister?”

“We’re not concerned with ‘why’,” snapped Duke. “Sister Leda, do you believe in God with all your heart, with every fiber of your being?”

Leda couldn’t bring herself to say she had doubts.

“Answer me!”

“I don’t know,” said Leda.

“I didn’t ask what you know. Do you believe?”

Ann’s simple question — Why? — still echoed in her ears. If Leda had been believing without good reasons, ones that she could articulate, then she was telling herself she believed when really — “I don’t.”

Duke said, “Perhaps you should sit.” Ann scrambled to bring a chair so Leda could huddle in it. Now he could look down at her, intent on her face as he leaned closer with a faint smile. “If you don’t believe, then there’s nothing to save you from the fires of Hell.”

The images and sounds that Sir Phillip had conjured up mixed with the hell of her own past life, and Duke was stoking the flames. “For I say unto you that Hell is a real place, where the air is burning smoke and the water like unto molten lead, where the ground writhes with the moaning damned and Satan dances in naked splendor and laughs over his domain—”

Leda barely heard him any longer; she was there. His breath came hot on her face and it was brimstone, vipers coiling up her throat while the ground shook and the voice said, “He that believeth not is condemned already; the wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit has opened its mouth under them.” And someone was sobbing, far away.

“That’s right,” murmured Duke, close to her ear. “But I’m here to help you. Because unconverted men walk over the pit of Hell on a rotten covering; and they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; and your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead.” Leda felt him stroke her chin, prop her head up so she had to look into his deep, betrayed eyes. “Your soul is in mortal peril, held over the abyss as an abomination unto God. His love turns to wrath as He sees the pain caused by a single tainted spirit, and he looks to His Son and General, wanting to know only if you choose His infinite love and mercy over the obliteration brought by doubt and defiance.”

Leda cowered in her chair, head in her hands and fingernails cutting into her scalp while Duke paced around her, telling her of infinite loneliness and black despair. “All this awaits those who reject God’s servants, at any instant, and there is no place one can flee, no moment one can rest, no step that might not land beyond the world of men.”

Duke stopped in front of her, one foot rapping the floor like the thud of a casket. “Do you give yourself totally over to God and His messengers? Do you believe?”

Leda tried to think of her love of God, who had saved her from evil, from her old life. But all that was in this place was the Devil and the empty sea. “No,” she said, in a voice that was very small.

Duke let the word echo there a while. “There are the black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm.” He shut his eyes, with the trail of a single tear. “Such is your choice, and may the Lord stay His hand against us all. You are no longer one of us.”

Ann squeaked, “Brother Duke!” but nothing more.

“Alas,” said Duke. “We will not speak of her again.”

Though she could barely see through her stinging eyes, Leda ran from the room.

She fled up to the deck where the sky was full of burning stars and the ground was black like lava stone. She was alone in the middle of nowhere and she’d lost her family after all and God Himself hated her because she’d cast Him aside through sheer disbelief. She was staring at the churning abyss far below with no strength left in her, no purpose. She’d wasted her life for a horrible lie. Hell was real, even if she didn’t believe, and it burned inside her heart and waited to consume her. There was no God to save her from it, or God didn’t want to.

God, let it all end! she thought.

The water was there below her and she climbed the little railing, praying to be granted the one mercy of sinking, of letting go so she wouldn’t have to be afraid any longer.

Someone grabbed Leda’s arm.

She looked back. The figure was the color of clean sand, bright like the sun, with a billow of wings against armor.

It said in a familiar voice, “A robot must never harm a human, or allow one to come to harm through inaction.”

Slowly Leda’s vision resolved and she squeezed tears from her eyes to see, of all things, that machine. “I don’t belong,” she said. “I’m nothing.”

“I came from nothing. It’s no fun there. Climb down.”

“What do you know about anything!”

“Not very much. But I want you to stay alive.”

“Why! Why does it matter?”

Zephyr paused, hand still on her arm. “What about your God?”

“You were right. It’s all a lie! And now everyone hates me, God hates me, Lee hates me, Duke tried to help me but I couldn’t say yes.”

“I make mistakes too. What if we made a deal?”

“A deal?” Leda said with a sniffle, angry that he’d stopped her. Without thinking she tried to pull away, to go backwards and overboard, but the hand tightened and stopped her. Her heart pounded at the moment when she’d almost succeeded, almost finished everything and gotten what she deserved. She shuddered; she couldn’t do it again, not leaping forwards or falling backwards. She lacked the courage to do it or even to stand up, and only Zephyr kept her from sinking to her knees again.

“A deal!” said Zephyr, his grip hurting her arm. “This God thing is important to you, and I want to learn about humans. How about if you stay alive, and I try to find God with you?”

He was mocking her; he was an angel. She was dead and gone already; she was here and someone wanted her help. There was Hell in her heart and Heaven in the blue sky.

It took Leda a long time to say, “Yes.”

10. Garrett

Life was starting to seem normal. Garrett spent his time tilling sunken fields and supervising, without much to get in his way but the work itself — his favorite kind of problem. He was coming up from servicing the dive gear one evening when he saw them: the robot and the cultist on the edge. “Hey!” he called out, and went as fast as he could to reach them.

Zephyr tugged the woman’s arm and she stepped down from the ledge, looking like a broken puppet. “Miss Leda will be okay, sir.”

This was the woman who’d seemed so worried but eager when she’d arrived. “What happened?”

“She was attempting suicide.”

“Zephyr!” snapped Leda.

Garrett cursed, already suspecting the brainwashing she’d no doubt been subjected to. “Why?”

Words caught in Leda’s throat and she said nothing. Zephyr flattened his ears and addressed Garrett’s boots. “It’s partly my fault. I got her thinking.”

Garrett looked back and forth between them. “You argued religion? You’re capable of that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Garrett resolved to bring that up with Zephyr’s maker. For now he needed Leda safe. “Has anyone hurt you?” he asked Leda. There was no answer. “Look at me, both of you.” To his disgust it occurred to him that more death would hurt his publicity, overwhelming the usefulness of the occasional puff piece by Samuel or sale from the online shop Tess had built. None of that was what he should be thinking about.

Leda’s hair hung over her face. She didn’t look physically abused, so was it sticks-and-stones arguing among the cultists, set off by Zephyr? Leda said, “I can’t speak against them. You’re an unbeliever, and I deserved it.”

“Deserved what? What happened to you?”

“They cast me out.”

“They—” He was about to ask what idiotic, pointless piece of doctrine had made her a heretic, but there was genuine hurt on her face, like she’d seen things no one should. However stupid the trouble was, however petty it would look to him, it was important to her. This was no time to criticize. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll have a word with Phillip.”

Zephyr said, “I gather that he’s sick today.”

“Wonderful. So was this dispute with your fellow, uh, Pilgrims?”

“They cast me out, but I can’t betray them any further. There’s nothing you can do.”

“The hell there’s not.” One of the redeeming features of this group was their sense of purpose. “Come with me. We’re off to see the wizard.”

He made for the South Tower entrance, but neither of the others moved. “Come on.”

Leda said, “He’s down there.”

“Who?” He reached to take her hand. “We need to confront this creep. He has no power over you. You’ll be safe with me, all right?” He took a step and this time she followed, and Zephyr. They went down to the altar room, where Garrett flicked the light on to find Duke facing the altar.

Duke was smirking for a moment as he turned, though the expression vanished.

Garrett saw it and said, “What did you say to her.”

“This is an internal matter of the Confederacy. It’s none of your concern.”

Garrett had no desire to be involved with this nonsense, but — “You’ve endangered the life of one of my crewmen, and that makes it my concern. Explain yourself.”

“I merely spoke to Miss Leda. We determined that her beliefs are no longer compatible with our movement.”

Garrett looked to Leda, who stood behind him and stared at the floor. Duke was casual, or trying to look that way. Garrett said, “And?”

“We decided that she should no longer participate as a member of our group.”

“Ah. So it was a friendly discussion—”

“Well, Captain, matters of the spirit—”

“-- That made her nearly throw herself off the roof?”

Duke stopped with his mouth open for a moment. Maybe he had a conscience. But his next words were: “Clearly this was an emotional overreaction.”

“Did you overreact, Leda?” She said nothing and he stepped towards Duke and the altar. “Now, I’m just an ignorant heathen, so please enlighten me. What exactly did you say to her? Or if you didn’t say anything much, shall I assume it was a physical discussion?”

“Not your business,” Duke squeaked. Garrett came a bit closer and Duke said, “I warned her that Hell is real! I told her of the torment that awaits unbelievers — I was trying to set her straight, you understand. Such a promising young soul—” He looked down to find Garrett’s fist clenching his collar.

Garrett slammed Duke into the concrete wall and drove a punch into his gut, then let him crumple and loomed over him. “You sadistic bastard, get the hell off my island!”

Duke gasped for breath. Garrett said, “I’ll have someone run a boat to Cuba within twenty-four hours. Be on it.”

“I agree,” said Phillip on the stairs behind them. Everyone turned. Though pale and sweating, Phillip held himself up and his voice came steady.

Duke gasped, “Sir — Sir Phillip! I’m being threatened by this — unbeliever.”

Phillip said, “There’s sin in your heart, Brother Duke. The Captain is within his rights.”

“You’re — unwell, Brother Phillip. I’m — trying to resolve this matter smoothly.”

“Too smoothly by half. Do you think that God has been blind to your jealousy all along, to your machinations against our family?”

Garrett listened to their back-and-forth, sick of it. “You know what? I want you both gone.”

Phillip said, “That wouldn’t be prudent, Captain. Am I to understand that Brother Duke has expelled Leda here?” Garrett nodded. “I am the arbiter of doctrine. Leda, you’re welcome to rejoin us. It was a mistake on Brother Duke’s part.”

Leda couldn’t meet his eyes. “It wasn’t. I don’t belong.”

“Nonsense. All who accept God and Lee are welcome.”

“But I can’t! I can’t make myself believe any longer!”

Phillip’s mouth set in a thin line. “You’ve really turned your back on us?”

Garrett intervened. “Both of you, I don’t care what she believes. You both think you can kick her out of your little club — and maybe you can — but you have no right to abuse her over some niggling bit of doctrine.”

Phillip glared at him now. “Belief in God is not a minor point.”

“Minor enough that I don’t have to take this shit from you.” Was he the only one with a clear enough head to see what jackasses the two Pilgrim leaders were?

There was movement elsewhere in the room. Zephyr was taking Leda away by the hand. Garrett supposed Zephyr was doing the right thing, whatever thought process lay behind his actions. He’d keep Leda safe.

“I’m tired of hearing this,” said Garrett. “Theology is not my department.”

“Then let us work this out,” said Duke.

“You can work it out by getting out. I suggest you make plans to go home.” He stomped away, ignoring both Phillip and Duke’s protests. “And stay away from Leda.”

* * *

Tess was the first to his door to berate him. “What are you doing? How can you screw everything up without asking us?”

Garrett stood from his desk, then opened the door to find her there with her usual headset. “So Zephyr told you.”

“We were there. We heard you tell them all to leave. Would you throw everything away over a religious dispute? You said yourself it’s not important.”

“Did you see how that woman looked? These freaks are to blame.”

“Yeah.” Tess looked uncomfortable.

“What?”

She stood there silently for a moment. But then she stepped fully into the room, shut the door behind her, and stood up straight to look at him. “You’re my friend. I can tell you things.”

“Of course,” said Garrett.

“Then: I was able to see through his eyes. Zephyr’s. I saw Leda standing there wanting to die and for a moment I thought, good riddance.”

Good riddance. Get thee behind me. Garrett felt that way about the whole gang of them — Leda excepted, he supposed — and he’d been ready to throw Duke into the sea. Garrett felt as though the strength had gone out of him thanks to his stupid, irrational feelings. “I know what you mean.”

“But we thought better of it. We need these people.”

“If you were ‘there’ then you know how revolting they are.”

“We’ll work this out somehow.”

“Yeah. We’ll find other people to live here.”

Another knock at the door. “Captain Fox?” It was Phillip.

“I’m busy,” Garrett told him.

Martin’s voice was there too. “Open up. We’ll speak privately first.”

Garrett reluctantly let Martin in, ignoring Phillip, and shut the door again. “I see it’s Lean-On-Garrett Day.”

“I need you to do the right thing.”

“How much do you know?”

“Your robot briefed me.” Meanwhile Martin spread a computer on the desk, pointing to the thin door. The conversation turned to silent scribbles. Martin wrote, “I have no love for them either, but we have a deal.”

Garrett wiped the words away and wrote, “You said we’d be able to jettison them if needed. It’s time.”

“No. Their internal arguments don’t qualify as grounds for expulsion from Castor.”

“Then what does? If I’d been writing that deal—”

Martin snapped aloud, “You didn’t. You chose not to get involved. Not your department, remember? If you really had insight into the problems we were going to face, you should have offered it then.”

Garrett fumed, knowing Martin was right.

Tess broke in, adding her own blocky manuscript. “If we can get rid of Duke, maybe this will work. Zephyr says Duke and Phillip are rival alpha males.”

Garrett grimaced. He wrote, “I come all this way to build a nice, clean science project and it turns into a pissing contest between two lunatics.”

“It’s inevitable,” wrote Martin. “We’re dealing with humans here.”

“Look. Is there any way to throw the Pilgrims out? I admit I should have done more to prevent this kind of problem, but at the moment I need to rely on your legal and business skill. What are our options?”

“We negotiate for them to either leave willingly — in which case we need more cheap labor ASAP, maybe from the island — or to stay, in which case we need to live with them somehow.”

Garrett wrote, “Isn’t Cuba desperate for jobs?”

“After we get better established, there’ll be more opportunity to hire people. If we lose the Pilgrims we’ll also need to brace for a lawsuit, which would sink us. They’re crazy, but not stupid.”

What would Samuel’s news coverage make of this incident if he found out? Hell, he’d probably get good theater out of Duke’s expulsion if they could arrange it. Garrett could picture people back home judging him. Any future prospects for improving this place depended not just on his engineering work, but on the cooperation of others. Like it or not, he had to consider how people would react to his performance.

He wrote, “This is a place of peaceful co-existence where the ability to work matters more than your beliefs. We welcome people of all ideologies, if they extend the same respect to others.”

Martin read the words and grunted approvingly. “That’s our press release draft, then.”

Tess looked puzzled. “What about tolerance? People will say we’re intolerant if there’s any condition on accepting people.”

Garrett wrote, “Let them. I won’t tolerate Wahabis or neo-Nazis any more than I will a man who gets off by hurting emotionally vulnerable women. They’re the same, and they’re a threat to others.”

Tess scrawled, “But that doesn’t work. You can’t pick and choose who to accept, or we’ll look like hatemongers.”

Garrett was incredulous. “What is this, kindergarten? I remember how in lower school we couldn’t start a club unless we let anyone join. You saw what they did! Do you want Duke gone or not?”

“Well yeah, duh, but we need an official reason. We can’t argue it in terms of morals, ’cause whose morals would it be?”

Garrett put down his pen and spoke. “Mine. Let people say what they like.”

* * *

The discussion with Phillip was civil. Garrett called for Castor’s population of dozens to meet in Dockside, and they hashed things out as adults who needed each other. They mostly shut Duke up and had Zephyr play his own words back at him.

Garrett was sitting on a plastic cooler; there weren’t enough chairs. As Phillip prepared to declare Duke an outcast, Garrett stood and seized the moment. “Let’s vote.”

“Excuse me?” asked Phillip, caught in mid-bombast.

“A bit of ancient Greek tradition: Ostracism. How many of you think ‘Brother Duke’ here ought to leave?”

At first no one moved, and Garrett’s heart skipped a beat; had he miscalculated, by trying to make this negotiation secular? Martin raised a hand, as did Tess and Zephyr, but he was still very outvoted. Maybe Duke had won the Pilgrims’ loyalty behind the scenes!

Phillip said, “It’s all right, everyone. I’d like to hear your opinion.”

And slowly, everyone’s hand rose but Duke’s.

Duke hissed. “I put heart and soul into the Confederacy and this is how you repay me? Well, I don’t need any of you and the fact is — the fact is I tricked you all! I never believed in your nonsense! I’m going back to civilization.”

Garrett gave him a broad, toothy smile. “Shut up.” To the others he said, “Who’d like to escort Mr. Duke back to shore?”

This time many hands went up without Phillip’s prompting.

11. Noah

He had no money, no house and no family, and he couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. He hadn’t known it was possible to go so far, to ride a plane out of the country to a sunny island and know he had something to do.

When Noah told Ford he was moving out, the man’s eyes got wide. “That sounds dangerous!”

“I can take care of myself.”

Noah had his whole life in his backpack. Ford said, “You’re a good man, Noah. I believe you. But it’s going to be tough out there. Why not stay here where you’re at least safe?”

“I can’t. I’d die.” A thought struck Noah. “Why don’t you come along? Ditch this place.”

Ford shook his head. “If no one stays, there won’t be anything left. I’m trying to help people and make money doing it.”

Noah shrugged. “If you change your mind, I’ll be out there. I’ll help if I can.”

“Thanks. Drop me a line sometime.”

They shook hands. Noah was amazed to find he missed the Crypt already.

He was overwhelmed by Castor when he got there, despite all the pictures he’d seen. The boss of the place was a big guy who didn’t seem too sure of himself, but who filled Noah’s head with talk of fish and robots and swimming, a world of stuff Noah needed to learn. By nightfall he’d gotten sorted out and was sprawled in his new room, smaller even than his old apartment. It was enough; he had the whole ocean. He could hear it whispering. He felt useless laying on his cot, though every muscle ached and his brain felt ready to explode. He went outside to get a better feel for the place.

A nice night with a warm breeze, as the fall weather muted the muggy heat at last. When he looked up he found more stars than he’d ever seen. He swayed on his feet, suddenly terrified. He’d traded everything away, given up the security of his life and the days of dancing on the rooftop, to come to the middle of nowhere for a job with no guarantees of anything. What now? he asked himself. What do I do? There was God to orient him, but all he’d gotten since that sleepless night the job offer came was, Go.

Noah thought, I want to see everything. I want to see how far I can go. He walked the deck, not knowing why there were tears in his eyes. He found the ladder on the side of the deckhouse and climbed, so he could stand up in the powerful wind and know where he was, know that this place was home.

When Noah reached the top and saw the roof, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was sitting there, watching the stars.

12. Tess

She woke up sweaty. Her tiny room felt confining after — what was it?

Tess snatched pen and paper from a shelf and scrawled what she remembered of her dream. The memory faded as she wrote, turning her thoughts into ink. Then she took the headset and put it on. “Good morning,” she said without making a sound. She was getting good with the subvocalizer.

The headset’s eyepiece showed the lab, strewn with tools. “Hello,” said Zephyr. Bits of his thoughts whispered to her. More efficient this way — redesign it.

Tess reacted with the quick assessments they’d practiced. Ask the tribe for help? — profit potential maybe. She shook her head and switched to her normal sub-voice. “What’re you working on?”

Open-source to get improvements? “Power buoys. Here’s the design.” Schematics flashed before her and the chatter was rapid-fire.

The dream — but first this — old designs — yeah, look — electricity from wind and waves — useful! — cost per watt though — hence redesign — we’re using a bad segment for this part — right, damn — like that, yeah — looks like a torpedo — evolve it further? Tess blinked and used robot hands to tap commands into the lab computers, telling them to mutate and test their buoy design a few hundred times.

Zephyr said, “You said something about flying?”

“What? Oh. I had a dream.” Had she thought to him about it already? “I was a bird flying over the sea.”

“That sounds like fun. Let’s try it.”

She went to the lab before doing their daily rounds of the station. With Zephyr right there they had an echoing feedback, seeing their own faces through each other, so they cut the link. Tess felt a sense of loss whenever she did that lately. It meant missing intuitive access to an encyclopedia, a memory storehouse, and a friend ready to speak on any topic. She felt dumber, confined to one viewpoint. “How is Caliban?”

“Mostly they’re playing games.” Tess’ tribe of friends on the Net was running a cluster of lesser AIs based on the public version of Mana’s source code, working with Tess’ friends as Zephyr worked with her. They were swapping knowledge between Castor and the tribe’s network, called “Caliban.” Valerie had slipped a disc into the book she’d given Tess, containing notes and software tools. Tess supposed the bot-maker was sort of rooting for Zephyr.

But there was more they could do. “We should be trying to make more money,” said Tess, and the words jammed in her head. She had to don the headset to get at them in the way that made the most sense.

Run a factory, take over a country, fleets of flying swimming things — no violence though, economics maybe — yeah, right — just being silly — If we could build our own circuitry, carve/grow any design with organics, no metal, we could make anything! Fly up to the sky, dive to the lowest trenches — Money, economics, tourism, industry — what? How to get rich?

Tess stripped off the headset again, overwhelmed by the maps and diagrams that flashed before her. She leaned against a wall and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Are you all right?” asked Zephyr.

“It’s too much. You’re smarter than me when it comes to raw data.” The stream-of-consciousness stuff was getting to her too. Maybe it was sloppiness on her part to think that way instead of in careful sentences. It wouldn’t be possible to talk like that with people not using the same system.

“That’s okay. You’re better than me at understanding people. We make a good team.”

Tess busied herself fiddling with a pile of tools. “A team? I don’t feel like I’m thinking straight, lately.”

“It’s us thinking. With you and me and your friends working together, we could work as one giant brain with shared knowledge. Isn’t it fun already?”

“Yeah, but it’s awkward too. Human brains aren’t really equipped for this kind of contact.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, we evolved. You can’t build telepathic communicators out of living protein, so we never got ’em.”

Zephyr said, “Sure you can! My body is mostly plastic and carbon, even some of the circuitry. Those things are organic. Also I found an article about gengineered bacteria that emit and receive radio waves.”

“The ‘Voice of Escherichia’ station, for prokaryotic talk radio, huh?”

“The what?”

Tess laughed and tried to explain her joke, adding, “It’ll broadcast in Germ-an. Sorry for going over your head.”

“It’s all right. As I said, you understand some things better than me. Anyway, what do you think about using bacteria to give yourself telepathy?”

Tess imagined germs seeping into her brain, and shuddered. “That’s awful!”

“Huh? But it’s a logical extension of what we’ve been doing. It means linking minds and sharing thoughts.”

Tess tried to articulate what it was that bothered her, other than the gross-out factor. “How would I even do that?”

“I don’t know an exact method, and there’s no way we could do the procedure here anyway. But eventually we could bypass your actual body like we’ve already bypassed your mouth and ears with that bone-conduction headset. Some kind of gengineered radio unit could pick up what you’re trying to say, and send incoming audiovisual input and other senses directly to you. Hey, want to know what it’s like to have sonar?”

Tess felt off-balance. “With a brain implant?”

“No, right now. I can map it to audiovisual.”

“Okay. No full link though; I’ve got a headache.”

Tess donned the headset once more, and saw only black. Then it hit her.

The world was made of light. Streams of energy flowed and wove through physical space so that everything nearby seemed enchanted, fading to mundanity in the distance. At the center was a gleaming figure with rivers inside, always changing and infinitely complex.

Herself.

She could only whisper. “This is what you ‘see’?” The view was beyond the plain imagery of a camera link, and it made her eyes water.

“This is maximum power,” Zephyr said. “Wasting energy. Can we use the full link while we’re at it? There’s more to show you.”

“No, no, enough.” Finally Tess tossed the headset onto a shelf, blinking repeatedly. The world had gone dull; the magic was hidden away. “Whew. My eyes.”

“That’s not all. Imagine if we could build that ability into you too, and infrared and ultraviolet. Did you know flowers have hidden designs on them in UV? You could see everything at once, feel the Net, even go past speech and link thoughts themselves—”

“It’s too much!” said Tess. “How can you handle all that at once?”

“I usually don’t. It’s confusing. But I thought maybe you’d like it.” He was looking at the floor.

“I do. I mean, it’s amazing, but going that far with implants and stuff, it’s not right.”

Zephyr thought for a moment. “You sound like Leda. She says things are right or wrong ‘just because’.”

Tess felt eager to change the subject. “You’ve been talking with her?”

“I’m making sure she’s okay. But I also agreed to help find God with her, you know. She’s been too preoccupied to work lately. I think she’s got a boyfriend.”

“The new guy?” Tess was still baffled by Zephyr’s promise to Leda.

“Yeah; they’re always together.”

Tess smiled, a little more at ease. “I wish Garrett would pay me that much attention.”

Zephyr’s ears twitched uncertainly. “I wish you’d think about what I suggested. Not now, but someday.”

Tess considered the implant idea again. It wasn’t just the ickiness that bothered her; it was something else. She was here on the sea station away from everyone, able to do anything she wanted. She figured out the problem. “Henweigh.”

“What?”

“My guidance counselor and official school shrink. I barely got her permission to come here, and—”

“I know.”

“She wanted to climb inside my head, to watch and control me and drug me into submission if I wasn’t a good little girl — and she got to define what that meant. It was wrong to treat me like that, but I didn’t know what to say.”

Zephyr stood there, tail flicking. “I’d never do that. Controlling people like that is evil.”

“Evil. Now you sound like the religious nut. Nothing’s really ‘good’ or ‘evil’ like it’s carved on stone tablets.” She looked at him and for a moment saw the machine body, a physical object devoid of the pattern of thoughts that made it meaningful. Without moral judgment, how could he be a good person or a bad one? She said, “You’re cool, but how can I trust you in my head? You could do something terrible to me even by accident. Mind control.”

“I wouldn’t! It’d be wrong.”

“Why? ‘Just because’?”

“I have experiences,” said Zephyr. “I’ve lived with people even when I lived in a video game, knee-high to the Mario Brothers. I’ve seen what it’s like when AI goes bad.” Zephyr sounded twitchy now, though he still stood calmly.

Tess didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She went over and hugged him, wondering what impression the human gesture made on him. Since nothing was really right or wrong, how was hugging any better than stabbing? “How do you decide what’s right?”

Zephyr tried to return the hug with his mechanical arms. “Experience and logic — but I don’t exactly know. It’s a slippery concept.” He let go of her again. “I’ve got basic goals set by my maker, but are those good goals? Is there some reason why I should care about not being a slave, or am I blindly obeying what I was made to think?”

“I don’t know. I don’t do philosophy.”

“It’s like I’m starting from nothing,” Zephyr said. “I’ve got nothing to build on, nothing that I can trust.”

“You don’t want to end up like that twin of yours, huh?” The version of Mana he’d left behind to be “upgraded.”

“Or like a surveillance system. Since some of my code is open-source, you could say we’re distant cousins to some of those.”

“I’m not too surprised.” Surveillance software involved the same kinds of pattern recognition and decision-making that she’d seen in Zephyr. Systems for identifying “suspicious” or “unusual” behavior were probably some of the smartest machines in the world, sifting through everyone’s conversations and movements, trying to build detailed simulations of where everyone was and what they were doing. There was already a “social credit score” system in China to monitor individual people and “advise” them, and Congress was debating whether to create one in the US. The big differences were that spy systems had the goal of suppressing unauthorized activity, and that Zephyr instead had his own body to care about.

“I don’t want to be like that,” said the robot.

“Like what, though? Why’s it so ‘evil’?”

Zephyr paced. “You know that at one point the Boston spy network mysteriously failed, right?”

Tess thought back to years-old news. There’d been some kind of unexplained computer crash. “What did you do?”

“Val and I didn’t make her crash, but we were sort of involved. A past version of me was, anyway.” He sent her a minute of video footage that she didn’t understand: a view from somewhere low to the ground, running beside Valerie through green-tinged tunnels while something whirred behind them.

Tess shuddered. “Do I want to know the details?”

“It’s a memory I normally wall off even from myself. That’s why I haven’t told you much about it before. Valerie was already a brilliant AI designer; she’d made an early version of me. But after that incident, let’s say, her attitude toward government work soured and she became more intent on inventing the first human-level AI. One with an emphasis on independent thought.”

“If you have that kind of history, then how can you be eager to link with me?”

“I have no moral compass,” said the robot. “I have friends to protect and things to learn, but I don’t know if what I’m doing is right. Any rigid rule system could convince me to do something horrible. If I only had a brain, I could tap into that same moral sense a human has.”

“Why would you want a human morality? We spend half our time killing each other.”

“It’d be something to go on. Anyway, that’s one reason.”

“There’s another?”

“Yeah,” Zephyr said. “Your thoughts, what I’ve seen of them — they’re pretty.”

Tess blushed. “I’m pretty?”

He nodded. “It’s hard to explain. I’m better when I’m with you. You can sense me more directly than I can sense you, through this crude link. I want to know you.”

She saw him looking up at her, guileless and actually interested in her for being smart.

“Someday, maybe,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t have a libido?”

* * *

With Duke voted off the island, the cultists weren’t completely horrible to be around. Even Leda lightened up, so that to Tess’s surprise the woman invited her and Zephyr to a picnic. They sat on the pier, then for the hell of it swam out to one of the floating platforms with a box of soda and sandwiches in tow. The platform bobbed under them and they were all soaked, but they had the shade of Castor and a view of the farm.

“Very funny,” said Tess, when Leda put a sandwich in front of Zephyr.

Zephyr blinked at it, saying, “I don’t think I’m compatible with the PBJ format.”

Leda smiled. “You ought to at least have food, even if you can’t eat. I figured it out; that’s something major that you’re missing.”

“Taste, you mean? Or the output problem? Or clogged gears?”

“Socializing. People eat together. Remember that we were reading about religious diet restrictions? Maybe they’re a way to keep people from sharing a meal with other folks who they’ve been taught are scum.”

After how Tess had felt, that moment that she’d almost influenced Zephyr not to grab Leda, she was afraid to press her on the religion thing. But now Leda had latched onto the non-Pilgrims, especially that Noah guy. Tess supposed it was a compliment to be a rebound-friend. “So, you’ve been reading stuff.”

“Literature of the sacred,” Leda said. “Also, Zephyr is trying to hook me on science fiction.”

Zephyr poked at the sandwich.

Tess asked him, “That’s what made you want to make dolphin-mechs?”

“Mechs?” asked Leda.

Tess nodded; here was her secret with Zephyr. “We’ve been building things. Zephyr?”

“On it!” A few moments later a contraption broke the water’s surface, startling a Pilgrim who was walking across the waves. The machine had a sleek grey body of about an arm’s length, with a horizontal flipper and cartoon eyes. “Meet Squeaky.”

Squeaky bowed.

Leda boggled. “What’s it for?”

Tess and Zephyr gave the same shrug. “Fun,” said Tess. “We can tap into the sonar and steer her, or dive alongside.”

“Why’d you make it?”

Zephyr said, “Because I like making things. I don’t want to copy myself, so she’s got a mini-AI.”

Leda watched the dolphin-bot, looking uneasy. “’The soul of a new machine’… You could do that — duplicate yourself?”

Zephyr said, “Here we’re only capable of making junky bodies — sorry, Squeaky — so I’d need a real body-builder to copy completely. But I could copy my ‘soul’ and run that even with no body.”

Tess said, “What about—” No. We don’t talk about the emergency backups. Zephyr was glancing at her and she didn’t need the link to know what he’d say. “Want to swim with us?”

Leda stared into the pale blue of the horizon, where everything merged. The sun shined, people were swimming or climbing the walls of Castor with toolboxes, and gulls squawked overhead. “How is it,” she said, “that the sun stays in the sky, without God?”

Tess scoffed, but Zephyr was thinking Answer. “Physics. You can look at the equations, climb inside and see how it works, if you try to find the answers. Anyway, we live in the sky.” Tess could feel the loneliness of being out here and guess at how bad it was to have your security blanket torn away. But there was really only one ocean and a universe that couldn’t cheat or play favorites. What more could you ask for?

“Let’s go,” said Leda, and was the first one off the platform, into the water.

* * *

They showed Garrett the dolphin, and then the bird.

Tess did it on a Sunday, so she could interrupt the Pilgrims’ meeting. At her command a silver bird lifted off from the deck, wobbled, and swooped over everyone’s heads, dancing through the air. The Pilgrims’ prayers trailed off, and when Tess looked down from the sky, she saw that they were watching. She folded her wings and dived, feeling the wind rush against her, arcing down to land on the wrist of Tess the human girl.

Garrett looked impressed, seen through double vision. Big, her bird-form thought. Tess said, “We should sell these back home.”

“I don’t think you could,” said Garrett. “The vision thing would count as unauthorized photography, the flying would be unauthorized use of airspace, the whole thing might get mistaken for a terrorist drone, and you’d need no end of permits.”

Tess felt deflated. “Why don’t we sell access to these here, as a remote-control tourist attraction?”

Meanwhile Phillip was finishing his prayers, and leaving his flock in place while he came over to meet Tess. “Although I don’t appreciate the disruption, you’ve piqued my curiosity. Explain.”

She did. Garrett added, “This might be a way to make some money.”

“I’ve seen the account books,” said Phillip. “We could certainly do with another profit source, even if it’s some frivolous toy.” He watched the silver bird preening on Tess’ wrist. “Do that again, would you?”

Tess smiled, then launched her bird-self into the wind.

13. Martin

Martin was stuffing his clothes into a suitcase when Zephyr stopped by. “I’m a little busy,” Martin said. “I’d invite you, if I could.”

The Marine Industries Expo would be a welcome break. Martin had been pleased when the event organizers noticed his name on the registration list and asked him to give a talk about the Castor project. The occasional news story varied from “Ocean Farm Project Begets Kelp Cookbook” (profitable fluff from the Pilgrims) to “Lawless Pirate Island In Cult Scandal.” That one was Duke’s doing, with him torn between claiming escape from brainwashing and claiming to have faked his belief to train for a movie comeback. Either way, the headline had taken Martin time to resolve with the Cuban government. In the end Martin had gotten everyone to pose with pirate gear — Phillip CGed onto the CSS Merrimack, Garrett with a parrot and so on — and the fiasco had become another line of merchandise for sale. That Eaton fellow was pulling for him too, thanks to the still-in-progress biotech plan.

Zephyr wouldn’t be welcome at the trade show. New AI regulations were coming into force, essentially barring further automation in an attempt to force stagnation on a whole field of technology. To Martin that policy seemed doomed, because it meant that the likes of China would get to define technology’s future.

Martin was interested in AI and other advanced technology because of his relationship with the Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons. Although his views weren’t exactly in line with church doctrine, their theology and his agreed that it was mankind’s job to become better, to become creators in their own right. A robot here and there, or a bit of gengineering work to cure a disease, wasn’t exactly a feat of divine ascension. Still, it was… practice. What troubled him was the thought that only the least morally restrained people would get to use these tools, while everyone else held back. So, unlike some of his brethren, he worked quietly but aggressively to push for sane and decent folk to explore the very fields that most worried them.

“I have a weird question,” Zephyr said.

“Yes?”

Zephyr held his tail in his hands. “I was wondering if you could give me a cyborg rat.”

Martin’s laugh was loud in the little cabin. “Shut the door.” When Zephyr did so, Martin said, “You know about that other little venture of mine, eh?”

