She loved him for this subtle poking sense of humor. Besides, he was right. They couldn’t disappear for months. “How about we take down two or three ships while we’re planning?”
“What if you stop on a win.” Darnel didn’t deliver the line as a question.
“Do you doubt us?” Nayli asked.
Surely it was a trick of the camera and the distance, but Nayli thought she saw a trace of fear cross Brea’s strange, pale eyes.
“Never,” Darnal said. “But we need all of your attention. This will be harder than attacking the Diamond Deep.”
Of course it would. They’d need to move quickly; Nexity was rising fast and rumor had it they’d started two more cities. She started making lists in her head, thinking through resources and messaging.
Brea and Darnal had planned the assault on the Deep. They’d never let her and Vadim plan more than a single ship takedown before.
Was this a sign that they had earned more power, or that the Shining Revolution had grown too big?
PART TWO
THE FOLLY OF BEING HUMAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SATYANA
A still image of Nona hovered in Satyana’s room, her mouth captured in a wry smile, her fingers caught in the act of twisting a strand of blue hair into a tight spiral. Satyana had taken the pic during the call they had just hung up from. The Deep and Lym were in reasonable proximity to each other for face-to-face calls, and they would stay that way for the next few months. Ships could travel between the Deep and the planet in less than a week. It was about the only thing that seemed to be breaking their way.
Satyana spoke to Gunnar, who sat behind her drawing in his journal. “She’s so vulnerable there. Doesn’t she look fragile? At least she’s finally growing into herself.”
Gunnar grunted. “I trust you noticed that she picked the fulcrum of a system-wide war to test her diplomacy skills. She doesn’t have the experience for it. I’m not sure you’d succeed at shepherding Manna Springs through this crisis, especially not by leading from the back.”
Satyana reached for the glass of wine in front of her. “She’s our only option, and leading from the back is the only thing she can do. Manna Springs threw everyone with any experience out in a fit of stupidity.”
“I’ll be surprised if she succeeds.”
Satyana whispered, “Good luck,” in the general direction of the image before she turned off the visual.
“She is better than I expected,” Gunnar offered, maybe as a white flag. He rose from a couch across the room.
“I don’t see how there’s anything truly important she can do though,” Satyana fretted. “What did you tell me? There’s two hundred more ships than usual circling Lym, and only twenty percent or so—including the Next—belong there?”
“Maybe twenty-five. I’m sending some ships from my fleet.” He poured himself a dollop of whiskey.
“Whatever for? You don’t belong there.”
“Someone might have to pick up the pieces.”
“You’re the enemy.” Not that she needed to tell him that. Gunnar strip-mined and deep-mined and otherwise exploited Mammot—the only other rocky planet in the system—and the Lym government was forever worried that he might want to do the same to Lym, in spite of system-wide treaties forbidding it.
As usual, he appeared to know when she worried. He came closer and leaned down, kissing her gently. “Take a walk with me?”
Sometimes it was more work to keep Gunnar going than to support Nona. “I have two hours. Then I’ve got a meeting with Neil, who is going to report on the meeting with the Colorima that’s our current Next ambassador.”
“That’s enough time. I want to check on my forest.”
She sighed. That meant one of the two hours would be spent in travel. At least the other one would be pleasant. “All right. But I can’t get trapped there.”
He put his hand out for hers. “Do you ever relax?”
“Only with you.”
“Then you don’t relax nearly enough.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Neil was easier to spend time with, and she’d started doing that when Gunnar was off and away. This put her in the awkward position of being the lover of the most economically powerful man in the solar system and the best friend of the third or fourth most politically powerful. Some days it made her want to go earn a captain’s tattoo in some far corner of the solar system hauling heavy ores.
Maybe after all of this was done.
Satyana and Gunnar walked hand in hand through the forest bubble. It was midday here, the bubble’s sun shade fully open, and the light filters set as wide as possible. Even though the roof was far above them, warmth fell through with the light and brought a slight sheen of sweat to Gunnar’s skin.
Two bright blue butterflies as big as her palm danced circles around each other. Red and yellow flowers hung from tall-canopied trees in long strings, and here and there darting blue-green or red flashes indicated pollen-birds fighting silently over attractive flowering vines. “Do they ever kill each other?” she asked him.
“Only once.”
They walked in companionable silence on spongy paths, and she marveled at the wild things all around her. Even she, with all of her vast resources, could not afford to build and maintain such a place. The only other two forest bubbles she knew of were owned in common as parks, and they were not nearly as beautiful as Gunnar’s private reserve.
After ten minutes, Gunnar pulled her to a stop and looked down at her. “When we voted to help the Next, we agreed that we’d not only let them come here, but we’d help them. That’s part of why I’m sending ships—they need a human to deal with the humans.”
That’s why Nona was there. The poor, beleaguered planet hardly needed Gunnar to complicate things even more. Satyana bit her tongue and let him talk.
He spread his hands wide. “So far the damned robots aren’t much real use to us, though. I can’t get them to trade me a thing.”
“Trade goes two ways. What do they want from you?”
“We’re keeping a lot of the stations calm.”
