Blade, page 7
part #4 of Inverted Frontier Series
Pasha spoke over the radio. “Tio Suthrom, please confirm that you have found our device clean, harmless, and compatible with your Makers.”
Tio Suthrom replied, “On the surface, that is the case, though I cannot know the extent of your abilities.”
“Nor can we know yours, but we mean you no harm.”
Urban hissed softly. No such promise had been made before, and given Kona’s anger, and his suspicion that this great ship had somehow served the Chenzeme, it wasn’t a promise he was ready to make.
And it wasn’t a promise Tio Suthrom was ready to believe. “What are you?” he demanded, for the first time with an edge of anger. “You, with your human voices and human conversation. Do you think I don’t recognize a marauder when I see one? I have been to the frontier and back. I have seen the ruin of worlds after marauders struck them. Jewel-like worlds turned to ash and black stone. The marauders are death! And you. What are you? What are you but a trick of that ship now gone dark?”
So hard to express tension in ghost form. Urban felt his jaw set, his stomach knot, his hands clench into fists—all simulated responses to satisfy the biological needs of his mind. He signaled to Pasha that this time, he would answer.
“The marauders are death,” he said in a quiet voice. “We call them the Chenzeme. And you are right. Our ships are Chenzeme starships. You’ve seen only one. We have another. We captured them, we control them, and we are human. We came here from the frontier on a voyage of discovery, seeking to understand what you have called the Great Silence. But with your original message, you seemed to ingratiate yourself with the Chenzeme—the marauders. Did you ever ally yourself with them?”
“No. No! Do not suggest such a thing. I have seen a companion turned to vapor. I have seen the burnt husks of once-thriving worlds. The marauders have existed eons and the struggle to survive their depredations is not just a human one—”
He broke off. The sharp silence that followed piqued Urban’s suspicions and fed his curiosity.
“Not just human?” he echoed.
No answer. Not right away.
The scout-bot had remained suspended within the gel membrane throughout this exchange, but now the membrane’s motile tissue pushed the bot forward again, until it spilled into a little air-filled transit bubble that, like the hangar, had red-glowing walls.
The bot assayed the air, finding it ship-standard, except that it was sterile—utterly devoid of the microbial life that always accompanied Earth biomes. There were not even remnants of organic molecules.
Pasha turned to Urban. “He claimed to be devoid of organic life. I’m starting to think that might be true.”
“Sooth,” Urban whispered, feeling himself plunged into memory—all those centuries spent alone as he’d returned to Deception Well. His mind had existed then only as a ghost, with Dragon as his body. Not a single cell of Earth-based life had existed within him then. His Makers had been the only physical evidence of his existence.
“He’s alone,” Urban concluded. As I was. “This is an empty ship, without a ship’s company. But he knows something, Pasha. He’s seen something—something inhuman.”
She said, “He might have found some alien ruin in his wanderings, ancient and awful.”
“Or some remnant of alien life? But not here. Not in the Hallowed Vasties. There’s no record of anything like that here. But why hesitate to speak of it?”
“Ask him,” Pasha urged. “Keep him talking in honest words.” In a tone of avarice, she added, “He may well know histories we’ve never heard of.”
Urban nodded. Gathering his thoughts, he spoke again over the radio. “Tio Suthrom, it may be we’ve both misread each other.”
“It is hard to know the truth,” Tio Suthrom conceded. “It is hard to accept an unexpected truth when there is so very much at stake.”
“More than your own life?” Urban asked.
“Far more.”
“Will you allow the scout-bot to explore your interior?”
“The transit bubble is free to glide about, but there are no hollow spaces that your bot could access. This is no longer a human ship.”
Urban felt the pressure of Pasha’s ghost hand squeezing his arm. The look of awe on her face surely reflected his own. Holding her gaze, he asked, “What kind of ship is it, then?”
For several seconds, no answer came. But Urban was patient and finally, Tio Suthrom said, “We are a scientific expedition, here to survey the ruins of Ryo.”
