Defy the Worlds

  He nods.

  Noemi feels nauseated, not from illness but from the knowledge that her world could’ve been saved so easily—but someone, somewhere, decided they had too much to hide.

  She expects returning to the makeshift sick bay to be more difficult, now that she knows these people could so easily have been treated. They’ll have to break this news to Fouda, who will of course want to attack the passengers immediately—a conflict Noemi doesn’t want any part of any longer. Even less does she want to be surrounded by suffering people she can’t save; after Genesis and now this, she feels like some mythological bringer of death.

  But the worst part of her return is when she sees how much worse Riko is.

  “Riko?” She hurries to Riko’s bedside, Abel beside her. Riko looks so ragged, so miserable, that Noemi can hardly connect her to the energetic, sarong-clad woman they met on Kismet’s moon. Even when Riko was in prison on Earth, her strength shone through. Now she looks like her own ghost. “Hang on, okay? We might be able to help you.”

  “Doubt it,” Riko rasps.

  “Shhh. Save your strength.” Noemi looks around for something, anything that might help, and Abel hands her a cool, damp washrag someone must have prepared. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, so she lays it across Riko’s forehead. Riko’s skin is so hot it nearly burns.

  “Tell me one thing,” Riko whispers. Every word costs her. Every movement. Yet she manages to clasp Noemi’s wrist. “You people—on Genesis—you believe in gods, don’t you?”

  “We believe—” Noemi catches herself before launching into a detailed explanation of the many various faiths on Genesis. “Well, we believe.”

  “Before—I thought I’d see people living free—thought I’d know then it was all worth it.” The doubts Riko never hinted at before now haunt her eyes. “But I’m not going to see that. I’ll never really know.”

  Noemi opens her mouth to protest that Riko will be okay, but Abel gives her a look that silences her words. Whatever treatment is out there, they’re not going to retrieve it in time.

  Riko continues, “What if I was wrong the whole while? What if there’s no place for us to go? Was it all for nothing?”

  Abel says, “You acted on your beliefs, intending to help others. That has worth.” He and Noemi share a glance. She knows he doesn’t agree with Remedy’s terrorist actions any more than she does. But there’s no point in punishing this woman on her deathbed.

  Noemi remembers Captain Baz’s words to her, more meaningful than ever before. “I think it matters what we fight for. What we choose to die for.”

  Riko hears in those words whatever she needed to hear. She very nearly smiles. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Noemi brushes a few strands of sweaty hair off Riko’s forehead, then takes her hand.

  Riko’s grip tightens around hers at first, but slowly, gradually goes slack. Her breathing slows down. Suddenly the image of Esther’s final moments fills Noemi’s mind, tightening her throat. This is what death looks like.

  The doctors always say hearing is the last sense to go. She leans close to Riko’s ear. “It’s all right. We’re here with you. It’s okay.” Which is utterly meaningless, but it’s all she can come up with.

  Somehow she must have said the right thing again, because Riko relaxes, exhales in a long, unmistakable rattle, and—

  “She’s dead,” Noemi whispers as she turns to Abel. “Isn’t she?”

  “The line between life and death is somewhat arbitrary.” Only Abel could say this and sound compassionate. “Riko’s heart and lungs have ceased to function, but while her brain no longer supports consciousness, it continues sending signals. In its last moments, her body was flooded with endorphins, with every possible emergency boost of strength or will. Her brain will be processing these as pure euphoria, producing the visions reported by so many brought back from clinical death.”

  “That’s what Earth thinks.” She wipes at her eyes. “On Genesis we see it differently.”

  Apparently Abel knows better than to argue the existence of heaven with her here and now. “It’s interesting to conjecture.”

  Although Noemi believes in the afterlife, she isn’t sure exactly what kind of reckoning awaits on the other side. She only knows Riko kneels before it now. A power greater than Noemi will decide whether punishment or mercy is called for. So it’s okay to mourn what could’ve been.

