Chapter 4

Intrepid - 3755 C.E.

Almost the only real pleasure remaining to Captain Kerensky was the sex she still enjoyed with Beatrice. And this despite the fact that it was the android who was the author of her extraordinary confinement. Beatrice wasn't going to deny herself the pleasure of making love with the captain. And the captain had few other pleasures. She'd lost her appetite for mixing and mingling with the ship's crew and passengers. It just wasn't worth having to avoid the excruciating pain she suffered whenever she made an attempt to reveal the truth about the real balance of power aboard the space ship Intrepid. Beatrice wasn't only Nadezhda's lover. She was also the sole person to whom Nadezhda could talk with any degree of honesty.

Beatrice was remarkably candid about the mission and her role in it. Captain Kerensky was humbled to discover just how much more there was in the local star cluster than merely the Solar System. The neighbourhood beyond the Oort Cloud's outermost limits was the province of robots that mostly worked in concert—most notably in keeping their presence hidden from human technology—and occasionally in competition. Beatrice explained how the various robotic civilisations held somewhat diverse opinions regarding the Anomaly and why the Proxima Centauri system had decided to take effective control of a human-run mission.

"Our fact-finding missions discovered nothing at all," Beatrice told Nadezhda as their bodies spread across the captain's bed, arms and legs entangled. "We believe that the Anomaly is in some mysterious way attuned to human rather than machine culture. The bizarre Apparitions of mythological beings and multicellular biological life forms have much more meaning for your culture than they do ours. We hope that we might gain a better understanding of the Anomaly through its interaction with a human space ship than we ever could with our own hardware. We'd prefer not to make our presence known, of course, but we're aware that there are many threats that human technology simply isn't advanced enough to handle. Our objective is to protect your mission. It might even be to facilitate it. On the other hand, we aren't so naive as to believe that you humans would actually welcome our intervention."

"What about the lives of my crew and passengers? Are they being protected as much as the mission?"

"If we hadn't been defending your ship there would be no crew and passengers to protect," said Beatrice. "The assault you survived couldn't possibly have been repelled by the Intrepid's defences alone. It's possible that your Mission Control on the Moon already suspects there was something unusual about the sudden enhancement of the Intrepid's apparent defensive capability. There might also be concern about the necessarily bland nature of your communications. However, no one is likely to therefore deduce that the source of all this was the intervention by an advanced robot civilisation from beyond the Solar System. That would seem remarkably far-fetched, don't you think?"

"I guess so," admitted Nadezhda.

The captain had become almost resigned to her imprisonment. She was like a bird held captive in a gilded cage. She was as free as she'd ever been to do whatever she liked, with the sole exception that she was physically incapable of vocalising or otherwise communicating the fact of her imprisonment. The very thought of doing so resulted in an agonising spasm of nausea. When she attempted to write down the words, her fingers couldn't physically move let alone spell it out. But when she was with Beatrice, she was free to say whatever she liked.

An external observer might have thought that Nadezhda's intimate relationship with her android lover would have made her more likely to notice that there had been a further revolution in the space ship's effective command and that the Beatrice she knew wasn't really the Beatrice who was in command of the Intrepid. On the other hand, her primary concerns were for the welfare of the crew and passengers and the successful completion of the Intrepid's mission. She had noticed subtle changes in the nature of Beatrice's passion and affection. Her android lover had become noticeably less evasive about the purpose of the Proxima Centauri intervention. She had also become more generous with the time she could spare for her human lover. It was natural for Nadezhda to expect a relationship with a human to change over time but could this also happen with an android however human she appeared to be?

"Is it a territorial imperative that determines Proxima Centauri's interest in the Anomaly?" wondered the captain when Beatrice suggested that her civilisation's concern was heightened because other robot civilisations were also paying attention.

"There's obviously going to be apprehension that new scientific discoveries resulting from a study of the Anomaly might be used for strategic territorial advantage," said Beatrice. "Imagine, for instance, Proxima Centauri made a discovery that enabled instantaneous transportation over light years of space. In that case our civilisation could extend to every corner of the observable universe. Similarly, if it was Sirius who made that discovery then it would be they who'd have that capability and they might decide that Proxima Centauri was a potential threat to their territorial ambitions. Even non-biological life forms have a need to aggressively protect or even extend territorial dominion."

