Линда Нагата - Edges

He smiled and nodded as he passed Tarnya and Mikael, walking with arms entwined. Life goes on. People adapt to changing circumstances. At Deception Well, people had learned to co-exist within an ecosystem once considered lethal to human life. The Well’s microscopic governors regulated that system, maintained a balance between competing alien biologies. Urban believed the governors did the same thing here—though no one had ever worked out how. Pasha had often lamented over the elusive nature of the governors and her frustrated attempts to study them…

He halted in the center of the path, staring ahead at nothing.

“You idiot,” he said aloud.

Urban had credited the governors with stopping the expansion of the capsule. Surely there was useful knowledge to be gained by renewing a study of the ancient regulators.

“Riffan, listen to me,” Pasha said, striving to keep her voice even despite her rising impatience. “People have attempted to study the governors for centuries and no one—including me—has ever unraveled the mystery of how they work. You forget that my principal work aboard Long Watch was a study of the bio-machines of the nebula. The governors were only a small part of that.”

“But isn’t now the perfect time to renew that study?”

He looked so earnest, sitting across from her at a low table in the dining pavilion, leaning in with his eagerness to persuade her to take on this hopeless line of inquiry. A slight shake of her head to obscure the smile she could not quite suppress.

Riffan’s general humility was countered by his often incandescent enthusiasms, and now he had seized upon the idea that Pasha could master the superior nanotech of the entity by solving the riddle of the governors.

“It’s fantastical, Riffan, to think I could work out the mechanism of the governors.”

“But isn’t it worth trying, given all that’s at stake?”

Yes, it probably was worth trying, but why was Riffan pushing it? “I thought you wanted to learn to live with the entity,” she said.

“Yes, well… I am very interested in understanding it, in learning its history, and… comprehending its intentions. But that’s best done from a position of strength. Right? And you could help with that, with your study of the governors.”

She sighed, surprised to find herself warming to him. “I’ve missed your optimism,” she said.

His bronze cheeks deepened in color. “Oh, I don’t think I’m—”

“Accept a compliment, Riffan.”

“Oh. All right.” His brow wrinkled. He looked down. Looked up. Looked at her with a pensive gaze. “You believe it’s evil?”

The question startled her, but she didn’t need to consider her answer. “ Yes .”

She’d watched the brief video of its avatar as it had appeared at the Rock, listened to its words and the inflection of its voice, considered the disappearance of Urban’s and Riffan’s avatars, accounted the violence it had used when it stormed Dragon , and also its failure to offer any accord or communication. And she’d concluded it was evil.

Not alien, though. She recognized it as a human thing, but atavistic despite its knowledge and its skills. Brutal. Arrogant. Possessive. Controlling. Fascist . Traits the people of the frontier had tried to leave behind, had needed to leave behind to survive the long voyages and to work successfully together at the arduous task of adapting worlds to human needs.

“I mistrust the idea of compromise,” she told Riffan. “Although so far, compromise is only wishful thinking.”

“You can change that,” he said, returning to a cheerful confidence. “We all can, together, by strengthening our position. Say you’ll do it?”

“I’ll look into it,” she conceded, quite certain she would regret the promise. “Don’t expect anything to come of it.”

“But if it did—”

He broke off, looking up as Bituin, a poet and dramatist, approached their table carrying two large covered platters. Bituin was a skilled cook who’d volunteered to host a luncheon that day.

“My apologies for the wait,” she chirped, skillfully balancing her burden as she knelt.

The grace of her movements, the happy anticipation behind her smile, this luncheon she’d planned—in a moment of insight, Pasha saw in these details a return to normalcy, to the regular rhythms of daily life aboard Dragon , despite the entity’s presence. It was human nature to get on with things.

“This is wonderful,” Riffan said, reaching out to help Bituin. “And you mustn’t apologize.”

“Do be careful,” Bituin scolded him. “The platters are hot. Let me.”

People could remain afraid for only so long. Throughout history, societies had learned to live with the inevitability of earthquakes, volcanic eruption, climatic oscillations, outbreaks of pestilence, and war—whether that meant attack by nomadic warriors armed with spears and arrows or by the ruthless ships of the Chenzeme. A threat not immediately apparent was easy to put out of mind.

Pasha leaned back to give Bituin room to maneuver. She set down the platters and removed their covers with a theatrical flourish, releasing a warm cloud of sweet and sour aromas.

“Oh, it smells wonderful!” Pasha exclaimed.

“Enjoy!”

Pasha resolved that she would enjoy moments such as this, but she was also determined never to forget the threat posed by the entity.

She picked up her chopsticks, reciprocated Riffan’s smile, and split her timeline, transiting to the library before the first bite was in her mouth.

Once there, she summoned the Bio-mechanic and explained her intention.

“Oh yes,” he responded with truly polished sarcasm. “Yes, I do agree. If I knew how to master the governors, I don’t doubt I could master the entity too. But nine hundred years of study and experimentation has not allowed me to emulate their function or reverse engineer their structure. Given that history, I foresee failure for your efforts too.”

His assessment stung, even though it matched her own—but she wasn’t going to let him see that. A disdainful shrug, and then she told him, “It doesn’t take any great insight to foresee defeat. But given the stakes, I think we should try. Why not? It’s one more option to explore—and how sweet it would be for you to win this contest, to prove yourself more adept than the entity—and to actually have a chance to survive.”

He crossed his arms, narrowed his eyes, looked at her with a judgmental expression. “Meaning you want my help in this project.”

“I want to utilize your unmatched expertise. That’s your purpose, isn’t it? The reason for your existence?”

“It’s my pleasure and my joy,” he agreed flatly. “How shall we begin?”

Steady, incremental improvements strengthened the expedition’s arsenal of defensive Makers. Clemantine’s deep dive into the memory of the philosopher cells yielded insights on combative nanotech, Vytet’s team of molecular engineers contributed further improvements in logic, deduction, and adaptability, and the probes and detectors Pasha developed in her otherwise futile work with the governors led to enhanced reaction times.

Still, no one suggested their defensive Makers were ready to turn loose against the entity’s stronghold—but there was no hurry. For over three years, the containment capsule had remained quiescent.

Mockingly quiet , Clemantine thought as she occupied Griffin ’s high bridge. She gazed ahead, twenty thousand kilometers, to the faint spark of Dragon ’s luminous hull, barely discernible against the background stars. The entity seemed unconcerned with their efforts, content to let them puzzle out the challenge it had laid for them.