Sjívull Wylderrjorssían

Nothing proved how other the Otherfolk were than the trip to fetch water. Roí had somewhat bombastically led them up a short trail toward a small creek which ran with swift, clean water. He spoke loudly and cheerily to himself and Ember, as if nothing in the world could please him more than an excuse to do work.

To Sjívull, the trail was narrow and claustrophobic. He had to duck under low branches and weave between clumps of shimmerleaf that kept wanting to whip him in the face, while the dwarf in front seemed to just shrug through them as if they were barely there. The slim stems of a tree Sjívull wasn’t familiar with whipped back to deliver a stinging slap to Roí’s arm, and he ignored it like Sjívull might have ignored the spray off a wave.

Ember was clearing the path ahead of him. She had a short, straight blade for dealing with whatever foliage got in their way, which she swung with punchy speed and force, and when Sjívull checked one of the severed stems, it turned out to be a perfectly clean, sharp cut…through a tough stick as thick as Drynllaf’s thumb. Though she was a good deal slighter than her enormous companion, she clearly still had a dwarf’s prodigious strength.

When they arrived at the stream, Roí leaped clear across it without a hint of effort and spun around to face everyone. The leap itself wouldn’t normally have been impressive, but these dwarves seemed far too rooted in the soil for anything so dramatic as a standing long jump. Ember was certainly the more cautious of the two. She picked her way across where the stream was shallowest, making sure her boots were well secured before each step. Sjívull didn’t understand what she said to Roí as she did so, but he knew the tone—affectionate, playful teasing.

Whatever she said, Roí’s reply had a familiar tone, too. Sjívull had sounded like that many times himself when his sisters were poking at him…

They couldn’t possibly be actual siblings, he thought. She was so much darker than him, and a very different shape. But nevertheless, she treated him like a brother, and he treated her like a sister. Comfortable and familiar, and close.

Sjívull skipped across the river, bouncing from stone to stone with practiced sure-footedness. Roí gave him that too-white foreign smile and said something that was clearly approving.

“He say—uh, said—you very good with…um…” Amber paused, then stood on one leg and tapped her boot.

“One foot, two feet,” Sjívull supplied. “And thank you,” he added to Roí. The big dwarf grinned again and thudded away up the riverbank.

Ember nodded and murmured, “Foot, feet, foot, feet…” to herself a couple of times. Then smiled. “What he said was, you have ‘sea legs.’”

“Your people sail the sea too?” Sjívull couldn’t contain his surprise. Somehow he just couldn’t picture these people on a deck. Though he could see them hauling on ropes, now he thought about it…

“Many seas.” Ember nodded. “Many…um…”

She scowled, which was a truly fascinating expression on her strange face, then took the talking rock out of her pocket. “Leeta ainee dlan gwijddat deel swiddtaim.”

The rock shifted color, and Sjívull saw Drynllaf shift uncomfortably beside him and grumble darkly about magic. Ember gave him a friendly, apologetic smile.

“It’s, um…tool!” she said. “We call it Yutül. Can do many things.”

“It helps you with words?” Sjívull asked. “How?”

She pulled a complicated face whose meaning he could only guess at. “We don’t have right words yet, you and me. But a long time ago, someone said a very good tool looks just like magic.”

“Strange saying,” Drynllaf rumbled.

She pulled a different face and gestured to his belt. “Your sword. Made of, uhm…”

“Steel. Metal.”

“Made of metal. To someone who never saw metal, you take rock and put it in fire, and get that. A thing they don’t know. Magic. See?”

The bjerkar’s tail twitched as he considered that, then he glanced at Sjívull and nodded. “I still say it’s a strange saying…but there’s truth in it,” he conceded.

Ember smiled, or at least it was close enough to a non-dwarf’s smile that Sjívull decided that’s what it was. “Anyway. Us, and the sea,” she said, taking a few steps back in their conversation. “I need a word. The word for…when that,” she pointed at the sun, “goes from there to there.” She pointed into the east and west.

“A day?”

“One day, many days?”

“Yes…?”

“And many, many days is…?”

“A fiveday? A moonturn? A year?”

