by C. Gockel
Noa felt her nostrils flare as they stepped into the kitchen. Hisha was a civilian, and she didn’t understand what they were up against. She tried to keep from snapping at her. “I can’t watch him. I have to work out a plan with James for commandeering the Ark. Now that we have the protest marches to factor in, we’ll be able to change our strategy.”
“But he’s too young not to have supervision,” Hisha protested, going over to Oliver. Sitting in the corner of the kitchen in a bouncer contraption and sucking on his knuckles, he barely looked up at Noa. He was gazing intently at a holo.
Noa’s eyes fell on James. He was eating a bowl of what looked like oatmeal with a fist-size helping of shredded coconut and a giant square of butter on top. Carl Sagan was at his feet. Noa would need James, preferably not hungry. She didn’t distract him with a joke about his culinary choices. Her gaze flicked to 6T9, standing unblinking in hibernation mode, and was hit by inspiration. “6T9, wake up!”
The ‘bot’s eyelids fluttered and a soft hum came from his chest cavity and his head.
“No,” said Hisha, apparently guessing her intentions. “No, no, no … ”
Noa turned to her. “You said that you’d do anything so that your child could live.”
Hisha took a step back. “But I can’t let a se … a ‘bot watch my son. Who knows what he might do to him? And he’s unclean.”
Noa rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he’s been bathed since his last escapade.”
“I have indeed,” said 6T9 brightly.
“And he’d never have sexual relations with a minor,” Noa supplied.
6T9’s jaw dropped, and he stood up straighter. “Indeed, I would not. That goes specifically against my programming.” It was the first time Noa had heard 6T9 sounding so affronted. Come to think of it, had she ever heard him sound affronted?
“Can you make sure the minor doesn’t harm himself?” Noa asked.
6T9 smiled. “I am programmed to recognize harm, even self-harm, and to stop it with physical restraint if necessary, and a call to the authorities.” A light buzz came from his chest. “Although, with the ethernet down … ”
“You could call for James or me,” said Noa. “We’ll be upstairs.”
“Oh, yes! I could call for James or you,” said 6T9, eyes widening. He smiled and nodded, as though that was the most ingenious idea he’d ever heard.
“No,” said Hisha. “He doesn’t know how to take care of a toddler!”
Voice dry, James quipped, “I’m sure he knows lots of games.”
Forcing herself to frown instead of laugh, Noa shot a glare in his direction. The cheeky bastard raised an eyebrow.
“Indeed, I do know a lot of games!” 6T9 chirped. He frowned. “Although most I could not play with a minor, as they would violate my programming.”
Sighing, Noa said, “You can throw a ball, right, Sixty?”
“Yes.”
“Make hover noises?” Noa supplied, remembering watching Kenji when he was a baby.
“Actually, yes!” said 6T9.
Noa nodded. “You’ll have to do.”
“No, he won’t!” Hisha stamped her foot. “He needs instructions on feeding, and potty training, and nap time.”
“Then give him instructions,” Noa snapped.
“But make them simple,” said 6T9. “I’m dense. Literally and figuratively.”
Hisha glared up at Noa, and Noa swore the smaller woman trembled with rage.
Leveling her gaze at her, Noa said, “If you have problems with 6T9 watching your son in your kitchen, you better be ready to park yourself on this planet and stay behind. These are ideal conditions compared to what we’ll face soon. If you think your son would be better served by staying here, then you say so, now.”
Hisha’s mouth opened as though she was about to speak. But then she snapped her jaw shut.
Noa let her stance soften and spoke gently. “I’m trying to save everyone’s lives, not just your son’s.”
As Noa expected, the doctor deflated a bit at that. She turned to 6T9 and started to give him instructions for feeding, naps, and nappies. Noa took a deep breath and felt a sting in her lungs. Thank the universe, the rest of her crew would be military and disinclined to confront her over trivialities.
Motioning for James, she headed to the stairs. Grabbing a piece of fruit, he followed. “And that is why I didn’t want a child on the ship or anywhere near this mission,” she half-muttered, half-panted as she climbed the steps. She paused to catch her breath at the top of the landing.
“Maybe he won’t survive the commandeering,” James said.
