Chapter 24: Looking Over The Edge

The room is a cold lit interior above a night lit city, with no single wall or support interfering with the perception of height. Far away and smeared across the distant shell are other, more distant cities, and invisibly moving ships on the seas. Far above, attenuated by the distance and the air, the greyish light of a different day lights another land.

Clu stands at the glass, hand on its neutral curve, looking slightly upward, while behind her the sounds of others begin. She can see their reflections in the glass, very faintly, though with the brightness of the room, she would expect them to blot out the buildings beyond.

She wonders if she should be afraid.

Something like a hand appears on her shoulder, and she twitches. She double-checks for a fraction of a second as she notes that is is dark, mottled, and hard-shelled, with a variety of rounded thorns studding the places between the plates that define the flexible areas of motion.

"Oh, hi," she replies, struggling out of her surprise. Then she remembers to look slightly downward. Her representative, paid for by the militia, called Escarante, crinkles the front of his flattened head in what passes for a smile of greeting.

"Are you ready?" he asks. "They are a lot of audience on your side. Three of the Convoying Association are here. They can't speak, but have offered financial support. Don't expect much trouble, to be frank. Everyone on the panel knows the score for convoying out there. Besides, the logs are unambiguous. As I told you yesterday, most native Prometheans wouldn't necessarily have done so well making sure all acts were self-defense."

She nods. "Thanks," she replies, and she feels her shoulders relaxing. "Maybe it's because I'm so new. I'm afraid I'll do something wrong. This is my second audit. I ought to be more comfortable by now."

The panel members are taking their seats at the front of the room by the inner wall beside the lift. If they had been sitting behind a table or on a dias, she might have been terrified - it would be too much like a Correctness Hearing, or a Block Board censure. But with no paper and no tabletop computers, there's nothing between the lot-selected panel, herself, and the audience... as she begins to explain the events.

Time passes, with difficult and challenging questions from the panel and the audience. Finally, the panel steps out for discussion, leaving her spent.

... "In the event at 12 minutes 32 seconds into the attack, we find that Clu Sherril could not safely attempt to distinguish between direct and indirect aggressors and was correct in allowing her missiles to complete the attack. Likewise, we believe that Sherril's decision to depart rather than attack the investing force indicates her purely defensive posture. Accordingly, this board finds Clu Sherril, member of Prometheus, not guilty of violating the letter or spirit of the non-aggression principle and release her from all potential charges and liabilities."

But as she steps into the night, surrounded by officials of the militia, with the reveres just past their circle, she finds the plaza choked with demonstrators. Cards, holography, and images deployed to the shared network contest the sides of her case. Some claim she has initiated force. Others that she is a hero. The underlit faces are of many human races and both sexes - and there are other forms that are more complex or alien. The silence at first is unnerving but then there is a gradually growing sound as voices all begin at once. Her hand creeps toward the slim weapon at her hip.

Escarante touches her hand. "Come now. The attendant has brought your vehicle."

She walks numbly through the crowd, wondering what is going on. When the door closes behind her, there is blessed silence for a moment. She engages the engine and leaves them behind... but she is worried.

"Have you seen this?" Ivo asks. She is sitting in her apartment, sprawled bonelessly on her couch., looking at the wall. Clu can see the images of a pair of male humans talking to each other in formal surroundings with a moderator sitting to one side.

"It's obvious to me that she is a disaster waiting to happen. This goes to show what happens when you let an immigrant have access to full weaponry. And if she gets her way, and goes home for her husband, we're going to see a bloodbath."

"Halasin is all wrong here. Every action she's taken in combat was justified by the panel, and with good reason, if you look at the logs. She's done nothing but act as a good member since she took contract. I don't see Halasin leading a militia or even taking a role in the reserves. So what complaint does he have? He's a pacifist Federalist, so I suppose it's no surprise, but it's hardly a reflection of the foundation of our society."

"Plessy can ignore the possibility she's going to go right to Cocteau and do damage, if he wants. He can slander my politics if he wants. Everyone knows his opinion is that there's no legitimacy to government in any form. But it's just one more sign of how dangerous this woman is now, and if we sanction her actions, it will be Prometheus' reputation that will be irretrivably damaged. Frankly, I think there is no question the Coadjutant Executive needs to step in, with authority from a session of the Ordinate if need be.

