Recursion Read Free

stealth technology?”
    “I have. I don’t believe it is sophisticated enough to fool my scanners,” replied Herb shortly.
    “Oh, it is,” Robert Johnston said softly. “It is.”
    They crouched by the hole for another moment in silence. Herb’s pale blue eyes locked with Johnston’s dark brown gaze. Herb was used to playing this game, and usually he was the last to look away. Not this time. He blinked and looked back down into the shadows.
    “Okay,” he muttered softly, “I believe you. You attached a stealth ship to mine.”
    “I didn’t say that,” said Johnston.
    Herb jumped to his feet in anger. “Hell’s teeth!” he shouted. “What is your problem? Why do you keep playing games with me?”
    The smile vanished from Johnston’s face, and Herb found a very different person looking at him. There was no emotion in his face, just the cold certainty that Robert Johnston—and only Robert Johnston—was in charge of the situation.
    Johnston spoke in the softest of tones. “I just wanted to establish, right at the beginning of our relationship, that I could. I’m not one of your father’s lackeys, paid to be pushed around.”
    The smile snapped back onto his face, and Herb felt a rush of relief.
    “However, let me explain. I did not say that I used a stealth ship, I merely pointed that out as a possible solution to the problem: namely, how did I attach my ship to yours without you noticing?”
    Johnston rose to his feet and walked across to the sofa facing the viewing field that Herb had opened earlier. Herb paused to run his finger along the rim of the hatch Johnston had opened in his ship. The parquetry was joined to the metal of the hatch like the crust on a loaf of bread: one material faded into another without any definable boundary. However the join was achieved, Herb had not seen the effect before. Reluctantly, because Johnston was waiting, he pulled the hatch shut and went to sit on the sofa opposite him.
     
    When Herb had designed the lounge of his spaceship, he had intended it to be light and airy. White leather furniture and slabs of glass sat above the nonrepeating, tessellating pattern of the parquet floor. The walls were left quite plain, only the occasional tall ornament or sculpture set out around the perimeter of the room acted to relieve their blankess. The ceiling was hung with the fragile white balls of paper lanterns that gently illuminated the room. To Herb’s eyes, Robert Johnston, sitting on the white sofa, stood out like a turd in cotton wool. His dark suit may have been immaculately tailored, his sharp starched cuffs may have slid from the sleeves of his jacket as he smoothed a crease on his trousers, but as far as Herb was concerned, there was something jarringly wrong about the man sitting opposite. As he was thinking this, the answer to the problem occurred to him.
    “You suppressed my ship’s AI, didn’t you?” Herb said. “My ship is completely under the control of your ship’s AI. Your ship has processed every command I’ve made and filtered out any information it didn’t want me to see.”
    “Very good. You are intelligent, but I knew that. However…I want you to understand that everything you have done over the past six months has been catalogued by the EA. We have the proof you destroyed this planet.”
    “It was an accident.” Herb narrowed his eyes. “If you’ve monitored everything that I’ve done, you will realize that.”
    Johnston smiled sadly.
    “Oh, I realize that. But Herb…it’s not an excuse. You’ve still destroyed a planet.”
    “It was completely lifeless. I checked first.”
    Herb knew that it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left his lips. Johnston’s eyes darkened and the smile snapped away again to be replaced by an expression of pure anger.
    “You checked, did you? Ran a full spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere for airborne plankton? Performed a high-resolution deep scan in case microbes were clinging onto life