by Claudia Gray
“And how long will that take? Hours or years or what?”
Abel has to admit, “I don’t know.”
“Oh my God, how long will I live?” Noemi’s eyes widen. “Do I still have a normal human life span or will I live for a couple of centuries, like a mech? I know I’m not totally a mech, but I—I’m not fully human anymore either.”
Abel wishes she would look up at him. “You’re the best of both, I think.”
Noemi brushes her hand along her scalp. A faint fuzz of hair has already grown back. “That’s what you see. The rest of the galaxy is going to think I’m a freak.”
“Surely that is irrelevant compared with your own self-image—”
“First of all, I don’t know what my self-image is right now, but since I can’t even walk straight, it’s not super high. Second, it’s not irrelevant! The way people treat you—it matters. I’m going to have to lie about what I am—”
“I lie by omission,” Abel offers. “It’s an easy habit to acquire.”
Noemi shoots back, “I don’t want to live a lie.”
He has no response for that.
The silence that stretches out between them lasts a mere 7.3 seconds, but seems to last longer. Abel has always known that humans perceive time differently than mechs—faster when busy or happy, slower when bored or sad. However, this illusion is apparently one he can share under conditions of sufficient awkwardness.
Why is Noemi so unhappy? Surely she can’t be displeased that he saved her life. If she were, that would mean she thinks of being part mech as being less than human. The transitive property would then indicate that she thought of him as less than human. Since very early in their relationship, Noemi has always accepted him as her equal.
Hasn’t she?
Abel finds this question so disquieting that he immediately pushes it aside. “How do you feel?”
“Tired. I’m going to try to get some rest. It’s weird how cryosleep makes you really tired. If you’re asleep for days or weeks or months on end, you ought to at least be well-rested, right?” Noemi blinks. “My brain just told me the physiological explanation for that.”
“It will be a new experience for me, not having to explain so many things to you.”
She gives him the look that means What you just said isn’t what you should’ve said. He’ll analyze his error later. Maybe Noemi is merely exhausted into unusual levels of irritability. Humans are like that sometimes, and despite her fears, she is still mostly human.
“Well, call me for the Haven Gate.” She rises to her feet and stumbles toward the door. The clumsiness is so unfamiliar, so unlike her, that he briefly glimpses how alien her body must have become. “Zayan and Harriet both said they refuse to sleep their way through a Gate ever again, because apparently dreams get beyond bizarre.”
Abel has heard them complain about this before. Zayan once dreamed he had become a lasagna—to be specific, a lasagna with opinions about politics, frustrated about its inability to share these thoughts with a galaxy not yet ready to listen to pasta. “I’ll summon you for the Gate,” Abel agrees.
As the bridge doors slide open for her, Noemi pauses. “Abel, thanks for being willing to make that sacrifice for me. For taking that chance. Even if right now I feel like—” She sighs. “It means a lot.”
Abel can only answer, “Always.”
Their eyes meet, and the strangeness between them fades—until she turns and trudges toward the door.
He settles into his captain’s chair, attempting to analyze her earlier reactions. Yes, the experience of suddenly gaining mech capabilities must be overwhelming to a limited human mind. Yet Noemi almost seems to be rejecting her new status entirely.
She accepts me as the equal of a human, Abel reasons. Why can’t she then accept herself?
Perhaps he was wrong about Noemi’s acceptance. Her total repudiation of her own mech half indicates a level of—underestimation, or even contempt. In her eyes, he might not truly be as alive and valid an individual as a human being. Maybe she never saw him as being “as good as.” Only “good enough” to merit rights of his own.
The difference between those things is far larger than he would’ve anticipated.
Just before reaching the door, Noemi stops short and looks back at him in fear. “Oh my God. Darius Akide. Where is he? How did you get away from him?”
Abel remembers the crunch of Akide’s spinal cord between his hands. His initial impulse had been to tell Noemi about this immediately—but now things are uneasy between them. Is this really the time to tell her he’s capable of killing humans without orders, without needing to save anyone?