  If Earth had opened Haven to everyone, Noemi thinks, there wouldn’t be such a thing as Remedy. Maybe Riko would’ve been a settler here, working hard to set up the first cities of a brand-new world.

  So many lives could’ve been so much better if Earth had only taken responsibility.

  The comms—recently restored by Abel—crackle with sound. Gillian Shearer’s voice comes through: “If our calculations are correct, by now the members of Remedy have learned exactly why this world belongs to us, and not to them. You can’t live in this environment—not without the medical treatment we control.”

  Noemi and Abel look at each other. We were right, she thinks.

  Gillian says, “We’re willing to trade that medical treatment. You’ll get as much as you need. You simply have to pay for it first.”

  Noemi instantly realizes what comes next. Dread hollows her out, and her breath catches in her throat.

  With satisfaction, Gillian concludes, “Bring us the mech named Abel, alive.”

  24

  ABEL’S BLASTER IS BACK IN HIS HAND BEFORE GILLIAN Shearer has finished saying his name. He reaches for Noemi—but she’s already on her feet, her own weapon at the ready. She looks down at the body of Riko Watanabe, and for a moment he thinks Noemi won’t be able to abandon her. Humans behave strangely around the dead.

  Instead Noemi says only a single word: “Go.”

  He runs for the far door, which leads into a badly damaged corridor. With one leap he’s in the door frame, able to pull Noemi with him. Behind them he hears somebody hoarsely shout, “He’s getting away!”

  Are Fouda’s soldiers already after him? Irrelevant. If they aren’t, they will be, and he and Noemi have to run without looking back.

  They take off through the long, dark corridor, debris crunching under their feet. Even the emergency lighting took damage here, meaning the small orange beacons are far apart. They dash through an area that must have briefly caught fire; the once-delicate murals on the walls have been charred black. Each breath smells of ash. Through the darkness he can barely make out Noemi, sometimes glimpsing only the glitter of her jumpsuit. With her limited vision, she must be running nearly blind.

  “What do we do?” she says. “Literally everyone on this ship is trying to capture us. There’s no safe space.”

  “We have to leave the Osiris, and Haven, as soon as possible. The corsair is approximately two kilometers away—”

  “Okay, great. We get outside and run for that,” Noemi pants. “We have to find an air lock.”

  Under such stress even an experienced fighter like Noemi can make an error in strategy. “They’ll check the air locks first. I believe there’s a breach in the hull not far from the theater. We stand a better chance of escaping through that breach than through any of the doors.”

  Noemi is wise enough not to ask the exact probabilities of their success. “Let’s go.”

  Abel calibrates his running speed to match Noemi’s. Once they’re on more even footing, he’ll simply pick her up and carry her. “If I’ve calculated Haven’s diurnal cycles correctly, it should be nighttime outside. We’ll have cover of darkness and should be able to get back to the corsair.”

  “Without a scratch?” Noemi quips. “Promise?”

  “We can take scratches. The corsair must not. I suspect Virginia would refuse to give us a ride back to the Gate. She’d take the Persephone as her bounty.” He means to joke, but the possibility is in fact plausible.

  “Wait.” They pause at a sharper bend in the corridor. Abel thinks Noemi’s only catching her breath, but
she asks a question. “Virginia Redbird came with you?”

  “You know how she loves a mystery.”

  She laughs in apparent surprise. She leans against the wall, clearly gathering her strength for their next run. Although Abel should be focusing nearly all his conscious attention on plotting their course, he nonetheless registers that her jumpsuit is extremely low-cut, revealing the curves of her breasts, which rise and fall with her rapid breathing. This should be irrelevant but somehow is not.

  Swiftly he comes up with a reason for observing her wardrobe. “You’ll be inadequately protected against the cold.” He gestures at his own white hyperwarm parka. “Once we’re outside I’ll give you this.”

  “I found a coat earlier and left it behind, like an idiot. Won’t you get cold, too?”

  “I can endure it for considerably longer than a human, more than long enough to reach the corsair. The flight back to the Persephone will also be cold, but should take no more than twenty-nine minutes depending on Virginia’s orbital status.

