Edge of Dark (41 page)

The Historian's office was huge. A dozen people could fill its sitting-room-like chairs. The decor had been done in browns and blacks and warm tans. Pictures hung on every wall, in a sequence that started with the colony ship that had brought the first humans to Lym and ended with the return of the generation ship
The Creative Fire
. Tea and breakfast cookies filled a small table.

Nona glanced at Satyana, who looked as intense and alert as Charlie's tongat. Nona took a deep breath. She could do this. She remembered her chant on the way in.
I am strong enough to influence the Deep.

The current Historian, Dr. Neil Nevening, had once taught at the same university Nona used to teach at. Even though he'd been the Historian for fifteen years, he still looked like a professor. His hair was a sandy brown that no one in their right mind would choose as a dye, and he had no noticeable mods.

She held out her hand. “I'm Nona Hall. I taught biology at Startide. You left quite a reputation behind.” In fact the school was so proud of him that there was a three-dimensional statue of the slender professor worked into an art-wall.

He smiled softly at her. “I miss teaching.”

“But surely your new duties are interesting,” Nona murmured.

“They are. But as a teacher you're closer to the students than a councilor is to the people. At least I met most of my students at least once.” He poured three cups of tea from a round pot colored like a sun. It looked like it might actually be old: it appeared to have been fashioned by hand, or at least painted by hand.

Satyana lifted the delicate cup he handed her and turned it around carefully to admire it. “How beautiful. This must be an heirloom.”

He looked pleased. “This set has been in my family for generations.”

He neither poured for Chrystal, nor asked her. He had done some homework.

The tea turned out to be mint and some flowery spice Nona couldn't name. He let everyone take a few sips and allowed a lightly uncomfortable silence to grow before he spoke to them. “I have been doing research nonstop since the High Sweet Home.” He glanced at Chrystal. “I'm sorry.”

“It's all right,” Chrystal said. “I've grown used to it.”

“First, I haven't made up my mind yet. I'll have to vote from the perspective of my position when we're done. I interpret that as a vote to respect the choices we made in our past. That does not mean that we must repeat mistakes.”

“We understand,” Nona said, grateful to notice that Satyana smiled at her for it.

He turned to Chrystal. “I have a few questions for you. May I?”

Chrystal inclined her head. “Of course.”

“You did not choose this?”

“No.”

“And you would un-choose it if you could?”

“If I could stay alive.”

“So you prefer this,” he seemed to choose his words carefully, “you prefer being in a robot body to being dead?”

Chrystal hesitated, very slightly. Perhaps so little that only Nona would recognize it for uncertainty. “Yes.”

“And you believe you are yourself?”

“Yes. I don't detect a break between the me that was flesh and the me that is not flesh—there's no loss of continuity. Even so, the me I would have been—undisturbed—was destroyed. Cut off. That version of me would have felt more deeply, would have slept and ate and made love and grown ill.”

Dr. Nevening stood and paced a bit before he continued. “In the past, we chose to banish people who had made choices that created beings like you.” He stopped and stared hard at Chrystal, pressing her. “Should you be banished?”

“No.” No hesitation. She put a finger up to indicate she had more to say. “If I may. I studied last night. When the Next were originally banished, they were weak and fractured. They came from all over the Glittering, and they had no governance. Some wanted to live forever. Others wanted to become much stronger than humans, sometimes for specific goals like to climb mountains or race all the way around Lym. Some were human children that were ported into pubescent robotic bodies and used as sex slaves.”

Dr. Nevening nodded. “That's all true. And what you're going to go on to add is that the power balance is different now. That we made them all go live beyond the Ring because we could. I've read that argument.”

Chrystal smiled. “You're underestimating me. The point I want to make is that what we did before was kind. Many of the people in the first group, the people actually banished, did not choose to become Next. Out there beyond the Ring, the Next were forced to learn to get along, to reproduce by making copies, to create governance.”

He looked excited. “Yes!”

Satyana leaned forward. “But they're still taking humans against their will. They made you.”

“They promised that if we don't fight them, they won't force more people to become like me.”

“Why should I believe that?” Satyana replied. “They
did
make you.”

“After.” Chrystal hesitated for a moment. “After the attack, we were asked how we felt and they seemed surprised that we were unhappy and that we thought they murdered us.”

The Historian furrowed his brow. “So they are so far out of touch with what it means to be human that they accidentally killed you to improve you?”

“That's an oversimplification,” Chrystal said, although her body language suggested that she agreed with him.

“Still,” he said. “You are asking me to support the Next because they promised not to kill humans and translate their souls into software, even though they did that to you?”

An awkward silence fell. Satyana spoke into it. “We can't fight them. Surely you see that. If you look back into other parts of history, is there any moment when a far more powerful entity lost a war to a less powerful one?”

“Are you certain we are less powerful?” he responded to Satyana, although he was looking at Chrystal.

“There's a lot I don't know,” Chrystal said. “Including how much military power the Next have. I know that I was on the High Sweet Home and that they destroyed all of our protections there. Ships, guns, warning systems. All of it.”

“There is a theory they had inside help.”

Chrystal shrugged. “But there are millions of people on the Deep. Are they all loyal?”

“Can you answer my question?” Satyana pushed. “Has there ever been a war this unequal where the lesser power won?”

“No.”

“No, history has never shown we can win? Or no, you can't answer?”

“Smaller forces have defeated larger forces over and over. Way back on Lym. Usually these are revolutions, rather than a smaller force repelling an invader. At this point, we must think of the Next as invaders.”

Chrystal said, “The Next think faster than we do. They think faster than I do, even now that I'm faster than I was. They communicate with each other constantly and well, across large distances. They are driven by some goal they have not explained, and everything I saw in my time with them suggests that they will be hard or impossible to stop.”