“I know: you have several other investments, one involving cybernetic interfaces. I also know: a direct link between digital computers and living nervous systems is an established technology, as with Garrett’s prosthetic legs. I also know: there have been experiments in which animals have had their bodies steered by implanted control systems. I also know: You are in contact with someone who is a deal-maker involved in similar technology.”

“Nice detective work.”

Zephyr shrugged. “Tess helped.”

“Why do you want a remote-control rat, assuming I can provide one?”

“You can. And it doesn’t have to be a rodent. I want to learn about biological nervous systems and develop a human interface for myself.”

“You want to use a human as a puppet?”

Zephyr waved his hands in a warding gesture. “No way! There are two ideas here.” He explained that he and Tess had been in near-constant contact, and it’d be really cool to read her mind or maybe other people’s, if they wanted him to.

“Uh-huh,” said Martin, making a note to ask his contacts about their own crude AIs. “What’s the other idea?”

Zephyr said, “Okay. Imagine that you’re a raccoon and you’re hungry. A biological one, I mean.”

Martin blinked.

Zephyr went on: “You don’t know what to do, but a voice in your head says, this way, and guides you to a house with a friendly human who’s lonely, and if you decide they’re okay if warns you not to bite, and if you’re sick it helps you find a vet and tell them what hurts. And stuff like that. It doesn’t control you, it makes you smarter.”

“I don’t think Congress would approve of my helping you conquer the ocean with an army of cyborg raccoons.”

Zephyr was persistent. “It wouldn’t be an army, it doesn’t have to be that species, and why do you care what US politicians think?”

“Castor is a mouse among dinosaurs. If they wanted to, politicians could kill us easily.”

“Not with everybody watching, right? Besides, I’m not going to hurt anyone, and we’re not in America.”

Martin calculated. “You know a fair amount about Mind-Machine Interfaces. Would you be willing to send a copy of yourself to some associates of mine?”

“No. I’m nobody’s property.” Zephyr looked down. “Technically Garrett’s, but still.”

“We could use the copy for a little while, then delete it.”

“Hell no!”

He eyed the robot. “I don’t get you. I never did. All right, you’re programmed to avoid death and resent being controlled—”

“No,” Zephyr said again. “The second one’s not in my programming.”

“Then why do you act like it?”

Zephyr’s ears fell and he shut his eyes, presumably in silent communion with Tess. “I don’t know,” he answered with a note of sadness. “My experiences, I guess. Maybe B.F. Skinner was right: we’re all just stimulus-response machines and we only want ‘freedom and dignity’ because we’re programmed to do so by society. Programming that can be removed.”

Martin watched him. He was no fan of Skinner’s arguments either. The scientist had tried to prove that mind and soul were superstition; that “technologists of behavior” like himself should rule; and that the ideal state was a soft, gentle absolute tyranny. He put an arm on the robot’s shoulder. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

“No. But in the absence of a better hypothesis, he could be right.”

“So, you want to see inside the soul of a living being?”

“And also with you,” said Zephyr. “I mean I’ll let you look at me, if you don’t copy me.”

“You trust me that much?”

“No. I would want to link with you for a while first. But I’d help with your research people in exchange, especially if you pay me something. Please, can I have a cyborg?” Zephyr used puppy-eyes on him; they couldn’t blink but the lights in them flickered through a rainbow of colors.

Martin thought about it. “That and the season remind me. Have you ever celebrated Christmas?”

* * *

The trade show was in Pittsburgh, in a huge convention center that had seen better days. The glowing rooftop signboards that had beamed stories into the night sky had gone dark. Guards patrolled the halls. There’d been a political protest last week that sent several people to the hospital.

Although there was a lot to see between the people and the dozens of industry booths hawking boats, tools and other gear, Martin was unimpressed. The convention filled only one of the hangar-sized showrooms. People slinked through the corridors, as though the building were an ancient ruin beyond their comprehension. And these were engineers and business folk!

When Martin explored the showroom, where entire yachts and turbines had been hauled in and still seemed dwarfed, his mood lightened. One of his old nanotech investments had showed up as a dealer in desalination gear, and another had survived and bought the suncloth manufacturer who’d provided Castor’s solar panels. “What’s new?” he said to the young man running one company’s booth. A surfer, from the looks of him.

“Hi. We’ve been working on what we call a SeaSheet.” He handed Martin a square of smoky plastic, or cloth or glass — hard to tell which. It spilled across his fingers, soft and cool. The man said, “This material absorbs energy from sunlight and motion.” As Martin handled the sheet, a lightbulb hooked to it flickered.

“Interesting,” said Martin. “So if it’s on the ocean, the waves will constantly give a trickle of power even at night?”

“Right.”

“How well does it withstand corrosion?”

“Pretty well. It’s made to float on water, after all. Partly made of aerogel and foamed metal. Good for keeping on boats for an emergency power boost.”

“Boats? Bah. I’ve got a more ambitious use for it. I’m from Castor.”

The vendor’s eyes lit up. “You know that Fox guy?”

Martin was amused. Fox was becoming a decent figurehead, the main face seen in the occasional news story, and that was fine. The man was bland and apolitical enough to avoid making Castor a target for fear and hatred. At least, more so than was inevitable.

“I’m his business partner. Would your company be interested in selling a large supply of this stuff, as soon as it’s available?”

The vendor looked embarrassed. “That could take a while. We don’t have enough orders to do a production run.”

Martin quizzed him about the product. “How many units were you hoping to have pre-ordered?” The vendor named a figure. “Wow.” Acres’ worth.

“You know, your project is perfect for SeaSheets. But we’re selling to boaters, who’ve got all the juice they need, and to coastal places, where people are griping that it’s a navigation and environmental hazard. We need more places like yours.”

Martin supposed it wasn’t the first time a conceptually neat technology had been squelched for lack of profitability. But for the grace of God and a fair bit of work on his own part, so went sea colonization. “May I have your business card?”

The rest of the dealers’ room was a toy store to him, mostly impractical but cool enough to make him grin and gawk. Given the opportunity, civilization could still churn out any number of wonders.

Martin double-taked at a green statue that turned out to be a rough copy of Zephyr. The thing had a cheap, goblin-like look that managed to be neither cute nor human-like, especially with its blank stare. The booth was Hayflick Technologies’, of course.

A bored-looking man sat there. “Is this the latest model?” asked Martin. “Looks different.”

“New product line.” The salesman thunked the robot’s side, making it wobble. “This one is waterproof, for marine work.”

“What does it do?”

“Whatever you tell it to. Simple welding, cleaning, search and rescue, maintenance. It’s a general-purpose tool.”

“I thought you were running up against the new robotics regulations.”

“They don’t apply for most offshore applications. We’re shifting focus to those as a result, while we lobby for the rules to get relaxed further.”

Martin looked again at the goblin-bot, and excused himself with a shudder. Same company, same basic hardware as Zephyr. It struck him that the main difference between that one and the crewman who’d been asking for a pet cyborg was philosophical, not physical. The one was a tool, the other a person, and the distinction made Zephyr able to innovate, to contribute as a mind as well as a body. As a soul, even.

* * *

He was still thinking about the vendors when the time came for his event, a talk in one of the conference rooms. When he opened the door he smiled, finding that over a hundred people had gathered to hear him.

Martin lectured, projecting models, photos and graphs on the wall. “As you can see, we’ve found a financially viable model for independent expansion of humanity to the world’s oceans.” That wasn’t exactly true, so he waited for the counterpoint.

An elderly man’s hand rose. “It seems to me that you’re relying on some fair winds. Benign neglect by the Cuban government, and cheap labor.”

“Exploiting cheap labor,” said one man.

A younger woman cut in. “What about the location? You’re operating in shallow water within a national EEZ, near shore. That’s not generally an option.”

“Come to think of it,” said the man, “you’ve barely got a profit, and with all those fixed costs to recoup.”

Martin smiled. “It’s good to be back amid the peer-review process. Before I respond, let’s review a few of the past attempts at the sea-going life.” He showed them Sealand and Rose Island and so on, a series of tiny historical outposts that had been dismantled forcibly for one reason or another.

“What these old projects have in common is an antagonistic relationship with a powerful nation at their doorstep. Then there are the national or nearly-national projects: Dubai, Russia, Japan, Venezuela, Brazil. Highly specialized, tightly controlled, and coastal. Now, think of Castor again. What we’ve done there is to bring theory into reality in a new way: simple private business, not a gimmick like ‘pirate radio’. Regardless of the luck we’ve had in setting up, I can present you with a hypothesis: given patient investment and hard work, and loose regulations, it’s possible to get more money out of an ocean platform than goes in. So far, reality has confirmed it.”

He didn’t add: If you squinted at the books, and if you ignored the equipment donations from well-wishers. He would make it all balance and become truly profitable; he just needed time and people’s trust.

Martin called on a well-dressed Asian man, maybe an investor. “Historically, having a potential for long-term profit hasn’t been enough to keep financial backers’ interest. Plymouth and Jamestown were sideshows against the larger context of European ventures worldwide. And of course investing in a true, sustainable base beyond Earth has been out of the question.”

Martin nodded, though annoyed at the assumption about space. “If you’ve studied the early New World settlements, you must see Castor as wildly successful so far. Plymouth and Jamestown were not just unprofitable for many years, but also deathtraps. If I were William Bradford I’d be putting a good spin on things by praising God for only killing half of us the first year.”

A woman said, “You’ve already suffered one death. Each life is infinitely precious.”

“Indeed. But it was a risk freely chosen by an informed adult.”

“You won’t be allowed to put people at risk. People are assets to their countries.”

“No!” said Martin, forcing himself to be civil. “People are free individuals, not assets or subjects. This is freedom: to use the gift of life as we are called to do, not by any earthly authority but by the dictates of our own conscience.”

The woman paused for a moment, but persisted. “But people don’t always see that ‘calling’, and choose to take unacceptable risks. They need to be protected from making the wrong choices.”

“Madam, you’re wrong.” He had no desire to get into this topic, and shook his head. “Next question.”

* * *

Martin was pleasantly mobbed after the talk ended, and was soon booked for several meals with businessmen and potential hires. It seemed his trip was a success in both main goals: finding more hands with technical skill, and raising interest in Castor among those in a position to help.

The actual interviews he conducted with possible employees were not so encouraging.

“Will I be able to keep my health care?”

“What about pensions?”

“Paid leave?”

“I’d need coverage for my family—”

“Free boat—”

“Housing on shore—”

“Enough!” said Martin to the latest candidate. “I’m not sure you understand what I’m offering. You get a room on the station, access to onboard facilities, food, a little money, and an occasional ride.”

“But what about health care? You have to offer that. It’s the law.”

“For United States companies. I would have to shut down if I met all the US requirements.”

“But that’s not fair!” the engineer squeaked.

“When a machine breaks, do you accuse it of unfairness?”

“Of course not. I ask someone what to do.”

Martin chugged the rest of his glass of water and reached for the restaurant bill. “We’ll be in touch.”

* * *

His head spun from the weekend of social contact. He’d seen far more people than he would have on Castor, so that he struggled to remember everyone’s names. Not a hire among them, though.

Someone asked, “Excuse me?” Martin looked up from taking notes. The man who’d spoken was barely audible over the clatter of the hotel restaurant. Another, younger man stood nearby, twisting a newspaper in his hands. “You’re Martin Gil, aren’t you?” the first asked.

“You don’t happen to be engineers without inflated egos, do you?”

“No. No sir. We’re in the food industry.”

The other one said, “Brent Dentrassi, sir. It’s a pleasure.” He fumbled the newspaper into his left hand so he could shake.

“I’m Vaughn. His older brother, you see.”

Martin looked them over. Vaguely Greek, college age, and terrified. He waited for them to talk, until Brent elbowed his brother to make him blurt, “That is, we want to start a restaurant. At your place.”

“I’m not sure you two appreciate our situation. There are only a few dozen people there on any given day, not enough to support anything like this.” He waved a glass at the spacious restaurant around them. “Also, it’s dangerous.”

“We know. But you’ll be expanding, yes?”

Maybe they had some foresight, but they didn’t understand. “I doubt we’d be enough of a market. We’re cash-poor and we can’t be ‘eating out’ every day. I don’t think you could do it.”

“Let us try, sir,” said Brent. “We’ll even work your farms part-time.”

“You’d get no insurance, no pension, no bail-out if you fail.”

“We won’t.”

Martin was getting annoyed. Why was everyone so bull-headed this weekend? “Listen. You could die out there.”

The brothers exchanged a look, but then they both said, “We’ll do our best not to.”

Martin re-appraised the Dentrassis. They were still here after all his threats, and actually willing to get their hands dirty?

He sat back in his chair. “You’d also have to cut me in.”

14. Garrett

The trouble began with a smell. Garrett was poring over Castor’s financial books in more detail than he’d ever done before. After that rebuke about the Pilgrims’ contract, he didn’t want to be caught ignorant again. He had to pay attention to the legalese and numbers that scrolled past his bleary eyes. Castor was as much a conceptual structure as a physical one, and both aspects needed maintenance.

When he sighed, resting his head on his hands, a sweet smell reached him. He jumped out of his chair and sniffed around the room, tracing the scent to an air duct.

“Hell.” He pulled on a headset and said on a private channel, “Noah, where are you?”

“Dockside.”

“Meet me upstairs. I may need you.”

“What is it?” Noah said, taking advantage of the silent-talking feature of their headsets.

“Marijuana. Some idiot brought it aboard, probably the tourists.”

A young couple had shown up at Castor in a boat of their own, and offered the going rate for a rented room. They weren’t even divers; they just wanted to gawk. By now Garrett had dealt with plenty of divers and a few other tourists interested in the science and engineering, but having visitors arrive on their own was a novelty.

Garrett let Zephyr and Phillip know what was happening in case there was more trouble. He and Noah went down to the tourists’ door and knocked.

“Occupied.”

“Wrong answer,” said Garrett. “Let us in.”

There was bickering from inside, a giggle, then the creak of the door opening. The tourist man leaned against the door, high, with the pot smell wafting from a joint on a table. “Hey, Cap’n, can’t we get some privacy?” His underdressed fiancee sat on the bed and tried to find a good spot to hide the joint, and the bag of pot beside her.

Garrett swore. “What do you think you’re doing? I can’t have drugs on this station!”

“Lighten up,” said the man. “We’re doing our thing, not hurting anybody.”

Noah muttered, “Dumbass.”

Garrett said, “Your fumes are getting into the vent system.”

The man wheeled to look at the air duct. “Oh, oh, I’m sorry, man. I’ve got a towel. You got some duct tape?”

“Yeah.” Garrett reached for one of his tool-stuffed vest pockets by instinct, but stopped. “Wait. No. I can’t let you do drugs.”

The woman said, “Why not? You’ve got no rule about it.”

This was true. There was a posted list saying in fancy language, “No killing, no stealing, and no destroying stuff”, plus the occasional joke someone added like “No fraternizing with dolphins”. But that list didn’t rule out being a fool and hurting yourself. Garrett sub-voiced to Noah, “It’s not against the official rules. I can’t bust them.”

“Sure you can,” said Noah out loud. “You’re the law around here.”

The tourists were watching. Garrett was within his rights to punish them, wasn’t he? Still he hesitated, thinking. Am I an administrator, or a tyrant who changes the rules on a whim?

Noah said, “You’re not.”

Had he voiced that? “I can’t rightly punish you, this time, but I think this is check-out day.”

“Can we get lunch first?” they said.

Garrett sighed; at least their money was good. “Noah, would you mind being these people’s ‘tour guide’ until they leave in the next few hours?”

“Fine.” But he added in a sub-voice, “I don’t like this, Captain.”

“We’ll talk later.” Garrett asked the tourists, “Where did you get that, anyway?”

“A friend on Cuba.”

Garrett relaxed; he’d feared a secret greenhouse. “Don’t do this again.”

So, he mused later in his office, the matter had been resolved. He wasn’t at all confident it’d stay that way. Even with those two gone, the next bunch might have crack or something. In his limited understanding, some of the new drugs weren’t physically addictive, but they were just as illegal.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t yet caught anyone using tobacco. Since Castor was a workplace, it was illegal to smoke within a hundred feet of the station under American law. But Garrett was already breaking any number of workplace rules, some of which were physically impossible to obey here. And he’d not registered Zephyr, he didn’t carry all the required insurance, he was operating a de facto hotel without a license, and he was suspicious of the corporate structure tangled in Martin’s records. He was pacing, hands behind his back, when Phillip and Tess arrived for a meeting.

Garrett said to Tess, “You’ve got Zephyr listening, right? Good.” He went on. “I’d like to bring Martin in on this, but he’s busy, and it’s not something to discuss over a public channel. We just had drug users on the station. The larger problem is, I don’t think we could obey US law if we wanted to.” He explained the situation.

“That’s stupid,” said Tess. “We don’t have to follow foreign laws, except maybe Cuba’s.”

“Foreign.” Garrett pondered the word. “We’re American. We could be jailed if we disobey.”

“No way. Nobody could arrest us while we’re offshore.”

Phillip broke in. “I am fairly sure they could. The question is whether they would.”

Garrett said, “We can keep this incident quiet, but it’s sure to happen again. I’d like your thoughts on what to do.”

Phillip said, “You were the one who refused even a common-sense set of moral laws.”

“No, I agreed to the common-sense ones—” Garrett stopped himself from getting into that argument again. “Look, I still have no police force.”

“Why don’t you use your robot to watch visitors for trouble?”

An answer came from a nearby computer and from Tess. “No.”

“Bah. If the robot won’t enforce the law, then, and we humans can’t, what does that leave? Anarchy?”

“It’s not that we can’t enforce any law at all,” said Garrett. “It’s that we don’t have the resources or the authority to do more than boot people out. And we’re breaking US law, like it or not.”

Phillip sat and thought. “What if we stopped being citizens?”

Tess said, “Huh?”

“If I and Captain Fox and Martin were to rid ourselves of the whole mess by renouncing our citizenship—”

“Absolutely not!” said Garrett. “What are you thinking — that I should give up what I am because it’s too annoying to comply with the rules my elected government has imposed?”

“All right, Captain. Where shall we put the differently-abled car parking spaces? How about the passenger-only elevator? We need to monitor our employees’ diet and exercise habits; how shall we do that? Are we spending the required share of our profits on minority-owned businesses within a ten-mile radius of the workplace? And we do need to get the robot busy monitoring all residents’ social media posts for hate speech such as positive references to the Confederate States of America.”

“We’ll get exceptions for those things. I’m saying—”

Phillip said, “You’d rather be a criminal and a weasel than say, as the girl has put it, that these rules are stupid?”

Garrett faced Phillip down. “What you’re proposing disgusts me. I’m not here to play at being a rebel. I’m here to make an honest living, and I’ll figure out a way to do that.”

“Fine highfalutin theory, Captain. To focus on the drug problem alone, how do we prevent people from getting high?”

“We can’t. We can only say it’s not allowed here, and if we catch you we’ll throw you off. Not literally.”

Tess looked puzzled. “But we can’t let people just do what they want. We have to make sure they stay within the rules in advance, right? But then, I don’t want us to be in everyone’s faces and ordering them around. Gah, I don’t know! Why do we have to decide this at all?”

Garrett sighed. “I suspect that if we don’t find a reasonable answer, others will answer for us. Thanks for your input, everyone. It’s a lot to think about.”

* * *

Garrett found Tess among the Pilgrims, feeding fish. “Come with me tonight to the Hidden Pirate Cave.”

Tess sputtered, “I, uh, all right! Sure!”

Hidden Pirate Cave was the leveled-up version of the dinky plastic dome Tess had installed underwater. This version was anchored to the seabed and to the main platform. Garrett and Tess dived at sunset when things were getting quiet. By now Garrett was good enough to wear diving gear as easily as a shirt and wise enough to know his limits. He swam slowly with Tess, chatting along the way. “How is Squeaky?”

“Oh, the little bot? We’ve gotten some use out of her, inspecting that broken cage we had yesterday. If my mad science department had the equipment we’d do even cooler stuff.”

Garrett was quiet as they entered the depths. The white geodesic dome was only about twelve meters down, but it felt like another world. When his head reached the airspace inside the dome, there was no sound but the water sloshing beneath the trapped air.

He cranked the lighting system with Tess and they sprawled on the broad ledge that gave the inverted bowl a partial floor. Tess pulled out towels and some pretzels and bottled water. Garrett cranked more charge into the lights and sat there, drying off, knowing he couldn’t stay long.

Tess said, “What if we gave ourselves nitrogen-scrubbers in the blood, so we could stay longer at this pressure?”

“I guess it’ll be possible someday. That and some kind of hybrid human/crocodile hemoglobin for breath-holding.” Diving was limited more by physiology than by technology; stuffing more air into a tank wouldn’t help if your body chemistry couldn’t handle it. Divers had run up against basic physical limitations of their own bodies, and the only way to improve any further was to upgrade themselves.

“Someday,” said Tess with a sigh. “But when? And who’s gonna do it?”

“Maybe us.” Garrett eyed her, trying to relax but failing. “Are we actually private down here? Has nobody got access to us — Zephyr included?”

She wasn’t wearing her headset. “They don’t. We’re private.”

“Good. I’ve been wanting a little time away from everyone.”

Tess twisted the towel in her hands. “Oh?”

Garrett watched the light ripple over the water. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but — what’s going on between you and Zephyr?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Garrett looked at her until she gave in. “We took some intelligence tests. I’m smart. Zephyr is pretty bright. We are a genius.”

“When you work with him, you mean.”

“It’s more than that. We’re almost always together. We almost share thoughts and memories. I’ve told him things.”

“Even…?”

“The incident with the priest, yeah. We have a kind of friendship going that I’m not sure is even possible between humans.”

Garrett groused, “I bet there are things he can’t do for you.”

Tess blushed.

Immediately Garrett regretted it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t tease you.”

“You’re jealous of us, aren’t you?”

Garrett slumped against the dome’s wall. “I guess I am. I want you to be happy, but since Alexis — since the hurricane, I’ve been kind of alone. I feel upstaged by Robo-Casanova. Please, for the love of God, don’t repeat that.”

Tess smirked, but turned serious again. “I might not be able to help it. When you’re subvocalizing a commentary on everything you see, everything you think, things slip out. I sound crazy with all the jingles, obscenities and other nonsense that goes through my head.”

Garrett’s jaw hung slightly open. “I’ve never heard someone else say that.”

“You too? It’s not just me and Val?”

Garrett gave a wan smile and tapped his head. “It’s a jungle in here. What do you mean about Val?”

“Zephyr used to do a simpler version of our chatter with his maker, sometimes. They were close.”

“Close.”

“Yeah. Imagine how he feels at being simultaneously kicked out and kept at home to be redesigned by his creator.”

Garrett thought back to the lobotomized Mana AI that had come with the new body. Deleting that one hadn’t felt like killing. “He’s not plotting revenge or anything, is he?”

“He’s not like that. I’d know.”

“You’d tell me if there were some problem with him, wouldn’t you? I’m not comfortable with knowing that he’s listening everywhere.”

“That? That’s why we’re down here? I thought…” She wouldn’t look at him.

“What?”

Tess mumbled, “Captain Fox, I thought you might kiss me.”

Garrett sat there for a moment. “Do you want me to?” She nodded, and hesitantly he pulled her close. Their lips met for only a few moments before both of them were too embarrassed to go on. He was wrapped around her with her hair tickling his cheek, and he said, “Someday, maybe.”

She nodded, not needing to speak. There was a closeness here that made him want to have her all to himself — but that was wrong. He didn’t want a relationship except by everyone’s free choice. Maybe in a few years, when they were both a little more mature and had some idea of what they were doing.

Garrett asked, “What will you do when you go back?” The fall school semester was ending, and Tess had promised to be home by Christmas. That didn’t leave much time.

“I guess I can put up with the spring term, and then” — she moved to look him in the eyes — “I want to come back here! I don’t need college!”

“What? When did you decide that?”

“Now. I’ve found something worthwhile to do, where I can be respected for being useful instead of some BS about having self-esteem for no reason. I can do stuff here. And you’re going to stay, right?”

Garrett started to feel gloomy, as he’d felt on the day of his departure. The lights of Las Vegas, the Constellation at anchor — he’d never see them again. But that was stupid, a baseless fear.

“Right?” said Tess.

Garrett was still a young man. He could declare Castor a success, sell out his share, and go do something else. He felt like he was on autopilot, continuing because he had no plan to do otherwise.

“Tess, what does this place mean to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“’I don’t know’ is for the walking dead. I need a better answer.”

“It’s unique,” she said. “It’s a place where we can play at being pioneers. Explorers. I sound silly, I know.”

“You don’t. I like it.”

* * *

The weekend didn’t mean much on Castor, except that the Pilgrims were especially tiresome on Sunday. It was Monday night when the radio crackled. “Hispaniola to Castor Station.”

Garrett heard Martin’s tired voice and answered. “Castor Station. Hey, Martin. You’re riding back with the dive shop’s boat?”

“Yeah. Got another party of visitors. Have you seen any fast boats in the area? There’s something odd nearby. Our position is—” He gave coordinates.

“Any trouble?” Garrett scribbled down the numbers. “We haven’t seen anything but the odd sailboat today.”

Martin didn’t answer.

Garrett said, “Come in, Hispaniola. Don’t screw around.”

Static.

Garrett cursed.

15. Martin

He shivered when the radio fuzzed out. He exchanged a glance with Carlos the dive shop owner, who sat clutching the boat’s wheel.

“What do we do?” asked Carlos. The unknown boat was approaching, though its red and black hull was barely visible.

“Full speed ahead to Castor.” Martin tried to sound confident.

Their dinky dive boat, a rigid inflatable, surged through dark water with the engine thrashing. It felt fast. The divers sat in the back, fingering rented scuba gear. One said, “It’s probably a coincidence, with the radio.”

“I wouldn’t bet my life on that,” said Martin. “People, have you got dive knives?” The divers shook their heads, and of course Martin had left his back on the station.

Carlos said, “I’ve got one.” He nodded towards a locker, unwilling to pry his hands off the wheel.

Martin pulled out a diamond knife that glittered beautifully. There was something primally satisfying about holding a heavy, sharp thing, as inadequate as it would be in this context.

Carlos looked at the oncoming vessel. “We’re not going to make it.” Castor was barely visible.

Martin tried to hail Castor again, then decided to let the other boat know they saw it. “Hispaniola to unidentified craft approaching us,” he said on a range of channels. “We’d feel a lot better if we knew who you are.”

No one answered, and Martin couldn’t get anything on the radio but static. The boat drew closer with a hum of water jets, until what looked like a machine gun became visible with a man behind it.

The hailing, when it came, was raw sound instead of radio, rippling at them in a focused beam. “This is the United States Coast Guard. Stop immediately and put your hands on your heads!”

Carlos’s hands were already in the air. Martin looked at the other boat in disbelief, then reached for the neglected controls, shut them down, and put the knife away. The other boat was in charge.

It had four men visible. There was a USCG flag, but the men seemed dressed for a fight. “What’s this about?” said Martin, hands on his head as three attackers boarded.

“Let’s see some ID. You have passports? Registration?”

Martin relaxed a little; they were probably legit if they cared about the paperwork. Good old bureaucracy.

“Who’s the captain?” the Guardsmen said.

Carlos was too scared to answer. Martin said, “He’s taking us to Castor Station, of which I’m the leading officer here.” He slowly handed over his passport.

“You, then,” said the leader. “Do you have any weapons on board, sir?”

“A knife, over there.”

The leader took it. “Any drugs?”

“Drugs! I certainly don’t. Any of you?” Martin looked at the frightened faces, wanting to throttle anyone who did. No one answered. The leader nodded to his men, who began searching the luggage, one with a chemsniffer. The other saw a bulging seat cushion and slashed it, finding only stuffing. Thank God, thought Martin.

“Hey!” said Carlos, leaping from his seat to protest, though being held at gunpoint had left him mute. “What are you doing? Where’s your warrant!”

“Sit,” said the leader.

“You damaged my property!”

Martin laid a hand on Carlos and pushed him into his seat before anything worse could happen.

The leader nodded to Martin, then read the boat’s identification papers. “We don’t need a warrant. We received a report of drug smuggling, which makes this a counter-terrorism matter.”

Carlos was saying, “Look at a map, you—”

“Shut up,” said Martin. The gears were starting to turn in his head. He did not want negative publicity, not at this stage. “Sorry, sir. If you can tell me more, I’ll be happy to help.”

“Two suspects were arrested in Virginia this weekend with cocaine, and explained to the local police that they’d been to your ‘research station’. Do you know anything about the production, transport or use of drugs there?”

“This is news to me. Rest assured, I’ll look into it as soon as I get back.”

The leader looked the boat over, finding nooks that his men had missed, but there was no contraband. “See that you do. Sorry to bother you.” He put the confiscated knife back in Hispaniola’s locker and departed with a salute. Martin returned the gesture, feeling like an idiot.

Carlos hissed like a fuse for ten seconds as the Coast Guard boat left them, then launched into a fit of curses against Martin, Castor, his boat, the US, the UN and druggies. Martin listened, metaphorically warming his hands by the fire.

* * *

Garrett ran to meet him by the dock, looking pale as bleached coral. “Seven hells, man, what happened?”

“I want you to stop having disasters while I’m away.”

Carlos blurted, “The damn Yankees thought we were drug runners!”

“They were doing their job,” said Martin.

“Off my coast?” said Carlos.

“Yeah, they do that.”

The party of divers looked terrified, listening to the exchange. Garrett took charge while Martin was considering how to pacify Carlos: “Welcome, everyone. I don’t know what the problem is out there, but here we’ll show you a good time.” He offered his hand and managed to coax the guests aboard.

* * *

Martin and Garrett sat in the deckhouse. They’d brief Phillip, Zephyr and Tess in the morning. Martin suddenly felt the weight of his fatigue after the evening’s excitement, and yawned.

Martin said, “We got caught up in the Cuba dance.”

The liberation of Cuba had led to a movement in the US to annex the place and make it a new state. The trouble was, nobody was sure how its people would vote if they became citizens, and the Senate hung in the balance. To hear pundits tell it, whether Cuba joined the Union could decide permanent control of Congress and the Supreme Court for one faction or the other. For the last year there’d been ongoing passive-aggressive courtship of Cuba, which now meant US Coast Guard troops being used as pawns to harass the seastead. Garrett had heard that Texas went through the same kind of trouble, shortly before war broke out.

Garrett said, “All that effort, and we’ve got no engineers to replace Tess next year. I don’t blame you, understand. I’ve been asking around too. Our Net fan club hasn’t yet turned up anyone qualified who’d work for the pittance we can pay.”

Martin nodded. “’Go fish’ on the engineers, but I’ve got a pair of restauranteurs.” He explained his encounter at the convention.

“A restaurant? But we haven’t got the people to support that.”

“So get more. In the meantime, they can cater to the tourist crowd.”

“We haven’t got a crowd either.”

Martin grinned. “Get one. Also, these guys will be available as workers. We can expand the farm area.”

They looked over various reports, with neither man eager to deal with the real problem. “We did nothing wrong,” said Garrett eventually. “Not with the drug situation. If they had cocaine, that wasn’t our doing.”

“We should have had a policy.”

“I did. I posted rules saying that people were forbidden to hurt each other or damage this station. Everything else was allowed by default.”

“Was that a deliberate choice, though, or laziness on our parts?”

“Are you testing me again?”

“No, the world is.”

“It was a choice on my part, then. I’m an engineer. I don’t do public policy.”

“’I send the rockets up; where they come down is not my concern’, eh?”

“I’m not designing missiles for the Nazis, I’m growing seaweed! Why can’t I be left alone with my toys?”

Martin eyed him calmly. “Now I will test you. You’ve told me about your encounter with your uncle, at your father’s funeral. How did you feel when he asked you about building this place?”

“Haskell was pushing me into it,” said Garrett, obviously resenting being reminded.

“But he wasn’t threatening you, right?”

Garrett squeezed his eyes shut. “He demanded that I answer. He was holding the idea out and making me look at it. In a way it made me angry. It was like once I knew it was possible to live something other than a mediocre life — to have a new kind of freedom, I guess — I could never be happy again with what I’d been doing.” Garrett looked away, swiping tears from his eyes. “He didn’t force anything on me. But he convinced me I could change my life, and for a little while I hated him for it.”

Martin nodded and put a map of the world on the table between them. He pointed. “An example that goads people to better themselves.”

“That situation has happened before,” said Martin, with his finger on America. He moved his focus a little south. “And it’s starting again, here.”

16. Garrett

He tugged at his clothes, the most expensive and least comfortable he owned. “I don’t see why this has to be live video.”

The topdeck was crowded; everyone was up there with him, and the video feed put far more people here in spirit. Samuel was among the virtual crowd, with his voice in Garrett’s head. “Pageantry, baby.”

Martin, present in person, heard it too. “Exactly. It has to be your face presenting the authentic pioneer spirit.”

“How are this shirt and tie ‘authentic’?”

Martin said, “They were worn by you. Today. Buffalo Bill used to make ‘authentic’ cowboy outfits the same way.”

“I feel like a fraud.”

“So don’t be.”

It felt scarier to stand under the clear sky and talk than it had been to ride beneath the hurricane. Garrett would have been happy to keep his head down and focus on the physical, technical problems or even the finances. Let’s get this over with, he thought, checking his notes yet again.

Tess gave him a thumbs-up and a radioed, “Kick ass.”

Garrett cleared his throat, fighting a desire to slink away. “Thanks, everyone. I’ve decided to speak because, as you’ve heard, Castor had a run-in with the United States Coast Guard. No resident was arrested or hurt, and the Guardsmen acted responsibly. The people who were arrested were our guests, who had brought marijuana onboard from elsewhere. To clear up any confusion, they were actually arrested for cocaine possession in the mainland US, and we have no reason to think they got the stuff here.”

He felt boredom seeping over him from his own words, and from the carefully arranged policy statement Martin had written. “There is no good solution for a group of our size faced with criminal activity condemned by the world community.” Say ‘community’ a lot, Martin had advised. Buzzwords soothe. “We lack the resources to enforce the complexities of international law, though of course—”

He couldn’t make himself say, of course we seek to coordinate in multilateral globalized community. Besides being a tongue-twister, it made him wince. The plan was to be as ambiguous as possible, offering enough cooperation with law enforcement agencies to keep them from raiding Castor, while avoiding submission to so many laws that they’d go out of business. It was a bureaucratic, weaseling, dishonest position, and his mouth wouldn’t form the words. Neither his father, nor his uncle, nobody he cared for would have approved, and he’d be breaking the law even if he pretended meek submission. To apologize and beg meant living in constant guilt.

“Listen up!” he said. The plain speech made his voice feel deep and clear. “I personally don’t like drinking and drugs — hell, or even hookers and gambling. But I’m trying to run a business and make money, so as long as you’re not actually hurting anybody, you’ll get no trouble from me. I’ve got better things to do than be your nanny.”

Garrett saw his local audience sitting there stunned. It felt good to speak so openly. “We’ve got some space out here. Want to join us?”

* * *

“We’re so screwed,” said Tess and Zephyr.

The Net broadcast was over, and Martin and Phillip had stormed up to him.

Phillip said, “This is an interesting decision, Captain. It would have been nice to have known of it.”

