Edges

Chapter 10

Kona ghosted in the library, afloat within a virtual space that showed him the cosmos outside, as if the ship’s substance had all gone transparent, leaving him adrift in the void, surrounded by two hundred billion stars and the dark streamers of molecular clouds that would someday forge more suns, more worlds, more potential for life.

They were a year out from Deception Well.

Looking back—looking swan—the brilliant beacon of faraway Alpha Cygni was still easy to pick out, but he could no longer distinguish Kheth, the Well’s sun, from the scattered stars beyond it. He could ask a Dull Intelligence to find Kheth for him, to draw a circle around it or artificially increase its apparent magnitude, but on his own, he’d lost track of it.

Back there somewhere lay his past. Centuries of joy and grief, terror and hope, struggle and disappointment—and quiet triumph because his people had survived. They would survive, Kona was confident of that, but the burden wasn’t his anymore and with every passing day, he felt the weight of those years slowly lifting. As the distance separating him from Deception Well accumulated, he felt himself renewed, reinvigorated, gifted with new purpose.

He turned to look ahead. He was no astronomer, but he knew enough to pick out some of the closer stars of the Hallowed Vasties. There was Ryo, and Tanjiri, Quin-ken, Bengali. Somewhere farther, the Sun.

Did Earth still exist? Did it still rotate to a twenty-four hour day? Still revolve in a three hundred sixty-five day year? Did it still harbor some vestige of the life that had arisen there, miraculous result of a long chain of incredibly unlikely circumstances?

Up until a year ago, he had never even entertained the thought that he might someday find out. Now, he dared to imagine that in some future century he might voyage there, come to see it for himself. If so, he would come there in stages, with many stops along the way, passing the intervals between worlds primarily in cold sleep.

With the busy first year over, and the planning and design phase done, he wanted to hurry on.

He closed the virtual bubble. His ghost migrated back to his atrium, melding with his core persona, reaffirming his determination to leap forward in time. His skills were people skills. His real work would start when the ship’s company was resurrected.

Now, alone in his chamber, he generated a new ghost and sent it to the archive. From there it would waken at intervals to review the progress of the ship and the status of those aboard, before returning to stasis. He also instructed a Dull Intelligence to keep watch, charging it to alert his ghost if ever there was an event, anything out of the ordinary.

After his ghost was away, he summoned a cold-sleep cocoon, closing his eyes as the cocoon’s transparent mucilaginous tissue enshrouded him.

He looked forward to the future, and he’d already said his goodbyes.

Late afternoon in the forest room:

The weather algorithm had summoned gray clouds into the projected sky beyond the pergola. Clemantine appreciated the muted light as she floated in tandem with a curved screen displaying the tabular genetic data of an ornamental descendant of an ancient line of maple trees. Genetic sculpting was an art form she enjoyed, modifying not just the appearance of plants, but their life cycle as well, in this case seeking a perfect balance of autumn leaf coloration. Through her atrium, she ordered the screen to refresh, to display an accelerated simulation of the tiny tree’s seasonal life cycle.

Green leaves had just begun to unfold when a DI brought her news of a course change.

Startled, Clemantine froze the simulation and sent a ghost into the library to investigate. Then, turning her gaze skyward, she sought a point of reference, settling on a white camellia blossom just above her nose. Slowly, as seconds ticked past, she watched herself and her free-floating screen drift away from the flower, scant centimeters toward the side of the room—motion so subtle she couldn’t be sure of the cause until a submind returned, informing her Dragon was undertaking a navigational correction, using a slow, subtle lateral force to nudge the ship’s immense mass. Why?

She waited to find out and at the end of the extended maneuver confirmed their course to be fixed a little more closely on the future position of the Tanjiri star system.

A reasonable action, then. A responsible action. And yet the incident troubled her. She should have known the adjustment was necessary. She should have known it was coming. But she wouldn’t have known about it at all if she hadn’t been monitoring the logs.

