Defy the Stars

by Claudia Gray

  And for all her love of her Genesis, there’s something about the way her body responds to this gravity, this atmosphere—an easiness where she’d never noticed strain before. Something deep inside her knows this is humanity’s true home.

  “When will someone check us in?” Noemi asks. No George has yet arrived to take their information.

  Virginia raises her eyebrows at the naïve girl from Genesis. “You’re on Earth now, remember? You don’t have to justify being here.”

  “Except to yourself,” Ephraim mutters.

  “You’re both as blown away as I am, and I know it, so stop pretending you aren’t.” Noemi pushes up her sleeves. “Let’s just get out there and find Abel.”

  So they walk away from the dock, onto the sidewalk, to merge with the rest of the crowds. To pretend that they’re from Earth, too.

  After Stronghold, this air doesn’t feel all that cold, but it has a bite. Rain puddles line the streets and fill broken gaps in the sidewalks, of which there are many. The paths in front of the row houses seem crowded enough, but then they turn onto a main thoroughfare, and Noemi’s eyes go wide. Thousands of people, all walking, riding with purpose, most of them not looking up, few of them smiling—and they go on and on, shoulder to shoulder, seemingly forever.

  And in those countless faces are some she recognizes: mechs. Two—three—no, more than that—

  There’s no ignoring them: They’re everywhere.

  There’s a caretaker model, an Uncle, obediently carrying a child on his shoulders. A Yoke trudging along with a heavy pack full of cleaning supplies. A Fox strolls toward her next assignation—or, perhaps, to her owner, if someone wants to keep a pleasure mech around full-time. Sugar, the cooking model, holds bags of produce… or the limp, wan food that passes for fresh here on Earth. In one shop, there’s even a George, selling cup after cup of something that smells like coffee but isn’t.

  Are there more mechs than people? No—but there are so, so many. Noemi would’ve thought her time with Abel would have desensitized her to being around mechs. Instead she can’t help contrasting their dull, flat eyes to Abel’s, which are so clear and intelligent and obviously alive.

  Ephraim’s hands are in the pockets of his coverall, and he seems less curious about Earth, mechs, or any of the rest. As overwhelmed as Noemi is, she can’t ignore his grim expression. “Are you all right?”

  “Depends on what you mean by all right. If you mean ‘not in pain right this second,’ yeah, I’m all right. If you mean ‘not guilty of treason or in danger of being turned in by a terrorist just so she can save her own skin,’ no, I am definitely not all right. I am as far from all right as I’ve ever been.”

  “You think Riko would name you?” Noemi says in a low voice.

  Ephraim shrugs. “How would I know? All I know is, Watanabe’s ruthless. I don’t know what her priorities and morals are, but they damn sure aren’t the same as mine.”

  Noemi has tried to come up with a plausible scenario in which she and Abel forced Ephraim into helping them, something that would guarantee Ephraim’s safety when he returned to Stronghold—and she has come up with absolutely zero. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. If you could pay a debt of honor without it costing you anything, you wouldn’t have really repaid it, would you?” Ephraim sighs as the crowd surges around them. The clouds make it hard to tell, but Noemi’s pretty sure it’s getting darker. Night is coming.

  Virginia steals another glance at the dataread in her hand. “We’re gonna take a right, and—whoa.”

  They stand on the corner, staring. This street leads up a hill, passing through an enormous sentry gate. A faint shimmer in the air tells Noemi there’s a force field surrounding the entire area. Within the gate are trees, grass, a winding path… and, at the very top, a magnificent domed house, glowing golden and bright in the gloomy twilight.

  Ephraim murmurs, “I’d guess we’ve found Burton Mansfield. But how are we supposed to get past all of that?”

  “Oh, it can be done.” Virginia tosses her hair. “If I couldn’t get through a force field, I’d be ashamed to call myself a Razer.” Then she drops the cocky act. “I’d need a whole lot more equipment than I have on me, though. And it would take time. Probably a few days of testing different approaches, figuring out how to cover my tracks.”

