Green leaves had just begun to unfold when a DI brought her news of a course change.
Startled, Clemantine froze the simulation and sent a ghost into the library to investigate. Then, turning her gaze skyward, she sought a point of reference, settling on a white camellia blossom just above her nose. Slowly, as seconds ticked past, she watched herself and her free-floating screen drift away from the flower, scant centimeters toward the side of the room—motion so subtle she couldn’t be sure of the cause until a submind returned, informing her Dragon was undertaking a navigational correction, using a slow, subtle lateral force to nudge the ship’s immense mass. Why?
She waited to find out and at the end of the extended maneuver confirmed their course to be fixed a little more closely on the future position of the Tanjiri star system.
A reasonable action, then. A responsible action. And yet the incident troubled her. She should have known the adjustment was necessary. She should have known it was coming. But she wouldn’t have known about it at all if she hadn’t been monitoring the logs.
She thought about the process behind that correction, wondering if Urban had ordered it, or if it had been triggered by the Pilot, operating independently.
A chiding inner voice scolded: I should know that.
Heat rose in her cheeks, a flush of shame. More than a year had passed since her ghost had transited from cardinal to cardinal, exploring the neural bridge. She had meant to go back. She wanted to look again for the pathways leading to the spiraling trunkline and its hundred thousand filaments reaching outward to meet and link and control the vast field of philosopher cells. She wanted to confirm that she had not just missed those pathways, but that they had been hidden from her.
And yet, day after day, she’d put off the task.
At first, after opening the cache of privileged files, she had needed time to come to terms with her other existence. She felt no shame for the actions taken by her other self, but her grief ran deep. Comfort came to her through the belief that this expedition was different, that the disastrous past lay behind them, that they were embarked on a new age of discovery—or re-discovery—and that they would ultimately find evidence of vibrant, tenacious life blossoming among the ruins.
At the same time, she worried this benign outlook was fragile, that it would disintegrate if she asked too many questions. So she curbed her questions and kept busy: working with Vytet to develop a plan for the interior of the gee deck, devising a housing scheme and a landscape, and then working out the chained sequences of assembly that would bring her vision into existence.
All of that was done now. She was out of excuses.
So get on with it!
She wiped the screen she’d been using. Pulled up a schematic of the neural bridge. Reviewed its intricate, branching structure, and plotted every path that led to the trunkline. There weren’t many, just thirteen. She identified the sequence of cardinal nanosites she would have to pass through to reach each one. Then, despite her aversion to the sense of disembodiment she would face among the cardinals, she sent a ghost to investigate.
Very soon, the ghost returned. It affirmed what she’d inferred over a year ago: The paths to the trunkline were not visible to her. She had no access to them.
A deep breath to gather her courage. The philosopher cells were on the other side of those hidden paths. Once she crossed over, she would be in contact with them, plunged into unfiltered communication with the ship’s murderous composite mind.
She dreaded it. The Chenzeme had murdered her family, her people, her world. She wanted no intimacy with the minds behind those deeds. And still, she held it to be her duty, her responsibility, to learn all aspects of the ship. At the very least, she needed to know why Urban had closed the paths to the high bridge.
So she messaged him: *Hey. We need to talk.
He woke his avatar and, still stretching and yawning, came to her in the forest room. She observed the moment he caught up on her recent activity, a wary look taking over his face.
She said, “You know I’ve visited the neural bridge.”
He shrugged, as if to dismiss the topic as anything that might cause him concern. “You’ve been there before.”
“I have. And just like before, I found that part of the bridge is not open to me. The spiral trunkline and all those filaments that link to the philosopher cells—”
“That’s the high bridge,” he interrupted.
“The paths to it aren’t just closed,” she said. “You’ve hidden them. Why?”
“Because I don’t want you there. It would be dangerous.”
She raised her eyebrows, though she gave him credit for the blunt honesty of this answer. “Dangerous for who?” she asked.
“For you, and for all of us.”
“You go there.”
“I’m used to it. I understand it.”
“I want to understand it.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t want to be immersed in Chenzeme thoughts, Chenzeme conversation, millennia of memories, the murder of worlds.”
“You’ve seen that?” she asked, her gut clenching.
“Yes. And you don’t want to experience it. You don’t want it to touch you.”
Clemantine let out a slow breath. “You don’t need to protect me.”
“I’m not sure that’s true.”
“Trust me when I tell you that it is. You’re right that I don’t want to interface with a Chenzeme mind. But I do want to learn this ship, to understand how it operates, how you integrate with it. I want to learn from you what it takes to pilot Dragon—and if the cost of that is intimacy with the philosopher cells, so be it. I’ll take it on.”
His jaw clenched in frustration; he shook his head. “Why? Why do you feel you need to do this?”
“Because it’s dangerous for me, for you, for everyone, if you’re the only one capable of handling this ship. If something happens to you—”
“Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“I believe you, and still, you shouldn’t be the only one to know.”
Intimacy, she’d called it, and Urban found that it was a strange intimacy to feel her ghostly presence overlaid against his own in the branching fibers of the high bridge.
He didn’t want her there. He knew her history, and understood the horror she must feel at interacting so directly with the philosopher cells. He also worried her presence would change the temper of the cells, feeding their suspicions, making it harder to bring them to consensus. Mostly, he resented her implication that he was vulnerable, that he might someday be separated from his ship, that someone else might need to take over.
But none of these objections were sufficient grounds to refuse her request. Clemantine believed she could handle the experience. It would be petty and paternalistic to deny her—and besides, she would never forgive him.
So he’d opened the high bridge to her.
Before her first visit, they’d met in the library. He’d warned her, “If you feel overwhelmed, if you can’t suppress an emotional reaction, I need you to retreat. If you stay, you’ll destabilize the cell field.”