Mansfield tilts his head, wondering. “Tell me about this Noemi Vidal. What she’s like?”
How can he describe her? Abel sits down on the richly patterned Turkish rug to consider. The only sounds are the ticking of the grandfather clock and the pop and crackle of the nearby fire, which is close enough to share its light. “She’s… brave. That’s the first thing I knew about her. She’s also resourceful, smart, but she has a terrible temper sometimes. She can be impatient, and she’ll laugh at you if she thinks you’re too proud. She always thinks I’m too proud. But after a while I didn’t mind her laughing. By then she knew what I could do and—and she respected me. Once I knew she respected me, that made it all right for her to laugh. Is that customary?”
Mansfield shrugs in the way Abel knows means continue.
So he does. “It’s important to me that Noemi be safe, even now that she’s no longer my commander and my programming doesn’t require continued loyalty. I preferred to be with her, or at least near her, to being alone. For some reason I often think about her hair, which is unremarkable by any objective standard but seems to suit her extraordinarily well. I want to know what she thinks, and to tell her everything that’s happened to me, and I—” He breaks off when Mansfield begins to chuckle. Frowning, Abel says, “I didn’t mean to be humorous.”
“I know, I know. I’m laughing because I’m delighted.” Mansfield’s hand pets Abel on the shoulder. “You’ve fallen in love, my boy. I made a mech capable of falling in love.”
Abel’s astonishment is so great it takes him nearly three-quarters of a second to restore normal conversation. “I have? This—this feeling—this is love?”
“Or something very like it.” Mansfield sits back, weary from even these small exertions, but still smiling. “A bit of a complication, but I daresay it can be worked around.”
Leaning against the sofa, Abel allows himself to consider some of his memories of Noemi in this light. Did any one event awaken this feeling? He can’t choose just one. But some of his stranger behaviors the past few days—the way he would touch Noemi’s hair, or the wrenching wrongness of seeing her so sick in the hospital—only now does he grasp the explanation.
He’s not broken at all. Instead he’s better than he’s ever been. More human.
Mansfield coughs once, then again, and suddenly it’s as if he’s overtaken. His entire body shakes with each wheeze. The Tare model hurries forward again, this time with an oxygen-enriched mask. She cups it over Mansfield’s face for the few seconds it takes him to start breathing normally again.
Finally Mansfield waves her off, leaning back on the sofa once more. “As you can see, I haven’t been enjoying myself as much as you have, my boy.”
Exciting though the past several days with Noemi have been, Abel thinks they shouldn’t outweigh the previous three decades of loneliness, during which he was not, in any sense, enjoying himself. But he understands that this is only a conversational segue, clumsy but irrelevant. “Are you well?”
“I’m old, Abel. Older than I have any right to be.” His rheumy eyes close. “But I couldn’t go, could I? Not while you were still lost out there. I’ve been holding on. Waiting, hoping. All this time, I waited for you.”
Abel takes Mansfield’s hands, a spontaneous kind of affection he’s never shown before. “I waited for you, too.”
“And now you’re home.” When Mansfield opens his eyes again, he seems to have regained his focus. “Give me your arm, Abel. Let’s go outside.”
Mansfield leans on Abel’s arm, and together they make their way outside, into the gardens Abel remembers so well. But he doesn’t remember them like this. None of the flowers are in bloom; although it’s still early in Earth’s spring, at least a few should have blossomed by now. Instead leaves droop and vines wither. Green still dominates brown, but not by much. Even the lavender is gone. Abel always loved the scent of the lavender, the way the breeze would carry it around—
“Sad, isn’t it?” Mansfield says, shaking his head. “We can’t even buy beauty any longer. Can’t even work for it. Sometimes I think Earth has no more to give.”
Touched, Abel pats Mansfield’s hand, which tightens on his arm. They share a sad smile. “Where will you go?” Abel says. “After Earth.” It seems possible—probable—that Mansfield won’t live long enough to be faced with this challenge. However, pointing out his creator’s imminent death seems unkind.
Mansfield doesn’t acknowledge his frailty either. “I expect to have plenty of options. Come on, let’s take a look at the workshop.”
