The Colorima continued placidly, ignoring Manny’s discomfort, even though he was sure she recognized it. “People who attack us will be killed. Letting them live encourages more attacks. Our immediate challenge is that Charlie Windar and Nona Hall are on their way to Next’s Reach. If they can get there and stop the fight, then we can pretend we didn’t see it.”
Manny had finally gotten enough control over himself to spit out some words. “You can’t hurt either of those two. Charlie is too important to Lym, and Nona is an ambassador. You could lose the Deep’s support.”
“I don’t think so,” the Colorima replied. “The Deep is too smart to fight us. But we will try to avoid hurting her if there is an option.” She spoke exactly as if she were discussing the number of places to set a party. “Nona is aligned with Satyana and Gunnar, who are allies. We need Charlie for the same reason we need Manny. They are the ones we negotiated with and the ones who have the authority to negotiate further with us.”
Manny looked like he had just eaten something distasteful.
Based on how Manny looked, Yi chose subvocals again, addressing the Jhailing directly. Here is your third thing. We found some history. It might relate to what you wanted us to look for. Humans will find it soon.
They don’t know about it now?
No.
All right. Is it so urgent that we need to act now?
Let me send you some memory shots I took. You should have some clues in case something happens to me.
Very well.
Yi started a stream going.
Three hours after the meeting with the Jhailing and the Colorima, Yi and Manny sat in a bar just inside the Mixing Zone, Manny drinking water and Yi drinking nothing. They shared a tall wooden table with metal legs and sat on stools with soft orange cushions. Yi’s cushion kept threatening to slide out from under him, so he had to pay attention to his balance. In spite of the crowd in the bar, everyone except the serving robots gave them a wide berth. “How long do we have to wait?” Manny asked.
“I don’t know. As long as it takes. Are you nervous?”
“There are roughly a thousand things that might go wrong with this plan.”
Yi laughed softly.
Manny squinted at him. “Don’t you worry?”
“All the time. My family teases me about it, but I can count at least three times I’ve saved their lives.”
“I heard that from Katherine once. She said you worry for all four of them, so they don’t have to worry.”
“We should all worry.”
Manny finished his water and asked for another one. “Katherine and I used to sit together at night sometimes. I’d read or plan my way back home, and she’d sit and do her trance thing, and every once in a while we’d stop and talk.”
Art decorated the walls right behind Manny. Pictures of places on Lym painted with exaggerated colors. A sunset so bright it looked like an explosion, mountains the blue of a summer sky, a yellow flower so varied it looked real except the core yellow was so bright he’d never seen it in nature. “She told me about talking with you. She enjoyed herself. We don’t spend a lot of time with humans anymore.”
“Aren’t you supposed to show the other humans how to be robots?”
“They spent a lot of energy making everyone who survived the High Sweet Home into perfectly created soulbots with our old likenesses. Katherine works with them, and she said people can choose the bodies they want from a catalog. They are not as different from one another as we are.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Remember, they made us to be ambassadors. Sometimes I think they designed us so precisely for Chrystal. So she could get close to Nona.”
Manny grunted. “That worked.” He fell silent, stroking his beard. When he spoke again, it was nearly a whisper. “But then they let the Shining Revolution kill her. Do you think that was on purpose?”
“Jason is sure of it. But I don’t think it’s that easy. The Next see death differently than we do. They had another Chrystal just as far through our training program as the first one. So no real loss, right?”
“But the Jhailings and Colorimas are different. I’ve had time to figure that out. It’s not one entity named Colorima. It’s a lot of copies, but they’re all different. I met two Jhailings at once early on, and one had a sense of humor while the other one had a stick up its silver ass.”
Yi suspected he was more like the second one and wondered briefly if he should try to learn more skills at humor. “If they’d stepped in to save Chrystal, they might have started a war.”
Manny frowned. “Are all the Next really three original humans?”
Yi smiled at that. “Hundreds. But the Jhailings and the Colorimas took on the task of . . . communicating with the humans. It’s hard, you know.”
“For you?”
“A little. Its gets harder as time goes on. That’s why Katherine liked sitting with you. Some of the Next are thousands of years old, and the only humans they saw before this were smugglers.”
Before Manny could ask another question, a Jhailing came in. “We’re done. You can go now.”
“Did it go well?”
“Better than we might have expected. Your advice appears to have been good.”
They walked through the gates of the Mixing Zone and into the bright lights at the edge of the spaceport. “We have a skimmer over here.”
“What happened?”
“We were able to make a case that five of them had violated the treaty. We mentioned that they could be sentenced to death. After that they started negotiating.”
“But you didn’t kill anyone?” Manny asked.
“No.”
The big man relaxed visibly. “What happened to them?”
“They got to keep their lives; they will spend a few years of them in jail in Manna Springs.”
“Why here?”
The Jhailing said, “We don’t jail humans. We befriend them or we give them the opportunity to become us or we kill them. It’s simpler that way.”
