Edges

Chapter 22

Every few minutes a new submind reached Clemantine at her post on Griffin’s high bridge, bringing her the memories of a parallel life—not just the observed experiences but also the thoughts, impressions, and emotions of her core self. The result: She lived that life, she was that woman, and also the isolated mistress of the high bridge. A dual existence. Two versions, wound around each other, witnessing progress on both fronts:

For Dragon, a thriving community, and for Griffin, a slow evolution away from hostility and malice among its philosopher cells as she reshaped their instinctive responses, making her post on the high bridge more bearable, day by day.

Another submind brought her a new segment of memories. Pasha Andern sat across from her, steaming cups of tea on the low table between them. Pasha asked, “Do you remember, centuries back, when Riffan and I first asked to go on this expedition… we talked about the authority of a ship’s captain?”

Clemantine nodded. She did remember. “You agreed the captain was the final authority.”

“I would have agreed to almost anything,” Pasha admitted with a laugh. “But you—you had doubts. You said ‘we’ll find a way to make it work.’”

“You’re angry over the centuries in archive,” Clemantine guessed.

“Let’s say I’m concerned.”

“That’s over. The ship’s company will have a voice going forward.”

A dismissive shrug, because having a voice was not the same as having a veto. Pasha asked, “Was it hard to learn to master the philosopher cells?”

“Yes,” Clemantine said without hesitation.

“Was it worth it?” Pasha pressed.

Clemantine sipped her tea, recognizing this as an oblique question, a substitute for a question that could not be asked directly—

Should Urban ever again exceed his moral authority, could you take over?

“Yes,” she said, more thoughtfully this time. She set the hot cup down. “To be more than just a passenger aboard Dragon, to learn to impress my will on the ship’s Chenzeme mind, it was worth it.”

Pasha nodded, seeming satisfied. “I’m glad there’s someone else who knows—and I’m glad it’s you who’s in command of Griffin.”

Clemantine looked askance. She did not command Griffin, she had no experience of it—not this version of her—and more and more, she wanted the experience. She’d told no one of the separation between her selves. She’d come to regret it, ashamed to be credited for a role she had not truly undertaken.

A voice, speaking from out of this parallel memory: It’s not too late for us to synchronize timelines. I don’t need to be protected.

On Griffin she pondered this, and after a time she messaged her other self, *I’m the one who needs you to be protected. I need your experience of human community unadulterated by the atavism of this Chenzeme mind.

An answer arrived, replete with frustration: *It can’t be that different from Dragon’s high bridge.

*It is, and I don’t like what I’ve had to become.

She had told no one of the separation, but her Apparatchiks knew. The Engineer, monitoring data traffic between the two ships, had noticed the one-way flow of subminds: “You’ve created a version of yourself specialized for command,” he concluded.

“You would see it that way, having a personal understanding of specialization.”

She sensed Urban knew as well. When he spoke to this version of her, atrium to atrium, his tone was formal, distant. So different from when he spoke to her other self. Had he worked it out on his own? Or had the Engineer informed him? This last question led directly to another: Just how closely does he monitor me?

Suspicion blossomed, but suspicion was toxic, so she resolved to clear the air. She messaged him, *Do my Apparatchiks report to you?

He did not answer right away. Seconds passed. She imagined him considering all that this inquiry might imply. Finally, he asked her, *Should they?

A fair question. She held immense power, yet lived a separate existence. It would be dangerous to allow her to become a stranger. She would not allow that for herself.

*If my Apparatchiks have concerns, I hope they share them with me and with you.

*Okay, but… you are all right over there?

*Yes. I’ve adapted. I live her life and mine. And I want you to know that nothing means more to me than you and her and Dragon’s evolving community—and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect all of you.

Late afternoon:

Urban was alone, gathering memories from his subminds as he lay with eyes closed on a blanket spread out in a shady garden corner, a few steps from the sliding backdoor of the cottage he shared with Clemantine. One after another, the partial copies of his persona dropped into his atrium, joining their memories to his so that he was acquainted with the current status of the ship, of the outriders, and of Clemantine in her separate command.

Urban had created the Sentinel to help him cope with the demands of commanding Dragon’s high bridge. Clemantine had taken a different path in her command of Griffin. Instead of a partial persona that could be swapped in at need, she’d created a permanent alternate-self. She remained herself, but colder, more emotionally remote, as if she had taken on something of the implacable, ruthless nature of the philosopher cells. Did she realize it?

She must. Why else refuse to synchronize? Still, it left him questioning how well he knew her and what her boundaries might be.

But there was no calling it back.

Another submind, bringing the memory of the ongoing survey of the Near Vicinity. No anomalies of a stature to warrant concern had been found over the past twenty-four hours.

And another, bringing confirmation of the continued silence from the site of the beacon.

