The Ghost Line Read online

  Michel let go of her. “Then you should have let Wei destroy the ship,” he said bitterly. He would not meet her eyes.

  “You would have died,” she said quietly. “And it would have sent out seeds before it died, too. Anyway, who are we to say it should be destroyed? If I stay I can guide the Queen safely out of the solar system. This is the only way.”

  “I can’t believe you’re sending me off in a lifeboat with this woman who caused everything. I don’t get a choice at all?”

  “No,” Saga said. “Not this time. Go back to Earth and see my family. Tell them I’m sorry. Tell them it’s important, what I’m doing.”

  Michel shook his head. He got up from the bed and went to the small desk in the corner. He sat at the desk, his back to her.

  Saga went to the door. There was a limit to what could be said with words.

  Wei was in the room across the corridor. Saga closed her eyes so she could see inside. Ayanti sat with her on the bed. The ship had upgraded the crude body she had fashioned. It now held his memories, his thoughts. He could talk. They’d been talking for a long time now, holding hands. She could see the tear tracks on Wei’s cheeks.

  Saga walked the corridors again, past the model ships and the hollow carvings on the doors. The dining room that still echoed with the sounds of past dinner parties as the ship brought them to life, spurred by the mimetic instincts of the organisms that inhabited the Queen.

  She’d seen this ship as a sterile, forgotten thing. She remembered her disappointment when she realized that it would have made a terrible interactive. That whatever stories she would have told here would have been clichéd and uninspired.

  Now there was something else. There had been deaths here, but also life. She began to think about a new interactive. A way to pay tribute to Gregor and Ayanti, and to her mother. Something that captured the feeling of being part of a machine that was being remade. That might just become something greater than the sum of its parts. She had lots of time to work on it. It would be the last and the most important thing she would ever create.

  * * *

  She found Michel on the bridge, curled on the floor, surrounded by crumbs from the steak sandwich they’d left there. She stood and watched him, feeling a wave of tenderness for what he’d tried to do. Then she reached out and undid the changes that had begun within him, disconnecting him from the ship, returning his cells to their former selves.

  She carried him back to the stateroom. Across the hall, Wei slept peacefully in Ayanti’s arms. He had already placed a sedative patch on her neck, and Saga did the same to Michel.

  When the time came, Saga stood at the lifeboat hatch as Ayanti and Krasivaya gently carried their sleeping cargo to the lifeboat and deposited them inside.

  They came back out and stood with her and the male synth as the hatch closed. In her mind’s eye, she saw the puffs of gas as the lifeboat was pushed away from the Queen. Then the boat’s small engine fired and it quickly dwindled, heading for an orbit that would make their rescue possible, though it would take months. Perhaps Michel and Wei would come to some sort of accommodation in that time. Perhaps not.

  She felt a rumble as the Queen’s own engines came to life. A part of her mind carefully worked to persuade the ship that it was okay to leave this small yellow sun behind. There were other places.

  Saga could still cry, so she did that for a while. Then she turned to Ayanti and the two synths.

  “Come,” she said. “We have work to do.”

  About the Authors

  ANDREW NEIL GRAY and J. S. HERBISON are partners in life as well as in writing. The Ghost Line is their first fiction collaboration but won’t be their last: a novel is also in the works. They have also collaborated in the creation of two humans and preside over a small empire of chickens, raspberries, and dandelions on Canada’s west coast. You can find Andrew Neil Gray at http://andrewneilgray.com and @andrewneilgray on Twitter. You can find J. S. Herbison at http://jsherbison.com.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Begin Reading

  About the Authors

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  THE GHOST LINE

  Copyright © 2017 by Andrew Neil Gray and Jennifer Herbison

  Cover illustration by John Harris

  Cover design by Christine Foltzer

  Edited by Carl Engle-Laird

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of

  Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9496-5 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9497-2 (trade paperback)

  First Edition: July 2017

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