It’s a puzzle. Jason stared so hard at the door he seemed to be trying to wrest its secrets away with his gaze alone.
Not literally. Yi closed his eyes and focused. If the previous inhabitants had been on either side of the war, they might have locked away their weaponry. If they had been a group that would become Next and had been told to leave, they might have done the same. This place felt more like it was built for machines than for humans, even if what he’d been taught in school—and just related to Jason—refuted that idea. Unlike the rooms they’d left Charlie and others in, floors were hard instead of soft, corridors and doors wide. Seats didn’t have backs. Restrooms or galleys were rare.
So the door should be easier for a machine to open than for a man.
Jason ran his hands along the doorframe.
Yi went into soft focus. He didn’t know enough history to think of a code or password if there was one. He ran his memories back a few lectures and played them at an accelerated pace. A lot of the class had been about the Glittering rather than about Lym.
Surely he was just making this too hard. The smooth walls offered nothing. He looked on the floor near his feet. Nothing. He backed up, slowly.
A slightly raised piece of floor near a wall looked promising. He stepped on it, and it gave, but the door didn’t budge.
He stomped.
The door opened.
Jason turned a startled face toward Yi. “You’re uncanny.”
Yi smiled. “I use my brain before my body.”
“Hey!”
The door rattled and hummed on its way open. It stuck about half of the way up, something in the doorframe making a repeated banging sound. I supposed we’re lucky it opened at all.
I smell fresh air, Jason said, walking in through the door, which had opened high enough that he didn’t need to duck.
Yi wondered how Jason knew it was safe to go through, and then decided he didn’t. But no traps sprang, so Yi followed.
It’s dustier in here, Jason told him.
The walls were smooth, and began to glow softly as they walked in. Eerie.
The shapes that Yi hadn’t been able to make out were alcoves. He wandered inside the first. A space ship of some kind, bigger than the skimmers Charlie used down here and smaller than inter-station ships. The square bottom faded to a gently rounded nose cone and scales covered the outside. Shielding of some kind. Yi would bet that it was designed to power through the atmosphere and then to meet up with something bigger.
Come here! Jason called, excited. I found a catalog in the system, or maybe an inventory. He started reading, not even waiting for Yi to join him. There are fifteen different ships near here, and more someplace else in the caves. That one you’re looking at? It’s one of the smallest. Some of them have serious weapons, like they could take out a far bigger ship or a piece of a station. There’s one that could probably destroy the Deep.
Really?
Well, hurt it anyway.
Yi started walking down the long room. It went for a considerable distance.
Jason’s voice kept going in his head, a little fast and slightly staccato. There’s missiles and hand weapons—beam, projectile, light, something else I don’t understand. There’s trucks and a few other surface vehicles. There are solar charging units that run power from the surface down here. Jason paused. It looks like three of the ships have power.
Can you tell which side they were on?
No humans could have built these.
Yi felt vindicated for his assumptions. That’s what I thought.
He was halfway down the hallway. I smell it. Fresh air.
I told you so.
Yes. Yi jogged, glancing right and left to get a visual feel for the contents of each alcove they passed. Everything was neat and orderly, as if it had all been left against some use in the future. Can you tell anything about who made it?
If you’re the one who uses his head, why am I the one in the catalog?
Yi laughed out loud, the sound strange in this place that felt so much like a museum. He stopped and sat on a backless bench that was too tall for him and slid into Jason’s mind so they could explore the catalog together.
The ships were all left in perfect shape let’s see when they were made in the middle of the war but someone kept them from using them even though they were allowed to build them there are more places like this one close enough to reach in a day and another is on Entare and smaller but maybe we need to know about that and yet we really can’t tell the humans can we but why not oh I see the fights we must be careful we should close this door and say we could never open it but remember it but what about a back door we’ll need another I want to explore later they will be asleep now and we should be back before they wake I love you too we’re aligned.
Yi shook his head to break free and started a conversation to cement the separation. I think these might work.
Can we test that?
Yi began to feel them separate, become able to disagree without melting into each other and hungry for consensus. Now?
Well.
Someday.
At the far end of the corridor, a set of steps and a ramp led upward, both spiraling over and over. They appeared to have been cut into the rock with lasers, although in a few places they had been built up with a material neither Yi nor Jason recognized. They led up to a long flat corridor and eventually to a small cave with a flat floor and a mouth that opened out to the sky. It would be very hard to see from above. Trees almost concealed the opening. It would be possible—but very hard—to climb to this point. From the outside, humans might not be able to do it at all. Can you find it from the air? Yi asked.
I think so. We know what to look for.
Nothing about this goes into any shared systems. The gleaners were right about that.
Do you think they know what’s in the cave?
I have no idea. He took a last long look at the view from the mouth of the escape cave. Unlike the wet ravine full of ice-melt, this looked mostly dry and rocky, with scrub trees and bushes. But then, they’d come a very long way.
