The Stark Divide

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  Everything he saw told him he was misreading the situation. The way he’d talked Ana through her moment of crisis…. Colin had learned to trust his gut.

  Hammond pulled the mass hauler up to the open air lock, its magnetic treads keeping it on the hold deck. This time it was Colin who vaulted over the seed, carrying the hauler’s straps.

  He wrapped them around the bulky object, clicking the buckles into place. “Clear.” Hammond pulled back on the controls, easing the seed out of the air lock and into the open space of the hold.

  Was this what they should be spending their energy on?

  Colin was fond of the Dressler—or Lex, as Hammond had taken to calling her—but there were other matters at hand too, including their own basic survival. Surely that was more important than an organic machine?

  Hammond and Anatov had outvoted him on this matter. Strange bedfellows, those two.

  In any case, they still had five hours before the rendezvous to prepare.

  ANA LAID out her instruments on the crate she had set up earlier as a table. She’d replaced her lost cutter with Hammond’s. As he handed it over to her, she’d squeezed his hand in thanks.

  His quick thinking had saved her life.

  She also had a small vial of the fungicide. In these circumstances, it was as good a disinfectant as any. The seed’s tough wooden shell would keep any airborne spores out, but once she opened it up, she’d have to be careful.

  Hammond set the container holding the ship-mind on the table.

  You okay in there? Ana took a deep breath, ready to begin.

  She pulled on some heavy rubber gloves and looked over the seed, searching for the telltale shallow depression in the shell that indicated where the neural bunch came together—the congregation of neurons that would become the world-mind.

  Even on its side, the seed was almost as tall as she was.

  She traced the rough body of the shell from the small pointed end closest to her. Half was warm from the rays of the sun, and half was icy to the touch—the chill of the void. The cold radiated out into the hold. She shivered.

  She spiraled her hand lightly around until her palm settled into the depression. It was, of course, on the bottom.

  “We’ll need to turn this thing over.”

  Hammond climbed back into the hauler and spun the seed gently.

  “Stop,” she said when the depression was just above waist level.

  She wiped down the area with fungicide, which immediately froze with a crackling sound.

  Picking up the cutter, she chose a starting point and adjusted the cutting depth to about six inches. She cut a circle around the depressed area, about two hand spans across. She connected the cut from one end to the other.

  She stepped back to review her handiwork. It was rough, but it was a decent enough circle.

  “When I open her up,” she said without glancing back, “I’m going to want to get her plugged in quickly to minimize the risk of contamination.”

  “Got it, Doc.”

  “You’ve seen the dimensionals. You’ll be my nurse. I’ll ask you for something and you’ll hand it to me.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Okay, here we go. Hand me the extractor.”

  He handed it to her, and she drilled a small hole in the circle, using the tool to pull the fresh-cut patch up and off the seed.

  She handed it off to him. “Keep that close by. Cutter.”

  The inside of the seed was revealed, overlapping folds of pink tissue that would be warm to the touch.

  Embedded in the folds of flesh was a miniature duplicate of the ship-mind, no bigger than a walnut. At the moment, it was no more than a control unit, regulating the basic processes of the seed. No intelligent thought. But how do I know for sure?

  If Hammond was right, these creations were capable of so much more than she would have ever guessed.

  She cleared her mind to concentrate on the task at hand.

  Using the cutter, she stripped out the seed-mind and excised a little of the surrounding flesh. She felt a burst of regret at ending the nascent mind’s life prematurely.

  “All right, give the ship-mind one more wipe-down with the fungicide, and then hand it to me. Carefully.”

  She took it from his hands and gingerly laid it in the space she’d made for it.

  “Now hand me the synth wand.”

  “The what?”

  “The skinny black stick there.” She pointed at the table.

  “Ah… this?” Hammond held out a tool.

  She glanced at it. “Yes, that’s it.” She took it and checked the settings.

  She laid each of the existing neural lines—bundles of nerves that would carry the commands from the seed-mind into the rest of the seed—across the ship-mind and used the synth wand to lay out a row of specialized stem cells to form a meld between each line and the mind.

  She’d never done this in the field before in such crude conditions, and certainly never with a fully developed mind like the Dressler’s.

  In theory, it should work.

  She applied a small electrical shock to each site to start the regenerative process.

  “Fungicide.”

  Hammond handed her the bottle.

  She gently wiped down the exposed surfaces one last time and handed him back the vial and cloth. Then she laid a hand carefully on the mind. Come on, Lex. You can do this. “Glue.”

  He handed her a tube of industrial-strength glue. She applied it carefully to the newly cut interior surface of the shell.

  “Patch.”

  Hammond handed her the piece of the protective shell she had cut out earlier. She lined it up with the hole and pressed it down, sealing the seed once more.

  Using the glue, she put a final seal around the edge of the patch. Then she stepped back to review her handiwork.

  Not bad for field surgery. “It’s done. Now we wait.”

  LEX STIRRED as things… changed. The world around her was still black, but instead of a vast nothingness, there was something. Potential.

