A skittering sound, then a thud tells him Noemi has successfully reached the lower level from which she might escape. Although he wishes she’d leave the Osiris without him, he understands she never would.
The Tare wobbles forward and puts one hand on Abel’s chest. “You’re like me, aren’t you?”
“In many ways.” Abel smiles in a way he hopes will read as reassuring. “We both synthesize the human and the machine.”
Frowning, the Tare steps back again. Abel curses his own precision; synthesize is too formal a word for a small boy. “You don’t look like me. You look right. I don’t look right. I look all messed up.”
“That can be fixed. Everything that’s wrong can be fixed. You just need to—”
To what? Abel realizes he doesn’t have an answer. The most logical outcome would be for Simon to return to Gillian, who understands both the body and the soul involved far better than anyone else. But Gillian is cut off from her usual resources; if she weren’t, Simon wouldn’t have been re-created so hastily and poorly. Abel would like to take Simon on as a project, to offer him guidance and friendship, and to figure out his inner workings over time, with the help of the excellent scientific equipment available there. But cooperation with Gillian is impossible. Taking charge of Simon would in effect mean kidnapping a little boy, promising to make him better without being certain that was even possible.
“Abel?” Noemi whispers. His sharp ears catch the sound, but responding is still inadvisable.
Through the Tare, Simon smiles. “You’re like me and you’re not like me. We’re alike and we’re different.” The Tare model’s hand fists in the folds of Abel’s shirt. “I want to see how you’re different.”
“I’m not sure that you—”
“I know! I’ll take you apart. Then I can see.”
Abel blocks the Tare’s forearm, breaking her grip on his clothing. He draws upon the few child-psychology texts in his databases and says, simply and firmly, “No.”
Both the Oboe and the Tare seize him, and the Oboe yells, “Simon says!”
With one shove, Abel pushes them both back—but not far. They’re mechs, even if not for combat, and they’re stronger than any human opponent. When they both rush at him, he jumps upward as high as he can, which is just high enough to grab the ridge above them. As he dangles there, the Tare and Oboe leap upward, too. The Oboe doesn’t make it—her broken leg keeps her off balance, and she clatters onto the floor and rolls off into the crevasse. A series of distant crashes makes it clear she’s being dashed to pieces.
One down, he thinks—the Tare is coming nearer, her blank golden light of an eye boring into him.
“Abel!” Noemi cries. “Will you get your metal butt down here?”
My butt is made of flesh and is designed to be pleasant both to see and to touch, he’d like to say, but this information can perhaps wait.
He lets himself drop, falling past the Tare to Noemi’s side, where he catches himself on the floor of her level. Noemi makes a half-strangled sound of fear before he pulls himself up, but the instant he’s next to her, she knows to start running.
They dash across the jagged edge of this broken ship, snow blowing through their hair, the deep fatal drop less than a meter to their left. Abel’s sharp vision and quick analysis allows him to identify the areas they’re running through—a broken-up Turkish bath, devastated living quarters, an upside-down pool—the other half of each mirrored on the opposite side of the ravine. When they run past a transparent wall separating two rooms, a Tare on the other side throws herself against it with such speed and force a human would be knocked unconscious. Noemi has the fortitude to keep going without even glancing sideways.
Abel does not. The Tare claws at the transparent material; there’s no way she could break it, but a Tare model isn’t programmed with that information, and Simon neither knows nor cares.
And it is Simon doing this. He cannot deny that.
“Come back!” the Tare shrieks, her voice saying Simon’s words. “Come back!”
The plea wrenches Abel to the core, but he can’t take the risk. He has to keep running.
They reach the framework he’d seen before, the one that provides a way for them to crawl to the top of the ship. Noemi pauses, panting and clutching at her arm. She must still be feeling intense pain from those cuts, but she says only, “Can we climb it before they get to us?”
“Possibly.” Abel readies himself. “But I can climb one-handed and shoot at the same time.”
