Линда Нагата - Edges

“Let them do their job,” Kona urged at last.

“All right,” Clemantine conceded.

She grabbed another bun, just one more.

The air cleared. The last few butterflies fluttered away, their mass reabsorbed by the walls as they transited to virtual creatures.

Clemantine closed her eyes, allowing herself a sigh of contentment.

It turned out Urban was not familiar with such a benign emotion. He touched her shoulder. Asked, “Are you all right?”

She opened her eyes again. “I’m good, thank you. No, I’m good thanks to you. Thank you for not forgetting me.”

He grinned. “Forget you? How could I? Anyway, I knew you’d be missing me.”

“Smart ass.”

Vytet raised her arms in an extravagant stretch that emphasized her height and the thinness of her body. “Ah,” she sighed. “It feels good to be real, to exist in this space. I admire the efficiencies of a virtual existence, but I also love being alive.”

“Sooth,” Kona agreed. “This is a good first step. Still a lot of planning and assembly to do.”

“A lot of people to get out of the archive,” Clemantine added. “I think we should start. There’s room. This warren was designed to accommodate twelve.”

Silence, extending across awkward seconds. Frowning, she turned to Urban to find a distracted look on his face as if he’d checked out of the conversation, checked into some other reality. Vytet looked uneasy, twirling the translucent blue shell of an empty bulb in the air.

Only Kona met her gaze. “I want to do the right thing too,” he rumbled. “But we can’t wake everyone. So how do we choose who to wake? And how do we explain that choice later, to those who weren’t chosen? We’d create a situation in which some are seen as privileged over others.”

Clemantine reached out and caught the twirling bulb, annoyed at its carefree motion. “That’s an easy problem to fix. We’ll rotate. Each of us returns to cold sleep after an allotted time, with the choice to continue as a ghost in the library.” She shoved the bulb against the wall, where it was swiftly absorbed.

“That’s not going to work,” Urban said quietly, his gaze still unfocused as if he was somewhere else. “Right now, the library doesn’t have the capacity to support a high-res existence for everyone. The computational strata are being expanded, but—”

“But it will take time ,” Clemantine interrupted, anticipating what he would say because she’d heard it so many times already. “Just like everything else.”

“Yes,” Urban agreed. “This is no easy thing.”

She wrestled her temper down. He was trying. She could not deny it. He was doing what he could, given the unexpected number of recruits. But it was crushing to know the archived ghosts would not even have the choice of a virtual existence.

Moderating her tone, she said, “We could still rotate. Take turns here and in the library. Let people participate in the life of the ship, in the decisions that will need to be made.”

“And if someone refuses to return to cold sleep?” Kona asked her. “If people begin waking out of turn? Once they’re given agency, they’ll be able to do what they want.”

“No,” Urban said, his focus finally returning to the discussion. “I can enforce any restriction.”

Vytet bit a thumbnail, looking worried.

Kona asked, “At what cost? Deprive people of agency and you sow resentment, and dissension.”

Vytet slid her thumbnail out from between her teeth. “We’re better than that,” she argued. “Every archived individual is fifth level. Rational and cooperative. They’ll grasp the necessity of rotation.”

Clemantine sighed, feeling defeated. “I wish it was so,” she said to Vytet. “But we can’t be sure of that.” The idea of further delay vexed her. It was inherently unfair to keep people locked up and helpless in the archive. But Kona had a point.

“I worked security for years,” she reminded them. “Even normal, rational, cooperative people behave in unpredictable ways in extreme circumstances.” She did not want to concede the argument. Still… “Waking in a cramped warren aboard an alien ship to face the consequences of a decision—made in haste—to leave behind loved ones and all that’s familiar, with no way out and no way back, is an extreme circumstance. Who knows how anyone will react?”

Kona was a master politician; easy for him to cast his voice in a grim tone when he said, “All it would take to create a cascade of resentment is one person refusing to return to cold sleep.” He shot a hard look at Urban. “Whether you force the issue or not.”

“I’ll do what’s needed,” Urban responded.

It sounded like a warning. Clemantine heard it that way and felt a need to intervene. “We don’t want to reach that point.”

“Agreed,” Kona said. “Our best path forward is to treat everyone equally.”

Vytet’s fists were shoved deep into the pockets of her tunic. “It’s too late for that. You and Clemantine are exceptions because you were invited by Urban. But I came with the rest. And I’m the only one awake, the only one who can take part in this discussion. It isn’t fair.”

“You’re right,” Kona told her. “It’s not fair, but it’s necessary, because you are the one I trust to design the gee deck.” His gaze shifted to Clemantine and then to Urban. “Let’s focus on that. Get the gee deck designed. Get it built. Then bring everyone out simultaneously into a comfortable environment, one they can begin to think of as home—and we’ll all be better off in the end.”

Urban looked irritated and a little puzzled. “You understand it could take years to finish the gee deck?” he asked.

“ Years? ” Clemantine echoed in disbelief.

He looked at her, the intensity of his gaze reminding her of the Engineer. “If we encroach too quickly into Chenzeme territory, we risk igniting a molecular war.”

She turned to Kona. “ Years ,” she said, the word feeling toxic in her mouth.

Kona looked disgruntled. “That’s a disappointment,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t change the argument.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No. I don’t. We’ll be centuries on this voyage. A few initial years invested in setting up our infrastructure won’t make any difference in the long run.”

Logically, that was true. But it felt wrong. Clemantine looked around their small circle, still half-expecting someone else to voice an objection—but who would? Not Urban. He met her gaze with a stony, resentful stare. Vytet wouldn’t look at her at all: hands still deep in her pockets, shoulders hunched, gaze averted, body language that declared she’d removed herself from this decision.

“Years,” Clemantine said once more, this time in resignation.

“It’ll be all right,” Kona said. “People will understand.”

Clemantine raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“It’ll be all right,” he said again.

Urban kept watch from the high bridge, cognizant of the grandeur around him: distant blue suns, furiously bright, illuminating nebulas light years across; the perfect repeating rhythm of pulsars; streamers of cold dust longer than he could transit in ten thousand years; the remote electromagnetic cacophony of star death at the galactic center.

And always, he remained mindful of the nearest stars and of the ship’s precise position among them.

Dragon had coasted as it left the vicinity of Deception Well, its velocity less than five percent light speed, allowing the fleet of outriders to catch up and then to move ahead into their customary formation: a long, staggered line around Dragon ’s vector of travel. Khonsu was now closest, then Artemis , Lam Lha , Pytheas , and Elepaio , with Fortuna in the lead. Ninety light-minutes between each ship: a vanguard to warn him of hazards to come.