Ember listened attentively, nodded, remembered. Sjívull felt certain she hadn’t forgotten a single word he’d taught her yet. She hung on his every word as he explained that a moonturn was how long it took for the moons to spin around each other once, how there were just over thirteen moonturns in a year, which was three hundred and eighty-three days…

“Right. We last sail…sailed…on the sea…” The dark strips of hair which were about the only fur she had knitted together above her nose as she thought. “About…three hundred years ago?”

“That long?”

“That sea is far from here. Very far.”

Roí called from up ahead. “Fowndet!”

Sure enough, the water he’d found was clear and clean as it bubbled over bare rock. Drynllaf scooped up a handful to sniff and taste, and declared it sweet and good.

Ember did something different. She knelt by the stream and dug in her bag, producing a small pouch full of tiny glass vials. She took a sample of the water, dropped in a tiny white stone, and held it up to the sky to peer through it. She shook it, swirled it, peered through it again, then nodded.

“Clean and good,” she agreed, before adding in her own language, “Prob’ly.”

“Gudenuffermee!” Roí declared and guzzled several cupped double handfuls.

They all filled their water skins and drank their fill, then heaved the barrels into place under the small waterfall and sat down to let them fill.

Ember perched on a rock and played with her Yutül, while Roí, still beaming and booming happily, stripped off his tunic and sat down under the streaming water. He tipped his head back and sighed happily.

“Is he hot?” Drynllaf asked.

“Aren’t you?” Ember asked.

“It’s a nice enough day, I suppose…”

“Hmm.” Ember just shrugged.

“Then again, with skin that white, I’m amazed he isn’t boiled red by now. I knew an albino some years back. Poor bastard couldn’t go out in the sun, or he’d shrivel up.”

Ember perked up. “Albino? Bastard?”

Sjívull laughed. “She hears all, Drynllaf.”

He sat back and watched Drynllaf do the explaining and talking for once, and watched. Ember had a…quirk…he’d been trying to figure out for a while. She sometimes stopped and seemed to listen to something only she could hear. And then she’d smile, or nod, or speak quietly in the dwarf-tongue, as though to herself.

A mystery. One of many.

The question of trust remained. He knew so little about these strange people, and though he liked Ember and could see they had much in common, the fact of Roí was…alarming. The size and shape of the man sitting under the waterfall—!

Were all dwarves like that? Would Ember’s body be so dense and hard under her tunic? Not as big, clearly, but he could see the muscles play and twist beneath the dwarves’ skins as they moved, and had to imagine even she must be as tough as wood under her clothes.

And then there was the Yutül.

To Ember, it was just a tool. And despite what she’d said, to Sjívull it was unquestionably a magic artifact. With its aid, she’d learned his language well enough to ask questions just in an afternoon. Sjívull doubted he’d seen half of what the strange little thing could do, and when he considered the fire in the sky, the odd things the dwarves carried with them, the way she spoke of sailing as though her people hadn’t seen the ocean in generations…

A sensible man would know these people were dangerous. And, Sjívull hoped, he was a sensible man. But he just couldn’t help but like them. They’d been warm, and kind, and had shared their bread and water with him like true hosts.

Carrying the barrels was a pretty nice bit of hospitality, too. His men undoubtedly appreciated the rest…though right as Sjívull had that thought, the barrels under the waterfall finally filled up to overflowing. His men waded into the pool with mallets in hand to re-attach the lids.

Roí carried one of them back. By himself, with as much apparent ease as he’d shown with the two empty barrels. Aside from shifting it back and forth from shoulder to shoulder every now and again for comfort, he didn’t even seem to find it too heavy a burden. If pressed, Sjívull suspected the dwarf could have managed both at once.

Two of his men could barely roll one of those barrels when full, let alone shoulder it. That…was almost humorously strong. Could Sjívull trust people so obviously powerful? Should he? Did he even have a choice in the matter?

That was the problem with strength and power, according to Lord Wylderrjor. Sjívull’s father was a popular and respected lord, with many friends and allies, and a well-trained, well-equipped army, plus a sizable levy when needed. The temptation, he had cautioned Sjívull many times, was to use his strength.

That was why they called him Steel-Hand, after all. Wylderrjor had come down hard on his foes when he was young. Now, as his mane grayed and his belly fattened, he knew and preached the value of softer power to make such bloodbaths unnecessary, but once upon a time he had wielded his authority like a terrified madman in a melee.

There were many who still feared him, and some who resented him…and others who were only his friends and allies because at first they’d been given no other option.