“Bet I can shoot and climb, too, if it comes to it.” However, her focus remains above. She turns up her face to the moonlight and starts to climb. Abel follows her, dividing his attention between Noemi’s progress (will her injured arm continue to support her?) and the area below them (in case more of Simon’s “toys” pursue).
Their ascent doesn’t move as quickly as Abel would like. Noemi is undoubtedly wise to pace herself, conserving her lesser human strength, but he can’t forget that Simon or his mechs could reappear at any minute, wanting to play a very deadly game.
Perhaps I can still communicate effectively with him, Abel thinks. Once controlling the other mechs has lost its novelty, Simon will wish for other forms of amusement. I could structure the learning he needs as a series of puzzles he might find enjoyable. He doesn’t intend to give up on the boy yet.
But how is Simon controlling the other mechs?
A far-off glint of light at the edges of Abel’s peripheral vision draws his attention just in time for him to refocus and see the blaster in a broken Charlie’s hand, pointed straight at them.
“Noemi!” he shouts. She responds intelligently by hugging the metal framework, hard.
Charlies have intelligence, too. The blaster bolt is aimed not at them, but at the very top of the framework they’re climbing, and he hits his target. Abel feels the metal shudder, then tilt backward.
“Abel—” Noemi clutches the frame tighter. “We’re falling!”
He can do no more than watch as the framework gives way, toppling into the crevasse in the ship’s wreckage, taking him and Noemi down with it.
25
THEY FALL BACKWARD, GAINING SPEED. NOEMI CAN ONLY clutch the metal that’s clearly not doing a damn thing to keep her from tumbling down into the open maw of the crashed ship. She winces, preparing herself for the worst—
—and the framework stops hard. The reverberation through the metal carries into her bones, and the jolt of it nearly makes her lose her grip, but she manages to hang on. Her blaster tumbles down, a brief flash of moonlight on metal before it vanishes.
What just happened? She looks around as best she can and realizes the metal framework is still connected to the ship by various cables and one twisted but unbroken beam. It sways precariously, suggesting that connection won’t hold much longer. The framework’s fallen from being parallel to the sides of the ship to perpendicular—stretched across the deep gash, but not nearly long enough to reach to the other side.
“Noemi!” Abel calls. He must be moving closer to her, because the entire framework trembles; she hugs it tighter and tries to ignore her aching muscles. “Are you all right?”
“I didn’t fall, if that’s what you mean. But this is not all right. Not even close!”
Don’t look down, she tells herself. Just go hand over hand back to that side of the ship. Like the monkey bars!
She’s always hated monkey bars.
Abel reaches her side, which would be reassuring if it weren’t for the buck and sway of the metal frame with every move either of them makes. One extra-violent dip makes Noemi break her own rule and look down; immediately she wishes she hadn’t. The bottom of this gash in the ship lies too far below; the crevasse in the wreckage looks like a deep canyon through stone, except more ragged, uglier, deadlier. She stares into the jumble of sharp wreckage and snow beneath her, knowing at any second she might become part of it. And if they fall, she wants to be holding on to Abel. Maybe then she could bear the f
eeling of air rushing around them. Maybe she could endure the cold, and the terror. It will just be hanging on to Abel until the obliterating end.
“I doubt Simon’s mechs will pursue us here,” Abel says. “His control lacks the finesse necessary for bringing any of them across.”
“You’re wrong.” At any other time, she’d be proud of finally getting one step ahead of Abel. Now she just wants to throw up. “He won’t send any of the big mechs, but the—the severed things, the hands and arms—he could send those.”
It would only take one mechanized fist slamming down on her knuckles to send her falling to her death.
“True.”
“You could fire on them, though. Give us cover. You’re strong enough to hold on with one hand, aren’t you? So you could still fire your blaster.”
“Of course I’m strong enough to hold on with one hand.” He sounds almost offended. “However, my blaster, like yours, was shaken loose during the fall.”
