There seemed no doubt that Poole really had existed as an historical figure. The question was: what was his relationship to the Ultimate Observer? Was Poole just another supplicant, if an extraordinary one, his life just one more thread in the tapestry contemplated by the Wignerian godhead? Or, some argued further, perhaps Poole and the Observer ought to be identified: perhaps Michael Poole was the Observer. The trouble with that argument was that Poole was undoubtedly human, whatever else he was, though his achievements had been anything but ordinary. So could a god be made incarnate?

It was an issue that had always fascinated Futurity. Indeed, it had so intrigued some of his predecessors that they had commissioned the Virtual Poole from the Idealists so they could ask him about it: it was a rough-and-ready engineer’s approach to a deep theological question.

But oddly, with the real thing - or at least a disturbing simulacrum - just down the corridor of this ship, Futurity’s dry scholarship seemed pointless. He found it hard to believe Poole himself would have any time for this dusty stuff.

After a couple of hours Futurity gave up. He left his cabin and went exploring again.

As he roamed the corridors he watched the crew at work. They all seemed to be command staff, aside from a few orderlies who performed such chores as serving the Captain his meals and shifting furniture around to set up passengers’ cabins. It was puzzling. Futurity had no experience of life aboard starships, but he could not see how the crew’s complicated discussions and endless meetings related to the ship’s actual operations. And he never spotted an engineer, a person who might be in charge of the systems that actually made the ship go.

He was probably reading the situation all wrong. But Michael Poole, who had once built starships himself, also concluded that there was something very odd about this ship.

On the second day he talked it over with Futurity. Tahget had given Poole some limited access over where he could ‘pop up’, as he put it, and he had been able to roam a bit wider than Futurity had. But not much further. His own internal-consistency protocols, designed to give him some anchoring in humanity, made it impossible for him to roam into areas that would have been hazardous for humans. And when the Captain had spotted that Poole was hacking into access-denied areas, such privileges had quickly been locked out.

‘I saw a few sights before they shut me down, though,’ Poole said, and he winked. ‘We’re not alone on this ship. It’s a big place, and we’re confined to this little box. But in the longer corridors on the fringe of our cage, I saw things: shadows, furtive movements. Like ghosts. And if you look too closely what you see disappears into the shade.’

Futurity frowned. ‘You’re not saying the ship is haunted?’