He says, “I overpowered Akide, and ejected him and his transfer pod while you were in cryosleep.”
Every word of that is accurate. He simply omitted the fact that when he put Darius Akide in the pod, Akide was already dead.
Noemi pauses, then slowly, haltingly walks back toward Abel. “If you’d told me that earlier, I would’ve believed you. But now I can’t help but listen to the voice in my head that’s analyzing every single thing you left out of that story.”
Indirectness will not serve me as well in the future, he thinks.
“Tell me the whole truth,” she insists.
It’s been a long time since Abel wasn’t sure he could trust Noemi with the whole truth about anything. His trepidation doesn’t change the fact that he owes her that truth. “I killed him.”
She sways on her feet. For 3.1 seconds, dreadful suspense stretches between them. Then she shakes her head, as though to clear it, and says, “It was self-defense. Of course. Akide was trying to kidnap you—I saw it myself. He was going to use you to destroy the Genesis Gate, which means he was trying to kill you—”
“This is all true,” Abel says. He stands up, as rigidly correct as he was on the day they met. “However, I didn’t kill him in self-defense. I killed Akide because I thought Akide had killed you. It was an act of fury. An act of revenge. It was murder.”
Noemi puts her hand to her mouth. Is she trying to remain silent? Afraid she’ll throw up? Abel’s programming doesn’t allow him to guess.
He continues, “My programming ought to prevent me from killing a human for any reason besides defending another human. It didn’t. Instead, the killing felt—natural, instinctive. It took me a while to understand why, but finally I realized that was because what I did had nothing to do with being a mech. That was my human side. Killing Akide was the most human thing I’ve ever done. If that’s humanity, I must again question why so many humans consider themselves superior to mechs.”
She winces as though his words had caused her physical pain. He waits for her answer, expecting it to be terrible. Maybe she doesn’t trust him any longer.
When she speaks, however, she surprises him: “Does Genesis know?”
“Do you mean, have the authorities learned that I killed Darius Akide?” Noemi nods, so Abel continues, “I’m not sure. As he was operating with the authority of the Council, they must at least know that he set out to apprehend me in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Genesis. By this point, they’ll be aware that Akide failed to execute his plan. But I don’t have sufficient data to determine whether they know that Akide reached my ship, or that he’s dead.”
Grimacing, she asks, “What did you do with… with the body?”
“I put it back in his transport pod and ejected that pod just before leaving the Cray system, on a trajectory that should’ve sent it crashing into the other planet in that system. As that world is even hotter than Cray, with an almost wholly volcanic surface, Akide and his pod would’ve been vaporized. I calculate only a five point two two percent chance that the pod would be detected by Cray sensors, and only a zero point eight one percent chance that Cray would’ve had any chance to intervene between detecting the pod and its destruction.”
Another long silence stretches between them; Abel refuses to measure this one. Finally, Noemi begins to nod. “Good.”
“Good?”
“He tried to kill you. He basically did kill me. Genesis would’ve let him get away with that. If you’d left Akide alive, he would’ve stopped you from saving me. So as far as I’m concerned, he got what he deserved.”
It’s Abel’s turn to stare. “I would’ve thought revenge was a value inconsistent with Christianity.”
“It should be,” Noemi agrees. “But pretty much all of human history proves that wrong. Besides, I’ve never been a perfect Christian. I’ve tried, and I’ve tried, and I’ve studied my Second Catholic catechism until I almost have it memorized, and none of it changes the fact that I’m almost glad Akide’s dead.”
She’s disquieted; Abel can tell. This discord between her beliefs and her feelings is one they should get into sometime.
But not now.
“You’re tired,” he says gently. “Try to rest. We’ll talk about it more later.”
“I don’t care if we never talk about it again,” Noemi insists, but she turns to go. Maybe she’s only sleepy, or maybe she needs some time alone to think about this.
