by Claudia Gray
She has taught him this, and is now teaching him many things more.
“You really never wanted to kiss anyone else?” Noemi murmurs as they cuddle together on one of the lower crew bunks. (Not his bed, nor hers—that would suggest a progression to greater intimacy than Abel is willing to presume.) “Not even the tiniest flicker of curiosity?”
“I felt curiosity,” he admits. “But that’s not the same thing as desire—at least, not for me.”
She lies next to him, touching from their feet to their thighs to their bellies to their heads. Abel rests his cheek against her forehead; from this angle he can just see her kiss-swollen lips. He’s not yet sure whether they’re done kissing for the time being, or whether this is merely a pause. A pause seems infinitely preferable to stopping.
Noemi idly rubs one of the arms he’s wrapped around her. “So it was impossible for you to feel physical, um, needs before you fell in love with a woman?”
“Strictly speaking, it could as easily have been a man I first fell in love with. I possess no inherent sexual orientation or preferences.”
She looks up at him in dismay. “Are you—programmed not to feel emotions without, uh, stimulus?”
“I’m programmed with a deep feeling of devotion,” Abel admits. “That was meant to be directed only at Burton Mansfield, in order to make me obey his orders, even the ones that lead to self-destruction. But with you, I believe that devotion grew into something far more powerful.”
She frowns. “Devotion is a part of your programming? Is it a part of mine now?”
Abel considers this. “Unlikely. Mine was a special program, not a standard function of mech hardware.”
Noemi smiles, apparently reassured, but still curious. “So you could’ve fallen in love with—well, anybody? Just whoever showed up at the right time?”
“Not just anybody.” He rolls her over onto her back, the better to look down into her eyes. “It seems I would only have felt romantic love for someone brave, and forthright, and intelligent. Someone who had high ideals and challenged herself to meet them. Someone who wasn’t afraid to hope. Someone who could look at me and see not a machine, but a person. I think such people are very rare.”
To Abel this seems like no more than a recitation of the facts, but Noemi’s dark eyes well with tears. “I think you’re the only person who could’ve seen anything that good in me.”
“Not the only one,” he says. “Just the first of many.”
Her only reply to this is to pull him down for another kiss, and it’s the only answer Abel needs.
They had first planned to go to Cray only to check on Virginia. Abel now hopes that they can also talk her or some of her Razer friends into helping them repair the Persephone’s engines. The trick will be managing this without attracting undue attention.
“So, do we pretend to be games merchants again?” she says once they’ve returned to the bridge. “Or do you have a better plan?”
“Actually, I do. Weeks ago, while investigating Gillian Shearer and Mansfield Cybernetics, Virginia and I set up false records that establish me as her ‘cousin.’ Family members are allowed to visit Cray, as long as they don’t come too often or stay too long.” Abel considers this. “Our stay will be short, so I doubt we’ll run into any problems.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Our stay on Stronghold was short.”
“Your point is well taken.”
Noemi makes her way to the ops station as she says, “Cousins, huh? You two look so much alike.”
Virginia is several centimeters taller than Abel, and dark where he’s fair. He can see the humor. “If asked, I’ll say I was adopted.”
That makes Noemi laugh out loud.
Her mood remains buoyant as they approach Cray for landing. Abel, too, is encouraged by the lack of any extra military presence. No Damocles ships surround the dull reddish planet. Its citizens are almost all scientists, brought to this planet as children, separated from their families and taught that their first loyalty is to Earth. They’re pampered and privileged, allowed to spend their entire lives in a kind of intellectual playground. If the revelations about Haven have shaken Cray’s ties to Earth, there are no visible signs so far.
As for the biological warfare—Earth’s attempt to destroy Genesis with a deadlier form of Cobweb—that weapon was created here. Every other world and all the Vagabonds may be outraged at the thought of biological weapons, but at least some of the people on Cray agreed with their use. They helped it happen, after all.
In other words, Abel and Noemi have enemies here. They just don’t know who they are.
