Edges

Chapter 21

“You did good,” Kona said, his voice pitched just loud enough to draw Urban’s gaze as he left the dais. “Now you should stay. Make yourself accessible. Answer questions.”

Urban met this praise with a dismissive half-smile. “Let them catch up on history first. I’ll be around.”

He threaded between Vytet and Clemantine, nodded to Riffan who still stood near the entry, and walked off into sunlight.

Kona turned a disgruntled gaze on Clemantine, who rolled her eyes. “It’s better this way,” she consoled him. “He’s no good at comforting people and you know he doesn’t have the patience to listen to complaints.”

Kona grunted reluctant agreement as he eyed the ship’s company. Nearly everyone was still seated, eyes glazed, focus turned inward as they used their atriums to access the documents prepared for them.

“I thought his speech went well,” Vytet offered, his voice a gentle, low rumble.

“It did,” Kona agreed, also striving to keep his voice low so his words would not carry in the eerie quiet pervading the amphitheater. Somewhere, a trembling breath suggestive of quiet weeping. Rustling fabric, shuffling feet. A raspy indrawn breath. Sniffling.

The atmosphere would heat up once people got past the initial shock. Kona had agreed to be the buffer when that happened. It was the deal he’d cut with Urban, to get him to deliver the orientation speech. Urban had wanted Kona to speak, arguing, “You’re the politician. This is your role. You explain to them what happened.”

Kona had refused. “They need to hear it from you. This is your ship. You’re the master here. People need to know who you are. You need to engender trust, not suspicion. Let them know you’ve got their best interests in mind.”

The quiet continued for minutes before people began to look up, look around. Speak to their neighbors.

Motion drew his gaze: Shoran, rising from her seat near the end of the first row. She looked to Kona, and offered up a brilliant smile that warmed him deep in his belly. An old friend, an occasional lover. Her bright and cheerful personality a sharp contrast to his own somber pessimism, but they had gotten along, and he’d always admired her fearlessness.

He went to greet her properly. She came forward to meet him, but partway along the front row of seats she paused, using her toe to nudge Pasha Andern’s bare foot, startling her out of a reverie. With a smile, Shoran told her, “You started this. So come on now, and let’s figure out what’s next.”

Pasha’s lip curled. Her brow wrinkled in a scowl surprisingly fierce for such an elfin face. “All I did—” she started to exclaim.

“Was give the rest of us the opportunity of a lifetime,” Shoran interrupted. She turned her mischievous gaze on Kona and, raising a scolding finger, she said, “You I am not going to forgive for letting me sleep through the conquest of a Chenzeme courser and the expedition to the Rock. However, I’m still willing to negotiate on where we’re going from here.”

“There’s time for that,” he said gently, grateful to have her there. “Right now we need to get people settled.” The volume of noise was climbing as people left their seats. Several openly wept, others strove to comfort them, their encouraging words a sharp contrast to knots of angry conversation.

Shoran side-eyed the growing hubbub. Pasha turned in her seat to look. Beside her, Tarnya did the same, her expression concerned.

Kona knew Tarnya only from her bio, but he liked what he’d read. She’d served on the city council and had earned a reputation for straight talk and efficient action.

“All of you,” he said. “Work with me.” They turned to him with questioning gazes. In a low voice, he explained, “This could go either way unless we set a positive tone now.”

Tarnya was first to catch on. She nodded. Kona left it to her to lead the others. He stepped back onto the dais. “This is new for all of us,” he said, his voice calm, confident, and pitched to carry over the rising volume of conversation. It was also a voice everyone in the ship’s company knew, if not from personal experience, than from historical speeches replayed on annual holidays. The gathering quieted. People turned to listen.

“Some of you are thrilled to be here,” he went on, drawing enthusiastic whoops from the back. “Some are already regretting the decision to come.” A chorus of denials, and a muffled sob. “Regardless of what you’re feeling now, let’s help each other. Comfort each other. Move ahead, while we learn together how to make this work.” An extended pause. Everyone listening. “We’ve got time.”

This last won him some cynical chuckles—recognition that time was something they had in plenty.

“We do have time!” Tarnya called out in a positive voice, stepping up onto her chair, as she stepped into her assigned role. She surveyed the gathering, missing no one. “Time to mold a new community. A new way of life. Let’s get to know each other and our options, and together we can figure out what we want.”

“And where we’re going!” Shoran said, one hand on Tarnya’s arm to make sure she didn’t lose her balance. “And what we’re going to do when we get there, because if I have any choice in it, I am not going to miss out on the next adventure.”

“Adventure?” Pasha scoffed, on her feet now and facing the ship’s company. She looked small alongside Shoran, but not at all intimidated. “This is about discovery, history, what was and what can be. We are less than a century from the Hallowed Vasties! We can argue about how we got here, but we are here—and I want to know what we can see from here that we could not see from Deception Well, and I want to know where we are going.”

An eager murmur sounded through the gathering. A few voices offered competing assurances that they were even now consulting the ship’s astronomical records for the newest images of those star systems that had been cordoned—and Kona breathed a soft sigh of relief. Let them stay focused on what was ahead and they would be all right.

He said, loud enough for all to hear, “Our first destination has not been decided yet. The two closest systems are Tanjiri and Ryo. As we get closer, we’ll see in more detail what’s left at each, and we’ll know.”

Riffan organized and oversaw a banquet to celebrate that first day, held at the dining terrace, halfway around the wheel from the amphitheater. Cushions served as seats around a long, sinuous table, segmented to make it easy to cross back and forth to either side. People moved about and mingled, introducing themselves as needed, sharing their wonder and their fear.

