Defy the Worlds Read online

  Abel ducks into one of the cloudy side passages that lead to bathrooms and food-preparation areas, finds a bathroom that’s empty, and locks the door behind him. Then he kneels down and punches through the transparent floor.

  The sound and spray of the waves roar into the room as he rips out a segment approximately forty by forty centimeters and jumps into the ocean.

  Water closes around him, shockingly cold. He strokes and kicks through blue-black seaweed and tiny silvery eels, fighting the current, grateful for his unerring sense of direction and the ability to hold his breath longer than any human could.

  They will find the damage to the floor in no less than three minutes, no more than ten. If Gillian fully recognized me, she will already have sent a signal to the security mechs on land. If she only suspects my identity or is unsure due to inferior human memory, she won’t send the signal until the damage is discovered. In the latter case, he has a chance to make it to the Persephone’s hangar. If the former—

  He resolves to handle this negative outcome only upon its occurrence.

  As soon as Abel’s foot makes first contact with the shifting sand near the coast, he digs in, stops swimming, and starts running. Dashing straight out of the waves, he sees guests at a nighttime beach party skittering backward, laughing as a wild man bursts out of the waves to run past them. Sand sticks to his shoes and sopping-wet clothes, but it doesn’t slow him down.

  No point in restricting himself to human speed once he’s off the beach. He accelerates past that within 1.3 seconds and aims directly for the hangar. With one hand he taps the dataread as he runs. “Harriet, Zayan, do you read me?”

  “Abel!” Zayan’s voice comes through instantly. “Another couple minutes and we’d have been worried.”

  “Worry now,” Abel says. “Also start the engines now. Get ready for takeoff as fast as you can.”

  Harriet yells, “We told you not to—”

  “Scold me after preparing the ship to fly.” He makes a quick time estimate of his possible capture as he runs beneath an elevated rail into a small, scrubby park. Every moment the sky grows darker as night becomes real. “If I’m not on the ship in ten minutes, leave without me, and the Persephone is yours.”

  “Oh, God, Abel, what did you do?” She’s become more terrified than angry.

  “Nothing, actually, but the authorities won’t believe that. Go.”

  By the time he reaches the hangar 6.1 minutes later, his hair and clothes are almost dry from the sheer speed of his run. Abel doesn’t slow down as he heads toward the doorway to their docking bay, except for once when he sees a crowbar lying unattended near an old Vagabond junker. Stooping to grab it only costs him 1.3 seconds, and besides, if he’s going to run into resistance—

  Approaching the door, Abel grabs the jamb and swings around the entrance, slamming the crowbar straight into the head of the waiting Queen, who was of course concealed in the spot on the other side of the wall her programming would’ve targeted as most strategically likely. She falls like the inert machinery she has become, and Abel tosses the crowbar back before covering the final distance to the Persephone. Its silver teardrop shape seems to shine in the dark bay. When the door spirals open for him, he’s finally back home.

  “Immediate departure is advisable,” he calls, trusting the comm system to be on. Sure enough, the mag engines instantly fire and his ship takes flight. Whatever signal Gillian sent didn’t trigger a planet-wide alarm, or at least she didn’t know to target the Persephone specifically, because he feels the ship escape planetary gravity without resistance.

  When he walks onto the bridge, Harriet calls over her shoulder, “Have you gone completely mad?”

  “I’m no more mad than I ever was,” Abel replies.

  This wins him a scowl from Harriet. “That’s not as encouraging as you think it is.”

  Noemi’s voice echoes in Abel’s mind. You’re really bad at comforting people—

  “Doesn’t look like we’ve got company coming,” Zayan announces. “Our path to the Earth Gate to Stronghold checks out as clear.” Gillian must not have fully recognized Abel after all—only saw him as an intruder, someone to check out at the nearest spaceport, not someone to chase down and entrap no matter what.

  But she easily could have. In another fraction of a second, she would have. Abel had let his curiosity override his good judgment; in so doing, he endangered not only himself but also his crew. This is unacceptable. He must be more cautious in the future.