Noa’s head snapped in his direction. His tone was so flat, she couldn’t tell if he was joking … if it was a joke, Noa couldn’t imagine it being in poorer taste.
“What?” said James, with no eyebrow raise and no expression in his lips, of course. A shiver swept through Noa, and she didn’t think it was just because the Manuels kept the air conditioning too damn high.
“What is it, Noa?”
Somewhere, an air vent clicked off. “You don’t sound as though you care, either way,” she said softly and then mentally castigated herself. It was just his damaged augmentation—of course he cared, even if he couldn’t express it.
“I should care?” said James.
Noa wanted to step back, but her back was already to the wall. The situation suddenly felt wrong, backward, and inside out. “Yes,” Noa whispered, hairs on the back of her neck rising.
James’s head dipped. The air vent clicked again, and she heard air rushing into the other room. “You care,” said James. A slight crease appeared between his brows. “More than you would about an adult.”
“The death of a child is the death of hope,” Noa whispered, her hands fluttering to her abdomen. “It would be terrible for morale.”
“Oh,” said James. He shifted on his feet. “Have you caught your breath?”
Noa started at the lack of segue, but then she shook it off. They had too much to do, and too little time.
James watched Noa’s avatar prowl through a three-dimensional map of Prime generated by his app. Her avatar’s face was lit from below, her hands were clasped behind her back, and as usual her avatar wore her Fleet grays. James’s avatar, this one in more casual Earth attire—a long tunic and loose slacks—walked along beside her. In the physical world, they were sitting across from one another, cross legged on the bed, Noa leaning slightly against the headboard. Occasionally he diverted his attention to the sound of her breathing. As she’d rested, it had become less ragged. He was worried about what lay ahead. He knew the first treatment for the infection would give her improved lung function immediately, but she still would be far from well. He didn’t let that concern, or any other emotion, cross the hard link. She kept her feelings to herself as well.
“A disturbance there should divert the Guard,” Noa’s avatar said, pointing at the entrance to the museum complex.
Her words brought his full focus back to the mental map he’d conjured. Their avatars were in the courtyard of the Tri-Center where the Ark was docked; the mental model of the Ark rose just to her hip. She was pointing at the restricted wing of the complex where Luddeccea’s spaceport and Central Authority were located. “With the protests going on, the ranks of the Guard will already be thin—they’ll have to divert some forces to protect the rest of the city. The Guard left behind will fall back to protect the Central Authority wing or go to the main gate, if they detect a disturbance. That’s when we’ll have to move in.”
James tilted his head. “What sort of disturbance were you thinking of?”
“I’m sure with Manuel’s help we could improvise a bomb,” Noa’s avatar said, tapping her chin.
In his mind, he ran through his near-contacts with the Guard, remembering in particular that they were solicitous when not threatened. James took a step closer to the gate. “Maybe we should use another sort of distraction, something that won’t immediately be perceived as an attack, th
at generates confusion instead of aggression?”
Noa’s avatar snapped her hands behind her back again. “Agreed. Have any ideas?”
Instead of answering, James expanded the scale of the map until the main gate was as high as the walls of the room; it was still only one-quarter of its real size. The gate was an antiquated-looking structure of metal bars embellished with decorative curling ferntree leaves. Looking out from the museum campus, it was possible to see traffic streaming by. Luddeccea’s Tri-Center was in the heart of Prime. The First Families had built outward from the Ark’s final resting place, a few kilometers from the sea where it had landed. There were Guard posts on either side of the main entrance. Each post shot beams of light into the sky at a thirty-degree angle. A stone fence connected to the gate and continued around the museum complex port and the central headquarters; the fence emitted a circle of similar beams. Altogether the beams of light created a funnel-shaped fence of light in the sky. To cross the beams was to violate a no-fly zone. Only ships specifically authorized by the Port Authority were allowed to take off and land. Hover craft approaching the port, museum, and Central Authority were allowed to do so, only at ground level.
“It’s slightly blurry,” Noa said, indicating the gate and the hover traffic staying low, carefully avoiding the beams of light.
James nodded. “This is from my memories, before I fell. I was just a child when I visited the Tri-Center.”