She thought about the process behind that correction, wondering if Urban had ordered it, or if it had been triggered by the Pilot, operating independently.

A chiding inner voice scolded: I should know that.

Heat rose in her cheeks, a flush of shame. More than a year had passed since her ghost had transited from cardinal to cardinal, exploring the neural bridge. She had meant to go back. She wanted to look again for the pathways leading to the spiraling trunkline and its hundred thousand filaments reaching outward to meet and link and control the vast field of philosopher cells. She wanted to confirm that she had not just missed those pathways, but that they had been hidden from her.

And yet, day after day, she’d put off the task.

At first, after opening the cache of privileged files, she had needed time to come to terms with her other existence. She felt no shame for the actions taken by her other self, but her grief ran deep. Comfort came to her through the belief that this expedition was different, that the disastrous past lay behind them, that they were embarked on a new age of discovery—or re-discovery—and that they would ultimately find evidence of vibrant, tenacious life blossoming among the ruins.

At the same time, she worried this benign outlook was fragile, that it would disintegrate if she asked too many questions. So she curbed her questions and kept busy: working with Vytet to develop a plan for the interior of the gee deck, devising a housing scheme and a landscape, and then working out the chained sequences of assembly that would bring her vision into existence.

All of that was done now. She was out of excuses.

So get on with it!

She wiped the screen she’d been using. Pulled up a schematic of the neural bridge. Reviewed its intricate, branching structure, and plotted every path that led to the trunkline. There weren’t many, just thirteen. She identified the sequence of cardinal nanosites she would have to pass through to reach each one. Then, despite her aversion to the sense of disembodiment she would face among the cardinals, she sent a ghost to investigate.

Very soon, the ghost returned. It affirmed what she’d inferred over a year ago: The paths to the trunkline were not visible to her. She had no access to them.

A deep breath to gather her courage. The philosopher cells were on the other side of those hidden paths. Once she crossed over, she would be in contact with them, plunged into unfiltered communication with the ship’s murderous composite mind.

She dreaded it. The Chenzeme had murdered her family, her people, her world. She wanted no intimacy with the minds behind those deeds. And still, she held it to be her duty, her responsibility, to learn all aspects of the ship. At the very least, she needed to know why Urban had closed the paths to the high bridge.

So she messaged him: *Hey. We need to talk.

He woke his avatar and, still stretching and yawning, came to her in the forest room. She observed the moment he caught up on her recent activity, a wary look taking over his face.

She said, “You know I’ve visited the neural bridge.”

He shrugged, as if to dismiss the topic as anything that might cause him concern. “You’ve been there before.”

“I have. And just like before, I found that part of the bridge is not open to me. The spiral trunkline and all those filaments that link to the philosopher cells—”

“That’s the high bridge,” he interrupted.

“The paths to it aren’t just closed,” she said. “You’ve hidden them. Why?”

“Because I don’t want you there. It would be dangerous.”

She raised her eyebrows, though she gave him credit for the blunt honesty of this answer. “Dangerous for who?” she asked.

“For you, and for all of us.”

“You go there.”

“I’m used to it. I understand it.”

“I want to understand it.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t want to be immersed in Chenzeme thoughts, Chenzeme conversation, millennia of memories, the murder of worlds.”

“You’ve seen that?” she asked, her gut clenching.

“Yes. And you don’t want to experience it. You don’t want it to touch you.”

Clemantine let out a slow breath. “You don’t need to protect me.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Trust me when I tell you that it is. You’re right that I don’t want to interface with a Chenzeme mind. But I do want to learn this ship, to understand how it operates, how you integrate with it. I want to learn from you what it takes to pilot Dragon—and if the cost of that is intimacy with the philosopher cells, so be it. I’ll take it on.”

His jaw clenched in frustration; he shook his head. “Why? Why do you feel you need to do this?”

“Because it’s dangerous for me, for you, for everyone, if you’re the only one capable of handling this ship. If something happens to you—”

“Nothing is going to happen to me.”

