Her other ghost she sent into the library’s circular research room, where stacks of files surrounded her. She summoned the Scholar.
On the main floor of the library the Apparatchiks always appeared confined within the virtual space of a frame, but here among the stacks, the Scholar instantiated without any such restriction. He stood facing her, dressed in what she considered a formal fashion: a long, loose, dark-blue tunic and voluminous trousers of the same color.
The Scholar was the Apparatchik who looked the least like Urban. His aspect was older, his features sharper, his eyes a strange violet gray, and he’d styled his hair so that it was smooth and long. Tied at the back of his head, it reached his waist.
“I want to know more about the first time an outrider was lost,” Clemantine told him.
He eyed her with an unsettling intensity, and then nodded. “I have a brief report prepared for you.” He touched a file, seemingly at random, and a door opened onto another circular room. “Follow, please.”
She traded subminds with her ghost on the high bridge, where her attention was caught by a centuries-old memory brought into play among a cluster of philosopher cells. The memory circulated as more and more individual cells found value in it and passed it on. It was a study of ballistic motion, like the simulations tracking Pytheas’s debris field—a chaotic, tumbling collision of particles ranging in size from dust motes to meter-wide lumps—but this played out far more quickly.
It came to her: Like her, the philosopher cells were interested in the history of that first lost outrider. They were using remembered data from that original incident to test a new mathematical model meant to predict the dispersion of debris.
Ahead of her, the Scholar stepped through the open doorway into another room within the library. Clemantine followed him, but drew back when she saw Vytet already there—this new Vytet, not the Vytet she remembered—and Vytet looked equally taken aback by the sudden company.
In all the vastness of the library, what were the odds of running into someone else? Excellent, if both were chasing the same topic.
Vytet recovered his composure first, saying, “This room is devoted to Khonsu, both the ancient deity and the outrider that bears its name. I expect we’re both here for that reason.”
His low voice disturbed her. She was too accustomed to thinking of him as a woman. She had liked him that way. “So you decided to go over to the other side,” she said, striving for a humorous tone. Mostly failing.
His smile was sharp-edged. “I like the shift of perspective. It forces me to see things from a different point of view. You should try it sometime.”
“I’m good. Thank you.”
Ignoring this exchange, the Scholar touched a file, again seemingly at random. A screen unfolded from it, displaying an unfamiliar starfield. After a few seconds, Clemantine saw a distant flare of blue light. The Scholar pointed, saying, “There. That is the moment the outrider that first bore the name of Khonsu was lost.” After several more seconds, blue sparks appeared, marking the remnants of the shattered reef.
“The dispersion of the debris was monitored and mapped to the extent possible,” the Scholar explained as the video transitioned to show the hypothesized spread.
Clemantine nodded. From her post on the high bridge, she’d already seen a model of Khonsu’s debris field—one sketched with more certainty than this. In the Scholar’s rendition, most of the fragments were transparent, barely there, reflecting a lack of certainty in their positions or maybe their existences. But both models depicted objects subject to an unnatural physics, following curved paths, even spiraling around each other, as if drawn by magnetism or an unaccountable gravity, before tumbling apart and disappearing.
The Scholar said, “We believe that at this point the fragments of the reef expired.”
Clemantine eyed the time scale in the corner of the display. “After just a few hours?” she asked.
The Scholar confirmed this with a nod. “We were unable to track the debris after that point.”
On the high bridge, currents of thought wove across the cell field, coalescing, diverging. Several threads considered the existence of a new ancillary ship already growing within Dragon’s tissue.
A ship?
Clemantine’s surprise at this concept bled out into the cells, where it ignited a responding suspicion. She remembered then: It’s not a ship. It’s the gee deck.
The philosopher cells had been deceived into perceiving the deck as a nascent ship—that was its camouflage—but Clemantine had stumbled, introducing doubt, and now the philosopher cells were questioning the legitimacy of the nascent ship.
She needed to correct that, soothe their doubt, allay suspicion—but Urban got there first with a concise argument that flooded the field from a hundred thousand points:
– negate that! –
Suspicion collapsed. Doubt evaporated. The focus of conversation shifted back to the dispersion of debris.
A submind brought the memory of this incident to the library. Clemantine pursed her ghost lips, annoyed with Urban for stepping in so quickly, but intrigued by the vision of an ancillary ship growing within Dragon’s tissue.
Vytet was saying, “Can this be right? An interval of fourteen days before the second ship was lost?”
“That is correct,” the Scholar confirmed. “That second ship was Artemis. At the time, it was the closest outrider to Khonsu.”
The Mathematician had warned the debris could remain a hazard for years, but Clemantine was skeptical. “Your model shows the reef affecting the debris for only the first few hours. The dispersion would follow standard physics after that. Surely, after fourteen days, it would be spread too thin to constitute a hazard. Is it possible the fleet was passing through a pre-existing debris field? The shattered remnants of a lost comet or an asteroid? And that both impacts were caused by that primordial hazard?”
“That would be an extremely unlikely occurrence,” the Scholar said. “But it cannot be ruled out.”
Vytet shook his head, the dark-red pelt of his hair a helmet framing his intense expression. “I don’t think that theory is any more unlikely than the idea that some fragment of debris, after fourteen days adrift, just chanced to intersect the course of an outrider.”
“So really, we don’t know what happened that first time,” Clemantine said. “And that means we have no idea what level of risk we’re facing now.”
“In my judgment,” the Scholar said, “that is an accurate assessment.”
She pressed a knuckle to her chin and, thinking out loud, she mused, “I wonder if Urban will want to replace Pytheas?” Doubt intruded. “I wonder if he can? The philosopher cells perceive the gee deck as an ancillary ship under construction. Would they be willing to support two growing ships?”
The Scholar drew back, looking uneasy, unsure—just a brief slip before he restored his habitual stern expression, but enough to stir in her a vague suspicion.
“It has been done before,” he assured her, gentle-voiced, as if explaining things to a child.
Clemantine wanted details, but Vytet’s enthusiasm was engaged. He jumped back into the conversation, declaring, “I’ve always meant to look into this process. It’s astonishing to think that Dragon has given up enough mass to produce the six original outriders and the two replacements.”