Blade, page 1
part #4 of Inverted Frontier Series
Inverted Frontier
book 4
Blade
Linda Nagata
Published by Mythic Island Press LLC
Kula, Hawaii
Mythic Island Press LLC
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Prelude
Life diverges over time.
A moment came when Clemantine, alone on Griffin’s high bridge, stoically accepted this as her own truth. Once, she had regularly received subminds of her other self, replete with memories of life lived amid the garden of Dragon’s gee deck and in the company of cherished friends and lovers.
Even then, she’d been her own mind, only leavened by the humanity of her other self.
Now years had passed without any such update as Griffin slow-coasted in the void beyond Tanjiri, closely accompanied only by the two sentient missiles that Urban controlled.
How it irked that she did not control them! She should have been given the missiles to deploy because like those missiles, she was a weapon. The Tanji, those strange entities who both nurtured and guarded the dual living worlds of Tanjiri system, had recognized her as a weapon and for that reason had forbidden her ever to enter their realm. She, the defender of the fleet, compelled to wait alone through all the years Dragon’s people had chosen to linger on and around the world of Prakruti.
Too many years. So many, the separation between her two minds had surely become irrevocable. She thought it likely that an update from her other self now would at best fail to integrate, and at worst, confuse and weaken the structure of her mind.
For the sake of the fleet, she could not, would not risk it.
Not now, though Dragon had at last departed Tanjiri. Not ever, as she led the fleet toward a star she had chosen on her own, a first stop in a long future to be spent pursuing every bit of surviving life she could find amid the ruins of the Hallowed Vasties—because she craved the gleam of life; she hungered for it.
And she did not regret her isolation. Not at all. No, she enforced it instead by keeping a five light-hour lead on the nearest outrider while brushing off a persistent radio hail imploring her to reduce her velocity enough to rejoin the fleet and re-establish laser communication.
Her reply: I am here to ensure the way is safe.
A unilateral decision. Her Apparatchiks might have protested if she had not purged them years ago.
She told herself, It’s better this way. I am better without their chattering voices. I am stronger.
Griffin’s gleaming skin of philosopher cells picked up this thought and reinforced it with quick consensus:
And she responded in bold agreement: – sooth –
Chapter
1
Honua. Zemlya. Erde. Chikyū. Gaea. Terra. Diqiú. Earth.
These, Urban knew, were just a few of the many names given to the precious world where human life had begun. In the long millennia of humanity’s history, thousands of other names had doubtlessly been uttered and forgotten.
But did any of it matter now?
A bitter question. One Urban asked only of himself as he strove against a crush of disappointment, and of disgust.
Over centuries, Dragon’s Apparatchik, the one known as the Astronomer, had studied every star within the Hallowed Vasties. The ever more detailed observations he collected allowed him to confirm the existence of known planets or, more often, fail to confirm them because those worlds had been broken apart, shattered by the dimensional intrusion of a blade, the rubble cannibalized to create the cordons that had once veiled each star’s fierce light.
All those cordons gone now too, with only ruins left behind: broken structures adrift in debris fields or half-hidden in nebulas of dust and frozen gases.
Here and there, signs of life blazed among the ruins. At a star called Hupo Sei the combined efforts of the fleet’s telescopes had picked out glints and hints of what might be lacy little orbital structures amid the remnants of a vanished cordon. Another star, Sulakari, gleamed like Deception Well from within a dense nebula, one that surely required ongoing intervention to prevent it collapsing into planetesimals. Most intriguing, there was the Halo: a multitude of tiny but brightly blazing starlike objects encircling a central light—a star nearly veiled by vast, intricate layers of orbiting objects. Surely a cordon, but not like those of historical records. The ancient cordons had been warm dark masses visible only in the infrared. At the Halo, fragmented starlight shone through, demanding investigation.
In contrast, at the historical center of the Hallowed Vasties, around the star known as the Sun, nothing remained. Not even dust. The Astronomer had just confirmed it in a new report, issued a moment ago. Not even one of the Sun’s known planets had survived the collapse of the Hallowed Vasties.
Extended senses alerted Urban to Clemantine’s approach. He opened his eyes, and as she came into the cottage they shared, he looked up from where he sat on the carpet, cross-legged, his back resting against the sofa.
Her dark eyes met his, cool and questioning.
“They destroyed it,” Urban growled, giving in to the burn of a rising anger. “All of it, gone to madness.”
“It’s what we expected,” she answered, her matter-of-fact tone marred by the slightest of tremors. “It’s confirmation of what we already knew. We only hoped for better.”
He heaved a tired sigh. “I don’t want to go there.”
She sat on the sofa close beside him. Squeezed his shoulder. “We need to. The ship’s company will insist.”
“There are more interesting systems.”
“And we will visit them, before and after. But along the way, our path must take us past the Sun—out of respect, and as an apology for the foolishness of our kind . . . and to confirm there truly is nothing left behind.”
