by Linda Nagata
*No! Urban snapped. *Watch it. Understand it. But don’t interfere.
The gel door pulled back to admit her. She stepped over the threshold into the sparsely appointed front room of her cottage. The sofa by the side window was gone, making room for a low central table. Urban and Kona sat silently on opposite sides, a tea service steaming between them. On the honey-colored side table, her colony of irises had just reached their bloom, the subtle sweet scent of the freshly opened flowers mingling with the warm spicy odor of the tea.
Kona looked up, acknowledging her with a nod as she settled cross-legged onto a cushion.
Urban was brooding or lost in the tumult of his subminds, she couldn’t tell, but his gaze remained fixed on the steaming teapot.
“So now you know where the avatar was grown,” Clemantine said as privacy screens slid closed, cutting off the leaf-tinted afternoon light. “He won’t surprise you again.”
Urban looked up. Met her gaze. “You don’t think he could hide it again, if he wants to? No, he’s taunting me. He wants me to know just how vulnerable I really am. All these years trying to beat Lezuri’s defenses and nothing to show for it.”
Kona picked up the teapot, his dark, long-fingered hands pouring golden tea into white ceramic cups. Steam furled. He said, “He’s left us alive. He’s let us thrive.” He handed a cup to Clemantine, slid one across the table to Urban. “He’s never challenged your authority over the ship—until today. Today this became a political game.”
“Sooth,” Clemantine said. “Lezuri showed a talent for persuasion. It won’t be long until he convinces a majority of the ship’s company that he is here for our good.”
Urban stared into his tea as if to read the foretellings in the stray leaves gathered at the bottom of his cup. He remained master of the ship, but if he lost the consensus of the majority he would be in the unpleasant position of either forcefully imposing his will or yielding his autonomy.
Clemantine knew him well enough to know he could find neither option acceptable.
“What is he after?” Urban asked, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. “I thought he wanted the ship, wanted a way off the Rock, and we’re still alive only because Griffin has the last word.”
“Tell her what Lezuri offered you,” Kona said.
A slight, cynical smile. “He told me, ‘Give me your loyalty and I will teach you what you want to know.’”
Clemantine drew a sharp breath, apprehensive, sure that he was tempted. Knowledge had always been a path to power for Urban. He strove to learn how things worked, he sought to control the mechanisms around him, because to be in control was his assurance that no one could choose the path of his life for him.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” she asked.
Another smile—that pirate smile. Mocking the idea that his loyalty was a commodity to be traded—unless the offer was right?
“Lezuri wants allies,” Kona said. “But why? Why does he need us?”
Clemantine sipped her tea to settle her mind, musing on Kona’s question—and an idea came to her. “Why did you need us?” she asked Urban.
He returned her gaze with a quizzical expression.
“You were by yourself for centuries,” she reminded him. “You described it as misery. Soul-annihilating loneliness. We are human. We’re not meant to be alone. And at his core, Lezuri is human too.”
“You’re saying he’s lonely?” Urban asked.
“I don’t know if ‘lonely’ is the right word,” she said, working out her thoughts as she spoke. “But you saw his performance today. He wants admiration, even responsibility. From what he said today, his strength was built out of the act of gathering personalities around him. I think he’s still doing that. He’s seeking subjects. Followers. Satellite personalities that can give him a sense of purpose, define his place at the center of a social web. I don’t doubt that he’s power-seeking and narcissistic, but he’s posing as beneficent—and I think he wants to see himself that way.”
Urban set his cup down with a sharp crack. “He wants my ship.”
Refusing to coddle him, she answered, “He has your ship.”
“No. I still command Dragon. If I didn’t, I would end this, like the crews of those other ships.”
“It might come to that,” Kona said. “You have to recognize it, if it does.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“We’re not there yet,” Clemantine cautioned. She would do everything in her power to hold onto her home here on Dragon. Just a little longer, and the Bio-mechanic’s swift secretive mission to prepare the Pyrrhic Defense would add a final, necessary layer to their resistance—but she did not tell Urban that. He had rejected all similar suggestions for so long, she feared he would try to undo their plan if he knew it was real and underway.
She did not feel much guilt over the deception. It was necessary, and she had not forgotten how he’d once hidden a critical truth from her because he felt she could not handle it.
She watched him sip his tea, eyes unfocused. Contemplating? Or collecting another tide of subminds?
He said, “I think I’ll let Lezuri try to persuade me.”
Clemantine’s shoulders slumped. She traded a weary look with Kona. Silent consensus: Didn’t we both know it would go this way?
Urban took no notice, musing aloud: “If he wants my loyalty, he can try to win it. Prove to me he’s beneficent, that he’s willing to share what he knows. That will give me an opening. A way to get close to him, to learn what I need to learn. He knows so much more than we do.”
