Edges

Chapter 33

A confrontation would come. Clemantine felt sure of it as she hurried along the path to her cottage, leaving behind the hubbub of the amphitheater. The Bio-mechanic had accepted the task of surreptitiously preparing the sequence of kinetic countermeasures detailed in Pasha’s confidential plan. They had named that plan the Pyrrhic Defense, acknowledging the terrible damage the ship would suffer when they made the decision to launch. A reckoning was coming, and no telling how things would unfold from there.

The personnel map showed Urban and Kona already at the cottage. As Clemantine crossed the patio to join them, a submind reached her, generated by her ghost on Dragon’s bridge. A memory unfolded. The Bio-mechanic had messaged both her and Urban: *I traced the path the entity’s avatar took through the ship’s tissue. I found its point of origin—an undefended cocoon. Not empty. Another avatar is already growing, but I will destroy it.

*No! Urban snapped. *Watch it. Understand it. But don’t interfere.

The gel door pulled back to admit her. She stepped over the threshold into the sparsely appointed front room of her cottage. The sofa by the side window was gone, making room for a low central table. Urban and Kona sat silently on opposite sides, a tea service steaming between them. On the honey-colored side table, her colony of irises had just reached their bloom, the subtle sweet scent of the freshly opened flowers mingling with the warm spicy odor of the tea.

Kona looked up, acknowledging her with a nod as she settled cross-legged onto a cushion.

Urban was brooding or lost in the tumult of his subminds, she couldn’t tell, but his gaze remained fixed on the steaming teapot.

“So now you know where the avatar was grown,” Clemantine said as privacy screens slid closed, cutting off the leaf-tinted afternoon light. “He won’t surprise you again.”

Urban looked up. Met her gaze. “You don’t think he could hide it again, if he wants to? No, he’s taunting me. He wants me to know just how vulnerable I really am. All these years trying to beat Lezuri’s defenses and nothing to show for it.”

Kona picked up the teapot, his dark, long-fingered hands pouring golden tea into white ceramic cups. Steam furled. He said, “He’s left us alive. He’s let us thrive.” He handed a cup to Clemantine, slid one across the table to Urban. “He’s never challenged your authority over the ship—until today. Today this became a political game.”

“Sooth,” Clemantine said. “Lezuri showed a talent for persuasion. It won’t be long until he convinces a majority of the ship’s company that he is here for our good.”

Urban stared into his tea as if to read the foretellings in the stray leaves gathered at the bottom of his cup. He remained master of the ship, but if he lost the consensus of the majority he would be in the unpleasant position of either forcefully imposing his will or yielding his autonomy.

Clemantine knew him well enough to know he could find neither option acceptable.

“What is he after?” Urban asked, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. “I thought he wanted the ship, wanted a way off the Rock, and we’re still alive only because Griffin has the last word.”

“Tell her what Lezuri offered you,” Kona said.

A slight, cynical smile. “He told me, ‘Give me your loyalty and I will teach you what you want to know.’”

Clemantine drew a sharp breath, apprehensive, sure that he was tempted. Knowledge had always been a path to power for Urban. He strove to learn how things worked, he sought to control the mechanisms around him, because to be in control was his assurance that no one could choose the path of his life for him.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” she asked.

Another smile—that pirate smile. Mocking the idea that his loyalty was a commodity to be traded—unless the offer was right?

“Lezuri wants allies,” Kona said. “But why? Why does he need us?”

Clemantine sipped her tea to settle her mind, musing on Kona’s question—and an idea came to her. “Why did you need us?” she asked Urban.

He returned her gaze with a quizzical expression.

“You were by yourself for centuries,” she reminded him. “You described it as misery. Soul-annihilating loneliness. We are human. We’re not meant to be alone. And at his core, Lezuri is human too.”

“You’re saying he’s lonely?” Urban asked.

“I don’t know if ‘lonely’ is the right word,” she said, working out her thoughts as she spoke. “But you saw his performance today. He wants admiration, even responsibility. From what he said today, his strength was built out of the act of gathering personalities around him. I think he’s still doing that. He’s seeking subjects. Followers. Satellite personalities that can give him a sense of purpose, define his place at the center of a social web. I don’t doubt that he’s power-seeking and narcissistic, but he’s posing as beneficent—and I think he wants to see himself that way.”

Urban set his cup down with a sharp crack. “He wants my ship.”

Refusing to coddle him, she answered, “He has your ship.”

“No. I still command Dragon. If I didn’t, I would end this, like the crews of those other ships.”

“It might come to that,” Kona said. “You have to recognize it, if it does.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“We’re not there yet,” Clemantine cautioned. She would do everything in her power to hold onto her home here on Dragon. Just a little longer, and the Bio-mechanic’s swift secretive mission to prepare the Pyrrhic Defense would add a final, necessary layer to their resistance—but she did not tell Urban that. He had rejected all similar suggestions for so long, she feared he would try to undo their plan if he knew it was real and underway.

She did not feel much guilt over the deception. It was necessary, and she had not forgotten how he’d once hidden a critical truth from her because he felt she could not handle it.

She watched him sip his tea, eyes unfocused. Contemplating? Or collecting another tide of subminds?

He said, “I think I’ll let Lezuri try to persuade me.”

Clemantine’s shoulders slumped. She traded a weary look with Kona. Silent consensus: Didn’t we both know it would go this way?

Urban took no notice, musing aloud: “If he wants my loyalty, he can try to win it. Prove to me he’s beneficent, that he’s willing to share what he knows. That will give me an opening. A way to get close to him, to learn what I need to learn. He knows so much more than we do.”

Clemantine shook her head, set her teacup down. She reached for his hand, squeezed it. “He knows so much more than we do,” she echoed. “Hear the truth in that. You’ll try to play him, but he will play you, draw you into his orbit.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

“Urban,” Kona pleaded. “You have to remember, he grew out of the Swarm. None of us has the capacity to even imagine—”

“Whatever he used to be, that’s not what he is now,” Urban interrupted. “He’s only a fragment of that past self. That’s why we have a chance. But to make this work, I need to play the game.” He turned to Clemantine. “When I think about all those years on Null Boundary, and what we might have done if only we knew what this thing knows—”

She raised her hand. “Stop,” she commanded, shocked that she hadn’t realized regret was one part of what drove him. “Don’t go there. Don’t let it haunt you. You can’t rewrite the past.”

A rough gesture, casting aside her concern. “It’s not about the past. It’s about ensuring our future. I need to learn everything I can from this thing. And in the end, I will learn enough to defeat him.”

She studied him in this, his fallback state: cocky, confident, in denial of hard inevitabilities. So far he’d had the luck and the strength to recover when those inevitabilities inevitably hit—but luck didn’t last forever.

“Guard yourself,” she warned. “I’ve gotten used to your company. I don’t want to lose you.”

That version of Clemantine existing alone aboard Griffin received these memories. She shared them with her Apparatchiks. The Scholar said, “A truce with this being could be highly advantageous as Urban has surmised, but there is no way to be sure of Lezuri’s intentions while he exists under the threat of our gun.”

“So we continue in vigilance,” Clemantine said. “With so many factions in play, something is bound to break.”