Edges

Chapter 8

Urban kept watch from the high bridge, cognizant of the grandeur around him: distant blue suns, furiously bright, illuminating nebulas light years across; the perfect repeating rhythm of pulsars; streamers of cold dust longer than he could transit in ten thousand years; the remote electromagnetic cacophony of star death at the galactic center.

And always, he remained mindful of the nearest stars and of the ship’s precise position among them.

Dragon had coasted as it left the vicinity of Deception Well, its velocity less than five percent light speed, allowing the fleet of outriders to catch up and then to move ahead into their customary formation: a long, staggered line around Dragon’s vector of travel. Khonsu was now closest, then Artemis, Lam Lha, Pytheas, and Elepaio, with Fortuna in the lead. Ninety light-minutes between each ship: a vanguard to warn him of hazards to come.

Urban issued an advisory: *Five minutes until we commence acceleration.

*Ready, Clemantine acknowledged. Kona and Vytet echoed her assurance.

At the scheduled hour he directed the philosopher cells to accelerate. They fed the propulsion reef with pulses of fierce ultraviolet radiation, enough to stimulate activity across its surface.

The reef was an aggregate entity, like a coral reef, made of billions of tiny cooperating organisms—polyps—layer upon layer of them, with those on the surface seeming most alive.

The polyps functioned in a manner so utterly alien Urban speculated they had originated in some other Universe. Each was capable of synthesizing nanoscale particles of exotic matter from the zero point field—matter that decayed in an instant—but with a billion events per microsecond the cumulative effect was to tweak the structure of space-time. Not randomly.

The reef was positioned far forward, at the bow. The polyps worked in concert to create a steepening gradient aimed away from the slight gravitational distortion of the ship’s mass. The reef accelerated along that gradient, and Dragon came with it, the ship’s velocity slowly growing.

The outriders accelerated at the same time, each powered by its own propulsion reef and piloted by a DI. From the high bridge, the lateral lines of Dragon’s gravitational sensor let Urban detect the signature of Khonsu’s reef, and more faintly, that of Artemis. The other outriders were too far ahead to be seen or sensed.

As the rate of acceleration increased, that version of Urban within the warren drifted toward the designated floor and began to walk. The ship’s company joined him—Clemantine, Kona, and Vytet. They sat together at a table, and ate and drank as if they were on a world. A convenient situation, but temporary.

Urban took the fleet to thirty-five percent light speed and then he dampened the activity of the reef, leaving Dragon to coast toward its faraway destination in the Hallowed Vasties. The reef could pull the ship to much higher velocities, but as Dragon’s speed increased so did the risk of collision. Interstellar space was not empty, and even a tiny object could severely damage or destroy the ship if it impacted the hull at a significant percentage of light speed.

Even at this compromise velocity, molecules of dust and gas constantly bombarded the hull cells. The cells renewed themselves, but Dragon slowly bled mass. That mass would eventually need to be replaced.

“Is this what you wanted?” Clemantine asked one evening, not long after Dragon ceased to accelerate. The warren had returned to a zero-gravity configuration. Ribbons of faintly glowing wall-weed again lined the oval interior of her private chamber. She drifted in the cozy space, one arm around Urban, a leg hooked over his, skin to skin. Shared sweat, shared warmth. She gazed at his face, at the sheen of his eyes under half-closed lids. Shared tranquility, after a long session of deeply attentive love-making.

“Having you here?” he asked in a low, almost hoarse voice. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”

Clemantine wanted the truth.

She ran two fingers down the smooth skin of his chest and, with a sharp edge of accusation in her voice, she said, “I trusted you.”

This induced an unmistakable tension in his body, an acceleration in his breathing—unwelcome evidence that her emerging suspicion was not misplaced.

“Look at me,” she said.

He obeyed, turning his head until they gazed at one another. She read guilt in the worried set of his eyes, but his confused frown hinted he wasn’t certain what he was being accused of.

Multiple options, then? Interesting. She would have to investigate further, but right now, she just wanted an honest answer on the status of the gee deck.

She said, “I talked to the Bio-mechanic today. The Engineer was there too.”