A brief surge of emotion sparked over the link from Noa—sympathy—and he felt his neurons jump, as though he’d been waiting for exactly that. He wanted to pause everything, to examine that feeling; but there was no time. In his mind, the countdown clock to Manuel’s expected arrival ticked along, unstoppable. He focused on the present, and mentally opened the gate. Luddeccea had no history of insurrections, so the gate was seldom closed. Blurry shapes of hovers swept in and turned, either to the left toward the museum complex and Central Authority, or to the right toward the space port. Noa’s and James’s avatars were standing in a pedestrian area, backs to the museum. There was a stone wall between them and the Ark, and enormous stone bollards between them and the main gate.
James tilted his head, studying the bollards and the traffic speeding through the gate. “What if we caused a hover crash pile up at the gate?” he said. “We could make it look like an accident—”
Emotion sparked across the link again from Noa, causing James’s neurons and nanos to spark with so much electricity that he couldn’t identify the feeling. And then he did. Happiness. It sparked through his nervous system like a drug.
Her avatar beamed. “We could program hovers to crash. None of our team would even have to approach the gate.” Her brows furrowed. “But if the hovers were unmanned, the Guard would know immediately that it was a ruse.”
James’s nanos and neurons spun. “We need a decoy of some sort.” As soon as he said it, he was struck by an idea.
Noa’s eyes widened in real life and on her avatar. “Ghost’s ‘bots!”
It was exactly what he’d been thinking. James’s avatar smiled. The body he was in wanted to smile, too, but couldn’t. “Yes.”
Noa exhaled, and there was a ragged edge to it. Her avatar said, “You know, for someone who called this a crazy plan to begin with, you’re being really helpful.”
His avatar’s smile dropped. “I still think it’s a crazy plan. But if we stay here, we’re not likely to survive until the Fleet arrives; maybe a year or so at most.” The mental map faded, and he was staring at Noa in the physical world, the hard link a tether between their minds. If he focused his hearing, there was still a slight rasp to her breathing. A thought occurred to him. “If we hadn’t come to Prime, if we hadn’t sought out help, your infection might not have been discovered. You would have died in months … or less.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know that. You would have discovered the infection either way.”
“Would we have been able to find a doctor who wouldn’t turn you in?” James asked.
“Who knows?” Noa and her avatar shrugged. “Unhappy what-ifs. Not worth thinking about.”
But James couldn’t help thinking about it. The Noa before him wasn’t the vibrant woman from his memories, but she was alive, complex, unique, brave, and still beautiful, even with the sharp angles that had replaced smooth curves. If he lost her … his vision, his whole mind went dark, as though the possibility was too great for his neurons to contemplate. Failure. His body shuddered.
“James?”
He felt her hand on his shoulder. The world stood still. Noa was close, he could feel her breath on his cheek. His gaze fell to her slightly parted lips. The edge of her teeth, very white, flashed in the dim room. One had a barely discernible chip. A tiny flaw that would have been covered up on Earth.
“You alright?” she said.
He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. The moment felt real, and everything beyond the moment felt like a dream. The time before he fell on Earth, that felt like the biggest fantasy of all, but it hadn’t been … He tried to focus on the memories of himself as a history professor in Sol System. He had loved his career, he knew that intellectually. He remembered his mind had always been racing with ideas for his next paper or presentation.
He “had” loved his career, past tense. The dream was fading. Noa’s hand on his arm by contrast was in brilliant focus.
He put a hand on top of hers. “I’m here,” he said. He met Noa’s gaze and her dark eyes did not avoid his. “I’m alive.” His gaze dropped again to her lips that were so close. “I’m more alive than ever before. It’s a cliché, isn’t it?” At least according to the books he’d devoured before. There was some comfort in that; the dream that was the past was helping him cope with the reality of the present. He would have smiled wryly if he could.
Noa gave him a lopsided grin, and something warm sparked through the hard link. “Just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
The spark of emotion, that was also real. He wanted more of that—of her. He couldn’t leave her, couldn’t abandon her, even if it meant death. The same books, that history that he was connected to, told him his attachment bordered on obsession. His hand tightened on top of hers. He wasn’t the type to become obsessed with a woman. And, as right as she made him feel, the obsessive nature of his emotions also filled him with apprehension. Something was off. “I don’t know if it is the extreme situation, though … I worry it is more—”
From behind him came 6T9’s voice, “Oh, you’re hard linking! You should have told me. I have some apps with built-in themes. Roman coliseums with gladiator avatars, cowboy ranches, dragon lairs with shapeshifting dragon knights … ”
Noa projected what she saw over the hard link—6T9 with Oliver practically draped over his shoulder. Despite 6T9’s rather loud declaration, the child didn’t stir.