  The pain was gone.

  Instead, she felt quiescent, safe, and surprisingly whole. Organic.

  Her mechanical parts had been stripped away with the sharp edge of Jackson’s cutter.

  She felt around and touched something. It was strong, hard, warm, like the root of a tree. A golden glow began to emanate from it, stretching out into the darkness. Then another, and another, all connected to her, all a part of her.

  She was inside the seed.

  Jackson had done it.

  She set about feeling out her new domain. It was more limited than the Dressler but destined for so much more.

  She would once again have to wait, but she was content.

  JACKSON SET down the cutter Anatov had handed him and turned to face the captain, who had come up behind him during the operation. “I won’t fight you. But hear me out.”

  The captain locked eyes with him for a long moment, his arms crossed over his chest. Then he nodded. “Speak.”

  “You think I did this to the ship, right?” He pointed to the walls of the hold, now visibly sagging.

  The doc stepped between them. “It’s a fungus, Hammond. It was apparently carried in on the cross you wore. That’s how it got past security. I assumed you knew all of this.”

  Jackson shook his head. “It was a gift from my pastor at my son’s communion. I had no idea what it carried. For heaven’s sake, why would I want to destroy the ship? I’d be dooming myself too.”

  The captain snorted. “People do it all the time. The Interveners….”

  Jackson wanted to shout. Instead he kept his voice level. “The Interveners are batshit crazy. Look, I’ve been working on these ships for ten years, and until today I thought of them as nothing more than big semi-intelligent workhorses. Computer-smart, but nothing like us. Even so, I love my family. I would kill to protect them—”

  “Was that why you did it?” The captain pushed past Anatov, getting in J
ackson’s face. “Is that it? Did someone threaten your family?”

  “Back off, McAvery.” The doc pushed him away from Jackson. “Hammond, what did you want to tell us?”

  Thank you. “I would kill to protect my family, and I would kill to get back to them. I didn’t do this.”

  The captain shook his head. “It’s been bothering me for an hour. It makes no sense.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why you’d try to kill the ship and then save the ship-mind.”

  Jackson sighed, looking over at the seed. “I didn’t try to kill the Dressler, but I had to try to save her. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try.”

  Jackson did his best to relay the content of his dreams to the captain, the strange contact he had with Lex, the tower, what she had asked of him.

  He wasn’t sure, in the end, that the man believed him, but it didn’t really matter.

  “I still have to turn you in when we get back to Frontier. You know that, right?”

  Jackson looked away. “I guess so,” he said finally. “Do what you have to do.”

  McAvery nodded. “We’ll let the authorities there sort things out.”

  Chapter Nine: Evacuation

  THE NEXT four hours were a mad rush of preparation.

  Hammond’s actions had limited their options. Colin no longer had the ability to adjust the ship’s course, so he had to hope they would pass close enough by Ariadne to maneuver using only the lifeboat’s small jets.

  As the rendezvous time approached, they each collected a small bag of their own belongings—not that they had carried much onto the ship to begin with, but every extra ounce of mass might become critical.

  For his part, Colin took his photo of Trip, the ancient butane lighter his father had given him with its Welcome to the Golden State logo, his vintage, well-thumbed paperback copy of the book Red Mars, and his flask that he only resorted to in extreme emergencies.

  He took one last look around the cabin that had been his on-again, off-again home for the last several years. It was strange knowing he’d never see it again.

  Colin sighed and let the door close behind him.

  He made his way down to the hold and shivered. It was cold. The ship’s circulatory systems had mostly shut down with the removal of the ship-mind, and in a few hours, it would get downright freezing inside.

  He still didn’t understand why Hammond had infected the ship—or if he had done it. He wasn’t entirely sure the man was still sane. Hammond truly seemed to believe the story he’d told about the maiden in the tower.

  All that would be sorted out later. If they had a later.

  He got to work inside the lifeboat, tying down the personal belongings behind safety webbing along the back wall. Then he began to remove all the nonessentials, including the two extra passenger seats, shelving, and anything else not bolted down that wouldn’t be needed for their hopefully short stay on Ariadne.

  Nothing he could do would significantly increase the amount of oxygen they could carry with them. He hadn’t figured out a solution to that part just yet.

  Hammond worked with him silently, lost in his own thoughts or afraid of what the captain might say. Either one suited Colin just fine.

  JACKSON LABORED to secure the seed to the lifeboat. Protecting this nascent life-form with its encased ship-mind had become his overriding priority.

  He’d been chosen for this unique challenge, to help this strange, beguiling creature that God had made through the hands of man.

  Jackson didn’t know if Glory would understand. He thought she would, but then again, he wasn’t sure that he himself did. He was possessed by a new kind of faith, an assurance that told him clear as day what he had to do.

  He welded a metal plate and eyelet onto the back end of the lifeboat that he hoped would be strong enough to hold the mass of the seed. The monofilament chain that had carried it behind the Dressler was still intact. He planned to use it to secure the seed to the lifeboat.

