Линда Нагата - Edges

Clemantine hated the philosopher cells, hated interacting with them, but the strength of her hate made them amenable to her will.

She learned to perceive as they did, through the senses of the ship: the carefully nurtured vitality of the reef; the burn of dust against the hull field; the slight gravitational perturbation generated by the closest outrider and the occasional incoming bursts of laser communications that marked its position; the population of stars in the Near Vicinity; the chaotic radio chatter of background radiation.

She sensed the link to the gamma-ray gun. Explored a memory of a time—she guessed it was long ago—when the gun had been used against another ship, one vastly larger even than Dragon . She felt the excitement of the philosopher cells, their frantic demand to

Suppressing a mental shudder, she diverted the cells from the violence of that memory by giving them a task. A simple task, but it was the first time she exerted her will on them.

She asked them to push Dragon ’s velocity a little higher, just to do it, to know that she could.

She thought: – go –

Lightly, easily.

In response, a spike of awareness: Urban shadowing her, his concern for what she was doing. But he said nothing, nor tried to interfere.

Again, she thought: – go –

The cells responded, commanding just a tiny pull of acceleration from the reef. She felt it as a shift, a sense of falling forward, so slight she wondered if it would even be noticed in the warren. But then she suppressed that thought, not wanting to distract the cells.

Enough , she decreed.

The acceleration ceased, but Dragon ’s velocity was now slightly higher. Urban issued an order to the outriders to boost their velocity to match.

Clemantine visited the high bridge often during the second year of the voyage, but never alone. “You’re always there,” she mused, lying entwined with Urban one morning. “Your ghost, always present. You must get tired of it. You have to find it…” She groped for the right words. “Emotionally exhausting,” she decided.

“Did you want to take over?” he asked with that familiar taunting smile. “Hijack my ship?”

“Mind reader.”

He chuckled. “You’ve learned everything I know.”

“No, that’s not true.”

Still, she’d learned a lot. She’d skimmed the ship’s history, delved into its systems, interviewed the Apparatchiks, and refined her control of the philosopher cells.

She had needed to verify all those systems to truly trust him.

And I do .

She kissed his cheek and sniggered.

“What?” he demanded.

“Just remembering what an asshole you used to be when you were younger.”

He chuckled some more. “Come on. You found me entertaining.”

“Always,” she agreed.

A comfortable silence followed, one she eventually interrupted with a softly spoken promise, “We’ll have years together.”

“Sooth,” he agreed, sounding half asleep. But then his eyelids fluttered, his brows knit in a suspicious scowl.

She said, “I’m going into cold sleep.”

His eyes snapped open. “ No .”

“Yes. I’m going to skip ahead to when the engineering phase of the gee deck is done. The Engineer estimates two more years to finish the assembly of the inner cylinder, the rotational mechanism, the permanent supply lines, the heat sinks. Then it’ll be my turn to assemble the interior landscape.”

The Bio-mechanic had warned her it would take an additional year to complete the interior and lay in material reserves. After that, they would finally be able to waken their company of archived ghosts.

She said, “I’m looking forward to the future, Urban. I’m eager to start my project. So I’m going to jump to that point in time.”

“But what am I supposed to do while you’re down?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s just two years. Aren’t you the one who voyaged alone across six centuries?”

He sighed a heartfelt sigh. “I was younger, then.”

“You’ll get by,” she assured him. “You’ll be there on the high bridge whether I’m awake or not, whether I’m there or not. Nothing will change. And if you need to, you’ll adjust your time sense so the years don’t burden you. I know you’ve done it before.”

He sighed again, gazing at her unhappily. “The times in between matter too.”

“We’ll have time,” she insisted. “We’ll be okay.”

Time heals all .

It is an ancient aphorism that surfaces in your mind as if by chance.

You are aware that a billion seconds have gone by since you resolved to take revenge. A billion seconds spent in reconstruction of your ravaged memories.

A billion seconds.

More than enough to know that time does not heal all, that it cannot, because the circumstances that created you will not exist again in any future you can foresee.

Judged strictly, the aphorism is false.

You understand though that the aphorism is not meant as a binary true/false statement. Instead, it is intended as encouragement in the process of recovering from grievous emotional wounds. That you are aware of this distinction reflects the progress of your own slow recovery.

You walk the tunnels that honeycomb the cold crust of your world; miles of tunnels restored or rebuilt. Thousands of miles more lie still in ruins but you will get to them in time, if time allows. At this time, you focus your mind on what you’ve accomplished, not what remains to be done.

Re-grown in ordered ranks on walls and ceiling, are the thin, crystalline leaves of your computational strata. Now, as always, your mind works to gather scraps of data and memories from the ruins.

You organize what you find, analyzing and testing as you do so, seeking to place it all again into proper context although with no outside means to cross-check results, you know there will be errors.

Still, you do your best and second by second your mind recovers. You remember more and more. You are capable of more and more.

Another billion seconds, and you have used resources stored in the subterranean ocean to grow telescopes, and subsurface silos to house them. When the silos open, you look out on the cosmos for the first time since she destroyed you. You map the position of your world and realize: There is not time enough .

You are light years from anywhere. No star holds you within its gravity well. She has cast you away, flung your world into the void. You are alone, alone, alone. Stranded, with no way back.

Terror stirs deep within the biological structure of your ancestral mind. You experience it and then the sense of shame that follows it—shame of both your fear and your defeat.

You could cut both fear and shame from your persona but why would you? The old passions sustain you. They give you all the reason you need to go on. So you remind yourself that her cruelty, her jealousy, her fury, marooned you here.

This helps to focus your mind.

You continue your observations. You hunt through your shattered memories, seeking astronomical data and eventually you are able to recognize the closest stars, map their relative positions, and determine your precise location in both space and time.

Quite a lot of time has passed, but less than you would have guessed.

In the course of your astronomical survey you observe a hint, a glint, a tiny reflection where you are sure no reflection should be. For eight and a half million seconds you watch it as it moves against the background stars.

Does she regret her fury? Has she sent some monstrous servant to look for you, to fetch you back? No . Wishful thinking, that.