“Go away, 6T9,” Noa said.
“Yes, ma’am,” said 6T9, and through the link James saw him disappearing down the hall.
Noa’s hand was still on his shoulder, and his hand was still on top of hers. He could feel the bones beneath her skin, and the light throb of her pulse. To think of her frailty was too much. To think of everything that felt real being wrong was also too much. He understood now, at some deeper, intrinsic, hard-wired level, why Noa joked in the face of danger and despair. It was to avoid launching one’s mind on inconvenient mental trajectories. Seeing her laugh would be infinitely better than worrying.
Cocking an eyebrow, he said, “I think that reviewing the sewer maps would have been much more interesting if our avatars had been dressed as gladiators.”
Noa laughed, and let her good humor slip across the hard link. It fused with the sense of victory he always had when he made her laugh, and that emotion and his own laughter exploded in his mind like fireworks. He let the sensation slip back across the link.
Pulling her hand away, Noa gasped and sat back fast. The cable between them drew tight.
He felt confusion across the hard link, and then nothing. She’d shut him out. “What was that feeling?” she asked.
The question echoed in his mind through her avatar, and in his ears, as she’d spoken the words aloud, too.
“I just … laughed,” he said.
Noa stared at him wide eyed. From the front of the house came the sound of a hover landing, and then the click of a latch as the front door opened. James heard Hisha’s footsteps in the foyer. “Noa, you need your treatment … now!” the doctor called.
Noa yanked the hard link out. Leaning forward, she whispered, “Don’t worry, I don’t think anything is wrong,” she said. “You just startled me.”
And then she was hopping off the bed. At the door, she stopped and leaned on the frame, as though in pain—or weariness—and the awkwardness he felt over the situation was replaced by dread. She could still die. His mind went dark, and he heard a single word echo between his nanos and neurons.
Failure.
He shook his head. Obsessive. He was being obsessive … or maybe it was just stress, and adrenaline. Rising from the bed, he followed her. The reality that he was in didn’t give him a choice.
Noa held a plastic ventilator mask to her face. Her nostrils were filled with the slightly acrid smell of her treatment, and it left a bitter taste on her tongue. Although the day had been sunny just hours ago, clouds had rolled in; and she could hear a gentle rain on the roof. Through the cracks in the blinds, she watched the afternoon gray turn to the dark blues of a rainy evening. The wet season was coming. In a few weeks the Guard wouldn’t have to patrol the sewers—they’d be flooded.
“You’re almost done,” Hisha said. “You should feel the treatment begin to work immediately, but you won’t be better.”
Noa nodded. She could already feel the beginnings of relief.
While the inhalation device quietly hummed and delivered the rest of her treatment, she reviewed the plans she’d made. She tried not to think about the emotional surge she’d felt over the hard link. She’d hallucinated again; this time, she had hung suspended in zero G and watched a star go supernova. It had been strange and surreal and … more. Beneath her mask, she licked her lips, flushed and scowled; she had no time for foolishness. Shifting in the chair, she tried to relax. Carl Sagan, padding around the room, stood up on his four hind legs and nudged her hand. She ran her fingers between his soft ears—and her thoughts drifted back to that strange emotion and hallucination like a leaf caught in a stream. She told herself that she wouldn’t even think the word “alien” and of course did think that … She searched the room with her eyes. James wasn’t with her now. Cocking her head, she heard him eating in the kitchen. He had complained that the cold in the house made him want to “eat like a horse.” She guessed a guy who played polo would know about horse appetites. Beneath the mask, she smiled. Polo was one of the most expensive sports she could think of, especially on Earth. Even on Luddeccea a horse was an expensive item. Horses ate a lot, and required a lot of pastureland and care. Perhaps that wealth was the key to James’s strange, intense emotions; he had some hyper-weird expensive augments. Crazy Earther.