When he says as much, she replies, “So, we just don’t cause any trouble.”
“You believe that this is possible, all past experience to the contrary?”
“Let me try to be optimistic, okay?”
Landing permission is swiftly granted. Although his last visit was less than four weeks earlier, apparently “Cousin Abel” hasn’t visited often enough to raise suspicion—yet. As he and Noemi disembark, there’s no sign of surveillance, only a couple of George models placidly recording data.
Noemi’s expression darkens. “Do you know what I mean when I say it’s too quiet?”
“I’m familiar with the euphemism, but I see no grounds for concern. Don’t indulge in paranoia.” Abel refuses to surrender to neuroticism just yet.
“It’s not paranoid to be on our guard. For anyone, but especially for us.”
“I only meant to reassure you,” he says. “Though I must point out that your commitment to optimism has already faltered.”
“You’re still terrible at comforting people.”
It’s an old joke between them. This reference is further evidence that their interactions are becoming normal again. Abel smiles to himself.
He goes to a communications kiosk at the edge of the hangar and punches in the codes for Redbird, V. Almost instantly the screen lights up with Virginia’s face. She grins, as she always does, but her expression is edged with anxiety. “Cousin Abel! Thank goodness. I didn’t know when you’d come back again.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Abel says. “Noemi’s here, too.”
Next to him, Noemi leans close enough to wave at the camera. Virginia brightens. “Well, sounds like it’s time to celebrate! Would you like to meet up for dinner? And maybe we can get a look at your ship.”
“A look at our ship?” Noemi frowns, then goes very still. Abel knows she’s realized what he determined almost from the beginning: Virginia is afraid her communications are being monitored.
Cray authorities suspect dissent, he reasons. Even sabotage. Genesis, a world with lower levels of technology, found the cure for the weaponized Cobweb virus within weeks. It would be logical to conclude Genesis had help, and the authorities would know that help could only have come from Cray itself.
As he thinks through this, he keeps his tone casual. “Yes, you should come by before dinner. Who’ll be with you?”
“Just Ludwig, Fon, and me.” Virginia points to a spot off camera. “We’ll come to the docking bay as soon as we can!”
Instead, red warning lights begin to flash—not in the space dock, but within the Razers’ hideout. Instantly Abel realizes that Cray authorities must already have suspected who the guilty parties were; they were monitoring communications, waiting for something incriminating—such as a strong hint that someone badly wanted to escape the planet. He and Virginia just provided that hint.
“Oh crap. Oh no.” Virginia whirls toward the still-unseen Ludwig and Fon. “Override the locks, now!”
“We’re going to have company,” Noemi mutters as space dock doors begin to clank open nearby. “Lots of it.”
Within 0.52 seconds, Abel has pulled up the area schematics he studied on his first visit to Cray. A human’s memory would retain only a few details, if any. He sees them in his mind in complete detail. “Virginia, you must get to the Caldera Four observatory platform. All of you, as fast as possible.”<
br />
“Caldera Four?” Virginia yelps. “Talk about going from the frying pan to the—” But she shuts off communications, and he knows they’ll meet him and Noemi there if they can.
A blaster bolt hits the wall near them, and Abel mentally adds, If we make it there ourselves.
“Get down!” Noemi shoves him toward the nearest cover, a pile of crates. Abel’s shocked at the force of her push, the confidence of her defense. She aims her blaster and starts firing, every single bolt precision aimed.
The Charlies and Queens fire back in a standard pattern. Yet their accuracy is below regular parameters—perhaps most humans wouldn’t notice it, but Abel does. Noemi seems to as well, probably due to her military training. She is therefore relatively safe. This frees him to concentrate for the 2.7 seconds it takes to map the quickest route to Caldera Four. As soon as he’s sure, he shouts, “Head for the ship!”
Noemi keeps returning fire the whole way, but her greater speed means she reaches the Persephone only moments after him. As she dashes into the bridge, sweaty but not winded, she says, “Did you notice the mechs?”