“Just great.”
Abel finally reaches her side and slings one arm beneath her, helping to hold up her weight. Trying to be encouraging, he adds, “The mechs may simply wait to see if we make it back to that side of the ship, to capture or kill us then.”
“Fabulous.” Noemi’s breathing hard with the effort required to hang on, even with Abel’s help. “I don’t think this framework’s going to hold very long. Especially not if we keep moving.”
“Agreed.”
For a second they hang there in silence. Noemi turns her face from the crevasse below to the luminous moons overhead in Haven’s sky. This might be her final experience of beauty, of wonder. Cold wind whips around them, and ice crystals sprinkle her cheeks and eyelashes. Despite the chill, terror has made her hands start to sweat. Oh, great, this is exactly when I want to be slippery.
Abel says, “Attempting to return along the framework may be unduly dangerous, if not impossible.”
“Yeah, but what else are we supposed to do?”
“I might be able to jump to the other side of the ship. You could hold on to my back.”
Noemi cranes her neck to look at the cavernous gap around them. She can’t tell exactly how far away the other side is, but—it’s far. “Not even you can make that jump with me weighing you down… can you?”
Abel remains silent for a second, then says, “We’ll find out.”
“Not reassuring.”
“Unfortunately, that which is reassuring is not always true.”
She swallows hard. “You’d just be swinging over, using your arms. Not jumping.”
“The verb is imprecise, but I felt it would sound more encouraging.”
“It did until you explained it!”
Apologetically, Abel says, “You did ask.”
“Okay.” A stronger gust of wind sends shudders throughout the framework. It won’t hold their weight much longer. She takes a deep breath and pulls herself together the best she can, turning her head to face Abel. They’re so close together their noses nearly touch. “All right. I know we have to do this. I just don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it much either,” Abel admits, “but in this situation, the best solution isn’t necessarily a good solution.”
“You are the absolute worst at comforting people ever.”
One corner of his mouth lifts, half a smile, but his mech focus remains absolute. “Our first difficulty will be adjusting your weight onto my back.” The air currents whirl around them, dusting them with ice, as Noemi’s brain tries desperately to think of a better way out of this, any other way out of this, or maybe how she could’ve avoided being out here to begin with.
“Hold still,” she commands, and he braces himself, becoming even more unyielding than the metal they hang from. Noemi calls on her memories of basic training. They had to climb plastic webbing, nets made of thick rope, even trees. She always scored at the top of her squadron. If she did it then, she can do it now.
Swing your arm over OH GOD OH GOD okay you’ve got it GOD HELP ME grab on to him HARD—
“Okay!” she yelps as she clutches Abel around the neck with her arms, and around his waist with her legs. She dangles from his back like a sloth from a tree branch. “Okay, okay. Got it.”
His voice is slightly strangled as he says, “You’re lucky I don’t have the same respiratory needs as humans.”
“I know you could probably hang here all day, which is great for you and everything, but could you please jump already?”
“I need to brace myself.” With startling speed, he swings around the edge of the framework so that he’s crouching atop it instead of hanging beneath. Having him between her and the deep crevasse below feels irrationally reassuring—until the metal framework groans ominously, and a shudder sends vibrations through both their bodies. They don’t have long. Abel senses it, too. “Are you ready?”
Noemi grips Abel even more tightly. “Go.”
He jumps with such force that it knocks the breath out of her. For one terrifying, surreal instant it seems as though they’re flying—the other side impossibly far away until it’s rushing toward them, into them. Noemi goes dizzy when they hit one of the floors, pure metal, and hit it hard.
Abel manages to grab the edge of the floor, delaying their fall. She hangs there for a terrible moment, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, until he hurls her over him.
He lets go of her—a terrifying sensation—but Noemi rolls onto the other side of the ship, onto a jagged, raw structure.