  A few days. Those are days her friends on Genesis don’t have. The Masada Run is so close now. Too close.

  “Looks pretty nice up there,” Ephraim says, and he’s right, it does. Noemi can imagine Abel warm and safe there, basking in his creator’s welcome, happy to be home at last.

  Wait. She doesn’t have to imagine.

  Noemi grabs the dataread away from Virginia, who grumbles. A few quick twists turns it into a viewer, which can be held up to focus in tightly on the house so that she can see the garden.

  And there, standing in it, are Abel and Burton Mansfield.

  The image slices through Noemi, beautiful and painful at once: Mansfield so elderly he can barely walk, being supported by Abel’s arm. When they smile at each other, somewhat sadly, the affection between them is obvious.

  “It’s Abel,” she whispers.

  She wants to run to him, to say good-bye if for no other reason. But what right does she have to go barging in on him? It looks like he’s exactly where he wants to be: home.

  Which is where she needs to be.

  “Well?” Virginia asks. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. He’s—good, I think.” Noemi swallows hard; her throat is tight, holding back emotion she doesn’t know how to process.

  “So this whole trip was for nothing,” Virginia says.

  Ephraim shakes his head. “Not for nothing.”

  Virginia rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know, we checked to make sure Abel was all right, which is what friends do, and I’m not sure how I wound up friends with a mech, but—”

  “Not what I meant,” Ephraim says, cutting Virginia off. His gaze locks with Noemi’s. “I owed Genesis a debt of honor. I’ve repaid it. But from where I’m standing, it looks like you owe me one now.”

  “… I guess I do.” Noemi lets the dataread drop; Abel’s walking Mansfield back into his house, and for some reason she doesn’t want to watch him walk out of her sight for the last time. “So how do I repay it? Get you back to Stronghold?”

  “Too late for that.” Ephraim smiles fiercely. “You’re going to help me break Riko Watanabe out of prison.”

  34

  “HERE, TAKE A LOOK.” MANSFIELD GESTURES TOWARD his desk, smiling benevolently at Abel. “Might as well see what a real Nobel Prize looks like, shouldn’t you?”

  Abel picks it up, testing its heft and softness. “I thought Nobel Prizes were made of pure gold. This is an alloy.”

  “Gold’s not so easy to come by these days. Purity either, for that matter. We’re running out.” Mansfield shakes his head. He sits on the velvet sofa of his great room, false firelight reflected onto him by the pendulum of the grandfather clock. Around them, in soft hologram form, stand the members of the Academy at the Nobel Prize ceremony—until it flickers and is replaced by an image of a younger Mansfield, maybe only a year or two older than he was when he abandoned Abel, with his arms around a smiling girl wearing a graduation cap. “Ahh, and here’s Gillian getting her master’s degree at Northwestern. I wish you’d get to see her again, Abel. She was always so entertained by you.”

  He remembers Mansfield’s daughter, red-haired and coolly elegant. She wasn’t “entertained” by much—even back then, when he was new, Abel had more of a sense of humor than she did. But Gillian was never unkind or dismissive, the way humans are to many mechs. Her interest always seemed genuine. “Perhaps we’ll meet soon.”

  Mansfield gives Abel a searching look, starts to speak, then thinks better of whatever it was he was going to say. “Now, look here. This is her wedding, and there—that’s my first grandchild. What do you think of him, Abel?”

  The infant, mu
ch larger than life, moves within the hologram—the image was taken while he was snuggling into his blanket. Abel studies the tiny, chubby face, which interests him far more than logic would dictate. “I see you in him. The eyes, certainly. Maybe the chin. Gillian’s features are even more markedly observable.” What else should he say? How can he put into words this strange, happy fascination he feels? “He’s… he’s very cute.”

  That makes Mansfield cackle with glee. “Excellent, excellent! Ah, Abel, you’ve come further than I ever would’ve thought. I’m only sorry thirty years in isolation is what it took to bring this out of you.”

