"But only if it comes from choice, made in the face of a longing to live, made out of love which is not programmed, made out of sacrifice which is not imposed duty, made out of a decision to take responsibility even when I I do do not not wish wish to to take take responsibility! responsibility! My optics are not good for distance. Will you take me to the Soul Stone?" My optics are not good for distance. Will you take me to the Soul Stone?"

"We have a day," I said. "I can't answer you now."

"Yes," Lud said. "And, Tom?"

"Yes?"

"Because I know your beliefs, because I accept Tom for Tom as much as I accept what I am, you cannot fail me. You are human; you are being human. It is right for you to doubt what I am. I do not have your dilemma, but oh how I savour that doubt. You may decide not to help, but one day you might."

"Then it will be too late. Too late for you."

"No," Lud said. "Then it will be right."

I watched the eyes, saw Phar get up from where he had been crouching alongside Phaya.

"It is what Lud told me many years ago, Tom. Most human belief systems-the religions-fail because they require faith, trusting acceptance, first, even before self-knowledge. Lud understands that truth must be lived, that faith can be folly, an easy way out, an insult to the self, a crutch. Lud is ready now to sacrifice the only bit of life he has, the only sort of life he can offer."

"I do not know what I can do," I told him.

Lud answered that. "Tom, can I tell you a story I learned in the Bati Gardens?"

"Yes," I said, watching the softly-glowing eyes. Phaya moved in her sleep, and Lud waited until she was settled again before starting.

"There was a great king once who had two sons he loved very much. One, a scholar, a kind warm-hearted young man, the king kept by him at court, partly because the young prince was not a warrior or an administrator, and partly because he greatly enjoyed the lad's discourse, the easy closeness they shared. The other son, also much loved, was a great warrior, a good and just administrator, the perfect choice for general to lead the king's armies. But the king and this son rarely spoke, rarely shared their hearts, were rarely easy or close. Yet the king believed the son understood, believed that their silences contained the same deep and rich understanding he shared with the other son, that the looks that did pa.s.s between them were full of unspoken affections, that nothing needed to be said.

"Then, one day, out of jealousy, out of envy, anger and disenchantment, the warrior son led a rebellion against his father. Without the king's knowledge, the scholar went forth to appeal to his brother, but in a rage the warrior son slew him as the focus for all his wrath and disappointment.

"The king wept when he heard the news. He raged, he stormed, he did not leave his apartment for days. When he did come forth, he a.s.sembled his royal bodyguard, took his great sword and seven mighty spears and his fierce battle lions, and rode out to meet his son. 'What will you do?' the king's advisers asked as they charged to battle. 'I know,' the king replied. 'What?' his advisers asked. 'What will you do?' And the king, even as his son's army came into view, said: 'I already know what I will do, but I do not know what it is yet.'"

"And the moral?" I asked.

"It is just a story," Lud said.

"Why did you tell it?"

"Because you are like the king. You know what you will do, but you haven't discovered it yet. So much of human life is like that: Head speaking for heart; ego claiming to represent the soul."

"What did the king do?"

"The right thing. It is just a fable."

"What, Lud?"

But the mankin would not tell me. I had had enough, and I moved away from the robot and the sleeping child, went out into the street. The old Ab'O followed me as he had before.

"I need time, Phar."

"I know. And, Tom, even if you do not walk with us to the Stone, you do us honour. Even if you see us off, walk a step or two; even if you decide to denounce Lud tonight, call in the Kurdaitcha avengers, you do us honour."

"Why? How?"

The old man smiled. "Because you came back tonight. Whether you approve of Lud as AI or not, whether you believe there can be such humanity in a man-made oriete, you acknowledged the life in him enough to do even that."

"Phar. I probably did it for me, to ease my conflicts in the matter."

"Yes," Phar said. "But that's the real reason Lud wanted to meet you. He did it for himself also, to ease his own conflicts and doubts."

"Are you saying I've convinced him to go ahead with it?"

"Yes, Tom. You did."

I walked the evening streets of Twilight Beach, pa.s.sing through the Byzantine Quarter and the Mayan Quarter, and headed towards the lights of the famous Gaza Hotel terrace. The Life Festival was just over a day away, and I did not know what to do. I walked down onto the Pier and sat watching the dark ocean, sat there for hours, caught in the loop. It would be such a little thing, I knew, and Phar was right: there would be only a token penalty. My services to the tribes would allow it. I had no excuse but my true feelings, so little I could blame. I feared the machines. I wanted to believe in them so much, so deeply, that I had to be sure, just as Phar said. I had to have it proven; I couldn't take it on faith, no more than Lud could for all those years. Surely I could take some time, as Lud told me I could. 'Then it will be right,' he had said. He He had said. had said.

He.

And since I was in the loop, at the very depth of it, there was the same foolish, absolutely absurd question to ask again, a superst.i.tious, ignorant, Luddite question if ever there was one: was there a detectable life-flow out of a dead mankin-machine?

That nadir point of the loop did it.

I needed information, answers; I had to realign my thinking. Though it was late, I phoned the only life scientist I knew well enough to disturb at that hour.

"Pamela? It's Tom."

