Edges

by Linda Nagata

  A submind took this conclusion to the library. From there, she accessed the radio. She had to contact Griffin, tell her other self to go in pursuit.

  But the radio did not respond.

  Kona saw what she was trying to do and shook his head. “It’s out.”

  <><><>

  As Dragon writhed, Griffin shifted position, seeking a clear shot, but Clemantine could not find the containment capsule. Somehow, it kept itself shielded behind Dragon’s mass.

  A new factor entered her awareness: The gravitational sensor had detected a slight perturbation, separate from those generated by the coursers. The cells sought to discern its source, their attention focused in the direction of Dragon.

  When she shared this news with her Apparatchiks in the library, the Engineer said, “It’s the containment capsule. It has to be.”

  A dark laugh from the Pilot. “Even if it has a reef, so what? It can’t outrun two coursers. It can’t escape our guns.”

  The source of the perturbations was already receding.

  On the high bridge, Clemantine proposed an action:

  – pursue it –

  The cells complied, triggering a surge of activity in the reef. Griffin leaped forward. But Clemantine still could not locate the little ship.

  Surely it had moved beyond Dragon’s bow by now? That would make it an easy target, yet Dragon did not shoot.

  “Dragon is damaged,” the Engineer concluded, his somber gaze on Clemantine. “It’s up to you.”

  She could not shoot what she could not see. Griffin’s gravitational sensor let her track the newly activated reef, but that gave her only an estimate of Lezuri’s position—enough to know he was moving out fast and hard.

  Resolving to match that pace, she imposed her will on the cell field:

  – pursue it. faster –

  In the library, the Pilot objected. “The risk of collision—!”

  “I understand it, but our target is small and dark and cooling fast. I don’t want to risk losing it in the void.”

  “Radar,” the Engineer said.

  “Try it,” Clemantine agreed. “But I think Lezuri will anticipate that and shape-shift his hull to a fully stealthed mode.”

  She tried to contact Dragon again by radio, but got no answer.

  As she neared the larger courser, its cells—what was left of them—flashed a message of triumphant identity:

 

  Within that declaration, a sense of gloating victory over an embedded enemy successfully ejected, and a firm assertion that it retained the strength to self-repair.

  Griffin’s cell field responded with what Clemantine interpreted as a warning:

 

  The implication: that Dragon must recover or be consumed.

  She swept past the larger courser, taking a good look as she did, horrified at the extent of damage, longing to know if anyone was still alive within that torn hull.

  She could not help them, not yet, but she could hunt the entity.

  “Okay,” she said to the Engineer. “Dragon’s behind us. The field is clear. Have you got anything?”

  “No, you were right,” he conceded. “No radar returns at all.”

  “Then lock it down,” she told him. “We’re going stealth too. I’m taking the hull cells dark. We’re going to track his reef and I don’t want him to see us coming.”

  Chapter

  39

  The bundled memories comprising Urban’s last generated submind slipped through the data gate, bound for Elepaio. Transmission protocols ensured no copy was left behind.

  Elepaio was closest in the vanguard of outriders, but it was still ninety light-minutes distant. Ninety minutes in which either the entity had secured its hold over Dragon or Clemantine had destroyed the ship.

  The submind’s arrival at Elepaio’s data gate woke an archived copy of Urban’s ghost. Mind and submind merged. He instantiated in the outrider’s library with the memory of all that had happened aboard Dragon. Predominant in his memory: the predator and its relentless pursuit of him in all his variations.

  He issued a command to close the data gate to incoming traffic—too late. Something had come through.

  He knew there had not been time for all the data needed to define a fully realized ghost to transit through the gate, and he assumed a far larger quantity of data would be needed to define the entity. Still, something had arrived behind him.

  The predator might be a fragment of the entity or it could be a manufactured weapon that did not represent the entity at all. Whatever it was, he already had a partial map of its structure. He used that to devise a probe to further investigate its configuration.

  The thing winked into existence on the library floor. Riffan again! he saw in disgust. The predator still wore Riffan’s aspect like a protective shell.

  Urban’s probe instantiated around it: a shimmering translucent column that shot up from the library floor, trapping the predator within as it rose an infinite distance overhead. Immediately, the diameter of the column began to shrink. It compressed around the predator, probing it from all sides, passing all the structural data it discovered back to Urban, at the same time overwriting everything it touched.

  The predator reacted by withdrawing the Riffan mask—a bizarre transformation as the façade was sucked off, twisted, and then compressed into a geometrical point where it vanished. Left behind was a tremulous, vaguely man-shaped cloud, that appeared to be composed of tiny virtual machines. Battle ready now, the predator struck back.

  Chaos boiled up around its feet. The base of the column disintegrated. Chaos climbed the column, consuming it, while a separate wave of chaos swept across the library floor, catching Urban before he could retreat.

  Chaotic forces swirled around his ghost feet, climbed his body. He was conscious of his own disintegration, an onslaught of mindlessness, meaningless disorder, overwriting the programmatic structure that defined him. He sensed the same wave of chaos at work consuming the library’s computational strata, destroying the virtual grid and the archive where he’d kept the backup copy of his ghost.