  It’s as close as Mansfield has come to apologizing for abandoning Abel on the Daedalus. Not that he needs to apologize—he had to save himself, of course, because any human life takes precedence over any mech—but even this small expression of regret soothes Abel tremendously.

  As it happens, he needs soothing. Ever since he first saw the workshop, Abel has felt… wary around Mansfield. He’s not entirely sure why, since the workshop follows normal procedure for mech creation. And why should he feel strange when Mansfield is so clearly thrilled to have Abel back home? They’re eating a special meal tonight, something Mansfield had planned for a big occasion. The Sugar mech has even iced a bottle of champagne.

  Perhaps he’s not afraid for himself. He remains worried about someone else.

  “Father, may I use one of the communications channels?” He smiles and puts his hands behind his back, the way lower mechs do when asking a question. It’s important to make it clear that he isn’t demanding anything, or second-guessing his creator, only asking for a favor. “I’d like to double-check news reports on Stronghold.”

  Mansfield chuckles. “Still worried about your girl?”

  “She’s not my girl.” Abel knows Noemi doesn’t feel for him what he feels for her. She only just accepted him as a person and not a thing. This bothers him not at all. Merely discovering that he loves her—that he can love her—fills him with gratitude to Mansfield, to Noemi, even to the equipment pod bay. He knows better than to ask for more, and he doesn’t need to. Feeling this is enough. “But she helped me escape. I’d at least like to thank her. Wouldn’t you?”

  His question catches Mansfield off guard. “Never thought of it that way. Don’t you think she’s gone home to Genesis?”

  “Probably she has.” So few days remain before the Masada Run. Noemi will certainly have returned if she can. But if she can’t, she’ll soon miss her chance to save her friends and, perhaps, her world. “We should make sure she’s not in trouble. That’s the least we owe her.”

  Waving his frail, spotted hand, Mansfield nods. “Go on. Check all you like.”

  Abel does so, sitting at the station that’s been refitted to look like a nineteenth-century rolltop desk. Although Stronghold’s news accounts mention a “suspected break-in at Medstation Central” and hint that a staffer may be responsible, nothing is said about any capture or arrest. No citizen of Genesis is mentioned. There’s not even a report about an altercation in the spaceport, though surely security monitors must have picked up some of it. And what about the Daedalus? No news of the ship at all.

  The longer he searches, the less satisfied Abel is. He had convinced himself that there might be news, mostly because he wanted so badly to know what has happened to Noemi. Apparently he’s evolved the capacity for wishful thinking. Yet he knows that a soldier of Genesis, found on any of the colony worlds or on Earth itself, would immediately be hidden away in a cell so deep no one could ever find her.

  Maybe Noemi got away. The ship was right there. The Queen and Charlie were focused only on him; Mansfield told him they wouldn’t go after Noemi.

  But Mansfield seems so unconcerned. So certain that Noemi hasn’t been found by the authorities.

  Is it possible that Mansfield… lied?

  Abel rejects the idea instantly. But he’s aware his objection is emotional, not rational. This, too, is new.

  When he returns to the great room, Mansfield remains seated on the velvet sofa, smiling as he watches a hologram of little Gillian playing tea party with her father. He was a younger man then, younger than Abel ever got to know him. “I see the resemblance,” Abel says. If he’s going to lead up to asking Mansfield to let him go back to Stronghold, he needs to make sure Mansfield is in a good mood. Noting the dominant chromosomes in his genetic material seems to please him. “Between you and me. Our similarities are clearer in this holo.”

  “Indeed it is. I made you a bit handsomer than I ever was, of course, but kept most of the features the same. After all, we can’t all be Han Zhi.” Mansfield smiles fondly at Abel. “I wanted the continuity between us to be clear.”

  One word strikes Abel as odd. “Continuity?”

  “I suppose we might as well get to it. Sugar will have dinner ready within the hour, and after that, well, the great adventure begins.”

  “What adventure?” Abel doubts his creator is talking about going to Stronghold.

  Mansfield settles back on the sofa. “Abel, you’re by far the most sophisticated mech ever created. I can justify you as an experiment, but for anyone else, you’d be illegal to create or own. So why do you think I built you?”