"Your timing is spectacular," a sleepy voice said.

"I'm sorry, Pamela. I need some advice."

"Now? Okay. Tell me quickly before I wake up, will you?"

"What's the Life Festival's position on AI?"

"Divided," Pamela James muttered. "Always divided."

"The universities' position?"

"They won't go into it. The Ab'Os run the affair. We face de-registration, lose sanctions, if we do too much. Look, go to Kyra Prohannis at the Festival Office for the latest policy."

"He's Ab'O!" I said.

"So? You into something illegal?"

"No."

"I may be half-asleep, Tom, but you answered that a bit too quickly."

"Thanks, Pamela. Nothing else?"

"Nothing that gets to me. See Prohannis. Be direct. You're curious. Lots of people ask. Goodnight!"

"Goodnight," I said.

The next morning, I was at the Festival Office asking to see the Co-ordinator. His secretary-appropriately a young tangental: a sea-woman of the Jade Sabre design-told me that Kyra Prohannis was engaged with Festival preparations and would not be available until midday. I made an appointment, then spent the rest of the morning away from Phar's Emporium, first walking on the beach, touring the sculpture gardens and watching the young boys playing their games of stylo, then wandering through the colourful bazaars of the Byzantine Quarter and sitting with the sand and sea sailors at the old Sea Folly Inn, keeping my mind occupied as best I could.

Shortly after noon, I was back at the Festival Office, only to learn that Prohannis had been and gone, but that he would definitely spare me some time after his afternoon siesta. When I returned at 1630, I was half-expecting to be disappointed again, but the tall, powerfully-built Ab'O was there to meet with me. While we sat together out in the roof garden, looking across the whitewashed, sun-drenched rooftops of Twilight Beach to the ocean, the sea-woman served us vintage terfilot in small porcelain cups. A fine Iseult-Darrian belltree stood near us, an ambitious twelve-foot construct with psychotropic filters, rewarding us with ion-fluxes, soft reed-calls, and the subtlest of mood-bending frissons. I watched it standing boldly in the golden afternoon air, then realised my gaze kept coming back to its diligent housing at the crown.

"Almost alive," I said.

"Trapper? Yes." Prohannis said. "The Iseult-Darrians are very close. Not like Christine though, the Jade Sabre who brought you to me. She is real life."

"Mr Prohannis, I am here to ask about the Festival's position on mankin AI. I know it's contentious but, given the Festival's background, it has to be a continuing issue for you." Prohannis waited until Christine had poured us refills and had moved away to sit on a hand-embroidered rug close by, enjoying Trapper's mood-bending to the fullest.

"It is is a constant avenue of enquiry for us. It has to be, of course. Christine here has made it her own speciality, as you might understand. But we have no active program where mankin AI is concerned. Our problem was one of interpretation. We did too much too soon, trapped ourselves into decade-long debates with formidable comp systems which refused to accept our rulings, raised up new somatotypes, sculpted DNA and worked with cyborgs and micro-circuitry till we plunged us all into a major philosophical and ontological crisis. Fortunately, we a constant avenue of enquiry for us. It has to be, of course. Christine here has made it her own speciality, as you might understand. But we have no active program where mankin AI is concerned. Our problem was one of interpretation. We did too much too soon, trapped ourselves into decade-long debates with formidable comp systems which refused to accept our rulings, raised up new somatotypes, sculpted DNA and worked with cyborgs and micro-circuitry till we plunged us all into a major philosophical and ontological crisis. Fortunately, we were were able to restore proportion, to define parameters, and quite cla.s.sic ones at that." able to restore proportion, to define parameters, and quite cla.s.sic ones at that."

"The high-mankins?" I said, reminding him.

Prohannis furrowed his brow. "We drew our line with the AI machines, Tom. This Iseult-Darrian is as close as we allow. The mankins were mocking mirrors to us. We were almost seduced into that terrible trap. The Haze Island comp took twelve years to put down. We had the Dreamtime to protect, our own enhanced life-view."

"Bear with me, Mr Prohannis. I was in the Madhouse for a long time. The machines in the darkness there became my friends in a way, the only friends, the only contact I had. I grew to trust them, then found out they said what they were instructed to say. They betrayed me by being ersatz life."

"Yes," Prohannis said. "I know of your time with the dream machines. I truly do understand. Let me a.s.sure you then that the mankin program was a . . . boondoggle, a false lead, a hoax. The Festival tomorrow is for all genetic life, Tom, not for machine impersonation."

"One more question, Mr Prohannis."

His eyes warned me by their gla.s.sy coolness, but I asked it anyway. "I've been told the high-mankins could read lifeflow from the newly-dead. As-"

"I'm sorry-"

"-as a simple biometric capability. Was this so? A deliberate bioscan function-"

"They were designed to be sensitive to life. But there is no evidence at all for high-mankins possessing such a skill."

"Oh? What of Antique Futures? The Bati Garden program?"

"Mere stories," Prohannis said, rising to his feet. "But you must excuse me now, Tom. With the Festival tomorrow, I have so much to do. Christine, show Captain Tyson out, will you?" The sea-woman led the way down to the street door, gave me a timid smile as she opened it.