Urban looked again at the video feed, though it showed only dull red light emanating from the transit bubble’s smooth walls.
“We?” he asked.
Tio Suthrom did not answer this, asking instead, “Are you able to ghost using common protocol?”
“Yes, of course. Are you inviting us?”
“We are. There are two of you?”
“Yes.”
“In another minute I will send you addresses for two artificial avatars.”
Again, Urban looked at Pasha, this time with a mix of confusion and concern. “Not a library?” he murmured, still speaking over the radio.
“No, robotic units,” Tio Suthrom answered. “It is necessary.”
Pasha objected, “But you said you have no hollow spaces.”
“I said I have none that your bot could access. It is a question of scale,” he explained without explaining. Then, after a long pause, “Here are the addresses. We await you.”
To Pasha, Urban said, “I’m sending a DI to evaluate.”
“Good.”
A few seconds later, the DI reported both destinations to be benign, exhibiting every aspect of the common protocol used in such situations since ancient times.
“We’ll be able to retreat, if needed,” Urban concluded. They would be able to erase themselves too, though he didn’t say that aloud. “I’ll go first.”
Chapter
12
While the Cryptologist took Griffin far from the fleet, the Bio-mechanic took inventory. He sampled the tissue of every dormant philosopher cell, using that data to map the lineages; and he charted the complexity of the intercellular links.
The pattern and quantity of links told him which cell lines dominated, but the dominant lines were not always the most aggressive. If he knew their temperaments, it would be easy to cull the worst of them while dormant. But he did not. That assessment had to wait until the cells wakened. Even then, he’d need to rely on the Cryptologist to confirm from her position on the high bridge which lineages to thin, because from the neural bridge, he could only guess at their different natures.
*I am concerned, she messaged him.
*As you should be.
She ignored this jibe, asking him, *Can you simultaneously cull multiple cell lines?
*Why would you want to do that? The goal should be to cull just enough to ensure your control of the ship.
*Yes. But can I secure control in time?
He heard doubt in her voice, and fear. He didn’t like it. *If you can’t do it yourself, invite Urban to help you. Or Pasha.
He said this knowing she would refuse. She did not want Urban back on the high bridge where he might take control of Griffin and reshape the cell field in his own way. The Bio-mechanic felt sure she would hold similar reservations about Pasha.
*I will consider this suggestion, she told him, although her stiff tone implied she had already rejected it.
Later, a prolonged, crushing shift in velocity brought Griffin into alignment with one of Ryo’s drifting megastructures. Over the ensuing hours, the Cryptologist used gentler course corrections to place the rogue courser behind the megastructure, relative to the fleet. From there, the philosopher cells would not be able to sense the presence of any other vessel when the Cryptologist finally wakened them.
She was right to fear that moment.
The cell field had gone dark on the expectation that the courser would pursue in stealth the targeted great ship, following it to its home system. Such a pursuit might take decades, centuries, even millennia. It didn’t matter. A few millennia could not matter to a mind that had witnessed the passing of millions of years. However much time slipped past, the cells would remember their purpose. They would waken eager for a kill and when they did not immediately detect their prey, they would go hunting for it.
It would be on him to quickly cull any lineage the Cryptologist could not subdue, because if she lost control, it would not take Griffin long to move out from behind the megastructure and select a target from among the fleet.
Leaving the neural bridge, he manifested in Griffin’s library, finding the Cryptologist already there. She stood facing the cell map he had generated. Strident colors marked the lineages, casting a weird glow against the Cryptologist’s pale cheeks.
Her goal was to reshape the ship’s mind, retaining all she could of the knowledge the philosopher cells possessed while freeing them from the authoritarian constraints of their Chenzeme ancestry. Just as she had done with Dragon, she meant to eliminate hate and indifference, instilling in their place traits the philosopher cells had never possessed before, like the capacity to experience wonder, and a sense of deep empathy for all those lifeforms and wildly unique planetary ecosystems they had been forced, in their prior existence, to despise.
