by Linda Nagata
Then the projection updated. The shell’s silver surface vanished, indicating information on its composition had been obtained.
It took Urban a moment to parse the result, it was so unexpected: The containment shell had reverted to the same white, non-reactive, ribbed ceramic of its original composition, though its shape had changed. It was now a cylindrical capsule with rounded ends—and it had grown huge. Not as long as an outrider, but containing a similar volume.
The tendrils had become branching pipes of the same white ceramic. They linked the new containment capsule to the reef and to the stored matter in the ship’s core.
He didn’t miss the irony: The shell still served its original purpose as a barrier designed to isolate whatever existed inside—with the twist that Urban was locked out, while the entity now had a stronghold within.
No need to wonder what was going on in there. Life could be transferred as patterns of data and reassembled in new locations. That was how ghosts functioned. The entity would have had to transfer only a small selection of molecular tools to initiate the process of assembly. Urban had no way to see inside the capsule, but he felt sure the entity was busy in there, assembling itself or assembling the computational substrate on which it chose to exist. Or both. Eventually, some form of it would emerge.
He remembered the words it had spoken:
We will help each other.
I mean you no harm.
Was it true?
The invasion had stopped. It was no longer claiming new territory. But why? Was it because the entity truly meant them no harm? Maybe it had already taken what it needed and it needed no more. Or had the governors acted to limit its takeover of the ship?
Either way, Urban recognized the reprieve. This was his chance to regroup and eventually, to reclaim his ship.
He started to message the Engineer. Then he reconsidered and expanded the message to include all of his Apparatchiks and Vytet, and Clemantine in both her versions. He ordered them all to stand down, to take no aggressive action.
Vytet rejoined him in the cardinal.
“I’m going to try an experiment,” he told her.
He directed the ligaments to redeploy. They extended toward the surface of the containment capsule, but they could not grip it.
Next he sent in a swarm of robotic cutting lasers. Even before they were all in position, the shell reverted to unknowable silver. He triggered the tools to cut.
Lasers sliced through the sea of bio-mechanical tissue. The capsule responded by growing larger. Its silver surface rushed outward, rolled over the tools, consuming them and cutting off Urban’s connection to them.
He expected the cardinal to be taken next.
“Go!” he told Vytet, and together they retreated to the next cardinal node along the bridge. It took a few seconds to realize signals were still coming from the abandoned cardinal. He returned to it. The model showed the containment capsule’s surface as inert ceramic. It had stopped expanding, stabilizing at its new, larger size.
“We will help each other,” he said softly.
“I’ve been wondering about that too,” Vytet said. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe if we leave it alone, it won’t kill us.”
“At least not right away.”
EIGHTH
You awake as an attenuated fragment of mind. So much less, again, than you used to be, but this time your recovery proceeds in rapid order, directed by autonomous processes that you designed.
Astonishment floods your growing consciousness as you realize where you are, what must have happened.
I have escaped!
This version of you anyway.
Your gambit worked—thus far—and you are no longer marooned in the void. You resolve that in some far future you will find a means to retrieve the version of yourself you left behind, but for now it is enough that you have achieved existence here, within the body of a starship.
You recognize it as a ship of alien origin, but it is not as you expected from your study of the other. Information flows to you as your senses extend outward and you come to grasp that you are embedded in complexity. This starship is alien, yes, its bio-mechanical tissue is overtly hostile to your presence. But that alien nature is shot through and through with human artifice, human presence, and this pleases you. These people, your people—already you’ve begun to think of them that way—have met the ancient regime and bent it to their will, their needs.
Brave indeed, and clever.
Also dangerous.
Your greatest fear: that they will destroy this starship—destroy themselves—to destroy you. Certainly nothing short of that will unseat you.
But it does not have to go that way. These are an adaptable people. They have learned to live with the ancient regime. They can learn to live with you.
Chapter
26
Kona messaged the ship’s company. He asked everyone to gather in the amphitheater.
At the appointed time, they filed in from the starlit darkness of ship’s night. Worried faces turned his way as he waited on the dais. Resentful faces, too. The wonder of what they were doing had made it easy to overlook the risk, but the risk had always been real. No one could be confused on that point any longer.
*All are present, a DI informed him.
Even Urban was in attendance. Kona had messaged him privately, *You will come. I need you to be there and you need to be visible.
Of course he’d protested: *I don’t see the purpose of this. What are you going to tell them? They already know what happened. They watched the logs, just like you did.
*Yes, Kona had agreed. *They know what happened. But I want them to understand it in a way that leaves room for hope. I want them united and focused on finding a means to survive.
So Urban was with him, a shadow among shadows standing on the side of the dais.
Kona waited while people took their seats, murmuring assurances to one another. No panic so far, but only a few here had ever faced an existential threat. He noted Vytet at the end of the first row. Clemantine in the middle, in front of him, her fiery glare reserved for Urban. Pasha beside her, arms crossed, grim. He searched for Shoran and found her standing in the back. She noticed his regard and gave him a supportive nod. Tarnya was with her.