"It is your day tomorrow, Christine," I said. "Be happy."

"Those machines, the ones in the darkness," she replied. "They could have loved you, given choice. Perhaps they did not deceive you of their own choosing."

"Christine!" I said, keeping her in the doorway. "How can I know? What can I do?"

But, of course, she did not understand my questions. A worried look crossed her strange pretty face, and she removed her own bewilderment by closing the door. That evening, I returned to Phar's Emporium. Lud was talking when I entered, holding another of his 'cla.s.ses', telling little Phaya yet again about his favourite place, the only place he had known but for Phar's shop: the Bati Gardens. The child seemed totally oblivious to the words, more entranced by the mankin itself and its wonderful voice than what it said.

". . . because they're mostly stone gardens," he was saying. "With all these ancient sculptures and sand-paintings arranged about. I used to tend the lenses that fused the paintings for the tourists to see, but we had a few bushes there too, small and hardy, lucky to survive in the heat. And I knew every one, Phaya, every single one. One day I shall see a real garden and a real forest and-h.e.l.lo, Tom!"

"h.e.l.lo, Lud. h.e.l.lo, Phaya?" The little girl laughed at me and clapped her hands, but it was plain she did not recognise me from the night before.

"You will see the forest at Catherine Park," I told the mankin. "The Stone is hidden by it now."

"Yes," Lud said. Then he waited.

"Lud . . ?" I began.

"Yes?"

"I've solved nothing. Tomorrow I will go as far as the Sea Folly, but I will not go into the Square or to the Stone."

"Thank you, Tom. I am not disappointed."

"I'm disappointed," I said. "But it's the point I've reached. I am sorry to fail you. I do it for Phar and Phaya."

"The gla.s.s is not half-empty, is it?" Lud said. "You are going to the Sea Folly with us." And gently he bent at the waist, reached down, and stroked Phaya's dark hair, crooning deeply, a prolonged soothing note that made the child croon back happily as she settled down in her makeshift bed.

"Where is Phar?"

"He has preparations to make for tomorrow. He will be able to talk later. But, Tom, I think you should go now. I think you should return here tomorrow at 0900 so we can walk together, the four of us."

"To the Sea Folly?"

"Yes. Further than I thought you might. Better than the end of Socket Lane."

"You'd rather I didn't stay now?"

Lud's eyes glowed above the fixed expressionless features. "Tom, you are already grieving for what you cannot do. I grieve to see such alarm, such confusion. What do you say at a next-to-final goodbye? Distractions are better. Remember, I caught you in a trap; I put you back in the loop. You know better. Leave me with Phaya now. Tonight I would like to savour the dear shadows, the world I know, to enjoy the chance to re-choose."

I seized on that. "You might not go tomorrow?"

"Who knows?" Lud said. "Everything is suddenly so dear. Goodnight!"

I went to the door, wending my way through the piles of junk, keenly aware that every turn, every carefully-arranged stack and carelessly-cluttered corner was part of a universe, vivid and cherished-if not through conventional modes of vision, then at some other percept level across the range of Lud's damaged sensors. As I pa.s.sed the front counter to the door, I was aware too of the planisphere lying there beneath the dark gla.s.s. Without looking at it, I stepped out into the night, went straight to my hotel, and put myself into one of their somniums, not caring about the resemblance it had to the machines in the Madhouse, escaping the only way I knew how. At 0900 on that crystal-clear morning, we set out from Phar's shop, the four of us: Phar and Phaya to either side of Lud, each holding one of his big hands, with me two paces behind to one side. Phar had polished the robot during the night so that Lud shone, his elaborate curlicues making threads of dazzling gold against the dull silver-grey as the sunlight caught them. Lud moved slowly, matching his stride to that of Phaya's little legs so she could keep up. We almost resembled a family group as we moved down Socket Lane: a child and her grandfather leading an awkward arthritic invalid, with me a slightly detached, possibly reluctant and embarra.s.sed uncle off to the side, keeping them company. As we turned into Julianna Boulevard, spectators started to gather. People came rushing out of shops and houses, running from the bazaars and up the steps from the beach. By the time we started into Catherine Parade, there were at least four hundred people following us. Phaya, far from shrinking back at all the attention, was squealing with delight. So many people, so much awe and excitement.

At the end of the Parade, I could see the Sea Folly with its wooden sign showing Aphrodite rising from the waves. I kept my eye on it, not looking at Lud but constantly aware of his heavy distinctive tread near mine, thinking of how the mermaid sign reminded me of Prohannis' Jade Sabre, Christine.

"What did the king do, Lud?" I said, with only thirty of Phaya's paces to go.

Lud continued walking, intent on reaching the Park and the Stone, but he answered.

"He stopped his chariot," Lud said, as if the story had never been interrupted, as if the evening continued about us now and not this bright fateful morning. "His arm was raised, holding a great spear ready to cast. He was in midcharge. But he stopped, and he stopped his army. He walked across to his son."

"And forgave him," I said, finishing it.

"Yes."

"And the son?"

"Killed his father with his sword," Lud said, with ten paces to go.

"What!"