14

“WELL, IF IT ISN’T MY BELOVED COUSIN ABEL BACK ONCE more! It’s so wonderful to see you again so—oh, crap. What’s wrong?”

He stands in the geometrical white-and-orange dock on Cray, staring at Virginia Redbird, unable to find any words.

It would seem that having more emotions within would lead to having more to say, since there is naturally more to discuss. But now Abel knows it doesn’t work that way. Emotions don’t take turns; they crowd in together. His different feelings blot each other out, like writing words atop other words in ink, until nothing’s legible any longer. What remains is a darkness that says nothing and contains everything.

Virginia comes closer and puts her hands on Abel’s shoulders. “Abel?” she whispers. “What happened with Noemi?”

“I don’t know,” he manages to say. “Let’s go back to your lab. We have some data to analyze.”

In the Razers’ hideout, they find Ludwig and Fon sitting on the floor, immersed in a game of Go, until it becomes clear that Abel’s brought them a new puzzle to solve.

(That’s how they think of problems—as puzzles or games. Abel knows some humans would find this insensitive or at least immature, but he doesn’t want sympathy or sensitivity. He wants answers. Answers are data for him to work with, and if he has enough data, then he won’t have to think about the black-ink jumble of feelings inside.)

“This is beyond bizarre,” Virginia says as they replay the disappearance of the Osiris on one of the 2-D screens. The flicker of light and shadow carves her distinctive features more sharply, setting off her strong cheekbones and square chin. “If it had been destroyed, we’d either see some cataclysmic event or at least some debris floating around afterward. Instead it’s like the whole ship gets—swallowed by the void.”

“That’s not a realistic hypothesis,” Abel says.

Virginia shoots him a look over her shoulder. “I know, Abel, don’t trip a breaker. It’s just an expression. This is weird, is all I’m saying.”

Abel nods to show her he understands—he always did, of course—but it appears that even the deepest grief can manifest as irritability. He must take this into account when dealing with unhappy humans in the future. “We have to determine whether or not the ship still exists. Burton Mansfield and Noemi were almost certainly on board.”

“How can you know for sure?” Fon asks from her place on a nearby floor cushion, hugging her knees to her chest.

“Burton urged me to find him there. Logically he would’ve taken Noemi with him to the ship immediately after leaving Earth.”

Ludwig points out, “He might have gone somewhere else, planning to join the Osiris later.”

“Burton Mansfield is in very poor health. His body is frail, and he requires mech assistance for almost all daily activities.” Mansfield’s papery skin, the veins showing through in soft blue. “He could send mechs or trusted associates to take care of any other business.” Abel, my boy. “Therefore Mansfield would minimize travel, going directly to the Osiris, which may well have been destroyed.”

All his concern, fear, and grief ought to belong to Noemi. She’s the only one who should matter, the only one he wants to save. But Directive One remains insistent within him, demanding that he care about Mansfield, too. Even now. Always.

“Destroyed by nothing, leaving behind nothing?” Virginia says. “No way. Think this over, Abel. Your emotions are clouding your judgment, which is kind of exciting in terms of the evolution of your psyche, but it’s not helping us analyze the situation. So maybe dial down your human side for a minute.”

My emotions are clouding my judgment, Abel thinks. At any other time, this revelation might be wonderful to him. For the moment he can only refocus himself.

“Do we know where the Osiris was headed?” asks tiny Fon.

“Irrelevant,” Abel replies. “We can only speculate whether Remedy flew the Osiris along its original course or diverted it to another destination. So we have to analyze the data to determine its course and extrapolate from that.”

Pointing at one corner of the screen, Ludwig zooms in on it. “Do you see the blur here? That doesn’t look like a problem with the Persephone’s sensors. It looks like a distortion field at work.”

“Mansfield has used distortion fields in the past,” Abel says. “Mostly to camouflage deep-space mech facilities, particularly those near the Genesis Gate in the earlier days of the Liberty War, when Genesis troops sometimes came through to fight in the Earth system.”

Virginia lights up. When she gets a new idea, it’s like setting fire to a fuse. “Speaking of Gates, these energy readings—don’t they kind of look like a ship passing through a Gate?”

Fon makes a scoffing sound. “Come on. There’s no Gate out there.”

“The size and intensity of a distortion field that could eclipse a Gate completely, beyond any detection—that’s far beyond anything Mansfield has done in the past,” Abel says. A Gate requires more than a visual screen. “Massive energy readings also have to be concealed. Such concealment is difficult to begin with and grows exponentially greater with the size of the object to be concealed.”

“The distortion field didn’t conceal all the energy readings,” Virginia insists. “Yeah, this is like the mini-pocket-baby version of Gate-transport readings, but maybe that’s all that bleeds through.”

