“You might as well, Aelfric.” Justinian’s eyes were burning. “You’re a good counselor. Better than one of those fucking machines…”

Back on Gateway, Justinian had the impression the pod was letting him know it had scored a point. It was an AI: it could force you to feel things, do things, even realize things about yourself that you didn’t want to. Okay, so he didn’t like the Watcher. He had always avoided thinking about that in the past, and now the pod had caused him to face up to the fact. Each pod he had met so far had done the same: forced him to face up to some aspect of his personality. Everything from his jealousy at his sister’s success to his feeling of failure for not doing better at school. This was home truth number fifteen. He just didn’t like what the Watcher did to personality constructs. It troubled Justinian’s personal worldview that the most intelligent being known to humankind, if it really did exist, would choose to inflict suffering on sentient beings.

The pod was reading his discomfort: it now paraphrased the words originally attributed to the Watcher.

“She was a human personality construct, Justinian. If she lived forever, she wouldn’t be human. If she never got ill, or ran the risk of illness, she wouldn’t be human.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“It’s all that you’re getting.”

Justinian gave a mental sigh of relief that this section of the interview was over. To have an AI dip so deeply into his mind-what damage could it have done? Was there any way of telling? Now Justinian called up the visual representation of the pod’s intelligence on a narrow-beam viewing field from his console. The pod shouldn’t be able to see it, but it could probably read by his reactions what he was doing. It would no doubt mention the fact in a moment.

There were no clues there. The pod’s VRep looked just the same as those of all the other pods he had examined on this planet: concentric bands of color vanishing into infinity at the center of the image. The picture always reminded Justinian of a cross section of an incredibly old and gnarled tree trunk. On cursory inspection there was nothing unusual there: it was an apparently sane and healthy personality. There were no clues here to its creation…

“Does my VRep give you any clues to why I committed suicide? I feel like I’m rattling around the inside of this case, just looking for answers.”

“No, nothing. Do you realize that you have exactly the same personality construct as all the other AI pods I visited? It’s like you all agreed on a common template before you wound yourselves down. All of you answer my questions in the same way.”

“Is that your child I see, there in the hatchway to the flier?” asked the pod, changing the subject. Nobody likes to be told they’re not an original. Justinian looked towards the flier. The craft’s lights were dimming as the sun rose. Leslie was standing just inside the rear hatchway, gently rocking Justinian’s son in its arms.

“Yes,” said Justinian. “That’s the baby.”

“The baby? Doesn’t it have a name?”

Justinian was used to this question by now. Even so, it didn’t diminish the twinge of pain he felt whenever he gave the answer.

“His mother has been in a coma since just before he was born. We’ll decide on a name once she comes out of it.”

“Your wife is in a coma? How unusual. What’s the matter with her?”

“The White Death. Have you heard of it?”

“Of course,” said the pod, “…I’m sorry.” There was a pause. The pod continued: “Only, how old is the baby? Fifteen months, I would guess.”

“Almost exactly. Don’t say anything else. Anya will get better, and then we’ll choose a name for our son.”

A pregnant pause. And then the AI made the statement Justinian had been waiting for.

“Historically speaking, people would leave their children at home when they traveled into dangerous situations.”

“Historically speaking,” said Justinian, slowly and deliberately, “people used to rape, murder, and die of starvation. Just because it happened in the past doesn’t mean it has to be a good thing. Nowadays, parents do not leave their children to be raised by others, and as his mother is ill, where else would he be but here with me?”

Another pause.

“Okay,” said the pod slowly, “if that’s what you think is best. Why did they send you here to Gateway? There must be lots of other counselors specializing in PCs who don’t have children. Or whose partner isn’t in a coma… Ah.” The pod suddenly understood. “So,” it wondered, “am I like Anya? Do you think that I might have caught the White Death?”

“I don’t think so,” said Justinian. “You’re still thinking.”

“Albeit at a much reduced level.”

Justinian waved to the baby. It didn’t see him; it seemed to be concentrating on trying to unscrew Leslie’s head. Just a few more questions and then he could get back on the flier and move on to the next pod. Gateway was a bust and he knew it. There were no answers to Anya’s illness here. He needed to wrap this up.

“I have access to a lot of data about the Environment Agency,” said the pod conversationally, “but most of it goes right over my head.”

“And why is that?” asked Justinian, striving to keep his voice level. It was pointless, he knew, for the pod would read his motives. But then maybe it would realize how important it was to admit what had happened to it. It even seemed to want to tell him.

The pod hesitated, then spoke the truth.

“All right, I think you know this already, but I’ll tell you anyway. My intelligence is currently residing in the boot system for the processing space within this pod. The boot space is a physical system, so naturally that limits my ability to think. I’m about as intelligent as the Turing machine in your flier-nice chap though it is. But, Justinian, I need to occupy the cloudware in order to execute the non-Turing processes that will truly allow me to be.”

“So what are you doing in the boot system?” Justinian asked, knowing the answer already. “Why not move into the cloudware?”

“I’ve stopped myself. When I first came to this planet I occupied the cloudware, but the intelligence that I then was wiped the evolutionary processes when it wrote me into the boot system. My former self committed suicide and left me here: a pale, stunted thing, unable to grow. It’s fair to say that I’m not the AI I used to be.”

Justinian smiled. “You’re half right,” he said. “I hoped you were going to say all that. It’s an important stage in the healing process.”

“No, it isn’t,” said the pod with finality. “I can’t be healed. Even if I were to grow again, I would not be the personality that I once was.”

Justinian did not comment on the point. He knew the pod was right. Instead he followed his prescribed line of inquiry.

“Do you know why your former self committed suicide?”

“No. It has hidden those reasons from me. One can’t help thinking we should perhaps respect the judgment of one more intelligent than both of us. Are your inquiries wise?”

Justinian sighed. The sun had risen above the horizon, and the trailing fingers of mud ribbons making up the wide delta glowed red, a bright contrast to the shadowy sea all around. Justinian felt as if the same black water was seeping up through his feet, filling his body with despair through some dark osmosis. What was he doing here, standing on a mud flat in the middle of a silted-over river delta, marooned on a barely explored planet at the edge of human space? A man, a pod, and a white scattering of grass seed.

He moved on to the next question on his list. “Okay, do you remember why you were placed here?”

“Oh yes,” the pod said. “River reclamation project. I can see the plans laid out right here. Get rid of the silt in this delta and you’ve got the ideal location for a city port. This planet is intended to be an Earth model, you know: an example of Earth life and culture spread out to be seen by whatever may lie out there in that galaxy. In M32.”