Edges

by Linda Nagata

  “Understood,” he replied sullenly.

  “There’s no need to be . . . overt in our position. We all know the direction this is going, but for morale we can pretend otherwise. I don’t want Dragon directly in our line of fire, but give me a position that will let me put Dragon in our gunsight within thirty seconds.”

  Chapter

  27

  Days passed. The containment capsule remained unchanged. It grew no new tendrils. It did not expand. But it maintained a temperature far warmer than the bio-mechanical tissue surrounding it. The heat of internal processes underway.

  Riffan followed the situation closely. He could not forget the way he’d conducted himself at the Rock, how he’d let fear blunt good judgment. He’d wasted an opportunity. If he’d done a better job, if he’d responded more intelligently to the entity’s overtures, this whole awkward infestation might have been avoided.

  He needed to let go of his provincial attitude and get used to the idea that he was . . . well, disposable. Any single version of himself anyway. There might be unpleasantness in a demise, but so long as there was another copy, a backup version stashed somewhere, then someone who was him would go on. That’s how Urban looked at things and Riffan could appreciate the logic of it. It was a philosophy that encouraged risk and bold choices in dangerous situations.

  They were in a dangerous situation now. All of them under the gun, quite literally, with Griffin trailing at a secure distance, there to ensure Dragon did not become an enemy.

  Kona had put it on the ship’s company to find a way out of this mess, to explore every possible option—and Riffan had an idea. A very simple idea. The trouble was, it might kill him—that was the sticking point—it was why he needed to adopt Urban’s philosophy as his own.

  He drew a deep breath. “You’ve got this,” he muttered aloud.

  The first, careful step was to send a fresh back-up of his ghost to Artemis, from where it would eventually be relayed to Griffin. He did that. Then he checked the personnel map for Urban and found him present at the cottage he shared with Clemantine.

  Riffan allowed himself one more deep sigh. Then he rose from where he’d been sitting cross-legged at his breakfast table.

  He would need Urban’s help to try his possibly fatal idea.

  <><><>

  “Oh, hello, Urban,” Riffan said, working to sound casual. “Could I have a word?”

  Urban’s half-closed eyes opened to take in Riffan. “Nothing’s changed,” he said irritably, from where he sat on the stoop of his cottage.

  “No, I don’t expect that anything has,” Riffan countered. “That’s the nature of a stalemate. But I’ve been thinking. The entity did try to communicate when we were there at the Rock. It might be willing to do so again, if the setting was not entirely hostile. So I’d like to volunteer to go out there. Take the risk. Face to face, as it were. Try to get it to chat.”

  Urban cocked his head. A slight, incredulous smile. “You mean go out there physically. Knock on its door. As it were.”

  Riffan noted the sarcasm, but ignored it. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it exactly.” He dropped into a squat, bringing himself to Urban’s level. He balanced easily, arms resting on bent knees. “Most likely nothing will happen. Still, if we can’t get rid of it, our next best step is to try talking to it. Let it know we’re willing to communicate. It would be helpful to understand what it is, what it wants . . . what it intends to do with the ship.”

  “It won’t do anything with the ship,” Urban said. “Because I’ll have Griffin destroy this ship before that happens.”

  Riffan suppressed a shiver. “Right. I understand. Nevertheless, I’d like to try.”

  “It could infect you,” Urban warned.

  “It could have done that already. It could have done that to all of us. But it hasn’t. Look, this thing . . . if it’s not human, it’s human derived or a human descendant and I’ve come here to study such things. Besides, the more we learn now, the safer we’ll be later.”

  Urban stared past him—pondering the proposal?

  “You can get me out there, can’t you?” Riffan asked.

  Urban cocked his head, refocusing on Riffan. “I think so. Understand that you’ll be cut off out there. Isolated. I won’t leave a passage open that it can use to access the inhabited areas.”

  “Understood . . . so long as I can get back.”

  He nodded. “Assuming nothing goes wrong.”

  “Probably nothing will happen,” Riffan repeated.

  “If you’re lucky.”

  <><><>

  Well, Riffan thought. Here I am, and still alive.

  Urban had created a pod to protect him from the hostile nanotech in Dragon’s Chenzeme tissue. It was just large enough to contain him in the slightly curled posture he naturally adopted in the zero-gravity environment outside the gee deck. Riffan had feigned confidence as he allowed himself to be sealed inside it. Not that Urban had been fooled.

  “You sure you want to do this, Riffan?” he’d asked.

  No! Riffan’s mind had screamed.

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” he’d answered in a soft voice that almost hid his fear. “Let’s go. Let’s do it. I’m not going to change my mind.”

  And he hadn’t.

  The pod had ferried him outward through Dragon’s insulating layer of bio-mechanical tissue. A long, slow trip. He’d closed his eyes against the glow of the pod’s inner surface, trying not to think about how his avatar had disappeared at the Rock, or about how the robotic laser cutters had been engulfed by the sudden expansion of the containment capsule. Embedded molecular machines worked hard to soak up the carbon dioxide expelled by his rapid exhalations. They released oxygen back into the pod to keep him alive long enough for the entity to kill him.

