Линда Нагата - Edges

The Bio-mechanic summed it up: “She wants to be very sure she has not been misled.”

“I haven’t misled her,” Urban said.

The Bio-mechanic smiled coldly. “Not in any critical way.”

Urban had shown Clemantine the structure of the ship: its layers, its immense propulsion reef, its dual telescopes.

She’d questioned him on how well the ship could track activity in the region around it. He’d hidden nothing about the process, explaining, “The philosopher cells keep watch on the Near Vicinity. I can ride their senses, see what they see, but it’s a general view. Minimal magnification. Long-range sight comes through the scopes. Dragon ’s instruments are good, but the seeing is exponentially better when I digitally integrate them with telescopes on the outriders. That lets me create a virtual lens light-hours in size.”

The reason for her particular interest became clear when she’d asked her next question—the question he’d dreaded. “How often have you seen other Chenzeme ships?”

Long ago, Clemantine had watched helplessly from a far orbital outpost as two Chenzeme swan bursters swept in from the void to destroy her home world of Heyertori, her family gone with it, and most of the people she’d ever known.

She hated the Chenzeme, feared any encounter with their robotic ships. Urban knew it had taken heroic courage for her to come to Dragon . He worried she would back out if she knew what was to come.

So he’d edited two ancient log files to conceal a few critical details of his return voyage, and he’d evaded her question, responding with a question of his own. “You looked over the library files… right?”

An ambiguous answer that had earned a sharp response: “I haven’t had time to examine everything in detail.”

But then in a softer tone she’d added, “A DI is analyzing the files, but for myself, I’ve only skimmed the summaries. I’m not sure how much I want to know about that life I never lived.”

He understood her caution. The decisions, the actions, the experiences of her other self existed now only as historical events, over and done. She could not change any of it. And still, it was history she’d lived, witnessed, endured—been responsible for—and some of it was ugly. She would have guessed that from his silence. No wonder she was afraid.

“You’re right,” he told her. “There’s no need to go back there. Better just to let it go.”

Her sharp tone returned. “You think so? Why? Did I fail along the way? Do something to regret?”

Of course she would twist his words! He had wanted to divert the conversation but not in that direction.

“ No ,” he said. “You did all you could. We all did. Sometimes you just can’t win. Not the whole game. Not the round that matters most. No one could have changed it, but in the end we learned to beat the Chenzeme.” A vague gesture. “ Dragon is proof of that.”

“Was it worth it, then?” she asked. “Would you do it again?”

“Hell, yes, I would. You would too. We all would. What was the alternative? Hunker down at the Well for ten thousand years of cold sleep? We had our freedom at least, to change, to become what we needed to be. And we did. And you and me, we’re both still out there living some other life. A good life. It looked like it would be a good life. You can’t have everything.”

But she was still circling around her fear of the timeline she’d never lived. “It got brutal at the end, didn’t it?”

“Sooth. And I did what I had to do. It was the right thing to do, the only thing to do—but that last day will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

He knew she hadn’t accessed the privileged data cache that recorded the details of those last days because he’d assigned a DI to alert him if she did. So he’d braced himself, certain she would ask what had happened, how it had ended. But she didn’t.

Instead she had returned to the other subject he did not want to discuss. “After I left you to return to the Well, I never saw a sign of the Chenzeme. I was running dark though, and I didn’t have an array of telescopes. You’ve seen other ships, haven’t you?”

“Sure,” he’d said cautiously. Then added, “Not often.” And that was true.

To his surprise and relief, she had accepted this answer. It was what she wanted to hear. She had assumed he would go dark and keep his distance if ever he sighted another Chenzeme ship—and she had pressed the issue no further.

Now, hours later, the Bio-mechanic said, “This ship is not a closed system. Eventually someone will think to ask how resources are renewed.”

Urban shrugged.

The Bio-mechanic translated this vague response into words: “By then it will be too late. No going back.”

“It’s already too late,” the Pilot informed them. “By the time a ghost could relay back through the chain of outriders, the link to Long Watch will be lost.”

“She doesn’t want to go back,” Urban insisted. “She’s made up her mind.” Guilt tweaked his conscience. “I’ll restore the modified log files. Later.”

“Are we going to go through the Committee?” Kona asked when they were all back in the library again and Urban had introduced him to the Pilot.

The Committee was a cluster of neighboring stars easily visible in Deception Well’s night sky, where there had once been several settled worlds.

Kona added, “I’d like to know if anyone is still there.”

“I’d like to know too,” Urban said. “And if I had more resources I’d send an outrider to investigate. But I don’t want to take the courser there. Too many Chenzeme ships have visited those worlds. I’ve relived memories of it when I’ve been immersed in the hull cells’ shared thoughts. If anyone is left, they’ll stay silent. They’ll see a courser and they won’t respond except maybe to launch an automated attack. So why frighten them?”

“You’d frighten them less if you destroyed the hull cells and sculpted this ship into something human,” Clemantine pointed out. Nothing in her manner suggested this was a joke.

“I don’t want to look like something human—not while I’m still in Chenzeme space.” His attention shifted as an update reached him.

“What is it?” Clemantine asked.

“We’ve got twelve ghosts in the archive and another coming through.”

“That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“I was expecting ten or twelve.”

“Word must have spread,” Kona said. “Pasha picked up a few extra volunteers. I’m not surprised. It’s an exciting project.”

It was more than he’d expected.

The thirteenth ghost cycled into the archive. A fourteenth began to come in. He waved off the Pilot. Brought back the Engineer and the Bio-mechanic.

The Apparatchiks did not have access to Urban’s thoughts and memories but they were derived from him, knew him well, and generally intuited what he was thinking. “You want to know how many individuals the new habitat can support,” the Bio-mechanic said before Urban could present the problem.

“The warren is designed for a population of fifteen,” the Engineer reported.

But the fifteenth ghost was now arriving. Add Urban, Clemantine, and Kona to that count, and the capacity of the warren was already exceeded.

It was far too late to send a stop order. Light-hours separated Dragon from Khonsu , the trailing ship in the outrider fleet.

“You could close the data gate,” the Bio-mechanic suggested.

“No!” Clemantine snapped. “This is not just random data. We’re talking about people. They could be expecting to meet friends, family. We’re not going to erase them.”