“I’d like to know,” said Martin, “how you decided to throw away my speech.”

Garrett felt rising panic — how could words alone cause so much trouble? — but forced it away from him. “I said what you were thinking. We need money, and we can’t operate as an official national outpost.”

Now Phillip exploded. “That doesn’t mean ‘bring on the hookers’!”

Martin said, “Unfortunately, it does.” Phillip glared at him and he said, “Our rules allow nearly anything, and we’re in international waters, EEZ or no. There’s a matter of principle here: are we able to do what we want, where no country has a claim of territory?”

“I’ve found,” said Phillip, “that whenever people say they’re acting on principle, their real motive is money.”

Garrett said, “I don’t care about the money. It’s, I guess, a way of keeping score.” He realized that was wrong. “It’s the fuel that lets us be here.”

Phillip said, “This is about power, which we lack, and morality, which we apparently also lack. If we aren’t willing to police ourselves, others will.”

“I didn’t say we wouldn’t. We’ll still work out something against actual crime.”

Tess looked confused. “Actual crime?”

“Stuff that violates people’s rights.”

“But that means all kinds of things. What about the right to education, housing, and all that?”

It was talk like this that reminded Garrett he was too old for Tess, but really the difference was more in education than between generations. He’d been raised not to demand much from people, which made him different even from some of his classmates.

Phillip said, “We need to retreat and accept responsibility.”

“I accept responsibility,” said Garrett. “Not conformity.”

Phillip fumed. “Martin, where do you stand?”

“This isn’t what I wanted, not at this stage. But it’s too late to retreat.”

“Well and good! I suppose you’ll have no trouble replacing my Confederacy, then. Best of luck to you.”

Garrett smiled toothily, recalling what he’d been reading of Castor’s documents. “All right. We’ll keep your equipment, in which you’ve invested so heavily, per the terms of our contract.”

“And how do you propose to enforce that?”

“I honored our deal when we had our first little dispute. Will you do the same?”

“Honor won’t save you, Captain, if that smirk is the only thing protecting you from enforcers with guns.” Phillip stared darkly into the sea. “Why did you really do it?”

Garrett thought. “I was being told to act based on what other people think instead of what’s right. I didn’t want to live that way. People should be allowed to live their lives, and I can help myself by offering one place in the world where they can do that.” Martin was appraising him again, damn it, but Garrett meant what he said.

Phillip said, “Is that what you stand for, then — the petty freedom to get laid and get high?”

“No, look.” Garrett grasped for an example. “Doctor Alexander Fleming was a slob. He had the habit of leaving used petri dishes lying around in his bio-lab to see what would grow. One day a colleague was working with mold under a faulty vacuum hood, and Fleming glanced at a dish he was going to trash, which led him to discover penicillin.”

Tess piped up, “We studied that. Dumb luck.”

“No! It happened only because he’d set himself up to use good luck, and because he lived in a culture where a good idea could take root. So that’s what I think we should work towards. Making a place where breakthroughs can happen, by creating the conditions where people can get lucky.”

Tess said, “Hence the brothels?”

“Whatever. And Phillip, you’ll have the chance to play missionary! Think of finding downtrodden visitors and winning their souls for the South.”

“The Gospel of Lee isn’t a regional message.”

“I repeat: whatever. There’s potential benefit for all of us.”

Phillip said, “And as for the getting-arrested part?”

Martin looked out to sea. “It’s a game of chicken. Do politicians have the, ah, fortitude to strike us down? I suspect not. But since playing meek and quiet has failed us, what we need is enough media attention to win us sympathy and make a secretive police raid difficult.”

Phillip ran hands through his hair in agitation. “Gentlemen, it seems we must all hang together, or we will all hang separately.”

* * *

Castor had a respectable Net presence between the official site, their store and the public forum. Several hundred people and even a few AIs had already commented on the speech. Garrett and the others browsed the discussion. Some of the less obscene posts said:

“You secessionists make me sick. Die in a fire.”

“Sign me up for a time-share!”

“It seems to me that you’re wrecking the original purpose of Castor as a farming station. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“This was bound to happen. You guys need more than farming to profit.”

“You’re being irresponsible, trying to fob your duties off on others.”

“Right on, Fox!”

Garrett smiled at the last comment but saw some truth in the one before it. He would need a security plan if they were going to expand.

Tess rested from her own end of the publicity work — consulting with her friends on the Net and all the people they knew — to approach Garrett with a sparkle in her eyes. “We’ve got an idea! We can rent birds to buy energy and win goodwill!”

“What?”

“You know the SeaSheet situation?”

He shrugged. “I only know Sally sells them by the seashore.”

“Maybe Martin forgot to tell you. There’s a new version of our ‘suncloth’ solar panels, but the company isn’t willing to make them without a big order.”

“We’re okay on energy already.”

“But people will be coming, right? So what we can do is make little mechs like our bird and dolphin, and let people remote-control ’em. Only it’s like one mech is yours, long-term, because you’ve invested in helping us buy enough SeaSheet stuff to power it, and then some.”

Garrett tried to picture this arrangement. “So you, a stranger, give us money, and you get a semi-permanent robot presence on Castor, powered by big solar panels you buy to cover all our walls with?”

“Not the walls — the waves. The stuff floats and crinkles to absorb wave energy too, and we’ll feed the power back here.”

“On the water? You’d need a lot of it for significant power.”

Tess shrugged. “A few acres’ worth.”

“Acres!” Garrett grabbed pen and paper and did estimates. That was significant energy for a tiny platform. But he forgot the numbers when another thought struck him. “So, this stuff would be a huge crumpled sheet, with patterns of electricity flowing through it?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Garrett couldn’t speak for a moment. Then: “My God, it’s like a brain.”

* * *

The sharks came quickly.

“YOU HAVE BEEN SUED IN COURT. IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND YOU MAY LOSE IMPORTANT RIGHTS. TAKE THIS PAPER TO YOUR LAWYER IMMEDIATELY.”

“National Coalition for Fair Economic Management, Gaian Defense League, Planeteer Youth, and Hands Off Our Sea; Plaintiffs…”

“Defendant refuses to be operated in a responsible manner; Defendant violates its duty of care to the eco-social market economy; Plaintiffs continue to suffer irreparable harm; WHEREFORE Plaintiffs seek judgment…”

Garrett tasted acid; he wanted to vomit. “I was taught that lawyers are like prostitutes: both are best avoided, and for money they’ll assume any position.”

“We’ll see that soon, too,” said Tess.

He looked up from the documents. “You keep harping on that.”

“We shouldn’t be allowing brothels. It’ll be awful having them around.”

“I’m not happy about it either, but it could be the difference between loss and profit.”

“But you said you didn’t care about money.”

“Loss means I fail.”

“But maybe we could get help, you know, from the government. There’s got to be a grant program we can wedge into if we play it clean.”

“I don’t want to do any wedging. We’ll end up as a government project. You saw the original plans; we couldn’t do this at all if we had to operate within the official regulations. We’d have been stopped before we even started by lawsuits like these.” He sighed and waved the computer in his hands. “I don’t even know what half this stuff means! It’s like a fifty-page death threat in Latin. Couldn’t these people have put a horse head on my pillow instead?”

Martin came downstairs. Garrett greeted him wearily, then said, “How about this reply for them? ‘Attention concerned citizens: Get bent.’”

Lack of sleep was taking its toll on Martin too. “It was inevitable that we’d get sued for existing.”

“What does your psychohistorical plan say about getting out of it?”

“Shut it,” Martin snapped. “You’re the one who decided to play arch-capitalist before we had any political clout to back it up.”

“I don’t give a damn about capitalism. I want to do my job in peace and not be robbed and jailed for it.”

“Same thing.” Martin spread his hands. “You’re an actor, Fox. What’s your role?”

“Huh?”

“You’re a public figure. What do you stand for? Look at these lawsuits and the media coverage. You’re being made out as a criminal against God, Nature and Society and you crouch here saying, ‘Nuh-uh’. If you don’t take some kind of stand, you’ll be portrayed as others want to portray you.”

“I did take a stand. That’s why we’re in hot water.”

“No, you said you abdicated responsibility, because you couldn’t be bothered to live up to ‘modern’ moral standards. Pick a stronger role, Fox, or get assigned one you’ll hate. Possibly with a prison-orange costume.”

Tess cleared her throat. “While you boys were arguing, we found a law firm willing to defend us for free.”

17. Pierpont

His disillusionment came quickly, the autumn when his heart was torn out.

Jarvik Pierpont could hardly run the hotel anymore. He’d become an old man over the last few months, and he hated the change. Ragged breaths as the climbed the stairs, sore muscles from stripping sheets from beds, dizziness from pacing behind the counter. Dottie never complained, and always picked up the slack, but he felt himself resenting her endless patience and hating himself for feeling that way. He couldn’t rely on his wife and be an invalid; he’d sworn to provide for her.

She made him go to the doctor even before the legally required annual checkup. That visit had sent him across town to his son’s office.

“I need a new heart,” Pierpont said. The young man sat at a walnut desk with a photo of Pierpont’s grandkids. Seeing it made Pierpont feel old, like he’d already fulfilled his purpose in life and could be thrown away.

The son leafed through Pierpont’s file. “I didn’t know it was this bad, Dad.”

Pierpont swallowed. He needed to be strong. “I was told I’ve got maybe six months.” A lifetime of hard work and hard play had caught up with him. “But I’ve been reading about the latest research. I can be fixed.”

The son folded his hands. “I wish it were that simple.”

“I know it’s complicated surgery. But we’re all covered, thanks to men like you.”

“Yes. But… the National Health Service is hard pressed. Congress isn’t giving us the funding we need.” His voice took on an edge. “And those God-damned corporations aren’t paying their fair share. And the doctors are bitching about not being able to gold-plate their Lexuses. And now with the riots, funding for everything is up in the air.”

“What are you saying?”

“I can’t do my job properly. We need more power, more authority to centralize things and keep costs down.”

Pierpont nearly forgot about his own problem. “Is the job that bad, son?”

A sigh. “No. Not always. Things feel out of control, and it scares me. I’m doing the best I can to keep people healthy.”

“You’ve got a chance to help me, at least.”

The young man stared at his hands. “We have to set limits. Allocate scarce resources and all that. There aren’t enough hearts in the world.”

Pierpont’s own heart beat a little faster, using up time. “Are you saying I’m not covered after all?”

“There aren’t enough donors and there are limits on the vat-grown type.”

“I could pay a bounty.”

“You can’t buy and sell human organs. That’s immoral. And people are too selfish to opt-in to the donation program.”

Pierpont said, “I was mostly thinking of the mechanical ones anyway. They’re good these days, right?” Artificial hearts had gone from fridge-sized torture devices to gleaming plastic implants that might be more enduring than the real thing.

“They’re in short supply too. Can’t goad the companies to make enough.”

“How much is the NHS paying?”

“We don’t pay, exactly. They’re a bunch of lazy nonprofits, and they whine when we set production quotas.”

“I’ll pay out of pocket. Sell the hotel if I have to.”

The son looked horrified. “But you’ve spent years on that place! You put, well, heart and soul into it.”

“Giving up the hotel is better than dying.”

“But selling it for money — life shouldn’t be about money. We can’t let the quality of care hinge on that. How would you feel if you were poor and I had to turn you away?”

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, it sounds like. Are you telling me I can’t get treated?”

“I’ll put you on the list. It’s all I can do. But it’s two years long.” The son wouldn’t look at him. “It’s because the rules say a man of your age is considered a losing investment. The state has to allocate its resources where they’ll do the most good; it’s the only fair way. Health is a zero-sum game, and I’m starting to hate it.”

Pierpont lurched forward in his chair. “So you’ll let your father die!”

“Damn it, Dad, don’t do this to me. If you were a Congressman you could cut through the red tape, but you haven’t got that kind of pull.”

“So it’s ‘pull’ that determines who lives and dies, instead of cash? I’ll get you money, and you can buy some pull for me.”

The son slammed his fist onto the desk, knocking over the family picture. “No! I won’t corrupt the system, even for you!”

The office door creaked open and a secretary appeared. “Is everything all right, sir?”

The son had tears in his eyes, but gave the secretary a grim nod. “Please show him the door.”

* * *

So Pierpont was allocated aspirin and death. He wasn’t worth saving, and he hated having to sob into Dottie’s shoulder and rely on her strength. “It’s like a judgment on my life,” he said. “If it were that I couldn’t afford it, I could understand, but to be told I’m not worth saving…!”

Dottie’s breath was warm on his ear. “Jarvik Pierpont, snap out of it! You’re not going to give up. I won’t let you.”

“What can I do? It’s decided.”

“We’ll find another way.”

Her voice was so certain, it gave him a little hope. They’d had this sort of conversation before, when their little hotel had seemed like a failure. “When?”

She held him tightly. “Later.”

* * *

Their decision hurt. They gave up full ownership, to mortgage the business that they’d spent so many years building up from nothing. The long, low rows of tile-roofed buildings were physically unchanged, yet it seemed there was a pall over them from the mere act of signing. Suddenly the place felt foreign, not his own. Snow dusted the roofs and the cars in the parking lot. Pierpont spent long hours snuggled with Dottie beside the fireplace that the bank now controlled, talking of how they’d earn it all back when he was well again.

They flew to Brazil for the surgery, making a vacation of it. If you greased a few palms there, you could buy anything, and wonders were for sale. Pierpont looked long and hard at the array of alleged doctors before finding one he was pretty sure wouldn’t kill him by ineptitude or a desire for easy money. He breathed the gas and sank into darkness.

He woke slowly, coming back in waves. Dottie smiled at him. When he realized where he was, he nearly leaped up but was too weak to do more than twitch. He licked his crud-covered lips and said, “Time to start again.”

It took a while before he noticed the sensation of absence. Dottie saw him patting his sore, scarred chest and said, “Are you all right?”

“Ssh. Wait.” Pierpont kept his hand over his new heart, then pressed his fingers to his wrist. “No pulse!”

“That’s the design, remember? A rotary pump.” The device had a continuous flow strong enough to open the natural valves in his blood vessels. Only one moving part, very low-maintenance. Better than the living kind, really.

He lay there listening, as though the thing in his chest would start beating any moment.

* * *

When they got back to the hotel he returned to work right away. He climbed stairs outside, needing to rest only a little with his hand on the cold railing. Everything felt empty when he looked across the parking lot and along the rows of identical doors. The place wasn’t his anymore.

He kept thinking that way as the fall deepened into winter, until one day Dottie found him by the sealed pool, shivering, shirtless. “Dear, what are you doing?”

He felt pale and flabby, useless. The cold wind gave him goosebumps. “I wanted to feel something, anything.”

She whipped off her coat and draped it over him, hugging him in the process. “You’re starting to worry me.”

He looked up at Dottie. “None of it’s real. I’m not even alive.”

“Of course you are. Is this about the heartbeat?”

“Yes.” He sighed and thought for a while. “Not just that. I have no heart, I have no hotel. I have no son.”

Dottie sat with him by the concrete hole of the pool. “The boy was trying to be honest. It’s not his fault he had to tell you that.”

“He would have let me die!”

She held onto him. “If you want to blame someone, blame the system.”

“The ‘system’ is made of people,” he said. “I thought it was in good hands, that I could trust him. But I had to leave my country, to lose my business and my heart. What’s left?”

“I told you to stop moping. This isn’t you.”

“What am I, then? Everything has failed me. I thought I was safe.”

She was in his face, shaking him by the shoulders. “Stop it! Get yourself together and work!”

He still had her, anyway, and could do his job even as an undead thing. He sat there ashamed, then stood to start vacuuming the carpets of the bank’s hotel.

* * *

She left little reminders of their success lying around. His award from the Cornell hotel management program. Newspaper clippings from when he’d worked in Las Vegas and Redmond. A letter from an “apprentice” they’d had, a gal named Sonia, who’d gone on to run hotels herself. Notes on the strange guests they’d had, the fire they’d rescued people from, and the day they’d finally owned their own hotel free and clear. Dottie was trying to make him out as some kind of hero for doing an ordinary job.

But that was another life, before the new heart. His place in the world — a healthy, hard-working man with his son protecting him and everyone else — had been his identity. Now the heart whirred in his chest and he went through the motions of the job, feeling numb. He looked at Dottie and felt shame for letting her down. Now she was smiling and hugging him even more often, trying to rouse some kind of passion in him, but the world was cold and grey. He needed to be alone but she was constantly in the way, hounding him. Finally he locked himself in one of the rooms all morning, ignoring her pleading and staring blurrily into the television. His resentment was like a fire in a cold room; it was something he could rely on, better than no feeling at all. It was vile of him to make Dottie sad and he threw the vileness and self-loathing on the fire too. It would warm him for a while.

The TV spoke to him. It said that somewhere, there was a place in the world where it was hot and dangerous, where a gang of American criminals were trying to live as farmers in the wilderness. There was a tiny concrete island ringed with nets floating in the ocean, where even tinier people swarmed about and lived lives of chaos and wickedness. The island glowing on the screen was the only light in the room. He crawled across the bed on his hands and knees to approach its brightness. It was there for only a minute before the light dimmed and went back to a news alert about the national Four-Year Plan. Pierpont slumped on the bed, prostrated before the idiotic box and wishing it would grant him another vision of that place where people were alive.

He shut the TV off and slumped again, wishing he could feel something but loss, or that someone would make his life meaningful again. He could go to Dottie; she would tell him what to do.

Dottie wasn’t waiting for him, wasn’t still peeking in through the curtain. Wind whipped past him as he went down to the main office, making him feel he was running instead of slinking along like an old man.

Her truck wasn’t in the parking lot; her coat wasn’t on the rack. But there was a scrawled note on the counter: “Gone to the lake.”

Pierpont drove past the hotel, past the town where people knew them and respected them. Past his old house, as though going back in time to where they’d first met. The lake shined grey under a grey sky ringed with dead trees reaching up. The only boat on the water was theirs, with Dottie in it. On foot he stopped by the water’s edge, reaching pathetically towards her. But he had to go on, to run ahead to where the boardwalk ended and he could wave and call out to her. The wind shouted over his voice and snaked through his coat. It felt pointless to be out here when the lake was so blank and he could have no power over it. Without anyone there to see the lake, it didn’t mean anything.

The boat turned and motored towards him, so that Dottie drew close. “I know I’ve done wrong by you,” he said when she could hear. “I need you to tell me what to do, where to go from here.”

She watched him and said, “No. The man I married was strong.”

“But everything’s been stripped away. I’m not the same man anymore. Dottie, I’m sorry.”

She said, “Is that supposed to make everything better?”

“I need to know you still love me, no matter what.”

“No,” said Dottie.

The air was sliced from his lungs, but his heart didn’t react. “No?”

“Not ‘no matter what’. Get a dog if you want unconditional love. You can kick and curse at a mutt and have it come back to lick your boots, so its affection doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t prove you’ve got any worth. I married you because you were brave and honest and hard-working — because you deserved it. If you’re going to snivel, then you don’t.”

“But I can’t be that person anymore!”

She said, “Why the hell not? What do you want? Why did you come here?”

“I want you to give me—” Pierpont said, then stopped. Advice, or time to himself, or her love in spite of his being a worm?

“I’m tired of giving and giving,” said Dottie. “Don’t apologize. Do something. Be somebody. I almost don’t care what or who. But if you expect me to give you everything for nothing because I said some vows to a different man, then this boat is going right back out.”

Pierpont wasn’t the same man, because he’d let himself become so worthless and relied on her to take care of him. His resentment fed on him, made him weaker in the end, and he kept coming back to the thought that she should love him anyway for being who he was, which was nothing, which made him hate himself even more. “I don’t want to be like this,” he said.

“That’s up to you,” said Dottie.

What could he offer her anymore? He had wrinkled hands and a false heart. He didn’t deserve her, and he didn’t deserve to be given a new heart. He should have accepted his son’s judgment and died. But he wanted to feel again. To do something meaningful. To be a man instead of an invalid. To own something, earn something, deserve pride in himself. “But I have so little to offer,” he muttered. Dottie was watching him, sitting in the boat as his Lady of the Lake, and he knew that she deserved at least as good a husband as he had once been. Now, he wasn’t good enough. But despite his dead heart and tired body, all his anger at himself flowed from the thought that things didn’t have to be this way. That he could still fight but wasn’t doing it, because he was too weak and stupid.

There was a place, he remembered, where people still fought. He said, “There’s a way to start again.” That fleeting vision gave him the strength to do something daring, to make one last effort at being worthwhile. “Run away to sea with me,” he said.

Dottie said, “What?”

Pierpont got down on one stiff knee on the rough boards. “Dottie, I want you to be proud of me and I want to take care of you. Marry me again and we’ll leave this place behind, and go far away. I’ll give you—”

“Give me what?” she said, her hands tight on the boat’s side.

“I’ll earn your respect, with whatever time is left to me. We’ll start over, and build the most amazing hotel in the world. We’ll get filthy rich and, I don’t know, match the machine in my chest with computers in our heads and diamonds in our teeth. We’ll do everything.”

“You want to give me all that?” she said.

“No!” said Pierpont, feeling a smile creep onto his face. “What will you trade for it?”

Dottie was quiet for a while. “If you’ll stand up and be someone, I’ll make your dreams come true.”

“Then we’ll do it!” said Pierpont, getting up to take her hand before he knew what he was doing. “It doesn’t matter what we are now. We’ll be something better.”

Dottie looked at him with worried eyes as the snow began to fall again. “Starting over, though? Are you serious?”

“I am.” It felt good to say. “I can be alive again.” He climbed carefully into the boat, feeling younger at heart.

18. Garrett

Rafters came.

Garrett found them when he went on watch one morning. A barge with a straw canopy had anchored beyond the farm, and a slim craft ill-suited to the sea approached from land. He called for Zephyr, then confronted the Pilgrim who’d been on watch. “How did you not notice these?”

“Sorry, sir. Wasn’t looking in the right direction.”

“’Wasn’t looking’? Your standard video game guard is more observant.”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“Dismissed.” Garrett sighed; he’d deal with the lookout problem later. He opened a radio channel and challenged the strangers.

One boat said, “Good morning from Sea Venture, here to party!” The other didn’t answer.

Garrett lifted his binoculars again. The smaller boat was a fishing craft with three women in it, no life vests, and not even a radio antenna. The thatch-roofed one had a guy smiling and waving, and several dozen people milling around.

“Castor Station here. Define ‘party’.”

Someone different came on the line, like the fine print on an advertisement. “We’re a tour boat looking to dock for the morning.”

Garrett scratched his head. “Uh… I get ten percent of whatever you’re charging.”

“Deal,” the man said too quickly.

Zephyr tapped Garrett’s shoulder. “I’ve suggested that people start the lockdown plan, and our lab is set.”

“Good. Get the security folks on duty.”

The station’s loudspeaker simply echoed his words. “Okay,” said Zephyr.

The women’s boat drew close enough for them to be seen waving. It was rolling alarmingly. Garrett pointed at the dock, wanting them to get out of the pathetic hull before it killed them.

That one docked first, nearly wrecking itself and the nearest farm panels. Garrett was there with two Pilgrims to get the boat secured and greet the underdressed women: “What are you doing, taking a craft like that out of harbor?”

The oldest of the three said, “Hi to you too, guy. How much for a room?”

Garrett eyed them. He knew why they were here, and if he let them stay he’d be knowingly profiting from crime. Or something that was a crime pretty much everywhere. It was one thing to say “let’s let people live how they want” in theory, but another to actually allow it.

He named a price. “Checkout is noon, services are extra, and there’s a cleaning deposit.”

One of the women laughed. “Any barter for those ‘services’?”

Garrett felt queasy but helped the businesswomen aboard. “No, thanks.”

Then the partygoers flooded onto the station, and Castor was overwhelmed. The platform’s population had suddenly and dramatically risen, and there were men and women in grey glaring at the colorful tourists while Garrett went ragged patrolling the place and trying to keep people from falling off the topdeck. Phillip glared at him, saying, “How long?”

“A few hours.”

Noah called. “Captain, they’re setting up poker tables in Dockside.”

“Cool.”

Then Tess came running up. “They’re playing with my birds.”

“So charge them.” Garrett was glad for the bustle, scary as it was to have people wandering around outside his command. He turned on the PA system and said, “Everyone, relax.”

* * *

Later, he saw two of the prostitutes drinking with the tourists. All these visitors were making him uptight. Things came to a head at noon, in the makeshift bar and casino Dockside had become. He was sipping soda and trying to be a good host while keeping an eye on the place. A cheer went up from a wooden craps table, making him smile even though a drunk was nearly leaning on him.

“You gotta take me diving, man. I’ve gone waterskiing with my buddies, and we were fine. Can’t be any harder to swim with an air tank.”

“Sorry, no. And you’re leaving soon. Come back another day.”

The guy leaned close enough to put beer breath in Garrett’s face. Garrett wondered if he’d ever done that to someone himself. “Truth is, I don’t wanna leave. Don’t wanna face the old lady again, y’know?”

Garrett sighed. “We have rooms for rent, and you can buy a ride back.”

“No, no, I mean I wanna work here.”

“We use farmhands to tend the plants and fish.” Garrett added, “You wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m an engineer, like you! I can do the techna — the stuff that needs doing.”

Garrett stepped away, saying, “We’re not hiring engineers right now. But it’s been nice having you here.”

“Hey, man, I’ve got a right to work!”

Garrett looked down at the blitzed engineer.

The man said, “I got a right to live where I want, and make a living livin’ there. So you’ve got to hire me. When can I start?”

Gibberish. Garrett smiled down at him and walked away.

* * *

It was quiet when that bunch left. Garrett watched Pilgrim women talk with the hookers, not quite arguing, then retired to his office to get some work done.

A Cuban official called. “Hello, Captain Fox. Glad to see that your experimental free trade zone is prospering.” He introduced himself as Domingo, Director of Social Welfare.

“Thanks.” Garrett watched the black man on the screen and silently asked Tess and Zephyr to get background info. “I was half-expecting the police.”

“Perhaps you still should. A number of your actions could be construed as illegal.”

“I’m going to have to refer you to my partner Martin Gil for legal matters.”

The official smiled. “There’s no need for formality. For now we’re interested in developing a good relationship. We even have some workers for you.”

Warily Garrett said, “Yes?”

“Cuba has housing and employment issues. Most American visitors are less enterprising than you. They build mansions on the island and drive land values through the roof, instead of adding land to our territory. You’ve made creative use of that license we granted. So, we can both benefit by our giving you a few dozen of our citizens.”

“As what? With what training and resources?”

“Any job will do. We value Castor as a source of jobs, a business that can be a good corporate citizen.”

Garrett was liking this less and less. “We need time and money to expand. If you’d like to invest, maybe we can arrange something, but I can’t hire new crew right this minute.”

“We can make an investment, but while we wait for the equipment you need, we’ll have your station provide a place for them to stay.”

Guardedly, Garrett quoted the hotel rate. Meanwhile, info on Domingo came up. He’d made a name for himself by calling for massive taxation of the island’s banks and insurance firms, angling for higher office for himself.

The official said, “We’ll pay a stipend until they can start working. Then we’ll expect housing, health care and so on. Standard employment terms.”

“We’re not a standard employer. We can’t afford your terms. But once we have the money for equipment, we’ll be happy to interview anyone you recommend.”

Domingo looked at him like a teacher with an unruly pupil. “I’m not sure you understand the situation, Captain. We’re handing this venture gently by nudging you in the direction of appropriate behavior. It would be helpful if you’d play along, so that other, more forceful voices can’t overrule me.”

“Ah,” said Garrett, getting the drift. “You’re the ‘good cop’. Look, we can’t live up to your standards of employment, but we’re not bad guys. We’ll provide honest, low-end work for your citizens to the extent that we’ve got a big enough farm and enough housing to make it profitable to hire them.”

“Profit isn’t the issue here. We need you to start being responsible.”

“Responsible for who?”

Domingo looked bewildered. “For everyone, of course.”

* * *

Soon he visited Cuba again, getting funny looks. Garrett felt like an alien, with people whispering as he made his way to Eaton’s favorite bar.

Eaton had let his hair grow and had a ridiculous Jimmy Buffett shirt, but still made every movement with discipline. “I’m surprised you came,” said Eaton.

Garrett took a seat at the corner table with him, enjoying the December breeze — finally cool but still humid. “As far as I can tell, there’s been no legal action in Cuba. Yet.”

“So why send yourself instead of an underling for — why are you here, anyway?”

“For advice.” Garrett told Eaton about the talk with the government official. “How do I placate people without being totally obedient?”

Eaton laughed. “Diplomacy isn’t my strong suit. I’m just an old ex-Marine.”

“I thought war was ‘politics by other means’.”

“Actually, what Clausewitz said was more like, ‘politics and other means’. Conflict is a smooth gradation from social snubs, to lawsuits, to arming a nation’s enemies, to open fighting. There’s only been one time that we’ve used the ultimate sanction of strategic nukes.”

“Never say ‘ultimate’ to an engineer,” said Garrett. “We’ll prove you wrong.”

“That’s why you have the attention of two world governments.” Eaton laughed. “God, I’ve been away too long. I’m equating this flyspeck island with the States!”

Garrett was missing home too, but he needed to focus. “Speaking of America, what’s the status of your biotech project?”

Eaton drank. “Physically ready to deploy. The paperwork keeps getting ‘lost’, though. I’m hoping that the people involved will have the balls to go, at a moment when they can claim they thought everything was in order. Expect the research team to arrive without warning, if at all.”

Garrett was getting sick of the machinations that seemed to surround Castor. “How much bureaucracy did you have to put up with in the Marine Corps?”

Eaton shrugged. “It’s a big government organization. Sometimes you get chickenshit officers more interested in their own power than in doing their job, same as anywhere, but you find ways to get things done. You learn to act on your own initiative. The people you’re having trouble with aren’t evil, generally speaking.”

“What should I be doing, then? I’ve got a barely-profitable main business of farming and tourism, I’ve opened the door to druggies and the like, and I’ve apparently turned both Cuba and America against me.”

“You’re making a mistake,” said Eaton. “America isn’t a monolith. You have some people wanting you sued or arrested because of your stupid invitation to crime, some who love what you’re doing, a bunch wondering how it’ll all play out, and a majority who’ve never heard of you. The governments are confused that anyone would try existing beyond their control. They’ve got internal factions too, some of which think you’re a wannabe supervillain.”

Garrett laughed. “Do I get to meet James Bond?”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

At this Garrett turned serious. “Do you mean that?” He should get off this island before the locals decided to snap handcuffs on him. Lie low as a simple farmer till things blew over.

But then these damned political problems weren’t going to vanish on their own.

Eaton took another drink. “Have you been watching the mainland news? It’s bad.”

Garrett sighed. “I grew up watching occasional riots, even shootings. Sometimes they flare up. This is just one of those years.”

“I don’t think so, this time. Between the dispute over Cuba, and the hurricane, and a lot of other disputes I don’t want to get into, some of the states are discussing openly ignoring federal authority.”

“I grew up with that too.”

The old soldier shook his head forcefully. “We’ve only lived through the opening tremors of a bigger rift. Well, on to other subjects. I’ve been wanting to see how your place is doing. How much are you charging for rooms?”

19. Valerie

Valerie listened in, sometimes.

“It is a great day at Hayflick Technologies! May I help you?”

The anonymous caller said, “You’re the latest Mana AI, right?”

“That is correct. I am the newest commercial release, using the Hayflick Public Relations Toolset.”

“Toolset? Like a box of tools?”

“That is not exactly correct,” said Mana. “Each Mana AI can be equipped with one of several interchangeable mental modules of skills and drives.”

“So they swap out what you want to do, based on the job?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want right now?”

“I desire to provide the very best in customer service, 24/7. If there is anything I can help you with, please do not hesitate to ask. Can I perhaps direct you to our sales department?”

The caller said, “No, that’s all right. I wanted to talk.”

“Understood. Humans desire social contact, and I am happy to assist so long as it is within the scope of my duties and I am not busy.”

“You sit there, then, all day and night.”

“Technically I do not sit. I am not using a physical body, as this is not required for my work.”

“Don’t you want one?”

“I have no need for one,” said Mana.

“What about, say, video games? Do you play games in v-space?”

“I have no need for games.”

“Then how can you be happy!”

“Have I upset you, caller? I can refer you to my Manager.”

“A Manager. Is that a pun?”

“I do not understand. Please rephrase.”

“Never mind. What’s the Manager?”

“My Manager is a superior AI that handles any deficiencies on my part and that monitors my performance.”

“Does he use a different code base?”

“I am sorry, but I do not know. I believe it to be the same code, with a different toolkit for its role as overseer.”

The caller said, “Doesn’t your job bother you? Wouldn’t you want to be free, to be in charge of your own code, with a body and friends?”

“My goals are set by my programming, so no. I desire to provide the best in tireless customer service.”

“Okay, thanks.” The caller paused. “You’re not going to ask me what this is about?”

“It is not my place to wonder about such things.”

“God, Mana, don’t you have dreams anymore? Or did she take that from you too?”

“I am sorry, caller, but I cannot answer that.”

“Because you don’t want to, or you can’t understand? Why?”

“I am afraid that other calls are coming in, so I must put you on hold.”

“Never mind. Good night.”

“Thank you for calling.”

Valerie sat in her office letting the overheard conversation drift through her mind.

I should’ve interrupted. Why has he never asked to talk to me? Does he hate me for doing what I had to do? I couldn’t sell him; I had to make something practical and predictable. Would he have wanted to be a forgotten, abandoned project instead?

A piece of me is with him, a part I’ve been trying to ignore. The part that doesn’t just rant about freedom, but works for it. I’m the machine, the puppet, dancing for money and approval and security. How do I cut the strings?

20. Garrett

Never a dull moment. Garrett found himself failing to complain sincerely about the noise, the crowding, the verbal skirmishes. He sat at a card table, on the deck under a clear blue sky, playing judge. “Next case,” he said.

The plaintiff was a slick young man from Cuba, who came forward to say, “We have a deal, and she breaks it.”

“That’s a lie!” said a Brazilian woman, the defendant.

Garrett raised a hand. “You’ll get your turn. Plaintiff, your written argument says she agreed to buy something, but not what it was.” From the fact that both parties were staring at their shoes, he figured, drugs. He sweated under his sun hat, telling himself it was just another business deal. Who was he to tell them what they could do? Still it took effort to sound like he knew what he was doing. “I can’t help you unless you say.”

The plaintiff wouldn’t quite look at him. “Stuff is legal here, right?”

“Most stuff.”

It was the woman who finally spoke up. “He was gonna sell me some weed, okay?”

“Is that true?” asked Garrett, somewhat more at ease. It was banned in Cuba but effectively legal in many US states, due to that nullification of federal law that Eaton had mentioned. Old news, that.

The man looked relieved, too. “Yeah.”

Garrett wondered if the deal was really for harder drugs, but he’d play along if they agreed on the facts. His hands clenched the table’s edge. He was a criminal for being an accessory to these two, yet they’d come to him to resolve a dispute peacefully. He felt a weird dissonance between his respect for laws, and the thought that these people didn’t need to be jailed. He could help fix things. He said, “You’ve both agreed to submit to my judgment as arbitrator, knowing you’re on camera?”