“And you don’t feel guilty?” Manny asked. “How can you be you?” He sounded almost as calm as the Colorima, and deadly serious. To his credit he didn’t sound frightened at all, maybe even a little excited.
They finished buckling in. The Jhailing said, “You know you’re really attached to the re-wilding here. You’ve devoted all of your choices to it?”
“Yes,” Manny replied.
“We’re like that.”
Manny look offended at the comparison. “We don’t kill as casually.”
“No?” They started off, the skimmer’s movement driven by an absence of sound or stutter, as if it were a fast feather. “How do you deal with invasive species?”
“If we can, we move them.”
“And if you can’t?”
Manny didn’t respond.
Large spaceships loomed around them, reminding Yi of the cave, except that these were sleeker, prettier. The artifacts in the cave were more about brute force, or perhaps simply from before humanity or the Next had learned so much about nanomaterials.
What will we find? Yi messaged the Jhailing.
Don’t be impolite.
Yi sat back and waited. It had a point. Wind pulled at his curly, difficult hair and cooled the surface of his skin.
They could see the lights of Manna Springs. “What about the fight?” Manny asked. “Is it over?”
“At Next’s Reach? It hasn’t really started.”
A small crowd had gathered near the edge of the city where the hotels stood. Yi recognized Jules standing apart, and some of the business owners crowded next to each other. Most faced them, watching them bring the skimmer in. Jules kept his attention on the townspeople.
This was a place where the boundary between spaceport and city was clear . . . the surfaces even changed colors. The dark, chargeable tarmac of the spaceport contrasted with the lighter and more porous surfaces of roads and walkways in Manna Springs. The skimmer landed on the
port side, near where a Colorima stood, quietly watching the crowd of people. Good to see you, she said to the Jhailing and Yi.
And you. He recognized the woman who ran the Spacer’s Rest hotel, a man who sold flowers, a woman who ran a tea shop, and a couple who specialized in tours for the academic tourists.
Jules stood a little apart from the others, on the side as far from the Colorima as he could get. He glared at Manny.
The skimmer stopped in front of the group, on the spaceport tarmac rather than in the city proper. As far as Yi knew, there was no legal division, but the color-change line worked out as a symbol.
The hotelier said, “Jules will leave now. If he steps foot in Manna Springs for the next three months, he may be jailed for contempt of our leadership. After that, he may come back in the role that he has always played, as a citizen of Lym. Amanda will be expected to share the same restrictions.”
A bloodless exchange. Yi approved.
Jules walked slowly across the line and stood close to the skimmer, glaring silently at Manny. He looked roughly like a three-year-old who had just broken his favorite toy, or perhaps a young man after the first time a girl dumped him.
Well, what are you waiting for? the Colorima asked. Get out.
Yi opened the door and climbed down, leading Manny by the hand.
Manny didn’t even look at Jules. He stopped, still on the darker spaceport tarmac, looking at the townspeople. Yi didn’t quite understand the details of what was happening, so he stood beside Manny.
Jules climbed into the skimmer. The Colorima followed him. The two Next and Jules flew off, the eerie silence of the skimmer still unsettling.
Now Yi was the only Next in sight.
Manny looked at the group, and the hotelier gave the slightest nod, and then Manny stepped across the line and both groups of people were laughing and shaking hands. They turned and walked down the street all together in a bunch.
Yi followed silently behind them, watching for dangers.
This had been far simpler than he had expected. He found that unsettling. Either the fight out in Next’s Reach had drawn all of the rebels out of Manna Springs, or they were hiding and waiting. And here he was, walking down the street by himself behind a gaggle of humans.
He hurried to catch up.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHARLIE
Hunger pangs woke Charlie up halfway to Entare. He pulled an energy bar out of his pocket and ate slowly, centering himself before he opened his slate to prepare for the speech he would have to give shortly. He found two messages waiting for him. Both were from Gerry, who had been collecting information about Entare from Desert Bow Station. Before he opened the PA system, he took a deep breath, squeezed Nona’s hand once, and glanced at Amanda, who looked back at him placidly and nodded.
Gerry had sent him news for Amanda as well, although he wouldn’t give it to her in public.
He stood up and faced the cabin. “I’ve learned more about the situation on the ground at Iron’s Reach. First, let’s have a geography lesson. Entare is huge, and over half of it is desert. A long spine of mountains runs down the center, and everything east of the mountain is dry. West is wet, deeply forested, and mostly re-wilded.
“We will be going to the desert, specifically to the desert coast.
“Most of you don’t know what that means. I spend two ranger tours there, one of them at Desert Bow Station, where we’re going. Days are hot and nights are cold. Some plants and animals are poisonous. There’s little cover and a lot of difficult, dry ground. To stay there, you need water.
“Entare used to be wetter, and there are a number of old cities left from that time. Most are crumbling and a few, like Palat, have been partially deconstructed. Near Palat, there are beautiful beaches with breathtaking reefs, and low hills where some freshwater can be found. The . . . attackers are using the small port at the Desert Bow ranger station, which we recently abandoned.