The first speaker seems to become incensed, and he leans forward with an angry wave of his arm. "That's his answer to everything; get the Coadjutant involved. In his view, the CA might as well be a dictator who enforces preventative law. Why not make our territory into a mirror image of what it is now?" His voice drips sarcasm. "Let me remind you that Clu Sherril is a hero who has done nothing wrong, whose intentions are manifestly the same as ours. It's clear she wants freedom for her husband, and, I have no doubt, for her world. And while we're isolationist, that doesn't mean we have the right to punish someone for something they haven't done, or even for taking action to free prisoners whose rights have been demolished by initiation of force. If the fundamental principles of the Compact aren't clear to Halasin, maybe he needs to reconsider his next renewal and head off to somewhere more compatible with his lack of ideals."

Ivo waves off the program and turns to Clu, whose eyes are wide with horror. "Are you OK?" Ivo asks, frowning.

Clu turns to look at her. "They're talking about me... like I don't even exist."

Ivo laughs suddenly. "Wow, girlfriend, you have assimilated. But hey, that's what they do. Plessy & Halasin is a fam polsoph battleground. You were bound to end up a topic, no surprise."

"Can they do what they said? Stop me from going after Lan? Because I tried to save the convoy?"

"Oh, come on, there's no chance of that. You have rights, you know. As long as you don't initiate force, they can't initiate against you."

"So they can't stop me."

Ivo stands, smiles, and clasps her friend's upper arm in a gentle remonstrance. "You worry too much. Nothing's going to happen. Except that more people are going to want to interview you. You've made a shine, now!"

Clu makes a face, but finally tries to smile so that Ivo will not know how worried she has become.

It had taken months for Clu to learn about money. She still is worried that she is ignoring something important.

But one thing is clear. She is in a race that swings between expenses and earnings. And, for the moment, the earnings are ahead.

For how long?

The elevator races up the side of the Zadar as she thinks of dock rental fees.

Elsewhere in the docking complex, a pair of cargo pilots meet on the flight deck of an enormous freighter.

"Morning..." the second smiles down at the first - who is a large shell with a bundle of tentacles whipsawing the control space. It gestures a baritone greeting. The second rests his hand on the back of a seat that recignizes him and quickly morphs from centauroid to human. "Almost time to go." He gestures up the monitors on his lenses, and he can suddenly hear all of the conversation of the busy port city as if it were in the room beside him.

They have already announced their intentions, and the complex is sliding past the edges of their view.

But hidden in their hold is something that will disrupt their plans forever.

If Clu had been looking off toward the exit, she might have seen the vast complexity of the cargo carrier, blazoned with a blue lightning bolt across a hull of textured white, moving slowly past the ranks of parked vessels. As it happens, she does not see it start to bulge, then crack with a hesitant brightening that shocks across the ceiling. But she does see the shivering light and moments later hears the roaring sound of the oncoming shockwave, just as she steps into the Zadar airlock and the door closes behind her.

The Zadar shudders beneath her feet as the shockwave blends with the internal gravity.

She stares around, bewildered. She gestures up the port visual channels - and finds chaos. She gestures away in self-protection and switches to the external sensor feeds. Smoke is streaming across the ceiling to the ventilators. She zooms into the distance, and there she can see the slowly collapsing fiery mass of the cargo vessel causing several secondary explosions and debris eruptions. It takes moments for her to realize what she is seeing. But it doesn't matter, because by then there is nothing she can do.

"Almost a thousand dead and injured. Seventy billion in yard damage. A hundred fifty billion in delayed shipping. And I'm not able to get out of dock for a week." Clu dismisses the news page and refocuses across the dining table in Marie's office. The suntube is a vague luminous line seen through clouds above them.

Marie nods sadly. "It's the worst accident in thirty years. I have Hikaru loaned out to the Marshals on some forensics consulting." She picks at her food. "Well, I imagine you'll be happy to hear that we've moved a personal Hermes to production with fifty firm orders."

Clu smiles, her attention drawn away from her own drive for the first time in days. "I am, Marie. But why did it have to happen right there? A mile further, they would have been out. The access would be clear, and I'd be setting up for Cocteau."