  “I always assumed you wanted to expand human knowledge.” Abel remembers sitting in front of Virginia Redbird on Cray, watching her marvel over his complexity, and what she said then. “But I have come to believe you may have some specific purpose in mind for me.”

  “I do, my dear boy. Always have. And tonight, that purpose will be fulfilled at last. For thirty years, I thought I’d never see this day.” Mansfield’s voice trembles. “I’d given up all hope. Then you came home just in time.”

  Technically Abel was kidnapped and brought back to this place, but he no longer cares. “All hope for what, Father?”

  One of Mansfield’s shaky hands strokes Abel’s hair, then catches a lock between two fingers for examination. “To have hair like this again—”

  “Father?”

  “Your brain is complex enough to contain the knowledge and experiences of a thousand human beings. But what I never knew was whether or not you could contain a mind. A way of thinking. Opinions, beliefs, dreams. Whether you could feel emotion. Now you’ve proved that you can. Finally I know that you’re big enough to hold me, and carry me for the next one hundred and fifty years.”

  “—I don’t understand—”

  “Consciousness transfer,” Mansfield says. “We’ve understood the technology for a while now, but the problem is, there’s nothing to transfer a human consciousness into. You can’t overlay a human mind on top of another; a few people tried, in the beginning, and the results were disastrous. And other mechs don’t have the capacity to contain anything so… intricate. So subtle. But you do, Abel. Once I wipe your mind completely clean of its existing consciousness, I can transfer myself inside and pick up where you left off. Except this time I’ll be strong, young, and well-nigh invincible. I can’t wait to get started.”

  Abel sits motionless, expression unchanging, as the realization sinks in.

  He is… a shell. Only a shell. Nothing he has ever thought or felt matters. It never did. Not to Burton Mansfield.

  This is his extraordinary purpose. This. Everything he is, everything he’s been and done, will be erased in an instant. Or maybe it won’t be an instant—maybe it will take a long time as Abel lies there, feeling more and more of his consciousness slipping away—

  “I thought this through,” Mansfield continues. “I was careful to make sure you wouldn’t mind. Your prime directive tells you to take good care of me, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Should he have said father? He can’t, not now. “I always want to protect you.”

  That wins him a satisfied smile. “Now you’re protecting me from the greatest danger of all—from death. Don’t you think that’s wonderful? Of course you do. Your programming tells you to.”

  And it does. It does. Even as Abel struggles
with this knowledge, something deep inside him takes satisfaction in the thought of keeping Burton Mansfield safe forever, shielding him within his own skin.

  But his thoughts have evolved, these past thirty years. He’s had ideas and feelings that have nothing to do with his programming. He’s had experiences Mansfield could only dream of. Abel remembers Noemi’s voice saying the words that meant so much to him: “You have a soul.”

  And also: “Burton Mansfield’s greatest sin was creating a soul and imprisoning it in a machine.”

  His body is not a prison. It’s a vehicle. Mansfield will scoop Abel’s soul out and pour his own back in.

  “I understand,” Abel replies. He can’t think of anything else to say.

  This satisfies Mansfield. “See, I knew you would. We’ll have a delicious dinner tonight; I’d like to treat this body before I discard it forever. Then later on, we’ll head down to the workshop and get started.” His smile widens. “This day will go down in history as one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time. Burton Mansfield defeats death. Worth another Nobel, wouldn’t you think?”

  A cough rattles in Mansfield’s throat, then another. As his shoulders shake with the hacking, Abel braces him gently, holding the old man safe while the Tare hurries in from another room. He can’t do anything else. First and foremost, he takes care of Burton Mansfield.

  “He needs an oxygen treatment,” the Tare says briskly. “I’ll see to it immediately.”

  “The last time for this damned nonsense, at least,” Mansfield wheezes.

  Abel nods as he gets to his feet. There’s no reason not to walk away, not while the Tare is tending to Mansfield. So he walks downstairs, into the workshop.

  His birthplace, and the place he will die.