Clemantine shook her head, set her teacup down. She reached for his hand, squeezed it. “He knows so much more than we do,” she echoed. “Hear the truth in that. You’ll try to play him, but he will play you, draw you into his orbit.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Urban,” Kona pleaded. “You have to remember, he grew out of the Swarm. None of us has the capacity to even imagine—”
“Whatever he used to be, that’s not what he is now,” Urban interrupted. “He’s only a fragment of that past self. That’s why we have a chance. But to make this work, I need to play the game.” He turned to Clemantine. “When I think about all those years on Null Boundary, and what we might have done if only we knew what this thing knows—”
She raised her hand. “Stop,” she commanded, shocked that she hadn’t realized regret was one part of what drove him. “Don’t go there. Don’t let it haunt you. You can’t rewrite the past.”
A rough gesture, casting aside her concern. “It’s not about the past. It’s about ensuring our future. I need to learn everything I can from this thing. And in the end, I will learn enough to defeat him.”
She studied him in this, his fallback state: cocky, confident, in denial of hard inevitabilities. So far he’d had the luck and the strength to recover when those inevitabilities inevitably hit—but luck didn’t last forever.
“Guard yourself,” she warned. “I’ve gotten used to your company. I don’t want to lose you.”
<><><>
That version of Clemantine existing alone aboard Griffin received these memories. She shared them with her Apparatchiks. The Scholar said, “A truce with this being could be highly advantageous as Urban has surmised, but there is no way to be sure of Lezuri’s intentions while he exists under the threat of our gun.”
“So we continue in vigilance,” Clemantine said. “With so many factions in play, something is bound to break.”
Chapter
34
Now that he’d located the cocoon that held the entity’s newest avatar, the Bio-mechanic longed to destroy it. It would be so easy to do.
The structure of the cocoon was well known to him. It was a copy of the barrier wall he’d designed to protect the warren. And it was not defended by the unfathomable nanotech that guarded the containment capsule. Instead, it utilized the Bio-mechanic’s own system of Makers to keep it safe from the surrounding Chenzeme tissue.
<
br /> Knowing the entity had so casually replicated his work infuriated him. It fed his determination to rid the ship of this maddening infestation. Adding to his pique was the knowledge that the thing within the cocoon was a masquerade and not at all human.
Ultrasound had yielded an initial view, later confirmed by molecular mapping. The partly grown avatar had lightweight honeycombed bones, no brain, no digestive system, and lungs just large enough to give it the capability of speech. It had many small hearts and what looked like gas-exchange surfaces in its skin to supplement the undersized lungs. An inefficient structure, clearly not intended for long-term use, but with the advantage that it could not be killed by a single projectile as a human could.
The Bio-mechanic maneuvered a fleet of sensors into position to monitor the cocoon . . . though it would be so much more satisfying to bring into play one of the pods of stealthed explosives he’d prepared for the Pyrrhic Defense. He imagined using such a device to immolate the cocoon.
He so looked forward to putting a fiery end to the entity’s tenure.
But the avatar was not the entity. It would do no good to attack the cocoon, whatever momentary satisfaction he might derive. So he resisted the temptation.
Resisting temptation was new to him. In the past, he would either act or not act, as logic dictated. He did not suffer illogical desires. But his decades-long failure to evict the entity had changed him, made him more bitter, more duplicitous, more human.
A hundred years ago he would not have had the complexity to resist the temptation to report to Urban on the existence of the Pyrrhic Defense. Now he had nearly completed the project without informing either Urban or the other Apparatchiks.
The Bio-mechanic despised his new skill at duplicity. He foresaw that it would inevitably destabilize the smooth operation of the ship. But for now, no one knew better than he did what must be done and by the Unknown God he would do it.
<><><>
Urban existed on only a single timeline, occupying the high bridge, when the Bio-mechanic messaged him: *The avatar is on the move.
He replicated into the library, and linked into a sensory web established by the Bio-mechanic. The web allowed him to monitor the progress of the avatar’s cocoon as it slid through the ship’s tissue. Ninety-two minutes later, the cocoon merged with the warren’s barrier wall, releasing its occupant into an empty chamber.
Lezuri had waited only three days to make his return.
Urban opened a window. Filled it with the updated personnel map, now capable of tracking the location of the avatar.
The Scholar appeared, uninvited, within his frameless window. “Let me be with you when you talk to him.”
Urban considered this, then nodded his assent.
In the bedroom of Clemantine’s cottage, he awoke, his memories already synced by a submind. The Scholar joined him, a ghost presence residing in his atrium and riding on his senses, perceptible to him, but to no one else.
The personnel map showed Lezuri waiting to cross from the zero-gravity of the warren to the rotating gee deck.
“Look there,” the Scholar said, highlighting a point on the map as Urban walked into the front room. “Naresh is waiting to meet Lezuri.”
It did look that way. The physicist was loitering by the transit gate, behind the amphitheater. Urban considered and then rejected the possibility that the entity had signaled Naresh.
The Apparatchiks on Griffin remained suspicious that the document containing the Naresh Sequence had been a plant, that Lezuri had somehow gained access to Naresh’s atrium, and through that, to the network. But there was no evidence for it, and the DIs assigned to watch for unusual activity had found nothing of note.
“Naresh must have instructed a DI to monitor the map, and alert him,” Urban said.