  It hasn’t tried to kill you, you idiot! Not yet.

  The pod’s journey ended when it bumped up against the containment capsule. Riffan had expected to die then, but the capsule remained quiescent, not responding in any way. So Riffan’s pod moved to the next stage. It opened.

  Where it was in contact with the capsule, the wall retracted. The perimeter of the circular opening shimmered, an active boundary working to keep the surrounding Chenzeme tissue from leaking in. Framed within that circle was a small section of the capsule’s ribbed, bone-white surface. The sight of it amplified Riffan’s quiet terror. And yet, as the seconds slipped past, he discovered himself to be a little disappointed too, because apparently he’d been correct when he predicted that nothing would happen. Nothing at all. Not so far.

  He wanted something to happen. Not something terrible. Just . . . something, to make this awful venture worthwhile.

  So he gathered up his courage and, bracing himself against the pod’s wall, he reached out with a trembling hand and touched a finger to the capsule.

  No response.

  The capsule felt warm. He slid his finger along its ribbed surface. Slick, he thought. Almost frictionless.

  Urban spoke within his atrium: *No defensive reaction?

  He meant toxins, electrical shock, nanotechnological defenses.

  *No, Riffan replied, without speaking aloud. *It’s warm. Like a living thing.

  He placed his palm against the surface, barely touching it, using almost no pressure so his hand would not slide. “Talk to us,” he said aloud, his voice gentle but a little hoarse from the dryness of his throat. “Tell us who you are.”

  No answer came—he had not really expected one—and there was no visible change. Yet he felt his fear fade. Out of nowhere, a sense of comfort and beneficence came over him. He couldn’t help but smile a peaceful smile.

  *Behavioral virus, Urban said.

  *I feel it, Riffan acknowledged. *It’s just a simple emotional boost. Nothing that interferes with cognition. It wants us to trust it, to know that it means no harm.

  *The design of that virus is ancient, Urban said. *It appears multiple times in the library.

  *More evidence of a
human origin, Riffan replied.

  *Agreed.

  Riffan’s defensive Makers easily broke down the behavioral virus. Its influence waned within seconds, but Riffan’s fear did not return. He reasoned that if the entity meant to kill him or absorb him into its matrix it would have done so by now, but here he was.

  At the Rock, the entity had identified their language and addressed them with it. Riffan spoke to it, hoping it had brought that knowledge of language with it. He didn’t know if it could hear him, if it understood, if it listened at all. He spoke to it anyway, telling it of Dragon, of the ship’s origin, and the amalgam of lifeforms it represented—Chenzeme, human, the reef, the Well. He explained that they were bound for the old worlds to discover what might still be there.

  He told it of his own curiosity, his desire to communicate with it, to understand what it was, where it had come from, how it had come to be at the Rock, and what it wanted to accomplish now that it was part of Dragon.

  He did his best to convince it that they meant it no harm. He said, “The ship’s internal defenses reacted to protect us from what we interpreted as hostile action, but compromise is possible.”

  *Only when I’m in control, Urban warned.

  *We don’t know that it’s hostile, Riffan countered. *It could have continued to spread, taken control of every aspect of the ship, but it didn’t.

  *The governors would have stopped it.

  Riffan pondered this. *Do you really think so?

  *I’ve been thinking about what it’s doing in there. Maybe trying to puzzle out a defense against the governors.

  This troubled Riffan, because it felt plausible. Aloud, he said, “We mean you no harm, and we ask you to take no hostile action.”

  Still no response, but then, he didn’t expect anything to happen.

  NINTH

  They have sought to communicate. A good sign.

  Your response, deliberately minimal, mysterious, but suggestive of goodwill and friendship. From the seed of that brief interaction they will begin to construct a narrative favorable to you, one that you will be able to exploit in time.

  For now, protected within the shell of your fortress, you continue to grow your neural structures, expanding your mind. Outside that shell, you are extending your senses as you explore and map all levels of this hybrid starship.

  Such an amazing mosaic of lifeforms! The ancient regime, the anomalous gravitational reef, the molecular ecosystems, the people in their ancestral forms . . . and something else. Something elusive. Only lately have you become aware of it. You suspect it is another alien strain but it rejects your inquiries.

  This is concerning. It is evidence of an ability to adapt and deceive that exceeds your own—though you will surely master it, given time. It’s enough for now that it abides your expanding presence with no expression of hostility, setting it apart from every other lifeform you have encountered on this ship. Indeed, you’ve begun to wonder if this elusive strain has contributed to the restful equilibrium now existing between your molecular armies and those surrounding you.

  Emboldened by this thought, you push your luck and extend a single thin tendril toward the hull. It’s a region still unknown to you. From the density of connections you suspect a sensory organ or even a neuronal interface—although placing a thinking stratum on the hull where it is exposed to both radiation and enemy attack strikes you as poor design. Not even remnant hull tissue was left on the hulk of the alien warship you defeated. Still, the design endures and it is your nature to seek to understand it.

  Your tendril taps into a strand of alien nerve tissue. You expected no commonality, thinking to encounter only a puzzle that you would slowly decode. Instead, you are caught in a riptide of cognition: pulled in, pulled under.