  “I’m calculating our path to the corsair,” he says quickly, turning his head to gaze at a broken light fixture instead of Noemi’s chest. “I should have it in another few seconds.”

  Noemi glances at him sideways. “The Persephone? That’s what you renamed the ship?”

  “Yes. In Greek mythology, she’s the wife of Hades, the daughter of Demeter. She spends half her time in one world, half in another. In each world she’s a goddess, but there’s no one place she will ever belong.”

  “…Oh.”

  When he turns to her again, Abel can see realization dawning in her eyes. He’s betrayed his feelings. When will he learn not to do this? Love has to be buried even deeper than he realized.

  In a small voice, Noemi says, “You saw that.”

  He doesn’t know how to reply except to say, “I know you.”

  Noemi shakes her head—not denying him, but as if in wonder. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve gone my whole life just waiting for someone to see me. And you do, Abel. You might be the only person who ever has.”

  “Now you know how I felt the day you told me I had a soul.”

  Their gazes meet in the darkened room, and Abel realizes he’s holding his breath, which is highly counterintuitive. Yet the impulse is undeniable.

  “Running,” Noemi says abruptly. “We should be running.”

  “Agreed.” With that they resume their haste, Abel bewildered by his own reordering of priorities. Escape must be their first and only goal.

  The ambient temperature drops a full degree Celsius, then lowers still further. Their destination must be within proximity. At last he makes out lighting at the end of one long corridor that has a blue tint rather than the orange of emergency lighting. When he magnifies this sector in his vision, he detects a few stray snowflakes.

  In 3.6 seconds, Noemi sees it, too. “The hull breach. We’re almost there!”

  Assent seems pointless. Abel runs faster, pushing ahead of Noemi to scout the area. Every meter brings more brightness and sharper cold, until he finally rounds the final turn—

  —and stops just short of tumbling down a hundred meters, which even for Abel would be fatal.

  He stretches out one arm, which Noemi runs into just after. She gasps in shock. “Oh, my God.”

  Even for a soldier of Genesis, that’s only an expression. However, the physical devastation of the ship could well have been wrought by a vengeful deity. The entire Osiris hull has cracked—opening a sort of canyon almost forty meters wide, one that runs almost the length of the ship. From where they stand on the ragged edge, he and Noemi can see nearly an entire cross-section of the ship—each deck its own layer. Dangling sections of wall, flooring, and wires cover the side as though they were vines. Exposed above them is Haven’s night sky, brightened by six of its moons; below, at the floor of this artificial canyon, are drifts of freshly fallen snow.

  “How exactly are we supposed to get out from here?” Noemi’s question is valid. What is now the top of the ship stands a solid eight meters above their head, and no uninterrupted framework for their climb readily presents itself.

  Abel leans out, examines the wreckage, and comes to a conclusion. “First, we’ll need to climb down this”—he points to a nearby waterfall of dead cables, most of them as thick around as Noemi’s ankle—“to a level approximately fourteen meters below us. From there we can shift sideways and reach that piece of wreckage.” His gesture indicates a latticework of metal that leads very nearly to the top.

  Even the most courageous humans are not entirely unafraid of extreme heights, especially in uncertain conditions like the ones they currently face. Noemi appears pale, but she nods. “That looks, um, doable.”

  “It is.” At least, he believes so. Testing the weight capacity of that latticework is a task he’ll turn to later.

  He slips off his white parka, which Noemi quickly dons. By mutual, silent assent, she prepares to go first—until, in the distance behind them, they hear a thump.

  Turning his head to focus better on the sound, he makes out at least two sets of footsteps—still faraway, but heading in their direction.

  “They’ve found us,” Noemi whispers.

  “Not quite.” He gestures toward the cables leading downward. “You should go on alone.”

  “What?”

  “They’re only after me, Noemi. I can evade them for a time and escape the Osiris later. You and Virginia could retrieve me then.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m not leaving you.”