The beacon had fallen silent precisely at the time Elepaio was due to make its close pass. Urban longed to collect the memories of the ghost ensconced aboard that outrider. What did I find out there? Did I make contact with someone? Some thing? He wished again he’d been the version to go.

A sudden sharp electric hum, a minor note, seized his attention. His eyes opened to a dazzling spangle of daylight piercing past the bright-green leaves and feathery pink blossoms of a carefully shaped rain tree.

He sat up, looked around, as the hum dopplered away. A laugh from the direction of the path. A shout—Shoran’s voice—“Get it! Go, go, go!”

He jumped to his feet—not out of alarm, but out of curiosity. This sounded like a game.

Riffan saw Pasha ahead of him on the path that wound around the circumference of the gee deck, linking all the cottages to the pavilion and the dining terrace.

He called out to her. “Oh, hey, Pasha!” And with a couple of easy bounds in the low gee, he caught up with her.

She turned to meet him, her delicate face framed in short blond hair that gleamed in the morning light, thin brows arched over skeptical green eyes. “Hey, Riffan.” Her tone neutral as always.

“You’re attending today’s lecture, aren’t you? May I walk with you?”

She snorted and continued toward the amphitheater. “Why are you always so formal?”

“Am I?” he asked with a frown, matching the slow-motion pace that most of the ship’s company had adopted to prevent inadvertently launching themselves into the shrubbery.

“Yes, you are,” she informed him.

“Well, perhaps you’re right.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Okay, you are right.”

The corner of her mouth quirked up.

“Are we friends, Pasha?” he blurted, stopping on the path, even taking a step back. She stepped back too, her pale cheeks warming with a flush, her green eyes wide. “I admire you so,” he said quickly, getting it all out while he could, “but I think… maybe I’ve offended you?”

“Why do you think that?” she said in an undertone, as if concerned someone might overhear. She stepped off the path and onto a small lawn, glancing over her shoulder at a cottage behind her.

“We used to be friendly, together on Long Watch. We often talked, discussed our studies. Now I hardly see you.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I see you every day at the lectures. Isn’t that where we’re going now?”

Riffan sighed, recognizing the brushoff.

With Vytet, he’d organized daily lectures and discussions on academic topics related to the expedition, ranging from astronomy to biology to history. The sessions were well attended, which meant Pasha was a face in the crowd while Riffan stood by the dais, moderating discussion—and afterward she would melt away, or be off to dinner with her friends, or disappear for hours behind her closed cottage door, doubtless pursuing research in the library.

“All right,” he said, glancing around as Alkimbra and Naresh approached along the path. He nodded to them, then blushed a bit as Alkimbra’s eyes narrowed, his keen gaze clearly perceiving Riffan’s awkward situation. He pursed his lips, raised his heavy eyebrows in a sympathetic expression, but to Riffan’s relief he said nothing, walking on with the oblivious Naresh.

Riffan turned back to Pasha. He desperately wanted her to explain what had changed—but what a ridiculous demand that would be! Everything about their lives had changed. And she didn’t owe him an explanation.

“I’ll see you at the lecture, then,” he said quietly.

She put out her hand before he’d quite gathered himself to leave. “It’s not you,” she assured him.

He waited, hoping for more, but Clemantine and Tarnya were coming next along the winding path, with several others not far behind.

Tarnya, looking ahead, saw them and called out, “Hi Pasha! Hi Riffan! You know there’s going to be a concert tonight, right?”

“Right, I’m planning to be there,” Pasha said, stepping away from Riffan, and then she was walking with them, leaving him trailing behind.

“It shouldn’t be too many more days before Elepaio gets back,” he said idly.

Only Clemantine looked back at him. She slowed her stride to let him catch up. “Are you worried?” she asked.

“No. Well, yes. Maybe. It’s just… I don’t know how to think about it. Whatever happened out there, whatever we discovered, I’ve already done it, been through it—but through what? Maybe nothing at all. Maybe three years of boredom. Or something wonderful…”

“Or terrible,” she said, guessing his thoughts.

“It’s nerve-wracking, not knowing.”

They reached the edge of the pavilion. Pasha paused to look back at him with a cool gaze. “I would have been happy to go in your place,” she said.

“I know. I wish I’d suggested it.”

A faint smile. “You’re a good person, Riffan. Better than me.”

She went ahead, striding across the pavilion, leaving Tarnya looking puzzled and Clemantine regarding him with questioning eyes. He cleared his throat, put on a smile, and said, “I’d better hurry if I’m going to be any help to Vytet.”

“Come out and play,” Shoran called as Urban rounded the cottage. She stood on the path beside her son Mikael, her smile bright, her skin glistening with sweat.

“Play what?” he asked.