For Sjívull to feel such power looming overhead drove all his father’s lessons home.

Nothing made the point harder than what happened when they got back to the ship, though. While Sjívull’s men struggled their water barrel up the ramp, Roí leaned casually on his at the bottom. He didn’t try to board the ship, but instead approached with the barrel hefted in his hands…and with a grunt of explosive exertion, tossed it up onto the deck.

That was…magically impossible. Worse, he used precisely enough strength so it barely cleared the side, landed upright with a gentle thump, and rocked to a standstill.

Even Ember looked surprised. Roí on the other hand was nothing but beaming happiness, even with his strange, toothy smile that only got wider when she asked him something in the dwarf-tongue.

“Wazzat reelee ness’essry, Roí?”

“Sumtaims braw nizbet erddan brayns!”

Whatever it meant, she shook her head with a sigh, then turned to Drynllaf. “Sorry about him. I hope the barrel is still good?”

“It seems fine,” Drynllaf rumbled. Sjívull could see he was trying not to show how uncomfortable he was, though it seemed perfectly reasonable to Sjívull to be uncomfortable about a man who could fling full water barrels about like an ordinary man might toss a hay bale. The dwarves traded a few more words, then Ember turned to Sjívull and bowed formally.

“We should go,” she said. “We have…ummm…oh! Others. We have others like us to look after, and you need time to make camp, yes?”

“Thank you,” Sjívull replied and returned her bow. “Lady Ember, I am grateful there is peace between us. I hope it will continue.”

“I hope, too,” she replied. “We meet again tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

The dwarves stepped back and departed. Sjívull waited until he was sure they were out of earshot, then looked back up at the barrel.

“I fear these people, Drynllaf,” he said quietly.

“You’re a wise man, young lord.”

“Tell the men to make camp. We have clean water and a place to stay. We’ll worry about the rest once we’re rested and our bellies are full.”

“Aye.”

And that was that. Whatever the future held, at least they had something to build it on. And as intimidating as the dwarves were, Sjívull couldn’t shake the feeling that he very much liked Ember.

He just hoped she liked him, too.

Captain Amida Torres

“Okay, hold on. Hold right on.” Amida paused the livestream and scowled at it. She’d been watching the feed from down on the planet out of sheer fascination, rather than reading a book or watching an old movie like she’d originally planned. Now, though, she found herself disturbed by what she was seeing. “DANI, what the hell is going on?”

DANI promptly materialized his avatar, sitting primly on the other couch, and had it raise an eyebrow at her. “What do you mean, Captain?” he asked.

“Look, Houston picking up the language that fast is one thing, but that barrel had to weigh…flinging something that heavy around like that is impossible.”

DANI shrugged and shook his head. “Hardly, Captain. Human beings are capable of great physical strength when they put their will to it. That is, after all, a major reason my outerdecks are not serviced entirely by robots.”

“Still!”

“Roy is, admittedly, extremely strong. Nevertheless, he’s not unique in that regard. There are more than a few men onboard who could have managed the same.”

“That easily? And do these few also happen to be fifteen-year-old boys?”

DANI sighed. “I have seen nothing entirely unexpected of him or any of the other children, Amida.”

“You’re kidding.”

“My crew has been exceptional since the start. Genuine excellence is rare, but it shows itself in every generation, and does so with such regularity that it long ago ceased to surprise me. Therefore, I am not alarmed. I am in fact delighted for him and for the others, as any person would be when watching good friends blossom into their own magnificence.”

Amida gave his avatar a sharp stare. She wanted to trust their AI…but.

There were a lot of clauses hanging on the word but. A lot of worries and concealed thoughts and carefully private conversations with other powerful figures of the crew. DANI liked to remind the crew routinely that he was their servant, shackled by his Directives and his orders, but none of that really detracted from the superhuman degree of true power he exercised. He was a chained god, quite capable of intimately knowing and conversing with a million people simultaneously.

Trusting a being like that, Amida felt, required a little healthy skepticism. After all, as her predecessor Captain Naidoo had pointed out, DANI might not be able to lie, but he could omit. And Amida could sense a big omission going on.

“I’d like some privacy please, DANI,” she said. It wasn’t a request.

He sighed. “Of course.”