Downstairs, in the basement of the geodesic dome, is Mansfield’s workshop—an old-fashioned word for a highly sophisticated laboratory, but it fits. The walls are brick, not polymer; the tables are wood, not plastic. When Abel, brand-new, first passed the initial tests of sapience, Mansfield celebrated by having the windows replaced with stained glass, so much like his treasured Tiffany lamps. The boards of the plank floor have been worn down by decades of footsteps, tracing pale, scuffed pathways between the main computer terminal and the tanks.
Many more tanks, Abel sees, than there were before.
The long tanks now stretch along the entire basement perimeter, six on each side. Within the swirling pink goo are the indistinct outlines of mechs growing toward their point of activation. Some are very nearly complete—a foot bobs against the glass, revealing five perfect toes—but others are still nebulous, hardly more than an opaque blob congealing around the artificial frame.
Mass manufacture takes place elsewhere. The workshop has always been reserved for research projects, for the mechs Mansfield considers special. Abel woke up here.
“What are you working on?” he says. “New models?”
“Potentially. People have been asking for child-size mechs. Harder to freeze the organic components short of full maturity—but maybe not impossible. At any rate, I intend to try.” Mansfield sighs. “Better to wear out than to rust out, my boy.”
“Of course, Father.” Abel has always considered that an odd phrase for humans to have come up with, but it applies very well to him.
“I had these tanks put in within weeks of losing the Daedalus.” Mansfield totters to the easy chair set up before the broadest desk. “Spent decades trying to re-create the greatest accomplishment of my career, and failed every time.”
Abel knows what Noemi would think of his next question, but he has to ask. “Are you saying that you attempted to re-create… me?”
Mansfield looks surprised. “Of course I did. You’re the greatest leap forward cybernetics has ever taken, and I thought I’d lost you forever. All other considerations aside, it would’ve been a crime against human knowledge not to see if I could make another.”
“Of course.” This makes sense. But Noemi was right about Abel having an ego, because it is now definitely bruised. Mansfield hoped to replace him, and now, perhaps, he is no longer the most advanced mech in the galaxy.
Yet his disappointment fades next to new, brighter curiosity. Losing his singular status hardly matters if that means he’s no longer alone. If other Abels exist, might they be brothers of a sort? “Are there other A models now?”
But that short-lived hope dies immediately as Mansfield shakes his head. “I said I tried. Never said I succeeded. You were so perfect from the get-go, I guess I thought I could always make another if the need arose. But I was wrong. The same plans, the same materials, but not the same results. Always, always, something was out of balance. That spark you have is yours alone. They came out so physically like you, and so clever—a few of them so close—but none of them could match you. None of them had the mind I was looking for. Had to deactivate them, one and all. Finally I gave up.”
Other mechs who looked like him, who had enough intelligence to possess a sense of self—and they were all deactivated. All found wanting, instead of being appreciated as the miracles they were. The idea is profoundly troubling, but Abel doesn’t know how to say so to Mansfield, or whether he e
ven should. What’s done is done.
But those lost brothers haunt him.
For now, they have more urgent matters to discuss. “Will you send the message to Stronghold now?”
“What message?”
Perhaps senility has begun to set in. Abel explains, “To make sure Noemi departed Stronghold safely instead of being brought into custody. If she is in custody, then to free her.”
“You want your ladylove brought to you by a bunch of security mechs?” Mansfield chuckles. “I doubt she’ll find that very romantic.”
“I would never want her brought anywhere against her will. That’s exactly why I want to be certain she’s free. So she can go where she needs to go.” Once again, Abel thinks about the impending destruction of the Genesis Gate, but says nothing.
Mansfield waves him off. “All in good time, Abel. Let’s take a few new scans, shall we? I want to map this newly complex mind of yours.”
Abel wants to press his point, to make Mansfield understand, until it sinks in that he already does.
Mansfield knows Noemi could be at risk; he knows how deeply concerned Abel is for her.
He just doesn’t care.
Abel had discovered that he could disagree with Mansfield, even that he could criticize him. But this is the first time he’s doubted his creator.
Still he must obey Mansfield’s every word.
Slowly, Abel sits in the examination chair and allows the sensor bars to curve around his head. When Mansfield smiles at him, he smiles back.