Riffan made sure to meet everyone, spending extra time with anyone who looked uncomfortable or alone, and making sure to find them friendly companions.

It was such a pleasure to have so many people to talk to! Though awkward to explain over and over why he’d been wakened almost three years ahead of all the others. When Shoran heard the story, she swore she would never forgive him for it. Riffan thought she was probably joking. Pasha, on the other hand, might plausibly be serious when she said the same thing.

He’d tried to explain his good fortune. “It was only because of my speciality in anthropology and Urban’s belief that the beacon was a human signal.”

Pasha was not happy with Urban either, of course, and she wasn’t alone in that. Maybe that was why Urban didn’t arrive with the others. Riffan had messaged him: *You’re coming, aren’t you?

And when that got no reply: *You need to be here.

He’d answered then, saying, *Not yet. Let people relax first. Enjoy themselves before they get angry all over again.

Maybe it was the right strategy. Urban arrived quietly at the end of the meal when the ship’s company had grown mellow on wine. By the time Riffan noticed him, he was already sitting with Clemantine. He saw her introduce Urban to those around her, including Shoran and Tarnya.

Few beyond Clemantine’s immediate circle noticed Urban was there, but Pasha saw it. She glared from several seats away, no longer listening to the conversation around her. Watching her, Riffan was struck by a fear that she would confront him and it was not a good time for that. It would spoil the evening. Let this day end in harmony.

He crossed between the tables and crouched behind her, speaking softly, “Don’t be angry,” he urged. “Circumstances constrained what he could do. Our history constrained us.”

Over her shoulder she gave him an annoyed look. “That may be true, but I wonder who’s in a position to constrain him, if it should come to that?”

His mouth fell open in shock, his worry so plain to see that she laughed at him. “Oh, Riffan. You’re too trusting.”

“But Pasha, we have to trust him.”

“Yes. I know.”

She turned back to her companions. He moved on.

She had meant nothing by it, surely.

He found Vytet, standing at the edge of the terrace. Seeking reassurance, he asked, “It’s going well, don’t you think?”

“Yes, indeed. I do. We are a frontier people. We know instinctively how to adapt to new circumstances.”

“Truth,” Riffan said, appreciating the reminder.

For centuries, their ancestors had migrated outward, each settled star system on the way acting as a selective filter, passing forward only those with a stable temperament amenable to cooperative existence. Those constraints had partly lifted during their long occupation of Deception Well, and still they retained much of the discipline and cooperation of their ancestral culture. If any among them struggled with the transition, it would not go unnoticed. They would be quietly counseled and cared for until they found a place in this new world. That was their way.

By the time the desserts were done, everyone had grown lethargic with food and drink. Ship’s day was ending and a golden evening light filtered through the branches of the lithe, graceful maple trees surrounding the dining terrace. Conversation quieted, post-adrenaline melancholy setting in.

Riffan had finally settled onto an open cushion between a new acquaintance—the sharp-eyed and self-assured historian, Alkimbra—and Naresh, a physicist with a youthful air who Riffan had known casually for many years. There he began to nod, half asleep, discovering it only when Tarnya’s fine voice rose over the assembly and startled him awake.

“I have a proposal,” she announced.

Riffan straightened on his cushion as heads turned and conversations faded. Tarnya allowed several seconds for attention to settle on her, and then she continued, “I propose that for at least three years no one should enter cold sleep. Instead, let us invest that time in developing our community, our personal bonds, and by doing so, ensure that we’ll know and trust one another so much that we’ll be able to endure the intermittent existence of the centuries to come. What say you?”

Riffan hadn’t once considered returning to cold sleep since he’d escaped it. He’d also had a lot of wine, so he was quick to call out: “I think it’s a fine idea!”

Laughter greeted his response. Alkimbra placed a heavy hand on his shoulder and, in a voice surprisingly deep for his compact frame, announced, “I agree! An excellent strategy!” Several other cheerful endorsements followed.

Then Pasha called out in her no-nonsense voice, “I think we will need to be awake more than three years to catch up on all we missed.”

“Yes, exactly,” Naresh said in a loud, clear voice, making himself heard amid other calls of support from around the terrace.

“Can we all agree, then?” Tarnya asked. “Does anyone object?”

If anyone did, they didn’t say so aloud.

Vytet stood up next, his tall slim figure aglow with a halo cast by a lantern that hung behind him. Riffan leaned forward to listen. Vytet’s gentle voice commanded a rapt attention from the ship’s company as he reminded them, “We are a frontier people. Our ancestors always looked outward in curiosity toward new suns and new worlds. But they also looked back along the star paths their ancestors had taken, and they kept records of what they saw.

“They watched known stars disappear within cordons made up of swarms of orbiting bodies of such magnitude and occurring in such numbers that all the light of the star was contained. Miraculous, it seemed. Inexplicable and overwhelming. The work of gods. The Hallowed Vasties.

“Centuries later, they watched the cordons disintegrate, and the stars reappear.

“Speculation has been rampant but no one really knows what spurred the precipitous growth of the cordons or triggered their sudden failure. We are here aboard Dragon to find out, to seek for our ancestors and to learn, both from their triumphs and their mistakes. It will be dangerous and it won’t be easy, but I think it’ll be worthwhile.”

Riffan raised his glass, calling out “Hear, hear!” with the rest of them, but as he sipped the cold wine he shivered, chilled by the thought that they might find only monsters living among the wreckage of gods.