Abel sticks to mathematical realities and probabilities for the time being. Math is comforting. It is rational and unchanging. His emotions cannot cloud his math. When he runs the numbers, it becomes increasingly clear that she has a point.

“Could Mansfield build a field that size?” Virginia presses. “You know him better than just about anyone, Abel. We all know he’s got the money and the power. And he’s definitely got the brain. Does he have the—drive, I guess you’d call it?”

Drive. Will. Purpose. Mansfield broke every law of cybernetics to build himself another home for his soul. He joined in the building of that enormous ship for some grand purpose still unknown, at a cost that must total in the billions of credits. When Abel filters this through his knowledge of his creator, the probabilities shift. “He does. He could.”

“Earth built another Gate without telling anyone?” Ludwig scowls at the screen as if demanding answers from it. “That would mean they’ve found another habitable world.”

Fon chimes in, “Not necessarily. They could be exploring something else, like a system with materials we need, even if humans can’t live there.”

“Or they built an artificial planet somewhere,” Virginia says. She’s playing with a lock of her red-streaked hair, eager and alight. “It could be a massive space station, maybe. Even a Dyson sphere! Something really flash, you know?”

“Any such structures may well have defenses,” Abel says.

How would those defenses react to the Osiris arriving under Remedy control? Would they negotiate or shoot to kill? Not to mention, such security would mean Noemi is in a prison—no, a fortress. Rescuing her would be extremely difficult.

But not impossible.

Ludwig hesitantly says, “You mentioned—you said that Genesis was under attack? Earth used biological weapons?”

“Cobweb was disseminated planetwide,” Abel confirms. “Possibly the virus was modified to be both more contagious and more deadly.”

The Razers all stare at one another, stricken to a degree that surprises Abel. He doesn’t doubt their horror at the use of biological weapons, but their reaction seems more… personal.

Fon speaks up first. “That’s going to be level 110.”

“I think Ricardo works down there sometimes,” Virginia murmurs. “Mei, too.”

Only then does it occur to Abel that the reengineering of the Cobweb virus might’ve been done at Earth’s request, but it wouldn’t have been done on Earth. That would’ve been performed by the greatest virologists in the galaxy—who, like the top specialists in every science, live and work on Cray.

“Are there any Razers who work on that level?” Abel asks. “Could they get information about how it was done?”

Ludwig lets out a low whistle. “That’s going to be under tight security. Really tight.”

“Doesn’t mean someone couldn’t get past it,” says Fon, and the others take on that look of excitement that means they’ve found a code or rule they plan to raze.

Swiftly Abel inputs contact codes for Harriet and Zayan. “Don’t endanger yourself for that intel, Virginia—but if you get it, please inform these people immediately. Tell them I asked you to. They may be able to hand the information on to doctors who could work on a cure.”

“You’ve got it,” Virginia promises. “Oh, we are forever captains for this.”

“Thank you for your help.” He shuts off his screen; Virginia and the other Razers stare up at him in surprise. “Your insights have been extremely helpful, but ultimately I must investigate in person. I should leave immediately.” Abel gives them another nod instead of saying good-bye.

As he strides through one of the rough-hewn stone tunnels leading back to the dock for Station 47, he hears footsteps coming up fast behind him. “Abel!” Virginia calls. “Wait up!”

He slows his steps, but not by much. “Did you discover something new within the data?”

“No, but you’re running out of here like somebody set your ship on fire.”

“What I observed demands direct investigation, immediately. Looking for alternate viewpoints and theories is—an interesting intellectual exercise, and you’ve provided valuable insights about the distortion fields and a potential Gate—but this is all irrelevant without further data. I don’t know why I didn’t see this from the beginning.”

“You didn’t come here just for intellectual exercise,” Virginia says. “You also came here because you were hurting and you needed a friend.”

Abel starts to say that this isn’t true. He’s functioned without friends for the large majority of his existence. Even if he did need emotional support, he would be consciously aware of it. Wouldn’t he? But humans are often oblivious to the psychological reasons for their behavior. Abel’s mind operates at a human level of complexity. He’s already determined that he has a subconscious—yet this is the first time he’s realized his subconscious affects his behavior. “Maybe I did. Thank you for listening to me, and going over this data. You helped me assess the situation more clearly. But the fact remains that I have to return to the site immediately.”

Virginia shakes her head. “Give it one hour.”

“Why one hour?”

“That’s how long it’s going to take me to put in for emergency leave. Well, I guess I should pack, too, but that’s not going to take long. Basically I only wear about six variations of this.” Virginia wears her usual deliberately oversize jumpsuit, baggy except for the broad belt tight at her waist, with various pins and badges proclaiming her fidelity to every piece of entertainment she’s ever loved. “I can have that done before the request’s even turned around.”