Abel knows he does.
11
AS REQUESTED, ABEL AWAKENS NOEMI VIA COMMS BEFORE going through the Haven Gate. She makes her way to the bridge a few minutes later, wearing her sleep-rumpled gear from before. Walking is… easier. Not normal, still uneven, but better.
Abel and Shearer said I have a cybernetic nervous system now, Noemi thinks. She can feel the cool, misty traces of it through every centimeter in her body—from thin tickles just beneath her skin to deep, chilly streaks that reach into her brain. It’s supposed to meld with the rest of her body soon, until it feels natural. Like it belongs there. Which it doesn’t yet.
Not even Shearer or Abel could tell her how long her adjustment is going to take. Noemi wonders whether she’s ever going to feel whole again.
At least she and Abel are together.
She moves slowly enough that she’s still in the corridor, a few meters shy of the bridge, when the Persephone hits the Haven Gate. Traveling through a Gate has always been disorienting for Noemi, along with pretty much every other human being in the galaxy. Light bends in ways it shouldn’t. Sound warps. Any sense of up versus down, right versus left, gets lost for a few seconds that seem to last way too long.
Abel has always been completely unfazed by the process. Noemi decides that if there’s any upside to being—whatever she is now—then at least it won’t be as bad going through the Haven Gate.
It isn’t as bad.
It’s worse.
Half of Noemi’s body can handle it; half can’t. Her mind seems to think the best way to handle this is to tear itself in two. Static drowns out her thoughts, and pain ripples through her limbs, her abdomen, and her throbbing head. Noemi clutches one of the wall struts as if it were a life preserver in a stormy ocean and prays for it to be over.
Does God listen to the prayers of mechs? She never had to ask herself that before. Abel doesn’t pray; he doesn’t believe.
The static stops so suddenly that Noemi startles. Reality takes shape around her again, like the crystals of a kaleidoscope settling into a pattern. Swallowing the last of her queasiness, she straightens up and tells herself, This is how things are now. Deal with it.
What other choice do you have?
Still troubled, she walks onto the bridge and halts in her tracks at the sight on the viewscreen. “Holy cats,” she murmurs.
“Is that a reference to the Egyptian goddess Bast?” Abel says. He’s a little too precise, too eager. This is how he acted in the early days, before they knew what to make of each other. “A preliminary search of my records suggests this as the only major feline deity, but I could scan deeper for lesser-known mythologies.”
“It’s just a saying. It means—that.”
She gapes at the enormity of the melee in the distance: thousands of ships, facing off against Earth scouts and one another, all of them attempting to pass through the Haven Gate.
As enormous as Gates are, they can only allow so many ships through at a time. That might be dozens of personal craft, even hundreds—but only two or three Damocles ships or larger freighters could transit together. The unwelcome thing in Noemi’s head tells her that at least 3,956 ships have massed around the Haven Gate, and plain logic tells her that number will probably double within a day.
“You saw how many ships were landing on Haven,” Abel points out. “Remedy seems to have sent out some information about the Gate’s location, though the galactic search would no doubt have turned it up before too long.”
“It’s not the number of people that surprises me—at least, not only that.” Harriet and Zayan told her word spread fast among the Vagabonds, but this seems incredible. “What I really can’t believe is that Earth’s trying to control this,” she says. “The people know about Haven now. The home humanity’s needed for centuries? This Gate is a sign pointing the way. They won’t be denied.”
“Or even delayed,” Abel adds. “Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately? What’s ‘unfortunate’ about humans finally having a real future?” Noemi thinks it’s high time Earth got stuck with a situation beyond its ability to dominate. But then her memory offers up the Russian family, so sure that Earth was lying about the toxicity of Haven’s atmosphere, and she remembers how careless they’re all being. “You mean Cobweb. They’re ignoring the warnings about Cobweb.”