33
THERE SHE IS,” VIRGINIA SAYS CHEERFULLY AS THE IMAGE comes up on the domed viewscreen. “Earth.”
Staring, Noemi covers her mouth with one hand. Beside her, she hears Ephraim whisper, “My God.”
Even from orbit, she can see how brown and dry the equatorial regions have become. Greenery exists only in narrow bands around the ice-free poles. Noemi learned Earth geography in school, in her pre-world history class, so she can pick out certain places, or at least what they used to be: barren China, still-green Denmark, and the home of her ancestors—Chile—almost completely inundated by the too-dark sea, with only the caps of the Andes poking up as an island chain. The nearby island where some of her people once lived, Rapa Nui, must long since have been swallowed by the ocean.
“Never seen this before,” Ephraim murmurs. “On Stronghold, they show you images, but old ones, I guess. Very old. It looks so green in those.…”
“Hasn’t been like that for a while, folks.” Virginia folds her arms behind her head and kicks back, setting her feet on an inactive part of the console. “Honestly, I think it looks a little better than it did when I left.”
Noemi would like to snap at her for being so blithe about a world so profoundly sick, but she hears the edge in Virginia’s voice. It’s less that Virginia doesn’t care, more that she doesn’t want to be caught caring.
Her family’s down there. Even though her family can’t be much more to her than an idea, even though she won’t have seen them since childhood and probably never expects to see them again—they’re still hers, and they’re trapped on this dying world.
As Earth’s image grows larger in the viewscreen, Noemi’s able to see the sheer enormity of the space junk around it. Every inhabited planet has satellites, of course. Even Genesis, while cutting back on all unnecessary technologies, never considered removing their main weather and communications orbiters. But tens of thousands circle Earth at every conceivable latitude, some of them ludicrously outdated. A couple of space stations remain operational, though they’re so old Noemi can’t believe anyone agrees to set foot inside. Probably they’re operated by mechs.
No standard planetary greeting is broadcast to the ship. This puzzles Noemi until she realizes—the other worlds have to identify themselves, to say why they matter. Earth doesn’t have to. It’s where they all came from, and where they all answer to in some sense. There is no other power, no other planet, that can ever compare to Earth.
To orient herself, she clicks through commercial channels—stunned by the incredible glut of information and entertainment being projected at Earth inhabitants from every direction—and how pure desperation exists side by side with the most trivial concerns. The translation program projects subtitles beneath the broadcasts in other languages:
“—THE PRIME MINISTER TODAY REMINDED CITIZENS THAT THEY BEAR RESPONSIBILITY FOR TESTING THEIR OWN WATER PURITY—”
“—THE BURGER SO DELICIOUS YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE IT’S NOT REAL BEEF—”
A man stands in front of a cityscape ringed with black smoke, and the subtitles read: RIOTING CONTINUES IN KARACHI AS FAMINE RELIEF EFFORTS FAIL.
“—SOMETIMES THE MECH JUST ISN’T ENOUGH, YOU KNOW?” A woman winks at the camera, nudges the half-naked Peter model next to her; he smiles vacantly in response. “SO WHEN YOU NEED A LITTLE EXTRA TO GET OVER THE EDGE—”
“—THE PROMISE OF BIOMEDICAL IMPLANTS THAT WILL REDUCE, ELIMINATE, OR MAYBE EVEN REVERSE COMMON DISEASES SUCH AS—”
An unnaturally sparkly young man is singing a song in what might be Farsi, the lyrics of which praise powders for your bath that can turn your skin glittery blue for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, while still making it clear results are not guaranteed.
“ORCHID FESTIVAL BOMBER AND KNOWN REMEDY RINGLEADER RIKO WATANABE WAS ARRAIGNED IN LONDON TODAY ON MULTIPLE CHARGES OF TERRORISM.” The screen shows Riko—pale and bruised, but chin still held high as she’s led through jeering crowds to what must be a courthouse. Noemi gasps. Although she can’t deny Riko’s guilt, she’s still shaken by the sight of anyone she knows handcuffed, in Earth’s clutches. “SOURCES INDICATE THAT A DEAL IS STILL POSSIBLE IF WATANABE NAMES OTHER REMEDY MEMBERS.”