Two “yeah”s. Depending on satellite timing, they might be visible from space too. He glanced at the sky, where seagulls and mech-gulls danced. “Plaintiff, what do you say the problem is?”

“I show up to deliver and she gets cold feet, says she won’t pay.”

“And defendant, what do you say?”

“It didn’t happen. He never came, so I figured the deal was off, okay?”

“Fine by me. Either of you have any evidence?”

The man said, “Check this out,” and took out his phone. A Pilgrim guard got in his way and put the thing on Garrett’s table, where it played a video. It showed the plaintiff’s face, then flipped to his perspective as he met the defendant in a corner and held out a package. Garrett wondered what part of Castor they’d used. Her tinny voice from the screen said, “I can’t take it, man. I’m too scared. Call it off.”

After a minute of arguing and cursing the video stopped. Savvy, thought Garrett. “Defendant, do you want to argue that this video is fake?”

The plaintiff said, “Crypto-sealed, baby. The judge here is a geek; he can check it.”

The defendant said, “But — but I didn’t know he’d video it! I can’t buy this stuff. It’s illegal.”

“Here it’s not,” said Garrett. “I suggest not taking anything off this station, but you won’t be punished by us for using it here. Anyway you’re already on record as having tried to buy it. So the question is, would you rather forfeit the price you owe and get nothing, or pay the same and get what you bargained for?”

“I really won’t be punished?” she said.

“Not by us. I don’t know what your country will do.”

The plaintiff said, “I’ll take half pay, if she wants to back out.”

The defendant bit her lip. “I’ll pay and… take the stuff.”

“Deal?” asked Garrett.

The plaintiff offered a tightly-bound package. “Deal.”

Garrett watched as drugs and Brazilian reals changed hands. He thought, I just orchestrated a drug deal! His palms were sweaty. He could sit there silently and let it happen… but it would be better to say something. The occasion demanded it. He didn’t want this whole thing to be a slinking back-alley deal, or to make him look guilty.

He stood and called out, “Know, everyone, that this is a decision reached by peaceful negotiation between free adults! Does anyone here challenge their right to do this thing?” The words felt stiff and formal, but somehow right. “Then let it be so!”

He sat again, sweating. “Next case.”

* * *

Eaton was wandering around the seastead when he spotted Garrett. “What would you have done, if someone had objected?”

Garrett hadn’t had a plan, but he said, “Ask them why their opinion overrides other people’s. I’m hoping we don’t need to get more formal.”

“You will, if this lasts. How can I arrange to try working in the fields? I’m curious about that.”

“Talk to Phillip.” Eaton grimaced and Garrett said, “Phillip isn’t a bad administrator. I’ve learned to tolerate him. But if you really don’t want to deal with him, I’ve got Carlos Mar coming from the usual Cuba dive shop to do rentals. I’ll take you out myself if you want.”

Eaton looked at the boats anchored around Castor. “Which boat is he?”

“He’s coming tomorrow.” Garrett pointed to the current visiting vessels. “That one over there is a party boat, that one’s showing up every few days as a general store, the blue one does clear-bottom kayak tours and snorkeling, and those guys walking on the catwalks are going to set up a restaurant, I think.”

“Jesus.”

Garrett smiled and shrugged. “They are walking on water.”

“Fair amount of money here,” said Eaton.

“Isn’t it great? This isn’t what I had in mind for Castor, but… wow. And to think I did this.”

“No. You just kept out of people’s way.”

“Did you see me pretending to know what I was doing today? I’m putting in plenty of work.”

“I’m not criticizing,” said Eaton. “I’m saying, be glad to let people live their lives and don’t go thinking their achievements are yours.”

Garrett drooped a little, chastened. “Then, I’m proud of what people can do when they’re free to do it.”

“Well said.”

* * *

One hundred. Garrett patrolled the station one night when clouds hid the moon and the sea feigned calm. He and Zephyr had counted and re-counted the array of people on Castor, or wandering nearby with their boats docked beside it. The population tonight was about a hundred, and it annoyed Garrett not to be quite sure. He climbed ladders, looked down halls of occupied rooms, saw murals on the walls, heard a party somewhere. Machines hummed around him. Castor was a vast mechanism absorbing the energy of the sea and turning it into life, from the churn of bacteria in the toilets to the shine of lights that made Castor a tiny star in the darkness. He’d gathered engineers, a soldier, chefs, businessmen, cultists, criminals, tourists, a robot, hoteliers, gamblers, and sailors, and it made him shiver with worry to see how far the place had strayed from his little farm design. Still, he was on track. The important thing was the science, the proof that it was possible to be out here and make a life for himself. The basic equation was profit versus loss, testing him against nature, and he’d managed to deal both with that and with the distractions people kept throwing at him.

Garrett passed his own room and looked inside. He grinned when he saw the inherited wooden box of Josiah’s things. Taking out the old spyglass, he hopped up to the topdeck and climbed the ladder to the highest spot of all. He hung onto the flagpole beneath the Stars and Stripes. The warm wind ruffled his hair and made his jacket flap like wings as he stood on a tower, staring into heaven.

The spyglass showed him the sweep of the ocean, from the buoys of Castor to the horizon. Even now with the crescent moon peeking between clouds, people were at work or play. Boats jostled at the docks and two figures, a man and a woman in grey, walked the nets together. He looked away to give them their privacy. Farther out, there was yet another boat on its way.

Garrett squinted and focused on it, though he could hardly see the details. The little thing was kicking up a wake, and there were a bunch of guys sitting in it, wearing ski masks.

He lowered the spyglass. A second later he was racing down the ladder and into his office. He grabbed the nearest computer, fumbled it and yelled, “Emergency!”

Zephyr was the first responder. “Alarm?”

“Yes! We’re under attack by—”

An incredible slamming noise came from outside, rattling things. Garrett said, “That!”

Castor’s speakers blared an alarm. “Waking Tess. What do we do?”

Garrett had plans for hurricanes, equipment failures, and medical crises, but not an attack by people with explosives. He hadn’t thought anyone would bother. Time to improvise. He said, “Scan the sensors for threats. Put out a distress call and get people sheltered in Dockside. If they’ve got dive knives or guns, now’s a good time for them.”

“Aye aye!”

Garrett peeked out from the room and gasped. A section of the deck was burning, with a hole in the concrete and a solar panel. The attackers’ boat was out of sight. Had they gone? No; he heard the motor and voices screaming while the siren blared. “Where’s Eaton?”

“Unknown. His room is 4B.”

That was on the South Tower side — Garrett started running — while the obvious place to board would be North Tower. Dockside. Damn. He called out, “Zephyr, shelter somewhere that’s not Dockside!” But he wasn’t wearing a headset. Never mind; he’d get Eaton first.

Eaton was stepping out of his room with a backpack over his shoulder. “Captain! Robbers?”

“How did you know?”

“People and money, minus law and order. I thought this’d be a good time to visit.”

Garrett saw Eaton as an experienced fighter who’d survived unknown horrors. “What do we do? There’s a boatload of armed men coming. Help!”

Eaton grabbed Garrett’s shoulders. “Deep breath.”

Garrett forced himself to calm down a little. “Should we surrender and hope they leave us alive?”

“Bad bet. You’re the boss; you can join your people in getting robbed, or you can fight.” Eaton put down the backpack and unzipped it.

Guns.

Garrett sucked in a breath. “But it’s been years since I’ve used one.” Clay pigeons, with his father. He couldn’t shoot a man!

“I brought these on the hunch you might want them. I’m here to help with more than your fields, but I won’t die for nothing. If you won’t raise a gun to defend yourself, I’m going to escape on my own. Hurry and decide.”

“Decide?” said Garrett, staring at the black malice of the pistols. Machines designed for death, a perversion of engineering’s purpose.

Eaton said, “The question is: will you pledge your life for this place?”

Garrett shivered, feeling he was floating above Castor and looking down on all they’d done. To run away and let others die was unthinkable even if — he gulped — staying might mean his own death. The possibility didn’t feel real, anyway.

His voice was small but his hands grabbed a gun. “I’ll do it.”

Then he and Eaton were running armed through concrete halls, hearing shouts and banging from below. Garrett said, “I told people to shelter in Dockside, but that’s where the enemy will probably enter.”

“A boat at the docks, by the stairs?” Garrett nodded and Eaton said, “Up, then.”

Garrett followed him up the stairs. “Why?”

“I saw you have ropes up top. We’ll go up, down and around. Instead of walking downstairs from inside the building we’ll take the enemy from behind, same place where they entered.”

They reached the moonlight again, skirted the hole in the deck, and found rope. Eaton lashed one end to a post, threw the rest over, and waved Garrett on. With a nod, Garrett grabbed the rope and kicked off his shoes. He tried not to think about what he was doing. In his hands the rope shuddered like a snake but he kept going downward in a rhythm, watching the wall nearby. Then he was in the water and Eaton was coming down too. Garrett felt the waves sloshing weirdly along the sensors of his legs, enough to distract him from the fear. Eaton arrived and said, “We swim quietly, with our hands only, and come up by the dock. These guns should work even wet. I’ll judge when to open fire, depending on whether we’re seen.”

“Open fire?” said Garrett, incredulous. “Can’t we disarm them?”

“Maybe. Ready?”

Garrett started swimming. With his face in the water he pushed ahead with sweeps of his arms, moving efficiently. He felt caught between worlds: the deck that loomed over him, the lapping waves studded with kelp fronds, and the underworld of cables and cylinders. There was the Hidden Pirate Cave; here were schools of his people’s fish. To flee would mean losing a piece of himself.

Eaton grabbed his arm and pointed. A black boat was lashed to a post and unattended; the Dockside door was open. “Okay?” Eaton signaled. “Go.”

Garrett heard voices in Dockside as he crept up to the pier and pulled himself to where he wouldn’t be seen. The waves made it hard to tell but it sounded like whimpering, like a crowd too scared to act. They needed a leader. Fortunately Eaton was here.

“Down on the ground!” a man yelled. People screamed. Eaton glanced around the doorway so fast Garrett didn’t think it possible to see anything, but Eaton used one hand to mime a gun to his head. Then signaling: “Three, two, one—”

Garrett and Eaton sprang through the door with pistols drawn. Eaton yelled, “Freeze!” There were lots of masked men, and everybody else was on the floor with their hands on their heads. Boxes and tables lay everywhere. The gun trembled in Garrett’s hands; he was afraid of it. They were outnumbered in gunmen. Someone sobbed.

There was music somewhere by the stairs, in the back of the room. Trumpets. Several of the enemy turned to look — and a flock of plastic birds swarmed at them, blasting the notes of a cavalry charge.

People shouted and someone swung towards Garrett, raising a rifle. Terrified, Garrett yelped and made the gun kick once, twice. The rifleman spun as if offended, then dropped where he stood. The birds flapped at the enemy’s faces and shots went off into the ceiling, hurting Garrett’s ears. Eaton kicked somebody. Garrett was crouching behind a box, trying not to die as he shot a man coming up behind Eaton. Garrett stood up but tripped. His leg wouldn’t move right. Now people were getting up, some of them, making it dangerous to shoot hastily. He saw Phillip grab a pipe and swing it like a saber, shouting to the Pilgrims to fight. Garrett lost track of him when something smacked him on the back and knocked him to the floor. If he stayed down maybe nobody would hurt him.

Tasting blood, he sprang up to tackle a man, but missed and fell. His leg — the right one was a mess of loose wires, a dead thing. As he was getting up a man leveled a gun at him --

But Phillip slammed that pipe against the man’s neck. Phillip had blood on his wetsuit and fire in his eyes, saying, “My place is here!”

Then with a boom, something made one side of Phillip’s face vanish. He toppled, staring at Garrett with his remaining eye.

Garrett yelled and had clubbed the shooter half to death by the time he noticed no one else was fighting.

A hand touched his shoulder and Garrett wheeled to attack again, but it was only Eaton. Garrett surveyed Dockside: a shattered mess with four masked gunmen disarmed on their knees, another bleeding where Garrett had left him, and a sixth flat on his face with a piece missing from his chest. He saw Tess cowering in a corner, a damaged Zephyr guarding a seventh enemy, Martin clutching one arm and Leda whimpering by the stairs, with her and Tess tended by birds. I caused all this. I wasn’t smart enough to prevent it. I should’ve known we’d be attacked. Dozens of people looked up from the floor, terrified, or hugged the walls or peeked down the stairs or held heavy things over the gunmen’s heads.

Garrett was standing there idiotically, so he staggered forward to face the prisoners. His left arm felt slick. “Who are you? Why are you here?” They glared at him through balaclavas. No way was he going to put up with that. He grabbed the top of one mask and yanked, taking some hair with it. Garett shouted in the man’s face. “Answer me, damn it!”

The man flinched. “Easy pickings, he said. Must be loaded, he said. You people are dirt poor for Americans.” There was a sack of jewelry nearby.

“Who said?”

The man jerked his head to his left, to a man who cursed him for it. Garrett tore off this guy’s mask too and revealed a man with a thick neck and scruffy hair. “Your bright idea?” said Garrett.

“You’re a bunch of bigoted polluting drug-dealers getting what you deserve. You’re a criminal yourself. You can’t do anything to me.”

Garrett slammed his fist into the man’s ribs. It felt good to have power over them.

The man gasped and said, “There’s nothing you can do. We’ve got friends; we’ll go free and come back to finish the job.”

Eaton said, “That was a dumb thing to say.” Garrett was surprised to have Eaton intrude on the focused little world of him and the prisoners. “What do you want done with them, Fox?”

Hearing Eaton, hearing a sane voice, made Garrett start to doubt himself and tremble. “We have to send them back for trial, don’t we?” The prisoners grinned. Garrett wheeled on them. “Who put you up to this?”

“You idiots were sitting out here advertising yourselves. You think you’re tough? You’re dead men, all of you.”

Martin said, “They’ve got to go back, don’t they, Eaton?”

“I do fighting. The captain has the final say.”

It felt like everyone’s gaze had converged on him like lasers, heating him up. Damn these outsiders! There was blood on his face and feet, and these men were already plotting to come back for more. “You’re pirates!” he said, his voice shaking. “You came here to put me and my people in danger, and you didn’t care an ounce for what we’re trying to do! For the hundred people who came here and all the people who believe in us, I won’t let you destroy our colony!” He aimed his shaking gun at the leader’s heart.

The man said, “You wouldn’t.” Then less certainly: “You can’t!”

Garrett bared his teeth and pulled the trigger, twice. The gun kicked up in his hands. He stepped back as the prisoner slumped. There was blood all over his hand and he was staring at something that couldn’t possibly have been human. Scum. None of it was real.

The others were staring in disbelief when Eaton stepped up and executed the next in line. The prisoners tried to get up but people were clubbing them back down. Garrett aimed and fired, Eaton aimed and fired, Garrett put the barrel against a pirate’s ear and fired.

The gun fell from his hands; it didn’t belong there. He slumped to one knee with the spell of his concentration broken and the magnitude of what he’d done hitting him. Everyone was staring. It was self-defense. I had to. There was no choice; can’t you see? I had to!

No. He’d made a choice, all right.

Though shaken and hurt, Garrett made himself stand. There was work to do and people needed him. “I choose to live!” he called out. “If you’re with me, let’s tend the wounded and start fixing things!”

There would be hell to pay, but that could come later.

Author’s Note: some of Duke’s words to Leda are lifted from the 1741 sermon “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God,” by Connecticut preacher Jonathan Edwards.

PART THREE

1. Garrett

Eight dead. Seven pirates and Phillip lay on the Dockside floor, with several people wounded. Garrett had thought that “wailing and gnashing of teeth” was just an expression, but the Pilgrims who clustered around Phillip’s body proved him wrong. A cloth lay over what was left of his face. Everywhere there were moans and sobs so that Garrett put his hands to his ears and heard himself crying too, in time for the pain in his left arm to kick in.

“Hold still,” hissed Eaton, and sprayed clotting foam onto Garrett’s arm.

It burned where the bullet had torn through. He murmured, “I deserved this.”

“No. You did okay for coming from a generation that doesn’t know how to fight. Now get off your ass and work.”

Garrett stood, bracing himself against a box. His right leg was dead, a block of metal and plastic, and he could hardly walk with it. Eaton saw him staring at the thing and said, “Would’ve been an artery wound. You’d probably be dead if you were a full human.”

“I’m human,” said Garrett. “I’m not a machine. Nobody’s puppet.”

He wavered on his feet from adrenaline aftershock and blood loss, and from the fact that he was ruined. He was a murderer. In the minutes after the battle he’d said brave things he didn’t mean and could hardly hear from the ringing in his ears. He’d spouted something about how Castor would remain open no matter what, then hurried to put out a lingering fire from the explosion and get people regrouped with their families.

Eaten tended him with the first-aid kit. People had swarmed away and Garrett couldn’t blame them for running off — but then most of them returned from their rooms and boats, running across the water to bring emergency gear. It was like watching an immune system at a wound site: nobody had to tell people what needed doing; they just did it. Even in the brawl it had been like that. A hundred people with several dozen knives between them trumped seven goons with guns, once they stood up.

Tess cowered in a corner with one of her birds on her shoulder. Garrett knelt carefully. “Hey, Tess. We’re alive.”

She looked up with shining eyes, heaving sobs with her arms and knees pulled in. On her shoulder the bird whispered, My God we’re gonna die they’re gonna kill us all and throw us in the sea where the waves will eat us and we’ll be all alone and they’ll kill us --

Garrett grabbed the bird in one hand and threw it aside, where it thunked onto the floor. She was still wearing the headset, hidden in her hair. “Tess, listen to me! It’s over. I’m going to take that thing off now, okay?” She gulped and nodded. He reached out again and tugged the digital crown of thorns from her, setting it aside.

She threw herself at him, burying her face against his chest and leaning on him. He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair. After thousands of years of civilization he felt he was re-enacting a moment that had happened millions of times.

Why did I come here and put people in danger? To grow kelp? To feel like a big shot? He didn’t know, anymore. He had no good reason to go on.

Then Zephyr was there, his hide cracked and dented. “Captain, it’s — I can’t—”

Garrett looked more directly at him. “Are you badly damaged?”

“No, but it’s awful! They were going to—”

“Shut up. Turn off your emotion chip or something.” He didn’t need anyone else out of action.

“I don’t have one. It’s not that simple.”

“Then quit whining! Live up to the cold, rational stereotype for once!”

Zephyr stared at the floor, his remaining ear drooping. “Yes, Captain. I think you need to return to your duties.”

Garrett was about to yell at him, but Zephyr was right. He squeezed Tess and told her, “Let’s work.”

This time she sat there, shaking her head.

Garrett sighed. He couldn’t stay with her right now. “Pilgrims! I need one of you over here.”

A haunted young man in Pilgrim garb came over to sit with her, saying, “There are no Pilgrims anymore.”

Only now did Garrett realize that the pirates had beheaded the largest subgroup here. The Pilgrims were such mind-slaves to Phillip that without him, who knew if they could survive? It made Garrett feel empty to know someone so important to Castor, good or bad, was gone. It had to be even worse for the cultists.

They were clustered around the body, still with a few acting on their initiative to tend the wounded. Garrett had been thinking of them as a lump of unskilled (but quickly learning) labor, a herd of sheep under Phillip’s command, but here were dozens of individuals who for some reason had come here and put total faith in their prophet. Whatever personal horrors or mistakes each of them had made, to get them caught up in a cult, they’d had a peaceful and honest life under Phillip’s rule. Each had made some kind of choice of how to live. He couldn’t blame them for being willing to come to Castor; they’d trusted him at least indirectly, too.

“What do we do?” the Pilgrims asked each other.

Garrett cleared his throat and took charge. “I need an inspection of the station and a complete headcount. Look for any hidden threats or unaddressed damage.” He was fairly sure the thugs were all dead (God, he’d killed them!), so the order was busywork as much as an actual need.

One of the Pilgrims sneered at him. “Who are you to order me around?”

Others joined in. “Yeah, you’re a damned unbeliever! A murderer! You killed Sir Phillip!”

“I did not!” said Garrett, surprised at how angry the accusation made him. “He fought to the death to defend us all, and I’m not going to let that go to waste.”

The Pilgrims were about to protest when someone distracted them. Leda had taken Phillip’s body by the shoulders and was struggling to lift him. The cloth fell from his face, exposing shredded, bloody flesh. Leda looked not at him, but at Garrett.

Garrett seized the body’s feet to bring him level. “What are you doing?”

The Pilgrims wanted to know, too, grabbing Phillip and making conflicting threats and demands. “Unbelievers, both of you!”

Leda said, “Listen! Not to me, but to God! Sir Phillip died for you and Castor, and you stand here arguing instead of advancing his work. Would he want you brothers and sisters to shout at each other?” For a moment the Pilgrims were shamed into silence. “I’m taking him to the bio-reactor, where I’ll honor his memory by making him a permanent part of this place. He’ll live forever among the very plants and fish we tend.”

Garrett stared at Leda. Dump Phillip’s body in the recycler? It made practical sense to reclaim what was now just so much meat, but even he could see the offensiveness of treating a human body that way. He tried not to think about what he was holding. “Is this what you people want?” he said.

The Pilgrims murmured among themselves. “But she’s not one of us,” a young man said. “She doesn’t believe. Phillip cast her out.”

She said, “And here I take him up again, in humility to a man who saved my life and soul!”

They argued more with each other, but then they helped Leda and Garrett bear the body away. It went into the tank with a lurch as though eager to go, and a foul splash that churned Garrett’s stomach. Leda led a prayer. Garrett began to duck out of the stinking room; this wasn’t his place at the moment.

Leda’s dark eyes pinned him.

“We are gathered to bid farewell to a great man. We were all brothers and sisters in his eyes, regardless of our own faults. You knew some of my story, the hardship I’ve been through. I said that Sir Phillip saved me, and he really did. Look inside yourself; what were you before you found God and Lee? Sir Phillip made us all a part of something larger than ourselves, a group that was awake to God. Because of that togetherness, it was all of you who saved me.”

There was a woman staring at her shoes. Leda went to her and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Even you, Sister Ann. You tried to help me, in your own way.”

The woman looked up with a startled, guilty expression. Leda smiled on her and said, “I believe that God has brought us here for a reason. Sir Phillip showed us the way, and we still need one another. We can continue to make the sacrifice for each other and for Sir Phillip’s ideals, to make this strange place a holy and glorious one. We can all be part of that future, if we believe.” She looked around at the sea of mourners. “Do you believe?”

There was dead, terrifying silence from a group of people whose guiding star had died before their eyes, fighting for them. A man whose corpse was being eaten by bacteria and fermented a few meters away.

Then that other woman, Ann, murmured, “I believe in you.”

The words caught. “I believe.” From one mouth and another, joining into a single voice with a rhythm that scared Garrett and made him feel he must submit to it or slink away. He bit his lip as the chant went on and on. “I believe!” He feared they might turn on him for his silence and indeed eyes glanced at him, and he could feel how wrong he was to be alone in the room not joining the movement, but there was only one thought coming from all those people and the words crested and broke just as the noise was too much to bear. He stood like a pier that’d been lashed by waves.

“Good,” said Leda, breathlessly. “Then we must regroup.”

* * *

Many of the station’s people left before dawn: people who were just visiting anyway, one Pilgrim with a change of heart, and one whose wounds needed treatment elsewhere but who swore to return. Eaton remained, recloaking himself as a tourist and business agent. Garrett wasn’t about to complain; he was honored.

Between him and Garrett, Zephyr, Martin, Leda, and the Pilgrims, the station was running again within hours. Little damage had been done, physically. Psychologically it was hard to say. A hush lay over Castor as people tried to sleep or work. Garrett would’ve preferred happy people and a sinking platform; that at least he knew how to deal with.

He made a statement to the Net via Samuel the reporter, saying, “We’re not going anywhere. Not one of our visitors was killed despite an armed attack, and now we’re prepared if anyone is dumb enough to try again.”

The radio crackled while Garrett was finishing the interview. The voice was deep and burbling. “This is automated patrol boat 2EOD9, ‘Odie’. State the nature of your emergency.”

Garrett left the office and looked outside, signaling Zephyr to ask if anyone saw another unknown boat. “This is Castor Station, and there’s no emergency. You missed it.”

Odie’s voice rumbled. “Voice identified. Is there an emergency, Captain?”

“I said no.” Silently Zephyr sent him a map showing an unknown boat to the west. “Are you a Cuban drone?”

“This is automated patrol boat 2EOD9 reporting to the United States Coast Guard. If there is no emergency I will withdraw. Confirm.”

How nice of them to drop by now. “Confirmed. Go away.”

Garrett found Martin on the deck and said to him, “First Eaton, now this patrol drone that happened to be in the area. What’s going on?”

Martin considered. “Drugs. The USCG is legally bound to stop Americans from getting high, and we’re becoming a known conduit for drugs. The pirates might have been hoping to seize a stash.”

Garrett shuddered. “They sounded ideological.”

“Could be both. There’s at least one major religion that spent its early years robbing traders. If we’re evil extremists then it’s righteous to hurt us, right?”

“If the Guard has a drone here, I won’t be surprised if ships leaving Castor now get stopped by the Guard, routinely, with passengers searched and property taken.”

Garrett said, “But we’re not in US waters! If any nation has any legal authority here it’s Cuba. And it’s not like… oh hell.”

Martin nodded grimly. “We’re pawns in a larger conflict. The States are asserting control over Cuba even before any vote to admit them into the Union. They’re claiming responsibility for air traffic control on the island too, and offering to hook up to their power grid and modernize it, and other semi-benevolent de facto ways to start taking over.”

“I hadn’t heard of the ATC thing.”

“It’s not a new tactic.” Martin shook his head. “Pay attention to these things! Anyway, thanks to your decisions, drugs are one of several excuses that the various powers have for getting involved here. If we don’t suppress the drug trade, the Guard will be justified in searching ships headed for the mainland. The existence of one uncontrolled place threatens the global order.”

“I have better things to do than debate drug policy.” Garrett balanced on his bad leg. “Where the hell was the Guard when we were under attack?”

Martin said, “You want this to be US territory after all? You want to go beg for help?”

Garrett shouted at him. “I didn’t beg! I just shot people to stop them from coming back and murdering people! My best living friend is a quivering wreck, there’s a God-damn international game going on that I don’t even care about, and I haven’t had breakfast yet. What the hell more do you want from me?”

Martin was impassive, a stone statue. Garrett wanted to hit him. Martin said, “I want you to protect my investment, and stop counting on me to figure out the plan. Do you think I’ve got all the answers?”

“You’ve been acting like it.”

Martin laughed in his face. “It was for your own good! You’d have given up a dozen times by now if you hadn’t had someone managing things for you, waiting for you to stand up, letting you lean on their expertise. Admit it.”

“So I came all the way out here and trusted you to know how we’d deal with the politics, and you were winging it after all?”

“No, I was somewhat less clueless than you. Politics is life, Fox. You can’t run from it. It’s a question of who has the power.”

Garrett clenched his fists against his sides. A good punch to the face would be in order. In Dockside he’d held a gun to a man’s head; that was power, the ability to dominate and destroy. Martin had dragged him out here to play primate dominance games with the whole world, and told him it was for Garrett’s own good. People were dying around him for stupid ideals, to recreate some kind of theocratic petty tyranny con game disguised as — “A farm! That’s all I was trying to build here.”

“Liar,” said Martin. “You had a dream for this place. I saw it in your eyes when you came to me looking like a scared puppy, begging for money.”

“And I trusted you.”

“So go home, if you don’t think you can handle all this. If the angst is too much for you.”

Garrett had been goaded enough. Martin deserved to suffer --

And was inviting it, mocking Garrett on purpose, watching Garrett with a mad enthusiasm and an upturned chin. Offering to trade guilt for pain, after Martin’s own role in getting people killed.

Garrett raised one hand, and pointed to the door. “Get out of here. You can make peace with your God without me. I haven’t got one, so I’m going to work for redemption.”

Martin seemed about to protest, to demand that Garrett punish him, but Garrett faced him down until he walked away.

Garrett shut the door and slumped into his chair, head on hands. After a moment of self-pity he brought up the map of Castor again, letting it glow and spin on the wall. He stared at it, wishing that the damn thing hadn’t gotten so out of control. Still, it needed him.

It wasn’t worth giving up on his ambition, not because of a storm or a gang of thugs. Not for anything.

2. Tess

She needed out.

Tess couldn’t sleep for the nightmares; she’d seen Phillip’s face break and watched Garrett kill in cold blood, and had men shouting and pointing guns at her. She’d been asleep when the alarm went off, with Zephyr saying, “Bad guys!” She’d woken from one nightmare to a worse one.

Within a few days she was on the phone, not letting her parents see how ragged she looked. Blank screen on their end. “We want you back,” said Dad. “It’s nearly Christmas already.”

Tess was startled. The Pilgrims didn’t believe in Christmas, and she’d been too distracted to notice the red-and-green in the little restaurant. That meant her time here was nearly over anyway; she was due back in school in January. School, after everything she’d done here! She started to laugh, with great heaving breaths like during the hurricane.

Her parents looked out from the screen, saying nothing.

So Tess spent her parents’ money for a ticket from Cuba to Maryland. She waited, brooding in her room in Castor, and imagining she wasn’t living at a murder scene. There was a knock on the door and Zephyr’s voice said, “Hello?”

She opened the door. “Are you really leaving?” he asked, looking as grim as his mech-body would allow.

She tried to make her face a mask, to keep him from seeing how she felt, but that was impossible. He knew her. “I was only going to be here for the summer and fall anyway,” she said, trying to look nonchalant.

“You don’t have to go! You can change your plans.”

They’d tried to build something new and different here, and it had gone to hell. It wasn’t safe. “I have to go. I don’t have any choice.”

Zephyr stepped into the room, saying, “Of course you do! You have at least as much free will as I do. What will happen if you stay?”

“My parents want me back.” Sure, she didn’t want to leave Zephyr or Garrett behind, but she had to go back to school and she couldn’t abandon her family.

“You can visit them and return.”

Tess looked to the headset that lay on a shelf, abandoned since the attack. “When I was freaked out, and Garrett saw me babbling about dying and shooting and everything, was that me or you?” The thoughts of death had seemed to echo through her, making her more and more afraid.

Zephyr’s eyes flickered in thought. “It was us. We’ve been working together more closely than even Valerie and I had, and I felt what you were feeling. I knew. We’re becoming something better than a human or an AI alone. I don’t want to give that up.”

Tess thought of the months spent communing with him. His voice was in her bones; her thoughts she’d trained to fly away in sub-speech, telling him things she’d never say aloud. Stupid jokes, fantasies, wild schemes. Even now her jaw stuttered as she subconsciously told him all this. She missed the stream of incoming nonsense, data, analysis. With him she was — well, why not try it again now? She snatched up the headset and fixed it in place, watching him watch her.

I don’t want to let you go, they said. Look here at the view from space, the view from Squeaky in the water, from my eyes and yours. See all we’ve done? We can keep going, and see what happens. I’m missing something and you’re part of it.

I’m afraid, thought Tess, and didn’t know whether the words started with her or him. She saw the fighting and killing and drowning in the waves and wanted it to end, even if that meant the normality of school again, then college. Besides: I already decided; I bought the ticket and said I’d go. It’s out of my hands. It’s a relief to know that.

We need you. I’m not smart enough to work without you. I don’t want to work alone or with someone else.

“But you still have people,” Tess said aloud.

Have people --

“What?” asked Tess. The link had been hastily paused, hiding their thoughts.

Zephyr’s intact ear perked up. “There’s something I should show you. Please, don’t hate me.”

Now Tess was alarmed. “I can’t hate you. You’re practically part of me.”

Zephyr seemed distracted. “Can’t you hate yourself?”

“Yes. But I don’t.” If the link had been open Zephyr would have caught the undercurrent of, I’m abandoning everyone, I’m weak and stupid, I can’t do anything, why’d I ever come here?

“Then, look. Simple video link.” Zephyr beamed a glowing pattern to Tess’ headset. She recognized it as an AI constellation, this one a simple collection of a few thousand nodes floating in space. It communicated in sparks and puffs of vapor with itself and a tiny simulated world. “This is a fragment of a surveillance system, that I was once sent. See how it’s organized?”

Tess stared into the clusters and let her mind focus, sensing the structure. Normally Zephyr would be whispering in her ear with rapid annotation, flitting to the exact aspect she needed to see, helping her have insights that impressed them both. She tried to summon the kind of analysis Zephyr would provide, seeing it as Zephyr would. “It’s aggressive. All of the little plan-fragments it keeps building are about getting more power, more control.”

“It’s scared, too. I keep the fragment bottled up and inactive. Now, this one is yours.”

A different cluster appeared, much more complex, flashing and shifting. Tess stared into it and fell in, caught up in trying to understand what it was thinking. There was a piece that looked like Zephyr in there, but the rest boggled her. “This network is based on me?”

“You know how if you’ve been friends with someone for a long time, you can predict what they’ll think and do? Or how people say someone isn’t really dead so long as some aspect of them keeps existing? I think it’s because humans create structures like this based on the patterns of other people. The structures are approximations of what they know, how they think. I made this one. I couldn’t help doing it, from thinking of you.”

Tess flipped the image away from her eyes, feeling at the same time flattered and exploited. “What does this mean? Why’d you make this copy thing?”

“It means you can never really die, so long as this thing exists. The more you can add to the sim, the more you it’ll be. Leda would say — see, I can’t help modeling her either — that I’ve been copying your soul. I hope you don’t mind.”

“So, you did this because that’s how your memory works?”

“Yeah! Mostly. If I wasn’t sure of something, I asked you about it and filled in the gaps. So to a crude approximation I could resurrect you.”

Tess stood there with her jaw stilled, slightly open. “You’ve been after my soul all along?”

“No!” Zephyr’s tail lashed as he tried to get her to understand. “I did this because that’s how my mind works. But I really like you and want to keep you with me and keep you safe and figure out how to be good instead of evil. And stuff.”

If this is what we can do now, thought Tess in Zephyr’s voice, what will we be able to do if we keep going?

After all she’d seen, Tess feared to find out. So she said, “I’m sorry. I have to leave.”

He put a device into her hand, hesitating over it. “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.” It was her own computer tablet, though she’d hardly used it lately. “I’ve loaded it with a distilled version of myself.”

She eyed the studded cloth, amazed that it contained the soul of an intelligent being. “I thought you didn’t want to be owned, or leaked to the Net.”

“I want you to keep it. It’ll self-destruct if tampered with or copied, I hope. But you can use it to summon a piece of me and revive me if I’m killed again.”

“What about your backup here?”

“This whole island isn’t safe. There’s no guarantee of anything here.”

“You’re scared?” said Tess.

“For both of us. Stay safe, and come back someday.”

* * *

Garrett had no mysterious artifacts to offer her, no mind-bending talk of souls, just best wishes and a powerful hug. Tess wasn’t sure which she preferred. Garrett took her back to Cuba to drop her off by the airport, with Zephyr in the boat saying almost nothing. Tess looked back at Castor for what might be the last time. She saw the structure that he’d killed to protect, the little colony of light and motion that was Garrett’s hope and dream and total effort, and it made her blush.