“I am ready,” he told her. “Are you?”
She turned to him with an expectant expression. “I have given your suggestion due consideration and have decided to accept it—though in principle, not in detail. Rather than Urban or Pasha, I want you with me on the high bridge.”
He recoiled from these words. A curled lip. A surly scowl. Manufacturing a dark expression to cover an unwelcome rush of frustration and . . . gratitude. Bitter gratitude.
Never before, not once in all the centuries of his existence, had the Bio-mechanic been invited to visit a high bridge. Not here and not on Dragon—until now—and he desired it fiercely. Out of curiosity, yes, but also because the grant of such permission would redefine who he was; it would be a grant of new ability. One step closer to the freedom of an embodied mind.
Even so, he told the Cryptologist, “No. That is your task. Mine is to cull those cell lineages that refuse your arguments.”
She dared to look annoyed. “Replicate, as Urban does.”
“I am not Urban. I cannot replicate.”
If he could, he would not have died aboard Dragon in that awful time when Lezuri had released his predator into the ship’s system.
“You replicated when you came here from Dragon.”
“One copy here, one there. No more. I am restrained.”
It angered him even to discuss such things. Perhaps she sensed it. She looked troubled, thoughtful. Her gaze drifted. And then her ghost began to fade.
“You’re distracted,” he concluded irritably. “Come back. Focus. We have a task.”
“A moment,” she whispered as something shifted within his mind, a strange dizzying instability.
Shocked, he turned inward to examine his own structure and found her there. He assumed it to be her. A mind not his own.
Fear surged through him. “What are you doing?” he demanded, though he already knew.
She had found his core. She could unmake him if she wanted to—but that was not her purpose.
He felt the change as a new sense coming online, an avenue of possibility opening.
Her probing mind withdrew from him; her ghost solidified as her bright blue eyes fixed on him in an intense gaze. “I need you on the high bridge,” she told him.
He nodded. He replicated. And he found the path to the high bridge open to him.
Chapter
13
Clemantine sat alone in her cottage, cross-legged on the carpeted floor of a front room empty of all furnishings save for a little table made of golden wood standing just ten centimeters high. She faced the table, or more precisely, she faced a potted orchid set at the table’s center.
The orchid had strapping, deep green leaves and three low spikes, each bearing a trio of white buds that might soon open into star-shaped flowers—if her mood allowed it. This was a meditation orchid, an old half-forgotten bioengineering project she’d resurrected in the idle hope that it might help her to find a path toward acceptance.
A vain hope, she thought grimly.
The re-taking of Griffin had broken something in her, allowing guilt to come crashing in. And not just guilt for letting herself be suborned by Griffin’s philosopher cells (because that other version of her, was her), or for the negligence committed by this surviving version that had allowed the travesty to happen, or for the ruthlessness she had exercised in eliminating her own corrupt self. No, it was as if a putrid cyst had burst within her mind, spewing forth the guilt she’d never allowed herself to feel for all the necessary violence she had committed through a long and challenging life.
Clemantine knew she needed therapy, but she didn’t want it. Not yet. She wanted this guilt. There was satisfaction in it, knowing it to be well deserved.
It almost amused her to watch the orchid as it sensed the subtle chemicals of her mood and reflected them as intended, its buds slowly withering over the hour that she sat there, before finally dropping away.
Much like Urban.
Yet another bitter thought. She had not seen or spoken to him in days, and did not want to.
With a deep, disgusted, growling sigh she abandoned her meditation and stood, turning to face an empty room. Just as she did, an alert reached her. Her DI whispered that Vytet had come; he waited now outside the door.
A hiss of irritation. Even so, Clemantine signaled the gel door to open, telling herself it would be easier to convince Vytet to go away if she did it in person.
The door retracted, but it did not reveal the Vytet she expected, the bearded Vytet, with stern brow ridge, deep-set eyes, and broad shoulders. Clemantine’s lips parted in confusion.
