“Wait.” Noemi halts mid-step. “What did you say?”
“Sleep is more—”
“Did you say you could dream?” Her voice slides up a pitch, but she doesn’t care if she sounds hysterical. Her heart beats faster, and she stares at Abel as if she’d just discovered him for the first time. When he nods, she says, “Do all mechs dream?”
“No. I think I’m the only one. Even I couldn’t dream for the first decade of my existence. During my time in the equipment pod bay, however, some of my neural connections formed new pathways and became more complex.”
“What do you dream about?” Please, let it be equations. Numbers. Plain facts. Something that could be explained as mere mathematical data bubbling up within the machine. “Tell me your last dream.”
By now Abel looks bewildered, but he obligingly says, “We were on Wayland Station at the time. In the dream, I was back aboard the Daedalus, and Mansfield was with me, but so were Harriet and Zayan. In the dream, they all seemed to know one another. We wanted to visit Kismet—to go surfing, I think—but the viewscreen kept warning us about sea monsters. The image I saw was drawn from an old twentieth-century movie called Creature from the Black Lagoon, which as filmed is obviously an actor wearing a rubber suit, but in the dream it seemed very real. Mansfield told me not to go to the ocean, but surfing seemed curiously important—”
“Stop.” Noemi takes a step back from him. “Just stop.”
“Have I done something wrong?”
He has hopes and fears. Likes and dislikes. People he cares about. A sense of humor. He dreams.
Abel has a soul.
24
ABEL STARES AT NOEMI, UNABLE TO INTERPRET HER reactions. She’s pale, breathing fast, and so shaken that his first instinct is to ask whether she is in pain.
No, that’s not it. By telling her about the dream, he’s behaved in a way she did not anticipate. Normally she recovers from such surprises quickly, especially for a human. But it’s different now.
Maybe she is both surprised and taking ill. Abel finally ventures, “Noemi, are you feeling well?”
“No.”
“Should we go to the medical bay?”
“That’s not it.” She pushes her black hair back from her face. Her stare freezes over until even he can feel the chill. “I’ve—I’ve come to realize you’re something besides a, a—device, or a machine.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Do you?” Noemi takes another step away. Her hands ball into fists at her side. She’s not merely surprised; she’s angry. Furious. “Do you understand? No, of course you don’t.”
Abel doesn’t allow his consternation to show. It is an inexplicable reaction on his part, given that her anger should be irrelevant to him. The misapplication of devotion leads to conflicting impulses. He must try harder to work out the error. “Please explain.”
“When I first came aboard this ship, you tried to kill me. You looked me straight in the eyes, you knew I was alone and afraid and trying to save someone else’s life, and you still tried to kill me.”
He tries, “Noemi, my programming—”
“Your programming doesn’t completely control you! I know that now. So you must have decided to look for Mansfield out of pride. Just your stupid arrogance and pride, because he made you feel special.”
Abel wants to protest—he didn’t know he could disobey his programming until he did—but he suspects it would only stoke her anger. And deep inside, he understands that at least some of what he feels for Mansfield—not all, not even most, but some—has to do with the pride of being Mansfield’s best, most cherished creation. Noemi’s not entirely wrong.
But his silence infuriates her equally as much as his response would have. “Tell me this, then. That first day, when you were shooting at me—when you saw me cowering on the floor, at your mercy, convinced I was about to be murdered—were you proud of yourself? Of what you really are?”
Abel considers this before giving her the simple truth. “Yes.”
Noemi shakes her head, mouth parted, dark eyes welling with tears. She turns from him then, as if she can’t bear to look at Abel’s face one second longer. When she stalks away, he knows better than to follow. Instead he remains where he is, awkwardly clutching the same tool in his hand, mulling over the ramifications of her statement.
Could he have defied his directives to defend Mansfield by defending the ship? No. Yet telling her this would mean declaring that he is, after all, just a thing.
Better to be hated by Noemi than to be irrelevant to her.
That reaction seems irrational—emotional—and yet Abel knows it to be true. Or maybe he’s malfunctioning more badly than he realized.
Abel decides to run a ship-wide diagnostic, as long as he’s still working. The engine room feels too quiet, the silence almost overpowering.
His reaction is illogical. For three decades, Abel heard not a single sound he didn’t make himself. Is he so accustomed to human presence already that he can’t do without it for even a day?
But Noemi’s not simply out of the room. She’s shunning him. Rejecting him absolutely. He doesn’t understand why that should hurt so badly, especially given that she will soon be his destroyer.
Abel’s resentment about his impending destruction seems to have vanished. He still wants to live, wants it desperately, but he’s come to terms with Noemi’s plan. He’s learned to understand and respect the girl herself. In the beginning, he thought she was reckless and naïve at best. Now Abel knows how courageous she is. How resourceful. Time and again, she’s made an intuitive leap that allowed them to escape, to survive.
He has to admire that, even if her world’s survival means his death.
That, however, is what most confuses him. He admires Noemi so much… but he shouldn’t be able to. His programming calls for him to prioritize Burton Mansfield’s health and happiness, to need Mansfield’s approval, and to value him over all others.