  It’s as if you’ve been plunged into a Swarm similar to that one from which you arose but this one is . . . alien. It is greater in scope, deeper in time, so much older, and far more brutal and violent than the one you once knew.

  You feel your sense of self begin to leach away.

  The ancestral mind panics. Alone among all your evolved cognitive modules, only that most ancient part of you is still capable of action. It severs the connection.

  <><><>

  You learn from your people a name: philosopher cells. This is the hull tissue. You conclude it is a twisted variant of the Swarm that gave rise to you, a shared origin that has made you vulnerable. You would destroy these grasping philosopher cells except that they seem entwined with the gravitational reef that propels this starship and the gamma-ray gun—a weapon you will surely need.

  Of all the life clades that comprise this starship, the reef is most alien. So very alien, you wonder if it is even of this Universe. Paradoxically, the physics it wields is familiar to you. Surely you once understood it?

  Be that as it may, it is beyond you now.

  You take precautions, fortifying your defensive perimeter against the chance the philosopher cells might seek to forcefully draw you into their Swarm. But that threat is not imminent, so you make no move against them, recognizing that it would be foolish to destroy what you do not understand.

  At least your people do not share your vulnerability. They are truly ancestral, evolved outside the Swarm. It pleases you to have them here, serving as your interface to this aspect of the alien.

  Chapter

  28

  On Dragon’s high bridge, Clemantine launched a thought experiment for the philosopher cells to consider and contend over: Simulate the capture and colonization of an alien starship.

  A skein of associated cells accepted the challenge. Among them, a scenario unfolded:

  A distant ship of a kind never seen before. Not Chenzeme! Its alien nature is irresistible. Instinct suppresses the urge to lay waste, demanding instead that the unknown be made known. Approach slowly, alert to danger.

  Close enough.

  A shudder runs through the field of philosopher cells, an orgasmic release of bio-active dust, shed into the void. Most of it will drift uselessly away, but a few particles will reach the alien ship and infect it, beginning the process of colonization.

  Pull away.

  And wait.

  Background stars slowly shift, marking the passage of time. On the hull of the infected ship, a colony of philosopher cells has begun to grow.

  Clemantine sensed Urban’s interest, his intimate presence.

  *Why do you want to remember that? he asked.

  On the Null Boundary Expedition, they’d endured a similar encounter with a Chenzeme courser.

  *It’s not us, she answered. This memory involved a different ship, in a different age, and a sentient culture that the Chenzeme warships must have eliminated from Creation long ago. *But what happened to us must have happened many times in the millions of years of Chenzeme history and the philosopher cells remember it all—don’t they?

  *Yes, he confirmed.

  *Some of their conquests would have resisted the dust, as we did. There may be memories of archaic lines of assault Makers that might be useful to us—forgotten patterns that we could modify and enhance, and use against the entity.

  She sensed from him a rising excitement.

  <><><>

  Riffan walked the winding path around the gee deck in the mild warmth of ship’s noon, lacy white clouds adding texture to the simulated sky. He followed the path from the pavilion, past cottages, to the dining court, then more cottages, before returning to the pavilion. He made many circuits, stopping often to talk to people, grateful to hear what they were working on, hopeful that their projects might reveal a way forward with his. Though he’d returned many times to the containment capsule, he’d never succeeded in eliciting a second response.

  The capsule remained active. No doubt of that. Resources cycled through its tendrils and it emitted a constant, low-level heat. Something was busy in there—but there was no visible activity. The capsule did not grow in size.

  His frustration was acute. There had to b
e something else useful he could offer in the effort to understand this thing . . . but at this stage the game belonged to the team of engineers and nanotechnologists that Vytet had put together.

  He smiled and nodded as he passed Tarnya and Mikael, walking with arms entwined. Life goes on. People adapt to changing circumstances. At Deception Well, people had learned to co-exist within an ecosystem once considered lethal to human life. The Well’s microscopic governors regulated that system, maintained a balance between competing alien biologies. Urban believed the governors did the same thing here—though no one had ever worked out how. Pasha had often lamented over the elusive nature of the governors and her frustrated attempts to study them . . .

  He halted in the center of the path, staring ahead at nothing.

  “You idiot,” he said aloud.

  Urban had credited the governors with stopping the expansion of the capsule. Surely there was useful knowledge to be gained by renewing a study of the ancient regulators.

  <><><>

  “Riffan, listen to me,” Pasha said, striving to keep her voice even despite her rising impatience. “People have attempted to study the governors for centuries and no one—including me—has ever unraveled the mystery of how they work. You forget that my principal work aboard Long Watch was a study of the bio-machines of the nebula. The governors were only a small part of that.”

  “But isn’t now the perfect time to renew that study?”

  He looked so earnest, sitting across from her at a low table in the dining pavilion, leaning in with his eagerness to persuade her to take on this hopeless line of inquiry. A slight shake of her head to obscure the smile she could not quite suppress.

  Riffan’s general humility was countered by his often incandescent enthusiasms, and now he had seized upon the idea that Pasha could master the superior nanotech of the entity by solving the riddle of the governors.