“Iron’s Reach is the wide peninsula that the Next are building their city on. They’re naming their city after the peninsula and calling it Next’s Reach. It’s not like Nexity—it’s low and sized to humans. Reportedly, the Next are taking the people they’ve recently turned into robots there. The theory is that a human-sized city is easier for them to live in while they adjust to . . . the consequences of their choice.
“I just got word from Wilding Station that the attack is probably planned for tonight. The attackers are calling themselves Shining Revolution, although we don’t have any way to tell if they are really affiliated.”
A few hands went up, but he didn’t call on anyone. “I’ll take a few questions once I’m finished. We’ll have time on the ground for discussion as well.
“The Next have been building on Iron’s Reach for a few weeks. That doesn’t seem long, but remember that the Wall around Nexity grew too high for us to see over in just two days. Obviously we have satellites, and we have a general idea of what the town they are building is like.” He stopped and fiddled with the controls on his slate. “Everyone should be able to see that picture.” He looked around in the cabin, verifying that the screens were showing the satellite shot. “Next’s Reach is also walled, but the wall is low. Ships that have come here have not been turned into raw materials.” He pointed at his slate, producing an arrow on the visuals that everyone else had. “There is a spaceport outside, to the south. The wall does not include Palat proper, but Next have been seen in the ruined city.
“Our plan is to land at the old ranger station where people are gathering and pretend we want to join the attack. Instead, we will try to gather up our people, put them into the Storm, and take them home. This plan is not only subject to change, but likely to change. Even with good knowledge of a situation, plans change. We don’t have that. We know very little about the people we’ll be meeting who are not from Lym. We don’t know how many off-worlders are here. We’ll have to be careful.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Now, I’ll take a few questions.”
A few hands went up. Charlie called on DeLong Fetcher, a man he’d once taken college classes from. “Why did the Next choose to locate their cities near historic places?”
“An interesting question.” It was, and something he hadn’t realized. The Jhailing he had negotiated with had asked for many places that they hadn’t been allowed to take at the end of the negotiations. How many of those were old cities? All of them, maybe? It was months ago now, and he couldn’t remember the details of what had been asked for, only of what had been given in the end. He mused out loud, “Palat and Neville are both ancient. I recall that they asked to settle near Hay’s Market and Lake Loop as well, and those are also very old.” He remembered where he’d seen his first Next, in the ruins of Neville, on Nona’s first visit, right around the time the High Sweet Home was destroyed. “That’s a really good question,” he repeated. “We don’t have time to dig too deep into it, but you are a history teacher. Can you describe the two cities?”
DeLong stood up. He was a tall rangy man with deceptive strengths, and Charlie remembered him and Charlie’s father sharing drinks by the fire after harvest days. His voice was gravelly. “Neville was once beautiful, and our histories and the histories of the Glittering alike hold it in high esteem as a place of power and elegance. It was largely destroyed in the war. Palat was industrial, and while it wasn’t attacked during any of the last few wars, it emptied as we moved out into space. Once, both had great universities, and each had more population than we allow on all of Lym today. As far as why the Next might be interested, I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you,” Charlie said.
A woman in the back stood up. “Maybe they like history. More importantly, what can we do to help?”
“A few of us will go in first. We can be sure it’s at least moderately safe before we put all of you at risk.”
“We want to go in,” one of the men said.
“Yes,” said another.
Kyle watched
him closely.
It felt like they wanted to slide free of his control. “There are too many unknowns. We’re almost sure to need you, but we don’t want to waste you.”
Perhaps it was the blunt terms he used, but they settled some.
He watched as they neared Desert Bow Station. A flat, rocky plain sloped gently up a low point between two hills. Buildings huddled at the foot of the hills, barely visible. The sun—now almost directly overhead—beat down on the rocky ground, and here and there it found scraps of minerals or metals in the rocks to add a touch of fire to. He had to squint.
Farro held the skimmer low and slow, rocking slightly.
He pointed. “There it is.”
She turned hard right, and they glided onto a long runway. The flat, empty surface ended at a concrete pad sufficient to land space-based vehicles on. They had landed a fifteen-minute walk or so away from the station, which was a small campus of buildings created to look like a pile of desert stones. Early in the restoration it had been a fad to try to camouflage every human thing, although eventually their successors had decided to make them obviously human like Manna Springs instead, choosing understated and friendly architecture.
This was from the earlier period though, and it was as if the people who built it had created another small hill in a field of natural hills and then surrounded it with a combination of natural and fake rock. Bushes grew from cracks in the walls and lined a rock garden on the roof. Bits of green startled the eye, colors that would have been home in the farm country they came from.
Farro turned the skimmer so it pointed back the way they’d flown in. She opened the door with a button and a great gush of heat filled the vehicle. The ramp squeaked as it extended out and clanged on the hard surface. Charlie grabbed the microphone. “Please stay here for a moment.”
As he walked through the ship, he spotted Kyle in an aisle seat next to his two rangers. He waved. “Come with me?”
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