Not that Gunnar had chosen to help much with that effort. Plus he hadn’t exactly answered her question. Damn him.
A bright blue parrot flashed through the trees to her right. Ostentatious beauty, like Gunnar’s. Like hers, too, when she dressed up. Showiness. Not really good for very much in the end. “I don’t believe the Next offered to trade anything. What we bargained for was the right to be left alone.”
“Surely you don’t think that’s enough.”
“They’re not going to give you the navigation AIs you want.”
“It’s not as if they’d be weapons. It would just be a way for us to stay safer.” He stopped on a bench in front of a humidifier that he’d designed to look like a waterfall.
“They’d be weapons if the Shining Revolution got their hands on them. More precise nav is one of the ways the Next ships escape their hunters.”
“I doubt the Next trust any humans,” Gunnar said. He reached down to pluck a single red flower, which he handed to her.
The flower smelled too sweet. “I wouldn’t, if I were them. We started the fight in Manna Springs and killed that gleaner and attacked their city.”
“We did not.”
“Do you think their view is really that nuanced?” She tucked the flower between two rocks. “I’m more worried they’ll decide we aren’t helping since we’re not controlling the Shining Idiots. What if they just decide to shoot us all down and be done with it?”
He sounded quite sure of himself as he said, “They wouldn’t.”
“None of us knows what they would or wouldn’t do.” She tugged on his hand. “Let’s go all the way to the cliff. We’ve got time if we don’t stop.”
He followed her. “I’ve been asking the Colorima to share something with us. Even if she won’t give me the nav AIs, they have all kinds of materials and ship designs we could use. Like the programming for th
e metal the Colorimas are always wandering around in. We can change something’s shape, but not as if the damned metal were water. Nothing we have transitions that fast.”
“Also not something they’re likely to give up.”
“Surely they understand that if we can show the other stations that we’re benefitting from our relationship with the Next, then we can calm them.”
“The Next think they’re doing us good by letting us become them if we want to.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” He took a few extra steps to catch up with her. “Only an idiot would choose that particular method of suicide.”
She smiled softly. “There’s a lot of idiots in the system right now.” She knew the habitat almost as well as he did and navigated two forks in the path in order to get them all the way across to her favorite spot. “We heard from one ship and two stations yesterday. None of them would commit to the coalition.”
“You need a name,” he said. “We have the Next’s fucking future of humanity—branded as ‘come and live forever in a body that never rusts,’ and the Shining Revolution branded as ‘come and fight and die for the right to die.’ Against what? A third force called the Coalition of the Helpers or some such thing? What’s your brand?”
“We’ve been calling it the Coalition for Peace.”
“Well, my, isn’t that compelling?”
He was being an ass, but he was also right. “What would you call it?”
They rounded a corner and left the mixed-conifer forest behind. Before them, a short and perfectly maintained lawn led them to the cliff of flowers. Blossoms flourished in showy profusion, waterfalls of hanging bells and tall stalks of blossoms in a myriad of shapes, floor to ceiling lines of yellows and blues punctuated with great sprays of violet. Behind the bigger flowers, smaller and smaller blossoms. An infinity of life; excess beyond imagining on a station.
Tiny pollen-birds and small pollenbots buzzed as they picked at the wall.
Unlike any of the other sides of the dome, this one spot had dirt that went almost all the way to the sunscreen, held together by who-knows-what superstructure. Maybe even just by the roots of the flowers that covered the face of the cliff to three times her height. She was fairly certain Gunnar had three gardeners at a time working it, although as usual when he was here they had become invisible. Whatever labor costs he was expending produced something worth the effort times ten.
Of course, nothing here was necessary, unless you counted it as a very private place for the soul. A place for awe.
He let her drink in the scents and colors in quiet for a moment before he suggested, “Defending Angels.”
“We’re neither.”
“Keepers.”
“Of what? Peacekeepers was the name of a troupe I was in as a girl.”
“Holders?”
“Boring. If partly true. It’s also a little like the Revolution. We’re willing to change.” She walked up to the wall and pulled a long yellow flower gently toward her nose. Silky, faintly sweet. “People don’t come to us to defend anything. They come to be safe. But we can’t just call ourselves the Islands of Safety.”
“Of course not.”
Another flower smelled of her mother’s favorite perfume, faint but tangy. “It can’t be too associated with the Deep. We need to attract the other stations, not repel them.”
“Maybe we can just call ourselves the only smart ones in the whole damned system.”
She laughed. “Time to go.”
He sighed. “I’ll think on it. Maybe you can ask the Historian as well.”
He never referred to Neil by his name anymore. He almost certainly had enough spies on the Deep to know Satyana was spending more time with Neil than she used to. “I will.”
As if he knew they were speaking of him, Dr. Neil Nevening waited outside of Satyana’s office. Gunnar greeted Neil with a large, meaty handshake. “We have a question for you.”
“And I have news for you.”
“Come on in.” Satyana settled them in two similar chairs. Gunnar dwarfed one and Neil looked like a child next to him. She ordered up stim and snacks from her housebot and joined them. Gunnar had clearly already asked Neil about the name, since he looked deep in thought. “If they hadn’t used the word ‘Free’ in the slogan for the Shining Revolution, I’d play on that.”
