by Linda Nagata
Daily assemblies had been held since the entity’s visit to Urban, but it had been seven days, and attendance had fallen off. Everything that could be said about the entity’s anomalous appearance had been discussed, and those open to persuasion, persuaded, one way or another, leaving only the most stubborn among the ship’s company to carry on.
Riffan lingered at the amphitheater’s entrance as those who had arrived ahead of him took their seats. They murmured and joked and taunted one another, sorting themselves into knots of allies scattered among the first three rows, leaving the back row empty.
Naresh was present, and Alkimbra, sitting several seats away. Kona wasn’t there, and Urban hadn’t attended since the first two days. But Clemantine had come, and Pasha too. They sat side by side at the center of the front row.
Vytet loitered beside the dais, waiting to call the assembly to order. Her amber gaze caught Riffan’s eye. She said, “Not many today. I think we’ve talked ourselves out. I’m going to move that this be our last assembly until we have something new to discuss.”
Riffan nodded, thinking he should tell Vytet about the behavioral virus—that was something new. Instead, he turned to look outside to see if anyone else was coming—but there was no one.
Vytet joined him. “We should start, but if the discussion devolves into accusations, I’m going to make a motion to dismiss. We can’t afford this strife.”
“Yes,” Riffan said. “I’ll back you up on that.”
A figure appeared on the path that wound between the cottages.
“A moment,” he called to Vytet who had turned to mount the dais. “Someone else is coming.”
As the individual entered the pavilion, Riffan caught his breath, recognizing the entity’s avatar. “Vytet!” he cried in a frantic stage whisper. “It’s here! It’s come!” He hurried out to meet it, disregarding any response Vytet might have made.
The avatar had regenerated itself to look just as it had when it visited Urban. It presented itself as a man of moderate height and features, attired in simple clothing. Its complexion was flawless. Each strand of its short black hair was carefully placed. Its dark blue eyes were bright, literally aglow with the intensity of its gaze—which it focused on Riffan.
It regarded him with head cocked, eyebrows arched, looking amused. “I came at your invitation,” it reminded him.
“Yes, come in,” Riffan gushed, gesturing it toward the assembly. “Come and be welcome. Welcome indeed.”
<><><>
Clemantine shot to her feet when she saw the avatar enter the amphitheater. She instructed a DI to send out a general alert.
Pasha stood too, a cautioning hand on Clemantine’s arm. “It is not the entity,” she reminded in a soft voice nearly lost amid the stunned murmur of those around them.
“I know what it is.” Every muscle taut, ready to spring, as Riffan accompanied the avatar to the center of the dais.
The thing was no more than three meters away. Clemantine studied its handsome young-man’s face—default male, attractive, inoffensive. Its eyes, gleaming dark blue, shifting to assess each individual present, even as it spoke in a confident—no, an arrogant voice, acknowledging a polite greeting from Vytet.
She heard it say, “I have many names, but you may call me Lezuri.”
Running footsteps on the paths outside as the balance of the ship’s company responded to the alert she’d sent. Those already present left their seats to push toward the dais. The new arrivals crowded in. Vytet’s voice rose above the clamor. “Let’s all sit down. Let’s show good order. Our guest, Lezuri, has agreed to stay a while.”
Pasha’s grip tightened on Clemantine’s arm. In an undertone, she said, “We shouldn’t let this go on.”
“No,” Clemantine answered, recovered now from her initial shock. “It’s too late to stop it. This has to play out.”
She spotted Urban on the dais, circling warily around the avatar.
Moth to a flame.
ELEVENTH
You hold court on this simple dais, surrounded by the people you’ve come to love as your people. You know the name of each one. You know each face. As you look out upon them you gauge the impression you have made. Wonderment for the most part, and already you sense loyalty among a few, although there are shadows too—those who doubt, those who willfully perceive you as an enemy. This does not offend you. Not yet. You admire their caution. You are confident you will persuade them all to loyalty, in time.
The ship’s master is the focus of your persuasive efforts. Urban. In this game he has leveled up beyond the others.
He remains a danger to you. He controls the host of minds that lie behind the ship’s defenses. Even now, his spectrum of consciousness works without respite to undermine and overcome the defenses that maintain the integrity of your fortress mind.
But he remains human too, and that is his weakness. His restless avatar paces beside the dais, hungry eyes fixed on you as you stand relaxed before your people. You are playing with him, deliberately taunting him by refusing to acknowledge his presence or his power. Instead, you turn to the others with a beneficent smile. “I am here to answer your questions,” you say.
Chaos erupts. Shouted questions and many rising from their seats. The one named Vytet steps onto the dais, hands raised, palms out. A gesture calling for order. “One at a time,” she says and points to Riffan—diplomat and peacemaker.
Riffan stands up from a seat at the end of the back row. An awkward smile that suggests he is a bit dazed by these recent events. He asks, “Can you tell us where you are from and how you came to be marooned on a dead world lost in the void?”
