Линда Нагата - Edges

Her golden-brown cheeks warmed with a flush. “ No . Urban…” Her eyes glistened. “I never thought to see him again. I never thought I’d see any of you. But if I’d ever considered that only one of you might make it back, I would have guessed it’d be you.” Her voice shifted, becoming low and feral: “But a Chenzeme warship, Urban. No one else—”

“That’s right,” he interrupted. “No one else dared to do it, to come all this way in a Chenzeme ship. Not even that other version of you. But here you are on a different timeline.” He reached out a hand to her. “Maybe you’ll make a different choice.”

To his surprise, she took his hand, pulled him into a tight embrace. He reciprocated, the warm scent of her an aphrodisiac exploding across his brain. He kissed her neck, her face. He remembered the pretty chains of tiny gold irises tattooed on the edges of her small ears; he found them and kissed those too. Glittering tears broke free and writhed in the cool air.

“This avatar is not really you, is it?” she asked.

“No. It is me. This is the core.” He got his hand up under her shirt, kissed the corner of her mouth. “ Please ,” he whispered. “Have mercy for once. It’s been a thousand years.”

Her throaty chuckle jacked him even harder than he’d been before. Unbearable.

The chamber shrank around them, squeezing out the glint of camera eyes, leaving them enclosed in a hollow just large enough to contain them. No way out. No way in.

Clemantine helped him peel off the thin layer of her clothing and then they locked together, his fingers embedded like claws in the soft wall to hold their position, her fingers hard against his back. Reminding one another of what it was to be physical beings, man and woman. To be alive.

Later, but still too soon, he told her, “I’ve got only hours before I have to go.”

He held her close, her body against his, a physical connection unbroken since they’d begun.

She leaned back in his arms and eyed him sleepily. “You have forever,” she countered. “You’re home. This avatar, anyway. This is your home.”

“No. I won’t stay.” Her body tensed in his arms, her embrace tightened as if she would hold him there. “I made that decision long ago,” he reminded her. “I’m here now for you—and to trade information. I’ve already transferred the full history of our expedition. Now I need data from Silk’s library. Everything known about the Hallowed Vasties. Their history, and current observations. I’ve got only hours to make the exchange. You’re tracking the courser so you know this is a fly-by. I wish it could be longer, but it would have taken years to dump enough velocity to achieve orbit—and if I’d tried it, this warship or the other one would have blown me up.”

“You sent the swarm ships instead,” she mused. “We thought they were some kind of weapon, plague ships maybe.”

“Just communications relays to extend my reach, give me more hours here.”

She shook her head. Sighed deeply. “ Damn you, Urban. After so many centuries, to have no time. And you don’t stay, you won’t leave even a ghost. Because no version of you wants to be trapped here?”

“Sooth,” he agreed.

Bitter now: “Some things never change.”

“You know me, Clemantine. I’m in possession of an immensely fast and powerful starship. What version of me would ever give that up?”

She sighed again. “No version I know. So you’re going there? To the Hallowed Vasties?”

He nodded, wanting her to share his excitement. “Our origin lies in the Hallowed Vasties. Our beginning, our earliest days. But it’s all changed. All of it unknown now. That makes it a new frontier, an inverted frontier, because the unexplored region lies inward from the edge of settled space. I want to see what’s there, what’s left, voyage all the way to Earth if I can.”

The outward migration from Earth had unfolded over thousands of years. Robotic probes went first, exploring and mapping tens of thousands of stellar systems, looking for those with sterile worlds orbiting within habitable zones. Those worlds were re-engineered, made viable and beautiful for the people who came to possess them.

It was as if the galaxy had been given to humankind by an unknown god, theirs to nurture and to slowly fill with new generations.

Frontier populations were never great in number, but they were enough that an innate restlessness drove some portion of them onward to still newer worlds. Always, they were the individuals who made a choice to engage in life, in the reality of physical existence.

That choice served as a filter in a selection process dividing them from those who chose to stay.

And when they looked back across space and time, they wondered what they’d left behind as megastructures enclosed the stars of the earliest inhabited systems.

On the frontier, those distant star systems came to be known as the Hallowed Vasties. Frightening rumors crossed the void, describing a behavioral virus run wild, one that spurred massive population growth and an evolutionary leap to a group mind, a Communion that was more than human.

Too far away to worry about. That was the consensus on the frontier and people pushed on—until the Chenzeme warships found them.

In those tumultuous centuries as the frontier collapsed, the Hallowed Vasties too began to fail. The stars that had been hidden within cordons of matter emerged again, and no one knew why.

Urban wanted to know why. It was the goal he had set for himself: to learn what had happened to the Hallowed Vasties and what was left. If there were only remnants and ruins, he wanted to see them. If something had grown up from the ruins, he wanted to see that too. He wanted to see it all with his own eyes.

“I’ve watched the Vasties for centuries,” he told Clemantine. “Every star ever known to have been mantled by a Dyson swarm is visible again. We thought that meant failure. Civilizational collapse on a massive scale. Death. But there are signs of life. Transmission spectra confirm the presence of oxygen, water, organic molecules. I want to know what was there, what happened, and what’s come after. And I don’t want to go alone. I want you to come with me.”

She closed her eyes, giving him no answer. He nuzzled her neck. “What are you thinking?”

“The past and the future,” she whispered. “Both are so very far away. That last time I saw you—you and him—a thousand years ago. And another thousand years to Earth, even in that great beast you’ve stolen.”

“It is a great beast,” he agreed. “And I’ve named it after a great beast. I call it Dragon . And time doesn’t matter to us. So what if it takes a thousand years to reach the Hallowed Vasties? If the time drags, we sleep.”

“How peacefully can we sleep aboard a Chenzeme courser?” she asked him.

He told her, “Don’t think of it that way. It’s a hybrid ship. Its neural structure is heavily modified. It’s under my control. And I want you with me again. You . After all those years we spent together, you are part of me… and I am so hungry for human company. Don’t abandon me again.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I think that other version of me made a smart choice to stay behind.”

“No. I think she regrets her choice. Because you’re her. You’re the same. You haven’t changed. You don’t have another life, do you? No new lover, no children. All you’ve done is wait. You’ve skipped over these years, passed them in cold sleep, waiting for us to come back.”

“I needed to know,” she said defensively. “But you—you seem the same too. That’s on purpose, isn’t it? You want me to believe you’re still that same smart-ass pirate, but Urban, you can’t be. Not if you’ve grafted yourself on to that alien killing machine.”