Линда Нагата - Edges

People joined them as they walked, far more than Pasha expected to see. Urban had said he wanted up to twelve volunteers… but there were so many more. Where had they come from? Why were they here?

Among those she recognized were scientists, historians, and a scout famous from her explorations of Deception Well’s planetary surface. Others were strangers. Without a network connection her atrium could not query theirs for an identity.

She approached them anyway, she approached everyone, asking if they had a network connection. No one did.

Pasha wondered again if they really were aboard Dragon . Amid the low buzz of conversation that surrounded her, she heard that question asked again and again by others.

Before long, the path wended around a lattice wall, and then they reached a pavilion where many more people were already gathering. At the center of the pavilion was a large oval pergola covered in neat vines bearing little star-shaped flowers. The pergola sheltered a small amphitheater with a low dais facing four curved tiers of seats.

Riffan was there, smiling, urging the new arrivals to take seats as if he was some kind of authority, someone who knew what was going on. This did not sit well with Pasha. It offended her to be kept in the dark like a child. She meant to demand an explanation, but as she started toward him, those who had arrived ahead of her moved inside and she saw that Urban was also standing there.

Urban, who was master of Dragon , to whom they had all entrusted their lives. Better to direct her questions at him.

She separated herself from the anxious swirl of her friends and angled toward him. But after a few steps, she realized she was mistaken. This tall man with the dark complexion was Kona, not Urban. He beckoned to her… no, to everyone in her group. “Please,” he told them, “no questions yet. Take a seat and everything will be explained.”

Pasha was tempted to question him anyway, but a woman just behind her spoke first. “Kona! By the Waking Light, it’s a comfort to see you here! But what is this place? Are we really aboard Dragon ?”

Pasha looked over her shoulder, identifying the speaker as the planetary scout.

Kona knew her by name. “Greetings, Shoran,” he said. There was fondness in his voice, but he put her off anyway. “Everything will be explained. Please take a seat.”

Shoran’s chin lowered, her eyes narrowed in a combative expression.

“Please,” Kona said in an undertone. “I need your cooperation, your example. Things have not gone quite as we expected.”

“That’s easy to see,” Shoran replied tartly. Her gaze shifted as she took in Pasha watching her. Their eyes met. Shoran inclined her head: an invitation. “Come,” she said to Pasha as if they were friends though they’d never met. “Let’s cooperate for now. We can conspire to revolution later, if the explanation does not suit.”

Pasha went with her reluctantly, leaving Kona to face his next interrogator. But then Shoran, who was a tall woman, recognized someone over the heads of those looking for seats. “Mikael!” she called out in profound relief. “There you are!” She stopped to wave.

Pasha went ahead on her own. The sooner everyone was settled, the sooner they would all learn the truth.

She took a seat in the first row, nodding to the woman on her right whom she recognized as a politician, one who’d served on Silk’s city council.

“I’m Tarnya,” the woman said, her voice rich and pleasant and possessing an equanimity absent from nearly everyone else.

“Pasha.” They gently bumped knuckles. Then Pasha turned to the stocky man seated on her left, whom she’d met before. “Alkimbra, isn’t it?” she asked, remembering he was a historian, but not knowing much else about him.

“You’re Pasha, right?” he asked as they touched knuckles. “I’m here because a friend forwarded a copy of the announcement you sent.” He gestured—at the auditorium, or the gee deck around it, or perhaps the whole strange situation. “This is not what I expected. Do you know—?”

“I don’t,” she interrupted. “I don’t know any more than you do.”

She turned her attention to the dais, deliberately ending the exchange, fretting that she could somehow be blamed for this situation—and on the dais she saw Urban. This time, she was certain it was him.

The dais was backed by a projection wall, deep black, showing nothing. Urban leaned against it, arms crossed, gaze focused on the stage in front of his feet. Looking sullen. Otherwise, exactly as he’d looked when she’d seen him on Long Watch .

Clemantine was nearby. She stood to one side of the dais in the company of a tall, gaunt man with black hair long enough to tie at the nape of his neck, and the unsettling, anachronistic embellishment of a short but heavy beard. Something about him—though certainly not the beard—made him seem familiar to Pasha, as if he was someone she ought to know. Another member of the founding generation, she suspected.

Behind her, the sound of shuffling feet and low, worried voices, as the seats filled in. People were still coming in. She was amazed at how many. She tried to count heads. At least forty-five. Or fifty? Maybe more.

Kona’s low commanding voice rose easily over the background noise. “Find a seat,” he warned. “You’ll want to be sitting down when you hear this.” He joined Clemantine beside the dais, studying the gathering. Pasha glanced back, to see that the seats behind her had all filled in. People hushed one another. When the last murmurings ceased, Kona turned to the dais. “Urban? We’re all here.”

Only then did Urban look up. Warily, he eyed the gathering. A glance at Clemantine, and then he straightened and uncrossed his arms. “It’s taken some time for us to reach this point,” he said, speaking loudly so that he could be easily heard throughout the gathering. He stepped to the side of the dais as the projection wall lit up behind him, white on black, displaying a simplified star chart with only a few features labeled.

Pasha studied the chart. She noted the position of Deception Well, skipped over the grouped stars labeled as the Committee, and jumped across the screen to Tanjiri and Ryo, two outlying stars of the Hallowed Vasties. Dragon was also marked on the chart, but the ship’s position made no sense. It was shown to be a full eighty percent of the way to those first stars of the Hallowed Vasties and that was absurd.

Pasha looked next at the top of the star chart where there was a label that read Today’s Date . Numerals followed, though it took a few seconds for her to make sense of them. She leaned forward, hugging herself, her queasiness rising again as she did the math.

If that date was real, then three hundred ninety-three years had elapsed since she’d sent her ghost to Dragon , and they were only a little more than a century away from the edge of the Hallowed Vasties.

A gasp from Tarnya beside her. More gasps and inarticulate cries of shock from across the gathering. Pasha rose to her feet. Fist clenched, she cried out, “You had no right!”

Tarnya was on her feet too, saying, “You must explain this!” Her voice discernible among a chorus of protests only because she was close by.

Looking deeply irritated, Urban stalked across the dais. Of all the raucous crowd, he focused his gaze on Pasha and in a voice strong enough to rise over the noise, he said, “It was necessary.”

Pasha took this as a challenge, took a step forward. The crowd quieted behind her. “Necessary to leave us archived and helpless for almost four hundred years?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

She shook her head. She could not accept this, did not want to. To keep them archived—and for so long!—was an outrageous violation of every person’s natural right of self-determination and it left her frightened for the future. Urban was the mind of the ship; he was its master. He held all actual power, leaving the rest of them to live at his discretion.