Линда Нагата - Edges

Naresh said, “We’ll do the calculations, but I suspect you’re right.”

Hours later, Pasha emerged from the night-dark pavilion into real night. She felt giddy with excitement. Lifting her face to an artificial sky bright with projected stars, she twirled like a child, laughing.

Tarnya laughed with her. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” she said. “To know it’s not all dust, that something is out there.”

“I’m a horrible person,” Pasha confessed in a stage whisper. “What we saw in there was the shattered tomb of millions, billions, maybe more… but it’s amazing all the same.”

“The ruins of gods,” Tarnya teased. “Who knows what we’ll find there?”

Pasha pulled up abruptly, her ardor cooling. “If we go there.”

Tarnya frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The last time I checked, our course was set for a close pass of Tanjiri System, like the close pass Urban made at Deception Well.”

Both queried the library, confirming this. The fleet was not on course to enter the system.

“I think we were only waiting for confirmation that something is there,” Tarnya said, waving at someone. She looked at Pasha in apology. “I need to speak to Bituin.”

“Go ahead. We’ll meet later.”

People were leaving the pavilion in small groups, chattering and debating with each other. Pasha looked for Urban, but did not see him. Maybe he had left early.

She checked the personnel map. It showed him at the cottage he shared with Clemantine. She arrived there to find the gel door open, the living room glowing with soft light. Urban was inside, half-reclined on the sofa, watching her with an unnerving fixed stare as she crossed the patio. This annoyed her. She wondered what game he was playing.

But when she reached the threshold, she saw his eyes weren’t tracking her. His face looked vacant, giving her the unsettling impression that although his avatar was present, he was somewhere else.

But even if that was so, surely some part of his mind, or a submind, monitored what passed around him?

She called to him from the threshold. “Hello, Urban? Can we talk?”

To her relief, his eyes shifted at the sound of her voice. He sat up. His gaze focused on her, and a slight, cynical, lopsided smile appeared on his face.

He said, “You want to talk about Tanjiri, don’t you? Come on in.”

She straightened her shoulders and stepped inside, striving to present a strong, confident front. “You’ve seen the new imagery. We have to go there. This is why we came.”

His smile widened. “Is that what the ship’s company wants? Is there consensus on that?”

He was teasing her, payback for her criticism of him that first day. She answered in a neutral voice. “I think we were all too excited to discuss it.”

“Well, you’ve got time.”

That was true! There was so much time left to endure before they got there.

“It’ll take even longer than you’re expecting,” he said. “We’ll have to dump velocity as we get close. Go in slowly.”

“Understood. And we’ll need to take the time to carefully map every object. But it’s worth it, isn’t it? We’ll never know the truth if we limit ourselves to a fly-by, standing off at a distance that keeps us safe.”

“We’re not safe,” he reminded her.

She shrugged, unwilling to play word games. “I think we should spend time in this system. It’s why we came.”

Urban’s ghost streamed in from the returning outrider, Elepaio . Rejoining with his core self, he possessed the memories of both timelines. He had been present when Griffin was captured, the outriders rebuilt, the gee deck finished, the ship’s company resurrected, and a consensus reached to keep Tanjiri as their first destination. He had also been present at the Rock when the marooned entity spoke to him. Both pasts equally real and already integrated into the totality of his experiences.

Riffan’s ghost would follow him in, and then the rest of the data gathered during the fly-by.

He turned to Clemantine, who lay asleep beside him in the bed they shared in her cottage. It was ship’s night outside. Quiet but for a few crickets, and dark. If lights were on in the other cottages, they were hidden behind window screens. He triggered a slight glow in the walls, enough to see her shape. He kissed her cheek until she awoke.

“What is it?” she murmured.

He purred deep in his throat, and then confessed, “God, I’ve missed you.”

She pushed him away, far enough that she could sit up. “You’re back, aren’t you? Tell me what you saw.”

So he did, while the data streamed in—chemical analyses, spectral analyses, log files, video, and his own brief summary of his findings—all downloading into Dragon ’s library.

Clemantine willed the lights to a brighter setting. She studied him, looking skeptical, worried. “I don’t like to think of your avatar gone like that, into the hands of some… monster .”

“I terminated.”

“You know that?”

“You know I would have.”

“But there’s no record of it. No data on how you were taken down—and that leaves us vulnerable. Without data on what happened, how do we improve our defenses for the next time?”

That was the problem he’d been wrestling with throughout the return journey—and not much to show for it. But he was saved from having to answer when a query reached his atrium. “Hold on,” he told her. “Vytet wants to talk. I’ll link you in.” Then to Vytet, “Go ahead.”

“I’ve read your summary,” Vytet said—a feminine voice tonight, though her tone was flat. A mask for anxiety? “I think we’ve got an immediate problem.”

“What kind of a problem?” Urban asked. “The data’s not corrupt?”

“No. The data is good, what I’ve seen of it, anyway. I haven’t had time to go over it in detail, but so far it all—”

“What’s the problem, Vytet?” Clemantine said, cutting her off.

An audible sigh. “The mission summary. It concerns me. The shipwrecks—at least the two human ships—Urban, you think those crews scuttled their ships to keep the entity from escaping.”

“Yes. That’s how it looked.”

“But you got away untouched?”

“ Yes , because only the probe went into the system. Elepaio never got close. No data viruses got into the library.”

“Yes,” Vytet said, and now she sounded impatient. “Yes, all that should have meant you were clean, but there is a glamour surrounding the returning outrider.”

Clemantine looked at Urban, her fine eyebrows raised in question. “A glamour?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

“Come to the library,” Vytet said. “I’ll show you.”

Vytet had become a female version of the dark-haired man she’d been, her black eyes glittering as she turned to greet Urban and Clemantine. The Apparatchiks were with her in the library, all six of them. A rare gathering, signaling a critical issue.

“Here,” Vytet said, gesturing at a large frameless window. “Have a look.”

Like all the outriders, Elepaio was stealthed. As it returned to the fleet, its position had been unknown until the data came in. But as soon as Vytet received its position information, she’d turned Dragon ’s telescopes on it.

The image she’d captured showed the expected faint infrared signature of Elepaio ’s hull, but there was also an indistinct blur encircling the bow.

“It’s not surprising you didn’t notice it,” Vytet said. “The outrider’s hull cameras are designed to see distant objects. This… fog , this mist, I think it’s indicative of something caught in the field of Elepaio ’s reef and energized by that interaction. The outrider is so small, you see, that the reef’s effect extends beyond its hull.”