“It’s better this way,” Clemantine said after the link closed.
“Why is it better?” Urban demanded. “Why do you want this?”
“I’ve told you my reasons.”
“You think I’ll get bored with you? I won’t.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course you will and it won’t be the first time.”
“I’m not that kid anymore, Clemantine. We can make it work.”
She said, “What I don’t understand is why you’re so against it.”
“I didn’t come here intending to pick up a roster of passengers. I don’t want them. Each one represents a risk. A huge risk to the ship. A risk to us. Fifth level or not, we don’t know who these people are.”
He said this with sincerity, appeared to believe what he was saying, but Clemantine didn’t believe it. “No. I don’t think that’s it. You’ve never been afraid to take a risk, and you’re no introvert. You’ve always ruled your personal kingdom. So what’s different this time?”
“I’m different.”
“Different how?”
He turned half away. “I’ve lost people, Clemantine.” He tapped his chest. “I don’t like the way it feels. Friends and lovers, gone forever.” He shook his head. “And you want me to take on more people?”
“Ah…” It was all she could manage past a painful knot in her throat. She understood now, too well. She touched his shoulder. Leaned in to kiss his cheek.
Urban said, “I hate him sometimes… that version of me I left back there in the cloud.”
“He has what you don’t.”
“Sooth.”
She narrowed her eyes, recalling their earlier conversation. “So there was a version of you who gave up your monstrous ship.”
His crooked smile. “Wasn’t really a choice for him. One of us had to stay. Can’t have it all.” His uncertain gaze sought hers. “Right?”
Not a rhetorical question, she realized. So she answered it. “It’s never easy—and I’m not going to make it easy for you this time. We need more people, and the complexity and variety they’ll bring.”
“You need them. I don’t.”
She was done arguing. “How many can you safely take?” she asked, moving on to the practical details.
“I’d have to work it out.”
“Twelve’s a good number,” she suggested.
Surprised: “You think that many will want to go?”
“I think it’s more a question of how many will get the alert and get here in time. Can you give us more time?”
“I can slow the last ships of the outrider fleet. That’ll allow a couple more hours for data transfer. But once we’re out of range, it’s done.”
Clemantine raised an eyebrow. “No, that’s when it starts. And there we’ll be, locked up together for millennia. No possibility of escape or diversion while we come to despise one another and go mad in our souls.”
This jest won her a rogue’s grin. “That’s not how I run my ship. When it starts to fall apart, everyone who irritates me is going to get shoved into cold sleep.”
Clemantine laughed, not because she thought he was joking but because he was ruthless enough to carry out such an outrageous act.
There was only a little time.
Pasha’s first priority was to get the word out about the expedition. Already she thought of it as a formal scientific expedition, which meant those aboard should have expertise across a variety of disciplines.
She returned to her workstation on the bridge and began to compose a group message:
By now you’ve heard of the Chenzeme courser, hijacked and brought home by one of our own…
She described what she knew, and the opportunity available to those who could make a quick decision. Clemantine messaged her to say that Urban was willing to accept up to twelve volunteers, so Pasha included that number. Then she went on to emphasize the points Urban had emphasized: that there would be no going back and that the version they left behind would never know what the venturing version had found.
After more thought, she added a cautionary closing: This is a gamble beyond the dangers presented by any interstellar voyage. Clemantine has sent a ghost to the ship to affirm that what we’ve been told is true, but there are no guarantees.
She addressed the message to only eight colleagues, wanting to respect the limit Clemantine had set. Her heart raced as she sent it off. Hours would elapse before it was received, hours more before she knew how her colleagues would react. Would they think she’d gone mad? Would anyone come?
She shook her head. It was all out of her hands now. She had her own preparations to make. “Riffan,” she said, looking up at his workstation, “I need time—”
She broke off when she saw he was gone from the bridge. Zira and Enzo remained at their stations. Both looked at her, seeming worried and doubtful.
“He went to his quarters,” Zira said quietly. “To prepare.”
“I need to go too,” Pasha said.
Enzo told her, “It’s fine. There’s no emergency. Not now.”
For a moment, Pasha felt confused. Then she realized, “Neither of you are interested in going?”
“I couldn’t bear it,” Zira said simply.
And Enzo told her, “I could never leave my family. Not forever. No version of me could do that.”
Pasha did not miss the accusation in his words, the implication that she could do that, that she was eager to do it—and that she should not feel that way.
She smiled a cold smile, defiant in the face of his quiet judgment. “How fortunate then, that we’re each free to make our own choice.”
She left the bridge, left that debate behind her. But as she returned to her quarters, she wondered how many of the colleagues she’d invited would feel the same as Zira and Enzo. What if none were willing to come? She should probably invite a few more, to ensure a reasonable number of volunteers. A few minutes of thought produced ten more names and she sent the invitation out again.
Then she needed to think on her own future. The question that troubled her was not whether she should go, but instead, if she should stay behind at all. Alone in her quarters, she pondered it, reflecting on Urban’s words:
Your timeline will split into two and you will never know what happens to that other version of yourself.
Zira could not bear to be the one who goes. Pasha worried that she could not bear to be that version of herself who was left behind.
She was an exobiologist. No one could ask for a better place to train for that field of study than Deception Well, where eons of evolution—some of it directed evolution—had combined the clades of different worlds into a balanced, self-sustaining biological system.
Pasha had spent years on the planet, studying the weave of lifeforms there. The posting to Long Watch had let her extend her research to the microscopic life existing within the nebula—the so-called gnomes and governors—biomachines whose activities maintained the nebula and drove its defensive functions. She could see herself continuing that research for years to come, either aboard Long Watch or remotely, from her apartment in the city of Silk. And she might have been content with that, if Urban had not come.
From the short time she’d spent reviewing the summaries of the Null Boundary Expedition, she knew it had been wonderfully successful. Lifeforms had been discovered in varieties never before seen in known history, and stranger than she’d ever thought could be. The cleverness and adaptability of life fascinated her and forced the question: What else might there be to discover?