Линда Нагата - Edges

Lezuri stepped down from the dais. Leaned in to whisper to Urban, who drew back, looking unsettled. The entity turned again to the gathering. Many in the front row had left their seats to converge around him, but he gestured them back, waving away another flurry of questions.

“Wonders lie ahead of us,” he announced, “but only if we reach agreement on the best direction of our endeavors.”

“ What? ” Pasha demanded in frustration. She had left her seat to stand on tiptoe at the edge of the throng that clustered around Lezuri. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Clemantine stood again too. Her height let her see over everyone crowding the aisle; she glimpsed Lezuri, already outside, striding swiftly away across the pavilion, several among the ship’s company trailing in his wake.

Pasha turned to her, demanded to know, “Did anything uttered by that creature make any sense at all?”

Tarnya stepped up, one of many who’d descended from the back rows. Hesitantly, she said, “I felt it was weaving a narrative meant to lead our attention along a desired path—until the mention of Tanjiri.”

“It doesn’t want us to go there,” Pasha said.

Clemantine stared after it. “That was my impression too.”

“It’s afraid of something there,” Pasha decided. “It’s going to lobby for some other destination. Let’s agree right now that we are not going to be persuaded.”

Clemantine looked for Urban, saw him over the throng. He stood with arms crossed, scowling at Vytet, clearly resisting an argument. Naresh joined them, gesturing for emphasis. Clemantine was well aware of their sympathies. Both would be working to persuade Urban to compromise with the entity.

Discussion swirled on all sides as more people came down from the back rows, crowding into the narrow space before the seats and standing on the dais. Their discussions devolved into arguments that swiftly grew heated. The tone set Clemantine on edge. In the confined world of the gee deck, there was no room for such a level of animosity or bitter disagreement.

She turned defensively at the sound of harsh words from Pasha.

“Riffan, you are obsessed with this thing! You of all people! You were at the Rock. You know what it’s capable of—”

“His name is Lezuri,” Riffan interrupted, eyeing Pasha with an amused half-smile, entirely unmoved by her anger. “And when we met him at the Rock, he was desperate. He’d been marooned there for centuries.”

“How did he come to be marooned?” Tarnya asked. “And why? ‘One whom I loved betrayed me.’ That is a diversion. It’s not an explanation.”

“He has begun to tell us,” Riffan said, in the grip of a giddy good mood. “This is a good thing, a wondrous thing. We have entered into discussions that will surely lead us to a peaceful resolution and there will be so much we can learn. We will be so much better prepared to meet what lies out there, ahead of us, in the Hallowed Vasties.”

Pasha dismissed all of this with a snort. “He has said a lot without saying much. I found him arrogant and condescending. He is clearly using us for his own purposes. If you can’t see that, Riffan, then you are a fool.”

“I am a fool!” Riffan conceded with a laugh. “But I am a fool who has begun to glimpse the story behind the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties.”

“But that’s just it,” Tarnya said. “Lezuri told us a story. It was nothing more than that. He offered no proof as to the truth of his words. No evidence—”

“Just the ring of truth!” Riffan sang out, gesturing with one hand. “The evidence of his long experience.”

“You are an idiot,” Pasha concluded.

Clemantine heard snatches of similar, heated discussions as she worked to extricate herself from the crowd. The ship’s company swiftly self-sorted into two loose federations: those who hoped for the best and those who expected the worst.

Clemantine had seen too much in her long life to be optimistic now.

Vytet was on the dais, urging people back to their seats, trying to call the assembly back to order. The ensuing discussion would surely go on for hours.

She looked for Urban, saw him with Kona just outside the amphitheater, their heads together in close discussion. Kona looked up to scan the crowd. His gaze found hers. He said something to Urban.

A moment later, Urban messaged her: *Come home. We need to talk .

A confrontation would come. Clemantine felt sure of it as she hurried along the path to her cottage, leaving behind the hubbub of the amphitheater. The Bio-mechanic had accepted the task of surreptitiously preparing the sequence of kinetic countermeasures detailed in Pasha’s confidential plan. They had named that plan the Pyrrhic Defense, acknowledging the terrible damage the ship would suffer when they made the decision to launch. A reckoning was coming, and no telling how things would unfold from there.

The personnel map showed Urban and Kona already at the cottage. As Clemantine crossed the patio to join them, a submind reached her, generated by her ghost on Dragon ’s bridge. A memory unfolded. The Bio-mechanic had messaged both her and Urban: *I traced the path the entity’s avatar took through the ship’s tissue. I found its point of origin—an undefended cocoon. Not empty. Another avatar is already growing, but I will destroy it.

*No! Urban snapped. *Watch it. Understand it. But don’t interfere.

The gel door pulled back to admit her. She stepped over the threshold into the sparsely appointed front room of her cottage. The sofa by the side window was gone, making room for a low central table. Urban and Kona sat silently on opposite sides, a tea service steaming between them. On the honey-colored side table, her colony of irises had just reached their bloom, the subtle sweet scent of the freshly opened flowers mingling with the warm spicy odor of the tea.

Kona looked up, acknowledging her with a nod as she settled cross-legged onto a cushion.

Urban was brooding or lost in the tumult of his subminds, she couldn’t tell, but his gaze remained fixed on the steaming teapot.

“So now you know where the avatar was grown,” Clemantine said as privacy screens slid closed, cutting off the leaf-tinted afternoon light. “He won’t surprise you again.”

Urban looked up. Met her gaze. “You don’t think he could hide it again, if he wants to? No, he’s taunting me. He wants me to know just how vulnerable I really am. All these years trying to beat Lezuri’s defenses and nothing to show for it.”

Kona picked up the teapot, his dark, long-fingered hands pouring golden tea into white ceramic cups. Steam furled. He said, “He’s left us alive. He’s let us thrive.” He handed a cup to Clemantine, slid one across the table to Urban. “He’s never challenged your authority over the ship—until today. Today this became a political game.”

“Sooth,” Clemantine said. “Lezuri showed a talent for persuasion. It won’t be long until he convinces a majority of the ship’s company that he is here for our good.”

Urban stared into his tea as if to read the foretellings in the stray leaves gathered at the bottom of his cup. He remained master of the ship, but if he lost the consensus of the majority he would be in the unpleasant position of either forcefully imposing his will or yielding his autonomy.

Clemantine knew him well enough to know he could find neither option acceptable.

“What is he after?” Urban asked, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. “I thought he wanted the ship, wanted a way off the Rock, and we’re still alive only because Griffin has the last word.”