They turned back, walking side by side. Once they got to ground level, they stopped and took a long look at the hangars full of war machines. Yi had decided to protect humans a long time ago, but that didn’t mean he would help them attack what he was becoming. When he was human, he had found war mystifying, and in this new existence that was beyond human, he found it even more disturbing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHARLIE
Charlie woke groggy with strange dreams, still plagued by a restlessness that had chased him all night. Perhaps it was the strange place and the odd smells. Cricket lay next to him, her eyes open and tracking his slightest move.
He was getting lazy with her, letting her sleep with him. Best to remember she was a predator. “Good morning, girl,” he whispered.
She slid sideways off of the bed, a move that honored her missing front leg. Her tail twitched. She hopped to the door. “All right, I smell it, too.” The scents of stim and baking bread drew him up and into his decidedly rumpled uniform. The arm was still damp where he had tried to wash the bloodstains out. Just yesterday morning he had dressed to meet Nona.
Hopefully she was okay. She and Manny.
Amfi met him with a cup of stim and a plate of bread, fruit, and eggs. He took the plate and she returned with a bowl of food for Cricket. She smiled. “This is eggs and tharp and a few vegetables. Hopefully it’s enough.”
“Thank you.” He kept Cricket near him until Amfi put the bowl down, and then gave her permission to eat. He eyed the eggs. “I didn’t know you had eggs.”
“We brought in supplies the day before all of this started. That’s how Davis and I got caught outside. We had just finished moving our skimmer into the blind, and we decided to take an afternoon walk.”
He took the plate from her. “I’m so sorry. I liked Davis.”
Amfi had a blank look on her face, as if she were staring back
ward in time. “It was a beautiful afternoon. Cold and clear, with the last of the fall leaves. This time of year the waterfalls are at their thinnest and most peaceful.”
“I bet they are.”
She twirled an empty cup in her hand. “I don’t think Davis really knew we were under attack. They took him down right away, a killing shot. I only got away because they targeted him first.”
They sat down at the kitchen table. He took a long sip of stim and a bite of the warm eggs before he asked her, “You think it was rangers? Why?”
“I know it was. We recognize them easily since we spend so much time avoiding them.” She smiled a slight, sad smile. “Except you and Jean Paul, of course.”
“Of course.” He liked the gleaners. They broke the laws gently, only hunting to live. In some ways, he thought of them as similar to the other animals he protected, and in other ways he thought of them as allies. They often alerted him to problems, and twice they had helped him spot smugglers.
Amfi sighed. “Will you help me bury him this morning?”
“Yes. Is anyone else awake?”
She shook her head. “There’s no point in waking them. Yi and Jason are still gone.”
He glanced at his watch. Yi and Jason weren’t due back for an hour. “The robots might be helpful. They’re strong.”
“I want to do this myself.”
He understood. “Do you have any news?”
“I don’t want it yet. Can it wait until after?”
He wanted to find out if Manny and Nona were safe. But from way out here, it didn’t matter. Amfi was right here, right now, sad and alone. He smiled at her. “It’ll be fine. How’s your leg?”
She grimaced. “I can walk. I’m just slow.”
He finished the rest of his breakfast in silence while she busied herself with cleaning up. He liked gleaners. They didn’t need to fill every moment of silence with their own voices. It left him time to think about strategies.
Whatever had happened here or in Manna Springs last night was most likely over, although he couldn’t discount the idea that whoever had killed Davis was still out here. When he got ready to go out, he took two fully charged stunners, a small projectile weapon, and a knife. “Are you going armed?” he asked Amfi.
“No.”
“You should.”
“If I die, then it’s my day to go.”
A gleaner cliché. He’d learned not to argue about it a long time ago.
They closed the door carefully behind them, making sure that the double set of biometric locks had all worked by having Charlie try—and fail—to get in. “You should set me up,” he suggested.
She politely ignored the comment.
As they passed behind the cold waterfall, Charlie tried to peer through the veil of it, but he really couldn’t see a thing except light. At least she’d waited until after dawn to wake him up.
Beyond the water, they stopped and surveyed the area; the path and the meadow and the skimmer they’d left out in the open, and beyond it, Davis’s body. Not too far from the body, a family of small, fleet-footed grazers probably smelled Cricket. They lifted their heads as one and bounded in among the trees.
As much as anything else, the grazers convinced him the meadow was safe. He’d expected Davis’s body to be ravaged by predators, but it appeared untouched. Maybe it still smelled too human. Amfi walked up to it slowly, and closed the eyes.
A projectile weapon had killed Davis. It looked like a wound from a common hand weapon that most rangers carried. Still, some people from town owned them as well. The shot had gone clean into his neck, and he’d fallen on his face—dirt still clung to one cheek. “Did you turn him over?”
“I had to see if he was dead.”
“This looks more like a human killed him than a robot.” Charlie took pictures.
“I told you that.”
“It’s not you I’m afraid I’ll have to convince. I suspect the Port Authority will know that their robots were killed by Next. They might even identify Yi.”
“Do they have to find the body parts for that?”
Charlie shrugged. “It depends on how good the connectivity was when they died. Probably they don’t.”
Amfi walked around the area, looking down. Every once in a while she tested the ground with her feet.
