<we are strong!>
<we are allied chenzeme!>
*It’s for both those reasons, she told her other self. *Going forward, we take separate paths. But keep sending me your subminds. Bind me to you in that way. Keep me human.
*Sooth. I understand.
The Bio-mechanic and the Engineer worked together to complete the conversion of the captured ship. They grew the computational strata to support a library and linked that library to the fleet. Cameras were added to the hull, and a radio antenna. They continued to expand the bridge, growing additional neural fibers so that Clemantine’s senses extended throughout the ship and her command of it was assured. And they initiated the growth of two new outriders.
The Bio-mechanic had spent centuries studying Dragon’s internal systems and had long ago discovered a preexisting Chenzeme protocol used to create new coursers. He activated that protocol. Clemantine observed as the process unfolded.
Step by step, over many days, matter was assembled and organized into the basic structure of two proto-ships that took shape within the reservoir of bio-mechanical tissue just beneath the hull cells. The heat of activity was a distraction to Clemantine, drawing her attention ever back to the dense and growing masses. She thought of them as parasites, feeding off of Griffin, weakening the ship as they grew stronger.
She resented them, wanted to eject them from the body of the ship.
– negate that! –
Griffin had been seized for the purpose of growing these outriders. She forced herself to edit her animosity, but her animosity returned. Only slowly did she realize it came from the philosopher cells. That led her to discover a feedback loop. By Chenzeme standards, Griffin was too small to reproduce, so the cells resisted, pushing to eject the growth.
*Interesting, the Bio-mechanic said, when she presented the problem to him. *Not an issue encountered with Dragon, given it’s always been a much larger ship.
*Close the feedback loop, she told him.
Afterward, she monitored the growth of the outriders with a sense of satisfaction, not resentment.
A message from Urban: *You’re secure now.
*Yes.
*I’m going to wake Dragon’s philosopher cells.
*Affirmative. We are allied Chenzeme.
*We will be, he answered. *But Dragon’s philosopher cells were ready to fight when I put them under. They’ll come out the same way. I’ll suppress that, but expect Griffin to be provoked.
*Understood. I’m ready.
She watched across the hundred kilometer gulf as points of white light wakened on Dragon’s hull. Her own cells noticed it immediately and fell silent, watching the white glow expand in lacy channels that widened until all of Dragon’s hull was illuminated. To human eyes, the light appeared constant, but Griffin’s cells saw it as a pulsing communication. They reached swift consensus on its meaning:
<it threatens>
Clemantine blocked a counter threat, instead presenting an argument to initiate a process of negotiated alliance:
– identify self/other: we are chenzeme –
The argument was considered, tested, approved, and a tentative consensus achieved. Intricate patterns of light, generated throughout the process, allowed Dragon to follow the debate from across the gulf, and to understand its conclusion.
Dragon accepted the argument, responding:
<confirm identify self/other: we are chenzeme>
A sense of victory flushed across the cell field, while Clemantine worked to define the relationship between the two ships: – we are allied chenzeme –
The philosopher cells affirmed this argument: <we are allied chenzeme>
And Dragon, driven by Urban’s will, echoed it: <confirm we are allied chenzeme>
Reassurances continued to be traded for hours, confirming the new status of the ships as paired coursers—instinctive behavior that allowed them to work together without trying to kill one another.
The proto-ships continued to grow within Griffin’s hull. They achieved the mass of outriders. They would have continued growing into massive proto-coursers, but the Bio-mechanic interrupted the process.
The assembly of the new outriders would be completed after they separated from Griffin. To achieve the separation, the Bio-mechanic hooked into the ship-building process again, near the end this time. A signal went out to the philosopher cells. It directed the field to split neatly above each proto-ship. Bio-mechanical motion pushed them free, imparting a slight momentum so that they drifted away from Griffin.
They were given the names of their predecessors, Khonsu and Pytheas, as swarms of Makers under the Engineer’s direction set to work assembling their internal components.
Behind them, Griffin’s hull sealed shut again and a long process commenced that would draw in, consolidate, and reorganize the courser’s interior to compensate for the loss of mass.
Griffin had become a smaller ship.
Small, but still toxic with malice, still deadly.
*I am going to change that attitude, Clemantine told her other self.
As time passed, she would strive to re-train the cells, to dilute their instinctive hate, their contempt. It was the only way she could conceive of enduring the years ahead.
Chapter
20
Pasha awoke in a small sunlit bedroom. She looked around without raising her head, recognized nothing, and wondered if a chunk of her recent memory had been overwritten.
Her bed cradled her within its low padded sides for which she was grateful. Even before sitting up, she felt dizzy, out of balance.
The room was done in light colors: white walls, a white carpet on a warm-brown wooden floor, translucent white curtains framing an open window with blue sky and sunlit foliage visible beyond, and an opaque gel door the color of golden honey. Through the window there came birdsong and a floral scent that sweetened the air.
“Welcome,” the room told her, speaking as a gentle-voiced woman. “This is your new home aboard the starship Dragon. Please be cautious upon arising. You’ll need to adjust your sense of balance to compensate for the centripetal force generated by the rotation of the gee deck.”
Questions flooded Pasha’s mind. She remembered departing for Dragon. It had been a decision made in haste, but also in certainty. Now doubt caught up with her.
This pleasant room—how had she come to be here? It made no sense. She should have instantiated as a ghost, but this was no simulation. The queasiness in her belly affirmed her physical reality. She wondered if this was Dragon after all. How could it be? Living quarters on that ship still needed to be built.