Edges

Clemantine wanted to recoil. The coordinated currents of hate, the murderous contempt, the deep craving need to inflict fiery death on all that was not self or the equivalent of self—it horrified her, but she plunged in anyway. No choice. She had to take control.

She extended her senses across the high bridge—so different from Dragon’s high bridge!—its structure still expanding, growing, extending ever more links into the cell field.

Yet here at the start she had only a small percentage of the connections she’d taken for granted aboard Dragon. Ten percent? Fifteen?

Doesn’t matter!

This is what she’d been given. Her will and her anger had to make up for the rest.

Her opening argument blasted out across what she now guessed to be fifteen thousand links:

– NEGATE THAT! –

The force of it overwhelmed adjacent cells, inducing them to take it up, echo it, evaluate it, and argue—an effect that rippled outward, introducing fault lines in the agreement of the field, disrupting consensus.

She offered an alternative argument across all the links: – the other is chenzeme –

A counter argument slammed back:

– NEGATE THAT! –

All her rage for what had been lost coiled within that short, sharp communication. A moment’s stunned pause. She had shocked the field into silence; shocked herself too with the force of her anger. She recovered, and commenced to hammer her will through every link in the rapidly expanding bridge:

– negate revulsion! the other is chenzeme –

– negate killing! the other is chenzeme –

– negate conflict! the other is chenzeme –

– the other is chenzeme –

– the other is chenzeme –

– the other is chenzeme –

– required: agreement –

This induced a positive response——but it was weak.

She amplified that weak response, and extended her argument:

– AGREEMENT! the other is chenzeme –

– we are allied chenzeme! –

– required: agreement –

The response came back stronger:

Still a fragile concession, but enough that she was able to cut off the steerage jets, route power away from the gun. She continued through rapid, looping argument to enforce her will, until after many seconds she hammered out hard-won consensus:

The high bridge continued to grow. More links reached the cell field, each an additional point of influence, further securing Clemantine’s hold over the ship’s mind.

She gave the newly captured courser a name: Griffin.

*Dragon’s partner, she explained to Urban through an open channel in the data gate. *A second hybrid monster, a kind of chimera, a mix of different organisms.

She invited him to send a ghost to visit the new high bridge but he refused, reminding her, *Never again.

Instead, he sent her copies of the Apparatchiks, all six of them, to haunt the cardinal nanosites.

She welcomed them, knowing that centuries had gone into their development and that each carried centuries of experience. They were a ready-made crew and she was grateful that their presence relieved her of any need to create her own ensemble of assistants. As far back as the Null Boundary Expedition, Urban had toyed with experimental personas, but Clemantine never had. Her sense of identity was too fixed for that. The idea that when her ghost split, she, this point of view, might become the one to be pruned and rewritten—it repulsed her.

And anyway, she knew how to handle the quirks of the Apparatchiks’ personalities.

When the Bio-mechanic returned from an inspection of the bridge, he concluded, *My assault was flawless.

Clemantine immediately disagreed. *The high bridge had insufficient connections to the cell field. I nearly lost the argument.

The arrival of a submind from that version of her on Dragon’s high bridge made it clear how close she’d come to annihilation. When Griffin had fired its steerage jets, seeking an angle that would let it target Dragon, Urban had been prepared to fire first. A few more seconds and he would have had no choice.

But the Bio-mechanic refused any responsibility for this close call, informing her, *The number of connections available to you was a matter of chance, dependent on the quantity of needles that got through. The number was sufficient, or we would not be here now.

*We’re here now only because I refused to lose the argument.

She wasn’t sure victory was something to celebrate. The violent, hateful contempt of the cell field would be with her always now, her will constantly engaged to guide and dominate the argument. A foot forever on the throat of a murderer. Urban’s words. Despite the time she’d spent on Dragon’s bridge, she felt the truth of them only now.

The malice that circulated among Griffin’s philosopher cells far surpassed what she’d known aboard Dragon—whether because Urban’s presence had filtered the intensity or because Dragon had mellowed after centuries locked under his influence, she didn’t know.

She had brought Griffin under control, but she felt changed by the effort. Colder. More stern and unforgiving. Not entirely herself anymore. Tainted by the merciless contempt of the Chenzeme.

A second submind arrived from across the expanding gulf that separated her from Dragon. It brought her memories from all three of the aspects she’d left behind. From her ghost in the library, a vision of the two coursers: Griffin bright with its luminous hull and Dragon still dark. That ghost had rejoined her core self in the forest room. Kona, Riffan, and Vytet were there too, with a victory celebration underway, while on the high bridge, she asked Urban:

When will you waken the hull cells?

When your hold on Griffin is stronger.

All of it, dreamlike. A mirrored existence that did not feel real to her. A lost world, yet more important to her than the ugly dimension she occupied.

A dream that made her reality endurable.

She set Griffin’s course to run parallel to Dragon, a hundred kilometers between them, while the Bio-mechanic and the Engineer worked to map the ship’s interior and inventory its internal storage.