“You don’t have to come with me. I’m more than capable of handling the Persephone on my own.” Sometimes it’s a stretch even for him, but Abel manages.

“For the most advanced artificial intelligence ever created, you can be kind of stupid sometimes.” Virginia sighs. “Backup is good. Backup is your friend.”

“No, you’re my friend, and I’d rather not put any more of my friends in danger.” Even knowing what Harriet and Zayan are attempting makes him feel uneasy. The risk to Virginia would be far more immediate.

She is unconvinced. “If you go out to investigate something, you’re just going to leave the Persephone abandoned? You might as well put up a huge glowing holosign that says ‘Free ship to good home.’”

Abel considers that, but only briefly. “You’ve raised a valid tactical point, but it’s still not worth endangering you.”

“Worth it to who?” Virginia demands. “I’m interested in this, too, you know. Scientific mysteries are my lifeblood. If I stay here, I’m just going to be running more data for Professor Fernandez, who can deal with a couple weeks’ delay. And Fon and Ludwig can handle the Cobweb project here.”

“None of this changes the risk to you. I’m sorry, but—”

“Listen to me, dammit!” Her smile has vanished; she’s not joking any longer. “The people aboard that ship, the Osiris—they may have traveled through a hidden Gate. That means Earth is possibly hiding an entire habitable world. They’re doing that while people around the galaxy starve. More than five months ago, right after I left you and Noemi, I went home to see my parents. We’ve always talked via comms every few weeks, but—you never know who’s listening to those, right? The signals are programmed to catch words that sound disloyal to Earth. Maybe I could get away with some of it because they’ve invested so much in educating me, but my parents? I hadn’t really been able to talk to them, to hear everything they had to say, since I was six years old.”

Abel remembers what it felt like to be separated from Mansfield for a long time, back when he still thought of him as “Father.” The ache is both indescribable and undeniable.

She continues, the words spilling out of her in a rush. “I’ve always felt like being chosen for Cray made me special. I love it here, but I never asked myself how it felt for my mom and dad. Not really. The teachers tell you here what an honor it is, that your parents brag about you—and they do—but to Mom and Dad, Abel, it’s like I was stolen.” Virginia stops, hand to her lips like she can’t believe she dared to speak the words. But she doesn’t hold herself back for long. “Historically, this is not a new issue for my people. Same crap, different package. I couldn’t see it for myself before, but now I do, and it makes me mad as hell. Why couldn’t they have taught these classes on Earth instead of here on Cray? Why is it so ‘impossible’ for my parents to ever visit, when game traders can get landing clearance any time they want?”

These are rhetorical questions, but when humans ask them, it’s often because they want to hear the answer repeated by another. “They bring top students here to weaken the bonds between family members and to ensure that your strongest loyalty is to Earth rather than to any individual.”

Virginia blinks. “Okay, wow. I knew that, but—I hadn’t put it in those words. But that’s it. That’s it exactly.”

“Your anger at Earth is understandable, but that doesn’t require you to come with me,” Abel points out. “Unless you mean to join Remedy? I should warn you, they’re unlikely to accept a new recruit in the middle of an operation on this scale.” Given the number of ships he saw attacking the Osiris, Abel considers it likely that this is Remedy’s most ambitious strike yet.

“Join Remedy? Are you having some kind of system meltdown?” Virginia mock-punches him on the shoulder, then winces and shakes her hand. “Ow. You’re way more solid than a human.”

“My skeleton contains—”

“Yeah, okay, I know about your skeleton, that was stupid of me, skip it. My whole point is, no, I’m not joining a bunch of terrorists. But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to the way I was before either. Growing up here, you’re always taught to look for new solutions, new ways of doing things. To search for new truth, you know? Instead they’ve been lying to us the whole time. After what I’ve learned, and what I’ve realized about how I grew up, I’m done being lied to. Whatever’s going on out there behind that distortion field—it’s real. It’s true. And it’s something the people in power don’t want us to know about. That means I need to know all about it, right now.” She pauses and catches her breath. “Did that make sense?”

“Yes, it did.” Abel could point out that her reasons for wanting to join him are almost entirely emotional, no matter how understandable those emotions might be. But so are his own reasons. Besides, she’s correct on one strategic point: Having a second person along will improve his odds of a successful resolution. “If you’re sure it won’t raise suspicion—”

“It won’t.” Virginia lights up. “I’m an amazing liar.”

“Don’t admit this to too many people.”

She laughs out loud as she jogs off to prepare, and calls over one shoulder, “You’re developing a sense of humor, you know that?”

It wasn’t a joke; it was a sound tactical suggestion. Nonetheless, Abel smiles.