“I believe you, and still, you shouldn’t be the only one to know.”

Intimacy, she’d called it, and Urban found that it was a strange intimacy to feel her ghostly presence overlaid against his own in the branching fibers of the high bridge.

He didn’t want her there. He knew her history, and understood the horror she must feel at interacting so directly with the philosopher cells. He also worried her presence would change the temper of the cells, feeding their suspicions, making it harder to bring them to consensus. Mostly, he resented her implication that he was vulnerable, that he might someday be separated from his ship, that someone else might need to take over.

But none of these objections were sufficient grounds to refuse her request. Clemantine believed she could handle the experience. It would be petty and paternalistic to deny her—and besides, she would never forgive him.

So he’d opened the high bridge to her.

Before her first visit, they’d met in the library. He’d warned her, “If you feel overwhelmed, if you can’t suppress an emotional reaction, I need you to retreat. If you stay, you’ll destabilize the cell field.”

“All right. I understand.”

Clemantine kept her voice level, but even a ghost existence could not mute her escalating anxiety. She closed her eyes, took a few seconds to gather herself. Then she departed for the neural bridge, leaving behind all illusion of physical existence.

A mapped path brought her to the trunkline. From there, a brief, terrifying moment as her awareness flowed to fill the great network of branching fibers. Then she was plunged into the swirling, combative conversation of the philosopher cells. The bridge translated their intent, their emotion, the bite of their hateful aggression.

She recoiled.

*Careful, Urban messaged her, much too late.

Her revulsion and fear spilled across a hundred thousand connections, flooding the cell field. The cells re-echoed her emotions, amplified them, sought the cause behind them as they debated in a complex language she comprehended but could not effectively translate so that she “heard” it only in primitive phrases:

*By the Unknown God, she whispered to Urban—and then she withdrew.

Just like the cells, he had been hit by the force of her fear and revulsion. It left him shaken, but he suppressed that and worked to soothe the philosopher cells.

Simultaneously, he awaited her in the library.

She appeared before him, wild-eyed, lips parted. “You’re there all the time,” she whispered in horror. “Some version of you.”

“Some of the time I use an edited version,” he admitted. “I call it the Sentinel. Low empathy. Emotionally numb.” He tapped his chest. “But it’s still my core persona that makes all the decisions. You could do that too.”

Eyes half-closed, she nodded, visibly recovering her composure. “Right now I need to be able to handle it as me. I’m going back in.”

She shifted from the library to the high bridge. Again, she became a disembodied presence that dispersed to fill the network of fibers, Urban there with her, everywhere. No breath to hold or she would have held her breath against the vicious, tumultuous conversation that engulfed her. Sadistic longings. Frustrated hates. The philosopher cells still restless, still seeking a target that would let them satisfy an instinct to burn/kill/sterilize.

Revolted again, she slipped away, back into the library.

Urban met her there. Saw the shudder run through her. “You don’t have to do this.”

Her fist closed. “I can do this.”

She shifted out of the library, but not to the high bridge. She needed to breathe, so she returned to her core persona. Alone in her chamber, she shivered and gasped, her heart raced, tears escaped to drift in the air around her, reflecting light like precious gems. “I can do this,” she growled aloud. “I can. I can.”

More than ninety minutes slipped past before Urban again felt her join him on the high bridge. This time, she came knowing what to expect; she had prepared herself. He felt her as a calm, glassy presence that allowed the endless conversations of the philosopher cells to pass through her, without touching her.

She stayed there with him, far longer than she’d stayed before.

After a time, she messaged him: *This conversation… it’s like mindless, poisonous froth riding on the surface of an ocean of memory.

*Not mindless, he replied. *The cells are a composite mind operating as minds do.