Instead Abel is now focusing on Noemi Vidal. Important circuits within him must have degenerated after so long without maintenance; he can’t think of any other explanation for why he’s becoming devoted to the wrong person.
Surely Noemi deserves admiration in a completely objective sense. Her determination to save Genesis, to keep going after her friend’s death, is constant. Her decision to throw herself into an unfamiliar, hostile cosmos on an unknown ship with only a mech at her side—that shows daring. And her willingness to die in the effort is selfless in the extreme.
Burton Mansfield also possesses many fine qualities, but Abel knows his creator would never make so selfless a choice.
When did he develop the capacity to criticize Mansfield?
A warning sensor comes on, blinking yellow—a proximity alert. Immediately it turns red, and Abel realizes something’s coming in fast. He turns the visual to the outside cameras in time to see a meteoroid falling toward them at an angle the outcropping won’t block. They’re going to take a direct hit.
He hits the control for the intra-ship comms. “Brace yourself!” he shouts, following his own advice. If the meteoroid is too large, however, nothing he’s done will make any difference; it will punch through the hull, depressurizing the ship so fast that, within seconds, Abel will go inactive and Noemi… Noemi will die.
The impact shakes the entire Daedalus so violently Abel can barely remain standing. His tools clatter from their places, rolling and bouncing on the floor. Red lights again shine from the control panels, but none are reporting depressurization—
—yet. But the topmost cone, the tip of the teardrop, has taken damage. If he can’t brace it through the integrity field within nine minutes, they’ll lose structural integrity. The air will escape, and the heat, and he and Noemi will freeze within minutes of each other.
Correct repair protocols call for Abel to put on an evac suit and scale the hull from the outside. Internal repairs would take more time than they have left. But an external fix will hold the ship
for several days, during which a better, more permanent repair can be completed.
But when the crew of the Daedalus fled thirty years ago, they took most of the evac suits with them. The closest one that would fit Abel is near sick bay. Running up there, putting on the suit, exiting through one of the air locks, and reaching the repair site would take—approximately ten minutes at top speed.
Therefore, there is only one thing to do.
Abel scoops up the tools he needs and runs for the nearest air lock. As he belts his satchel around him, he swiftly does the math, calculating how long he can remain operational in the near-absolute zero of space if he doesn’t wear the evac suit. That temperature destroys anything organic exposed to it. Even things only partly organic, such as Abel himself.
But that destruction is not instant. The cold will not render him inoperable for …6.92 minutes.
For another two to three minutes after that, he will be alive, at least so far as Abel can be said to be alive. However, he will be unable to move or act in any way, including getting back inside the ship. After that period, his biological structures will be too damaged to regenerate, and his mechanical structures will soon follow. He will be as dead as any human, forever.
That means Noemi will not have her mech to save Genesis. For her sake, he’s sorry. But also for her sake, he must do this. Those 6.92 minutes will be sufficient for him to complete the repairs and save her. That has to be enough for them both.
He reaches the landing bay air lock and seals it behind him. Then he hits the panel that will begin cycling the air pressure to release him into the void of space. As the atmosphere hisses away, he reaches for magnetic vambraces that will keep him tethered to the Daedalus hull. This asteroid’s gravity is so slight that, without the vambraces around his forearms, Abel might simply float away into outer space, lost in infinity. Then he grabs a portable force field generator—not nearly strong enough to protect him from the cold for long, but it will keep his organic tissues from boiling upon exposure to space. It clips easily to his belt.
Over the speakers comes Noemi’s voice. “Abel! What are you doing?”
“The necessary repairs.” He pulls on padded work gloves. They might buy his hands another five to ten seconds of maneuverability.
“You’re going out there?” Her words become fainter as the atmosphere continues to cycle out of the room. There’s not much air left for sound to travel through. The last thing Abel hears from her is, “Don’t! You can’t! You’ll be killed!”
She does not hate him enough to want him dead. Abel takes comfort from that.
He is of course programmed to defend a human’s life at any costs, including his own existence. But he knows he’s not doing this only because of his programming. It seems only fitting that his last act should be his most human.
The air lock spirals open. The cold surrounds Abel, and he pushes himself into the void.
25
NO, NO, NO, PLEASE NO—
Noemi stands alone on the bridge, staring down at the controls that tell her Abel just opened the primary air lock—while he was inside it.
Horror-sick, she switches the main viewer to show her what’s going on. The image on the enormous domed screen changes from the nebula-bright asteroid field above them to the side of the ship itself, dully reflecting the rainbow colors of surrounding space. Noemi spots Abel immediately and zooms in to see him skittering up the side, arms and legs at almost unnatural angles, climbing like a spider or some other inhuman thing. Within moments he’s reached the damaged tip and set to work.
He’s not even wearing an evac suit.
He’ll freeze solid. He’ll die. He knows that, of course.
If Abel has soul enough to have wronged her, he also has enough to value his own existence. And yet he has laid it down.
Noemi goes into action. She doesn’t think she can accomplish much before Abel finishes the repair. Not that it would do either of them any good if she did, since then they’d both die shortly thereafter. Putting on her own evac suit isn’t an option either; that would take more time than Abel has. So how can she save him?