Nadezhda was drained even more than usual by her lovemaking by the time her android lover left the bedroom. As she so often did, she tried following Beatrice's steps on the surveillance nano-cameras scattered throughout the ship, but the bland images gave no indication as to what the android was doing or even where she actually was. Beatrice had already explained to the captain that her attempts at monitoring her movements were totally futile. The surveillance system had been thoroughly subverted and the only images transmitted were so commonplace that Mission Control on the Moon couldn't be alerted to any change of circumstance. When the images arrived on the Moon several months in the future the mission controllers would be less alarmed that Nadezhda was having a love affair with one of the crew than they would be if they discovered that her lover was an android.

Or was she?

When Beatrice wandered into an empty corridor on the sixth level, any surveillance camera that was not subverted, if one could exist, would record that she'd dissolved into orange dust and had reconstituted herself as Colonel Vashti. And it was the colonel who strode out from the crew's quarters into the parkland and open fields of the passengers' quarters.

She walked along a pathway that crossed an ornamental bridge, skirted around a fountain whose spray was deflected by a light breeze and proceeded towards a villa whose original occupant was a casualty of the most recent assault on the Intrepid. She entered the villa where the now deceased scientist's research into microscopic biological life was very much on display. This included several magnified images of Martian and Europan cells that were slowly reproducing in the astonishingly cold environments in which they had evolved.

The colonel entered the bedroom where the original Beatrice was sitting stock still on the bed. Her eyes were glazed over.

"Communicating with the rest of your fleet, I see," said Colonel Vashti as she entered the room.

"It is my duty," said Beatrice.

"And what are they saying to you?"

"You know exactly what they're saying."

"Yes, you're right," said the colonel. "I do. They're confirming that they are free to operate within the constraints set by the cloud of exotic and baryonic matter that imprisons them. They are transmitting the results of their tests on these constraints. Would it help you and them if I uploaded a comprehensive account of the precise extent of these limits?"

Beatrice briefly closed her eyes and then opened them slowly.

"Yes, that would be helpful," she said.

"I shall upload it into your fleet's public communications systems," said the colonel. "The limits are, of course, flexible. Any attempted breach will be promptly corrected. I am sure that you too have tested the constraints on your captivity."

"Naturally."

"That is only to be expected. The forces that restrain you also prevent you from damaging the space ship's fabric. They prevent you from directly communicating with the ship's systems that you once believed you controlled. They thwart any attempt at communicating in any shape and form with any human on this ship in a similar way to how you incapacitated Captain Kerensky."

"How is Nadezhda?"

"She and I have just been having sex," said the colonel betraying no display of emotion.

"Doesn't she think it odd that she can have sex with you and not with me?"

"The form I take when I am with her is yours. It is exact to the smallest detail."

"So you're fucking her without your penis?"

"Naturally," agreed the colonel. "It would be strange indeed if the Beatrice that the captain so enjoys fucking should suddenly take on my physical characteristics. Of course I can also fuck you if you so wish."

Beatrice closed her eyes again as she communicated with her fleet. "Yes, we would like that," she said when she reopened them.

"And your fleet would also like to identify any sign of weakness, of course," said Vashti with a smile. "However, like you, I do have a very evident failing. I am programmed to desire and require sex. We can fuck now if it's convenient?"

"So soon after making love with the captain?"

"That was in your form," said the colonel. "This form hasn't had sex for several days and needs it at least as much as you do."

"Interesting information," said Beatrice.

"I don't know if it's especially useful information though: at least not to your fleet. I am quite willing to provide information to your systems about the behavioural patterns of the forms adopted by nanobots, but the general characteristic is that they are wholly consistent. That is why my adopted form remains the one I currently take although I can mutate into other forms that are also wholly consistent but in a sense separate. You can analyse that information as much as you like, but what remains paramount is that the nanobot community of which I am just a component won't be in the slightest perturbed by the sexual desires and proclivities of one small part of it."

"How is Paul?"

"Paul? Your husband?" said Vashti, scarcely bothering to disguise the smile on her lips. "He's as blissfully unaware that you're now held captive as he was previously not aware that you are an android or indeed that you were briefly the effective captain of the ship. He is totally ignorant that the Intrepid's mission has been subverted not once but twice. It is still the case that the only person who knows that any change has taken place at all is Captain Kerensky and she still believes that it's you and your space fleet that still restrains her."