‘Heliotrope, here are the parameters of a search, and related data.’ She sent the programs to the AI, and trustingly it accepted them without checking. As the Jain programs isolated the AI and began to take it apart, she watched the station. Precisely on time a brief speck of light appeared on its huge surface. But the mere fact that she saw it without magnification, from this distance on a structure so massive, meant a few thousand cubic yards of the station had been vaporized along with Shoala’s interface sphere, and his corpse. After a moment she picked up signals meant for her, and ignored them, while delving into the complexities of entering U-space. The ship AI died just as the ship it controlled dropped out of existence.

With a feeling of extreme déjà vu Thorn walked out along the platform, but that sensation passed as he gazed out across the roiling sea. When Skellor had come here, and for ten shillings picked up his Jain node at a market stall, there had been no sea here at all, but now the terraforming process was much advanced. The market now absent, large structures had arisen on what must now be described as a pier. A big ship lay magnetically moored to it, and a crane lowered large cargo containers into its hold.

‘Why a ship?’ he asked.

‘That was Aelvor’s choice,’ replied Jack via Thorn’s comlink. ‘For energy efficiency. The runcible is downside so requires the main output of present fusion reactors, thus for planetary transport he is using less energy-profligate means. The output from the reactor aboard that ship would only be enough to lift an AG transport one tenth the size.’

‘Then why not bring in more reactors?’

‘Economics. Aelvor is working within a budget.’

Economics.

Thorn tasted the word. When you worked for ECS it was one you knew about, but also knew only applied to others. The formulae that AIs employed to control financial systems he knew to be as esoteric as those they used to control runcibles. He understood that the profit margins of all concerns were limited by those formulae, as were their rate of expansion and resource demand. This last applied here, too, for Aelvor, the haiman overseeing the terraforming of this place, had been allocated limited resources and was left to assign them as he saw fit. Here then was an attempt to allow a terraformer to create something not quite so homogeneous as many worlds in the Polity. This world was also unusual in having a haiman in charge—the Osterland AI’s power being limited solely to the runcibles and their infrastructure. He wondered how the AI itself felt about that.

Thorn continued along the edge of the pier until he was closer to the ship.