Shoran stood tall, and she was well-muscled, resembling Clemantine in physique. She wore tight shorts and a sleeveless top, her silver hair bound up in a coiled braid, her breast rising and falling with exertion.

Urban liked her—her bold manner, her optimism, her inventiveness. The first time he’d met her, she declared, “I didn’t come on this expedition to look through telescopes. I’m here to explore the ruins or the recovery of life—whichever it turns out to be—for myself, as myself.” She’d made a name for herself at Deception Well as one of the earliest scouts to truly explore the planetary surface.

She said, “Mikael has remembered a game we used to play in Silk. I think you’ll like it. It’s called flying fox.”

She showed him a device in her palm.

“A camera bee?” Urban guessed. If so, it was modified. Larger than he remembered and bright red in color.

“This is the fox we’ll try to catch. One person alone will never succeed at it. We have to work together.”

She turned to Mikael, a man of athletic build with a smile more reserved than his mother’s. Age was not revealed by physical features, but it could be sensed in the way people handled themselves—and Mikael’s shy manner gave away his youth. He was the youngest of the ship’s company, only twenty-five when he made the jump to Dragon.

“Ready?” Shoran asked him.

Mikael nodded.

She tossed the fox into the air. Its multiple pairs of mechanical bee wings instantly vibrated into flight mode, producing the humming minor note Urban had heard earlier.

“Check the personnel map,” Shoran said. “Almost everyone is at Alkimbra’s lecture. We’ll need to stay away from the pavilion, but we’ve got the rest of the deck to play.”

“You’re not interested in the history of Tanjiri?” Urban asked, eyeing the fox hovering a meter overhead.

“I’ll read the transcript later—and I’m sure you will too.”

Mikael said, “The game is simple. We chase the fox, corner it, trap it if we can.”

“But use no devices,” Shoran warned. “And no implements. The aim is to train your strength and reflexes. We are a team. Let’s go!”

The fox shot off down the path. Then it dove beneath the trees dividing Clemantine’s cottage from the next one over, where Vytet lived. Mikael bounded after it in a great leap made possible by the gee deck’s low gravity.

Urban turned, listened a moment to the fox’s retreating hum and decided to take a shortcut. Two swift bounds let him achieve a running start. He jumped to the meadow on the cottage roof, then jumped again, to land, rolling in the small lawn of the back garden where he’d been inventorying his subminds just a couple of minutes before.

To his frustration, Mikael was still a step ahead of him while Shoran was only a step behind, appearing around the corner of the house, laughing as the fox doubled back to shoot just past the grasping fingertips of both Urban and Mikael. It shot under trees and over hedgerows. They followed in frenetic pursuit, shouting tactics at each other:

Go around!

Stop it at the picnic ground!

No, no! The other way!

Hearts pumping, chests heaving, skin glistening with sweat. Kona, who’d skipped the lecture too, came out to join them as they took a short break. He greeted Shoran with such an affectionate hug, Urban interpreted it as evidence of a renewed relationship.

So far, sexual associations among the ship’s company tended toward casual and ephemeral, his relationship with Clemantine the exception.

“Release the fox,” Mikael complained.

Shoran laughed and did so, releasing Kona too. They started the game again. The lecture must have ended because a few minutes later several more players joined in, Clemantine among them. She came dressed like Shoran. Bumping up against Urban, she gave him a wink. “Glad to see you making friends.”

“It’s coming at you!” Mikael shouted.

She jumped for it. Urban only watched, entranced by the beauty of her muscular bronze body, simulated sunlight glinting off the gold iris tattoos that edged her ears. She shouted as the fox slipped past, escaping by a millimeter. When it angled away, they bounded in pursuit. Shoran shouted at them to “Go around!” Go around what, Urban wasn’t sure, but after a minute Clemantine was laughing for the sheer joy of wild motion and what else really mattered?

Inexplicably, amid the chaos, he flashed on that separated version of her, the stranger, the one he wasn’t sure he could trust. He heard her words again: I live her life and mine.

This time, he understood. This is what mattered to her. This existence, the loving, tumbling, laughing, fearful, hungry, melancholy, restless human existence lived on this timeline allowed her to exist on the other, just as his dream of finding Clemantine again had let him fare alone over centuries. His doubt eased as he remembered her promise: I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect all of you.

A shout, all too close—“Move!”—startled him back into the present. A glimpse of the fox speeding toward him. He sprang at it, using his head to knock it in Kona’s direction. Kona was taken by surprise. All he could do was bat it toward the ground to slow it down.

Clemantine dove, seizing it as she rolled across a tiny lawn, but she didn’t have a good grip on it. It was wriggling free until Shoran met her. She clapped her hands around Clemantine’s—and abruptly, the hum of the fox ceased.

“We won!” Shoran crowed to a chorus of whoops and laughs as nine players collapsed to the ground in a satisfied state of exhaustion.