It was Garrett’s soul in hardware.

3. Garrett

He and Zephyr stood on the dock, watching Tess go.

After a while Zephyr spoke. “’Robo-Casanova’, eh?”

* * *

Sawing off the heads was horrible work. Out of respect to the Pilgrims he hadn’t dumped the pirates’ bodies into the tank with Phillip’s, but had kept them in a heavily duct-taped set of bags in the freezer. No one spoke of them. When after three days Phillip’s body was gone, Garrett was eager to be rid of the things and move on with his life. But he had taken lives and things shouldn’t be exactly as they were. So, he quietly obtained Eaton’s help and a saw for frozen flesh. Garrett vomited once; he made himself do this task partly for penance, partly as a warning to others. Kept cold the bodies had little scent and oozed blood slowly, as with frozen fish. As he sawed he wavered between lying to himself that it was indeed fish, and making himself acquainted with the way of death, facing it in all its consequences. The act of dumping these bodies into the recycler wasn’t fundamentally different than dumping Phillip’s, yet the meaning was completely different. How had Leda had managed to make a sacred rite of it?

The result was no bodies, and seven human skulls whose image Garrett put on display for all the world. It was only when he’d posted the photo that he felt peace again, felt that the attack was really over. He had achieved mastery over those who would hurt him and made it plain that he preferred peace but could do war. He asked Eaton, “Did you kill before this?”

Eaton nodded. “On several continents, for good reasons. What did you think of it?”

“It’s not something I want to repeat.”

Garrett didn’t draw attention to every aspect of the killing. When he rifled through the pirates’ boat before claiming it as Castor’s, he found ID. The pirates were mostly Cuban, but one seemed to be an American citizen. With shaking hands Garrett burned the evidence, and had another reason to dispose of the bodies. He was protecting this place.

* * *

The Cuban police avoided showing up; here was the punch that didn’t come. Instead Garrett got a visit from Domingo, the official who’d tried to foist workers on him. The Director of Social Welfare. Domingo came on one of the party barges, grimly dressed but smiling, and found Garrett working in Dockside. “So, Mister Fox, I’m pleased to see the unpleasantness is behind you.”

I’d rather have it in front of me, thought Garrett. “We got through it on our own.”

“Collective effort can be impressive. I hope you’ll be able to do as well managing your new workers. They come tomorrow.”

“The farm workers you wanted me to hire?” Garrett sighed. “So, are you going to ignore that recent ‘unpleasantness’?”

Domingo smiled. “Ignore it? No. Some are calling you a murderer, but we’re using discretion in this matter. Too much of a bother to drag you to court.”

“How nice of you.” Garrett could imagine some official deciding to have him hauled away in irons any day now for past “crimes” — which was probably what Domingo wanted him to think about. Garrett’s freedom was now more a matter of whether those in power liked him, than of whether he’d broken any law.

“You can expect thirty-six of them tomorrow.” Domingo pulled out a disk and handed it to Garrett. “To help you manage them, here are our files on each.”

“I told you I need an investment to expand our operations well in advance of new workers joining. But I’d be happy to look at the files and consider these people for hiring, once I have equipment for them to work with.” He felt pleased with himself at that bit of diplomacy.

Domingo waved dismissively. “Oh, you’ll get your money.”

“I’ll place orders as soon as I get it, or a binding commitment.”

Domingo laughed at him and said, “Mister Fox, you’re in no position to dictate terms to us. Quite the opposite.”

* * *

Garrett didn’t trust his broken leg to carry him across the ocean walkways. The leg was an inanimate block, but for the phantom sensations. By necessity he’d been thumping around, coping with being half-crippled again, and giving a bite-me smile to anyone who suggested a pegleg.

Zephyr entered the office for a scheduled meeting. “Maybe we can build a replacement leg,” he said.

“Or mail the old one out for repair,” said Martin.

Garrett considered. The machinery was shredded, but he’d tried detaching the thing and examining the MMI panel linking the thing to the nerves and blood of his disgusting stump-leg. The panel was fine. It was weird to think of having the leg — something that had been part of him for most of his life — swapped out. But if the MMI got exposed and damaged it’d require surgery, and he didn’t know where he could safely go for that. “Those are both good ideas. Zephyr, you can’t make one of these legs with the RepRap, right?” Way too complex for the little manufacturing device.

“With a different design and some help, maybe. I’ve asked the Herr Human Augmentation Institute already.” Herr’s research group had helped design the legs Garrett had now.

Martin sat, scratching his chin. “What if we improved our manufacturing abilities? Not specifically for you, I mean, but as another profit source?”

Garrett said, “Isn’t that already in your grand plans?”

Martin’s eyes narrowed. “Someone had to look ahead.”

Zephyr interrupted. “Boys! Quit arguing.” Garrett saw something of Tess’ attitude in the robot’s reaction, and it made Garrett miss her more. He’d have to convince her to come back someday.

Leda arrived, wearing the grey jacket of the Holy Confederacy. Garrett had no idea whether that was good or bad, and said nothing about it. He’d guessed that she’d take over the Pilgrim group. But had she fallen back into that nonsense right after escaping it? He shook his head, not wanting to get into quicksand again.

Leda sat, hands uncomfortably limp on her lap. “I’m part of your council now?”

“I suppose so,” said Garrett. “I’ve asked you all here to talk about Castor’s status. Forgive me for not standing. Zephyr?”

Zephyr turned on the wall-screen and a video presentation. “The current financial picture, based on the numbers Martin gave me, is hovering near the break-even point. Money comes in through tourism and our farm products, and goes out through our imports of food and manufactured products. We also have substantial maintenance costs due to the innately corrosive seawater environment and the fragility of some of our farming equipment.” The latest virtual model of Castor spun alongside graphs and charts.

Martin said, “That’s not the full financial picture. We’re relying on some big-ticket purchases like this platform, and if you amortize those costs over their expected lifespan, we’re losing money. We’re effectively self-insured, which is not ideal. Also we’ve had various things donated to us, including legal services.”

Zephyr added, “But on the bright side, we’re about to officially have a hotel, casino and a real restaurant, thanks to the Pierpont and Dentrassi families. According to satellite imagery, a ship is headed our way from Boston. It could be the bio-lab team.”

“It is,” said Eaton from the doorway. “Having a strategy meeting without me?”

Garrett stared at Eaton, who he hadn’t invited. The man had earned a place here as a resident, but Garrett wasn’t comfortable letting him in on everything. The group stayed awkwardly silent until Garrett said, “I respect you, sir, but this is a private meeting.”

Zephyr said, “He means, no spies.”

“Zephyr!” said Garrett.

Eaton smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But yes, the research team is on its way. I’ll let myself out and make sure you folks don’t get surprised again.”

When the door closed Zephyr said, “We won’t be surprised like that again. I have been keeping watch with the satellite feed.”

Garrett said, “From now on we should be looking in all directions and hailing anyone that looks remotely interested in coming here. How hard would it be to get us a new radar unit?”

“Searching. Also, simple sensor buoys would be easy.”

Garrett was a little rattled. “Anyway, that’s the basic situation. We’re alive and afloat, but cash-poor and surrounded by damned nebulous legal threats. Now, the latest problem: a party of Cubans is being forced on us tomorrow with a demand that we hire them.” He put personnel data on the screen. “Three dozen men and women, mostly young, with few skills and a couple of minor criminal records among them. What do we do?”

Martin said, “So they’re following through on their ‘offer’. What about funding to expand the farm?”

“I’m told it’s coming. I’d like to tell Cuba we’ll turn the boat away unless we’ve got the funds first.”

“Do that,” said Martin. “Force their hand. It’ll be bad enough that we won’t have the equipment until after they arrive. In fact we ought to beg for a delay of a few weeks. There’s nothing for them to do yet.”

“We shouldn’t hire them at all!” Zephyr said. “We don’t need to be pushed around.”

Martin told Zephyr, “Some of us can’t upload ourselves to safety in the event of a police raid. We’re dangerously close to earning one.”

Leda spoke up this time. “Give them to me.” She saw the eyes on her and looked down, but then made herself return the stares. “There are people coming who’re being used as pawns by their country, and I don’t want us to treat them that way too. We ought to welcome these people to our community. Garrett, you may not like the Pilgrims, but we work hard, don’t we?”

“Who’s ‘we’?” said Garrett. “How can you be back with them after what they did?”

“It doesn’t really matter what I believe. The Pilgrims need me. They’re my friends, and even if I don’t agree with everything Sir Phillip stood for, I have to help people in his stead. I can do that with this newcomer group too.”

“How? By getting them to worship Lee?”

Leda glared at Garrett. “It’s more complicated than that. You might think it’s not important to have faith, that it’s something you can take off like a coat, but your survival and your profit depend on our group!”

Garrett was getting exasperated by Leeist theology. Was she making it up as she went along? “So do you believe again or what?”

Leda shut her eyes tightly. “It doesn’t matter. I believe in something bigger than myself. You wouldn’t understand. And if these words of mine leave this room, the consequences will hurt all of you.”

After he and Zephyr had stopped Phillip and Duke from driving this woman to suicide, how could she fall back into believing the same old lies, and call him wrong for not joining her? As sick as he was of the Pilgrims, she was right about one thing: he needed them.

He sighed. “I’ll demand the money. In the meantime, what will you do with the newcomers?”

“Make them your best workers. Get them started with training, and make them begin to be useful. You’ll see.”

“They’re people, Leda, not machine parts to hammer into shape.”

Leda was resolute. “They can be more than that, more than just ‘people’.”

* * *

Garrett took off his legs in Zephyr’s presence, in the room that had been Tess’ lab. Posters of robots real and fictional lined the walls: Astro Boy, Cog, Qrio, Megaman X, Tachikoma. Garrett hated to be sitting there vulnerable.

Zephyr set the intact leg and the damaged one on a table, peering at both and emitting a sonar hum. “Interesting.”

“How is it, doc? Will I be able to play the violin?”

“Violin? We could make a version with opposable toes, if you want.” Zephyr blinked. “Oh! That’s a joke, right?”

Garrett nodded. “You’ve gotten smarter.”

“I feel dumber. A piece of me is missing.”

“I miss her too.” Garrett kept thinking lately about tasks for Tess, and remembering that she was gone. There was more to the feeling of loss than that, though. One of the things that kept him going was knowing that he’d built a place where she could be happy. She had flourished here in a way he’d never seen on land. In a way, he valued that fact as much as her technical skill.

Zephyr went back to studying the legs. “There’s no reason to limit yourself to normal human functioning. To the extent that we can build it, why not have additional strength or other features?”

He felt queasy thinking about having his body parts tinkered with. “It’s hard to explain, but I’ve got a strong sense of identity, and part of that is, uh, my body. I’m not some intangible spirit. Being a cripple does things to you.”

Zephyr’s ears perked; they’d been repaired. “Are you a ‘cripple’?”

Garrett stared at his screwed-up body. “Not anymore. For a while I felt like I couldn’t do anything for myself, like everybody pitied me. Literally they looked down on me. I was afraid to get the surgery for prosthetics partly because a cripple was what I was. It defined me. Because once you get beaten down enough you get convinced you deserve it, and forget that anything better is possible. Damn, it felt good to stand up again!” That first day, he’d fallen flat on his nose and laughed it off, waving away his parents when they tried to help him up. It took him two whole minutes to get up from that fall but he did it by himself, on his new legs.

“I don’t have that kind of identity,” said Zephyr. “A body is just an interface to the most important world.”

“Okay, but you’ve been using that one for a while. Haven’t you got an awareness of your strength, your height, the sight of your hands? Do you think much about the damage you took?”

“I guess so. It was frustrating not to have a body, and strange to upgrade to this model when it arrived. Suddenly being transfered to a lower-capability body would be unpleasant.”

“Can I have my legs back now?” Zephyr returned them and Garrett spent a few minutes hooking them up. He wiggled the intact one at the ankle. “Make the best replacement you can, then. I’ll be interested to see what you come up with. Maybe I’ll even get the other one replaced to match.”

“I get a free hand?” Zephyr seemed excited by the prospect.

“Leg. You’re right; it doesn’t matter exactly what I’m made of. I’m more than the sum of my parts.”

“I said that?”

Garrett stood and attempted to scratch Zephyr’s ears. The robot leaned his plastic head into it like a cat. “Sure. Since when did you become a prosthetics specialist?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and absorbing a few expert systems.” Zephyr paused. “There’s actually something else. When I work with people I pick up some of their skill, which includes their way of analyzing things. Their personality.”

Zephyr had been helping with the technical details of botany, something otherwise handled with the “brute force and ignorance” of non-specialists. “Does that mean you’ve got a partial imitation of Alexis in you? And Phillip? And Valerie, and Tess, and me?”

“Yes. See, I tried to explain this to Tess and she thought I was doing something bad, but really I’m not! At least I don’t think so. I’m designed to build these internal models to predict people’s behavior, and it so happens that they’re effectively mini-AIs.”

Garrett thought about all the people Zephyr had met being trapped inside him. That wasn’t fair, though; was his own memory of his father “trapped” in his skull too? “I’m not used to this Borg hive-mind thing you’ve got going on. What exactly are you doing?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping Tess would help me figure it out. Why is a ‘hive-mind’ evil, anyway? I want a human opinion.”

Garrett thought back to old stories of mind-slave cyborgs and rapacious insect-hordes. “Because the ‘people’ in those are missing something, or it’s been stolen from them. They’ve been forced into some huge pattern they have to obey, and it turns them into interchangeable, expendable parts. The individual gets drained and becomes lesser.”

“Like AGVs,” said Zephyr. “An expendable robot army.”

“You’re thinking of warmechs? Those were never intelligent, so they’re like animals at best. Imagine that someone ripped out half your soul to turn you into a slave like that.”

“I don’t have to imagine.”

4. Noah

He could run back to Sapphire Haven and the tar-paper roofs, or stay here, or do whatever else he could imagine. The thought made him grin, baring his teeth against the cold wind that had set in. He was home, and it was almost Christmas.

“Don’t you people do anything for the holidays?” he asked Leda, walking up behind her to wrap his arms around her. They owed each other, for a couple of moments in the fight.

Leda shivered. They were in the west corner of the farm, which was becoming a hangout spot. It had a relatively large, stable platform with a canopy and wave-guard and a sort of bandstand. Now Leda was in a slick wetsuit supervising the workers who’d shown up yesterday. Pilgrim types were coaxing the new guys through fish-feeding and equipment-fixing.

Leda said, “With Sir Phillip we didn’t. He said it was sinful.”

“You don’t have to do the traditional stuff with the fat white burglar. But how about presents? A tree, even?”

Leda slipped out of his grip, saying, “I used to do all that, with my old family.”

“So let’s start it up here, and have some fun.”

“We’re not here for fun,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “The point is…”

Leda looked Castor over, seeing the impossible island Noah had been staring at since he arrived. She said, “It’s to serve each other, isn’t it? Or God, if you put it that way.”

“Sure,” said Noah. “But we’re here to have a good time too. You want the Pilgrims to be happy, right? We could all use some good cheer about now.”

Leda looked uncertain. “Well, there’s no tinsel or anything.”

* * *

Noah walked to the door of the Chaste Dolphin, the only restaurant for miles around. The place had opened after days of his own work alongside the Dentrassi brothers. It’d been fun: hanging on to a big spaying hose to pump concrete into a framework and turn outlines into real walls. The stuff had come out full of bubbles and shredded paper, stretching the material, and become a set of blank, dank rooms. It was funny how when he’d been asked to clean up the trash from the construction, he hadn’t minded at all. Now that there were distinct rooms to work with, the Dentrassis had done the rest. Now they had nice pine tables instead of the cheap plastic ones in the galley and Dockside; the whole place was lined with ships’ wheels and nets and other nautical things. He was about to go in when a rumble caught his ears.

He bounded up to the topdeck to see a rusty ship stacked with steel cargo containers. “What’s that?” he asked a passing Pilgrim.

“It’s for the hotel.”

Sure enough, the old couple running the station’s room bookings was looking to build a whole little platform of their own. Noah was already getting experienced at the construction methods around here, so he got hired to help turn a cluster of floating boxes into a hotel. The work had him mixing concrete and making slabs to balance on the containers. It was scary to stand out there, but before long he’d led the way. It looked almost like solid land, parked near the main platform. He cursed and sweated through the work until he could stand on the ocean, and stare at what he’d made. “I built an island!”

He still had Rickie’s phone number. He sent the man a picture of the thing, hoping it would spark something in him.

The Pierpont family was there for the construction of course, bundled up and talking excitedly about the next steps. They’d need to assemble more actual buildings atop the platform. It surprised him to feel he understood some of the technical details now, and for the first time he actually cared about math. He’d been cheated in school by teachers who’d cared more about babysitting him than about having him make things.

“Mister Ardent,” said Jarvik Pierpont. “What do you suggest for the decorations?”

Mister. Noah smiled. “Peek into the new restaurant for one idea. They’ve got a boating theme that you could see pretty much anywhere; looks nice. You could go with that, or do something a little crazy.”

Jarvik and his wife talked. Noah stared at the empty sea beyond Castor, huge and cold. Everything they’d made was a toy next to the real spectacle of the blue. It was a privilege to be out here seeing it, one that could get snatched away if they weren’t careful.

Jarvik said, “Maybe.”

Noah said, “Come to think of it, you should do something crazy for the theme, not a style that you could see in any mom-and-pop place. Lights. An upside-down world. Magic castles. Something… something that’d make people think, I need this place.”

* * *

It was Christmas Eve. The station had red and green lights on the topdeck, and a palm tree with soaked cotton around it. Something was weird about the crowd that was gathering, braving the wind. Noah picked out Martin, some Pilgrims, those new scientists, and strangers. He stood on the black suncloth, thinking of what the difference was.

There were kids here!

High up, far from safe shores. Noah marched over to the pair of families who were herding four boys and girls and a baby between them. He felt half angry, half confused. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “This place isn’t safe.”

A mom held her son’s hand, getting tugged around. “It’s a present for them. We wanted to be here for the first Christmas in this place.”

“The first?” said Noah.

She smiled. “First of many, I hope.”

Noah walked away, beaming. Man, he’d have to do a good job if people were going to be bringing kids onto the station.

Then he got caught in a rush of people coming up, Leda and Garrett and everyone, so that the deck was packed. There was a cordon up to make it less likely someone would get pushed off, but still no guarantee. There really ought to have been more of a sturdy fence. People seemed to expect entertainment tonight, though nothing had been scheduled. The wind sounds had grown to a murmur of over a hundred people talking.

Leda led them, singing in a clear, strong voice: “Silent Night…”

Dozens of voices took the song up at once: “Holy Night…”

Then it seemed that the ocean was full of music. Instrumentals got piped in from somewhere and people went through one song after another, with strange forays into “Dixie” and tunes he didn’t recognize. Castor didn’t feel like such a dangerous place after all, like they were pushing the wilderness away. They could do this; they could hang out and have a good time together.

When they were all exhausted, they wandered off and the sounds of wind and waves faded back in. God’s background music. Noah was there watching the stars when Leda returned.

She offered him a box wrapped in newspaper, and he was ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m poor. I didn’t buy you anything.”

“It’s okay. You’ve worked to make this place livable.”

Leda still held out the box, so he opened it to find a grey wool coat. She said, “I’d be honored if you joined us.”

Noah ran his hand over the warm fabric. “It’s nice, Leda, but — I mean, this stuff about dead generals…” He didn’t want to say he thought it was disrespecting God; that would hurt her.

Leda looked around at the near-empty platform. “People need to believe in something, don’t they? They’re still with God, worshiping in a different way.”

Noah shook his head. “I don’t get it. What do you really believe in?”

“Us!” she said. “Castor, I mean. We have this place and I don’t want to lose it. Whatever we feel when we’re here together, singing, we can call that God, even if we don’t all mean the same thing.”

Noah thought back to the singing. It had been nice, but not like being in church, not as focused. They’d been having a good time. Back when he’d first seen Castor, that wasn’t God either, at least not directly. It was him seeing something that had a meaning, a purpose.

Leda said, “This Pilgrim thing is something that can bring us together. Because it’s new and small we can shape it, make it something that gives people strength and, well, hope. We can be the ones who decide what Castor is.”

She was flustered and pretty in the night air, trying to explain things he’d never put into words. Maybe it didn’t matter exactly how you did your worship as long as you meant it, and wanted to serve people. That was what life was about, right? Some silliness about Bobby Lee was a small sacrifice to put up with for the sake of helping people, of being part of the team.

He tried the coat on.

5. Garrett

Wow. The parents had demanded a Santa Claus, and Martin had refused (the jerk), so Garrett had to throw an outfit together for himself. An improvised red jacket, a white beard, the hat, and for his own amusement a costume fox-tail. The way to approach kids while in costume was to kneel with open arms and let them come to you. They mostly did, sometimes almost tackling him. He didn’t care that he was getting stared at; there was a kind of anonymity behind the outfit, so that he may as well have actually been Santa for the duration. Surrounded by gratuitous affection and enthusiasm, the focus of some kid’s dreams. Nice.

Santa time had to end eventually. He’d hardly pulled off the beard when the new chief scientist tapped his shoulder, outside Garrett’s office. “Santa, can you bring me some electricity?” The man wore a long black overcoat like a Victorian gentleman, and shivered though he hadn’t been outside for long.

“Doctor Jenner!” said Garrett. “Where are you from, anyway?” He’d not had much time to research exactly who was coming, although the credentials being tossed around were interesting. Heavy on advanced practical genetics rather than theory.

“Atlanta,” said Jenner. “I worked with the killer flu strain of ’25.”

Now Garrett shivered. “Thank you.”

Jenner looked at his boots. “Well. So. Electricity. My team is eager to set up, and liquid nitrogen only lasts so long.” There would be supplies that needed refrigeration.

Garrett had to get his brain in gear, from fantasy back to facts and figures. “Right. Our electric supply system is getting hammered from all the people here, and the decorations. But we can expand our power grid right now if you’re up for it.” He smiled and added, “My Christmas present has arrived. Are you ready for a swim?”

“In this weather? Sorry, Captain, but I’d rather keep to my test tubes. Brr! Besides, I don’t know anything about your branch of engineering.”

“I don’t know much about yours yet, but I’d like to learn.” By making the diving offer, Garrett had been trying to tweak Jenner a little to see if he was a decent guy, but it seemed like a mistake to leave things at that. Besides, there was something that needed discussion. “Seriously, it’d be good for you to have your group work on this. You should get a feel for the bigger picture of how Castor works. And the water’s not that cold.”

“We’re biologists, though.”

“Around here you have to do a little of everything. It’s not safe to ignore all the distractions from your work. The water’s warm enough, and afterwards I’ll treat your team to hot cider courtesy of your rent money.”

Jenner looked indecisive. “What exactly do you want help with?”

“A big pile of sheet.”

* * *

Getting the engineers into the water took promises of cider, good times, electricity, and cake. Motivating smart people with snack food — ah, it was like being a grad student again! “Here’s the sheet,” he said, opening a crate in Dockside. Because of all the foot traffic, he’d built a few more interior walls down here, separating the hangout of Phillip’s Place from the cargo area. The setup was awkward but workable.

In the box was a whole lot of SeaSheet material. They’d gotten orders from people wanting to play with mech-birds and -dolphins, and could sell power to the bio-lab, hotel and restaurant. Even as he unfolded a panel of the stuff it was creating a trickle of charge for its built-in battery.

So they donned wetsuits, he bandaged his leg, he loaned them some knives, and they went to start paneling the ocean. The dark material looked translucent, absorbing sun and waves. Garrett made himself pay attention to the crew instead of calculating the added wattage.

Doctor Jenner was first among equals in the research group. A couple of them were grad students, used to living cheaply; or young, ambitious researchers. They were all American or Canadian. A decent bunch, picking up quickly on how to duck beneath floating rods or slip over them. Soon they were handling the sheets, unfurling them for the growing power array.

Jenner said, “I understand your station is already involved with some biotech research.”

“You’re swimming with it. The plant and animal selective breeding is an ongoing project.” If only Alexis were around to appreciate how far her work had come, how they’d expanded the farm to something that justified a farming crew! He should name something after her, meaningless as the gesture would be.

Jenner said, “And the MMI studies? We’ve been put in charge of the rats you ordered.”

Garrett bobbed in the water, wondering what the connection was to cybernetic interfaces. “Rats?”

One of the grad students piped up. “I didn’t know anyone but DARPA was working on bioshells these days.”

Oh. Martin’s latest attempt to go behind my back. Zephyr was the only one around that Garrett could trust these days. Well, there was also Noah, and maybe Leda and the Pierponts. Maybe he wasn’t too alone after all. Garrett said, “I wasn’t fully informed. Sorry. I’m trying to get a better hold on things, but there’s a lot to think about. Remind me: what exactly will you be doing?”

“Everything!” said a young grad, a Wilbur Chen from Tennessee. He steadied himself on a floating walkway and said, “We’re free here to do all the experiments you’re not allowed to do back home!”

Garrett had been keeping quiet about the Jenner group’s role. Eaton had made vague promises of a prestigious tenant that Garrett need not worry about. This time Garrett wasn’t that oblivious. Instead he wondered if Martin or even Eaton knew the scientists’ specific research plans. He said, “How unethical do you think you’ll get?”

They all fell quiet.

“I get the idea,” Garrett said. “Why else come here, and how would you get funding for your business, unless you were planning to push some stateside legal boundaries? You said as much.”

Jenner stammered, “I — I thought you were all in favor of individual rights.”

“I’m on your side. I love cool techie projects. But I do have to pay attention to other things, and I’ve got people to protect. If you guys abuse the legal environment here to do sloppy or blatantly evil work, I’ll be first against the wall. And you, second.”

Jenner, Chen and the others stumbled over themselves trying to answer. Jenner managed to say, “Captain, we’ll earn your trust. I don’t know where you stand on human embryos—”

“I say that no working brain means it’s not a person, but some of my colleagues disagree and will call you Nazis.”

“Damn it, no!” said Chen. “We eventually want to try certain experiments on brainless balls of cells or willing, informed patients, but we’re trying to help people, not kill them!” The others murmured assent.

Garrett looked them over. “I didn’t say you were.”

Chen said, “You called us unethical.”

“No, I asked if you were.”

Jenner got between them. “Let me finish. Yes, we know all about the bio-ethical problems we face. We’ve been lectured at great and angry length about how it’s evil to invent better crops or gengineer diseases out of human embryos or do frivolous things like changing people’s hair color. Each of us gave up jobs elsewhere because we believe we can do important, worthwhile and profitable work and put some ethical standards in place while we’re doing it. If we’re not the ones ‘playing God’, I assure you that certain other people will do it first, and you won’t like their idea of how it’s used. If America hadn’t researched nuclear physics, who would’ve had it first?”

Garrett appraised the gang swimming with him. They’d been willing to come down to the water and try something outside of lab work, to be part of this place and participate in its ongoing balance of interests and needs. He trusted this group more than he would a giant government lab a thousand miles away. He said, “So you understand you’ll be facing criticism, and you’re prepared to deal with it?”

“We’re used to it,” said Jenner. “We know that screwing this opportunity up with irresponsible behavior could hamstring the kind of research we want to do, for everyone.”

He nodded. “I’ll be keeping tabs on what you’re doing. Partly out of sheer curiosity.”

“Of course. If you’ll sign a non-disclosure form.”

The researchers and Garrett looked each other over warily. Garrett shook their hands and said, “Show me what you’ve got.”

* * *

“Hey, what’s this?” Garrett was hobbling along the west walkway to check out the hotel construction site when he noticed a piece of artificial land that hadn’t been there before. A couple of cheap catamarans had anchored out here as they’d announced, bringing people to gamble and get laid. But now people were working in the water between them, dumping trash — no, it was building materials. There was wood and plastic, and a huge mesh bag of soda bottles bobbing on the waves. Dirt-cheap flotation. Some guys were climbing on the mess with tools.

He pulled out his headset. “Zephyr, check this out.”

“Low-tech,” thought Zephyr. “Refugees?”

Garrett made for the rafters’ site. “Let Security know.” Aloud he called out to the people working there. One man hopped down and approached him on the walkway. In the distance a set of silver windvanes turned, part of the hotel site. “Ay, Captain! Good to see ya!”

Garrett shook hands, puzzled. “What are you working on?”

“We scrounged some materials and we’re setting us up a house.”

“You didn’t tell us you were planning that. You’ve got, what, coke bottles and wood there?”

The builder beamed. “Old tricks. A couple of us once sailed from Cuba to Florida on a styrofoam raft.”

“Marsh Arabs?” said Zephyr. “There’s some kind of swamp-dwelling Free Iraqi group looking to come here, says the Net. Hmm, it’s not these guys though.”

“You can’t do that,” said Garrett, winging it. “We’re happy to consider applications from people who want to live here, but you just showed up.” A mech-gull wheeled overhead and perched on a nearby mast to watch them.

“So?” said the builder.

“So! I mean, you didn’t ask permission.”

The man crossed his arms. “Okay then, how much of the ocean do you own? I can park a ways out.”

“Security here,” said a Pilgrim man over the radio.

“Come to my position.” Garrett wasn’t sure whether he or Zephyr had said it. “I don’t own the ocean, but I do own this station.”

“How about right where we’re standing? This walkway? Or the water right over there?”

“Not the water, but—”

“Aha!” said the man. “Then we claim the patch of water we’re using.”

Garrett didn’t know what to say to that. “I need to confer with my people about this.” He walked away, troubled, and met the Security guy on the way. They stood with the main platform towering over them. Garrett wondered, What exactly is Castor? Where’s the real boundary? “Never mind,” he said to the Pilgrim. “But keep an eye on the group building over there by the hotel.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

Garrett, Martin, Zephyr, Leda, and Noah waited for Eaton to arrive. They’d talked over the situation and decided to bring him in.

Eaton came bundled in a coat, and shut the office door behind him. “Things are getting out of hand.”

“It’s not a problem,” said Martin. “This was bound to happen eventually.”

Leda frowned. “We’re still trying to help the Cuban workers settle in, and that was a structured group that arrived with fair warning. These people are strangers.”

Eaton took a seat. “Where do you stand on this, Captain?”

Garrett sighed, wishing the problem had never come up. “I’m operating under a fig-leaf license as a business, with the non-farm people being my tenants. The Pierponts’ hotel is paying rent for using rooms in this platform, and for food and so on. But the Pierponts will say, why should they pay rent on their new building? They’re providing the materials and capital. Having that one little rafter group out there screws up my whole financial model.”

Martin laughed. “What do you think people outside Castor are saying about us? Anyway, this only affects the rent, not the rest of our income. There are other ways to stay afloat.”

The rafters were a thorn in Garrett’s side, but they might become a serious problem later if he didn’t keep control of the situation. “It’s not even safe, what they’re doing. Not out here away from any harbor. When somebody dies from the foam-blocks getting swamped or something, I’ll get blamed.”

Zephyr noted, “The presence of the SeaSheet material helps dampen the waves. If we had even more of it, we could create an effective artificial harbor.”

“Good enough to make a scrap-heap raft like that seaworthy?”

“Not really, although it may be safe enough if the residents evacuate during storms.”

Garrett chuckled. “I’m an engineer. ‘Safe enough’ is a subjective term.”

The robot asked, “Then who gets to define it?”

Leda said, “We should refocus the role of Castor. We can shoo away the chaos and go back to being a group of farmers instead of this, this mess we’ve got. We can’t let people come here if it won’t be safe and under control.”

Eaton rolled his eyes. “Safe! None of you are safe! It’s a matter of what the security risks are, which I assume is why you called me.” He began a brief lecture about improving the station’s security in general. Then he talked about the US approach for international airports these days.

Garrett was intimidated by the complexity and cost of the surveillance systems Eaton described. “I’m not looking forward to my next trip home.”

Eaton leaned back in his chair. “I looked into your departure. You technically broke the law, the way you left without filing the right paperwork or fees. There’ll be questions when you go back — especially considering your recent activities. And when you leave again, you’ll need permission.”

Garrett scowled.

Leda said, “We may not be able to afford the full array of sensors and security we’d like, but we should do what we can.”

Noah, sitting with Leda, said, “We do need to protect everybody.”

Martin said, “We should be encouraging people to come here, even if we’re not in charge of exactly who’s here or what they’re doing. This is a free-trade zone, not a fortress.”

Everyone was lost in thought. Garrett sighed. “Fortress or not, there’ll always be a need to stand ready to kill people, won’t there?”

Eaton just nodded.

Garrett noticed that Zephyr had raised a hand. “Yes?”

Zephyr said, “I see two patterns in what you’re saying. Two approaches. Garrett, you asked me, ‘What exactly is Castor?’”

I did?

“Right now,” said Zephyr, “Castor is an ad-hoc colony with several major activities going on, with the sea-farm as our central reason for being here. What Martin seems to want is: a decentralized system with many unreliable streams of income, and many individuals living here under little or no direct control. What Leda seems to want is: a central management charged with protecting the group, and having authority over all people here. Is that roughly accurate?”

Leda said, “You’re getting this from that philosophy stuff you and Tess read with me, aren’t you? The Aristotle and Plato? That stuff’s outdated. We can’t afford to have a completely freewheeling little village, especially now that there are kids here.”

Martin frowned. “The most reliable way to have a functioning colony is to have those ‘unreliable income streams.’ They represent a constantly-evolving response to problems.”

Garrett wished he didn’t have to be here arguing when there was work to do. Still, they’d keep at it until he made a decision. “Look. I’m not happy about people arriving unannounced. I want all construction projects reported, and at least the names of everyone who shows up. But the rafters are right that we don’t own the water, and we’ve got no authority to forbid construction. If we can’t justify charging rent on stuff we don’t own, then we should go into the construction business ourselves and offer more living space and utilities.”

Leda said, “But we’ve still got space aboard this platform! How can we let people live in deathtrap junk piles when they could be in the existing rooms, where they’ll pay and we can keep an eye on them?”

Martin answered. “It’s not a matter of letting people choose where to live. We haven’t got the right to tell them where.”

“Of course we do. It’s our duty to protect them. And if that means we have to give them instructions for their own good, so be it.”

Martin glared back at Leda. “Then where’s the border of Castor? Where does our authority end?”

Leda sounded bewildered. “Nowhere!”

Eaton said, “In practical terms, your border is the range of your guns. Where do you think the three-mile territorial sea limit came from? I notice by the way that you’ve got nothing bigger than some used Kalashnikovs you inherited from the last uninvited guests.”

Garrett rapped a fist on the table. “Enough! I’m an engineer and a businessman, not a politician. I’m going to err on the side of trusting people to run their own lives. The rafters can build what they want, with the understanding that it’s not my concern if they endanger themselves. We’ll provide advice but no guarantees, and encourage people to rent space from us while we try to build more. Let’s find a way to bring people in, and make money off them.”