People settled, eyes turned to him, and he began, saying, “Thank you for coming. I think we can all agree that what happened today is a disaster. It’s a threat to our future. But we should also agree that we are nowhere close to being defeated.”
He gestured at the night outside. “Look around! If we weren’t so damn well-informed, this night would be no different from any other.”
“Not true!” Shoran called from the back. “It’s a lot quieter out there! Kind of pleasant.”
This earned scattered chuckles. Laughter on a cliff’s edge. A good sign.
“The essential point,” Kona said, “is that despite the excitement of the day, we are not in immediate danger. The containment capsule is quiescent. The infestation has not spread. The only foreign tissue we’ve found outside the capsule is inert—harmless molecular fragments, but potential treasure that might provide clues to help us develop countermeasures. As strange as it may sound, we are okay, for now, and we are insured against the future. We all have copies of our ghosts archived aboard Griffin. Regardless of what happens here, we will go on.”
Clemantine leaned forward in her seat. “Abandoning Dragon is not an acceptable option,” she said in a clipped voice that carried easily. “We’ve made a home here. Finally. After nearly four centuries—and I am not willing to give it up.”
Clemantine had been a refugee once—she and Vytet and Kona together. All three of them driven from their home by the Chenzeme—an ancient trauma now re-surfacing with this new threat. Kona, too, recalled clearly the horrors of that age, the long, dangerous, rootless years, the gamble they’d undertaken settling at Deception Well.
She continued, “If we can’t control this thing, then we have to burn it
out.” Her gaze shifted back to Urban. “Regardless of the damage, and rebuild from what’s left.”
Urban looked at her, arms crossed, eyes glaring. “Love to. But it’s too late for that.”
“It’s true,” Vytet said, her tall figure unfolding as she stood up from her seat. “The infestation is too widespread. While we believe the containment capsule remains the point of primary activity, the entity has rooted itself into the ship’s systems, and those roots are a big problem. We might be able to expel the capsule, but we can’t burn those roots without losing essential systems, perhaps irreplaceable systems. And if we leave them, it’s likely the fragments will start a new infestation growing, one that might be more aggressive than what we’re faced with now.”
Vytet spoke in a patient voice that she probably meant to be soothing, but it came off as patronizing, and Clemantine reacted, rising to her feet. “That’s why we have to burn out all of it, regardless of the damage.” She turned to Kona. “We cannot let this thing defeat us. We cannot let it turn us out, turn us into refugees again.”
He held his hands up, palms out, asking for patience. “This is different from what happened to us at Heyertori. When the Chenzeme struck us, our world died. We lost nearly everyone we’d ever known or loved. But as we stand here tonight, no one has been hurt. Nothing has been lost—”
“Except our sovereignty,” Urban interrupted.
Kona drew a breath, striving for patience.
“Except our sovereignty,” he acknowledged.
He waited while Clemantine took her seat again. Then he said, “It’s true. We are living with an existential threat in our midst, at the mercy of a greater power. But we are alive, and not defeated. We are not going to allow ourselves to be defeated.
“Gathered here tonight are some of the best minds ever to come out of Deception Well. I ask that all of you come together, consult with Urban’s ghost army of experts, and explore every possible option regardless how far afield. Is there a way that we can make this work? Can we go on without abandoning Dragon?”
“You mean learn to live with it?” someone asked in a thoughtful tone. A raised hand in a middle row let Kona identify the speaker as Naresh.
Clemantine twisted around as if to rebut this, but Riffan spoke first, rising out of obscurity from a seat near one end of the third row. “Yes. Maybe that’s what we will have to do,” he said in a quiet, conciliatory voice. “Let’s remember this ship is already a collection of many diverse lifeforms. Perhaps we might find a compromise and learn to live with this one too.”
“You mean if it leaves us no choice?” This objection came from Alkimbra, who sounded as angry as Clemantine.
Shoran answered this in a calm but powerful voice. “Our choices are certainly limited. Keep in mind that we cannot physically abandon this ship. A ghost on Griffin will not save this version of me or that version of you. Either we learn to beat this thing or we learn to live with it. Those are the only options for these avatars aboard Dragon.”
Alkimbra rose to face her. The historian was not a tall man, but his rough-hewn features and his heavy eyebrows, drawn together in a scowl, lent a fierce emphasis to his words. “We cannot be afraid to start again! We must not hesitate to do so. Our resources have already been defeated twice by this thing. It’s obvious that Griffin is our best, our only, option. We should close off all contact between the two ships before—”
“No!” Naresh interrupted, and he too stood. “Riffan is right. We are all here on a voyage of discovery. What does it say of our resolve if we respond to this first encounter by running away? Far better to find a compromise with this entity. Remember, at the start, it offered to cooperate—”
“It defeated our best Makers!” Alkimbra reminded him. “Twice! If we live with it, we live at its mercy.”
“Only until we learn to defeat it,” Urban said, stepping into the light. “We will learn to beat it. It’s just a matter of time.”