Marie sighs. "So you're ready."

Clu misses the wistful note in Marie's voice. "I learned tactics and strategy years ago to develop my designs. I helped those bastards on the Leadership Council with everything I knew. And they didn't protect me. They took Lan instead. But I know what they know. And now I know what Prometheus knows. And I've actually had to use it. There's nothing left. I could use a better plan, but what can I plan until I'm there? And in the meantime," she laughs, "I never knew about money, but one thing I know now... I'm burning it. Fast."

Marie tries another approach. "Have you been following the commentary on the militia action?"

"Well, you know, I'm being interviewed." She looks away, studying the movement of an aircraft in the distance. "Almost every day. I don't like it much."

"Has Celine contacted you?"

"Not recently."

"Are you... sure her agenda is the same as yours?" Her lids are low over her slit eyed lenses.

Clu leans back in her chair and eyes Marie carefully. "I've been here almost a year. I don't know much about anyone or anything. Are you trying to tell me something?"

"I'm sure Prometheus seems politically homogenous from the outside; from your perspective."

"But?"

"There's agreement on the non-aggression principle and not a lot more. Some think of the principle allowing a lot more of what some others call preemption. Celine.... well, she's made no quiet thing of it. She thinks the Recovery League let Cocteau down, that they should have contracted the militia after the revolution and struck hard. I think she hasn't gotten what she wanted, even from controlling the League. Maybe she thinks she can get it from you." Marie's hand slashes out, as if to dismiss a remembered argument.

Clu is uncomfortable. "Marie... I'm sure you're telling me this because... you have the best of motives. But Celine helped me from the moment I was brought here. I'm not really comfortable with what you're saying."

Marie sets her utensil on the plate and looks directly at her. "This isn't a comfortable place, and you have become a decidedly less comfortable person over time. I believe you handled the attack properly. But you're probably the most dangerous - and potentially initating - League agent to ever set foot on Cocteau. Celine helped with that - more than she ever had to."

"League agent?" Clu replies, astonished.

"They've been sponsoring you. Isn't there an obligation on your part that goes with that? Maybe one you don't even know about?"

"My obligation is to Lan, to get him away, however I have to."

"And if things don't go that easily? If he isn't alive? Aren't you going to be tempted to strike back?"

Clu stands. "Marie, I'll do what I have to. I'm going to find Lan and get him back. I'll destroy anyone or anything in my way. And he isn't dead."

Marie tries to stand with full composure, but it is an effort. "Well, since you can't achieve your goals right at the moment, maybe you'd join me for a walk around the plant. We have a new project you may be interested in seeing."

The hangar is not too far from the production test area, and it vibrates for a short period with the energies of graviton ducting being tuned in the yard. The disk just beyond the doors is polished to a nearly atomic finish, reflecting so strongly that it is actually hard to see.

Unlike the Hermes it is a lens with send and return field arrays in a ring above and below the rim. There are also some unusual ovals of texture marring the otherwise flawless surface.

Clu runs her hands just above the surface as if sensing its smoothness without daring to mar it.

Marie smiles. "You can touch it."

"I don't want to leave fingerprints."

"Can't."

She watches the perfect reflection of her hand reach her actual hand. She feels the pressure but no temperature. She shifts her hand. There is no friction.

Her face must reveal what she is feeling, because Marie laughs. "Grew the whole thing from a single metal fiber. Like it?"

"How does it fly?"

"We haven't turned it on yet. We're using your sims to train some standard Hermes pilots, but this is fully armed and stealthed; the extra mass makes it, at least in the simulations, have ... different flight characteristics. Chnur 'Nasin knows why we haven't been able to autostabilize it - I'm not up on the details. There's something about using the weapons. The interaction with the field tends to alter the stability unpredictably. We need a successful pilot to be able to capture the state space."

Clu shakes her head at the transparent ploy.

"Trials would take months."

"Weeks maybe."

Clu blinks. "Weeks are still too long."

"But you could have the prototype to take with you. Imagine the advantage."

Clu wonders... "Marie, why do you care? Anyone could do this for you. There's nothing special about me. There must be hundreds of pilots in Prometheus - people who are more used to the technology, people who are here all the time... people who don't have anything that might get in the way of working for you."