  This is enormously pleasing but poor strategy. “One of us has to go first regardless. It makes more sense for that to be you.”

  Still Noemi hesitates. “You swear you’ll follow me? Right away?”

  “I swear.” Oaths mean more to humans than to mechs; Abel sees little purpose in promising to do what future conditions may make impossible. But for Noemi’s sake, he will try to obey.

  She begins shinnying down the cables, hand under hand, bracing her booted feet against fragments of wall. He watches her carefully until she’s out of sight and only then glances back.

  In the darkness, he sees movement. Specifically, he sees a badly broken Tare, one eye missing so that the yellowish glow of her brain circuitry shows through. Behind her, an Oboe straightens, ignoring her shredded left arm and leg, and begins to hobble toward them.

  “We have company,” Abel says, knowing Noemi’s still close enough to hear. “Some of Simon’s—playmates.”

  She freezes in place; he is able to determine this from the way the cables stop moving. “Can they tell Simon we’re here?”

  “They already have.” Abel knows this as surely as if he’d programmed the mechs himself.

  “Come on,” she urges. “Hurry. Follow me.”

  An altercation with Simon must be very close. Although Noemi wishes to avoid it due to her own fears and prejudices—understandable, if regrettable—Abel welcomes the chance.

  He had been absolutely honest with Gillian; he believes he can get through to Simon. Calm him, reassure him, maybe even repair him. As long as that’s true, Abel has to try just as hard to save him as he tried to save Noemi.

  She’s the first person who believed I have a soul, he thinks. I must be the person who believes in Simon.

  “I’ll be right there,” he murmurs as he gets to his feet.

  “Dammit, Abel—”

  He ignores Noemi’s fury. The Tare staggers closer, her half-destroyed face more terrible in the brighter light. Abel doesn’t share the instinctive human revulsion at what looks like a life-threatening injury, but there is nonetheless something uncanny about the tilt of her head, the exposed illumination from the circuits of her mechanical brain. When she speaks, she reveals a damaged larynx, sounding more like an ancient type-to-speech reader than either mech or human: “Simon says stay.”

  “Are you in contact with him right now?” The mechs seemed linked, before—to one another, and to Simon—which means Simon doesn’t ha
ve to be in the same room with the Tare to speak for her. Abel takes one step toward her, but the Tare points and stomps her intact foot.

  “No! Simon says stay!”

  Finally Abel remembers the game human children play, which for some unaccountable reason is attached to this name in particular. No doubt to a child called Simon, this game was even more appealing. “I’m staying. See? Am I speaking to Simon right now?”

  “May-be,” singsongs the Oboe, who continues shuffling closer. Bloody wire hangs from some of the gashes in her leg.

  From below Noemi calls, “Abel? What are you doing?” He doesn’t dare follow; at this point in the “game,” he shouldn’t be moving.

  Simon is only a confused child, trapped in a mind he doesn’t understand. Abel may be the only individual who can ever help him make sense of it, the one native speaker of a language Simon must immediately learn.

  The Tare and Oboe stand on either side of Abel, effectively pinning him with his back to the enormous crevasse. They’re not operating independently; they’re being controlled by Simon with a level of coordination that goes beyond any standard protocols. Queens and Charlies perform military procedures programmed into their circuits, or they can respond to combat cues independently. They can’t do both. Tares and Oboes lack any strategic functionality—one practices medicine, while the other provides entertainment, usually in the form of music. For them to behave as they are now, they have to be operating as though they are parts of Simon’s own body.

  “How are you doing this?” Abel looks through the blank golden space of the Tare’s missing eye, hoping Simon is looking back at him. “How do you control the others?”

  “Well,” the Tare says, in the suddenly serious way of small children, “it’s like there’s a machine part of me and a me part of me. I have to forget all about the me part of me and just be a machine. That part’s way more fun.”

  Abel frowns. Virginia said something like this to him not long ago, that he should embrace his mechanical side more often. He’s always tried so hard to reach for his humanity. He’s not sure how to reverse that.