Edge of Dark

by Brenda Cooper

  “My pleasure.” He managed to take the shipping magnate’s hand without shaking. Gunnar Ellensson owned most of the traffic between Mammot and the Deep, and a little bit of the traffic around Lym. Mostly Mammot, though. The only other rocky planet in the system, Mammot had suffered a different fate than Lym’s. In some far dark past the Glittering had agreed to leave Lym alone in trade for the ability to mine Mammot. Bar jokes put the damage at a quarter of the total weight of the planet taken away. People lived there; more than on Lym. They inhabited complex and architecturally fascinating cities. But their work was the opposite of Charlie’s. They tore down.

  The man in front of him had more power than most, more by far than Satyana with her entertainment empire and her multiple ships. Satyana was to Gunnar like he was to Satyana. In his darkest nightmares on Lym, Gunnar Ellensson shifted his focus to Lym and demanded mining rights to as-yet-unrestored parts of her.

  Gunnar let go of his hand. “I hear you and Nona plan to fly into a swarm of pirates and save someone who’s already dead.”

  “We don’t know that!” Nona protested. “Someone’s got to care what happened to the people on the High Sweet Home.”

  Gunnar ignored her comments. “If you wait awhile, the damned pirates are on their way to us.”

  Satyana frowned and corrected him firmly but quietly. “Next.”

  Gunnar smiled softly at her, but he said, “I’ll call them whatever I want.”

  Satyana busied herself rearranging chairs.

  “They do act like pirates.” Gunnar didn’t sound at all apologetic.

  “Have you ever lost a ship to the Next?” Charlie asked him.

  “Three of them. Two in my first year—they almost broke me. Then, that was ten percent of my fleet. It took me five years to recover, and of course I had to add defensive ships to my line. They didn’t get me again until this year.”

  “What do you know about them now?” Satyana asked.

  Gunnar looked grim. “They found a better way to steal my ships. The High Council is pressing me to turn half my fleet into warships.”

  “Can you do that?” Charlie asked.

  Gunnar gestured toward a couch and a few chairs. “Are you hungry?”

  “Sure,” Charlie said, realizing it was true.

  Gunnar called a small serving-bot that Charlie hadn’t even noticed. As it whirred quietly across the floor, Gunnar went on, “I can give the station all of the protection I’ve bought for my fleets and then idle the barges or let them travel with no escort. Except of course, I can’t do either. Not really. The Deep needs the minerals I’m carrying, and the barges need protection.” The serving-bot had reached Gunnar. He pushed a few buttons on it, and then said, “The Edge is only one source of piracy.”

  That triggered a thought that had been going through Charlie’s head for a while. He was still power-smacked, awed that he was here talking casually with Gunnar Ellensson, and it seemed hard to get his words out right. “There is a lot of space. I mean, it’s big. Space is big. So why not just let them in?”

  Nona’s face flushed red, and Satyana went still. But Gunnar smiled. “It’s a good question.” He looked at Nona. “You want to be a diplomat. You’ve got that training. How would you answer Charlie?”

  Nona leaned forward. He could almost see her thinking. Instead of giving him an answer, she asked a question. “What do you know about the history of the Edge?”

  Charlie said, “My mother told me the ice pirates wanted to be more than us, better than us. That they didn’t understand the soul is linked to the body, and that they were really stupid humans for turning themselves into robots. She said they would have torn away our humanity if we didn’t banish them.” He hesitated for a moment while the serving-bot re-appeared with four glasses of water, a bowl of fresh fruit, a plate of warm, steaming bread, and some tiny cookies. He took water and bread, while eying the fruit. It was a strange shade of orange he’d never seen on Lym. “She also told me that if I didn’t do my homework, they’d come and take me away and make me into a machine.” He winced, able to hear the naiveté in his answer. And if he sounded backward—a member of one of Lym’s founding families—what must most of the people from Lym sound like? He added, “I’m most afraid that they’ll want a piece of Lym, to mine it or hurt it or to live there.”

