Further: Beyond the Threshold (21 page)

Not all the members of the “crew,” using the term loosely, had positions, with some of them acting only as passengers. And other positions were traded back and forth between the crew, at will, from time to time, whenever the mood struck; it would be complicated for an unaugmented organic mind like mine to follow, but the
Further
itself kept track of the crew and their responsibilities from instant to instant. In order for two members of the crew to trade positions, they needed only to inform the
Further
and it entered the record.

There were many times when I’d been tempted to offer the command chair to First Zel i’Cirea, if only to escape more of her withering stares.

Zel was treating me to one such stare as we all stood around the control center in an awkward silence. There were politics at work I didn’t understand, but I knew enough to recognize that the corvid brothers had sided with the Amazon in some sort of power struggle I didn’t even know was taking place. I was on the other side, the hapless unfrozen caveman, unsure even how I’d managed to give offense in so short a time.

Xerxes, not standing on ceremony, took a seat and configured the table in front of em to display astrogation information. One of the corvids, Hu or Mu, I couldn’t tell which, was occupying the next seat over and leaned over conspiratorially.

“My brother and I helped design the control interface, you should know.”

“Did you?” Xerxes answered, sounding not at all impressed. “Well, be sure not to mention ‘design’ to our good physician”—ey nodded toward Maruti—“or else he’s liable to respond with another of his irrational outbursts.”

Before Maruti could respond, his teeth already bared, the entry to the bridge slid open again, and a pair of young women entered wearing matching one-piece suits of flashing green.

“Well, look,” the two said in unison as they loped down the steps, “the gang’s all here!”

“
Namaste
, Madam Jida,” I said, pressing my hands together at my chest.

“Oh, don’t be so formal,” one of the two said, sliding into the seat beside me. “As ambassador extraordinary of Jida Shuliang to the universe at large, I suppose the correct term of address is ‘Your Excellency.’”

“The rest of me is getting my quarters in order,” the other said, dropping into the seat on my other side. “But I’m already unpacked and ready to go. So when do we launch, already?”

And that was that.

There was one more member of our command crew I hadn’t met yet, though I didn’t know it until I reached my quarters and finally unpacked.

We had just left Ouroboros, powering away from the Entelechy at speed, the transition from normal space to the distorted bubble of space time that enclosed us entirely imperceptible. The only sign that we were moving at all, in fact, was the view beyond the hull as the stars in front of us slowly began to cluster closer together, their shades shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum, while the stars behind were red and drawing nearer one another.

I’d given the order to depart from the bridge, but once we were underway, there wasn’t much to do or see for a few days. The metric engineering drives could maintain the distorted region of space around us for five standard days, during which time the bubble would be moving through normal space at a rate of ten light-years per day. At the end of five days, the bubble would collapse and we’d revert to normal space, after which the drive would recharge for another standard day, more or less. (The recharge cycle could be shortened by a few hours if we cut back on other power usage, but as that would mean shutting down gravity, environmental controls, and even life support, I doubted any of us would be in that much of a hurry.)

The
Further
, therefore, could average a maximum of fifty light-years of travel every six days. At top speed, it would take us just under one year to travel from one edge of the Entelechy to the other. For this first hop, though, we’d be taking a short shakedown cruise, journeying from Ouroboros to a planet called Aglibol, some forty light-years away.

For the next few days, then, we had little to do but settle in and wait. I had scarcely seen my quarters, stopping in only briefly after arriving to drop off my scant luggage, and with no responsibilities keeping me on the bridge and Zel and her corvid cronies still fixing me with hard stares, I decided it was high time to unpack.

The quarters I’d selected were simple, even Spartan compared to the opulence of the diamond house on Earth. A sitting room, a smaller room with a bed, a small kitchen, an office with a desk and chairs, and a washroom, all configured more or less to “Information Age standards,” or so I was told. If that meant I could understand the functioning of the toilet without needing an expert’s assistance, it was fine with me.

One wall slid aside to reveal a kind of wardrobe, and unpacking my bag, I hung the sherwani coat, white churidar pants, and juties up on hooks and, after taking out the rest of the contents, hung the empty bag itself on another hook. Then I returned to the sitting room, set the Space Man action figure on a place of honor on a shelf, put the handheld beside it, and then hung my holstered cap gun from a peg that helpfully protruded from the wall when I needed it. Then I was left holding only the diamond case Amelia had given me when we parted in Central Axis back on Earth. I sat down at the table and set the case down in front of me.

