by Claudia Gray
Well, it beats prison.
The sun has just dipped below the horizon, and the sky still glows with the last of the light. Noemi takes in the many buildings—the great ones carved of stone, the smaller ones of wood, with their domes and arches. She watches the low, long boats skimming over the water, competitors laughing to see who can reach the far bridge first. A flock of white birds skitters overhead; they’re native to Genesis, splendid things with pink-tipped tails that look newly exotic to her now. The dress uniform that gave her courage in court feels out of place while others stroll by in loose robes and cloaks of bright jewel colors. Those robes have never seemed lovelier to her before, and she can’t wait to slip into one again. Standing on her world is even more beautiful than flying above it.
If only she could send Abel a video—even a picture—but he’s gone now. All Genesis’s scans have failed to find any trace of their nameless ship anywhere in the system. Abel had the sense to take the chance she gave him.
“Sometimes,” Akide begins, in his deep voice, “traveling to new places feels strange, but coming home feels even stranger. You don’t expect the familiar to become unfamiliar, and yet it does.”
Other people feel that way, too? Noemi resists a sigh of relief. “It’s quiet here. In good ways, mostly—”
“But not entirely.” When Akide sees her expression, he laughs. “Yes, even members of the Elder Council sometimes criticize Genesis. We’ve gained so much on this world by claiming our independence, but only zealots believe we didn’t lose a lot, too.”
“Is that why you guys want to talk to me? To find out what we’ve lost?”
“Partly. But, I admit… there was one topic I wanted to discuss with you personally. Not as a member of the Council. I wanted to talk about Abel.”
Of course, Noemi realizes. One of the reasons Darius Akide is legendary even among the elders is the same reason he’s the one who teaches military courses about mechs: He was, in his youth, a cyberneticist like Mansfield. According to their histories, Akide was considered Mansfield’s greatest student and closest collaborator. But when the Liberty War broke out, Akide chose Genesis. That doesn’t mean he lost interest in what he’d studied and built for so long. “What do you need to know about him?”
Akide chuckles. “I know all there is to know. I helped Mansfield design him.”
Shock silences her, makes her take a step back. Why didn’t she realize that Mansfield’s top student would have played a role in Abel’s creation? It makes so much sense, and infuriates her at the same time. Once, she could never have imagined talking back to a member of the Elder Council, but now her voice rises as she says, “You agreed to build a machine as intelligent as a human? With the same feelings and thoughts—”
“No, never,” Akide says gently, soothing her temper. “It was a theoretical exercise only—one of our final projects together. I had no idea he intended to carry the plans out; even now, I can’t entirely believe the Abel model truly fulfilled the ambition of those plans. Now I want to know exactly what Abel is capable of.”
“He has a soul. I know that as surely as I know I have one.”
Akide shakes his head. “That’s only an illusion, Vidal. A convincing illusion, and I don’t blame you for being fooled. Model One A is already extraordinary without going to any… fanciful extremes.”
He speaks kindly. Means well. Unlike Kaminski, Darius Akide doesn’t intend to shame Noemi for her beliefs about Abel; he simply believes his last cybernetics project with Burton Mansfield was only that, tinkering with metal and circuits.
However, Noemi didn’t put everything in her report. She hasn’t told them how crushed Abel was by Mansfield’s betrayal, or even what Mansfield truly intended, because God forbid anyone else should ever get the same idea. She hasn’t told them about Abel’s declaration of love either. That’s too personal. It belongs to him and her alone.
Besides, if she’d reported that Abel loved her, they might’ve wanted to ask how she felt about him. Noemi can’t answer that, because she isn’t sure.
Is it love? Maybe it would’ve been, given only a little more time. All she knows is that she still wants to hear what Abel would make of everything she sees. What he might do if he were here beside her. He’s the one she wants to talk to about everything that’s happening, even though she knows she’ll never get the chance. She doesn’t feel as safe here on her own planet, under the protection of an elder on the Council, as she did with Abel beside her. This is her home, and yet it feels incomplete without him.
If that’s not love… surely it’s where love begins.
“Tell me,” Akide says. “Where do you think Abel’s gone? What is he likely to do next?”
“I don’t know.”
It’s the truth. And in some ways, that’s the most wonderful truth of all. Abel’s potential is as limitless as any human being’s. The entire galaxy has opened to him, and she wants him to find someplace he can build a good life—if such a place exists in this galaxy anywhere besides Genesis. Noemi’s not sure about that anymore.
But as she looks up into the darkening night sky, she knows she’ll never stop hoping. Never stop searching the stars, wondering whether any of them could be the one Abel someday calls home.
42
ABEL LEANS BACK IN THE CAPTAIN’S CHAIR. “REPORT.”