  Gunnar nodded. “Or Mammot, which would be worse. We’ve learned to live without Lym, but we need the minerals we take from Mammot.”

  Charlie managed not to say anything. The same treasure huddled in Lym’s crust, and there were still old mines pocking its surface in some places. He took a piece of fruit, which tasted as sweet as an orchard peach.

  Nona went on. “We don’t know what the Next want. They started as rebels, uploading human brains into computers. It kills the humans—your mom was right about that. They’re willing to die to become whatever they become out there. Some were religious—looking for machine nirvana. They left art and immersives behind. We studied them in one of my college classes. Some of their work is like a vision, as full of sincerity as any preacher we have here. But when you study the actual history—what happened instead of what people said—” She looked at him as if making sure he understood what she meant by the distinction, and when he nodded she went on, “There was a lot of exploitation. The minds of children uploaded into sex-bots, the creation of super-powerful robots that enslaved a whole station of humans, and then killed all the humans, and then died themselves.

  “The—beings—beyond the Edge don’t necessarily have the same philosophy, or even the same values from one to another. The common thread for people and machines included in the exile is that they were too dangerous to stay here, too powerful.” She paused, looking quizzically at Charlie, as if wanting to be sure he got her point. Light winked from the jewel in her cheek. “They’ve grown more powerful since then. We just weren’t watching very closely.”

  Gunnar said, “Nicely done.” He sipped his water and looked at Charlie. “Now do you understand why we don’t just let them come in and live in any orbit they want?” They have enough firepower to squash us, and they probably think we’re about as irritating as a swarm of mosquitos.

  Charlie nodded, unsure what to say. Hard to tell what was truth and what was fear and what was legend when people talked about the Next.

  Gunnar seemed to accept the nod, since he continued. “We’ve been assuming the Edge stayed fragmented. Like we are.”

  That got Charlie’s attention. “The Deep is fragmented?”

  “The Glittering is fragmented. I suppose we are, too. For example—you and I have different ideas about what to do with planets. Stations don’t all have the same laws. The High Sweet Home was experimenting with animals in ways that we don’t allow here, and at least a few of the smaller stations are essentially religions colonies. It’s not like there’s a solar-system-wide government.”

  “Fair enough,” Charlie said. “I guess I grew up thinking we thought one way on Lym and all of the spacers thought a different way.”

  Gunnar looked directly at Charlie, his expression a mask of patient, irritating kindness. “That’s a child’s way of thinking.”

  The words stung. The same trap he’d fallen into a few minutes ago, being naive. He’d have to get better at watching his mouth.

  “If you’re going to be any help to Nona,” Gunnar said, “you need to study.”

  “I already am,” he said, feeling defensive and mad at himself for it. “I can see it’s not that simple now that I’m here.” He glanced at Nona. “Besides, while I want to be all the help to Nona that any friend can be, I’m not here just for her. Lym needs a voice, and a way to get information. That’s why I came. It’s beautiful, you know. Worth saving.” He gestured outward, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what direction he should be pointing.

  He was supposed to be an ambassador. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to convince a possible protector that Lym mattered. “We’ve spent generations on restoration. There�
��s work that’s almost done, like decontaminating almost all of Goland. There’s whole ecosystems that we hardly need to interfere with at all.”

  Gunnar looked unimpressed.

  Charlie continued, struggling not to sound desperate. “There’s beauty in a world we didn’t make. Power in it—power of its own. The ability to surprise us, to evolve. All that we ever were before we grew out into the Glittering is there, in the wild places. We are animals!”

  “That might be true if we came from here,” Gunnar said. “But Lym is no more than a colony planet.”

  Charlie sat back, forced himself calm. “I do understand that history. I also know we need you to fight to protect the treaties you made with us.”

  Gunnar laughed, a deep warm sort of belly laugh. “At least you’re persistent.”

  “I am.”

