Ha covered her mouth as the five drones dropped down. Get ahold of yourself. They can’t fly. They came down in free fall, and then jerked to a stop at a level just over human height. Altantsetseg’s hand, raised like the hand of a sorcerer from a children’s story, worked in an exacting sign language that sent the drones into a dance around the symbol, dipping and pausing, swinging in tight arcs around one another. Ha backed away to where Evrim was standing, just out of the whirling flight pattern.

“This is your moment of triumph, Ha,” Evrim said. “There is nothing in doubt now: You have proof. We have proof. A justification to continue our work. This is a beginning.”

Ha said nothing. Her eyes tracked the gyrations of the drones, then moved back over the symbol, then back to the drones. At this distance, the skull was a spherical jade shape among the other objects used to make the symbol. Like a discarded weather-stained ball washed up on the beach, a neutral artifact.

But there’s nothing neutral about it.

Finally, she spoke.

“Don’t you see it?”

“I see it. But it could mean a lot of things.”

“This doesn’t read like a beginning.” She turned and walked away.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to the hotel. I have to think, and I can’t do it here.”

Chapter 20

We argue more and more about consciousness as AI develops and brains come online that can accomplish many of the tasks of a human brain. But still, we have no clear definition of consciousness—even though it must be the most important element of our own experience on the planet.

Why do we fear so much in the other this thing we so little understand in ourselves?

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

20

IT DIDN’T TAKE MUCH to kill a person.

This was something Eiko learned on the factory ship. He had seen a man from another ship arguing with a guard. In one easy motion, the guard raised their rifle and brought the stock of it hard against the man’s temple. The man crumpled to the gangway. The guard walked off. By the time other crew members reached the man, he was dead.

They had been on the factory ship for a week. In that time, Eiko saw hundreds of other crew members of ships, and fifty or so guards. Ships came and went, many of them smaller than the Sea Wolf, only one of them larger. The Sea Wolf crew mostly spent their time on board their own ship. And that was better.