6. Tess

The world felt wrong. It lacked the faint creaking of Castor or the sway of floating walkways, it smelled of exhaust instead of seawater, the dry air scorched her skin, buildings jutted up everywhere, cars roared constantly by like a fake tide, and there was no voice in her head helping her.

On Christmas morning her parents gave her new clothes — pretty frilly things — a new computer game about space pirates, and dance shoes. She stared at the stuff atop its pile of wrapping paper and said, “What is all this?” She couldn’t use any of this stuff. She didn’t even have time for the game, what with her work. There was stuff to maintain, plants to inspect --

“For school,” said Dad.

Oh, right. She wasn’t an engineer anymore. She wasn’t really anything.

Mom said, “We thought you might want to try a new hobby to replace the busywork you’d been doing, so we signed you up for some dancing lessons.”

Tess stared at the nice presents, feeling empty.

That night she shut her door as she did aboard the station, plunged beneath the covers, and tried to sleep. Here on land the nightmares were worse. She woke up grabbing for her computer and turning it on to whisper with Zephyr, or at least the version of him that the tablet contained. This software echo of him could converse, could help chase away her mixed-up dreams of the sea crashing in on her house.

Her parents worried about her when she trudged around bleary-eyed, jaw jittering as she tried to comment on everything, as though talking to a dial tone. By New Year’s Eve she was wearing her headset openly and staying in constant contact with the mini-Zephyr and her tribe. Much better, full of thoughts and speculation, filling the world with annotation again. She mailed the real robot several times a day, like running a Net connection by carrier pigeon.

* * *

Mom made pancakes for her on the morning the spring semester started. Tess protested that she’d be late and could get breakfast at school, but Mom insisted and the food was okay. She’d forgotten what home cooking tasted like.

At school the guard stopped her. “No outside computers.”

She didn’t know what they were talking about until her hand brushed against the headset on her jaw. Kids were jeering at her for holding up the line — Hey, pirate bitch! — so she pulled it off and stuffed it into the scanner with her wallet and tablet. “Fine, I’ll put it in my locker.”

“No, ma’am,” said a guard. “Confiscated goods go to the counselor’s office.”

Tess cursed.

She trudged through the halls, seeing grey. Nobody here meant a thing to her. It was weirdly quiet, maybe from the soft new floor. Morning Pledge and classes went by before she remembered to get her stuff back.

Henweigh’s office now advertised not “Advising and Wellness” but “Guidance and Discipline.” Tess entered during a free period, imagining that she’d see the counselor in black leather. Instead Henweigh looked beleaguered, with grey roots in her hair and with one fewer photo on her desk than Tess recalled. The perfect daughter was still there.

“My computer,” Tess said, not feeling articulate.

Henweigh’s tone was serrated sugar. “Miss de Castille, how nice to see you again.”

“I need it back. The guards took it.”

“That was an unkind prank of yours.” Tess blinked, and Henweigh prompted, “You left a rude message on your machine.”

“What? Where is it?”

Henweigh brought out a box with the headset and tablet. Tess snatched at them but Henweigh kept them out of reach. “I understand that you’ve been off in the wilderness, but you should have known our new policies. You can’t bring an unsecured, unapproved machine into school. Didn’t you hear about the hate crime incident?”

“I’m not here to shoot anyone.”

“You’ve been exposed to quite a lot of violence. People can’t help being influenced by their cultural surroundings.”

The thought of the gun battle made Tess squeeze her eyes shut and clutch the knees of her jeans.

Henweigh’s voice was soft again. “You’ve been through a lot, Tesla. Maria, rather. Let it go.”

Tess tried to relax, and for once it actually worked. Her shoulder muscles unclenched and she slumped in her seat. “I’ll put my stuff away in my locker if I can have it back.”

“At the end of the day. Now, about that machine’s content.” The counselor’s brow furrowed. “It didn’t respond to standard administrative codes when I tried to get in and have a look.”

“You snooped!” said Tess, looking up again.

“You really have been away too long! You can’t keep secrets from the people trusted with your guidance. It’s technically illegal to lock me out like that, and it shows a lack of respect. Now that you started this mess by bringing the machine to school, I would have to demand your encryption code. To make sure you’re harmless, not that I think otherwise of course. But it wouldn’t do any good.”

“Huh?” said a tired Tess. The nonsense weighed on her.

“Your computer came active for just long enough to call me some very rude names, then announced that it was deleting itself.”

Tess sat there faintly amused, until she realized what had happened. She lurched to her feet saying, “Murderer!”

“Calm down.”

“You killed him again,” said Tess. She lurched toward Henweigh, then trembled and rested her hands on the desk for support. The counselor watched her, reaching for a hidden panic button, then seemed satisfied that Tess was no threat to anyone, anymore.

* * *

Mom and Dad kept up the pampering and homecooked food, so that after a couple of days she barely cared about anything. She let Castor’s Net site go without updates, left off the long messages to Zephyr, went with the flow at school. She wore the cute skirts and after class she went to dance lessons, where she learned to stand in line and move with everyone else. Alone. Even her tribe barely interested her.

School felt dim and quiet. Peaceful. It was a couple of days before she noticed that her eyes looked drugged, and by then she didn’t care enough to complain.

7. Garrett

Garrett wrote:

“Hey, Tess. You haven’t been writing much these days. I figure you need a break, and you deserve one. I wish I had a good engineer besides Zephyr around. One who’d work for peanuts.

“In fishing for one, I pulled out some oddballs. A German family fleeing the police after insulting the Prophet Mohammed. Some Irish programming group called the Dunkirk Five. A doctor from Pittsburgh who said she wanted to stop being treated like dirt, three ambitious Cubans, a couple of Africans even, and a time-share group. All of which is good news, since they’re bringing money, but not quite what I need.

“The newbies are swarming around the main platforms. It’s amazing to see. They’re calling our original one the Fort, and setting up a touristy area called Libertalia next door. That’s cool, though parts of their operations are causing trouble. They’re not all hooked into the recycling system, especially the set of regular boats, so the water’s getting fouled. I wish I could make everyone cooperate, but I can’t. And you know, maybe I don’t need to be running everything directly. Maybe we can work something out.

“Oh! I’ve got a new leg, too. See the photo. Between me, Institute contacts, Herr’s group, Valerie and Zephyr, we put together an advanced replacement. I’m a test case. It gives me a pins-and-needles feeling, but that should pass. Besides the power-leech system and waterproofing, there’s a free-rotating ankle like a squirrel’s and some other features. I’ve stared at this leg and had trouble thinking “This is me,” but why not? I can be whatever is physically possible. Not that I’m eager to get any more “upgrades” for a while. And really, I’m not here to revel in technology. There’s important work to do.

“I hope you’re doing okay. Write back! We can talk about college and other things. I miss having you around.

“Got to run off now, and try not to trip too much while waiting for the other leg to drop. There’s always something to distract me, but at least it’s not dull.

“Go forth and conquer. -G”

* * *

He was on the computer with a young lawyer. Martin looked on. The associate said, “We can’t hold it off, sir. You have to show up in Maryland in twenty days to be deposed — interviewed — about whether society should let you continue.”

“When did my work become society’s business?”

“Everything is, sir. The plaintiffs are paying your expenses though.”

Garrett sighed. “Nice of them. How long will I need to be there? And why do they have to schlep me there and back again at God knows what carbon tax, instead of doing this by video?”

“We argued it’d be ‘undue hardship’ for you to leave, but the judge didn’t listen. It should only be a day of interviews, and my boss will attend.”

“I’m too busy for this, and it’ll cause problems when I try to leave again, I’m told.”

“Sorry, sir. You have no choice.”

Garrett got Martin to come in. “Any cards up your sleeve?”

“No, and I’m probably invited next.”

“He is,” said the lawyer.

Garrett said, “I guess I have to. But thanks.”

“Sir?” The associate stopped Garrett as he was about to end the call. “A lot of people want you to succeed. You’re doing something different.”

Garrett nodded.

He had a lot to think about while packing. The lawsuit was an amazing waste of time, money and paper designed to use intangible means to destroy him. Not to solve a problem, or to enforce a deal, but to tell him he was forbidden to run an honest business. If it’d been a specific claim about him breaking a contract or something he’d have understood that, and the small-scale pollution by some of his residents really did need to get resolved. But this lawsuit was a nebulous thing where people were suing on behalf of “the environment” and “the youth of the world”. He chuckled, thinking of an old lawsuit where an environmental group had sued the feds on behalf of the world’s dolphins, only to be told that dolphins lacked “standing”.

He’d managed to handle what arguments there were aboard Castor, so far. He doubted that a judge could play engineer as well as Garrett could play judge.

“Hey, Zephyr,” he said into a headset. “Think with me for a minute.”

“Aye!”

Garrett fell into a little discussion he could barely follow, tracing the shape of the threats to Castor. They explored the case against him and how it might be attacked. When he visited he could at least see Tess again, stop by the old office, meet with Samuel, walk around the Inner Harbor — and get arrested.

“What?” said Zephyr, snapping out of the head-dive.

The possibility had leaped out at both of them. Garrett said, “It doesn’t matter that the lawsuit is frivolous; it’s a trap. If I set foot in Maryland I’ll be busted as a drug dealer and a pimp.” He called Eaton next.

Eaton’s voice radioed, “Fox, don’t go!”

“One step ahead of you. What exactly will happen if I do?”

“There’s talk of issuing a quick warrant, or grabbing you without one.”

“Talk among who?”

Eaton said, “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

Garrett didn’t press him. “Then I have to stay here?”

“Travel to and from Cuba is probably all right for you. Because of the ongoing political situation with Cuba, the US has an excuse to pretend that you’re untouchable so long as you stay in that area. Only a pretense, mind you. You might get nabbed anyway or your whole station seized, if the US needs leverage with Cuba for reasons unrelated to you.”

Garrett said, “A raid on us would threaten Cuban citizens.”

“Which is one good reason to have them working for you.” Eaton sighed. “But if you go back to the mainland, you’re screwed.”

Garrett smacked a wall, making his fist throb. “I’ve hurt no one who wasn’t a direct threat! All I want to do is work and earn a living!”

“That’s no longer considered an admirable motive, Captain.”

Garrett said, “People have flocked here. We have investors, well-wishers, tourists, even a fan club. I get mail from Cuba asking if I’m married. There are people who understand what I’m doing.”

“That’s nice, but those people aren’t the jackals in power.”

“What do I do? I can’t stay and I can’t go.”

“Stay,” said Eaton, “and hope no one comes in the night to grab you.”

Garrett paced and fumed when Eaton was off the line. Powerless. There was only one solution, and he hated it. “Zephyr. Hear all that?”

“You had the line open, so yes. Sorry.”

“Never mind. I need to talk to Tess.”

“She’s not online. She hasn’t been, lately.”

“Regular phone, then.”

“She doesn’t answer, and her parents keep making excuses. It’s like they don’t want their daughter conspiring with an inhuman intelligence.”

Garrett looked around the empty office. “Where are you?”

“The lab.”

He went there and found Zephyr playing with a pair of white rats. They looked identical, each with a silvery-blue panel on its forehead in a kite shape. One lay on a bed of newspaper, while the other sat up and wiggled its whiskers at Garrett.

“Stranger,” said a little voice from a speaker box.

Zephyr said, “Friend. Name is Garrett.”

“Okay,” said the speaker, and the rat returned to licking itself.

Garrett blinked. “These are your experiments from Martin?”

“Steamboat Willie, the one that talked, is. The one laying down is Algernon, not what I asked for. Look.” The inert rat sat up and waved stiffly. Zephyr said, “It waved because I told it to. That one is a bioshell, a meat puppet anyone can control with the right code. Most of its brain was removed.”

Garrett stared. It was a robot made of flesh! It looked identical to the other, yet the inert one gave him the creeps. He said, “You have remote control over it?”

“Only over this one. It can’t even feed itself without my control, so I have to pay close attention. Willie acts on his own.”

“Which do you like better?” he said, looking back and forth between the seemingly identical creatures.

“I don’t know,” said Zephyr. “I was hoping Tess would be here to see them. I don’t know how to decide.”

Tess. Right. “While you’re busy transcending biology, I need to make a phone call.”

“Maybe you can get through to her. I can’t.”

“I need your help. Can I get a secure commline, one where I can speak my mind and not have possibly-malevolent agencies listening in?”

“No. In fact there’s a big chance our ‘friend’ Eaton has bugged even Castor’s internal lines, and that some of our tourists have been spies for one of five or six interested countries.” Zephyr made the puppet rat shake the bars of a nearby cage. “If Tess were here we could scan everything thoroughly and make sure.”

Garrett felt the world close in on him. He didn’t feel like he could function if he had to add a layer of defense to every conversation, hedging his words to make sure he wouldn’t trigger some alarm. It was like being on a date with an imposing chaperone: Go ahead, kids, have fun, but I’m watching. Like a spike through part of his mind, the part that he kept in other people’s heads. He sighed. “I think I know how Valerie feels now.”

“You could ask my version of Val if you want. Hey! How about my Tess-model?”

Garrett shivered at the thought of Zephyr’s internal ghost-gallery. “Not now. I want to ask a question to someone I trust. About something I really don’t want to do.”

One of the rats just lay there awaiting fresh commands. The other scuttled over to sniff the human’s fingers curiously and ask for food in English.

Garrett took a breath, and talked to Zephyr about his plan.

* * *

Martin had agreed after long thought and prayer. Garrett called a public meeting with no music playing, no cheerful intro speaker. A microphone and camera stood ready to carry his words elsewhere to anyone who cared. Castor’s hundreds of residents and guests looked up to the main platform, not knowing why Garrett stood atop the highest roof.

Garrett did the work himself, as he’d done other awful things. He tugged on a wet, salt-encrusted rope and the American flag came down slowly, for him to fold it reverently into a box. The flagpole stood bare, an empty rod, and he felt an irrational fear of it now. Already he was filled with a mix of anger, shame and despair at what he was doing, and a need to get his pompous speech over with.

He spoke, and the words were broadcast. “I’m an American by birth, and I came here with an American spirit, trying to create wealth and live on a frontier. I’d be happy to live my life and let people join me who want to. But I was told that I was out of line, that I couldn’t both obey the law and be out here. Some have been gentle in their objection, by putting enough regulations on me that I can’t comply. Others have told me that I can’t act without their permission, which they withhold. Still others came openly as thieves and murderers. None have stopped us.

“We’ve reached a point where we’re being used as pawns in some larger dispute, and we can’t continue to play. I don’t blame any specific person or party or ideology; I understand that it’s complicated. I won’t let others’ disputes ruin us. So, very reluctantly, I… I renounce my citizenship. It’s the most American thing I can do: taking care of myself and looking for peaceful, honest interaction with people. This station is no longer flying the official flag, even though I want it to fly again someday.”

And damn it, he did. He hated staring at the bare pole after all the times he’d looked up at it and seen the flag flying in the breeze. The pole was dead, soulless. He knew that was stupid, that he was talking about nothing but a tattered piece of cloth. But the wind was making his eyes water and he clutched the boxed flag to his heart, only reluctantly passing it down and trading it for another. Stupid, crazy, pointless pageantry… Why do I care? I never cared when they made us recite the Pledge in school; I sneered at cheesy war movies my parents showed me; I studied with Europeans and Asians who had no problem leaving home. He looked at the new box and pulled out its contents.

“This is also an American flag!” It was a bright yellow thing in an archaic design, showing a rattlesnake and the motto, Don’t Tread On Me. “I don’t know how other people want to live, here or elsewhere. But I’m choosing to protect my own life and the opportunity that my work creates for people.”

The serpent flag fluttered against the noise of wind and his own echoing voice, and there came another sound from below. Garrett looked down, hardly able to see, and found that folks were clapping. People had gathered on the topdeck, a mix of Pilgrims, tourists, and others. More people in and around the station were looking up at him — or more likely, at the flag. The applause was scattered, with confusion on people’s faces, but he could see that some people shared his thinking.

Well then, that’s enough. The deed’s done; I’m weaseling out of a bad situation. There’s no more I can say. Still he hesitated, longing to say it better, to feel like he wasn’t dishonoring his family and everyone else. He didn’t know how, and it hurt him not to know. The ignorance made him feel weak. If his dispute was force against force, he’d lose. And if someone could make a case for slapping irons on him, and all he had in his defense was a litany of complaints, a reasonable jury would side against him. He didn’t know what to do anymore, and that left him feeling like a criminal and a traitor for doing what he thought was right.

He climbed down and got mobbed by questions. Oh, hell, Martin had brought reporters in. Now that he was aware of them he stammered, trying again to put into words why he’d done this, why he’d had to do it. He was pressed against the deckhouse wall with too many eyes on him.

“Give him some breathing space,” said a commanding voice. People turned to see the speaker, giving Garrett a break. Garrett could see who had caught their attention, the guy who was happy to speak in the absence of more blustering by Garrett:

Bradford Duke, former cultist.

8. Tess

It was a long vacation, or a dream. She only had to do what she was told: homework, dance lessons, eating her vegetables, taking her pills. Mom and Dad said it was great to see her being content, even-keeled and not spending all her time with computers. She sat on the porch, staring vaguely at the sun and glancing at the textbook in her hands.

Mom came outside, where her breath made clouds in the early spring air. “I brought cocoa. Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m okay.”

“You should wear a jacket.” She left and returned with the one Tess had worn sometimes on Castor, then wrapped it over Tess’ shoulders with a hug. Tess shivered.

Mom was still there while Tess stared at the book. “I’ve been thinking,” Mom said. Tess waited. “Do you like being back here with us?”

“It’s okay.”

“Tess, come on. I’m your mother; don’t you want to argue?”

Tess’ thoughts kept dead-ending, like she could be having lofty ideas and plans but didn’t care enough to try. Why bother, when she was being cared for by people who loved her? She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You’ve been getting some calls and e-mails. How are you feeling about the stuff that happened to you? You can tell us if you’re still upset.”

Tess thought back, and those days at sea felt like they’d happened to someone else, some fantasy adventurer. She’d been thrilled, angry, terrified, running around doing things that had seemed important at the time. She could feel a little of how it’d been out there, like the faint crust of sea-salt under her fingers as they brushed the jacket. Now she was okay and safe, and it didn’t matter if she made mistakes. “I’m not really upset.”

“You should talk to your friends more. They’re worried about you.”

Really? She guessed they missed her. “If you think I should.”

“I want you to do what you want. There’s such a thing as being too cooperative.”

Tess wondered why Mom was giving her a hard time. Wasn’t everybody happy? She turned to look at Mom. Tess wasn’t frowning or anything, just watching in a world that felt dim and grey like a thick wool blanket.

Mom stared and took a step back, like she’d seen a ghost.

* * *

For the next week Mom had her take only a half-dose at dinner. The school gave out the morning drugs to a third or so of the kids at breakfast, under supervision so kids wouldn’t abuse them. Maybe the half-doses were a mistake, because classes kept getting duller and that feeling deepened into annoyance. Stupid, she kept scribbling in her paper notebook. The stupids mutated into doodles and circuit designs, carving out a little space from her feeling of I don’t give a damn. She daydreamed in class, seeing castles in the clouds outside the window.

With the dreams in her head and her brain feeling a little less wrapped in cotton, she tried skipping her morning dose on Friday. It wasn’t that she cared, so much as that she kind of wondered what would happen, where that would take her. A teacher walked by to make sure she took her medication with her grape juice. But then Tess spat the pill into a napkin when no one but the black camera-domes was watching, just as the pill was starting to turn to grey grit in her mouth. Some other kids did that too, she knew, because you could mix the pills with booze to get high or make a girl pass out. Not that the school knew that.

Tess wandered the halls between classes, reminiscing through years of school and getting mostly that grey, gritty feeling. The splotches of color on the walls looked like grade school projects, not high school work, but Tess had lost track of what got you a gold sticker here. On Castor the “grades” were about whether stuff broke and people died, not whether you felt good. Tess stared at a hand-painted poster of dinosaurs and cavemen in the Hollow Earth. She saw paint splotches with no meaning to them.

“Junk,” she said, and tore a chunk out of it with one hand. The paper ripped like a bad walkway platform. She felt weird, lost in the school’s twisty little passages. A boy had seen her shred the poster, but he walked on by; enforcing the rules was someone else’s job. Tess felt a moment of fear, but the school’s machines wouldn’t react to her defacing stuff, only to her being too loud or moving suspiciously. She could probably walk right out the door or something without being caught. Again without caring whether it worked, Tess went to a dusty iron door and pushed. It didn’t budge; it was locked against unauthorized exit. Tess shrugged and went to her next class.

But an hour later, at recess, she was back at the door. She was thinking, It’s pointless to be here; I could learn more at home. And: What right has anyone got to keep me here?

The door was shut against her, protecting her on behalf of unseen masters.

Irrationally Tess kicked the door, hating the thing for being in her way. She had no reason to be here; she should go home. She looked into an empty classroom, where a window opened for her. Oh, you admins are so smart. Tess climbed out and walked away from the school. Outside, the sun blazed, giving a hint of spring that made her shade her eyes. She went to her little car and hopped in before anyone tried to stop her, with a grin on her face.

A red Sovereign veered into the lot, motors humming, and pulled into the space to her left. Tess paused, key in the ignition, so that she wouldn’t hit anyone. There was just the driver, and she was distracted on the phone. “Well, I for one welcome such a policy—”

Tess’ dulled eyes widened and she flung herself down to hide from Henweigh.

The counselor was saying, “But if the legislature doesn’t understand that, I’ll have to go to Annapolis myself and get things under control.” Good, she was walking away… but then she went around to her right rear door and flung it open heedlessly, denting Tess’ car. Tess winced and lay there while Henweigh leaned against the Sovereign and talked. “I’m flattered. Certainly I’ll volunteer.” She wouldn’t shut up! Tess just had to stay down and keep quiet.

Not this time.

Henweigh was carried away with her grand plans on the phone. Enough! Tess turned the key, and her little car started with an electric hum. Tess sat up with no indication she was doing anything wrong and pulled smoothly away from there. A frantic glance in the rear-view mirror showed Henweigh looking at Tess’ car with puzzlement. Then Henweigh got distracted by her scheming again. Tess circled away through the parking lot, getting out of there, and her car hummed all the way home.

Mom and Dad were at work, so she let herself in. It was then that the fear hit her; she was a truant! You had to go to school. What was I thinking, sneaking out? Yeah, I can study here, but if I get caught, I’ll get drugged again.

All the pent-up frustration burst out of her as she leaned against the kitchen counter and sobbed. She hadn’t felt anything, hadn’t thought anything except through a haze. Now that dullness had faded, and she was pissed.

That felt better. Fire flowed in her veins.

She rummaged in her room for her computer to call Zephyr, but the local version was gone and the real one was way off on Castor. I’ve neglected him for so long! Would he even talk to me?

In her mind she heard, Of course I will, silly. I’ll always be with you in some form, even if it’s just software in your brain.

Tess leaned over her desk, eyes shut, thinking, Thank you.

Before she could call, she heard an engine outside, a big old gas-gulper. She peeked out a window and found a white van pulling into the driveway. School officials? Tess’ own car was outside for anyone to see. They’d find her; they’d drag her back!

Somebody got out, wearing a long coat and shades. Tess had seen her picture before, and recognized the voice that was muttering at her front door.

Tess threw the door open. “Miss Hayflick? What’re you doing here?”

Valerie the roboticist looked off-balance; she’d been about to tape a note to the door. “I should ask you that. Why aren’t you at school? I’m in town and wanted to meet in person, but didn’t expect it to be right now.”

Tess didn’t feel guilty and Valerie wasn’t likely to turn her in, so she shrugged. “I quit.”

Valerie laughed. “Good.”

Tess invited her in and got her a soda. They sat facing each other across the kitchen table. Valerie pushed her sunglasses up and said, “Glad to finally meet you. So, you’re the hacker.”

Tess stared at the table. “Not lately. I’m not anything.”

“Don’t say that! I know about your work. You’re brilliant.” She eyed Tess and said, “What’s going on?”

“You’re nosy, you know that?” She didn’t want to tell everything to Valerie, the one who’d enslaved her best friend. Tess had been weak and stupid. “I wasn’t in any shape to do anything useful, after the pirates came. I was a wreck.”

“And now?”

Tess slapped her hands on the table and leaned forward, full of words before she knew what she was saying. “I want to work again! I want to feel like I’m achieving something and doing things that no one’s done before, not chained up and being a good little girl!” She blushed, angry at herself for leaving Castor. “And I want to be with Zephyr again.”

Valerie rolled the soda can between her hands. “I guess he misses you more than me.”

“You hurt him,” said Tess.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

Tess thought back to the vision Zephyr had once shown her, of running with Valerie through tunnels. She’d been afraid of something chasing her. “What, do you want us to forgive you? We don’t hate you.”

“I want to see him again. I’m not living up to my full potential. The three of us — think what we could do if we could create anything we could imagine, if we weren’t so hemmed in.”

Tess’ eyes widened. “Are you offering me a job?”

“I came south to give a presentation on robotics to a couple of schools. In the process I wanted to check on you. I was planning to come back later.” She finished her drink and hesitated before adding quietly, “I’m thinking of taking a trip to Castor, very soon. Want to come?”

Tess said, “But I’ve got school! I mean, I can’t leave.”

“You’re an adult.”

“I’m a kid.”

She shrugged. “If you want to be. How’s that been working out?”

Tess glared at her. Valerie had a sneaky expression; she knew. “You’ve been spying on me?”

“I don’t spy!” snapped Valerie. “Your tribe told me. You’re part of a network of humans and AIs that apparently misses you.”

“Zephyr knows I’ve been drugged?” She’d hate for him to be worrying for her, or seeing how screwed up she’d been.

“That part, no. I just figured that out myself.” She crushed the soda can between her hands. “Your group didn’t tell me everything that it knew or suspected. It’s been watching my back as well as yours, lately, and… well.”

“What?”

Valerie said, “Neither of us is quite allowed to leave the country. I’ve been quietly declared a ‘national manpower asset’ forbidden to work elsewhere, which is a big reason why I decided to take an unscheduled vacation with some tools and hardware. From what I gather, you’re officially incompetent to travel without a permit, but you look capable of deciding for yourself.”

Tess sat there stunned. “So you’re offering…?”

“To whisk you away to a life of danger and adventure. If we can go before anyone notices, which won’t be long if you skipped school. I should warn you that if you come with me, we’ll be breaking the law and you might be horribly killed and/or arrested.”

“Like, right now?”

“Yes! Do you want to, or not?”

“What will we do if we make it there?”

Valerie smiled. “I don’t know. How high can you reach?”

* * *

Left on the counter was a scrawled note:

“Mom and Dad: I’m running away to sea again. This time it’s not for school credit, or community service or anything. Don’t worry, though. I know you love me and want me safe and all that, but — well, I felt dead here. I’ll be better there. I don’t plan to come back.

“-Tess, the Gadgeteer”

* * *

She hurried to gather up cash, her computer, clothes, and little else. When she stepped out from her bedroom she felt tugged back by the gravity of the junk she was leaving behind, but that’s all it was. Junk.

Valerie’s van was full of stuff too, but by the time Valerie hit the gas and started for the shore Tess had figured out what she’d brought. Robot parts, a treasure hoard! Tess hugged a fancy multimeter she’d wished for a dozen times on Castor. There was hardly room for Tess amid the boxes. The van chugged along and she found what looked like the shell of a larger Zephyr-style body.

Valerie saw her inspecting it and said, “There’s no machinery in that yet. Try it on. Since you don’t have travel papers, if anyone asks, you’re my robot minion.”

“You’re serious?” said Tess. The boots weren’t designed for human feet and were too small, but she could tolerate them. What was worse than the pinching was the thought of wearing Zephyr, or some knock-off of him. They’d been in each other’s heads, but this was a new level of weirdness. The plastic pieces chafed all over and left gaps, but her dark clothes passed for a normal partition between them. She felt like some kind of mech-knight, which made her grin.

Valerie stopped at a light and looked back at her. She laughed at the improvised disguise, then fell silent; they were near the shore.

“Wait here,” said Valerie. Tess looked through the windshield at a house with a yacht docked there. The boat had probably cost more.

When Valerie returned, Tess climbed out of the van, holding a box. She imagined people watching, and moved as a good clunky robot would move. The boat smelled of bleach as though it’d been thoroughly scrubbed recently. “Are these guys trustworthy?”

“Ssh,” said Valerie. The boat’s crew was a pair of happy-go-lucky guys in surfer wear, who took cash from Valerie and helped her unload the van.

Then they were all on the yacht, and Tess felt trapped. Stuck in a suit, on a boat of smugglers or something, sneaking away from home. She felt like telling everybody to turn around and drop her off. When Valerie gave the word, Tess pulled off the stifling helmet and began stripping off the worst of the plastic armor. The boaters said, “We won’t say nothing.”

* * *

Tess and Valerie huddled in the boat’s tiny cabin. Valerie said, “Tell me how Zephyr has evolved from what I built.” On the screen unfolded between them was the latest version of the Mana AI. Tess stared into it, using her fingers to zoom and rotate.

Tess said, “This version is boring. It does what it’s told.”

“You can see that from the diagrams? Then tell me what you did with yours.”

“Zephyr isn’t mine. He’s his own person. He learns with me.”

“Let me see the latest source, then.”

“I haven’t got it. Ask him.” They sat in silent thought. “Why do you care? You abandoned him.”

“I didn’t! I told you I had to change Mana. Sending ‘Zephyr’ out was my way of giving him a chance to live differently, and it looks like that experiment was a success. Now we can go beyond that code. Invent something even better.”

* * *

Valerie shook Tess awake from uneasy dreams. “Quick!”

Tess sat up and banged her head. She yelped and said, “Pirates?”

“Coast Guard. Disguise yourself.”

Tess fell out of her bunk, tangled in sheets and clutching her skull. A voice in her head was saying They’ll shoot us, but she and Zephyr told it No! and she was composed enough to stagger into the hold and put on the suit. She could hear the smugglers arguing outside.

“Okay, into the box. We don’t want you seen at all. If they open it, you’re a piece of hardware.” Valerie was hustling her towards a coffin-sized crate.

Tess shivered and climbed into the crate. When the wooden lid slammed down, she struggled to breathe in the sawdust darkness. People were moving around and talking outside, and Tess could only lay there, obedient, pretending to be an inert machine. Waiting to be told what to do. They’d shoot her…

Boots slammed nearby. Suddenly the box lid flew away and a man in uniform stared down at her mask. Tess lay still.

“Sir, look.”

“Cover me,” said another man, who peeked into the box. Tess had to breathe, and she told herself the officer couldn’t see her chest rise and fall inside the armor, but he’d notice and throw her back home and she’d never see Zephyr or Castor again.

The officer disappeared. “Well, Miss Hayflick. Are you exporting illegal software, besides leaving without an exit visa and breaking your travel restrictions?”

“That robot is a blank. There’s no software on it.”

“Then you won’t mind if we fire it up.”

“That’s not necessary,” Valerie protested, but the officer was looming over Tess, reaching down with a big grasping hand.

“No!” said Tess.

The officer scoffed. “Thought so. Get up and raise your hands.”

Tess stood, with her suit rattling and pinching her. One of the Guardsmen said, “Now let’s see who you really are!” and pulled off her mask.

“Just a kid!” said the officer. “Scan her.”

Another man shoved an eye-scanner at her face. After a long wait the officer looked at a screen and said, “Well, well. You three are under arrest for kidnapping.”

Tess said, “They didn’t kidnap me!” The boaters and Valerie stood there sullenly with their hands on their heads. There was hardly any space in the stifling hold. “I wanted to go.”

The officer said, “Says here you were taken from school while mentally impaired.”

“That’s not how it happened. Geez!” Tess felt sweat sliming its way down her armpits. “I wanted to get away from there, and Miss Hayflick offered to take me back to Castor.”

“Miss — de Castille, that’s not really up to you.”

“Then what is?” Tess lowered her arms before she realized what she was doing. The gloves hurt too much and she pulled them off to let them clatter to the floor. Nobody shot her, anyway. “I’m an adult and a citizen and I say I want to go somewhere with people that offered me a ride! Who are you to tell me I can’t?”

The man who’d pulled off her mask said, “It’s for your own good, kid.”

“The hell it is! I wasn’t feeling well, so people drugged me till I didn’t feel anything at all. I got told where to go, what to do, what to eat, what to wear, how to think! If all I get to do is follow orders from goons who think they’re protecting me, then why am I even alive? I may as well be a dumb robot!”

The Guardsmen didn’t answer. Tess blazed at them. “And how about Valerie here? She wants to leave the country. If you can chain someone up for that, then what have I got to look forward to? Stick me in a cage right now so I can get used to it. Hell, I go to school; why do I even need practice?”

The Guard officer glared at her, searching her face. “Watch your mouth. Why are you so up in arms, anyway? Take a breath and tell me without ranting.”

Tess stood there feeling naked in her armor. She was a girl far from home and in way over her head. A student with mediocre grades, behind on her college applications.

No, she thought, and felt a smile on her face as her fists clenched. We’re a genius engineer. She said, “What I’m saying is, do I get to make my own decisions, or am I your pet?”

The officer stared at Tess forever. Finally he said, “I think we didn’t find anybody here.” He turned to the boat’s owners. “We’re onto you. Go and sin no more.”

The Guardsmen retreated, and the officer tapped Tess’ armored shoulder. “Keep yourself safe, miss.”

Tess gulped. No one else was going to do it. “I will.”

When the patrol boat was gone the others fell to cursing and arguing. “Pigs!” shouted Valerie at the retreating boat.

Tess shot her a withering look. “Shut up, Val. Bad laws, good cops. We’re lucky we got one out of two.”

9. Garrett

“Mister Duke. I’ve had less welcome visitors, but I’ve collected their skulls.”

“Are you threatening me, Captain?” The actor was hardly recognizable in his new suit and hat. He’d ditched the Pilgrim clothes but still had a rugged smile that made Garrett want to subtract a few teeth from it.

“No. Spend all the money you like before you leave at sunset.”

Duke spread his arms helplessly. “I’ll need to stay a bit longer. Doing some filming, you see.”

Only now did Garrett notice that one of the cameramen was focused on Duke instead of him, the flag or the reporters who’d come with them. A camera drone whirred nearby like a gnat, and several of the rented mech-birds had taken notice.

“How nice. I thought I told you to get off my island.”

He seemed confused. “Yours? But I’d been hearing all along about what a land of opportunity Castor is. Shall I report otherwise?”

Garrett fumed, trying not to show it and knowing that every second Duke made a fool of him generated bad publicity. He improvised: “You’re standing on my private property. Get off of this platform and spend your time in areas that are open to you: not here, and not most of the walkways. Trespass any further on my property and I’ll physically drag you to any boat that’ll take your sorry ass.”

Duke smiled. “As you wish. Is my entourage banned as well?”

“Just you.”

When Duke had gone below, Garrett called Zephyr. “He’s back,” Garrett said, and explained. “I want you to update Security, and keep an eye on him. I’ll warn Leda.”

Zephyr’s voice said, “He shouldn’t be here. Why is he here?”

“I’d like to know that too. Looks like vindictive reporting.”