Clemantine lingered, luxuriating under the soothing, slow-falling water of her shower, quietly astonished at her own growing optimism. It had been a good day. She’d spent time in the library and on the high bridge, and the lecture had been interesting, but mostly she was still aglow from her introduction to flying fox.

The game had given her a workout, but better than that, it had been fun. Simple fun. She could not remember the last time she’d just played like that. Maybe not since that long-ago age before the Chenzeme ravaged Heyertori.

She squeezed her eyes shut, recoiling from the memory.

Don’t go there.

“Live in the moment,” she whispered. “Live for now.”

She touched the water off. Toweled herself dry in a gentle, warm wind. Then stepped out of the shower. The ultra-thin polymer of its walls unlocked, melting into a translucent ring that sank out of sight beneath the blond-wood floor as the ceiling regrew, smooth white.

After a moment of thought she requested a short, shimmering, mahogany-colored shift from the house DI. The dress budded from the generative surface of an active wall. She pulled it on, smoothed it straight, and walked barefoot into her living room.

Urban looked up with a smile from where he crouched by a low table with curved legs, arranging the various dishes he’d synthesized for their dinner.

“Just in time,” he said. He was dressed in loose trousers, his skin smooth and clean from the ministrations of his Makers; he did not enjoy showers as she did.

“It looks wonderful,” she said, and meant it.

He had picked up a lot of useful skills over his long lifetime, though he’d never learned to invest much value in the idea of home. He lived with her in this cottage, but it was hers. It reflected her personality and the simple serenity she preferred. Urban lived there without imparting any sense of himself to the place.

“It’s your home,” he always insisted. “Even when you’re not here, it’s as if you are and I like it that way. Don’t change anything.”

So the soft colors and the simple graceful lines of the furnishings that came and went in the changeable front room were all to her taste.

There was often a sofa positioned to catch the sunlight or moonlight coming through a side window. The table would be extruded from the floor on demand whenever they wanted to share a meal or a pot of tea. Colorful pillows served as their seats. The paintings on the walls changed every few days, or more often if the current selection did not suit her mood. The largest painting could be made to disappear, replaced by a screen where they watched recorded dramas.

The only unchanging piece in the room was a slim side table of honey-colored wood with a shallow dish on its polished surface in which a colony of irises grew.

Clemantine had an affinity for the flowers. Since her youth she’d been entranced with their beauty. She wore them as ornamentation, tattooed in gold along the edges of her ears. Only later in life did she come to appreciate them as symbols of renewal, life from lifelessness at the turn of seasons.

She sat down, cross-legged, facing Urban, and raised her jade-green chopsticks as part of a smiling salute. “Itadakimasu,” she said in appreciation of the meal.

“The least I could do.”

“You should host a community dinner and cook for everyone.”

He laughed. “No, they expect actual cooking, not just food ordered from a synthesizer.”

“You could help plan the menus.”

The focus of the community was squarely on the study of the Hallowed Vasties, but that destination remained far off, so people divided their time among a range of interests and enthusiasms.

Cooking was one of the most popular pastimes, whether for festivals, community meals, or competitions. Musicians and singers were abundant, performing in a range of styles. Visual arts and live dramas were pursued with passion, and the library was continuously mined in a search for recordings of ancient dramas, both performed and interactive. There were dramatic readings, intellectual and virtual games, and after today, athletic games.

Clemantine continued to practice her own hobby of genetically sculpting plants. The irises she kept on the side table were her creation. She had redesigned their genome so that with a proper feeding of nutrients they would grow from rhizomes to bold and bright blue flowers within three days, stay thus a while—a randomized span of time, unpredictable, anything from a day to ten days—and then the color of the flowers would shift to white, a sign that the cycle was nearly done.

If she was there to see the white color then she would sit cross-legged, waiting, watching, meditating, until, without further warning, the plant darkened and within a few seconds crumbled in on itself, collapsing in a layer of granular humus that fell like a shroud over the half-exposed rhizomes. Those seemingly lifeless roots would not quicken again until they received a new feast of nutrients.

The first time Urban had seen the collapse he’d been angry over it. “That’s horrible. Why do you want it to do that? Why don’t you make the flowers perpetual instead?”

“A false promise?” she’d asked him.

He hadn’t bothered to answer that. Just shook his head and moved on. Never questioned her on it again—though she’d seen him watching the transformation since then.

She meant for the rise and fall of the flowers to symbolize renewal, not death. More than once in her life she had lost all and grown again from nothing. Even in this peaceful succession of days, as she strove to live in the present, she thought it wise to be reminded of that.

She composed a message and sent it off to her separated self: *I think I understand why you want it this way.

Later, when dinner was finished, she would send a submind to that other version of her, and share her experience of this day.