  Charlie didn’t think he’d made any headway with Gunnar at all. But Nona looked pleased with the exchange, at least if the small smile playing around her lips and eyes was a decent indicator.

  A strong hand on Charlie’s shoulder jerked him out of bed with the instincts of a ranger. He blinked in the low light, certain he hadn’t slept enough. He felt caught between reality and fading dreams of flying his skimmer through open space, surrounded by stars and chased by ships full of machines. “Wake up,” someone whispered. “It’s time to go.” Satyana’s voice.

  “I thought we were going to spend a week here.”

  “You were. But while we were visiting Gunnar yesterday, the Council met. They allowed a military order to stop ships from coming or going while they come up with ways to inspect everything.”

  “You don’t look happy about that.”

  “It’s not our way.” She pushed a warm glass of stim at him, and he curled his fingers around it and raised it to his lips. The sweet, dark flavor Nona called chocolate. Either the drink or the urgency in Satyana’s voice woke him up. “So we’re leaving before they stop us?”

  “I’ve filed your flight plan. Nona’s there already.”

  He finished the stim, the heat nearly scorching his throat. “Are you sure we should go?”

  “You could get trapped here. The new rules take effect at the end of this shift change. That’s in four hours. If we miss this window, you can’t get out without calling attention to your departure.”

  “All right. Leave so I can get dressed.”

  “That’s old fashioned of you.” It truly sounded like a comment instead of a flirt, but he was happy when the door closed behind her. He pulled on his best clothes and threw everything else in his duffel. More clothes, his slate, a rock from home that he’d taken off of his dresser at Manny’s at the last minute before he came away from Lym.

  She started off leading him toward the ship’s bays. “I don’t know what you’re going to find,” she said. “Stay safe. Don’t let Nona do anything stupid.”

  “She doesn’t strike me as stupid.”

  “She isn’t. But she’s never been brave before. So promise me.”

  Their hurried footsteps echoed in the metal corridor. “She’s an adult. She’ll make her own choices.”

  Satyana narrowed her eyes at him. “You seem to be teaching her that.”

  “Someone has to.”

  She laughed, then. The most genuine laugh he had heard from her yet. “She’s not ready for this, you know. Somewhere down on Lym she finally understood that she can make a difference. But she hasn’t had much experience trying to change the world.”

  “None of us are ready for this,” he said.

  They walked fast and said nothing for a bit, the small woman pacing him with no trouble at all. They were leaving Satyana. He’d known that, and been grateful for it, but he had a feeling she would join the things he unexpectedly missed. “Stay safe here,” he said. “Try to keep Lym safe.”

  She laughed again, this time with a touch of bitterness. “We’ll try to keep everything safe. But we don’t know much more about the Next than you do. We should, but we don’t. We’ve paid far more attention to our own problems and not enough to anything else. It’s stupid to feel invincible.”

  She was almost babbling. He couldn’t imagine her being afraid, except perhaps for Nona. Maybe it was just that they were in a hurry. Or maybe everyone in the entire Glittering was scared now. He was. He swallowed and told Satyana, “We’ll do our best.”

  They entered the ship’s bay and jogged toward the Sultry Savior. Nona must have seen them. She swarmed down the ramp and raced to Satyana, holding her so close he could barely tell they were two beings instead of one.

  He watched them, amused.

  Nona tore herself loose from Satyana, and grabbed his hand as she came by, tugging him behind her. At the top of the ramp, they turned to watch Satyana jog quietly away.

  “I’m going to miss her,” Nona said.

  “Didn’t you go to Lym partly to get away from her?” Charlie asked.

  “It’s complicated.” Nona turned briefly, glancing over her shoulder. “Come to the control room?”

  He followed Nona, dropping his bag and the one Satyana had given him both into a locker on the way. The two of them strapped into acceleration couches and lay still. In front of them, a screen came to life, showing the outer door of the bay opening up, and the stars beyond. The Sultry Savior pulled out of the bay slowly and floated gently away from the Diamond Deep.