  “What, are you wet? Did someone try to drown you?” Harriet demands.

  “I’m much too good a swimmer to drown.” Abel doesn’t expect this correction to improve her mood; sure enough, her scowl only deepens. “I’m back, Harriet. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Of course it is.” She glances back at him, her long braids falling past her shoulder as she does so. Both she and Zayan wear traditional Vagabond garb, loose flowing shirts and pants in vibrant patchwork colors. On the stark black-and-silver bridge of the Persephone, the young couple seem as brilliant as butterflies. “We worry. That’s all.”

  Zayan laughs. “Yeah, we’d never find another boss who pays as well as you do.”

  A possibility occurs to Abel that had not presented itself before—an inexplicable flaw in his logic. “You could’ve taken off without me. The audio record of my last transmission would’ve allowed you to make a legal claim to the Persephone.”

  “We’d never do that to you,” Zayan protests. “C’mon, Abel. Don’t you know that?”

  Harriet looks at him again, but this time her eyes are less angry, more troubled. “Have you really never had a friend before, that you could think something like that? Besides Noemi, I mean.”

  “No. I haven’t.” Abel isn’t sure he wants this conversation to continue. “I should change my clothes.”

  Although he’s aware of his crew members staring at him while he heads off the bridge, neither tries to stop him.

  Neither Harriet nor Zayan knows why their captain doesn’t fear drowning. Why he uses a constant series of fake IDs and stays out of range of security mechs as much as possible. They’re loyal enough not to ask. They are, as Harriet just said, not merely employees but friends.

  Would they do things differently if they realized Abel wasn’t human? That he was not only a mech but the special project of the revered Burton Mansfield himself?

  If they knew that Mansfield wanted Abel back because Abel’s cybernetic body is the only one designed to contain a human mind—Mansfield’s mind, which can save the old man from his impending death—would they trade Abel’s life for Mansfield’s?

  Those questions disturb Abel sometimes, but he prefers never to know the answers.

  As far as he knows, only one human has ever valued a mech’s life as equal to that of any other person. She’s on the other side of the Genesis Gate—far away from him, forever.

  What would Noemi Vidal say about the organic mechs? Abel feels certain her fascination would match his own.

  His mood darkens as he imagines the future of this technology: mechs becoming more and more humanlike. Someday, surely, a soul will awaken within one of them—but Mansfield learns from his mistakes. The next mech with a soul will be bound by programming so strong it will make Directive One seem like a mere suggestion.

  We will no longer be individuals, Abel thinks, counting himself among these unmade brothers and sisters already. We will no longer be free.

  We will be slaves.

  3

  WHEN NOEMI RETURNED TO GENESIS WITH LITTLE evidence to support her story about traveling through the galaxy, she could’ve wound up in the brig, if not cashiered out of the service. Every young person on the planet capable of serving in the military does so; her status as a dishonored former soldier would’ve made her an outcast—even more than she already was. One person alone saved her from this fate: Darius Akide, Elder of the Council, and once the prized student of Burton Mansfield himself.

  Now they meet ever
y few weeks. She’s conspicuous climbing the stairs of the Hall of Elders, a teenage girl in her emerald-green uniform among gray-haired, august people wearing serene white robes. That’s by Akide’s design, since he knows how alone she is otherwise. By summoning her here, he sends a public signal of the Council’s trust in her version of events. He is her primary defender. Noemi’s grateful, or knows she should be.

  But knowing a member of the Elder Council has only made her more sharply aware of the Council’s flaws—and how those flaws endanger Genesis itself.

  “I suppose it’s not surprising that you’ve never seen any technology like those mysterious star probes.” He sits at his hewn-stone desk, salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a knot. Like most rooms in the great hall, it is illuminated during daytime only by the sunlight flooding through the oval windows carved into the wall. “But can you remember anything from news sources, or perhaps picked up in conversation? We’ve still no idea what the stars were intended to do. Any hint could help our investigation.”