“It surprises me that you're being so blunt,” he said.

Chrystal smiled. I've always been blunt.”

“So why did they send you as their ambassador?” He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs for effect, and Nona imagined that he was once a very good professor. He looked straight at Chrystal and said, “You seem like a weak choice.”

Chrystal didn't flinch. “We talked about this a lot, my family and I. We believe the Next are so far removed from humanity that they would not be able to have a normal conversation with you. They created us, and they matched us to people. I am here because I know Nona and she is connected to people on the Deep in power.” She nodded at Satyana. “After all, I am meeting with you. That implies a reasonable choice on their part. I am not so unlike you that you can't or won't talk with me. It would be hard for you to have tea with the—more evolved—Next.”

Nona felt confused. “But I came for you unexpectedly. They let you go with me, but I asked first.”

“I know,” Chrystal said. “I do think it was before we were completely ready, and while we still didn't know some things we might have learned. It had, however, been the plan. To have me leave with you. The Next must have decided we were ready enough or they wouldn't have allowed it. They're curious and interesting and interested. But they are not kind.”

“No,” Dr. Nevening said, “I don't suppose they are kind.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CHARLIE

When the light from Manny's message flicked off, Charlie watched Yi and Jason. He hoped to catch whether or not they were surprised by the rumors on Lym, but neither of their expressions exposed deep feelings. If he had to describe them, he might say Yi looked thoughtful and Jason slightly scared. “Do the Next have—members—themselves—already on Lym?” he asked them.

Jason answered immediately. “Not that they told us about.”

“But they didn't say they don't have them, right?”

“We never talked about it.” Jason frowned, his gaze turned slightly inward. “They told us about ourselves, mostly. And about what they could do, that they could live forever, that they could copy themselves and be two beings, or more. They didn't tell us anything about their plans on Lym. I can't imagine they would have wanted us to know.”

“But they did send you here,” Charlie murmured, the thought trailing off. “But not to Lym. To the station. Maybe we can surprise them.”

“Don't assume you can,” Yi said. “Surprise them. They can calculate outcomes better than a nav computer. All of them.”

“We're instant ambassadors,” Jason said, with a funny grin. “Just add robot body and voila! If they'd told us anything real, they might have had to kill us.”

Charlie laughed, but felt the pain behind the words.

Yi finally answered Charlie's original question. “It would be smart for them to have advance guards. We know that people smuggled materials to them beyond the Ring—that's been a way to get rich or get in real trouble as long as I remember. One of the women I went to school with died on a smuggling trip.

“It would be reasonable for them to have friends throughout the inner systems, and maybe even to have smuggled either individuals or very sophisticated robots to many places. They have robots that are not true AI's, are not aware like the Next, but are far more complex than any I've seen in the Glittering. Our own repair robot looks like one of yours that the Next improved. It's smarter than the models it was patterned after. It learns faster.”

“Crap. And to think I was only worried about you two.”

Jason laughed. “Don't worry about us. We're on your side.”

Charlie leaned toward them. “But you yourself have no one to contact on Lym, no plans.”

Yi took Jason's hand and squeezed it. “No.”

“And the Next can't directly contact you and tell you how to help them?”

Jason reacted first. “We wouldn't!”

Yi followed. “Not that I know of. But I wouldn't underestimate the Next.”

“I won't.” It would have to do. Charlie sat back. “Okay. Thanks. Yi, do you promise to tell me if the Next contact you for any reason, at any time?”

“If they contact me about Lym in any way, I promise. Otherwise, I will have to evaluate.”

Charlie found that answer more comforting than a simple yes. “Okay.” He sat back. “So we're going to talk about my goals.”

“Okay,” Jason said. They were still holding hands.

Charlie took a deep breath and imagined he was home. “I believe Lym is sacred. It's what we came from—a wild life. We must have evolved in a place like this, or we wouldn't have come here. Lym is natural, a place where plants and animals all live together with far less control than we exert on stations and ships. Lym evolves.

“Restoring Lym, protecting Lym, has been my work and my family's work since before the Next were banished beyond the Ring. We hardly noticed when that happened. We were busy making up for the damage done by people who raped the planet for materials they wanted in space. Things they could have gotten some other way. I think that's what the Next want—easy access to a place to get minerals and raw materials and bask in sunshine.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Nothing you've told me has convinced me the Next will care about the wild things of Lym.”

Yi nodded. “That's probably correct.”

Charlie continued. “I want to keep the Next away from Lym. I'm willing to die to do it.”

“I doubt that would help,” Jason said, quite solemnly.

Charlie laughed, the tension in the room breaking down some. Yi let go of Jason's hand and stood and stretched and then sat back down.

“No,” Charlie said, “it probably wouldn't. And I don't actually plan to die. But that's how important it is to me. If the best way to keep Lym free of the Next is to fight, I'll do that. If it's something else, I'll do that. But I don't want to see the Next landing on my home. There is nothing that drives me more than that, not right now. Nothing else matters more.”

Yi regarded him quietly. “You are taking us there.”

Damn it.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CHRYSTAL

After the meeting with the Historian, Satyana took them to lunch in a small restaurant with walls that were vertical herb gardens. Chrystal sat quietly while Satyana and Nona whispered together about the meeting with the Historian. Satyana sounded pleased.

The Historian had been interesting, but Chrystal's attention kept flipping back to the last image she'd recorded of her mother's face. There had been revulsion and sorrow and loss on it, and also disbelief.

Chrystal understood. Especially the disbelief. Here, back home, she sometimes felt like her old self. But then she'd flex a foot and realize it wasn't her old foot, or she'd let the sharpness of her nose bring her smells from all the way across the room and she would remember she shouldn't be able to tell that the plant in the corner had mold growing on its roots.