Michael Flynn - On the Razor’s Edge

An ancient sage once wrote that all things happen by chance or by design, but that chance was only the intersection of two designs. Consider the man who is struck on the head by a hammer while walking to his lunch.

Everything about his perambulation is designed, which is to say intended. He is hungry—it is that time of day for it—and he habitually takes his lunch at a café two blocks distant from his workplace. It is a sunny day, so he wears no cap. None of this is by chance.

Likewise, the workman atop the roof of the building half a block along. He too ceases work for lunch and, habitually, leaves his tools unattended. Because of the geometric arrangement of his tools, his foot nudges the hammer as he arises, the which, in obedience to the inexorable laws of action and reaction, nudges back and so begins to slide. The god Newton teases it down the slanted roof tiles until it tips into his clutches and is pulled to the street below, even as the unfortunate lunch bound is passing beneath.

“Ah, what ill luck,” say the street sweepers as they cleanse the blood and brains from the duroplast walkway. Yet everything that has happened is the consequence of the actors’ intentions or of nature’s laws—and some say those laws are but the intentions of a greater Actor.

We call it “chance” and we marvel because our superstitions desire that concatenation be as meaningful as causality. The man was brained by a hammer! It must mean something . There must be a connection! And so poor Fate is made the scapegoat of intersecting world-lines. Having become all tangled up in the threads, we incline to blame the weaver.

Which is to say that if two travelers intend the same destination, it is no great thing that their threads might cross along the way.

A third thing that Méarana’s mother had taught her was how to handle herself in free fall wearing a skinsuit. This was a fortunate skill, as Méarana’s mother well knew, for it enabled the harper to step out of a doomed ship wrapped in nothing much more than a leotard, helmet, and cloak of invisibility, and to coast until coming to rest on the side of the smuggler’s monoship.

“We must match our mootions while still blocked from view,” Ravn Olafsdottr had warned her before closing the skinsuit seals. “It would noot do to touch the vessel with too great a delta-V.”

“Bug on a windshield,” Méarana had agreed, a Terran phrase her father had once taught her.

And so they had launched themselves into the void. Ravn had waited until the last possible moment, when the external sensors had detected molecular jangling and an exponential increase in surface temperatures. “Wave cannon,” she said, and they had jumped with their baggage in tow even as behind them their ship began to disintegrate. After which, their cloaks made them invisible to GEM detectors and their luggage drifted like so much debris.

The entry locks of ships are never sealed because no pilot wishes to face the air lock and pat her pockets wondering where she put her keys. But operating keys are another matter. No pilot wishes another to saunter on board and fly off with her ship. The former owner, the late Rigardo-ji Edelwasser, had been a bonded smuggler, and Ravn, before she had turned the vessel over to Fleet, had squirreled a duplicate set of hard keys inside one of his many hidey-holes. The soft keys she had memorized. It was a matter of minutes to retrieve them, insert them into their proper ports, enter them at apposite terminals, or speak them into appropriate pickups and thereby complete the circuits for command and control.

The ship’s departure occasioned no comment from Space Traffic Control beyond the granting of clearance and the assignment of a departure orbit toward the New Anatole entrance of the Gong Halys. STC had been informed earlier by SVMG that the Lion’s Mouth was repossessing the Sèan Beta. Best it depart quickly before another unauthorized ship should attempt to seize it. One fewer Shadow in Henrietta system would make everyone happier.

Including the Shadow.

A monoship had little room for song and dance, but Méarana and Ravn managed. Life seldom tastes so sweet as it does when stolen back at the very brink from those who would take it. Méarana finally understood, a little, a phrase favored by the Ravn: “life along the razor’s edge.” She was rushed. She was high. She was giddy. They drank toasts to themselves, each other, the dead swoswai, and the live Shadow they had manipulated into avenging him. Méarana extemporized a rollicking geantraí while her companion danced a staccato of footwork known to the high-up hills she had once called home. In the end, laughing, they fell into each other’s arms.

“On to Terra!” Méarana declared to the grinning face above her.

“Noot quite yet, sweet. First, we stoop at Dao Chetty.”

Méarana pushed the Shadow off her and sat up on the couch. “Dao Chetty?” she said with sudden apprehension. The capital world of the Confederation. The center of all iniquity. A world whose very name fell leaden from the lips.

“I moost meet soomeone there,” Ravn said.

“Oh no, we must heigh for Terra, to rescue my father!”

“Oh, my sweet, yes. All in good time do I bring Gidula his praysent.” The Shadow leaned forward to pat her cheek, but Méarana ducked it. “Listen to me, yngling,” the Shadow said in a voice with more iron and less play. “Your father is like a toothache. To pull him from the mouth of Gidula is more than my strength. So I must persuade Domino Tight to join us. It will not be easy to divert him from his duty, but like a frog, I will capture him with my tongue. Haha.” Then, more seriously, she added, “To rescue your father wants more than to reach Terra quickly—but impotently.”

The harper leapt to her feet and turned away from her companion, folding her arms. “But you don’t need this Domino Tight. Mother is—”

“Following us? You meant her to when you joined me.” Ravn nodded slowly, as if to herself. “That is why your companionship was worth the wager. But I have no assurance that the wager is won, and ‘one sure ally on hand is worth two that might lurk in the bushes.’ It is best to copper the bet. And a second Shadow may dissuade your mother from foolish decisions if she does follow.”

“But what if Gidula should kill Father before we get there, because we delayed to fetch this Domino?”

“A large ‘if,’ and large because it contains two,” said the Shadow. “The first if is Gidula’s. He may have already killed your father, months ago. He may kill him five minutes before we land, however fast we scurry. Or he may have melted butter on Donovan’s head, put melons under his arms, and seated him at the right hand of power. Until we know Schrödinger has cut the thread, all possibilities remain open. Ignorance is hope. Beside,” she continued, “the second if belongs to Donovan. Gidula will not kill him until he cracks his memory. But I spend many months with your father, and I know, a little, how his mind works. Well, some of his minds. The scarred man’s egg is not so easily cracked.”

“You don’t think he’d cooperate with Gidula? I mean, if he thinks Gidula plans to overthrow the Names, and he knows the way into the Secret City…”

A shrug. “That secrecy is his life insurance. Once revealed, of what use then, Donovan buigh? He think long and hard which of us he lead inside. If he does start remembering, he will … his phrase, ‘take a hike.’”

“You sound as if you and he planned this all out ahead of time.”

“Ooh, you grant poor Ravn too mooch foorsight. But Donovan is my brother-in-blood. I have died for him, and he put on the shenmat for me. That is…” She waved with her hand as if swatting flies. “You cannot understand such things. I will save him if I can. This I vow on the blood of the Abattoir. But never forget, young harper, this war has larger goals, and the prices for them are higher than his life—or mine.” Her voice had progressively hardened as she spoke. Then the sprightly smile returned. “Now, coome. I shoow you where your father and poor Ravn battle Froog Prince togayther.”