Marie's face is unreadable, as if she wants it that way. Her slit pupiled eyes are suddenly mirrored, as if reflecting an internal emotion. "Clu, I found you by... well, accident isn't the right word. Let me be blunt. Cocteau doesn't have crap for technology compared to what we have here. But look at your Zadar class. It's decades ahead of them. Look at your escape." Suddenly she gestures and shares with Clu a visualization of her departing space battle, many time normal speed. "Look at the test flights you did for me. The design insights. The militia action."

Clu frowns, remembering the conflicts, the grudges, the hearing, the aftermath.

"I liked all that. If you survive Cocteau, in another five years, you'll be the best designer in Prometheus." She slowly paces. "You know, twenty years ago, someone had this kind of conversation with me. When I think about it, which is just about every day, I think that I wouldn't be here, walking through my hangars, sitting in my office, negotiating deals, without it. Do you know what I'm saying?"

Clu is embarrassed and excited all at once. But she manages to control her voice. "I can't be deflected. If I think about those things, I'll keep waiting. I'll find some reason not to go. I'll rationalize it. I won't do what I should, or I'll be too slow. Then Lan will be dead - even if he's alive now. I can't have that. That's why I have to go soon. I wish I could go now."

"I know. I wish I could help. But this is the best I can do. Give it a try. I'll take as much as you can get done before you have to go. And you'll have some more money."

Ivo walks onto the patio with grocery bags slung over her shoulder. The sky is clear and her shadow is razor sharp on the warm tiles. And as she had seen pulling into the parking zone, Clu is sitting on the wall, looking out over the water.

"Hey, Clu!" Ivo calls.

Then she sees past the aversion of Clu's face - her friend has been crying - and, even now, Clu's shoulders shiver with the remnants of sobs. But her face is only strained and faintly reddened.

"What's the matter, girlfriend?" Ivo asks, worried. Clu has been emotional on occasion, waking once screaming from a dream about the militia action. But this time, it is sadness, not fear or anger.

"I fell asleep... had a dream," Clu replies. "Lan was here. He just came and walked around the corner... like you did. Sat down with me, didn't say anything, just smiled. Started telling me about his... book." Her voice breaks, and she looks out toward the ocean.

Finally Ivo can speak. "You'll see him soon," she replies. "I mean, how much longer can it take to clear the dock. Another couple of weeks."

"You know, if only he could be here. He'd just love it." Clu sighs looking out over the water toward the distant city, as if she hasn't heard.

The suntube shadow has just run past her tall windows and now the light is pouring down onto the floor, the warmth stirring her from sleep. She suddenly is torn back into her past as her eyes open. But then it is gone, and she stares out into the brightness with a vague feeling of stiffness and well-being.

She sits at her breakfast table with a plate of fouraner, and a hot sweet cup of jaf. There are no clouds nearby, and the sand lizards rush back and forth in little flocks across the sand below.

At the controls of her Lustran, she enjoys how it clings to the varied road on the way to Celine's. To her left, the sea, and the distant towers of the city, bright in the haze. To her right are the hills and beside the road, tall glistening vasplin spikes sway in the breeze. Some of her favorite cello music, a new recording by Del, plays loudly and emotionally, but she tries to stay detached, to just enjoy the melody, because her well-being is shallow and probably brittle.

As she turns down the last few roads to Celine's, she remembers her first time in a car, when Celine had taken her for her interview. How terrified she had been by the speed, by the wild variety of vehicles - short, tall, long, small, huge, brightly colored, short, dull, reflective. And now, when these are all taken for granted, she enjoys the contrast for a moment.

They ride together out to the hills in Celine's Retrice, and the conversation ranges widely. This car is a large oval vehicle that drives itself, and they sit on a ring shaped couch high above the road, with a table at the center that serves refreshments as they ride. Clu is amazed by the luxury - not only the huge vehicle, but that it is the second vehicle Celine owns. She expects they would still say they weren't wealthy.

It is a little unnerving when the vehicle takes turns, or pauses at an intersection. She finds it difficult to follow when Celine and Luke discuss their work, but she tries. They watch one of the new programs that the pair had developed, their lenses relaying the images. All of the actors are synthetic, and the scenes are drawn from real places. It seems very strange, and the substance of it is hard for her to follow, depending as it does on many things that Prometheans take for granted. But the result is fascinating, and unlike any of the stilted performances she is used to from even real actors on Cocteau.