“We’ve got a confirmation on the Saturn-Neptune ore haul,” Zayan reports from the ops console. “That is, if we can pick up our load within eight hours.”
“Set in a course,” Abel says to Harriet, who grins at him from the navigation console as she follows his order. To Zayan he adds, “Let the mine know the Persephone accepts the job.”
He has renamed this ship one last time. He had to, of course, to cover his tracks, but he chose the name carefully. In Greek myth, Persephone was the bride of Hades, rescued from the underworld by her mother, Demeter, but still bound to her husband by the pomegranate seeds she ate—and, in some tellings of the story, by love. Abel thinks of Noemi as belonging to both Genesis and to the stars, as a person who will always have a place on more than one world.
Besides, he thinks, she’s been to hell and back.
If only he could tell her that joke, and see if it makes her smile. But he doesn’t allow himself to dwell on the loss too often. Noemi’s final request was that he create a life of his own, and he’s already spent enough time brooding in the equipment pod bay for many lifetimes.
No more. Abel intends to live.
Once he was safely back in the Kismet system and had dealt with the first crushing sorrow of losing Noemi, he considered his options carefully. His skills would allow him to take on virtually any sort of work, and he already possessed the ultimate advantage in that area: a spaceworthy ship. Erasing his criminal profiles was tricky work, but well within his skills; he erased Noemi’s, too, while he was at it, just in case she ever gets another chance to travel the galaxy. Abel wants that for her.
After that, he was free.
So, he became a Vagabond, dressing and acting the part. In order to get work hauling shipments and the like—while still avoiding interaction with Georges and other mechs that might now be programmed to recognize his face—he knew he’d need to take on a crew. But it could only be a small one, made up only of people he trusts. Luckily, Harriet and Zayan had still been working on Wayland Station, doing the backbreaking labor of post-explosion cleanup. Innocent of Abel’s status as either mech or fugitive, they were only too happy to switch to cushier jobs on such a “flash” ship.
“Room and board comes with the job?” Harriet had said, eyes wide, as Zayan whooped in happy disbelief. “You’re a soft touch, Abel, you know that?”
As a mech it is pleasant, if ironic, to be told you have a kind heart.
He’d like to hear what his creator would think of that, but of course that would mean encountering Burton Mansfield again, an experience Abel intends to avoid. It’s even possible that his creator has died by now. He was so elderly, so frail
, and enough of Abel’s programming lingers to pain him whenever he remembers Mansfield’s racking cough.
If Mansfield is alive, however, he’s searching for Abel more desperately than ever. Best for Abel to stay on the move. Mansfield has only so many months left, after all, and Abel can wait forever.
Forever is a long time. Long enough, perhaps, that he might one day travel to Genesis.
He’s still willing to die for Noemi and her world. Still hasn’t completely abandoned the idea of stealing another thermomagnetic device, returning to the Genesis Gate, and destroying it for her. But he has other ideas, too, now.
For instance—what if he returned to Genesis with an army?
There’s a resistance out there, deadly and effective, and he’s owed favors by members of both the moderate and radical wings. Some scientists on Cray, in the very core of Earth’s technological supremacy, appear willing to break ranks. Earth will do anything to bury the truth about Cobweb, a truth Abel knows and might, in time, learn how to exploit. These elements, brought together, could prove very powerful.
What if Earth could be cowed into making peace? He likes the idea of sailing through the Genesis Gate accompanied by diplomatic envoys, and knows Noemi would like it even more. For all her talk about winning the war, what she wanted most was to end it. To have a chance to choose her own life, the way Abel is choosing his own.
He’s going to do what she asked. He’ll explore this entire galaxy, and experience every single thing he can.
But nothing seems likely to match their one kiss.
As Harriet brings the ship toward Saturn, its rings dominating the enormous viewscreen, Abel focuses on a single tiny star above it. That’s Genesis’s sun. From here he can see it in all its light.
Silently he traces out a new constellation, one only he knows. One with Noemi at the very heart.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe thanks to so many people—first and foremost my wonderful editor, Pam Gruber, who saw the promise in this idea and has made working on this book such a pleasure. Thanks also to my agent, Diana Fox, to my assistants, Erin Gross and Melissa Jolly, and to my family: Mom, Dad, Matthew, Melissa, Eli, and Ari. In all honesty I should probably also thank Ba Chi Canteen for providing the immense amounts of pho required to fuel me through this project; and Madeline Nelson, Stephanie Nelson, and Marti Dumas for being willing to go to Ba Chi with me that many times. As ever, thanks to Edy Moulton, Ruth Morrison, and Rodney Crouther for listening to all my crazy plot ideas, and Dr. Whitney Raju for patiently talking me through the medical implications of each one. Finally, all the love to the good people of Octavia Books in New Orleans. (If you want a signed copy of any of my books, visit them online! They can take care of that for you.)