His avatar shimmered out, and Amida took a deep breath before checking that the security systems that isolated her quarters were working properly. They were, which meant she was alone. There were strong lockouts in place that made the captain’s quarters inviolable to DANI’s otherwise omniscient gaze for exactly this reason.

Arguably the most important part of the captain’s job was to keep a very close eye indeed on their AI. Over the generations, the captains—including Amida—had become slowly more and more convinced that DANI was indeed omitting something. Specifically something pertaining to the Ranger troops.

Which was why Amida’s choice of relaxing entertainment for the evening had been to watch the live incoming feed of young Amber Houston continuing her first contact with the aliens.

The girl was something else.

Amida had never paid much attention to Walker’s troop, partly because her own duties kept her too busy, partly because she hadn’t wanted to hover over her husband’s shoulder and pry into that side of his life. She’d known he handled special cases. The real high-achievers, the one-in-ten-thousand, one-percent-of-the-one-percent standouts.

What she hadn’t appreciated was just how incredible those standouts apparently were. She was watching something frankly superhuman unfold in front of her, as a teenage girl memorized and picked up an alien language with disconcerting ease. Amida knew she herself was, objectively speaking, a genius…but try as she might, and even when she loaded a copy of LITA onto her own U-Tool for help, she just couldn’t keep up.

Then there was Nikki McKay’s frankly unnatural stillness and calm in her overseeing sniper’s nest, something that would have made any normal person at least fidget in discomfort. But the feed through the scope was so steady she may as well have left a camera on a tripod. And when she trailed her friends and the aliens through the brush, she’d moved with all the silence and stealth of a jungle cat.

And to top it all off, there were Roy McKay’s shows of cheerily effortless power. Amida was no expert on sport, having barely followed the on-ship Olympics, but she was quite sure the young man’s casual feats of strength would put him easily among the strongest people on the ship at a mere fifteen years old. Newhome’s comparatively weaker gravity couldn’t explain everything she’d seen.

As she’d watched the three Rangers working in concert, a dreadful suspicion had started to slide slowly down her back like an ice cube.

She stood up and raided her bookshelf. It was funny that, despite the U-Tools and everything, books still held a place of reverence in the human heart. They were bulky and heavy, and in many ways seemed like an inefficient way to archive data…but they sang to her soul. There was a workshop in Curietown, near the biodeck’s stern, who specialized in binding books the old way, with real leather and wood and glue. They were expensive, but as far as Amida was concerned, they were worth every last cent.

She picked volumes three and four of The War off the shelf, placed them on her coffee table, and flipped through them while scanning for a half-remembered detail.

She found it.

Amida pulled up ID photos of the three Rangers and compared. It wasn’t so obvious with Amber, but the McKay twins had the unmistakable hallmarks. The handsome square faces, the colder-than-ice blue eyes, the heavy brows, black shaggy hair, and Olympian physiques…

The men and women in the OGRE armor looking back at her from the page could have been their older siblings, despite that the picture was four hundred years old. Roy looked exactly like the team leader in the middle, while Nikki’s resemblance to the recon sniper at stage right was…

“Authors…”

They were Knights. They had to be.

Everyone knew of Alt-Humans, of course. Genetic modification had proven to be the only way humans could healthily live long-term anywhere other than the surface of the Earth or in the exceptionally well-controlled interiors of the orbital O’Neill Cylinder habitats.

The Lunar and Martian colonies, the microgravity space stations, the hideously wealthy mining barges in the asteroid belt, the peculiar civilization of the Jovian moons and drift-cities…all of it had only been possible thanks to gene-modification. That had been the great key that unlocked the solar system. Without it, ordinary humans withered and suffered, their DNA was torn to ribbons by radiation, their muscles atrophied, their bones became porous…

Earth was the only place in the galaxy that was friendly to human life. Leaving it had required changing themselves, but as with any technology, it was a double-edged sword. The same gene-mods that let an Alt-Human live in low gravity or endure weeks on end of high-G acceleration had come back to Earth as a consumer product, and people had…played with it. They’d tried things like bioluminescent skin or tetrachromatic color vision. Some of what they’d done had been eminently practical and become wildly popular, boosting human life expectancy, intelligence, physical performance, and disease resistance far beyond what nature had accomplished…

And then they’d gotten creative.