I looked at the case for a long while, thinking about my former crewmate. I understood her reasons for staying behind while I went off to the stars, but that didn’t make her decision any less difficult to take. This was an amazing world in which we’d found ourselves, and it was a shame that we wouldn’t be able to share it with one another—whether simply as friends or as something more.

What trinket could Amelia have given me that could possibly make up for her absence?

I slid the case open, and inside I found a signet ring, the color of silver, set with a red gem. The stone might have been a fire opal, and indeed, it seemed to glow with a kind of inner light.

An inner light that quickly spilled out into the room around it, glowing brightly.

“It’s about time you opened that case,” said a familiar voice. “It was getting stuffy in there.”

Suddenly, on the table’s surface stood a miniature holographic projection of a woman, no more than thirty centimeters tall.

“G’day,” the projection said in Amelia Apatari’s voice, winking. “Did you miss me?”

I think my heart stopped beating for a moment, and only my years as a battle-hardened expert in Interdiction Negotiation kept me from jumping up on the chair and screaming like a little girl.

“What’s the matter, RJ? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I…I…” was about all I could manage.

“Of course, technically, I suppose I
am
a ghost, come to think of it.”

“But…but what…”

“If you don’t unclench a bit, my dear Ramachandra, you’re going to blow an o-ring.”

I still held the signet ring in a white-knuckled grip, and when I looked down at it, I could see the lights dancing deep within the fire opal whenever the holograph moved. Startled, as though something I’d thought was a stuffed toy had turned out to be a live snake, I dropped the ring and sprang to my feet. To my credit, though, I
didn’t
jump on the chair and scream, however tempting it might have been.

“What
are
you?” I said, and then followed quickly with, “Well, Amelia, obviously…but
how
?”

The tiny woman on the table sighed, a sympathetic expression on her delicate features. “Sit down, RJ. I’m supposed to help you, not give you a bloody coronary.”

I found my way back onto the chair, regarding the ring I’d dropped onto the table warily, as though it might bite me.

“It’s like this, mate. When I decided to stay in the Entelechy rather than come with you—that is, when
Amelia Apatari
decided to stay—she knew she’d be leaving you without any connection to your own world and time. And while I wasn’t willing—while
she
wasn’t willing to sacrifice her own dreams to come along with you, she wanted to do something to make it right.”

It was strange, watching the little figure, the table faintly visible through her translucent body, who seemed to find it difficult to remember she wasn’t the woman she so resembled.

“You remember Maruti saying that he’d reconstructed a more or less complete version of my consciousness and memory from my…well, from my ‘remains,’ right?”

I nodded numbly.

“Well, I asked Maruti if he could just update the copy with my recent memories and download it into something you could take along with you.” She nodded toward the ring sitting on the table a short distance from her. “The ring was Maruti’s idea. Stylish, don’t you think? Complete with its own holographic projector.”

“So you’re…what? Some kind of…copy of Amelia?”

“Technically, I’m a digital incarnation of Amelia’s consciousness housed in the ring. I can run as a virtual emulation inside the ring itself or interact with the outside world either by direct interlink communication or by holographic projection.”

“Wait, I’m still not sure I understand. Amelia stayed back in the Entelechy, as we discussed, and you’re a full copy of her mind. Does that make you…alive? I mean, are you sentient?”

The little holographic projection pursed her lips in an expression I’d grown to recognize in the years I served beside Amelia. It was the face she made whenever reminded of a fact she’d sooner forget.

“Well,
actually
, when ‘Amelia’ asked for the copy to be made, she insisted that Maruti keep it just below full sentience. I remember her being worried about creating a fully self-aware version of herself if it was only going to be, for all intents and purposes, someone else’s property. But I don’t know. Do I
seem
subsentient?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, or even the faintest notion what one might be.

“I
feel
the same as I always have, if you ask me,” the holograph went on. “So either sentience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be or that chimpanzee might have pulled a fast one.”

I reached over and gingerly picked up the ring. Holding it up to my face, I peered into the depths of the gem, as though I might catch a glimpse of Amelia’s mind somewhere in there. “It’s been a while since Amelia gave this to me. What have you been doing in there all this time, anyway?”

The projection laughed, Amelia’s laugh, familiar and throaty. “Well, it looks like cramped quarters, but there’s quite a bit to be said for being a digital consciousness. Sure, I don’t have a physical form, but I’ve got perfect recall and enough processing capacity to simulate any environment I choose. So I’ve been lounging around, rereading all of the
Taimi Taitto, Girl Reporter
graphic albums I loved as a kid, eating my favorite meals, and revisiting my favorite places. And even made a few new stops along the way. Paris in the 19C was particularly nice, I thought. Honestly, if I didn’t know I was an emulation, I’d never have guessed it.”