“All right. I understand.”
Clemantine kept her voice level, but even a ghost existence could not mute her escalating anxiety. She closed her eyes, took a few seconds to gather herself. Then she departed for the neural bridge, leaving behind all illusion of physical existence.
A mapped path brought her to the trunkline. From there, a brief, terrifying moment as her awareness flowed to fill the great network of branching fibers. Then she was plunged into the swirling, combative conversation of the philosopher cells. The bridge translated their intent, their emotion, the bite of their hateful aggression.
She recoiled.
*Careful, Urban messaged her, much too late.
Her revulsion and fear spilled across a hundred thousand connections, flooding the cell field. The cells re-echoed her emotions, amplified them, sought the cause behind them as they debated in a complex language she comprehended but could not effectively translate so that she “heard” it only in primitive phrases:
<revulsion: all that is not chenzeme>
<we are strong>
<locate target: identify>
<all that is not chenzeme: kill it>
<target: not found>
<kill it!>
*By the Unknown God, she whispered to Urban—and then she withdrew.
Just like the cells, he had been hit by the force of her fear and revulsion. It left him shaken, but he suppressed that and worked to soothe the philosopher cells.
Simultaneously, he awaited her in the library.
She appeared before him, wild-eyed, lips parted. “You’re there all the time,” she whispered in horror. “Some version of you.”
“Some of the time I use an edited version,” he admitted. “I call it the Sentinel. Low empathy. Emotionally numb.” He tapped his chest. “But it’s still my core persona that makes all the decisions. You could do that too.”
Eyes half-closed, she nodded, visibly recovering her composure. “Right now I need to be able to handle it as me. I’m going back in.”
She shifted from the library to the high bridge. Again, she became a disembodied presence that dispersed to fill the network of fibers, Urban there with her, everywhere. No breath to hold or she would have held her breath against the vicious, tumultuous conversation that engulfed her. Sadistic longings. Frustrated hates. The philosopher cells still restless, still seeking a target that would let them satisfy an instinct to burn/kill/sterilize.
Revolted again, she slipped away, back into the library.
Urban met her there. Saw the shudder run through her. “You don’t have to do this.”
Her fist closed. “I can do this.”
She shifted out of the library, but not to the high bridge. She needed to breathe, so she returned to her core persona. Alone in her chamber, she shivered and gasped, her heart raced, tears escaped to drift in the air around her, reflecting light like precious gems. “I can do this,” she growled aloud. “I can. I can.”
More than ninety minutes slipped past before Urban again felt her join him on the high bridge. This time, she came knowing what to expect; she had prepared herself. He felt her as a calm, glassy presence that allowed the endless conversations of the philosopher cells to pass through her, without touching her.
She stayed there with him, far longer than she’d stayed before.
After a time, she messaged him: *This conversation… it’s like mindless, poisonous froth riding on the surface of an ocean of memory.
*Not mindless, he replied. *The cells are a composite mind operating as minds do.
Later, in the library, he explained it in more detaiclass="underline"
“Each cell has its own senses, a particular awareness, a cache of memories, and a measure of influence in the cell field. That influence waxes and wanes depending on the success of the hypotheses and ideas that it supports. That’s what most of the chatter is: discussion and argument on the meaning of sensory input evaluated against known data. You can enter that debate. The bridge gives you enough influence to command consensus—but you will always need to be careful that the field doesn’t coerce a consensus out of you.”
Clemantine hated the philosopher cells, hated interacting with them, but the strength of her hate made them amenable to her will.
She learned to perceive as they did, through the senses of the ship: the carefully nurtured vitality of the reef; the burn of dust against the hull field; the slight gravitational perturbation generated by the closest outrider and the occasional incoming bursts of laser communications that marked its position; the population of stars in the Near Vicinity; the chaotic radio chatter of background radiation.
She sensed the link to the gamma-ray gun. Explored a memory of a time—she guessed it was long ago—when the gun had been used against another ship, one vastly larger even than Dragon. She felt the excitement of the philosopher cells, their frantic demand to
<kill it>
Suppressing a mental shudder, she diverted the cells from the violence of that memory by giving them a task. A simple task, but it was the first time she exerted her will on them.
She asked them to push Dragon’s velocity a little higher, just to do it, to know that she could.
She thought: – go –
Lightly, easily.
In response, a spike of awareness: Urban shadowing her, his concern for what she was doing. But he said nothing, nor tried to interfere.
Again, she thought: – go –
The cells responded, commanding just a tiny pull of acceleration from the reef. She felt it as a shift, a sense of falling forward, so slight she wondered if it would even be noticed in the warren. But then she suppressed that thought, not wanting to distract the cells.
Enough, she decreed.
The acceleration ceased, but Dragon’s velocity was now slightly higher. Urban issued an order to the outriders to boost their velocity to match.
Clemantine visited the high bridge often during the second year of the voyage, but never alone. “You’re always there,” she mused, lying entwined with Urban one morning. “Your ghost, always present. You must get tired of it. You have to find it…” She groped for the right words. “Emotionally exhausting,” she decided.
“Did you want to take over?” he asked with that familiar taunting smile. “Hijack my ship?”
“Mind reader.”
He chuckled. “You’ve learned everything I know.”
“No, that’s not true.”
Still, she’d learned a lot. She’d skimmed the ship’s history, delved into its systems, interviewed the Apparatchiks, and refined her control of the philosopher cells.
She had needed to verify all those systems to truly trust him.
And I do.
She kissed his cheek and sniggered.
“What?” he demanded.
“Just remembering what an asshole you used to be when you were younger.”
He chuckled some more. “Come on. You found me entertaining.”
“Always,” she agreed.
A comfortable silence followed, one she eventually interrupted with a softly spoken promise, “We’ll have years together.”
“Sooth,” he agreed, sounding half asleep. But then his eyelids fluttered, his brows knit in a suspicious scowl.