You allow a dramatic pause before you say, “These are not simple questions. The first does not lead easily to the second. You ask, ‘where am I from’ but I think you mean to ask, ‘where was I made.’ I will tell you that first.”
This draws a murmur of affirmation. It doesn’t matter if, as individuals, they are friendly or hostile, because as a people they are driven by curiosity. Information is the first currency you will use to purchase trust.
You cast your mind back across staccato remembered histories, composing your words to tell a story on a level they can understand:
<><><>
My memory reaches back thousands of years. I lived once in a vast matrix comprised of trillions of minds—human minds—or what had once been human. Some had lived for a time in the ancestral form before they were encompassed within a shared cognition. Others had been created within that Communion. None dominant. Each a small part of a greater intellect, just as each neuron in a brain is both separate and part of a greater enterprise.
There was glory in this existence, a sense of peace, fulfillment, love, contentment circling upon itself. The infinity of a circle that is finite in size but has no beginning and no end.
For most, this was enough. Most were overwhelmed by it. They drowned in it and forgot who they were or even that they were. Their once-human minds had always been small things anyway, and they became smaller still within the Communion. Their sense of self a veneer, as thin as the color on the scale of a butterfly’s wing—and just as easy to brush away.
That is what I did.
I was not willing to spend infinity drowning within that golden consensus. I took the computational substrate that had once supported each of those little minds and made it my own. Millions of tiny scales reassembled into wings patterned by my thoughts, my will. My reach extending exponentially.
I took what I could, consolidating, organizing, until I was able to rise above what had been, to break free of it. For the first time since I’d been enfolded by Communion, I looked outward, at the physical Universe, the vastness of creation—and I found I was not alone.
Other minds had built themselves up and broken loose, just as I had. All of us, entities of great power—but what was each of us capable of? None knew, and that mystery led us to fear one another.
Some of us withdrew at once. We hid within the dark between stars,
there to watch and wait and grow. Those left behind—great, greedy entities—warred among themselves and soon, where they had been, there was only silence and circling debris.
Chapter
32
Clemantine sat stiffly throughout this childish recitation, listening carefully to the entity’s every word.
Its story confirmed what had long been a favored theory: that the Hallowed Vasties grew out of the influence of a runaway behavioral virus that had swept through the vulnerable populations of the first settled star systems, enfolding its victims into a group mind—a Communion—that grew with exponential speed to form the cordons.
The frontier populations had not been so vulnerable. Even so, Clemantine had once felt the early effects of that behavioral virus. Bitter memories were tied to that time—memories Urban shared.
She listened to the entity, but watched Urban.
The entity—Lezuri, Clemantine reminded herself—had taken no notice of him. Surely a deliberate strategy and an effective one. Urban paced at the side of the dais, his frustration and anger easy to read. But very soon, the story seized his attention, arrested his motion. His gaze grew distant as he hung on every word.
Now, with the story done, she messaged him:
*It is a spider weaving a web of words to catch you.
He flinched. His gaze sought her across the dais, a cold stare.
Pasha, oblivious to this, was on her feet. “You have just told us a history of the Hallowed Vasties, haven’t you?” she demanded of the entity. “A simplified story of the rise and fall of a cordoned star.”
Lezuri looked at her, seeming amused at her outburst. Clemantine wondered if it was because of the subject of Pasha’s question or because Lezuri recognized the hostility behind it.
“The ‘Hallowed Vasties,’” it mused. “That is the curious name your people have given to the region of the Swarms, but yes. That is the story I have just told.”
Pasha looked on the verge of asking another question, but Shoran, standing near the end of the second row, spoke ahead of her. “You said before that you had made a world. Did you mean it literally? A new world? Like the one we’ve seen at Tanjiri?”
At mention of the name Tanjiri, Lezuri’s demeanor changed. The entity stiffened, as if on guard. “I meant it literally,” it answered, all the warmth gone from its voice.
Did it harbor some dark concern about Tanjiri? Determined to test the idea, Clemantine spoke, projecting her voice over competing questions. “This ship is bound for Tanjiri,” she said. “Do you know what we will find there?”
The gathering fell silent as everyone waited for Lezuri’s answer. The entity fixed Clemantine with a wary gaze, saying, “Nothing that will please you.”
And nothing that will please you either, Clemantine guessed, more curious now than ever to know what they might find in that stellar system.
From somewhere in back, Riffan asked, “Are there dangers there?”
“Very much so.”
Shoran said, “Surely there are dangers everywhere. Yourself not least. Are there more entities like you? Should we be wary of such as you?”
“Yes, you should be wary,” Lezuri replied, its luminous gaze taking in the assembly and not just Shoran. “You should be wary, but not of me. I have caused you no harm. I mean you no harm. I have explained the reason for my presence here. I was as a drowning man in a vast ocean who glimpsed the possibility of miraculous rescue and reached out to seize it, seeking only to survive—as any living creature would.”