“This is a science vessel,” she mutters to herself, frantically searching the bridge controls. “Science vessels launch research satellites. If they launch research satellites, they have to be able to bring them back in again.”
There! Next to the equipment pod bay is an extendable manipulator capable of grabbing satellites, pods, or maybe even mechs. It’s only about nine meters long, though. Will that be enough to reach Abel?
Noemi sits at the console and holds her hand above its screen. Green beams of light shine upward, illuminating her to the elbow. As the viewscreen shifts to show the manipulator arm extending from the mirrored surface of the Daedalus, she can see Abel again. He’s still working hard, but his movements have become stiff and choppy. The cold is taking its toll.
She reaches forward with her hand; the computer, reading her movement, pushes the extendable manipulator forward, too. Slowly she curls her arm upward, and slightly to the side.
Abel has almost been immobilized. He can’t move his hand to push something in, so he leans forward, using the weight of his shoulder. The red lights around the bridge all simultaneously shift to yellow, and Noemi realizes she’s been holding her breath. But he’s done it. He fixed the breach. He saved her.
Time to return the favor.
By now Noemi’s trembling, but that doesn’t matter. The motion doesn’t disrupt the sensors on her hand, and the manipulator continues reaching for Abel. Gently, she thinks, as if he were a hurt animal she can only approach with the greatest tenderness. She curls her fingers inward, centimeter by centimeter, staring at the viewscreen without even blinking. Abel’s pale shape against the darkness seems to burn an outline into her retinas.
He’s too far gone to take hold of the extendable manipulator, maybe even incapable of noticing it. Noemi imagines that she can capture him in her warm palm as she keeps tightening her fingers, finally taking hold of him. Then she pulls back quickly, deposits him in the equipment pod bay, then sets the air lock to cycle again as she takes off running.
Faster, she tells herself as she dashes down from the bridge along the ever-widening spiral of the corridor. You have to go faster. At this point, it hardly matters when she reaches Abel. Whether she gets to him in two seconds or two years, he’ll be repairable or he won’t. But she runs her hardest anyway.
The pod bay doors slide open as she runs toward them. As she jumps over the low threshold, Noemi sees Abel lying flat on the floor, staring blankly upward. His arms stretch out on either side of his body, unmoving. “Abel?” She kneels by his side. “Can you hear me?”
No response. His skin hasn’t gone pale or turned blue the way a human’s would, but the moisture at the edges of his eyelids has frozen into tiny crystals. When she reaches for him, she feels the electric burn of a force field—but this one is low-grade, something she can push through slowly. With great effort, she manages to shut off the device at his belt; the force field’s heat vanishes. She pulls off Abel’s heavy work gloves, hoping he’ll be able to squeeze her hands, but his fingers remain stiff and still. Noemi puts her hand over his chest, looking for a heartbeat, even though she knows that’s impossible.
She learned so much about destroying mechs, so little about repairing them.
Noemi does what you’re supposed to do for hypothermia victims, what she’s always wished she could’ve done for her parents and her baby brother: She lies down by Abel’s side, pillowing her head on his shoulder, and holds him tightly. That’s how you bring back people who have nearly frozen to death. You warm them with your own body heat. It’s her warmth that will save him, or fail.
Noemi treats him as a person, because she doesn’t know what else to do.
The minutes go on. Tears trickle from her eyes. Abel’s so cold he’s painful to the touch, but she doesn’t let go.
Finally, as despair begins to seize her, his finger twitche
s.
“Abel?” Noemi sits upright and takes his face between her hands. His stare remains blank, and she wonders whether she just imagined the movement. But then he blinks, and she begins to laugh weakly. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
It’s not that simple. More than an hour passes before Abel can even sit upright; some damage has been done. But he remains with her.
“You’re still functional, right?” Noemi tries to push back his blond hair, but it’s still frozen stiff. Instead she strokes his cheek. “If you need fixing, maybe you can talk me through it.”
“Unnecessary.” Abel’s voice sounds hoarse, almost metallic. “I should be able to restore most primary functions shortly.”
“Thank God.”
For the next couple of hours they work together. They test his range of movement. They test his memory. Abel can respond every time, sometimes slowly, but always adequately.
“What did you rename our ship?”
“First the Medusa, then the Odysseus.”
“What’s the square root of”—Noemi fishes for a truly random number—“eight thousand two hundred and eighteen?”
“To the third decimal place, ninety point six five three. I can provide the full number if desired.”
“Three decimal places works,” she says as she rubs his hands between her own, allowing friction to provide heat. Though there’s not that much friction, really: Abel’s hands are surprisingly soft. “What’s the first thing I said to you?”
Abel cocks his head, and finally he looks like himself again. “I remember it perfectly, but you almost certainly don’t. Therefore, reciting the words cannot serve as a viable test.”
“If you’re feeling good enough to be smug, you’re definitely better.” Noemi can’t stop smiling. “Does anything feel like it might be broken? Malfunctioning?”
He pauses before saying, “Some inner circuitry I’d already questioned has been damaged further. But my operations are not significantly altered.”