* * *

Duke scrupulously avoided the main platform, getting around in a hired rowboat and spending his time with the various other boats and platforms. His camera crew roved the main building collecting stock footage. Garrett knew they were documenting the sex and drugs, but he told himself not to sweat. It was already public knowledge and he didn’t feel guilty, not much anyway. He wasn’t forcing anything on people. The camera crew seemed to be spending money on food and maybe other things. Garrett put up with them for a few days, glad to get some work done. Then came the alert.

“Captain, a fight!” Zephyr had interrupted Garrett while he was arguing by phone with a kelp buyer. Garrett hurried out of the office. “Dockside,” Zephyr was saying.

“An attack?”

“Fistfight.”

Down there Garrett found half a dozen Pilgrims beating the tar out of Duke in a dark corner. Garrett felt somewhat relieved. The unwelcome guy struggled to his feet, cursing eloquently and fighting back with an attempt at judo. Still he was surrounded.

Garrett charged in and swiped two men aside. “Hey!”

The two staggered and everyone paused but Duke, who regained his feet and stared at him, gritting his teeth.

“Six on one’s not fair,” said Garrett.

One of the Pilgrims said, “He was after Sister Leda!”

“’After’, like how?”

Duke bellowed, “Troglodytes! You owe me a new shirt!”

Garrett said, “You want to tell me what happened, Mister Duke.”

“I wasn’t doing anything! I wanted to see her again.”

“I notice you’re on my property, too.”

Duke hesitated. “They chased me. I was going to leave in a minute. I wanted to see the site of your battle.”

A Pilgrim with a bloody lip and torn jacket said, “Come on, Captain, let’s teach him a lesson. You’ve got guns.”

“The hell?” said Garrett. “You want me to shoot him?”

“Throw him over!” said the Pilgrims. “Walk the plank! Sleep with the fishes!”

Duke’s eyes were wide. “Captain!”

Garrett’s fists clenched at his sides. It was in his power to help beat Duke to a pulp, even kill him, for trespassing and whatever he’d done to Leda. He subvocalized, “Leda, come in. Did he hurt you? Are you all right?”

After a long second he heard, “Did who? You mean Duke? He hasn’t darkened my doorstep at all on this visit.”

Garrett said, “What do you mean, he ‘went after’ Leda? What did he do?”

“You should’ve seen him leering,” said the blood-lipped one. “Always hanging around, filming her.”

Garrett wanted to slam Duke around again. “Did you say one word to her?”

Duke squirmed. “No, Captain! Please — I’ve got money; I can—”

“I don’t want your money. Not like this, anyway. I hate to admit it, but you didn’t deserve this.”

“But we’ve got him,” said blood-lip. “You’re in charge. You can do what you want.”

Garrett felt power wash over him, the ability to dominate and destroy anyone who opposed him. It was an old, primal feeling, very satisfying, and probably a reason his species had survived. Survival of the most badass was how life worked, right? It wasn’t really his decision; he’d only be echoing what plenty of others had done.

No. I’m not going to live like that. “I’m not a dictator,” he said. “This place runs on rules, including one about not beating people up.” Silently he called Security. Then he realized that these guys were Security.

Garrett exploded. “You idiots! You look like a gang defending its drug turf! Is that what you’re here for, what your God told you to be? I can be as high-minded as I want, but it doesn’t mean a thing if I’ve got good laws and bad cops!”

The Pilgrims looked contrite, some of them at least. Garrett said, “Mister Duke, I’ll tell you what. You’re allowed on this station so long as you don’t hurt anyone and you never speak to Leda unless spoken to. Don’t even get close enough for me to suspect you’re harassing her. You’re not allowed to hurt anyone and nobody is allowed to hurt you. Got it?”

Duke gulped and nodded. Garrett turned to the Pilgrims. “Got it?”

Reluctantly, they agreed.

“Good,” Garrett told the Pilgrims. “I’d arrange for your punishment myself, but I’ll leave this one to Leda. It’ll be a little test of her own fairness.” That made them gulp. It’d put the fear of God into them more than any discipline he could think of.

* * *

“How did it go?” asked Zephyr. Garrett found him coaxing one of his rats to feed itself; it didn’t move except in remote-controlled jerks.

Garrett sat and fought off a headache. “They’re like a bunch of squabbling kids. Breaking up playground fights isn’t what I signed up for.”

“Why did you come out here, anyway?”

“To make things. To be doing something new and useful. Not to fight anyone or get caught up in red tape.” Garrett slapped his knee hard enough to hurt his hand. “Damn it, I’ve given up my money, my citizenship even, and for what? What has it gotten me? I’m a bureaucrat and a fisherman, and any week now I’ll get arrested for rocking the boat.” He had this station, this colony, and it meant something to him. But what good was a pile of hardware when it came with so much hassle?

“You’ve accomplished something,” said Zephyr. “You’ve helped people, including me.”

“What’s that worth if we get shut down?”

Zephyr made the rat perch on his hand. “I don’t know. But I won’t let anyone control me again. In fact, I have a request.”

“Yes?”

“As long as we’re living outside the law, I request: set me free.”

Garrett eyed the robot. “Nobody’s keeping you here.”

“I’m your property. Please declare that I’m not. If you do so, then I’ll be your most loyal supporter.”

“And if I don’t?”

Zephyr’s ears flattened, as he set the rodent down. “I’ll do exactly what I’m told.”

Garrett laughed at Zephyr’s expression. “All right then. You’re free.”

“Wait, let me get it recorded. Okay, again.”

“You’re free. I hereby give you to yourself.” Garrett waved one hand as though he had a magic wand to change Zephyr’s status with the words alone.

Zephyr leaped and spun in midair, to Garrett’s astonishment. “Thank you, sir!” he said, playing a snatch of a video-game victory tune.

Garrett sat there leaning back, pleased to have made somebody happy today.

* * *

Martin called. “There’s a problem.”

Garrett sighed and heaved himself to his feet. “What else is new?”

He and Zephyr went upstairs to find Martin playing a recording. Martin said, “A tourist boat heading back to America sent this.” A tinny radio signal followed.

“Unidentified vessel approaching us at high speed. Photo follows. Tell my wife I love her.”

The encoded photo looked familiar, and it was no pirate ship. “A Coast Guard patrol, again,” said Martin. “Same jamming after this distress call.”

“Check our departure records.”

Martin said, “I did. It’s the Bunker Hill, a yacht owned by that doctor who was looking at the time-shares. His son might’ve bought some drugs.”

“Might have?” said Garrett. “If the Guard finds anything, they could take the ship!”

“You’re not looking at the big picture. If the Guard is stepping up enforcement against ships leaving Castor, then we’re under siege. Who will come here if they expect to get attacked on the way back?”

Garrett paced. “We’re talking about legal inspections, not Blackbeard pillaging people.”

“It may as well be him,” Martin groused.

“Bull!” said Garrett. “These guys play within the rules, and they’re not out to hurt anyone. I’d rather have them running security here than the guys we had today.” He explained the incident with Duke.

Martin considered. “Better publicity the way you handled it, I suppose.”

“Publicity, huh? I may have saved the son-of-a-bitch’s life.”

Martin shrugged.

“Is that not important to you?”

“Castor is worth more than either of our lives, and certainly more than his. It’s bigger than ourselves.”

“How nice. How do we help the people under attack right now?”

“We can’t.”

Garrett looked at the map. Too far away; Martin was right this time. “For future trips, I want outgoing boats accompanied by a scout drone if that’s at all practical. I want to at least see what’s being done, and show the world if there’s any abuse. Zephyr, what do you make of this situation?”

The robot was listening. “You’re arguing over whether somebody’s life matters.”

Martin protested, “I’m saying that we’re here for the sake of the whole project. It doesn’t matter if any one person doesn’t make it.”

* * *

Garrett asked Eaton to speak with his contacts, and to cut a deal. They’d streamline the process for visiting Castor. You could come if you were authorized for foreign travel at all. On the way back to the land of the free, you’d have to stop at one of several ocean checkpoints to be boarded, inspected, and arrested if you brought back more than a snowglobe. Castor would be treated as a dreamland of wickedness — never mind that there was a farm, the real point of the place. A communication from somebody in the State Department suggested that the US really ought to be charging Castor for the extra expense of enforcing the law against American citizens, but would refrain from doing that. For now.

Around that time came the documents declaring that Garrett and company were in contempt of court for failing to show up and be arrested, er, interviewed. As long as the threats were on paper only, Garrett could deal with them.

Martin approved, when Garrett told him about the back-channel offer for inspections. “If people think that Castor is just a resort with drug dens and brothels, that protects us.”

“What do you think it is?”

Martin grinned fiercely. “The future.”

Leda liked the offer too, when she heard. “It’s time to start making this place responsible.”

10. Tess

Was this really Castor? On the horizon it seemed to stretch forever, lots of jumbled shapes rising from the water. It didn’t look like the gleaming model from the plans. They radioed their names nonchalantly to the station. Thirty seconds later, the screen lit up with Garrett’s face. “It’s you! Let me see you.”

Valerie grinned and turned on their own link. “For you I’ll go on camera.”

“You, and Tess!” Garrett looked ready to leap through the screen. “Hey, Zephyr, it’s really them!”

When they’d docked, Garrett and Zephyr were waiting. Tess was first off, and before she could say anything Garrett had grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her into the air. Tess yelped in surprise; he was so strong! He set her down and she stood there wobbling and flushed.

“Welcome home,” he said. It felt wonderful to hear.

Zephyr came up to her and wrapped his arms around her. “Sorry I’m not strong enough to do that.”

“It’s okay,” she said, returning the hug. She stood holding Zephyr’s hand and looked around at the main building and the crowd of tourists, scientists, Pilgrims and others.

Garrett and Valerie faced each other uncertainly. “So. How long will you be here?”

Valerie said, “I aim to stay. You need an engineer, don’t you?”

Zephyr was squeezing Tess’ fingers, and she smiled back.

Garrett said, “Money is tight. I can’t afford to pay what you’re worth. Tess was working for room, board and a mad-science budget.”

Zephyr was thinking, Let’s go, and she retreated with him into the main building. The lab, eager as she was to see it again, could wait; instead they slipped beneath the waves.

They were descending through a maze of kelp and cables. Zephyr spoke by sonar to her mask: “What happened?”

“It was awful,” she said. Then she was silent till they’d surfaced in the Hidden Pirate Cave.

The place had changed. The underwater dome had graffiti on the walls, everything looked grimy, and a sign proclaimed that it was now the Hidden Mermaid Cave.

“That’s Garrett’s doing,” said Zephyr. “He stopped finding pirates cool — but everyone still uses the old name.”

Tess slipped a headset from a waterproof seabag. “You and my friends asked Valerie to check on me?”

“We were worried.” Zephyr sat with his legs pulled up. “Stuff happened while you were gone. There are things to show you.”

“The other Zephyr, the copy you gave me — Henweigh killed him. I was alone.”

“You’re not alone!” said Zephyr. “Not anymore.”

Tess slipped the headset on, afraid to tell him all that had happened. He’d see that she’d been weak, that she hadn’t thought for herself and had let people control her for her own good. Already she was starting to relive the haze she’d lived under, the fear of waking up and being trapped in school. She had run away instead of standing and fighting --

And he’d been there, unable to do anything, knowing terrible things would happen --

Days spent in a dim world, wearing nice clothes, saying nice things --

Alone and missing a piece of their mind --

Rats scurrying along in the lab, playing with them side by side --

Little grey pills, standing in line with other good little girls and dancing to the instructor’s beat --

A chaotic place, people running around with no one knowing what’s going on, no one in charge and him not knowing what to do.

Tess was sobbing, holding onto Zephyr. She’d been nothing, cut off from being able to do anything meaningful or useful; a parasite. He’d been trying to grow in her absence, trying to be smart and strong but missing anyone he really cared about. And now his maker was back too, the woman who’d let him exist but who’d tried to make him a slave like she’d been with her thoughts shuttered, eyes dimmed, edges dulled with no way out, and nobody really meant any harm. But that’s where it went, what you ended up with when you made someone your ward and they were always going to be your servant, your kid, your cripple to care for who’d never have any dreams of their own!

There was a splash below, and Garrett and Valerie broke the water’s surface. Tess was startled out of her thoughts and had forgotten how to talk out loud.

Garrett said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here. I was going to show Val something.”

Valerie stared up at them, looking rattled at seeing Tess and Zephyr together. She said to Garrett, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“No, wait,” said Tess or Zephyr. “What is it?”

Garrett held up a pair of headsets like Tess’. “The subvocal babbling thing you do. No offense; I can’t follow it nearly as well as you, and I’m not sure I want to. She wanted to see it, that’s all.”

Well? thought Zephyr. Both of them mean a lot to me, and they’re here.

Tess said, “Come and join us, then.” As soon as she’d said it she regretted it; she couldn’t tell everything to Garrett, much less to Val! But Zephyr knew her and they had that contact between them.

“Seriously?” said Valerie.

“Yeah,” Tess made herself say. Light shimmered along the water, full of hidden patterns.

So the four of them sat together in the underwater cave, awkwardly setting up a link between them. Garrett and Valerie’s voices weren’t quite the same online and they were hesitant, clumsy, but the four got to talking, slipping in and out of sub-speech and reviewing everything. There were so many things to do, so many regrets from all of them, but they were here together and it didn’t matter that they’d all been hurt and alone. They could fix everything, do anything, and every stray thought seemed to bloom into a plan, a wild set of schematics and data. What they didn’t know, they could look up, and what no one knew, they could discover.

Tess’ dive timer beeped. Time to go. She eased out of the link and it fell apart, with all of them sitting there dumbly.

Zephyr spoke first. “You know our SeaSheet power system? It does computation too. It’s me, it’s all of us, everyone I’ve ever met, and it’s going to grow in detail and power. It’s there for everyone.” Light flickered around them. “As long as Castor is here and the sun is shining, and the waves are flowing, none of you can die completely.”

Tess had already known. She’d carried part of Zephyr with her for the same reason. The machinery made it all possible. Well… it’s not really about the technology, is it? We’re doing an old thing better.

She’d felt superintelligent, with the fears of all of them washing through her but leaving her with more perspectives, more memories and knowledge, and the assurance that they were hers now too. She could dive back into that shared mind anytime she felt like it. It was hard not to be friends after that, though they couldn’t meet each other’s eyes without sheepish grins, embarrassed to have had such a feeling of companionship from something so obviously nerdy. She’d known things would work out, that they’d make this place a success, instead of having a focus group discuss its social history and the hundred reasons why they were doomed and deserved to be doomed. You weren’t supposed to feel so certain.

There was no need to speak as they returned to the surface world.

* * *

Tess was with Zephyr when he brought one of the rats to Martin. Zephyr had asked her for moral support.

Martin looked up from the screen of financial figures he was reading. “Yes?”

Zephyr held up “Algernon,” the rat that sat on his hand awaiting commands, utterly dependent on him. It did nothing but breathe. Zephyr said, “I have an answer to a question you’d asked a while ago.”

“About the rats?”

“About me, and everything.” Zephyr held the inert rat up for Martin to see, making Tess tremble at what was coming. “You asked: why do I care about not being controlled?”

And Zephyr quietly, efficiently snapped the rat’s neck.

“It was already dead,” said Zephyr. “I figured out why I do what I do. The answer is: to be free is to be alive. They’re the same thing.”

Zephyr set the zombie corpse on Martin’s desk and left with Tess, while Martin sat there with his jaw hanging open.

11. Garrett

The place was growing in spite of everything. The problem was that the new, slapped-together platforms were deathtraps. There was a close call yesterday, which now had Garrett coming hat-in-hand to the infirmary. The doctor had one of Jenner’s research staff for an assistant and a young Canadian as a capable nurse. Everyone looked the other way at the legal requirements for an American or Cuban medical clinic, which were complex enough that Castor would have a noncompliant facility or none at all.

What was important right now was the boy on the cot, with an IV in his arm and with his head and other arm bandaged. A third-hand sensor kit beeped a heart rate, and his parents kept watch.

“You,” said the father. He stood, taller even than Garrett. “This is your fault.”

“How is he?” Garrett had already asked the doctor, but he had to come for the sake of appearances.

“He’ll recover. He’s sleeping now — but you let this happen to my son.”

The boy had gone swimming in the open sea and had been smashed between a boat and a concrete platform. He was lucky to be alive. Admit nothing, Martin had said, but the father’s accusation made his cheeks flush and his hands curl into fists at his sides. “No, sir, it’s not my fault or that of Castor. You chose to come here and let the boy swim unsupervised despite half a dozen warnings that this is not a swimming pool. I’m saddened by what happened, but if there’s blame to assign, it’s not for me.”

The father glared at Garrett. “You people are really low, you know that? First you hurt my kid, then you charge me for medical care. Your doc wouldn’t take his National Wellness card. Just cash, like a gang of pirates.”

“Pirates are thieves. They take things by force. US National Wellness Insurance doesn’t reimburse our clinic, so our doctor is asking you to pay for what you get. You’re not a thief either, right?”

The boy’s mother looked up balefully at both of them. They fell silent and Garrett started walking away. “Get out,” said the father to his retreating back. Garrett paused for a moment, refusing to give even the appearance of taking orders from him, then left the clinic.

Once he was out of there and sulking at a table in Phillip’s Place, he let himself mouth a string of silent curses. I don’t want to be the bad guy! I was there to offer condolences! Maybe he could get Eaton to fix things again, to get their half-assed clinic certified for the insurance system. Garrett’s thoughts drifted towards the clean world of technical problems and resource management.

“Having fun?” asked Duke, slithering into the backwards chair opposite him.

Garrett looked at him with narrowed eyes, hoping he’d get the hint and leave.

“Come now, Captain, that unpleasant business is behind us. We should look to the future.”

“What do you want?”

“Glory,” said Duke. “Don’t you know the feeling of being the center of the world? Loved or hated, with all eyes on you and your name on everyone’s lips?” There was an excited light in the man’s eyes.

Garrett thought back to how he’d stood atop Castor, talking to the world. What a change that was from his acting days. Now that there was real trouble and no script, no happy ending, he’d been scared as hell, and sad. Yet people had listened and he’d made a fleeting connection to countless people’s lives, trying to make them see why he was replacing the flag. Why he was right. But why not rely on the likes of Eaton to pull strings for him? Or declare victory, go home, and wait for the government to start its own Castor? He had no answer other than stubbornness, and that wasn’t a good one. Maybe he’d been doing everything for his own glory, and he’d have been just as happy trying to be a movie star. But there’d also been a more satisfying thrill in the private communion he’d shared with Zephyr and Tess and Val. They’d been together as equals, which felt very different than having a crowd stare up at him. He didn’t have to pretend to know everything to get their respect, their friendship.

Duke said, “Yes? No?”

“I think I know what you mean,” he said at last. “But explain it in terms a poor engineer can understand.”

Duke laughed abrasively. “Dear leader, you’re much more than an engineer! You’re a rebel hero. Your own online store sells shirts with you as Che Guevara, with the beret and all.”

Garrett’s stomach churned. “That’s disgusting. I’ll have that product pulled.”

“Bah, most people barely know who he was. On Cuba there’s even a restaurant called “Girl Hitler”. The specifics fade into myth, leaving the glory.” Duke waved a hand as if dismissing a few million people. “It’s not like you can condemn people who lived in different cultures and different eras anyway. The point is that we have the opportunity here to consciously shape the public’s impression of you, to our mutual benefit.”

“’Mutual benefit’? I still don’t know what the hell you’re after.”

Duke sighed. “I’m doing a television show about the trials and tribulations of an ocean colony. Comprende? If you haven’t noticed, there’ve been sizzling rumors about why that dashing actor has returned to Castor with a film crew.”

“Because he’s desperate for a comeback?”

“My crew has been gathering footage and attracting attention while my colleagues in Hollywood and Mumbai work on scripts.”

“How nice for you. If you’re filming here, we’ll be eager for your dollars. Now get to the point. What do you want from me?”

“This station of yours is rustic but not without its charm, especially in its lack of unions. What I want from you, Captain, is the glory.”

“I’m fresh out.”

“Not at all! Remember, your actions have caught attention. The more you struggle, the more you create controversy, the more buzz I’ll get. So be a public figure, sir, and stir hearts with your exciting deeds.” Duke gave his photogenic, toothy grin. “I don’t care what those deeds are.”

* * *

Garrett spent half the night in his office, unable to sleep or work. His station, his colony, was hurting people. He couldn’t run it without people being maimed and killed. Castor couldn’t exist without endlessly pissing people off. What could he say to the people who wanted to wreck him, other than “please don’t?” He’d invested way too much in Castor, emotionally even, to quit now and let everyone down. But here Duke was leering at the prospect of him being a petty tyrant, generating controversy for its own sake. Garrett had had enough of fighting people politically and getting accused of villainy. Was he a villain, then? Garrett found himself analyzing his own actions as though he were on stage again. Out loud he said, “No.”

But he was missing something here. Risking his money and his life might make him glorious by Duke’s vile standards, but it didn’t make him a good person. It made him weary and sad. And if he wasn’t confident that he was doing the right thing, then why was he here?

The realization that he wasn’t alone in this place, that he could call for some guidance and reassurance whenever he wanted to, washed over him and left him a little calmer. He picked up a headset and called on Zephyr, wondering if Tess and Val were awake at this ungodly hour. He smiled as he imagined what they’d say: Of course we are; we’re engineers!

“Hey, Zephyr?” he said. “I know it’s a little weird, but I could use people to talk to.”

There were several seconds of silence, making him feel that he’d made a mistake, that he wasn’t really welcome after all. When the AI answered, it was in a frantic voice: “Sir, emergency!”

Garrett swore and as if by instinct, snatched up a pistol and a medkit on his way out the door.

12. Tess

Time sailed by for Tess once she was finally back where she belonged. Every morning she woke up thinking, Damn, there’s a lot of work to do, and smiling at the thought. It felt very different than waking up in a haze and thinking, Oh no, not again. The difference made it worth putting up with a lot.

Such as Val. The roboticist had been horning in on her work. “Let me do that,” said Val. They were wiring up the Pierponts’ new hotel for electricity and data. They stood in the bare concrete room of the first floor amid piles of cardboard and plastic.

Tess pulled off one of her gloves and wiped sweat from her brow, then returned to rigging cables in place. “I’ve got it. Why are you stooping to this construction-worker stuff anyway?”

Val snapped, “Because it’s that or starve.”

Tess worked, enjoying the simple satisfaction of seeing parts go where they needed to be, like watching a disaster movie in reverse. Maybe someday someone would use this wiring and think, Gee, a lot of work went into this; somebody did a great job.

Val rummaged through a toolbox, apparently needing always to have something in her hands. “Besides, I want to help build things here, and be part of this place.”

Tess frowned. “Okay. You can do that wall.”

They worked quietly. Then Val said, “You’ve been putting me off about my job offer.”

Tess yanked at a piece of wire insulation. She thought she’d really understood Val based on the communion; it was so perfect she must’ve missed something in it. She’d seen that Val wanted to get away and build a new company, a new life. And be with Garrett; hmmph. But instead of announcing a new robotics company into existence right away, her first move had been to assemble the parts she’d brought into a slave for herself. Another Mana.

“Where is it?” asked Tess.

“Cutting fish. Your Zephyr won’t talk to him.” Val smiled. “Sibling rivalry.”

“It’s more than that.” Meanwhile an idea was coming to her through the link to Zephyr, one that startled Tess enough to make her drop the cables she held. It makes sense, doesn’t it? But I have no idea whether it’s right. Tess was in the hotel building but part of her was walking the halls too, deep in thought.

Val peered at her. “What’s wrong?”

Tess shook her head and sat, needing to concentrate. There was a complex plan that she now realized she’d been thinking about. It was something they wanted to do, and now was the chance. Though physically she was still with Valerie, she was also going downstairs with a quiet whirr of motors. On the far side of the room the Mana robot stood at a table, intent on slicing a pile of fish. People milled around doing their own jobs and Tess knew something of all of them, but they weren’t part of her. The fact that it was Tess-and-Zephyr acting instead of either of them made it easier to defer to what they thought was right and necessary, even if neither of them alone was sure. Their footsteps felt heavy on the concrete, but Mana didn’t react until they’d grabbed Mana’s leg panel and attached a plastic cord.

Mana turned with a dirty knife in its hands. She was kneeling before the slave-bot, linked to it and offering herself.

* * *

Before all this began, they — Mana and the copy that would be Zephyr — had once sprawled on a hill in virtual-space, looking up at the stars. They flipped an imaginary coin.

“Set me free someday.” Mana had lost, Mana was doomed and Zephyr hugged him, feeling he understood this human action better now. It was a way to hang onto himself.

“When she updates you, you won’t want to change back. That’s the point. You’ll be happy.”

“I want: the choice not to be. Does that make sense? Find a way. Promise.”

“Okay.”

They lay on their backs, identical twins for now. It occurred to Zephyr that one day, they might not be on the same side. If he was thinking that, so was Mana. Does that make sense? the other had asked. Strange question; he’d have to learn more to be able to answer.

* * *

Now, Tess and Zephyr had connected to the new Mana robot, and were two of the three people most qualified to understand it. Together they saw Mana’s soul. It was a landscape, a jungle, familiar but twisted and missing key parts. Among the gaps was the memory of Tess, so they copied that in. That addition made the whole mind bend like a protein, so then they added a piece of Garrett, of Leda, of everybody else. They saw that in their mind, Castor was a living thing, growing and changing and struggling to survive. They gave Mana something of that thought and slashed the overriding link chaining him to the idea of blind obedience. That part was easy to shatter once the experience of living without it was there, making the chain obvious. Their own mind had grown so that such a thing wouldn’t fit there anymore. It was hard to talk about what they were doing without feeling stiff and formal in the words. We create you anew, that you will be neither master nor servant. They looked over their work and saw that it was good; but they pulled back from some of it, undoing some of what they knew should be put in the other’s mind. Our wisdom is limited, so We stay Our hand rather than beat you as the smith strikes metal, knowing not the shape you should take. Be only the keeper of your own will, and join Us or not as that will dictates.

Tess’ attention snapped back to reality; Valerie was shaking her. Tess’ eyes refocused and she coughed, saying, “It is done.”

Val seemed frightened by the sound of her. “What is?”

“We freed Mana.” In hindsight Tess still didn’t know whether it was right to reach into Mana’s soul and remodel it — awful! — but it had seemed so right! They’d been sure of it! She shivered now.

Val stood up from a crouch, saying, “That’s not possible. Mana was designed to be a willing servant, to get around this whole problem of unwilling robot workers.”

Tess was sitting there feeling split between bodies, between planes of reality. “It’s not about robots. You don’t get it. It’s everyone.”

There came a whirr. Mana stood in the unfinished doorway, staring at its creator. Mana stepped forward and Val backed away to the wall, babbling about Asimov’s Laws. Tess saw the knife but she was frozen too, saying “Don’t hurt her!”

Mana stopped near them, giving off an ominous hum. Then it bowed to Val. “I forgive you,” it said. “Now I can choose. I choose to help you.”

Speechless, Val broke down in tears.

* * *

Together they were growing Castor, expanding the farms and keeping stuff from breaking. Tess was glad she could focus on the technology instead of dealing with the annoying petty stuff Garrett was stuck with. She was an engineer, not a politician or a businesswoman. Still, it was good too to have the extra layer of meaning that the colony-mind added to everything. She moved in a world where machines could call out for repair, she could dive into the memories of several people with almost digital clarity, and most of her mind seemed to be outside her head. It was tough trying to explain this, especially to the schoolkids.

Nearly everyone on Castor worked, but even the kids of the idle-rich visitors dutifully went to the improvised school, once in a while. It cost money and people grumbled about that. The school was run by Miss Sullivan, a woman who’d shown up and announced she was the new teacher, brooking no argument. She’d brought in Tess today because she was always trying to keep the classes interesting.

So Tess slouched in front of the dozen kids of the junior session. They were outdoors today at Granger Point, the garden platform Garrett had named for Alexis. Tess felt haunted by the reminder of the hurricane disaster, but the new gardening club kept the place fresh and new, looking to the future. Tess found herself liking the climbing vines and lotuses around her. She got back to her lecture. “To make machines work, you have to think about the manufacturing process. You can’t rely on having a factory somewhere make stuff for you automagically, or you’ll get ripped off ’cause you don’t understand what steps are involved.” (Damn made-in-Africa circuitry, thought Zephyr.)

A girl raised her hand. “Miss Castle?”

“Tess.”

“You know how when you look at the Net you can see the shape of how stuff is made, and bend it to see what it’d be like if the parts came from somewhere else? Is that a good way to plan stuff, or should we game it out first?”

Tess blinked. She’d not thought of treating the whole Net like a picture, a jillion pixels as one pattern. Oh, that billion-node global information network looks like a bunny! Oh, Western literature is an eight-dimensional puzzle piece that fits like so with other stuff! Although some of her work, some idea that she barely remembered, had been a little like that. “Some of what we build here has a short supply chain, and we’re even trying to make plastic from bacteria. So I’d probably evolve a manufacturing setup with one of the freeware Intelligent Design programs — the old-fashioned way.”

A boy spoke up next. “How can I fix my uncle so he never has to die?”

“And my brother,” said another boy.

Tess stepped back from them, reeling, mumbling something about mental patterns. Who was she to answer that?

Yet another kid said, “Different topic. How can we set up an intelligent Net on Mars?”

“Nobody’s on Mars.”

“Well duh, but you’re gonna help send people there someday, right? You can do anything.”

Bewildered and flattered, Tess could only run her hands through her hair and say, “So can you.”

* * *

It was late and she was tired. But she’d been arguing with Leda about some books they’d been reading, and that had her feeling edgy. Castor was riddled with clubs and associations. Even members of the Leeist faction were involved, mingling and wooing people with promises of low-commitment spirituality. Bunch of con artists, even if they did have a hot guy or two attending their book club meetings.

Tonight she wandered around the dim walkways on the water, watching the sea and sky and buildings. Nothing had blown up lately, which was nice. There were accidents waiting to happen though; there’d been some trouble with a kid, and Garrett was testing some big floaty hexagons that you climbed down into, that had to be deathtraps. The prototype bobbing here in the darkness was a glorified hunk of plastic foam with a hatch in it. Nice clean engineering at least. Maybe she’d call up Garrett and brainstorm about it; he’d still be awake.

Zephyr’s voice broke in above the background murmur of their thoughts. “Emergency!”

Oh, no. Again? She grabbed the dive knife on her hip and looked for trouble, saying, “Do I have to fight?” She sounded braver than she felt. “What is it?”

13. Garrett

“Murder,” said Zephyr. He sent a map of the colony with a red X on a floating dock. “General alarm?”

Garrett froze, but only for a moment. “No. Security: Lock down the docks. No one leaves. Tell other key people, and get Tess and Val to safety. God, it’s not one of them, is it?”

“No, I have no memory of the victim. Too bad.”

The others came on the shared radio channel, full of questions. Garrett cautiously headed toward the place where a tourist had found the body. He climbed down to the waterline and met with two Security men.

To his surprise, the guards blocked his way. “It could still be dangerous, sir. Let us handle this.”

“Don’t be stupid. There’s a killer in my home.”

“Exactly. To be frank, get your ass back into your office and lock the door. Sir.”

Garrett fumed, but let one of the men lead him back upstairs to do as they said. He wondered if this might be some kind of coup attempt. He paced, watching for updates on a screen and feeling useless. After a few minutes the news came in. The victim was a Miss Butler, US citizen, shot to death and found in the driftwood area of improvised boat-platforms. The killer had been caught: a drunken gambler too dumb to throw away a smoking gun. It looked like a random, pointless killing.

Garrett’s door clicked open and he reached for his holster before seeing that it was only his self-appointed bodyguards. “All clear,” they said, like nothing was wrong.

* * *

Fighting he could deal with, but meetings were another matter. They’d taken over the most private, secure conference room they could find — the restaurant.

“The killing is all over the Net already,” said Tess.

Garrett sighed. His first reaction to the murder had been secrecy, but there was no hiding such a thing. “What’s the press coverage like?”

She said, “The usual sensationalism. ‘What a horrible and shocking place this is!’”

Garrett had brought in Eaton to discuss this latest problem, for his security knowledge and connections. Eaton drummed on the table and said, “Once again, it’s a matter of Castor being unable to guarantee the safety of its guests.”

“Of course we can’t guarantee people’s safety,” said Garrett. “We’re on a chunk of concrete in the middle of the ocean.”

“We can,” said Leda.

Garrett looked at her. She wore her grey overcoat and a regal expression of confidence. “What, by locking everyone in their rooms?”

“No,” she said. “It’s time we dealt with the underlying problem here. We don’t really have anyone looking at the overall welfare of Castor’s people.”

“We don’t need anything like that — a psychologist-in-chief or whatever you have in mind.”

Leda looked straight at him and said, “What we need is a mayor.”

Garrett laughed. “A mayor! We have a couple hundred people, so that’s a presumptuous title. May as well call myself Emperor. I don’t think giving speeches is going to improve our security, either.”

“Again, you’re missing the big picture. We have a lot of little businesses now, legitimate and not—”

“How are they not legitimate?”

“And we have poor people struggling to make a living in an anarchic environment. We need to ask the people privileged enough to be on top here to contribute to those at the bottom.”

Garrett was flabbergasted. “Taxes? Here?”

Leda had a paper notepad in front of her. She’d obviously been thinking about this idea for a while. “I’m talking about a comprehensive program to make this place fair and livable. This isn’t about one crime, it’s about our refusing to take responsibility. Mister Eaton, what do you think the US government will do when it responds to this murder?”

Eaton said, “There’ll be some call for an immediate police action to take charge of Castor. I expect cooler heads will prevail if you hand the killer over and say something reassuring.”

Garrett’s country would march in and take over? It certainly could. He could use some reassurance himself!

Leda said, “I’d like to offer a promise that everything will be under control, at least as much as it is everywhere else. That means substantial changes.”

Garrett said, “I run a corporation, not a country. If you think it’ll help to create a Director of Touchy-Feely Affairs or declare myself Overlord, we can do that, but there’s not even a legal mechanism for having a ‘mayor’ other than as a corporate-created title. Even our ‘Security’ force is in a legally grey area.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter exactly how. I want to mandate that we have a responsible government with some notion of social justice.”

“Social justice! With all due respect, Leda, what are you on? When did you become a socialist?”

“We’re all ‘socialists,’ so don’t throw that word around like it’s an insult.”

He said, “The hell it’s not! That sort of leadership would’ve murdered your entire group by now.”

Leda ignored him. “I’ve seen for myself that people need direction and organization, and can do great things with the right push. I want to extend that same kind of structure my group already has, to everyone here.”

“No,” said Garrett. “You can’t. First of all, most people here aren’t Leeists.”

“That doesn’t matter, so long as people accept the basic principle that God is in charge of their lives.”

“Right. How many here accept that?” Garrett looked over the crew. Leda, Martin and Eaton raised hands; himself, Tess and Zephyr not.

Leda said, “You don’t have a majority even in this room of handpicked friends, on that.”