“Uh-huh?” Low, puzzled syllables rising from deep in his throat. He clearly had no idea what she was getting at—and that surprised her.

She said, “The basic structure of the gee deck has been designed. A site’s been determined. A construction plan is in place.”

Still no hint of enlightenment breaking through his perplexed expression, so she expanded on her complaint. “Construction should have begun as soon as we ceased acceleration. But nothing’s been done. I asked the Apparatchiks why. Both were irked. They said they were ready to begin. They would have begun already, but you’d withheld permission—”

“No, wait.” He grasped her concern at last. “That’s not what’s going on.”

“Then you did give them permission to proceed?”

“No.”

Anger flared. She started to untangle herself from him.

“Wait,” he insisted, his arm tightening around her. “Listen to me. Vytet asked for more time, that’s all. She’s concerned. She and the Engineer can cross-check each other’s work, but no one has ever cross-checked the Bio-mechanic’s knowledge base. Vytet wants time to confirm his studies, his experiments, his conclusions. That makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes sense to take the time to confirm our knowledge base before launching a major, invasive project.”

Her hand slid back up his chest, came to rest beside his throat. “You’re saying you want to confirm six hundred years of studies and experiments?”

“It’s not me,” he protested. “Vytet asked for more time. That’s all.”

“And you gave it to her because you don’t trust the Bio-mechanic?”

“I do trust the Bio-mechanic. I wouldn’t be alive if the Bio-mechanic made mistakes.”

“Then why are you doing this?” Her fingers pressed a little too hard into his flesh.

“Vytet asked for more time,” he repeated, wriggling to escape her grip. She let him go. Even gave him a little push. “She just wants to make sure there are no mistakes,” he explained.

Clemantine said, “It feels like you’re trying to delay the project.”

A dark scowl. “And end up with your hand at my throat?”

She held up her hand, palm out. “Tell the Apparatchiks they can start the project. If it’s going to take years, we need to get started.”

“Fine,” he snapped. “It’s done. Whatever you want.”

“Thank you.”

He had drifted against the opposite wall of the little chamber, where fresh trousers had already budded. He tugged them on. A shirt appeared next. He grabbed it, put it on.

She felt a little guilty. She’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t trying to delay the project. He’d just been accommodating Vytet’s obsessive concerns. And still, she’d shaken him up with that line, I trusted you. She’d seen a flash of guilt—but whatever weighed on his conscience had nothing to do with the construction of the gee deck.

“I do trust you,” she said aloud, just to see how he would react.

This time he was ready, his signature half-smile, taunting her. “It’s not like you have a choice.”

She hissed. His grin widened—a dangerous delay before he darted for the gel door. She dove, intercepting him before he could make his escape, slamming him against the waving wall-weed. “Ah, son,” she crooned, biting at his earlobe as they bounced back across the chamber, “don’t ever underestimate me.”

He laughed and protested, “I was joking. Ow!”

“Of course you were joking.”

“I was.”

Even so, it was true she had no choice but to trust him—which put the obligation on her to verify that trust.

Clemantine sent a ghost to the library to confirm that the process of construction had truly started. The Engineer and the Bio-mechanic surprised her by appearing within their frames a moment after she arrived. Always before, they’d come only when summoned.

She cocked her head, looked from one to the other, wondering if Urban had ordered them to be there. “You’ve begun?” she asked.

The Engineer gestured. A huge, translucent, three-dimensional model of the ship appeared, with the planned gee deck ghosted in. Dashed ribbons, brightly colored and branching like tributaries, linked the construction site to the stored matter at the ship’s core. “We’ve begun,” the Engineer confirmed.

The Bio-mechanic explained, “I’ve initiated the growth of matter channels to transport required material to the construction site, and carry undifferentiated tissue away.”

She nodded, eyeing the ribbons. “This is the easy part.”

“Easy for me,” the Bio-mechanic agreed acidly. “Easy now, after the centuries I’ve spent studying this system.”

Clemantine gritted her teeth. “I meant that this phase uses only Chenzeme biotechnology, so you don’t need to be so careful. The dangerous part comes when you begin defining human spaces.”