“Yes. They’re not performing up to usual standards.”
“We’ve seen some other breakdowns,” she says as she takes her position at the navigation console. “What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know,” Abel admits. He knows only two things: The mech malfunctions have happened too often to be dismissed as mere coincidence, and he and Noemi don’t have time to investigate while Virginia and her friends are in danger. “Are you familiar with the definition of a caldera?”
Noemi’s eyes widen. “Wait—that’s not just a name? We’re really headed to a caldera?”
“You did notice that this is a planet with significant volcanic activity?”
Any further protests are cut off by the vibration of the mag engines coming online—which isn’t exactly what it ought to be. Only microns off, but still, wrong. No full human could tell the difference, but Noemi’s additional senses must make her as aware of the danger as he is. They didn’t even get a chance to make repairs on Cray.
“If the engines break down,” she says, “will we go dead in space and freeze to death? Or will we explode?”
“Unknown.”
“Again, not comforting!”
“With us, the truth rarely is.” The Persephone lifts off from the pad, still maneuvering well. It’s about to be put to the test.
Noemi points to her ops screen. “They’re locking down the spaceport exits.”
“We’re not exiting the conventional way,” he explains. Holding the mag engines at minimal power, he takes the ship not upward, but forward, all the way to the edge of their platform—
—then down, into the depths of Cray’s caves.
These underground tunnels are the reason this planet is habitable. They form laboratories, house humans, and conduct air. The schematics Abel saw months ago laid out very clearly the nearby location of some large, undeveloped aeration tunnels—which means he and Noemi are now making their way through solid rock. Uneven rock. Rock caves that twist and turn, or rise and fall, very sharply. And that are sometimes less than two meters wider than his ship. Even knowing the layout, it’s all Abel can do to keep from crashing.
To her credit, Noemi doesn’t scream. She says only, “The thing in my brain is telling me how much trouble we’re in, down to the decimal point.”
“As is mine.”
“I bet you’re going to say there’s no way to shut that voice off.”
“I’ve never tried.” If he were ever going to start, this would not be a bad time. But Abel’s programming directs him to deal with problems rather than deny them.
Noemi sucks in a breath as they take a particularly narrow turn. For a moment the viewscreen seems to show nothing but rock in any direction. But external sensors indicate the temperature is rising—sharply—which means their goal is close.
When the Persephone reaches a semi-transparent barrier, Abel recalculates its strength before crashing through. In that second, the heat sensors blaze red, a warning against temperatures too intense for humans to survive. Visuals shimmer and warp; the light turns crimson.
Beneath them gapes the open maw of a volcano.
Properly, a caldera should only refer to a supervolcano. On Cray, where volcanoes are more plentiful than clouds, the crater hardly counts. But it would be a caldera on Earth, which must have led to this name, which feels true enough as they look down into the vast sea of bubbling magma far beneath them.
Noemi stares into it for a moment, and he prepares himself for the inevitable questions. They don’t come. She must finally be listening to the data within. “The scientists studying this must have a heat-shielded area to protect them during observations, right? Is that where the others are going to meet us?”
“Exactly.” Abel steers the ship toward a far platform. As they get closer, they can see the faint shimmer of a minor energy shield—something the Persephone can easily fly through—and, beyond it, the shapes of three people running at top speed.
“There’s no place for us to land,” Noemi says, getting to her feet. “I’ll get some tow ropes ready.”
He doesn’t bother agreeing. She knows as well as he does what must be done, and he must concentrate on flying. The intense heat of the volcano warps the air, creating unpredictable crosscurrents and downdrafts; it’s all he can do to keep the ship steady.
Breaking through the energy barrier shakes them only slightly. Once it’s done, Abel uses the tractor beam to anchor the Persephone to the rock just below the platform, then runs down to the docking bay to help Noemi.
This should be the easy part, he reminds himself. The fact that towing people up from a volcano counts as easy in this scenario is somewhat discouraging.