They stop in the midst of a brightly colored forest, filled with giant fern like trees and others with more spherical foliage patterns. A narrow dirt path over rugged terrain leads them on foot up the hills, with Luke at the head of the party. Clu feels the strain on her upper thighs with every step, but it is almost unnoticable, thanks to her conditioning over the last few months. Again she wonders at these people. Why, with everything they have to make things easier, do they choose, on purpose, to make things harder?

The trees are shorter, as if battered by age. The light of the suntube streaks the litter of old leaves and sticks and seeds. They step from rock to rock, and Clu is in wonder at the reality of this place. It is a world, but it is all from man. How had they planned all this? How could it be so much like the wooded paths of her youth, yet so different, with plants, animals, and stones nothing like her home... All this inside an asteroid. For a moment, it makes her shiver. And she wonders about the Founders, who had created this and abandoned it, leaving only their structures, their Principles, and starkly empty systems. Where had they gone? What had they been? And these people with her, one from her homeworld, one born here. Neither descendants of the Founders, but certain in their own way that the Founders had been like them, and that they were proper heirs.

I don't think I can feel that, she thinks, breath harshening in her throat as the path steepens and become rockier.

They stop at an outlook in the perpetual noon, and across the vastness, the volumes of light and shadow chase each other slowly, slowly and changing, across the sky and the inner shell. She drinks some water that seems to constantly appear in a small, eggshell thin glass container blazoned "Nupre", whatever that is. The water is cold somehow.

"So what do you think?" Luke asks. This is his enthusiasm, and he has organized it all.

"It's lovely," she replies, dreamily. "Sometimes its all too much."

He laughs and the sound of it reroots her firmly in the world. "It is a wonderful place. There's too much to ever know all of it. I wouldn't be surprised to run into the Founders out here, living on some secluded shelf pushed out over the valley, watching us all. I know I wouldn't mind living up here, if I could afford it."

"It's hard to believe there's anything you can't have. Look what you have already! How can there be anything more?"

He chuckles and rubs her shoulder. "I swear, Clu, you think we're wealthy or something. Believe me, there are plenty of things we'd have if we could - plenty of things we want to do, but we're just waiting for the opportunity. Opportunities don't come every day. But when they do, they take your life down another road. And then there are all the roads you've never traveled, because you can only take one at a time. I think that's why I like stories. They take me down some of those roads. Anyway, living on a ridge like this is something we can only get this way, for now. Who knows what will happen next year or after?"

Celine is standing, and her sharp profile is deep eyed by the noon light. "Well, this is one road we won't travel before nightsweep if we don't start, so maybe we'd better move on. I think we have another two hours before we get to the shelters."

The shelter is a low, linear structure of wood, stone, and metalglass, almost invisible amidst the rocks of the ridgetop. The sky outside its windows is obscured by morning clouds and the shifting rain that drums on the roof.

Clu looks outward, elbows leaned on the glossy plank table. Beside her, the chair pulls back, sound harsh on the slate tiles. Celine puts a steaming cup of soup on the plank table for Clu, and a second one for herself.

"I like the rain," Celine comments quietly. "Especially here in the mountains.It seems so quiet and relaxing after a long hike."

"Walking in it, though..."

"Like anything else, the right equipment makes all of the difference." Celine and Clu sip during a moment of silence. Celine takes up the thread again."But I suppose you know that, you're getting so close to going back to Cocteau."

Clu sips the soup, her caution flung to the top of her emotions, even as the warmth and the sound tug at her desire to sleep.

"Soon," she replies.

"You'll keep in touch, won't you?" Celine's face is faintly worried. "I mean, let us know how things are going? A compression pulse every once in a while so we don't have to wonder?"

"Sure," Clu replies. She eyes Celine speculatively for a moment and then looks out the window. "Nice of you to bring me here," she continues, not wanting to let the conversation go too far down a line that leads to a dangerous, but barely sensed destination.

Celine leans back in her chair and her bright eyes are fixed on Clu over the edge of the mug. "Yes. Well. Glad you like it."