“Are you looking for evidence?” he asked her.
“I’m looking for a good place to bury him.”
“Best to go up near the trees. You’re too near the river. The spring floods might uncover him.”
“It didn’t get this high last spring.”
“But it might. I’d rather be digging in the tree line anyway. We won’t be so visible.”
She looked hesitant.
“I can carry him.”
“Okay.”
It turned out to barely be true. The body was so heavy that he stumbled once, dropped it, and had to pick it back up. In spite of the cold, the ground was soft enough that the extra weight made Charlie’s feet sink, leaving six-inch-deep footprints. While that boded well for grave digging, it didn’t make it any easier for Charlie to get up the slope. Nevertheless, he felt better when they were out of easy sight of drones or satellites.
Despite the reason for it, it felt great to sweat. Amfi helped, and Cricket watched for threats. Once she growled, and a small six-legged hunter with dark rings on its tail raced away from them across the meadow. “It’s good to see that,” he told Amfi. “Mountain spotted cats are still rare, but we’ve been nurturing a small population on the other side of the mountain.”
“We saw two last week.” Amfi stopped for a moment and leaned on her tool. “A breeding pair.”
“That’s great. I’ll take any good news right about now.”
Even though the top layer of ground was soft, it grew harder below that; Charlie wiped his forehead on his sleeve and took off his coat.
Amfi stared down into the hole. “Do you think that’s deep enough?”
“Almost.” It probably was, but he was enjoying the simple honest work. He needed to find Nona and Manny, but he needed this moment as well. He was beginning to feel balanced again, balanced and ready to go and take on whatever waited for him.
Twenty minutes later, he and Amfi tugged Davis’s body into the hole and covered it with nearby stones and packed the dirt from outside the hole around the stones. It made a nice little mound.
Amfi knelt and put a hand on the dirt. “From life to death we travel, some faster, some slower. From life to death you traveled in beauty and strength, my love, my brother, my fellow. From life to death, you traveled well. Now go again from death to life.”
Her words startled him a little. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“We don’t know what happens any more than anyone else. But I find it a comforting thought, and so did Davis.”
He held a hand out to help her up.
Cricket growled.
He looked out toward his skimmer. At first he didn’t see anything at all. Then the doors opened, and Kyle Glass and two other rangers stepped out, an older man and a young woman. They said nothing but looked deadly serious.
Kyle looked calm. “Where are the robots?”
Amfi took a step away from Charlie, giving him room. She looked directly at Kyle, and said, “He helped kill Davis.”
Charlie stiffened. “Did you?”
Kyle watched Amfi closely. “They helped you give Lym away. Gleaners had no right.”
Amfi looked neither frightened nor intimidated. She smiled. The set of her lips accentuated the wrinkles around her eyes. “You gravely misunderstand the situation. Every other choice was worse. Someone had to negotiate. Someone with a level head.”
Cricket had gone completely still beside Charlie. He reached down to pet her and found her back stiff and her hair raised.
Kyle watched Amfi rather than Cricket. “There is always a choice. I’m willing to believe that you couldn’t stop them. But you gave them leave to be here. None of yo
u had that right.”
“If you start a war here,” Charlie said, “They might wipe us all out.” Dammit, he had always liked Kyle. “You have to understand that.”
“Where are the robots?” the other man asked.
“What robots?” Charlie stepped slightly closer to Amfi, trying to be sure he was between her and at least one of their assailants.
Kyle gestured for him to step aside. “Hand me your weapons.”
“I’m not going to let you hurt her,” Charlie stated. He didn’t move toward his weapons in any way.
“I told you I would do what I can to protect you. But that doesn’t extend to anyone else.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charlie snapped. “You’ve done enough damage. Just stop. Since the Next announced themselves, humans have murdered more people than the Next have.”
Kyle’s eyes narrowed. “There you go standing up for your new best friends again.”
“Stop being an idiot. I am no happier they’re here than you are.”
Kyle spit on the ground and gestured toward Charlie again, as if expecting that he would just hand over his weapons.
Surely he knew better. “I trained you. You’re not going to kill me.” If Kyle were the only one here, he could convince him. But there were the others, and Kyle clearly had a leadership position.
Sure enough, he kept on-message. “We control Lym now. It’s a revolution, and it’s over. You have no power.”
In spite of the danger, Charlie almost laughed. “To what end?”
The man behind Kyle answered. “So that nothing more is given away. Lym needs to be run by people who understand exactly how dangerous the Next are, and who keep them away from us.”
“I hate them being here as much as you do,” Charlie repeated himself. He might as well be talking to stones as people.
The woman spoke for the first time, her voice full of accusation. “Then why are you pals with two of them?”
Losianna stepped out from behind the skimmer, a weapon in each hand.
Just as Charlie was about to shake his head at her, she fired. Blood exploded with the weapon’s electronic whine, as the man next to Kyle spun to the ground, his head split open. The woman’s scream matched the second whine, and she fell, choking as she curled around herself. Kyle stood, mouth agape, staring around in uncomprehending shock, his face bleached of color.
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