  He could not stop the destruction. Only microseconds left to create a submind. He focused on that one task and when it was done, he bundled his memories into it and sent the submind through the data gate, addressed to the next outrider in the fleet.

  Ninety-three minutes later Khonsu received the submind and woke an archived copy of Urban’s ghost. Their memories merged. His first coherent thought: Close the data gate!

  But the integration of mind and submind had taken a measurable quantity of time, enough to allow the predator through the gate before he could close it to incoming traffic.

  It instantiated, wearing Riffan’s aspect again. With a sharp shock, Urban realized it had to be that way. The predator could not pass through the data gate without using its stolen permissions.

  Again, Urban launched his probe, updating it with structural knowledge hard-won in the last encounter. Riffan’s aspect disappeared as the column formed—hidden away by the predator, which must be eager to protect it. So Urban compiled a second probe. This one had the single goal of locating and dissolving all identifiers associated with Riffan.

  But chaos broke past the column before he could launch it.

  He created a submind and sent it to the outrider Lam Lha.

  It arrived, ninety-one minutes later. Mind and submind integrated. Urban emerged from the archive just as the predator arrived through the data gate.

  This time, he was ready for it. He launched both probes as it instantiated. One assaulted the Riffan-shell, partly overwriting it before it could be withdrawn. The other trapped the predator within the column, holding it there long enough to dissolve another layer of its structure before chaos broke loose to ravage the library’s computational strata and its archive, and to overwrite the structure of Urban’s ghost.

  He sent a submind to the outrider Pytheas.

  This time, surely, h
e knew enough about the predator to defeat it. His prior encounters convinced him it was not a sentient thing, but a tool. And given that the method of its attack never varied, it was not adept at learning. Still, the entity had designed it and Urban had not broken it yet.

  It came through the data gate—but was it a microsecond slower this time?

  It instantiated. Urban saw that the Riffan-shell, damaged in their last encounter, had been restored. Instantly, he shifted tactics, directing both probes to attack the shell.

  He did not need to destroy the predator. He only needed an interval of time to get ahead of it and then he could close the next gate, trap it behind him.

  He’d already slowed the predator’s transit once by forcing it to rebuild the stolen permission structure that let it pass. He gambled that an increase in the level of damage would slow it more.

  The probes ripped into the Riffan-shell. Swaths of it dissolved before the predator drew it in beneath armored layers. This time, Urban cast his submind across the void even before chaos broke free of the column.

  Ninety minutes later he reached the last outrider, Fortuna. He closed its data gate before anything else came through.

  Chapter

  40

  Urban instantiated aboard Fortuna amid the austere architecture of the library. He stood alone on a white path winding away across a glassy blue plane of data, the color deepening with distance. This library was a copy of the one that had been carried aboard Dragon, but the only archived ghost that existed there was his.

  If Urban had been a physical avatar, the running battle with the predator would have left him shaking with exhaustion, but a ghost did not feel fatigue. Now that he was safely locked behind a closed data gate, he took up the task of editing out the useless emotional detritus of fear and panic that lingered in the wake of this latest brush with death.

  And then he went further. He created for himself a machinelike calm, walling off the fury and frustration that arose from the certainty that he’d lost Dragon.

  The entity’s assault against him had left him with no choice but to call for termination. If Griffin had received that radio message, then Dragon was gone, blown apart, reduced to vapor and debris.

  All sixty-five of the ship’s company gone with it. His last words to Clemantine: It’s over.

  Grief seeped past his machine calm. And fear. He wondered, Was it over?

  If Griffin had not received that message, or if the other Clemantine had not carried through with it, the situation would be far worse. The entity would have secured command of Dragon.

  No.

  She would never allow that. She would not take the risk of Dragon turning against her. He remembered her promise: I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect all of you. He trusted her to protect the archived ghosts she carried, regardless of the cost.

  Editing his ghost again, he sequestered his doubt and his grief. He couldn’t help Clemantine. Not now. He had to assess and secure his own situation and then decide on a strategy, one based on fact, not on what he wished things could be.

  He knew already he could not go back the way he’d come. The predator had wiped the computational strata in each successive outrider, leaving it nonfunctional. And with Fortuna so far from Griffin, any error in the targeting of the communications laser would be magnified many times over, so that the smallest initial discrepancy would cause the beam to miss its target, possibly by tens of kilometers. The independent motion of both ships made the problem excruciatingly complex. It was unrealistic to think he could get any data through.

  But he was not helpless. He had Fortuna, and the little ship should be fully operational. He queried the Dull Intelligence that oversaw its operation to confirm this. “Review current status.”