He looked up at her. “We owe no apologies. Whatever happened had nothing to do with us.”
“Still,” she said, and made no other argument. One word sufficing, because she was right.
Urban knew the ship’s company well enough to understand that the Astronomer’s negative report would not shift their desire to eventually visit the Sun and sample whatever sparse dust remained, sifting for clues at the epicenter of collapse. But before ever they came to that passage there would be other star systems to explore, with time enough for chance to amend the path they would ultimately follow.
Be careful what you wish for.
A grim thought, a troubled smile. He said, “Unless Griffin succeeds in changing the course of this expedition.”
“She’ll come around,” Clemantine insisted. “She’s devoted to us. You know that. She just doesn’t want to be held back, to be set aside the way she was at Tanjiri.”
That alone would be bad enough. But more was going on. Urban felt sure of it. He had always been uneasy with Clemantine’s dark twin, but he’d trusted her. Now, that trust had withered. He said, “I need her back with the fleet, back within reach of a laser link, of constant communication. You need to persuade her.”
“You know I’ve been trying.”
He held her gaze. “She’s changed, Clemantine.”
“We all change. Dragon has changed.”
“Sooth. For the better. But Griffin? We need to understand what she’s become.”
Clemantine lowered her chin; her eyes narrowed in resentment: “You’ve already decided, haven’t you?”
He sketched the facts, for himself as well as her. “She doesn’t care for consensus. She won’t listen to argument. She rarely even responds to our radio hails. And on her own she has decided to lead the fleet past Ryo, despite our protests.”
“It’s because she’s bored. Ryo is a dead system. No hint of life there. So she’s pushing us to go on to Hupo Sei. She’s leading us on. She wants to be first this time—not to be consigned to the void, but to make discoveries of her own.”
Urban sighed. He shook his head. He got up from the carpet where he’d been sitting and paced the room, thinking, while Clemantine watched him from the sofa.
Throughout the years at Tanjiri, Urban had rebuilt the fleet. Dragon had fed from the belt of ruins, enough to birth two new outriders to replace the pair lost at Verilotus. And then the courser had fed more, regathering mass and growing, expanding the size of its reef, adding to the power of its gun—while Griffin bided alone in the void, not feeding at all, not growing.
Urban could overtake the smaller courser if it came to that, but there was another way, a better way, to test Griffin’s loyalty. Ceasing to pace, he turned to Clemantine. “We’re going to Ryo despite her. If she’s still part of the fleet, she’ll adjust her course to go with us.”
Doubt welled in Clemantine’s eyes. She nodded agreement anyway while eliding the obvious question: What will you do if she does not follow?
Chapter
2
When Dragon had set off from Tanjiri, most of the ship’s company chose to retreat into cold sleep—but not the Cryptologist. She had not lived long enough to ever be bored with living.
Three years gone now, since Dragon had left the belt of ruins behind, faring outward into the void with only a few other minds awake and aware. Urban, of course, and intermittently, Clemantine. Pasha too, often on the gee deck and ever present as a ghost in the library or on the high bridge. And Vytet, who had always shunned cold sleep.
All but Vytet were capable of piloting the ship, but at present it was the Cryptologist who occupied the high bridge. She was serving a turn on watch, alone, because Urban had come to trust her there.
These were quiet hours, in which she listened to the persistent chatter of Dragon’s philosopher cells. Multiple threads of conversation cycled simultaneously, as always. There were evaluations of the ship’s condition, ongoing observations of Tanjiri System even as it fell behind them, curious speculation on the systems that lay ahead, and a cautious evaluation of Griffin—one that sought to determine if the smaller courser should be deemed friend or foe.
Even at such a distance—fourteen light-hours, with the outriders strung out in a long chain between them—Dragon’s philosopher cells perceived Griffin’s gleam and recognized in it an inherent threat, alien in its intensity. Not that Griffin had changed. No, Griffin remained Chenzeme. It was Dragon that had become something other. The Cryptologist had worked to ensure that.
Dragon had been out of control, plunging toward the living world of Ezo when the Bio-mechanic ruthlessly culled the courser’s most aggressive lines of philosopher cells. In the years following that near-disaster, the Cryptologist had undertaken a study of the surviving cells, recommending further changes. She’d promised Urban, I can re-engineer them.
And she had done it.
Through successive waves of modification and replacement, she’d forced the cell field to evolve. Native cell lines had been eliminated, replaced by generation after generation of new philosopher cells in which innate Chenzeme hostility was subverted and gradually transformed into wary curiosity. And at each stage, the cell field shifted ever farther from the ancestral norm.