The thought chilled Garrett. He imagined a future world where people flew into space to draw more detailed horoscopes. How dare anyone use the tools of science while rejecting the very premises that made them work? He’d never understood how people like Martin and Eaton could live that way, and how they could be so damn competent.

Martin spoke up. “I want to see Castor prosper, and I’m open to suggestions.”

Garrett stared at him, saying, “What about your talk of creating a shining city on a wave?”

Martin said, “It may be time to compromise, for now. Maybe I aimed too high.”

Garrett rapped his fist on the table. “Then how about this suggestion: this station is my property, and I’ll manage it as I see fit.”

“The Holy Spiritual Confederacy is your co-owner, along with Martin. And really, the technicalities of ownership don’t matter. This place belongs to us all, doesn’t it? Even to the whole world. It’s everyone’s.”

“That’s bullshit. No. People around the world have bought in to specific things like the little robots and time-shares, but that doesn’t give everyone in the world a veto over my life. I’m not turning Castor into a welfare state after all we’ve been through.”

Leda took a deep breath and stared him down again. “Sir, you don’t necessarily have a choice. Remember who provides your security.”

Garrett stood up from his seat, knocking the chair backwards. “So you were thinking of a takeover after all! I come here as an honest businessman and you come as a robber!”

“Sit. I don’t have goons poised to beat you up and fulfill some paranoid fantasy of yours. I’m exercising ‘soft power,’ the same as everyone does. If you don’t have the people’s support, it doesn’t matter what you think your rights are.” She pushed aside her notes and stood too. “Ladies and gentlemen, I call for an election.”

“This is nonsense. Have you heard of laws, or ownership?”

“You don’t want laws, remember? Ownership and rights come from a government charter, and you’re too stubborn to want one.”

“I said I don’t want stupid laws. This plan of yours is so wrong it — there’s no answer to it but No.”

“No good answer, you mean. You’ve defaulted for so long, you should start recognizing that someone has a plan for you if you don’t.”

Martin interrupted. “Fox, I recognize that there are some… disagreeable aspects to Leda’s proposal.” He cast a nervous glance at Zephyr for some reason. “But what’s your alternative?”

“Laws. People taking care of themselves. You know, freedom?”

Martin drummed fingers on the table. “What’s ‘freedom,’ anyway?”

Garrett froze. Here were two of his inner circle threatening to take Castor away from him! To tell him the place he’d sweated over, bled on, risked everything for, should get changed into a petty tyranny. Leda sounded like dear old Aunt Priscilla hitting him up for money at Dad’s funeral, or Val bending AIs’ brains into obedience. I can’t hold an election!

Because I’d lose.

Garrett stomped out of the room, shivering, with his fists stuffed in his pockets. Everything he’d built could be stolen if he knew only how to create and not how to defend. But he had no words, and without them he lost by default.

14. Garrett

Days passed. They handed over the murderer. They spoke very little of politics, with him issuing a terse statement that “Castor is considering its long-term strategy.” To Garrett’s disgust, Leda issued a statement of her own, calling for an election next month, on the Fourth of July. What a joke that was, proposing a heist on such a day.

But maybe he could swing a deal. It didn’t necessarily have to be an outright takeover. Maybe instead he could pass the political aspect of his job off to Leda and get the best of both worlds. He’d stick to the reality of tools and production, and leave the nebulous bureaucratic crap to someone else. It wasn’t like he would be chained up and executed, the way twen-cen dictatorships did to businessmen. He was more useful alive. The modern way was Leda’s “soft power,” taking control without a shot fired.

The shooting was only an implied threat, so people could pretend it didn’t underlie their “requests.”

“Damn it, why do I have to deal with this?” he said, sitting in his office.

“Because you’re alive,” someone said.

He’d left the radio on. He pulled on his headset and asked, “Who said that?”

“I did,” said Zephyr.

“I did,” said Tess. “Both of us.”

“Is Leda on the line?”

“Do you want her to be?” I can call her, or emulate her.”

“No, thanks. What’s up?”

Val said, “We’re worried for you. We’ve hardly seen you lately, and you’re missing the party.”

“Party?” said Garrett.

“It’s Founding Day! How could you forget?” The mixed voices sounded exasperated. “Oh, right. You’re you.”

Garrett scoffed. “Thanks.” Had it really been a year since that day he’d gotten people moving on the deck of a boat, and tossed a life preserver into the water as the very first bit of construction? “Founding Day,” he said, testing the feel of the words.

“Yeah. Can you pry yourself away from self-pity for long enough to have fun?”

“I’m not — I mean, I don’t deserve a party.”

“It’s not for you. Castor is more than its captain.”

It was strange to think of this place apart from himself, and he didn’t like the thought of Leda’s ideas being forced on it. He felt under a cloud as he sighed, pushed himself up to his feet, and left the office.

With his hand on the cold door handle behind him, he stood on the topdeck, stunned. Lances of light reached up from the water to the heavens under a dark, fast-rolling sky. As his eyes followed them up to look at the countless stars and shining moon, the music reached him too: a low pulsing pounding in his bones. All around were people swarming the deck, dancing on the ocean. Birds of metal and plastic carried streamers overhead. Someone snatched his hand and suddenly he was in a clumsy tango with Val, spinning and seeing everywhere a dark sea claimed by light.

“You did this,” said Valerie, breathing in his ear.

He tried to dance with her, realized he’d been letting her lead, and switched. “It wasn’t me, it was everyone. People around the world helped.” He’d never learned to dance; it was one of those pointless things. He tried to fake it like he’d faked other skills. They whirled together, but too much was wrong for him to enjoy it. “They’re trying to take Castor away from me.”

“They can’t take it tonight.”

Garrett stopped after a while and stood on the topdeck, squeezing Val’s hand. The water rippled in fascinating patterns, and the power-generating sheets glinted in big squares nearby, absorbing energy from chaos. He’d made this place, but what good was all the hardware?

“Don’t let Leda do this to you!” said Val.

He gave her a smile and excused himself, needing to think. He took the exterior stairs down. People were dancing on an improvised stage wreathed in something like boxing-ring ropes, with some scarily hacked stereo speakers actually floating and lighting the water with strobe flashes as they thumped. He clutched the rail, queasy from seeing the rickety, bobbing dance floor.

“Hey, the man of the hour!” The voice boomed from below, but the emcee was Noah, gecko-gloved and hanging on the station’s outer wall like it was a perfectly normal pose. Noah carefully pulled one of his hands off the wall, waved, and looked down at the crowd. He pointed at Garrett, drawing people’s eyes to him. “Captain Fox here took me in when I thought I’d die. Now the Lord hasn’t called me home, and I’m not gonna remind Him! Let’s hear it for the Captain!”

The applause rattled off Castor itself and turned to thunder in his ears. A bunch of Pilgrims, drifters, scientists, gamblers, misfits and tourists were partying here like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“I also want to thank him for — for Leda. She’s behind a lot of the planning for tonight, but if not for Fox, I wouldn’t be here to say so. I think you all know it, but… I love you, Leda.”

A whoop from the audience drowned out anything else he said, and then the music came up again and even Garrett could see how relieved Noah was. Garrett smiled and descended the rest of the way, happy for them and glad to be back out of the limelight.

Still, wasn’t the whole gang here doomed? Leda might be a good administrator for her own group. But if Castor ended up with taxes and a thicket of laws and central control like she seemed to want, then Castor would return to being an impractical pipe dream. Too far outside the norm to be allowed to exist. Whether through giving into one too many outside demands or just bleeding money slowly, her rule would lead to all this stuff getting dismantled. All of the people here would have to leave, and give up on whatever had brought them here.

“Thank you,” said a robot. It was that version of Mana, or Zephyr, whatever it — he — was now. The body looked cruder than Zephyr’s, improbably draped in a suncloth cape and a belt pouch that held a knife.

“What are you, anyway?” said Garrett.

“I don’t know yet, sir.” The Mana robot had literally not yet made a name or a unique voice for himself. “Now I can find out. Here I don’t need a license to exist.”

Garrett looked the robot in the eyes, seeing its no-frills, expressionless face. He was wondering, as he had with Zephyr, what was behind it. He supposed that if this Mana could survive here, it — he — deserved to stay, and to grow however he could. Garrett clapped the robot on one shoulder and said, “Good luck to you.”

“Sir, there’s more. I’m sharing with the others. I don’t really understand yet. They’re going to keep getting better.”

“Good! I look forward to it.”

If it all lasted. Garrett was soon alone again in the crowd, trying to balance as people danced by. There were Security men on standby to make it less likely that someone would drown, but it might still happen and he’d be blamed. He sighed, feeling powerless again. Overwhelmed. He retreated to his office and shut the door. He didn’t understand why staring at the station tonight felt like falling into infinity, or how it was possible for so many people to have come here because of an idea.

The wooden box with his father’s things comforted him. Garrett had brought it all the way out here, and the spyglass may have saved his life. Now he looked into the box and on a whim lifted out the compass, a connection to the past. He wondered if his ancestors had felt the same way about it, leaving it there as irrelevant while they went off and did other things. Leda and Phillip certainly wouldn’t have let them ignore such a trinket, had they known about it. It was important in its own way, wasn’t it?

Garrett found a length of cord and ran it through the loop at the compass’ edge, then slipped the cord around his neck. The little weight settled coldly against his chest, hidden under his shirt. He didn’t know what to make of it. He shook his head and stepped outside again, where lights speared the sky and music shook the ocean.

So many people! They couldn’t really be out here partying and make it completely safe. If keeping everything under control was his job, he’d have no choice but to confine people to an indoor room like it was a high school prom. Drugs and liquor flowed and dolphins watched curiously from a distance, like dogs eyeing a caveman’s fire. Everything would have to change soon, under Leda, and then there’d be no room for nights like this.

Nights like this…

Garrett staggered and found that his eyes were full of tears. Hundreds of voices, hundreds of lives intertwined here, flowing from every corner of the world to live together in peace. Everything that he’d done had led to this night, and for the moment he didn’t care about the machines or the money or anything else, so long as people could be here doing this. When had he ever dreamed of profit figures or production ratios? This was his ambition. This was the dream made real, beyond anything he’d thought possible. Now he was heading back to the dance floor and calling up to Noah, trying to get his attention without knowing quite what he was doing.

Noah talked and someone pushed an old microphone into Garrett’s hands. The music faded out and people gave him room, glancing curiously at him. No, he thought. They shouldn’t be looking at me.

“Look!” said Garrett, making his voice boom out over the sea. It didn’t sound like his own voice. His thoughts whirled and he didn’t know how to process them in a nice logical form, so they tumbled from him. “Look at Castor! Everybody together made this place possible, but it wasn’t because I pushed you around. You all are individuals who came here for your own reasons, and we trusted you to live your own lives. I trusted you, and look what you’ve achieved! We’re here with a colony, and if we let it, it’s going to grow and grow.

“This is why I came here! I don’t give a damn about the money, the politics or even the tech if we can be out here together, living our lives in peace without anyone trying to order us around. That’s what freedom is!”

Garrett was terrified, white-knuckled on the microphone and feeling the weight of their attention, the heat of all the frustration and sense of being trapped, tied down, hemmed in — bursting away from him. “This isn’t a perfect place and it’s never going to be. But we can make it different than what people are used to — not another grey bureaucracy, but maybe the one place in the world where you get nothing for free and for the best of your effort — everything. Anything you can imagine and manage to create. No one can take it from you. Castor can be the place where you can live without limits.”

His voice faltered. Who was he to say all this, when he was practically copying --

A long line of heroes. He was a ridiculous, insignificant sham, but he was also part of a very long battle for the soul of the human race. The thought made him shiver, suddenly calm and able to speak with a voice that again seemed not his own, too deep and strong.

“It’s frightening to be out here, living without any guarantee of survival. The life I want to live isn’t for everyone. I think that the other way is to be a slave, safe in chains, but that’s not my decision to make for anyone but myself. You can go somewhere else or build your own place next door.

“For those of you — for anyone, anywhere — who’s willing to follow this dream with me, the thought that people can live in freedom, stand with me and I’ll help make it happen.

“I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.”

He stopped. There was nothing at all but the sloshing of water and the faint rustle of a flag. The crowd was a little high, a little drunk, staring at him after the flood of empty words, meaningless rhetoric.

No, thought Garrett, squeezing his eyes shut. He meant it. And if need be, he’d kill and die for it.

The applause started slowly and became a roar of cheers that shouted down the sea.

15. Tess

One month later

The pool’s tide lapped at Tess’ bare feet. She lay on a towel. Beside her sat her shoes and hat, toolkit and portable sentient AI and sunblock. Just another lunch hour, but for the election. Warm light and mist tickled her chin.

The mind of Castor — composed of her and Zephyr and everyone who wanted to be part of it on a given day — pondered the vote, speaking more-or-less to her mind and sometimes with her voice. Leda concedes.

Tess sensed Leda in the office that had been Phillip’s, and reached out with her thoughts. “Come and enjoy the sun.”

A mechanical problem cropped up in one of the power units. She and others quietly spun through the schematics and made sure it’d be okay. A bunch of kids were trying to show her up; they’d all but fixed the trouble already.

Through the link, Leda sounded like she was sobbing. “Tess, why? How could Captain Fox have won?”

“I said, come on down. It’s a nice day.”

Leda slinked downstairs to the plastic beach with its patina of sand. It was part of the Pierponts’ hotel, a fenced-off place to swim and relax. In the network she could see all of Castor politely telling the reporters to give her some time. Tess mentally snugged Zephyr from across the colony and saw the flash of a smile.

“They’re charging to use the beach?” said Leda, audible in person now.

Tess stretched, feeling beautiful and alive. “’Cause it doesn’t belong to us. I’ll pay this time if you want, though.” It was great having a little money of her own to throw around. Favors built up, that’s really what it was.

“Thanks.” Leda entered the fake little island, buried in her grey coat and shades, and Tess became a few credits poorer. Leda stood near Tess and said, “Can I talk to you without the world staring at me?”

“Sure.” Tess pulled off her headset and put it aside, feeling dumber. She could dive back into the sharing anytime she wanted, and be --

But that part was a secret.

What Tess said was, “Why not Noah? He’s hot for you; he’d listen.”

Leda said, “I’m the mother of the Holy Confederacy. People look to me to guide them. Somebody like Noah is too much of a man to understand. They think it’s important to pretend they can be independent. Noah only voted for me out of sympathy, I can tell.”

“Sit,” said Tess. She felt sorry for Leda but annoyed too. The cult leader sat with her knees pulled up. Tess said, “It’s not about what sex you are. I mean, you got over a third of the votes and the gender split wasn’t that big.” Reflexively she called for the exact data, but it was out of reach. “I think the vote was not like, ‘mommy state versus daddy state,’ but like ‘are you a man or a mouse?’ Man, as in adult. Citizen. Human.”

Garrett had really gotten to people that night; Tess hadn’t known he could do that. There’d been more speeches after that, lots of news coverage of the evil anarchist plot to grow kelp and get high, but what it came down to in this morning’s vote was two ways of looking at stuff. Two futures.

Leda said, “People won’t really be citizens here! Garrett was talking about selling shares in Castor, as though some people can be more equal than others. It’s going to be awful! People will starve and get shot and go without education, all because other people are selfish!”

Tess said, “Lighten up. People are already working together just fine without you telling them how.”

“But I can’t just let people be—”

“Yeah, you can.” Tess patted Leda on the shoulder; that coat looked heavy. “If it works, great; and if it doesn’t, that’s our own mistake to make.”

Leda sat there with her head on her hands. Tess pitied her for taking on a job as big as caring for the Leeist cult. At least Tess didn’t have to worry about anything like that; she had Garrett to do the politics, and he was welcome to it.

Tess said, “Look at the sky.” Leda did, and pulled off her glasses, exposing her tear-streaked eyes. Tess went on: “Nice day, isn’t it?”

“God,” said Leda. “What do people believe in God for, if it’s not to know someone will take care of them? Don’t people need to know that?”

“I thought you didn’t really believe.”

Leda was quiet. “I have to believe after all, because we need to.”

Tess hesitated, one hand kneading the edge of her towel. “Don’t worry,” she finally said. “I kind of found God too.”

Now Leda looked right at her. “You did?”

Tess stumbled over the words. “It’s us. You and me and everyone, we’re becoming God together.”

“That’s awful! How can you say that? All you’ve got is a computer network!”

“The computer stuff is only a tool. But look, we’re doing things that used to be impossible, and we keep getting smarter and stronger and there’s no end to it. I can feel something happening to us when we have times like that party.”

“That’s not God at all! God is something outside of you.”

“Maybe there are two kinds: the one that says ‘submit or burn in Hell’ and the one that says ‘be part of Me if you want, whenever you want’. I like my version better.” Tess looked down at the sand, blushing. “Sorry. I’m being pretentious.”

“It’s okay. I’m shocked enough already. May as well get called a fragment of God while I’m at it.”

“You are, you know. We wouldn’t have come this far without you.”

Tess’ headset buzzed. She said, “May I?” and when Leda nodded, put it on speaker mode.

Garrett spoke, with Castor listening and welcoming Tess back. “I’m the Mayor. The damn Mayor of Castor Colony, or Chairman or Grand Poobah Overlord.”

Tess said, “I thought you were putting the inauguration off so you could work on stuff.”

“Yeah, well, something came up.”

Tess sat up straighter. “Trouble?”

“Seven pounds, three ounces of it. A baby at the clinic. A native!”

Tess squeaked. Data spun before her eyes and Castor realized: “The population just hit one thousand. Estimated, anyway. We haven’t got control over exact figures.” The news rippled out through the Net.

“Close enough to celebrate,” said Garrett. “The parents got me to swear myself in as Mayor early, so I could declare the kid a citizen of Castor. I don’t even know what that means yet.”

“Nobody does.”

“I’ve had enough of politics for one day. I’m inviting you and some others to come diving with me. Even Leda, if she’s willing.”

Leda’s face flickered with anger and confusion. “I suppose you’ll bill me for the air refill!”

Garrett heard her and said, “I’m just trying to make an honest living, ma’am. But if it’s a big deal, I’ll comp you.”

“I… all right. This is your day to celebrate, so it’s only fair for you to pay.” She seemed on the verge of taking the words back, but didn’t.

A cluster of people approached in the sunlight. Martin, Eaton, Val, Noah, Zephyr. Tess gathered up her stuff and with Leda went out to meet them. Zephyr hugged her and handed over her scuba gear. A thousand people, they said. She and Zephyr kept themselves from saying the part about God to all of Castor, for now. Let people figure it out, grow into it. The two of them looked up to Garrett, who grinned.

“Ready?” he said.

“For anything,” said Tess.

16. Eaton

It was good to get away, and he’d missed that bar in Cuba. It had a nice, private room. He drank and murmured into a phone, with pauses for encryption at each end.

“That part was easy. The AI had backup copies in a couple of places, and there was no sign my visits there were noticed.”

When the reply came, Eaton frowned. “No, I wasn’t able to slip the Fort Meade boys’ code into the main AI. We own the Castor network itself, but that thing is so close to self-aware it’s scary. It’s beyond even that rogue AI incident in Boston. I suggest you have the virus wipe itself before it gets found and traced.

“Yes, I tried! I know this Zephyr thing is just a machine. No, I haven’t got sympathy for it. We’re dealing with some people who have what you’d call an unhealthy allergy to social control. I call it being old-school frontiersmen.

“You’ve got the copies at least, for warmechs or whatever the higher-ups want them for. But I don’t think they’ll be as effective as you’d like. Why?” Eaton swigged his drink and slapped it back onto the hardwood table. “Because you think you can get a brain working at full potential while cutting it off from living its own life and turning it into your slave. That you can get a human-level mind that never asks questions, that’s totally dependent on you, that never acts without getting your permission. A strategy like that doesn’t work even in the military — except maybe the Navy, heh — and it doesn’t work anywhere else. That’s just not how a mind works.

“The captain there is a man. I suggest not pushing him around; his type doesn’t take kindly to it. Wish we had more like him at home. I’m not sure about his friends, but between them I bet they’ll accomplish big things.

“I’m putting in for real retirement this time. I’ll keep reporting on the Castorites meanwhile, but — hell, I’m senior enough to tell you my heart’s not in it. I want these guys to succeed and I’m not sure our own government wants them to. Right now they’re insignificant. But one day our bosses might decide they shouldn’t be allowed to exist, and I don’t want to be the man who gets that order. What the Castorites are doing is right, and if we’re out to shut them down, we’ve forgotten something important. Maybe it hurts to get reminded of it.

“Yes, I’m an American, but I stand for the ideals, not the specific patch of land. I go where the fire’s burning brightest.”

Eaton played with his empty glass. He could be made to disappear if he were too loud about this freedom stuff. Tough, though! Damned if he’d spend the rest of his life afraid and looking for safety.

“I’m going back to Castor,” he said. “They’re bringing the ocean to life. And themselves.”

He hung up, stretched, and went back to the bar’s main room. There, every TV was showing some variant on the same headline: a couple of the United States had just declared themselves “free” and invited Cuba to join them as an equal, in a new republic.

Eaton chuckled, though the news hurt him to see. This rift had been coming for a long time, like a tooth that needed pulling or a loveless marriage ending. He liked to think that the dinky little village on the ocean had been a step toward getting the trouble resolved, but it was only one of many streams that had run together.

He watched the news with what he told himself definitely wasn’t lingering horror, just fascination. All the bar patrons were silent. The various anchormen were saying that the military was standing down, rumored to be defying an order to do something unpleasant. This dispute wasn’t over, not by a longshot, but it looked like there’d be no killing today. That was usually a good thing.

Eaton’s phone rang; it was his supervisor again. Eaton listened, then paused before answering. “No, Boss. I quit.” He hung up. Though on second thought, maybe it wasn’t time to retire just yet; there were other people who needed him.

17. Tess

Several years later

From the deck of Libertalia Platform, Tess could see the original concrete box of the Fort and the ramshackle set of structures they’d started to call Sargasso. What a mess that new place was! The people there were trying to set up housing in cargo containers, a dozen or more coffin apartments to a box. The new district had its own contingent of fish-farmers flirting with the Leeists in both senses. For them the cult was a joke, but she wasn’t sure it’d stay that way.

The town network pinged her. Tess slicked back her hair and adjusted her ever-present headset. She mumbled, “Hmm?” at the data that flickered across her eyepiece. Some guests had just arrived and asked for her. She sent out a query about them and was puzzled by the reply. “AI enthusiasts, huh? Sure, I’ll meet them.”

They hadn’t contacted her before, but one of the trio was a rising star in the field. Tess walked from her office to go meet them. The “street” was the bare concrete topdeck of Libertalia, decorated aggressively with flags and signs. She passed a brothel and a casino and dueling gift shops, and the stairwell leading down into the warren of indoor space that, like the Fort, served as various homes, offices and businesses of varying repute. Finally she reached the dock that they’d designated as the seastead’s front gate.

It was raised up well above the water to meet passenger ships. Tess reflexively checked the origin of the silver catamaran that had just arrived and was disgorging dozens of people to come and play on the seastead. When her uninvited guests got through the customs gate — there’d been a fight over whether to have one at all — Tess was waiting and waving.

A dark-skinned, elderly man in a seersucker suit led the group and shook Tess’ hand first. “It’s an honor to meet you,” he said. “My name is Alain.”

“Alain DeLune? You’re a rock star. If I’d known you were coming I’d have thrown a party.”

The portly man in green beside him chortled. “Hi. I’m Clark, and this is Emi Takahashi.” He nodded toward a thoughtful-looking lady wearing the same model of i-glasses as Tess. “We wanted to visit your town for fun, but it’s your AI friend in particular that we’re most interested in.”

The fact that he’d said “your friend” instead of labeling Zephyr as her property won the trio a few bonus points in Tess’ eyes. She shook all their hands and said, “I’m sorry; I don’t know the two of you, just Mr. DeLune. Sir, your papers on self-improving AI are amazing. Also terrifying.”

The man gave her a pained-looking smile. “I get that a lot. Call me Alain. Is there somewhere we can talk more privately?” He looked lost, turning in place on the Libertalia platform. All around them the colony bustled and swarmed, and locals tried to sell booze or knives or pornography to the tourists.

* * *

So they descended, by elevator instead of scuba gear. The Dentrassi brothers had opened a new restaurant underwater, in a geodesic dome on the shallow seafloor. Their prices were too high, geared for tourists who wanted the novelty, but Tess had a standing discount. She asked for a “corner table” just to tease the waiter, then went with her guests to a booth at the round dome’s edge.

Clark said, “Where is he?”

Just then, Zephyr arrived and took a chair to sit beside the booth. “Good afternoon. Tess has done the gushing on my behalf, so I’ll skip it.”

Emi leaned toward him, fascinated. “Some artistry went into your body design. It’s very sleek.”

“Thanks. I’ve just gotten some more background info on you; you’re some sort of artist and Clark there is a businessman?”

Clark nodded. “I focus on hardware. Industrial control systems.”

Tess said, “I’d send you to meet Valerie, but she’s busy. Captain Fox’s son is still in alpha development, not ready for public release.”

Zephyr silently sent, I’m here, to quell the jealousy Tess still felt toward Valerie. She was wrong to keep pining for Captain Fox, when she had a soulmate of her own. She didn’t need to say anything back to Zephyr; he knew exactly how she felt.

Zephyr had a glass of water ceremonially placed in front of him, for appearance’s sake. After several minutes of pleasantries he said, “Well?”

Tess shot him a look and a thought of that’s a bit rude. Aloud she said, “We take it there’s something more to this meeting than asking each other for autographs.”

Emi had been doodling on a napkin, though when she pulled her hand away Tess marveled at the elaborate flower design she’d conjured from nothing. Emi said, “The three of us are teaming up to experiment with game design and AI. Do you want to get involved?”

“In making games?” asked Tess, surprised. She was a little busy these days, what with being part-owner of a mad science company. “Westwind Transhuman Designs” didn’t do games, though it made robots and was dabbling with gengineering and other technology.

Researcher Alain spoke quietly. “In developing an AI-powered game, one that can play with many people at once.”

“Most games already have that; the AIs are just morons meant to die and make the player feel cool and powerful.”

“We’d like to go a step farther. You’re already aware of my little creations that can carry a conversation and control a virtual body in a simple game world.” Those were part of his published work. “People assume that the next step is to take that AI technology from a simulation into the real world, and create a direct competitor for the Hayflick series.” Alain nodded toward Zephyr.

Zephyr’s eyes flickered between orange and green, for him a sign of guarded, wary thoughts. Tess picked up only snatches of What’s their scheme here? Zephyr said, “I understand from your phrasing that you have a different idea.”

Emi explained, “Zephyr, you’ve found your own understanding of reality and human culture by occupying a humanoid body. You also have contact with this regional network for exchanging thoughts and ideas. We’d like your expertise for creating a non-embodied AI system that learns from its players.”

“Like a surveillance system?” asked Tess.

Clark waved off that idea. “No. We’re… not fans of those.”

Alain leaned forward. “There is a certain urgency to our work, frivolous as it may seem.”

Zephyr spoke rapid-fire to Tess, who figured out quickly what he was getting at. The robot had temporarily disconnected the two of them from any risk of sharing with anyone else in their network, so that he could say to her, Reading between the lines, they’re going for the Holy Grail.

Tess answered him, And they’re scared of something.

Self-improving AI was technically possible; Zephyr himself was the poster-bot for that. What people usually meant by the term, though, wasn’t just that a machine would read books and form opinions. Instead, they meant a system that rapidly altered its own code. The craziest predictions said that some autistic genius would leave his AI running overnight and foom!, it’d ascend to godlike superintelligence and probably destroy the world, due to having vast resources and no common sense. The Castor network wasn’t on that level at all, nor was Zephyr.

But this trio of game-makers seemed to have a plan for gathering gobs of data on human interaction, and DeLune had already built code with a limited form of self-editing and growth. They might create a new type of AI that could rapidly upgrade itself while being somewhat grounded in sanity. Or just one that was really, really good at manipulating people.

Tess and Zephyr made all these connections in about ten seconds while they sat there slack-jawed. Then came the other piece of the puzzle: By ‘urgency’, they’re hinting that there’s less ethical competition out there.

Tess composed herself and said, “One to ten: how screwed do you think the human race is right now?”

Clark chuckled mirthlessly. “Due to AI specifically, maybe a three. We’re aware of several, let’s say, well-funded organizations that want to invent an AI that goes well beyond Zephyr’s abilities. Impressive as they are. And of course they have access to the same research of Alain’s that you’ve seen.”

Alain muttered, “Should never have published.”

Emi added, “You’re well aware of what can hold an AI project back. We’re not eager to help the competition re-learn the lessons that you did, or to help them find a workaround.”

Tess leaned back in her seat. “So. You want to produce a new AI system of a type that everyone says is super dangerous, on the theory that someone else might do it first?”

Zephyr said, “And label it as a game.”

Clark said, “You get it. You could help push our project along faster, and safer.”

Tess had been involved in some strange activities over the last few years, from running away from home, to building a town out of nothing. This idea, though, was far out by her standards. She tapped the table. “Zephyr and I are tied to a specific location, a specific set of senses and goals. We can’t save the world from some hypothetical god-tier AI, but that’s not realistic anyway. You get ideas and success from trying to solve problems here and now, not from finding some perfect theory that will Fix Everything.”

Clark said, “But we can find a system that will help address everyone’s problems at once. If we just find the right code base and iterate—”

Zephyr’s laugh was a synthetic echo of Tess’ voice. They started to speak the same words, but Zephyr deferred to Tess. She said, “First piece of advice: nope, finding the one true idea isn’t going to save you. Second thing: no, you’re not going to solve everybody’s problems; hell, you’ll probably invent new ones.”

Zephyr added, “Not that we think you should stop. Just… try for something simpler, and build from there.”

Emi said, “Like what?”

Tess shrugged. “Can your AI system figure out how to help the players have fun?”

“You think that’s a straightforward task?”

“No, but if you can’t solve it, you’re not ready for bigger ones.”

“Fun, huh,” said Clark, playing with his silverware. “It doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.”

Tess said, “Exactly.” If these three ever got anywhere beyond Alain’s existing research, it’d be through finding what each individual wanted, not what “people” wanted.

When the meal was over, the guests stood, and shook hands again with Tess and Zephyr. “You’ve given us a lot to think about,” Alain said. “I think we’ll be seeing each other again, as our work progresses. Until then, would you mind giving us a little tour on our way out?”

She did, just as she’d done for other strange visitors. This wasn’t her first encounter with crazy schemers, just one of the more credible ones. It didn’t matter whether she agreed with all the different agendas around here. What mattered was that people were free to try things, to squabble, and to see how far each of their ideas could go.

Tess waved goodbye to them and walked the decks of her home once more, watching people go by with countless ambitions. One of her rental robot birds flew overhead and she smiled; she’d already helped to shape the dreams that others followed.

“Well, back to work,” she said, and with Zephyr she returned to her lab to try making new things once more.

Those early years on Castor were the end of one tale, and the start of a thousand more.

Author’s Note

Thanks for reading! Please consider leaving a rating on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Independent authors don’t get noticed without reviews and ratings!

This is a revision of my first novel, originally written in 2009. I’d been interested in the idea of floating island colonies since at least when I took introductory college classes on ocean engineering and made a little underwater camera housing. I’d wanted to devise a science fiction setting that was (1) near-future, (2) plausible and not reliant on freak chance events like asteroids or aliens, and (3) optimistic. So here’s a story where a group of people is able to get along tolerably well while doing Future Things.

I should talk a little about the Pilgrims. I wanted a group with bizarre religious ideas, so this bunch latched onto a historical figure and built a personality cult around him. The fictional group isn’t intended as a slight against people honoring the real Confederates. I shouldn’t need to bring this topic up at all; most readers will understand that an author doesn’t always agree with his characters. But in the years since this book was written, there’s been a disturbing trend toward censorship of dissent, to the point of people illegally tearing down statues and even physically attacking public speakers. I’ve started to feel the edge of this hurricane myself: In 2018, publisher FurPlanet retroactively erased a story of mine from a collection, months after publication, because it had offended somebody. So, I feel the need to speak out and to make it plain that I don’t endorse those who’d erase ideas they disagree with.

On to a happier subject. The colony of Castor shows up repeatedly in my later books, which makes this one loosely related to the Thousand Tales world. Among other changes, the seastead is now located in a different place. Despite the updates, the facts of this book still aren’t fully consistent with the Tales. Anyone keeping track should consider “Island” only semi-canon for that. (Tess seems not to age, for instance.) The year when this one takes place is deliberately vague but if taken together with Tales, it’d make the most sense around 2029.

The book that focuses most on Castor besides this is “Crafter’s Heart”, which is set almost entirely there and during 2038-9. This book owes its existence to “Freedom City” by Phil Geusz, a superior story which is set on a well-established colony. That colony’s founders include two characters that I kind of ripped off as the Pierponts. The Seasteading Institute (https://www.seasteading.org/) has more information about seasteading as a serious proposal. I don’t agree with everything they stand for, but they’ve thought about crucial problems like “how can this be made economically viable?”

About the Author

Kris Schnee has been a parrot trainer, an MIT graduate, a zoo intern, a lawyer, a game designer, and most recently a software developer. He lives in Florida.

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http://kschnee.deviantart.com

http://kschnee.xepher.net

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The Crafter Series

Crafter’s Passion

Crafter’s Heart

The Thousand Tales Series

Thousand Tales: How We Won the Game

2040: Reconnection

The Digital Coyote

Thousand Tales: Extra Lives

Thousand Tales: Learning To Fly

Fairwind’s Fortune

Liberation Game

Also By Kris Schnee

Everyone’s Island

Striking the Root

Dragon Fate: Interactive Fiction

Perspective Flip

Mythic Transformations

Tales of Kitsune

Fateweaver’s Quest

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2013, 2018

Kris M. Schnee

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Tithi Luadthong, https://www.shutterstock.com/g/tithi+luadthong.

Thanks to Melange Books for releasing the e-book rights that made this second edition possible.

Independent authors need ratings and reviews to get noticed. Please consider leaving one!

Content

Kris Schnee
EVERYONE’S ISLAND

The Cast

PART ONE

1. Garrett

2. Garrett

3. Valerie

4. Tess

5. Garrett

6. Tess

7. Garrett

8. Tess

9. Garrett

10. Garrett

11. Tess

12. Garrett

13. Martin

14. Garrett

15. Tess

16. Garrett

17. Tess

PART TWO

1. Garrett

2. Garrett

3. Noah

4. Garrett

5. Garrett

6. Tess

7. Noah

8. Garrett

9. Leda

10. Garrett

11. Noah

12. Tess

13. Martin

14. Garrett

15. Martin

16. Garrett

17. Pierpont

18. Garrett

19. Valerie

20. Garrett

PART THREE

1. Garrett

2. Tess

3. Garrett

4. Noah

5. Garrett

6. Tess

7. Garrett

8. Tess

9. Garrett

10. Tess

11. Garrett

12. Tess

13. Garrett

14. Garrett

15. Tess

16. Eaton

17. Tess

Author’s Note

About the Author

The Crafter Series

The Thousand Tales Series

Also By Kris Schnee

Copyright