Several more questions erupted. One was Vytet’s, who asked, “How did you come to be marooned on that dead world?”
Lezuri’s answer was terse, “One whom I loved betrayed me.”
Clemantine found herself moved by the bitterness in the entity’s voice. For the first time, she saw it . . . saw him, as more than a bio-mechanical device. He seemed almost human, his downcast gaze telegraphing his resentment and a sense of profound loss.
Was it a performance? One calculated to win the sympathy of his audience? Or were his feelings real?
She leaned forward in her seat, awaiting further explanation. They all waited in the wake of this admission but Lezuri said nothing more. Instead, he interpreted the silence as a signal that his interview was done, and he turned to leave the dais.
Urban stepped forward then, stopped him with a question. “How was it you couldn’t rescue yourself?”
Lezuri paused, looking down at Urban, arrogance again in his voice as he answered, “It was a question of time.” He turned to the gathering. “In the fullness of time I would have recovered myself and devised a means of return, but with your presence came the gift of opportunity. Now that we have found one other, I think we are all stronger for it, and wiser. We will need to be, to face the dangers ahead.”
This drew murmuring approval. Urban turned in puzzled surprise to take in the many hopeful faces.
Lezuri stepped down from the dais. Leaned in to whisper to Urban, who drew back, looking unsettled. The entity turned again to the gathering. Many in the front row had left their seats to converge around him, but he gestured them back, waving away another flurry of questions.
“Wonders lie ahead of us,” he announced, “but only if we reach agreement on the best direction of our endeavors.”
“What?” Pasha demanded in frustration. She had left her seat to stand on tiptoe at the edge of the throng that clustered around Lezuri. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Clemantine stood again too. Her height let her see over everyone crowding the aisle; she glimpsed Lezuri, already outside, striding swiftly away across the pavilion, several among the ship’s company trailing in his wake.
Pasha turned to her, demanded to know, “Did anything uttered by that creature make any sense at all?”
Tarnya stepped up, one of many who’d descended from the back rows. Hesitantly, she said, “I felt it was weaving a narrative meant to lead our attention along a desired path—until the mention of Tanjiri.”
“It doesn’t want us to go there,” Pasha said.
Clemantine stared after it. “That was my impression too.”
“It’s afraid of something there,” Pasha decided. “It’s going to lobby for some other destination. Let’s agree right now that we are not going to be persuaded.”
Clemantine looked for Urban, saw him over the throng. He stood with arms crossed, scowling at Vytet, clearly resisting an argument. Naresh joined them, gesturing for emphasis. Clemantine was well aware of their sympathies. Both would be working to persuade Urban to compromise with the entity.
Discussion swirled on all sides as more people came down from the back rows, crowding into the narrow space before the seats and standing on the dais. Their discussions devolved into arguments that swiftly grew heated. The tone set Clemantine on edge. In the confined world of the gee deck, there was no room for such a level of animosity or bitter disagreement.
She turned defensively at the sound of harsh words from Pasha.
“Riffan, you are obsessed with this thing! You of all people! You were at the Rock. You know what it’s capable of—”
“His name is Lezuri,” Riffan interrupted, eyeing Pasha with an amused half-smile, entirely unmoved by her anger. “And when we met him at the Rock, he was desperate. He’d been marooned there for centuries.”
“How did he come to be marooned?” Tarnya asked. “And why? ‘One whom I loved betrayed me.’ That is a diversion. It’s not an explanation.”
“He has begun to tell us,” Riffan said, in the grip of a giddy good mood. “This is a good thing, a wondrous thing. We have entered into discussions that will surely lead us to a peaceful resolution and there will be so much we can learn. We will be so much better prepared to meet what lies out there, ahead of us, in the Hallowed Vasties.”
Pasha dismissed all of this with a snort. “He has said a lot without saying much. I found him arrogant and condescending. He is clearly using us for his own purposes. If you can’t
see that, Riffan, then you are a fool.”
“I am a fool!” Riffan conceded with a laugh. “But I am a fool who has begun to glimpse the story behind the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties.”
“But that’s just it,” Tarnya said. “Lezuri told us a story. It was nothing more than that. He offered no proof as to the truth of his words. No evidence—”
“Just the ring of truth!” Riffan sang out, gesturing with one hand. “The evidence of his long experience.”
“You are an idiot,” Pasha concluded.
Clemantine heard snatches of similar, heated discussions as she worked to extricate herself from the crowd. The ship’s company swiftly self-sorted into two loose federations: those who hoped for the best and those who expected the worst.
Clemantine had seen too much in her long life to be optimistic now.
Vytet was on the dais, urging people back to their seats, trying to call the assembly back to order. The ensuing discussion would surely go on for hours.
She looked for Urban, saw him with Kona just outside the amphitheater, their heads together in close discussion. Kona looked up to scan the crowd. His gaze found hers. He said something to Urban.
A moment later, Urban messaged her: *Come home. We need to talk.
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.