Even in the Cryptologist’s limited experience—she had learned to pilot during the years at Tanjiri—the high bridge had become a different place, more benign and intelligent. The cells still retained their ancient store of memory, and the field frequently explored the atrocities of the past, but they did so as if analyzing the deeds of an inexplicable alien. And in reality, that was the situation. Sanity had set in because Dragon’s field of philosopher cells was no longer Chenzeme, even if the field still claimed to be:
Much later, Urban arrived on the high bridge, his ghost separate from hers yet so intimately close her excitement spiked—as it always did—with the suggestive possibility that they might merge into a single being that was neither of them, but a greater entity, as the Tanji had merged to become Ezo. But this was only a momentary sensation, a brief echo of past experience that swiftly evaporated under the cool intensity of Urban’s mood.
*A decision has been reached, she said, sensing the truth of it and wondering that it had been made without her knowledge. *What decision?
*We’re not going to follow Griffin.
Ah, so. Had he finally come around?
*You agree then? she asked him.
*Sooth. We need to lure her back into the fleet.
*And then update Griffin’s philosopher cells.
*Yes. If she’ll let us.
<><><>
The Apparatchik known as the Pilot devised a new course. Urban sent the revised heading up the chain of outriders preceding Dragon: Artemis closest, then Pytheas ninety light-minutes on. After that, Elepaio, Khonsu, and Lam Lha, with the re-grown Fortuna in the lead.
Should Fortuna radio Clemantine’s dark twin? Urban had decided yes. Don’t give up yet. Invite her home at least this one time more.
His instructions sent, he had only to wait. On the high bridge, he did so by modifying his mental state, assuming the imperturbable aspect he called the Sentinel, a guise which allowed him to bide in a state of full alertness, but without impatience or anxiety as his instructions worked their way up the chain of outriders.
He occupied himself by exploring the Near Vicinity as he had so many times before, ever on watch for any sign of activity in the void—though he found none. And he observed no activity at Ryo. It appeared to be a dead system just as Clemantine had said. Hupo Sei, Sulakari, and the Halo—those were the interesting destinations. Especially the Halo. That ring of lights was a phenomenon he could not explain, any more than he could explain the physics of a blade. He wondered if the two were related. The Cryptologist claimed not to know, though with her mind uplifted by the Tanji she saw deeper into the structure of the world than he ever could.
He wondered, as he’d wondered so many times before: Could the Cryptologist really create a blade if she set her mind to it? She had glimpsed the path but refused to follow it, unwilling to resurrect such dangerous knowledge. Someday though, she might be persuaded to change her mind.
Hours passed. The time came and went when distant Fortuna would relay the course change to Griffin. Another five hours would have to pass before Griffin received it.
The fleet would not wait. Dragon’s navigational jets fired at the precise moment in time when every outrider also shifted course, in a synchronous dance aligned along a great curve—though only a deity unconstrained by time and distance could have perceived it.
In the aspect of his avatar, Urban sat cross-legged in the cottage garden, the night air cool against his shoulders as the delicate structures of his inner ears detected the light, dizzying pressure of the course change.
Only one more element of the fleet remained to be contacted. Drawing a deep breath, he closed his eyes and descended into the silver.
Distance had separated him from the entanglement of Tanjiri, but his connection with the two sentient missiles remained. He reached out to them. Sensed the calm readiness of their minds. They had not yet perceived the fleet’s changing course. He told them, She may amend her heading. Regardless, stay with her.
They acknowledged this, asking no questions. He withdrew, perceiving again the cottage garden under the gleam of artificial stars. The only sound: two crickets chirping in soft competition.
Urban wondered what Clemantine’s dark twin thought of the two missiles that dogged her. Surely she must recognize them as an implicit threat?
<><><>
Days passed without acknowledgment from the dark twin. Fortuna’s telescope tracked her continuously, but detected no flare of navigational jets that would indicate an intention to follow the fleet. Griffin only continued to grow more distant.
“You devised this course change to test the loyalty of that other Clemantine,” Vytet mused on an evening when all those awake had gathered on the dining terrace to share a meal. Vytet smoothed his beard, his gentle brown eyes gazing thoughtfully at Urban, who sat at the opposite end of the rectangular table. “But I think she knows we’re not really interested in Ryo, that this is a ruse. So she’s testing us, asking how far we’ll carry on with this deception, how long before we reach our breaking point?”
Urban hesitated with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, bearing a cube of savory bean paste.
So, the time had come. He’d resolved not to instigate this conversation, though he’d known it to be inevitable.
He returned the cube to his bowl, set the bowl on the low table, and looked at the others. Pasha and the Cryptologist shared the table’s long left side, while on the right, Clemantine sat beside Kona, who had only recently awakened. Concern was evident in all their faces.
Urban straightened his back. He squared his shoulders. He pretended to himself he felt no guilt. And he told Vytet, “I think that’s true.”
This drew a skeptical grunt from Kona; he had wakened when a Dull Intelligence alerted him to the course change. He said, “We don’t need to create scenarios to know something has gone very wrong. I’ve reviewed the logs. It’s been two hundred twenty-two days since we last received a communication from Griffin—and that was to urge us to radio silence.”
Clemantine spoke swiftly, defensively. “She worries about the insecurity of radio, signaling our presence and revealing too much of who we are.”