When did this happen?
This was Vytet in feminine aspect: tall as always, but slim and lithe now, gentle-eyed, her long hair gleaming gray, her body clothed in a sleeveless close-fitting tunic and a loose sky-blue skirt. With a pang, Clemantine realized how much she’d missed this version. She dared to wonder if Vytet had changed thus for her sake.
Vytet cocked her head, gesturing to where the sofa ought to be. “I thought we could sit together and talk.”
Clemantine bristled, sure she knew what Vytet had come to say. “Did Urban send you?”
“Urban? No. I have not seen him on the gee deck in several days.”
This news hurt, and that annoyed her.
“And you’re here why? To tell me I ought to submit myself to therapy? That I’m being self-indulgent?”
“You are being self-indulgent. But I think you need to be. That you deserve to be. That you’re the only one who can decide how and how much you need to grieve.”
Clemantine closed her eyes. Drew a quick sharp breath. Then she signaled the room to furnish itself. The sofa unfolded from beneath the floor; a small table rose in front of it. On the opposite wall, a screen emerged, displaying a three-part scroll of a night heron perched on a branch above a moonlit pond.
“It’s not grief, or not just grief,” Clemantine whispered, beckoning Vytet to come and sit with her, shoulder to shoulder through several seconds of silence.
Finally, Vytet suggested, “It’s guilt too.”
“Sooth.” Clemantine despised the tremor in her voice. Words she had not expected followed: “I should have stayed at Prakruti.”
Vytet squeezed her hand. “You were happy there.”
“Urban was happy there too. He loved that world and so did I. It was so much like home, Vytet. Our home, yours and mine. Our birth world. You remember it.”
“Yes.”
A world the Chenzeme had destroyed.
Clemantine said, “When we were there, at Prakruti, I didn’t want to think about her, about what she was enduring. She had never let me share that anyway, and I didn’t want to anymore. Let her carry it alone! Why not? She wanted it. I knew that because I knew her . . . and she knew me. She let me be happy.”
“A gift to you,” Vytet suggested.
Clemantine shook her head. “No. She decided she was not me, that she was stronger without me, that the subminds I shared only weakened her. So she abandoned me—and I let her do it, and I lost myself.”
Vytet turned to her, pulled her close, whispered in her ear, “You’re not lost. You’re still here. And I know you well enough to know your strength. You’ll endure this, and you’ll be happy again.”
“Yes.” Clemantine knew it to be true. She’d endured despair before. It would pass and this would prove to be but a short interval in a long life. “It will be different though, going forward.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m too old to be jealous, and yet . . .” She shrugged. Smiled a self-mocking smile.
“Urban?”
“He’s sleeping somewhere else now. Probably with the Cryptologist.” Another shrug. “He was never constant. It’s been a wonder to me that he stayed in my home so long.”
“I don’t think he’s sleeping with the Cryptologist.”
“No? If not yet, he will. He’s fascinated with her. He believes she holds the secret he still wants, the secret of the blade. And he listens to her. He let her re-engineer his precious philosopher cells! For years, I questioned his claim that the high bridge gave us absolute control over the cell field. He never took my doubts seriously. Though I was right.”
“You were. Proof of that came when we almost lost Dragon at Tanjiri. But it was that incident that convinced Urban to re-engineer the hull cells. It wasn’t the Cryptologist.”
“Maybe.” A soft, bitter laugh. “Who am I to complain? I made the same mistake as Urban. I occupied Griffin’s high bridge. I could have forced its philosopher cells to adapt to me. Instead, I adapted to them.”
“We all should have been watching more closely.”
“But we didn’t. I didn’t. Remember the story the Tanji told us? A story of war breaking out among the godlings that emerged from Tanjiri’s swarm and how they murdered one another. We’re no different, Vytet. We murdered that other version of me. I murdered her. And it horrifies me. And I can’t help but ask myself, who is next?”