Another submind arrived, bringing her memories of that other world that was no longer her world, that she could only know now through memories—and in those memories she questioned herself: What is going on over there? Why haven’t I sent a submind back to Dragon? Why are my memories being passed in only one direction? What are you hiding?

The truth, Clemantine wanted to say. She was hiding the truth.

Our paths have branched.

Her other self didn’t know that yet. She never would know it—not in the way I know it.

But to silence these confused memories that demanded an explanation, she opened a channel to herself:

*Hey.

*What is going on? Her own voice answering, calm but sharp.

*There will be no synchronization, she announced. *I am not going to send any subminds to you. Stay as you are and be the better version of us.

Seconds of silence elapsed. When that other Clemantine spoke, it was not to argue, but only to gain insight. *Is it the toxin of the Chenzeme mind you’re protecting me from? Or is it the way you’ve changed yourself to endure it?

The calm, rational tone of this response triggered a quiet pride that spilled across the cell field where it was interpreted as an affirmation of power:

*It’s for both those reasons, she told her other self. *Going forward, we take separate paths. But keep sending me your subminds. Bind me to you in that way. Keep me human.

*Sooth. I understand.

The Bio-mechanic and the Engineer worked together to complete the conversion of the captured ship. They grew the computational strata to support a library and linked that library to the fleet. Cameras were added to the hull, and a radio antenna. They continued to expand the bridge, growing additional neural fibers so that Clemantine’s senses extended throughout the ship and her command of it was assured. And they initiated the growth of two new outriders.

The Bio-mechanic had spent centuries studying Dragon’s internal systems and had long ago discovered a preexisting Chenzeme protocol used to create new coursers. He activated that protocol. Clemantine observed as the process unfolded.

Step by step, over many days, matter was assembled and organized into the basic structure of two proto-ships that took shape within the reservoir of bio-mechanical tissue just beneath the hull cells. The heat of activity was a distraction to Clemantine, drawing her attention ever back to the dense and growing masses. She thought of them as parasites, feeding off of Griffin, weakening the ship as they grew stronger.

She resented them, wanted to eject them from the body of the ship.

– negate that! –

Griffin had been seized for the purpose of growing these outriders. She forced herself to edit her animosity, but her animosity returned. Only slowly did she realize it came from the philosopher cells. That led her to discover a feedback loop. By Chenzeme standards, Griffin was too small to reproduce, so the cells resisted, pushing to eject the growth.

*Interesting, the Bio-mechanic said, when she presented the problem to him. *Not an issue encountered with Dragon, given it’s always been a much larger ship.

*Close the feedback loop, she told him.

Afterward, she monitored the growth of the outriders with a sense of satisfaction, not resentment.

A message from Urban: *You’re secure now.

*Yes.

*I’m going to wake Dragon’s philosopher cells.

*Affirmative. We are allied Chenzeme.

*We will be, he answered. *But Dragon’s philosopher cells were ready to fight when I put them under. They’ll come out the same way. I’ll suppress that, but expect Griffin to be provoked.

*Understood. I’m ready.

She watched across the hundred kilometer gulf as points of white light wakened on Dragon’s hull. Her own cells noticed it immediately and fell silent, watching the white glow expand in lacy channels that widened until all of Dragon’s hull was illuminated. To human eyes, the light appeared constant, but Griffin’s cells saw it as a pulsing communication. They reached swift consensus on its meaning:

Clemantine blocked a counter threat, instead presenting an argument to initiate a process of negotiated alliance:

– identify self/other: we are chenzeme –

The argument was considered, tested, approved, and a tentative consensus achieved. Intricate patterns of light, generated throughout the process, allowed Dragon to follow the debate from across the gulf, and to understand its conclusion.

Dragon accepted the argument, responding:

A sense of victory flushed across the cell field, while Clemantine worked to define the relationship between the two ships: – we are allied chenzeme –

The philosopher cells affirmed this argument:

And Dragon, driven by Urban’s will, echoed it:

Reassurances continued to be traded for hours, confirming the new status of the ships as paired coursers—instinctive behavior that allowed them to work together without trying to kill one another.

The proto-ships continued to grow within Griffin’s hull. They achieved the mass of outriders. They would have continued growing into massive proto-coursers, but the Bio-mechanic interrupted the process.

The assembly of the new outriders would be completed after they separated from Griffin. To achieve the separation, the Bio-mechanic hooked into the ship-building process again, near the end this time. A signal went out to the philosopher cells. It directed the field to split neatly above each proto-ship. Bio-mechanical motion pushed them free, imparting a slight momentum so that they drifted away from Griffin.

They were given the names of their predecessors, Khonsu and Pytheas, as swarms of Makers under the Engineer’s direction set to work assembling their internal components.

Behind them, Griffin’s hull sealed shut again and a long process commenced that would draw in, consolidate, and reorganize the courser’s interior to compensate for the loss of mass.

Griffin had become a smaller ship.

Small, but still toxic with malice, still deadly.

*I am going to change that attitude, Clemantine told her other self.

As time passed, she would strive to re-train the cells, to dilute their instinctive hate, their contempt. It was the only way she could conceive of enduring the years ahead.