  A gentle masculine voice answered, “Ship’s location is 7.5 light-hours from command ship Dragon’s last calculated position. Proceeding to target star system Tanjiri at a steady thirty-five percent light speed as measured against the velocity of the target star. Reef function is nominal, though presently dampened to a minimally active state. Internal network and computational strata report healthy. Navigational fuel reserves at 93%. Telescope presently engaged in a survey of the Near Vicinity. Collected data will be held until authorization is received to open the data gate.”

  “Don’t open the data gate,” Urban said.

  “Understood.”

  “And reorient the telescope. Look back. Calculate expected positions for both Dragon and Griffin and locate them with the scope.”

  “Understood.”

  Urban longed to go back. He resolved that as soon as he confirmed Dragon gone, and Griffin the survivor, he would order the DI to flip Fortuna bow to stern and then dump velocity. Griffin’s forward progress would close the gap and eventually Urban’s ghost would be able to make the jump between the ships.

  A fine plan, shattered by the first image the telescope returned.

  The image posted within a library window, its resolution shockingly poor. Urban was used to working with images compiled from data collected across multiple telescopes. Now he had only one. At such a distance even a courser was a minuscule object, its details blurred despite extensive processing. Still, the three-part equation of distance, luminosity, and the known dimensions of both coursers left no doubt that the ship captured in the image was Dragon.

  Clearly, it was battle damaged. Long, lightless scars sliced through the luminous philosopher cells and the ship was surrounded by a faint blur, a halo, that had to be a cloud of debris and frozen vapor. “Analyze that,” he told the DI.

  “Analysis indicates water, molecular oxygen, carbon dioxide, and an array of metals within the de-gassed cloud.”

  Urban felt an automated routine kick in, locking out despair.

  “Where is Griffin?” he demanded.

  “A search of Griffin’s calculated position is presently underway.”

  “You haven’t found it yet?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Keep looking. It has to be there.”

  But did it? Did it have to be there? Didn’t Dragon’s survival indicate Griffin’s demise?

  “Keep looking,” he said again.

  Hours passed. Then days, but Griffin could not be resolved.

  <><><>

  Griffin hunted the void, full stealth, its philosopher cells dark, its radar dormant, all transmissions silenced.

  There was silence too, on the high bridge, with no conversation to endure from hibernating cells. Clemantine had to conduct her search without the benefit of their acute vision, but Lezuri’s ship was so small and dark the cells could not have seen it anyway, unless it came so close that it reflected a glint of their own light.

  For Clemantine, the silence was a welcome respite that let her focus on the Near Vicinity as she tracked Lezuri’s propulsion reef. The faint signal cut out for hours and she thought she’d lost him. Then the signal reappeared, shifted intensity, changed trajectory, vanished again. The Pilot calculated where Lezuri should be. They swooped in on a heading meant to intercept his little ship, but did not find him.

  Clemantine quieted Griffin’s reef to minimize its interference while the gravitational sensor felt the void all around, seeking for the faint signal of Lezuri’s dormant reef. She scanned with cameras and telescopes. But there was nothing.

  More hours passed.

  Time enough to reflect that worlds could be lost in the dark between the stars.

  “What if we’ve miscalculated?” she asked the Pilot. “What if Lezuri was decelerating when we thought he was still accelerating? Maybe his goal isn’t to get away. Maybe it’s to linger and wait for Dragon to close the distance, come near enough to try his needles again.”

  “Or to wait for us,” the Engineer pointed out. “We’re vulnerable to his needles too.”

  If Clemantine had existed in human form, that thought would have given her chills.

  The Pilot dismissed these concerns with a contemptuous wave of his hand. “
I did not make such a mistake. I cannot pinpoint Lezuri’s exact location but I know his last course adjustment took him away from the trajectory of the fleet, and that his velocity is greater than ours, and that he has used his reef hard. He will not have the power to return, not for some time. And he cannot be hunting us in the same way we’ve been hunting him. His vessel is too small to carry a gravitational sensor. So we are hidden from him, as long as we remain silent and dark.”

  “I think there is very little chance now that we will find him,” the Astronomer said. “He won’t give us any more signals to follow. He’ll coast for years before he uses his reef again.”

  “It’s what I’d do,” the Pilot agreed.

  This assessment brought both guilt and relief to Clemantine. Abandoning the hunt felt wrong, but she longed to return to Dragon, to offer her help, and to learn how much of the ship and its company had survived.

  “All right,” she said. “We stay dark, and we go home.”

  <><><>

  No easy task to catalog all the damage—especially with the Apparatchiks gone.

  Clemantine kept to her post on Dragon’s high bridge. What choice? There was no one else to do it. From there she sent out an army of DIs to search the network, the library files, the archive, seeking for any sign of the predator . . . and of Urban.

  In the library, she approached Vytet. “I know you’re angry over this—”

  Vytet transformed, looming larger than life, features exaggerated, amber eyes now glinting red. “Angry over what? The fact you decided, on your own, to risk all of our futures? That you destroyed any chance of a peaceful coalition with a great being? Or that you blew the ship apart?” She gestured at a projection of Dragon showing the known damage, with vast tracts of the ship still to be surveyed. “You did this.”