When he reaches the bay, Noemi already has the towlines ready. They’re magnetic cables, normally used for tethering a ship in low to zero gravity. However, they’re also capable of latching on to whatever metal a person has on them. Even a buckle or a bracelet will do.
The door pinwheels open, and a wave of hot air hits them as intensely as opening an oven—the shield keeps out all but a fraction of the volcano’s heat, but that fraction is enough to stagger a human. On the platform 27.11 meters beneath them stand Virginia, Ludwig, and Fon, all in orange coveralls, each one looking more terrified than the last.
“I’ll aim for Virginia.” Abel readies himself. “You aim for Ludwig. Fon is small enough that either of the others should be able to bring her with them.” Noemi stares down at the towline in her hands, which he takes for assent.
Instantly he calculates the weight, distance, vector—and he throws.
The towline flings toward Virginia, snapping around her like the tentacles of a kraken from myth, its magnetic charge drawn to the metal of her coverall. He can hear Virginia’s protesting screech even over the roar of the engines, but what this rescue method lacks in dignity it makes up for in efficiency. Abel hits the control to bring the towline in, and Virginia zooms toward them at top speed.
Noemi hasn’t yet thrown her line. She clutches it to her, staring down at Ludwig and Fon in mute horror.
“We have to go,” Abel says. Should he do this for her? No—he must continue to steady Virginia’s towline. “You’re strong enough to throw it.”
That’s not what was worrying her. “Different voices in my head are telling me different things about how to throw it—about whether I even can—”
“Trust the machine.”
Noemi throws it. It lands only one meter behind Ludwig, only two behind Fon. They both turn and run for it. The instant they grab hold of the line, Noemi yanks it back with all her strength—
—her strength that, thanks to her cybernetic nervous system, is now measurably greater than before—
—and the towline slams into the edge of the open doors with so much force that it breaks. The length of it tumbles down uselessly onto the platform, sending Ludwig and Fon sprawling.
Even from this distance, Abel can calculate that the girl has at minimum broken an arm. Ludwig sees Fon lying there and crawls toward her. When he scoops Fon up into his burly arms, her black hair swirls around them like ink in water. They look up in hope, and Abel accelerates Virginia’s ascent, in hopes of having time to throw again—
It’s already too late. The platform doors open, and Charlies and Queens run out, blasters ready. Impossible to say whether these mechs are malfunctioning, like some others they’ve seen, but it doesn’t matter. They have Ludwig and Fon at point-blank range.
Virginia’s towline snaps her into the bay, sending her rolling across the floor until she thuds into the inert Smasher. Instantly she’s pushing its coils away, scrambling to her feet. “They’ve got Ludwig and Fon! We have to go back!”
“We can’t,” Abel says. He cannot allow himself to empathize. Someone has to be cold and rigid, or else none of them will escape. “They’re already in custody, and if we don’t leave immediately, we will be, too.”
“No.” Virginia turns back to the door, through which the guards can be seen cuffing Fon and Ludwig. “No.”
Abel hits the controls. The door spirals shut, closing off the sight of her friends’ capture. As he runs back up to the bridge, he calculates a 67.87 percent chance that either Noemi or Virginia will hurry after in an attempt to stop him.
Neither of them does. It seems humans are in fact able to recognize futility.
15
FOR SEVERAL LONG SECONDS, NOEMI CAN’T MOVE. SHE keeps staring at the closed door, as if she could will it to pinwheel open again. This time she would see the scene from minutes ago, back when there was still a chance to save Ludwig and Fon. She wouldn’t break the towline. She would get it right. She’d save everyone.
Instead, she’s standing in near darkness, motionless, listening to Virginia sob.
Noemi can say nothing other than “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re sorry?” Virginia slaps her open hand against the wall; the thud reverberates through the entire bay. “You let Ludwig and Fon get captured, which means they’re going to go to prison for years if not for the rest of their lives, and you’re sorry?”