  When the ship sped up, the movement was so smooth he hardly noticed it at all, just a slight change in his weight that pressed on him a bit more and then a bit more and then even more. “Maybe I’ll get back there some day,” he said. “To the Deep.”

  “There’s a lot I had planned to show you.”

  “There’s a lot I had planned to show you on Lym.” He smiled and watched the stars, which really didn’t change much. In truth he was a tiny being, strapped unmoving to a couch inside of a tiny ship beside a tiny station rotating around a tiny sun, which was merely one star among many in the galaxy, and that again was one galaxy in a universe.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHRYSTAL

  Chrystal, Yi, and Jason stood together across the room from Katherine, who sat on the floor, knees up, arms wrapped tightly around them, her head buried in her arms. They had done her body exactly right, the slender waist, the long limbs, the long neck, and even the fabulous dragon tattoo. The only physical flaw was perfection. If the Next had gotten anything wrong, it would be easier for Chrystal to watch Katherine sit so still and look so lost, and easier to be rejected.

  A long time had passed. Maybe more than a day.

  Chrystal whispered, “I wish one of them was here. Jhailing might know what to do.”

  “They’re probably watching us,” Yi said.

  “Great.” Jason moved a little away, pacing. He was also physically perfect—broad of shoulder and slender in the waist, well muscled. It seemed as though all of the perfection that had hidden inside of their human bodies had been honed in some awful fire of creation. She wondered if Jason was still stronger than her.

  They didn’t have any plumbing. No stomachs, no genitals, no inner ears. Their bodies were gendered by shape, but not sensation.

  Still, from the outside, they looked fabulous.

  God damn it! Everything was wrong. Her brain wouldn’t stick to the problem at hand. She went and knelt beside Katherine for about the fifth time. “Please talk to us,” she whispered. “I know it’s hard. It’s hard for all of us. But we need each other. I need you, your laughter, your silliness.”

  Katherine didn’t even move.

  Chrystal’s voice came out louder than she meant it to. “I love you.”

  Nothing.

  Chrystal made her way back. “How do we know she’s alive? We don’t breathe.”

  Yi said, “I bet her grip would fail if she died.”

  “We’re all dead,” Jason said.

  Chrystal was tired of the sentiment. She had spent what felt like weeks thinking it herself. She touched his cheek. “No. Whatever we
are—we in this moment—we’re alive. We aren’t our old selves—how could we be? But we are alive.”

  “Getting existential?” Jason asked.

  “Big ideas aside,” Yi said. “I think I have a smaller idea that might help her. Remember when you asked me how I know so much about the Next? And I told you that I braided? That’s what they call it. Did any of them talk to you about it?”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “But they talked to you in your heads?”

  They both answered, “Yes.”

  “That’s the first step. We’re using our voices now, but we probably don’t have to.”

  Chrystal supposed that was true. She tried to think at Yi the way she’d thought her answers at Jhailing.

  “I feel you,” Yi said, smiling. “But not clearly. Think something easy.”

  She thought, I love you.

  Yi looked puzzled. “What did you say?”

  She said it out loud. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Yi smiled at her, and reached a hand up to her cheek. “Try a single word. Something concrete. Picture it and send it to me.”

  She tried, Rose.

  It took ten tries and a few pep talks from Yi and Jason, but Yi eventually gave her a broad smile and said, Rose.

  Then it was Jason’s turn. They worked at it until they could think short sentences at each other and get them right over half the time. During the long practice, Chrystal kept glancing at Katherine. She moved a few times, shifting position, but Chrystal never caught her looking at them. She could surely hear them talking out loud. It was impossible to tell if she could hear them talking to each other in silence. “Are we going to be able to stay together?” she asked Yi.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like we need to eat or even sleep. You don’t sleep any more do you?”

  She stopped, confused by the question. She used to. Even since all this happened. Like being turned on and off. “I don’t know when I slept last,” she said.

  “Not for a while,” Jason said.

  But I could stand to get out of this white room, Chrystal thought.