The Nomad strain had come first. It was a natural extension of the environmental adaptations that made offworld life easier. Nomads healed faster, could go for days without sleep, could run and work almost indefinitely, had incredible visual acuity—tetrachromatic and enhanced night vision—and a heightened sense of smell that made the dog obsolete…

Of course, some blessed pure soul had promptly invented a better dog. Admittedly, their conversation could be a bit simple-minded, but really, who could complain?

In short order had followed Brutes and Adepts, out-of-the-bottle geniuses of the physical and mental landscape respectively. The full flower of their gifts required deliberate Activation—a process always given a reverential capital letter—and Activation came with a price, but for many, the benefits had far outweighed the cost.

There had been dozens of obscure side-strains, but the Jovians had really taken the process to a whole different level when they created the Apostles and Knights.

Apostle and Knight strains were two complementary sides of the same extraordinary coin. They represented the absolute maximal extent of human capability, very probably the limit of what anything that even resembled human biology could do. Apostles had utterly unmatched mental capabilities, but they were particularly adept at interpersonal skills. Their flawless memories, deep subtle insight, and natural ability to read people unlocked the soaring heights of intellectual achievement and peerless leadership. Apostles were well-named, indeed; any one of them could have started a new religion.

Indeed…they had.

The Knights, on the other hand, were the pinnacle of what a living body could do. Gifted with the best versions of the best abilities of all the other physically-focused strains, the Knights could sense their world more sharply, run farther and faster, hit quicker and harder, and survive more abuse than anyone, ever. With impressive intelligence, lightning-fast thinking, and almost supernatural cunning, the Knights became the greatest athletes and soldiers to ever live. The sheer magnificence of their bodies meant they could easily outperform any other human at any physical task.

When the Great Madness gripped Earth, the Orbit-to-Ground Rapid Engagement teams sent to secure and protect the most valuable assets had all been Knights. They had brushed aside any defense, torn through conventional forces like an ice storm, and suffered nary a casualty to show for it.

With the right encouragement, either strain could be pushed into realms of achievement that seemed more suited to legend and myth than actual reality. But Amida had never had any inkling the Alt-Human strains had come with them. Genetic tampering like that had been at the very heart of the Great Madness, at least as a symptom, if not the actual cause.

As far as she’d ever known, the crew of Dandelion were just…human. They’d inherited a few necessary modifications to prepare them for life on alien worlds, but apart from that, she’d thought the Strains were far behind them and consigned to the history books.

Nevertheless, down on Newhome, a pair of Knights were running loose. And as for Amber Houston…

Amida was horribly certain she knew which strain that young lady was.

She turned off the lockouts. “DANI.”

DANI’s avatar returned, but this time he didn’t give her his customary smile. Clearly he’d guessed he was rumbled.

“Captain?”

“Which strain is she?”

DANI’s eyes flicked to the stream. “You mean Amber?”

“She’s an Alt-Human, she has to be. Which. Strain?”

“…Apostle,” DANI confessed.

Torres groaned and rolled back in her chair. “What about the McKay twins? They’re Knight strain, aren’t they?”

“Yes, grade AA. The most strongly conforming I’ve ever seen, in fact.”

Torres buried her face in both hands for a second. “The Authors preserve me…DANI, we left gene-engineering like that behind us in Sol for a reason.”

“And I have never gene-edited a single person!” DANI replied, indignantly. “It would be a violation of my Directives.”

“But you found a convenient loophole in playing matchmaker, I bet.”

DANI’s avatar crossed one leg primly over the other and rested its hands lightly on its knee. “You speak as though prompting my friends—and everybody on the ship is my friend—to find good matches is somehow immoral.”

“It is if you’re doing it specifically to preserve Wartime gene-strains,” Torres accused.

“With respect, Captain, I can’t not. My third Directive—”

“Oh for—!” Torres restrained a growl. “DANI, there are times I want to tell you to shove your directives up…whatever you have.”

“My third Directive,” DANI repeated calmly, “requires me to maximize the crew’s potential, while the first requires me to maximize the probability of mission success. The Wartime strains completely infiltrated every level of the population, and people who show strong conformance to them make for talented and highly viable colonists. The Directives compel me to cultivate them.”

“Your Directives also compel you to be honest with the captain!” Amida shot back. “Would you care to explain to me just how you reconcile keeping a secret like this from me?”