She lands rough, tastes blood, but instantly scrambles to the edge to help him. He’s not pulling himself up for some reason. Then she realizes one of his wrists is badly bent. It must have been damaged in the jump; he broke it to save her, and now he can’t save himself.
Noemi leans forward to grab his undamaged arm. “Come on,” she whispers. “I can get you inside.”
Abel shakes his head. “I’m too heavy for you.”
“I’m strong. Look, I can brace my feet.”
“My left ankle is broken.” He must have hit that wall even harder than she thought. “I can’t push myself up. You’d have to take my whole weight. It’s too dangerous.”
“So, what, you’re just going to fall to your death?”
“…I believe you can escape and contact Virginia on your own.” Still, he’s only worried about her, not about himself.
“Listen to me.” Noemi grabs his arm with all her strength and leans so close that he has no choice but to meet her eyes. “You’d better try to help me. Otherwise, you’re going to fall and drag me down with you. Because I won’t let go of you, Abel. I will never let go.”
Abel hesitates, but only for an instant. “On three.”
They count together, silently, nodding on each number—and then Noemi pulls back as hard as she can, towing Abel with her. He gets his broken forearm onto the edge of the wall, which must be agonizing, but it takes enough of his weight to pull him over the edge. Then they flop down side by side, wounded and stranded—but alive.
Distantly she hears the metal framework give way, clattering against the sides of the gash in the ship until it smashes into the wreckage. Another ninety seconds, she thinks, and we’d have been smashed with it.
Once they can breathe again, she and Abel take stock. “Wait, what is this?” she pants. They’re surrounded by solid metal, with no doors to speak of. “Some kind of storage tank?”
“Possibly.” He remains on his back a few moments longer than her. “As there is no direct means of leaving this spot, we’ll need to devise an escape once—once we’re capable of it.”
Right now, they aren’t. Noemi scraped the side of her face badly in their rough landing, and one jagged bit of metal sliced a small cut at her temple. The self-inflicted wound in her arm is bleeding more now than it was before, too, but she’s less worried about herself than she is about Abel. He manages to use a bit of torn upholstery to bind up his bent ankle with his good hand, but he winces every time he tries to move the other wri
st.
“That joint has been compromised more seriously than my ankle,” he reports so calmly he might as well be talking about someone else. “Self-repair would be easier if I hadn’t extracted the auxiliary power module in order to speak to Mansfield. Just because I hadn’t called on it in thirty years, I thought I never would. I believe this is close to what humans call ‘hubris.’”
Noemi doesn’t have any tools that would allow her to repair him, even if she knew how. “This is bad.”
“The damaged components are organic. Even without the power module, I can repair myself within a few hours if I go into a regenerative state.”
She nods. “By then it’s going to be very late at night, but still dark, right? We can get out of here without anybody seeing us.”
“We’ll make a plan once we can assess our situation more fully,” Abel says. He’s talking to himself as much as to her, she suspects. “For now, we should rest.”
“Is a regenerative state like sleep?” Noemi doesn’t much like the idea of spending hours in this icy tank without anybody to talk to, but if that’s what Abel needs, she’ll deal. Maybe she can fall asleep, too. Dozing off somewhere so cold and uncomfortable would be impossible, normally, but at the moment she’s so exhausted it seems possible.
“It will be. But the transition takes several minutes.”
Abel tries to get comfortable, though there have to be few places in the galaxy less comfortable than a debris-filled, ice-cold metal tank. Noemi lets him choose a spot where he can lie on his side, then spoons behind his back, wrapping one arm around him while the other serves as her pillow. When she touches him, he goes very still.
“You need to stay warm,” she says. “If it weren’t for this parka, I’d have frozen down here already.”
“Even with the parka, you would die of exposure within forty hours. I would go into a dormant state not long thereafter and would require a full reboot to awaken.”
“Well, we’re not going to be down here that long.”
Either they’ll be out of trouble by then, or they’ll be dead.