  “I wish I could help.” Noemi keeps her tone even. Akide is the closest thing she has to a friend these days, but sometimes she thinks he expects her to have learned everything about the other worlds of the Loop during her whirlwind journey. “But I don’t remember anything like that at all.”

  Akide sighs. His next words seem to be spoken as much to himself as to her. “Were they probes? Weapons that malfunctioned? Meant only to scare us? As if we don’t know the threat Earth presents. As if we don’t know how little chance we have.”

  “Don’t talk like that.” It hits Noemi that she just said that to an Elder, and her cheeks flush red. “Excuse me. I meant—we have reasons to hope. Potential allies out there on the Loop, for one.”

  He pats her arm, a touch meant to be fatherly, but to Noemi it feels patronizing. Maybe she’d respond to it better if she could remember more about her late father, but he’s just a dim memory of smiles and hugs, an even fainter idea of what it felt like to be cherished, valued, seen.

  “Lieutenant Vidal,” Akide says. “You’ve grown up on a planet at war. You’ve known from an early age that victory was unlikely, and that your life would very likely be forfeit to the fight. You’ve never shied away from your duty, even from the ultimate sacrifice, but I don’t think you’ve ever come to terms with defeat as the most probable outcome of the Liberty War. I know it’s hard to come to peace with that—but for your own sake, you must try. Otherwise the pain…” He bows his head. “It would be too much to bear.”

  Always sacrifice. Always duty. Always resignation. For a planet at war, Noemi sometimes thinks, Genesis seems to have forgotten how to fight.

  That evening, she decides to visit the Temple of All Faiths. It’s one of the largest buildings on Genesis, certainly the most revered—a great dome of gray granite mottled with blue, held aloft by enormous columns as thick around as century-old trees. Smaller chambers set off from the central dome are reserved for different services of different religions, whether those involve chanting, dancing, prayer, or the handling of snakes. But Noemi is here for the one practice most faiths of Genesis share: meditation.

  She settles herself on one of the large cushions. It’s old, patched here and there, the cloth soft with age. The light filtering through the high arched windows casts beams through the vast space of the temple. Breathing in deeply, Noemi smells incense.

  In this place, even her noisy mind might quiet down.

  Closing her eyes, Noemi calls to mind Captain Baz’s two questions:

  What are you fighting, Noemi Vidal? And what are you fighting for?

  She doesn’t expect to get much out of that, really. It’s a starting place, no more. Because of course she knows the answers. She’s fighting Earth, fighting its mechs. And she’s fighting for Genesis.

  But suddenly she realizes that’s not the answer—or at least, not the complete answer. She’s also fighting her fellow soldiers, because they don’t trust her any longer. She’s fighting for Akide to listen to her, to see her planet taking more aggressive action to defend itself.

  And I’m fighting to carry on without Esther. Without Abel.

  I’m fighting to continue on alone.

  She’s always known most other people don’t like her much, and she’s never expected them to. Her one real friendship was with Esther Gatson, the foster sister who had no choice about whether or not to let Noemi into her home and her heart—and Esther’s death has become one of the crimes the others blame her for.

  Before, at least, Noemi had hoped her solitude might be temporary. That someday, somehow, she’d figure out how to get closer to people, or stop scaring them off—that she’d figure out just what her problem was so that she could solve it. And when she was out in the galaxy, meeting Harriet and Zayan on Kismet, Virginia on Cray, or Ephraim on Stronghold, she seemed to have figured it out. Making friends was easier when she could make a fresh start.

  No fresh starts here. Whatever lessons in friendship she learned out there don’t seem to apply here. Her isolation has become even more complete, and she’s trying to accept that it’s probably permanent.

  Relax, Esther used to say. Let people get to know you! Don’t be so nervous and defensive all the time. If you’re not afraid of being rejected, then people are less likely to reject you.

  Esther was telling the truth. Noemi knows how people avoid the loneliest among them. But if the trick to making friends is to stop being lonely, the paradox is inescapable. Bitterly she thinks it’s like telling someone starving to death that they can have all the food they want if they’ll just stop being hungry.