The points representing Lezuri and Naresh crossed the pavilion together—but not toward the path that led most directly to Urban’s location. Instead, they went the other way around the gee deck. Riffan and Vytet joined them, and then a few others. Tarnya, Mikael, even Alkimbra among them. The group did not go even as far as the dining terrace, gathering instead on a small lawn.
“I thought he would come to see you,” the Scholar said, bemused.
Urban had thought so too. Lezuri needed him, wanted his cooperation.
“Will you go see him?” the Scholar asked.
“It’s what he wants, isn’t it?”
“It would put you in the position of supplicant.”
“Does that matter in this circumstance?”
“I doubt it matters to Lezuri, but how would it affect you?”
Urban thought about it and decided he would let Lezuri come to him. He could wait and he would miss nothing because Vytet could be trusted to make a record of everything that was said.
He continued to watch the map. Others joined the little gathering. He saw Clemantine among them. He was about to message her, but she messaged him first: *Riffan has loaned Lezuri a tablet.
<><><>
Clemantine knelt on the edge of the gathering. She counted fourteen admirers, sitting with Lezuri on a small span of lawn. Vytet, Riffan, and Naresh closest to him.
“It’s Urban who controls access to the ship’s network,” Naresh was saying. “He is the ultimate authority here.”
“You will understand,” Vytet said, “that we must insist on certain security precautions. We cannot open the network to you, but we’re happy to answer any questions you have.”
“I would like to see where we are,” Lezuri answered. “Our precise position within the void.”
“Oh, I can show you that,” Riffan volunteered. He had a tablet with him. He checked the display and then handed it to Lezuri.
Clemantine gasped. She wanted to cry out, to tell Riffan, No! No, don’t give our enemy this doorway into Dragon’s network!
Instead she messaged Urban: *Riffan has loaned Lezuri a tablet.
Urban responded: *He’s looking at astronomical data.
*He’ll try to penetrate the network.
*I’ve throttled access. Don’t worry. Then he added, *Show me what’s going on.
She complied, opening a link that allowed him to see the video she was recording through her atrium.
After several seconds, Lezuri handed the tablet back to Riffan, saying, “It’s a relief to me to know we are still a safe distance from Tanjiri.”
“Oh yes,” Riffan said. “We’re still years away.”
“Tell us about Tanjiri,” Vytet urged him.
Lezuri cocked his head, eyeing Riffan with a thoughtful expression. “Long ago, when you first came to speak to me—I was not then capable of response—you described to me the history of this ship. You told me Urban is its master.”
“That’s right,” Riffan said. “But this is a shared mission, we are all bound together for the old worlds, to discover what might be there. And we understand there will be dangers—”
“No,” Lezuri interrupted gently. “You have no conception of what lies ahead of you.”
Clemantine rose to her feet. “Do you?” she asked him. “I had the impression you were marooned for centuries, if not millennia. What has changed since you were last at Tanjiri?”
He eyed her for several seconds. Debating an answer? Finally, he said, “I have not been to Tanjiri. I would not trespass there.”
This drew a flurry of questions. He ignored them all, turning to Vytet, to Naresh, asking questions of his own, “Who is it that decides the destination of this ship? All of you together? Or is it Urban who makes this decision for the rest of you?”
An uncertain silence fell across the gathering. Even Clemantine wasn’t sure how to frame an answer. Finally, Vytet offered a cautious explanation: “We have always treated it as a matter of discussion.”
“But the final word is Urban’s,” Naresh added. “The ship is his. He is the ship. You will need to persuade him if you want to see this ship go somewhere other than Tanjiri.”
Lezuri nodded. He
rose to his feet. “Please excuse me. The lifespan of this avatar is limited, and it seems I must visit Urban after all.”
From Urban, a soft, self-satisfied chuckle. He told Clemantine, *Come home. You’ll want to see how this plays out.
<><><>
Urban looked over his shoulder at Clemantine as she walked in from the bedroom, breathless, her face shining with sweat. She’d put her experience playing flying fox to good use, shortcutting through gardens and over rooftops to arrive at the backdoor well before Lezuri crossed the threshold.
“No one has told him you can command the ship,” Urban said.
“Let’s keep it that way.”
“Agreed.”
She took a seat on the sofa while he walked to the door. The gel retracted. Lezuri was outside, alone, crossing the patio.
“Come in,” Urban said.
Lezuri came in talking. “You want to believe you are strong, wise, ruthless—”
“Not so much,” Urban broke in. “But I can learn. I imagine there’s a lot I could learn at Tanjiri.”
Lezuri hesitated, eyeing Clemantine. She gestured at the other end of the sofa. “Please. Have a seat.”
He ignored this offer, returning his attention to Urban. “Tanjiri is not for you. You are not ready to encounter what exists there.”
This could be true, the Scholar said, speaking from within Urban’s atrium where no one else could hear.
“I want to see it anyway,” Urban said aloud. “The broken megastructures. The celestial city. The living worlds.”
“You’re not ready,” Lezuri insisted. “If I demonstrate this to you, will you consider another path?”