“You were entirely clear that the planet is only safe for those who’ve already suffered the Cobweb plague, or undergone the specialized treatment given to the passengers of the Osiris,” Abel reassures her. “But it appears many of them refused to prepare.”
Exhaustion sinks into Noemi’s bones, into her soul. When she transmitted that message galaxy-wide, she lit a fuse without knowing whether it led to a firecracker or a bomb. At the time it seemed brave, even necessary; now she feels like the same immature, impulsive idiot she’s always been.
“Noemi,” Abel says, coming closer to her. “Your message was entirely clear. Their misunderstandings are their own. You aren’t to blame.”
She nods, even though her bruised heart can’t believe it. “We should get out of here. But where do we go?” It seems important to set a destination, to have one solid goal in the middle of all this confusion.
“That is a difficult question to answer.”
They fled Haven because they had to, for Abel’s safety, but Noemi is newly, sharply aware that there aren’t many other places for them to go. Genesis is impossible, because Abel could easily be arrested for murder. Earth is impossible, because they’d both be in constant risk of getting arrested for treason. Cray doesn’t accept outsiders at random; only the most elite scientists and students are allowed to live there. “Kismet’s too expensive for the likes of us, and Stronghold—” Her memories of the place are largely blurred by fever, because Abel took her there to save her from her own bout of the Cobweb virus. But she remembers it as a gray, chilly, forbidding place, as craggy and hard as the ores mined there. Is that their only option?
“Our first destination should be Cray,” Abel says, surprising her. “I want to make sure Virginia Redbird arrived home safely, and she may be able to help us with whatever counterfeit permits and identities we’ll need going forward.”
Noemi nods. It’s only an interim plan, not a final answer, but it helps to have one decision made. “We’ll go via Stronghold, right?” Her hands lay in a course—more swiftly than she could’ve done it before. This counts as an “improvement,” but it still feels weird.
No other vessels react to their departure. Earth’s ships are too busy trying to block travelers heading toward the Haven Gate to care about their one little ship heading away from it. This is what safe looks like, for now.
She becomes aware that the silence has stretched out too long. When she glances back at Abel, he squares his shoulders, as though for courage. He says, “I sense that there are tensions between us. Perhaps it would be better to d
iscuss them now, while we have time and safety… relatively speaking.”
Taken aback, Noemi says, “Um, okay. What tensions?”
“You seem displeased at your new nature as a mech-human hybrid.”
“It’s bizarre,” she says shortly.
“Was I wrong, then? My only alternative would’ve been to let you go, and I was not—am not willing to do that.”
“Abel, no. I’m not angry with you. I’m just… angry.” With a heavy sigh, Noemi turns to face him. “My whole life has to change. Who I am, what I am, what I can do with my life… it all vanished in an instant, and I have no idea what comes next. That’s scary. A lot of times, when humans get scared, we also get angry.”
Hopefully, Abel says, “You mean you don’t blame me for your transformation?”
“I remember what it was like when Esther was wounded. Even though Esther said she didn’t want artificial organs, I tried to make you implant them anyway. When it came right down to it, I was ready to do anything if it would save her. That’s how love works.” He lifts his chin, a silent acknowledgment of his love for her. She feels too shy to meet his gaze as she adds, “I guess there’s no way to love without being a little bit selfish. You want to give everything to the other person, but there’s also something you want for yourself, more than you’ve ever wanted anything before.”
“I wanted you to live,” Abel says. “That’s all.” He’s never put expectations on how he feels for her, never acted like that required her to feel the exact same way. Maybe that gives her time to figure out how she does feel, because right now she doesn’t have a damned clue. The only thing she knows is that they should be together.
When he smiles, reassured, she manages to smile back. But she thinks, What kind of life is this going to be?
It takes hours more to reach the next Gate, hours Noemi largely spends conked out in her bunk. Cryosleep’s even more exhausting than the data in her head suggests; maybe the official information doesn’t take into account how the experience actually feels. Or maybe none of those scientists ever went through it themselves.