  Only a few times in her life has she felt that maybe the famine might be over. Really, though, there was only one time she wasn’t utterly alone—one time a person understood her and cared for her—loved her, he said—

  Noemi pulls herself out of the memory. Thinking of Abel hurts, for a thousand reasons but mostly because she knows she’ll never see him again.

  Sparing Abel’s life was the one moment of religious grace Noemi has ever been granted, the one time faith became a living force inside her. She’d thought that if she ever had such an instant of profound connection, her questions about God would be answered. Everything was supposed to come clear. But it turns out not to work that way. She is still small in a vast cosmos, unsure what is right and good.

  Try again, she tells herself, closing her eyes. Use the mantra Baz gave you.

  It doesn’t help. Meditation brings her no peace, only reminds her how alone she is—and how afraid she is that the loneliness will endure forever.

  “Will you want toast this morning?” Mrs. Gatson says it the way a server in a restaurant might speak to a customer. A new customer, not one of the regulars. Noemi has lived in the Gatsons’ home for nine years.

  After Esther’s death, the Gatsons commissioned a portrait of her from an artistic neighbor. The drawing hangs on one of the walls, a soft sketch in pastels that captures her golden hair and blue eyes. But the silence she’s left behind expands to fill the house every morning, until it feels as though Noemi doesn’t have room to draw a single breath. This place will never completely feel like home.

  Their house is a typical one on Genesis—bedrooms underground, general living space above, with large “windows” of translucent solar panels. Vegetables sprout from window boxes that line the perimeter of the one large common room, and herbs grow in long, skinny beams that stretch from floor to ceiling and divide the space into areas for cooking and eating, for socializing, and for work. Entertainment is found outside the home, unless a family is fond of music: Vids, books, and the like are kept in libraries, and pools and fitness equipment are at public gymnasiums. Noemi thought nothing of this until she went on her journey through the galaxy, along the worlds of the Loop, where she saw Virginia Redbird’s lab/hideout/opium den on Cray, Kismet’s luxurious resorts with their lavender seas and lilac skies, and the overwhelming, vibrant blizzard of activities and entertainment that dying Earth revel
s in to distract itself from its approaching end.

  Once, hiding on an asteroid in the middle of a nebula’s rainbow cloud, she and Abel watched an old twentieth-century “movie” together, one with former lovers reunited unexpectedly in Casablanca.

  If only I could see Abel one more time, she thinks. Without the weight of two worlds pressing down on us. When we could just… be.

  “Noemi?” Mrs. Gatson’s smile is stiff at the corners, like a napkin starched into precise folds. Dark circles under her eyes hint at a sleepless night, and her voice is hoarse. Is she getting sick? Maybe she was crying for Esther; for the Gatsons, grief is private. They don’t share theirs with Noemi, and have shown no interest in helping with hers. “Do you want toast?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I’m distracted this morning.”

  Mrs. Gatson’s more at ease once she has something to do and no longer has to look at Noemi directly. “No problems on base, I hope?”

  Her foster parents know perfectly well that Noemi’s dealt with nothing but problems since her return. This is not a nice subject to discuss. The Gatsons only like to talk about nice things. When Esther was alive—so naturally, easily, genuinely good inside and out—conversations centered on her, and the sense of strain was less. Now every single chat feels like a test Noemi has to pass.

  “Everything’s fine,” Noemi says.

  Mr. Gatson walks in, and she startles. He looks terrible. He’s pale, visibly sweaty, and shambling along, his legs shaking. “Mary, I’m not—not shaking off that cold.”

  Mrs. Gatson doesn’t go to him, but instead gestures to a chair. “I’ll get you some juice,” she replies, voice wavering.

  “No, no, let me get it.” Noemi quickly pours a couple of glasses while Mrs. Gatson settles herself beside her husband. “You’re both coming down with something, looks like.”

  “You might be next,” Mr. Gatson warns her. “Keep your distance and wash your hands, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.” Noemi gives him the glass and a smile. They do care for her, in their own remote way. They’d never want to see her come to harm.