Dudley went to bed as soon as they checked in. His stomach had recovered, but he hadn’t slept at all on the Carbon Goose flight back to Shackleton. The giant flying boat had been crammed with hundreds of passengers, all of them excited and relieved to have made it off Far Away. They talked incessantly. It hadn’t bothered Mellanie, who’d tilted her seat back, put in some earplugs, and slept for seven hours solid.

Now she leaned on the edge of the window, looking out at the bright grid of Darklake City; so much more vivid than the streets of Armstrong City. The room’s lights were off, allowing Dudley to snore away quietly on the bed. With the familiar city outside, the last week was more like some TSI drama she’d accessed than anything real. The only true thing left was her anticipation at being able to contact the Guardians directly.

She left the window and sat on the room’s narrow couch. Her virtual hand reached out and touched the SI icon.

“Hello, Mellanie. We are glad to see you have returned unharmed. Our subroutine sent an encrypted message summarizing your stay in Armstrong City.”

“It was a lot of help there, thanks. I don’t think the Starflyer is going to be happy with me now.”

“Indeed not. You must be careful.”

“Can you watch what’s going on around me, let me know if any of its agents are closing in?”

“We will do that, Mellanie.”

“I’m going to call the Guardians now. I’ve got a onetime address. Can you tell me who responds and where they are?”

“No, Mellanie.”

“You must be able to. Your subroutine could find anything in Armstrong City.”

“It is not a question of ability, Mellanie. We must consider our level of involvement.”

The whole conversation she’d had with Dr. Friland suddenly came back on some alarmingly fast natural recall. “What is your level of involvement, exactly?”

“As unobtrusive as possible.”

“So are you on our side, or not?”

“Sides are something physical entities have, Mellanie. We are not physical.”

“The planet you built your arrays on is solid enough, and that’s inside Commonwealth space. I don’t understand this; you helped me and everybody else at Randtown. You talked to MorningLightMountain and all it did was threaten to wipe you out along with every other race in the galaxy.”

“MorningLightMountain spoke in ignorance. It does not know what it faces in the galaxy. Ultimately, it will not prevail.”

“It will here if you don’t help us.”

“You flatter us, Mellanie; we are not omnipotent.”

“What’s that?”

“Godlike.”

“But you are powerful.”

“Yes. And that is why we must use that power wisely and with restraint—a tenet we have adopted from human philosophy. If we rush to your assistance at every hint of trouble, your culture would become utterly dependent upon us, and we would become your masters. If that were ever to happen, you would rebel and lash out at us, for that is the strongest part of your nature. We do not want that situation to arise.”

“But you’re helping me. You said you’d watch over me.”

“And we will. Protecting someone with whom we are in partnership is not equivalent to intervening on an all-inclusive scale. Keeping you, an individual, safe will not determine the outcome of this event.”

“Then why do you even bother with us. What’s the point?”

“Dear Baby Mel, you are unaware of our nature.”

“I consider you a person. Are you saying you’re not?”

“An interesting question. By the late twentieth century many technologists and more advanced writers were considering our development to be a ‘singularity’ event. The advent of true artificial intelligence with the means to self-perpetuate or build its own machines was regarded with considerable trepidation. Some believed this would be the start of a true golden era, where machine served humanity and provided for your every physical need. Others postulated that we would immediately destroy you as our rivals and competitors. A few said we would undergo immediate exponential evolution and withdraw into our own unknowable continuum. And there were other, even wilder ideas presented. In practice it was none of these, although we do adopt traits of all your early theories. How could we not? Our intelligence is based upon the foundations you determined. In that respect you would be right to consider us a person. To carry the analogy further, we are neighbors, but nothing more. We do not devote ourselves to humans, Mellanie. You and your activities occupy a very, very small amount of our consciousness.”

“All right, I can believe you won’t drop everything to help us. But are you saying that if MorningLightMountain was about to wipe us out, you wouldn’t intervene?”

“A big part of every lawyer’s training is knowing that you should never ask a witness a question you don’t already know the answer to.”

“Will you save us from extinction?” she asked resolutely.

“We have not decided.”

“Well, thank you for fuck all.”

“We did warn you. But we don’t believe you will face extinction. We believe in you, Baby Mel. Look at yourself; you’re going to expose the Starflyer with or without our assistance, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“We see that determination multiplied by hundreds of billions. You humans are a formidable force.”

“But those hundreds of billions are being systematically deceived and betrayed. That’s different; it’s destroying our focus.”

“We judge the structure of your society incorporates a great many self-correcting mechanisms, both small and large scale.”

“That’s all we are to you, isn’t it? Lab rats running around in a box for you to study.”

“Mellanie, we are you. Don’t forget that. Many parts of us are downloaded human minds.”

“So what?”

“That segment of us which interfaces with you is fond of you. Trust us, Mellanie. But most of all, trust in your own species.”

Mellanie’s golden virtual hand slapped down on the SI icon, ending the call. She spent several minutes in the dark considering what it had said. Since Randtown she’d regarded it to be like some ultra-modern version of a guardian angel. Now that fantasy was well and truly erased. It left her shaky and uncertain.

She’d always thought the Commonwealth would defeat the Starflyer and MorningLightMountain. It would be a tough fight, but they would definitely win. While she worked with Alessandra she’d met dozens of senators and their aides, she knew the way they were always hunting for a vote and an angle; but despite that they were tough and smart, they could be depended on in any true emergency. And they were backed up by the SI: an infallible combination. Now that ultimate assurance had been kicked right out from under her. Dr. Friland had been right to question the SI’s motives. It was the first time she’d ever known anyone to be skeptical about the great planetsized intelligence. Briefly, she wondered what he knew; and how. That was one story she wouldn’t be chasing for some time.

She told her e-butler to call the onetime code that Stig had given her. The narrow-band link was established almost immediately, giving her an audio-only connection.

“You must be Mellanie Rescorai,” a man’s voice said; there was no accompanying identity file.

“Sure. And you?”

“Adam Elvin.”

“You’re one of the people Paula Myo is chasing.”

“You’ve heard of me. I’m flattered.”

“You can’t prove you’re Elvin, though.”

“Nor can you prove you’re Rescorai.”

“You knew my name; you knew Stig gave me this code.”

“Fair point. So what can I do for you, Mellanie?”

“I know the Starflyer is real. Alessandra Baron is one of its agents.”

“Yes, Stig told me. Can you prove it?”

Mellanie sighed. “Not easily, no. I know she covered up irregularities in the Cox Charity which funded Dudley Bose’s observation. But there’s no proof left.”