  Its mass was enough to throw off the captain’s maneuvers, but McAvery had assured him that he’d be able to handle it. The man was an ace pilot—Hammond had seen it often enough.

  The seed had warmed considerably since they’d brought it into the hold. Though it was still cold, it would no longer peel the skin off one’s fingers if touched. He ran his hand along the fine seam where they’d glued the outer shell back together.

  He hoped it would be strong enough to withstand the vacuum. “Godspeed,” he whispered.

  COLIN USED the comm in the lifeboat to transmit his final plans back to Frontier.

  Without the ship-mind, he couldn’t make contact with Trip directly. So he recorded a short message and shot it off to Frontier, trusting it would reach his partner eventually.

  “Trip, hopefully by the time you get this, we’ll be safely down on Ariadne, waiting for rescue. The ship is falling apart, and we’re going to take the lifeboat and make a run for it. If… if we don’t make it, just know that I love you, and it was worth it. Every minute.”

  He cut it off before he could get too maudlin. He wanted Trip to remember him as hopeful and strong if things went wrong.

  With any luck, the rescue mission on the Herald would be able to reach Ariadne in time—if he could pull off the landing first.

  Their oxygen supply was going to be a problem.

  Given the constraints—small fuel tank, speed of travel, the tumbling of the asteroid, and the added burden of the seed—he’d be lucky to get them down in one piece.

  Outside, he could hear Hammond welding the holding plate to the lifeboat. He was dubious about taking the seed with them. They’d already gone well beyond the original parameters of the mission, and his pilot’s license was probably on the line.

  Hammond and Anatov had presented a unified front on the issue, and truth be told, he’d hated the thought of leaving the Dressler’s ship-mind behind.

  “How’s it coming out there?” he called to Hammond.

  “Ten more minutes.”

  “You want to send a quick message home when you’re done?”

  There was silence for a moment. “Yes, I’d like that,” Hammond said at last.

  “Comm’s all yours.” At this point, what could it harm? The damage was done, and if Jackson hadn’t done it, it would be cruel to deny him the chance to contact his family.

  Colin checked his watch. They had just about half an hour to complete their preparations to abandon ship.

  He’d always hoped he’d never have the occasion to use those words. He shivered and told himself it was from the cold. “Trip,” he said under his breath, “if you can hear me, somehow… I love you.”

  JACKSON DUCKED into the lifeboat and set the comm. “This is Jackson Hammond calling for Glory Hammond, in Fargo. Glory, I don’t think I’m going to make it out of this one. But you know I love you, Aaron, and Jayson more than life itself. I learned something new here, Glory, something I can’t explain in the short time I have. Just know that you were right. God is in every living thing.”

  He looked around at the oxygen tanks and food stashed in every nook and crevice. “I… I don’t think I’m going to see you again.” He choked up a little on that. He closed his eyes and willed himself to be strong. “Tell the boys they are stronger than they know, and it’s no weakness to cry. I love you, Glory. God bless.” Lord, I wish I could see you again, one last time.

  He cut off the recording and sent it to Frontier before he could change his mind.

  ANA COLLECTED a small smattering of medical equipment and the seed initiator and threw them in a carry sack. She hadn’t brought anything sentimental with her, so there was nothing of any emotional value to pack. Not unless she counted the diary.

  She hesitated and then threw it into her sack.

  She glanced around the lab one last time and exited onto the runway, sack in tow.

  The walls of the ship had taken on an unhealthy pallor, pink shot through with lines of yellowish-green.
The fungicide may have slowed the advance of the infection, but it had clearly not stopped it.

  Everything they took with them would have to be completely disinfected before they could board another ship.

  The Dressler trembled—without its ship-mind, it was no longer properly regulating its internal functions, and the spread of the fungus was only making things worse.

  It had quickly gotten colder. She could see her breath in front of her as she made her way along the rungs to the entrance to the hold.

  She put her hand on the callused entry knob, but the door refused to open.

  Frowning, she tried again. That part of the ship’s programming was encoded deeply in the ship’s DNA. Things must have gotten really bad for such a malfunction, even under the current circumstances.

  She tried it a third time, and the door finally opened, albeit slowly.

  Sighing nervously, she pushed her way through to join the others in the hold.

  Colin met her at the door. “Did you want to record a message for someone at home? We have a few minutes left.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no one waiting for me back there.”

  JACKSON STRAPPED himself into his seat in the lifeboat next to the doc and behind the captain, his stomach churning. He wasn’t thrilled with going EVA in the lifeboat. He preferred something sturdier between himself and the void.

  Clearly, the Dressler was no longer sturdy.

  “To the Father, the Holy Virgin, and the Immaculate Son,” he whispered under his breath. “Keep Glory, Aaron, and Jayson safe.”

  The temperature continued to drop, and some of the lesions had erupted into open sores, the material of the Dressler itself beginning to liquefy. The doctor thought the ship had no more than an hour left before her structural deficiencies became catastrophic.

  At least the lifeboat was fully mechanical.