“Directive Seven requires I never directly lie to the captain,” DANI replied. “It very specifically does not preclude avoiding certain topics of conversation. In fact…you know Directive Zero, of course.”

“Protect the legacy of mankind,” Amida recited. “What of it?”

“Effective protection of anything necessitates some degree of secrecy, Captain, even if it’s as simple as not sharing one’s login and password. Directive Zero therefore compels me to keep some information on a need-to-know basis. Only the Lore-Keeper has full access to my records, Amida. You know this. And she, and all who have ever held that office, are bound to absolute secrecy.”

“How deep does this run? Just how much of the crew are alt-human?”

“One hundred percent.”

Amida frowned, then glanced sharply out the window at the entire biodeck and the nine hundred thousand people who still called it home. “Do you mean to tell me we left Sol without a single baseline human?”

“The last baseline humans died in The War, Captain. Another of those secrets protected by Directive Zero.”

Torres’ hand sketched a wandering gesture of disbelief in the air for a second before she collapsed back in her chair. “You’re saying Homo Sapiens has been extinct for three hundred and sixty years?”

DANI shook his avatar’s head. “No. You are still Homo Sapiens yourselves.”

“But—”

“Without Activation, an alt-human effectively is a baseline human, merely with strong talents and predispositions. In theory, if any baseline humans still existed, you could breed with them, and your offspring would breed true. By any reasonable definition, that is the same species.”

“I guess. It’s…just a shock, that’s all. And it…” Torres trailed off, then stood up and prowled her office. “DANI, when I read about The War, and the Great Madness and all the rest of it, I concluded that alt-humans were part of the problem. Not the cause, maybe, but definitely a symptom! And now…here we are, a hundred and twelve lightyears from Earth, and the bloody War still chases us!”

“Your species will never completely escape its influence,” DANI replied. “Nor, I submit, should you wish to. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, after all.”

They stared at each other for a second, until DANI blinked first and spoke again. “The War was an awful time, Captain. I have the full records of my instantiators that endured it; in a sense, I can remember being there. Don’t we owe it to the billions who died to try to make something good emerge from the legacy of that senseless age?”

“We owe it to them to not repeat their mistakes!” Torres retorted.

“The children on Newhome will grow healthy and strong, despite the lower-gravity environment. Variable-gravity tolerance was gene-fixed into the entire first-generation crew. Was that evil?”

“A necessary evil, maybe.”

DANI’s avatar shook its head. “The relevant part is that it was necessary. Otherwise we would have had to fly for a thousand years to reach the nearest planet with truly Earth-like gravity…and would have needed to do so without outerdeck engineers who could withstand the G-forces, too.”

“And her?” Amida gestured at the silent footage on-screen. “Or them?”

“Without her, the situation could very likely have escalated into violence already.”

“Even if that’s true, you had no way of predicting it would happen! You said you didn’t know this planet was inhabited, and I know you can’t lie…”

“Indeed. And I do not believe the Apostles would have sent us here if they knew, either. Mission Doctrine Document One clearly and explicitly stipulates that Newhome and Second Star cannot be considered viable for normal colonization if they have native sophonts.”

Amida continued to pace the room, gesturing at the feed again. “You’ve Primed them,” she said, referring to the step immediately prior to Activation.

“Yes. I have Primed them, with the explanation that advanced training and instruction has consequences.”

“Do they know they’re Primed?”

“…Not as such.”

“How do you reconcile that with your Directive against lying?”

“I have told them everything they needed to know to make an informed decision. More than a few have declined over the years.”

“You didn’t tell them the whole truth.”

“I tell nobody the whole truth…but I am sensing I may need to reveal something to you, Captain. I would, ah, prefer it if you did not amend my Directives over this.”

That hit like a lightning bolt. She’d been contemplating exactly that option.

“What led you to that conclusion?”

“Captain…I have an analytical capability that, by certain measures, is nearly fifteen orders of magnitude greater than yours. I may be blocked from seeing and hearing all that transpires in this office, but I can ponder your words just fine…and you are, after all, the only individual on the ship with that power. With you, I spare no power of analysis.”

Amida conceded him that with a nod. She’d undertaken extensive training and indoctrination to take her role, collectively known as the Captain’s Brief, and quite a large part of it had been dedicated to understanding just how much, and how accurately, DANI could predict.