“Ah,” the Bio-mechanic said. “I will keep that in mind. Do you have other advice? I do so value the advice of those wholly lacking in expertise.”

Clemantine rolled her eyes. “You’re a sensitive flower, aren’t you?” she asked.

The Bio-mechanic’s eyes narrowed. His image changed, fading into the complex background of his frame—removing himself from the conversation in a fit of pique?

She shrugged, offering no apology, making no plea for him to stay. A flicker of surprise on his part and in moments he restored himself. In a crisp voice he informed her, “I know what I’m doing.”

“I’m confident of that,” Clemantine answered. “And I won’t insult you with amateur advice, but I do have an instruction.”

“Any change in the basic structure will slow the process,” the Engineer warned.

“Exactly,” she said. “That’s my instruction—or call it a request if the idea of an instruction exceeds whatever authority I might have. Allow no changes in the basic design. Nothing that will delay completion of the project. If someone attempts to introduce such a change, let me know.”

“All actions and relevant discussions are recorded in a log file,” the Engineer informed her. “Including this one.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll set a DI to monitor that log—and all the others.”

She should have done it before, but she’d been lax, overwhelmed during the early days of the voyage by newness, and by the immediate demands of creating a home within the hostile body of this alien starship.

No more surprises, she resolved. She needed to comprehend her environment, understand the operation of the ship, know when tasks shifted, and when orders changed.

And she needed to discover whatever sordid detail it was that Urban didn’t want her to know, even though she suspected she’d be happier not knowing.

She left the library, leaving the Apparatchiks to their work, but she did not return to her atrium. Instead, she entered the complex of Dragon’s neural bridge, intent on continuing her mission of verification.

The bridge was a cross-linked web of neural filaments extending throughout the ship, studded with cardinal nanosites—tiny processing nodes that tracked and monitored the surrounding tissue. The cardinals supported a limited virtual environment that allowed Clemantine to access the data they’d collected, in numeric and text form and also visually, so that she could see the structure of the tissue surrounding each node.

But the cardinals offered no representation of Clemantine’s physical presence. She existed only as a mote of awareness, a disembodied will. It was a state she heartily loathed. Although the cardinals were easy to instruct and she had no trouble moving between them, the absence of even an illusion of physical existence left her plagued by an underlying panic, in quiet terror of being trapped in that disembodied state.

She thought of Urban. She could not sense the presence of his ghost but she knew he was somewhere on the bridge. He was always on the bridge. It dismayed her to think he endured this state all the time. She wondered if he’d edited his psyche to do it, or if his brash confidence was enough to fend off the doubt that haunted her.

Despite her doubt, her fear, her aversion to that mode of existence, she continued her inspection, moving from cardinal to cardinal, assessing the function and status of the ship’s diverse array of bio-mechanical tissues, sensing its metabolic heat, aware of the incessant probing of Chenzeme nanomachines, and the firm push-back of the defensive Makers that guarded the bridge. She let herself feel it all, and she began to fit it all within a mental map, verifying what she’d been told about the structure of the ship.

It would be so easy to retreat, to leave it all in Urban’s hands, to trust him in his role as master of Dragon—but she kept going. She had to.

It’s not like you have a choice.

A teasing, taunting challenge. A dare. Asking her to look more closely.

If Urban had a guilty secret, it surely involved either their shared past or the functioning of this ship. Clemantine was still wary of immersing herself in that other life, so instead of accessing the data cache he’d set aside for her, she’d come here. Resolved to inspect the ship first, face the truth of her past later.

Nowhere among the cardinals did she encounter anything to suggest forged data in the library files, or a critical truth, hidden.

She kept at it until she could find no path she had not already explored. Then she fled, retreating directly to her atrium where her ghost memories merged with the memories of her physical avatar—alone within her chamber, just waking up, tension and fatigue tangled up together as if she’d only just escaped the grip of a bad dream.

She sighed and stretched, grateful her inspection of the cardinals was over. She did not want to go back there again.

Only as she relaxed, as her tension eased, did it occur to her she’d found no pathway leading to the philosopher cells.