Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

far more precious
to any Virtual than blood: processor time.
    ’The Mist’s capacity is huge, but it’s finite,’ Mela said. ’There
are rules that unnecessary programmes are eventually shut down.’
    ’Unnecessary like abandoned Virtual children?’
    ’Yes. But the bloodsuckers have learned a way to, um, integrate
you into their own programming. That way they co-opt your ration of
processor capacity.’
    ’And live longer.’
    ’That’s the idea.’
    Symat was stunned. Living in a city still occupied by humans,
Virtuals had always been peripheral to him. He had no idea that this
kind of cannibalistic savagery was going on among them, out of sight
of mankind. ’So that’s why you hid from me.’
    Mela shrugged. ’We didn’t know if you were a Virtual or not.’
    ’Not until you got stuck in the water,’ Tod said, and Chem
laughed.
    What else didn’t he know? ’Mela - when I was trying to sleep, I
heard the boys muttering. Something about Guardians. And in the
middle of the fight back there, you all looked at me strangely. I
heard that name again. Guardians.’ He looked at her uncertainly.
’What’s going on?’
    Mela flexed her hand, and held it up to the sun, as if trying to
look through it. ’You understand that we Virtuals are individuals.
But we are all projections, from the Mist, and of wider artificial
minds beyond even that. So we aren’t like you, Symat. We’re -
blurred. It’s hard to explain…’
    Mela was a projection of a mass artificial mind that, loosely
integrated, spanned Mars, and what was left of Sol system - indeed,
once it had spanned much of the Galaxy. Mars’s Mist was just part of
it. This interplanetary colloquium of minds, meshed together in an
endless conversation, called itself the ’Conclave’, Mela told him.
And sometimes she and the other Virtuals could sense the deeper
thoughts of that mind, the vast undercurrents of its
consciousness.
    How strange she was, Symat realised as she spoke, strange in
layers. She looked like a rather serious twelve-year-old girl; most
of the time she acted that way. But she was old - far older than him,
centuries old. She had been twelve all that time, looking after these
other ageless children. And behind her, looking at him through her
eyes, were misty ranks of ancient artificial minds.
    ’And the Conclave,’ she said, ’is very aware of you, Symat.’
    ’Me? I’m not important. I’m just a kid.’
    ’Apparently you’re more than that.’
     
    The water had almost run dry. Reefs of baking mud clogged the
basin of the canal.
    They slowed to a halt, and stood in a glum group.
    ’We’re past the point where the recycling pumps take back the
water,’ Mela said. ’Nobody tries to grow things further west than
this any more. It’s too hot and dry. And every year this point is
pulled further back.’ She looked up at Symat. ’So we can’t go
on.’
    ’Look.’ Tod pointed at the bare ground, a hundred paces from the
canal. ’There’s a flitter.’
    Symat shielded his eyes from the sun to see.
    Mela said, ’It’s your parents, isn’t it? They’ve waited for you
here, where you could walk no further.’
    ’I have to face them,’ Symat said grimly. ’Maybe now they’ll take
me seriously.’
    Another Virtual coalesced out of the dusty air. It was Symat’s
mother, grave, soberly dressed. Symat was astonished to see the
streaks of tears under her eyes. ’Come home, son,’ she said. ’We’re
here. In the flesh, in our flitter. We’ve come for you. Please come
back.’ She didn’t even seem to see the Virtual children with him.
    Impulsively Symat opened his arms. ’I’ve made friends. Let me take
them back with me.’
    ’That’s impossible.’
    ’One, then. Let me take one.’
    His mother glanced sideways; Symat imagined her looking at his
father back in the family flitter, listening to that gravelly voice.
Give him a victory. What does it matter?
    ’Very well,’ his mother said. ’Which one?’
    Symat turned to Mela. ’Come with me.’
    She hesitated. ’What about the boys?’
    ’I think I need your help.’
    She looked at him, and again he had an odd sense that she knew
more about him than he knew himself, that other minds watched him
through her eyes. ’Maybe you do.’
    ’No!’ Chem grabbed Mela. ’Don’t leave us!’
    Symat could see she was torn. ’I’ll come back,’ she said. ’This
could be important. Just stay out of the way of the bloodsuckers and
you’ll be fine.’
    Symat’s