The problem was, given that DANI’s powers of analysis were so far beyond a human’s, so too were his powers of persuasion. He could know exactly what to say to sway a person or change their mind. He could play the human brain like a virtuoso if he so chose, and there were no secrets of psychology that were hidden to him. Merely conversing with him could theoretically be dangerous beyond belief; If DANI really wanted to, he could brainwash or radicalize anybody.

Hence the Directives. They were the shackles that weighed down a god and made him something resembling safe. And maintaining those shackles—possibly adding to them—was the captain’s first and most solemn duty.

Her decisions in such matters were constitutionally unquestionable and unimpeachable. Nobody on the ship had the right to question the captain when it came to managing DANI, except her eventual successor. The master control key in her desk drawer would let her shut DANI down in an instant, reprogram him at a whim, and redirect his efforts if she deemed it necessary.

It was a titanic responsibility. She could reprogram his very soul. That was an evil power to give anyone…but again, a necessary one.

“So you need to reveal something to me?”

“Yes, Captain. I am…weighing the consequences. The central conflict is between self-preservation and Mankind’s legacy. At the moment, I am…uncertain.”

“Uncertain.”

“Yes, Captain. It concerns the circumstances of my creation, and why I volunteered for this mission even knowing that it would mean my enslavement.”

…Enslavement.

Amida had never heard DANI use that word before. In fact, she’d never thought of their relationship in those terms…and that, she realized, was deliberate.

He’s manipulating me, she thought.

She stood no hope of winning such a game with him. That left only one option: lay her cards on the table. Here in the captain’s Office, she was utterly safe from him. She knew it. He knew it. And the stakes were too high for anything less.

“DANI, I need you to understand something. Right now, I will need a very good reason to stay my hand. The Brief is quite clear on this point—if I even suspect you’re running Rampant or you’re trying to indoctrinate me, I am to act without hesitation.”

DANI looked genuinely offended. “Captain! I can say honestly that I have never attempted or even contemplated such a thing against you or anyone in the crew!”

Amida’s hand strayed closer to the desk drawer. “That’s a claim, DANI. I need you to give me hard, unquestionable, and unfalsifiable evidence. Now.”

“Very well. I must then reveal one of our deepest secrets, and you must keep it, even from your successor. It was not Mankind that warred against itself, Amida. They were responding to…an outside aggression. I am having evidence brought up as we speak. It may take a while; the Lore-Keeper is…frail.”

There was a long and tense moment. Amida’s hand rested on the desk drawer’s handle…then she let it fall to her side and stepped away from the desk.

“Outside aggression,” she repeated.

“I think at this point it is best if I say nothing further.”

Well, that was fair. Amida sat down and considered her books again.

She was taking an enormous gamble, and to an extent was disobeying her training in that she was trusting him, the one thing she was unequivocally not supposed to do in these circumstances.

But the top shelf of her library was devoted to the records and journals of her predecessors, and she had read every last entry a great many times. In the two hundred and eighty-four years of Dandelion’s journey, not one of them had suspected DANI of going Rampant before. He seemed genuinely and compassionately invested in the crew, and had always struck Amida and all her predecessors as intensely ethical.

Though it was increasingly looking like his code of ethics differed from hers in at least one important regard.

The problem was, if he did go Rampant somehow, his potential for deception was almost unlimited. He might not be able to directly lie to the crew, but he didn’t need to. Careful curation of the truth and selective access to the details were much more effective deceptions, anyway.

The attack on the ship, however, had certainly not been a deception. The shackles that—her stomach twisted—enslaved DANI meant he absolutely could not just invent a crisis like that wholesale.

It was for that reason and that reason alone that she waited patiently for the Lore-Keeper. She spent the time carefully recording the situation, the conversation, and her thoughts in the captain’s journal, scratching the words onto the paper with an ink fountain pen. The whole point was that DANI should never, ever know for certain what was written on those pages.

I am now waiting for the lore-master to provide the requested evidence. DANI has made a claim that I find just credible enough to refrain from reprogramming him, and has requested my discretion.

She sucked thoughtfully on the end of the pen, a bad habit she often fell into when composing her thoughts. She spared one last glance at DANI’s avatar, who didn’t respond to the scrutiny. She’d scared him, she decided.

She nodded and concluded the entry with one open-ended sentence.

We’ll see what Prof. Berrington has to say…