“What about independent?” Satyana mused.
Neil seemed to be considering it. “I think we need to keep the sense of a group. That we’re all together. The Coalition of the Strong?”
“Independent Strength.” Gunnar didn’t even say it as a question.
As the housebot rolled up with their tray of steaming hot drinks and long, thin finger sandwiches full of fresh vegetables over protein paste, she repeated it. “The Coalition of Independent Strength.”
Neil refined it. “The Company of Independent Strength?”
“Just Independent Strength,” Gunnar said. “That’s enough.”
Neil sat back. “I’ll bring it to the Council. They’ll have to decide.”
Gunnar had the good sense not to argue. Satyana added, “Thanks, Gunnar,” so Neil would know she credited Gunnar with the whole idea of a better name. “Now, what news did you have?”
“The Next have called a meeting. One of the Colorimas will be there in person. It’s in a week. They say that they’ll bring us something.” He looked at Gunnar. “I think it’s a response to your requests.”
“Did they give you any idea what?”
“No. They want to talk to us. The meeting will be on one of their ships.”
“Why not here?” Gunnar asked.
“Security. They’re more likely to keep the Shining Revolution away from a meeting than we are.”
Gunnar looked pained but didn’t say anything. “A week?”
“Eight days, actually. But our delegation needs to leave in five.”
“Who’s going?” Satyana asked.
“Us.”
Satyana raised an eyebrow. “Just us?”
“And the Futurist.”
Satyana drew in a long, slow breath. “Well, I suppose the Historian and the Futurist make sense. Will they add Leesha?”
“They would. But we’re not allowed to have more than two of the High Council off the station at once.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” she murmured.
“It will be formal,” he said. “They’ve also invited one member from every station and ship that’s joined the coalition to meet with them after we meet.”
Satyana leaned back, relief settling over her like a cloak. “So they are helping us.”
Neil looked lost in thought. “It will force the stations that have refused to choose to do so. If they attend this meeting, they’re voting for the coalition.”
“For Independent Strength” Gunnar said.
“Yes, that.” Satyana laughed. She hadn’t laughed all day. “We can record everyone who comes, and thus keep track of people who don’t. They’ll be curious, many of them, willing to send someone. The Shining Revolution will be shut out of this meeting, and anyone who refuses it will be signaling to the Next that they’re with the Revolution.”
“Surely it’s not that simple,” Gunnar said.
The Historian said, “Wars always find a way to sort people into sides.”
“But we’re trying to be the middle way,” Gunnar said. “It’s really the Next against the Shining Revolution, and we’re telling people to stay out of that nonsense and stick with us—we’ll keep them safe and keep their economies intact.”
Neil gave a long-suffering sigh. “The Next aren’t at war with anyone. We are at war with ourselves.”
Once again, Satyana agreed more with Neil than with Gunnar. “The real enemy is fear. Fear deep enough to drive people mad. Why do you think I’m spending so much time on human alliances?”
“I’ve never met a Next,” Neil admitted. “Except Chrystal, and I don’t know if she really counts.”
&nbs
p; Gunnar said, “She doesn’t. Not really. The Next are . . . the real ones, the Colorimas and the like—they’re something.”
Satyana detected a note of awe in his voice. It worried her. Helping the Next wasn’t supposed to make them part of a robot fan club. She didn’t say that though. She merely looked up at him and smiled and told him, “It will be fun to have an adventure.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHARLIE
Charlie walked away from Hope determined never to return. Cricket hopped beside him, and Yi and Manny flanked them both. Maybe he’d run into his enemies out here and die. But hiding made him twitchy. Besides, if he had to spend another hour drinking with hopeful would-be robots he might throw up. Most of them weren’t any more socially capable than the soulbots he knew; many were less so. There was the periodic unappreciated super-genius who really was one, and a few people with heartbreaking stories that had to do with age or health. Those, he understood. But the others?
Soulbots and people who wanted to become soulbots watched them, curious. The town was busy in spite of its containment inside the dome, although it had started to smell like overripe human and metal instead of like the planet.
The keeper of the gates of Hope closed the huge gate behind them with a clang, and they stood in the Mixing Zone.
For the first time since the attack a week ago, Charlie was on the far side of the shield. The air smelled of sweat and grass and freedom.
He looked around for Nona, who had agreed to meet them here.
The Mixing Zone was bigger than Hope, and it was building up even faster. Like Hope, it hugged the Wall. The far side of it sprawled further out, and it wasn’t walled. Roads bounded it. The biggest Mixing Zone building was an artsy plaza with open designs and lacework bridges and clever round windows that reminded him of the old and destroyed city of Neville. He asked, and Yi answered, “That’s where the selected are educated and then changed. Katherine works there.”
Charlie suspected the Zone also contained the crematoria, where those who failed were disposed of. Or for that matter, where the bodies of the ones who succeeded were disposed of. He didn’t spot it; they probably called it something with a sweet name that whispered of martyrs.
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