Later, in the library, he explained it in more detail:

“Each cell has its own senses, a particular awareness, a cache of memories, and a measure of influence in the cell field. That influence waxes and wanes depending on the success of the hypotheses and ideas that it supports. That’s what most of the chatter is: discussion and argument on the meaning of sensory input evaluated against known data. You can enter that debate. The bridge gives you enough influence to command consensus—but you will always need to be careful that the field doesn’t coerce a consensus out of you.”

Clemantine hated the philosopher cells, hated interacting with them, but the strength of her hate made them amenable to her will.

She learned to perceive as they did, through the senses of the ship: the carefully nurtured vitality of the reef; the burn of dust against the hull field; the slight gravitational perturbation generated by the closest outrider and the occasional incoming bursts of laser communications that marked its position; the population of stars in the Near Vicinity; the chaotic radio chatter of background radiation.

She sensed the link to the gamma-ray gun. Explored a memory of a time—she guessed it was long ago—when the gun had been used against another ship, one vastly larger even than Dragon. She felt the excitement of the philosopher cells, their frantic demand to

Suppressing a mental shudder, she diverted the cells from the violence of that memory by giving them a task. A simple task, but it was the first time she exerted her will on them.

She asked them to push Dragon’s velocity a little higher, just to do it, to know that she could.

She thought: – go –

Lightly, easily.

In response, a spike of awareness: Urban shadowing her, his concern for what she was doing. But he said nothing, nor tried to interfere.

Again, she thought: – go –

The cells responded, commanding just a tiny pull of acceleration from the reef. She felt it as a shift, a sense of falling forward, so slight she wondered if it would even be noticed in the warren. But then she suppressed that thought, not wanting to distract the cells.

Enough, she decreed.

The acceleration ceased, but Dragon’s velocity was now slightly higher. Urban issued an order to the outriders to boost their velocity to match.

Clemantine visited the high bridge often during the second year of the voyage, but never alone. “You’re always there,” she mused, lying entwined with Urban one morning. “Your ghost, always present. You must get tired of it. You have to find it…” She groped for the right words. “Emotionally exhausting,” she decided.

“Did you want to take over?” he asked with that familiar taunting smile. “Hijack my ship?”

“Mind reader.”

He chuckled. “You’ve learned everything I know.”

“No, that’s not true.”

Still, she’d learned a lot. She’d skimmed the ship’s history, delved into its systems, interviewed the Apparatchiks, and refined her control of the philosopher cells.

She had needed to verify all those systems to truly trust him.

And I do.

She kissed his cheek and sniggered.

“What?” he demanded.

“Just remembering what an asshole you used to be when you were younger.”

He chuckled some more. “Come on. You found me entertaining.”

“Always,” she agreed.

A comfortable silence followed, one she eventually interrupted with a softly spoken promise, “We’ll have years together.”

“Sooth,” he agreed, sounding half asleep. But then his eyelids fluttered, his brows knit in a suspicious scowl.

She said, “I’m going into cold sleep.”

His eyes snapped open. “No.”

“Yes. I’m going to skip ahead to when the engineering phase of the gee deck is done. The Engineer estimates two more years to finish the assembly of the inner cylinder, the rotational mechanism, the permanent supply lines, the heat sinks. Then it’ll be my turn to assemble the interior landscape.”

The Bio-mechanic had warned her it would take an additional year to complete the interior and lay in material reserves. After that, they would finally be able to waken their company of archived ghosts.

She said, “I’m looking forward to the future, Urban. I’m eager to start my project. So I’m going to jump to that point in time.”

“But what am I supposed to do while you’re down?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s just two years. Aren’t you the one who voyaged alone across six centuries?”

He sighed a heartfelt sigh. “I was younger, then.”

“You’ll get by,” she assured him. “You’ll be there on the high bridge whether I’m awake or not, whether I’m there or not. Nothing will change. And if you need to, you’ll adjust your time sense so the years don’t burden you. I know you’ve done it before.”

He sighed again, gazing at her unhappily. “The times in between matter too.”

“We’ll have time,” she insisted. “We’ll be okay.”