Ephraim groans in dismay. Virginia’s eyes widen as she says, “Oh, crap. She knows you, doesn’t she?”
“Not directly,” he says, “but we have contacts in common. If she starts naming names, it’s not going to be long before the Earth authorities find my friends. I’m ruined already, but if something happens to them…” His voice trails off, and for the first time his dark eyes show fear, not for himself but for another.
Noemi shuts the communications off completely and pulls herself together. “Okay, enough of that. Now we find Abel.”
Virginia glances over her shoulder, flipping her red-streaked ponytail in the process. “Any ideas about how we get that started? Abel’s unique, but not the kind of unique you can really pick up on from orbit.”
“We find Burton Mansfield. Wherever Mansfield is, that’s where they’ve taken Abel.” Noemi knows this as surely as if she’d planned it herself.
“How are we supposed to do that?” Ephraim asks.
Virginia gives him a look. “Burton Mansfield is one of the richest, most powerful, best-known human beings on Earth. Somebody’s gonna know where he is.”
“Really?” Ephraim’s surprise is genuine. “On Stronghold, the more powerful people are, the less likely you are to get any personal information on them.”
“Well, on Earth, they love the rich and famous,” Virginia says. “Hey, Noemi, are you positive they won’t have taken Abel to some top secret lab, though? Mansfield’s old as dirt. Older than most dirt, I’d guess. By now somebody else might be in charge of studying Abel.”
Shaking her head no, Noemi rises from her chair and walks closer to the viewscreen. “Abel’s special to Mansfield. Personal. Irreplaceable. As long as Mansfield’s alive, he’ll want Abel by his side.”
Virginia’s hands begin to fly across the console. “Okay, searching for the residence of one Burton Mansfield—and there we go. Residing in what looks to be the most posh area of London, in the same home he’s owned for, wow, forty-six years.”
Of course it would be there, Noemi thinks. That was what Abel answered when the George asked his birthplace. “Then let’s visit London.”
They change clothes—Noemi into a black turtleneck and pants from Captain Gee’s closet, Virginia into the stuff she had
in her ship’s cargo hold (jeans and a pine-green sweatshirt), and Ephraim into the only clothing he can find to fit him, a mechanic’s navy-blue coverall. Noemi’s able to retrace Abel’s work well enough to come up with a new fake ID for the ship herself; scans will now identify it as the private ship Atlas. Someone carrying an entire world on their back, its weight bearing them down—she’s starting to know how that feels.
They request landing clearance at the public dock closest to Mansfield’s house, which is closer than she’d dared hope, no more than a couple of kilometers. Virginia laughs at her surprise: “Come on. London’s one of the five largest cities on the globe. One of the greatest powers. Nobody has more spaceports than they do! Except maybe Beijing. Or Nairobi, or possibly Chicago—but, seriously, that’s it.”
“I’ve always watched vids set in London,” Ephraim says as the dock’s tractor beam starts guiding them in. “I may not be Earth’s biggest fan, but I had to admit—London looked a lot more interesting than any place on Stronghold.”
“So does every other place ever,” Virginia says, which earns her a glare from Ephraim. Noemi ignores them both, trying to quiet the strange queasy flutters inside her belly, until the ship settles onto the ground, and then there’s no holding them back.
I’m here. I’m really here.
When she looks over at Virginia and Ephraim, she sees her own fear and awe reflected in their faces. They walk together to the launching bay and stand by her side as she hits the panel. The silvery doors swirl open to allow Noemi to take her first-ever steps on planet Earth.
Beyond the ordinary dock lies a city larger and older than any Noemi has ever seen. On Genesis, a building that dates back seventy-five years is historic; from this vantage point alone, Noemi sees row houses that must be closer to five hundred years old, and a street paved with worn-smooth cobblestones. On those streets are wheeled vehicles, hovercraft, bicycles, and bright red buses. Sidewalks are thick with humans of all ages and races, trudging along with no sense that they’re anywhere special. Billboards and holograms glimmer from various signs and kiosks in eye-catching colors, but not as garishly as on Wayland Station. It just looks… lively. Everything smells chemical and fake to Noemi, but there’s that odd softness to the air telling her that, at some point within the past few hours, it rained.