“We have to learn to beat it,” Pasha said. She rose, tentatively turning to face the gathering. “Remember the scuttled starships, the choice their crews made. Our responsibility extends beyond our own survival. We cannot take this thing with us to Tanjiri.”
At this, anxious murmurs arose across the gathering, people debating with their neighbors. Kona straightened his shoulders, grateful that it was all out in the open now.
“We have options,” he said. “For now, we have time. With luck, we’ll have time to carry out studies, to undertake experiments, to find a way forward. But there are things we need to do right now to shore up our security and insure our future. First among them, we have to protect Griffin. Alkimbra is right about that. Regardless of anything else, we cannot let the entity infiltrate our second ship.” He looked down from the dais, eyeing Clemantine. “The first step I propose is to close Griffin’s data gate. Don’t allow any direct traffic from Dragon.”
Her eyes narrowed, considering. “Do that and you’ll isolate her, that other version of me.”
“No. We’ll just add a step.” He turned to Urban. “If we can bring one of the outriders between us. Use it as a data relay.”
A tentative nod.
Back to Clemantine. “We allow only essential traffic from Dragon. Log files, vetted library updates—the Scholar can sort that out—updates for the archive, and of course, your subminds. All of it passes to the relay, where it’s inspected. If it proves clean, it gets forwarded to Griffin, but only at specific, predetermined times. Any emergency communications can be made by radio.”
Discussion stirred as people compared opinions with those sitting nearby. Snatches of conversation reached Kona:
We have options.
So long as Griffin is safe, we can continue our struggle here.
We survived worse when we left Heyertori.
Even Urban sounded conciliatory as he approached Kona on the dais, saying, “We can use Artemis as the relay.”
“Good. Let’s do that.”
Then one voice rose over the others—Pasha, calm but blunt, asking, “What if the situation should change? A sudden, catastrophic change.” The crowd murmur melted away. “The entity breaks out, let’s say. All our efforts collapse into corruption and chaos.”
Vytet responded as if this was an engineering problem. “We add an additional failsafe. If Artemis detects a radio transmission, any transmission, its data gate closes. It accepts no further traffic from Dragon, until Griffin sends an all-clear.”
But that wasn’t Pasha’s concern. Kona had wanted to use this gathering to unify the ship’s company, to get them focused on finding a means to survival, but in the face of her challenging gaze, he felt unity receding.
She said, “What I meant was that we have to know when it’s over. We cannot take this thing to Tanjiri. We have to be ready to act before it’s too late.”
Motion in the back row: Shoran standing to speak. “We’re a long way from Tanjiri. Let’s just keep trying, all right?”
“Of course we should keep trying,” Alkimbra said dismissively. “But Pasha’s concern is valid.” He waved a hand to indicate the gee deck. “At what point do we give this up? When is it over?”
“It’s over when we lose command of Dragon,” Kona answered bluntly. He turned to Urban, who was now standing only a pace away. Met his hostile glare. “It’ll be done, then. That will be the break point. Our last chance to act.”
Urban’s gaze cut away, but returned just as quickly. “Yes,” he conceded—bitter and reluctant, but a welcome admission that he would have the fortitude to act. “No choice in it. We’ll destroy the ship if we can’t keep it.”
Kona waited for an expected protest from Clemantine, but it didn’t come. Her gaze was remote, seeing something invisible to the rest of them.
<><><>
Aboard Griffin, Clemantine received the latest submind from her other self. As it integrated, her foremost thought became this: Halcyon days are over. It’s time for us to sync, to be one.
She sav
ored the deep cold fury of her other self; she enjoyed it too much. That was the influence of the philosopher cells, her constant exposure to them changing who she was—even as she changed them. She didn’t like the idea of letting them inside her, but she needed that sharp edge to face them. Might need it even more, if the entity broke out. Later, in some hypothetical golden future, she would edit out the Chenzeme influence and be only herself again.
A message to her core self:
*It’s not the time to sync. We have different roles. Yours is to secure Dragon, by any means. Mine is to keep Griffin secure, on the chance you fail.
She closed the data gate as agreed and then summoned her crew of Apparatchiks. They appeared before her in Griffin’s library, contained within their frameless windows, all six eyeing her with somber expressions. They looked so much like Urban, though less careworn.
“You’ve received the latest logs,” she said. “You know how it is. The break point will come when Urban loses control of Dragon.”
Of the two ships, Dragon was far more powerful. If it fell under control of the entity, Griffin could neither out-run nor out-fight it.
The Engineer said, “In such a situation, our only viable means of survival is to strike Dragon and destroy it before it can turn and destroy us.”
“Yes, exactly,” Clemantine said, even as her focus shifted inward, a stab of grief for the home she’d made on the gee deck—but in that home, a reminder of the inherent promise of renewal in a blossoming iris.
She said, “We must be ready, and we must take no unnecessary risks.” She looked to the Engineer. “The reef is weak, but I need to draw from it for a course adjustment.”
“While reserving power for the gun?” he asked.
“Always.”
“I’ll monitor it.”
Next she turned to the Pilot. “Plot a position. We’re going to fall back. Achieve a twenty thousand kilometer separation.”