Torian

The torture of the next few days almost made me wish I was back in the Lab.

The morning of the second day, Zal gave me a quartz-laced pebble and told me to keep it in a pocket so my feet wouldn’t get quite so raw during the journey. Consequently, my feet fared better, although my legs and back were not so fortunate. Apparently the pebble’s healing properties were quite localized. I stored that piece of data for later consideration, automatically framing a report to the Infomancers, recommending further study.

But then I remembered: That life was over now, and well over at that.

I repeated that litany as I marched, but every night, my gaze was drawn to the broken top of the mountain, which never seemed to grow further distant. The ruins of the Lab, since I knew where to look, still faintly glowed in the dark like a misplaced star, neither fading nor flaring, giving no clue whether anyone remained inside.

After four long days on the trail, I had at last begun to believe pursuit unlikely, that the Infomancers had all either perished in the attack or fled off-planet as they’d been scrambling to do when I escaped. After all, what was one cyborg compared to all their lives, particularly a cyborg manufactured from one of their own failed experiments?

To keep my mind off my discomfort, and to bury the fear that they might yet be tracking me, I began to log information about the journey, simply because I wanted to and because no one was there to forbid it.

The trees, as an example, in their endless variety and aspect. Somehow, the information in the data banks didn’t do justice to the way the deciduous specimens bent in the wind, their bare branches creaking, dry leaves crunching underfoot. Or the soughing of the evergreens, their pungent smell, the prick of their needles as we pushed through a close-grown stand.

Just as well I was accustomed to the company of my own observations and thoughts because Zal hadn’t spoken to me again since the first night. Or only orders, such as “Sit here,” and “Eat this,” or warnings such as “Mind the ledge.”

My energy reserves were another problem. If I could lie bared to the sun’s rays, allowing the solar network on my back and shoulders to absorb the light and recharge completely, I’d be able to manage the discomfort myself with my body enhancement modules. They weren’t only good for complementing secondary sex characteristics: They amplified my recovery subroutines. They could ease aches and pains, even subtly augment my muscle mass so I wouldn’t be so pathetically weak compared to the strapping mage, who apparently never tired, never hurt, and never slowed down.

Just when I thought Zal would continue to march until dark again, he announced camp in his bass growl while the sun was still above the horizon but below the persistent cloud cover. After he stomped off to gather wood, I quickly stripped off cloak, jerkin, and shirt, baring my back and shoulders with their embedded solar grid.

I sighed with relief as power thrummed along my circuits, even though my skin pebbled in the cold. While soaking up the last of the sun’s rays, I scanned the edge of the clearing, my awakening systems allowing access to data on edible flora. Perhaps, if I were to prove my good will and ability to assist in the journey, to become something other than a burden and a duty, Zal would relent and talk to me again.

At sunset, while Zal still crashed about in the woods, I resettled my clothing and scouted the immediate undergrowth and along the river bank, collecting wild onions, a handful of desiccated berries, and the leaves of a kale-equivalent. By the time Zal returned with a bundle of wood under one arm and a string of fish dangling from his other hand, I had a fairly respectable selection spread out on a rock.

Zal stopped, letting the wood drop to the ground. “What’s that?”

“A salad. I thought our diet might benefit from some fresher items.”

“Salad, you say?” He scratched the back of his head through his heavy braids. “Looks like a mess of weeds to me.”

I tilted my head to look up at him. “Technically, they are weeds. That doesn’t mean they’re not edible. Don’t you eat greens?”

“Of course. But not on the trail. And not in winter.”

“Do you object to them?”

Zal scowled as he squatted to build the fire. “No.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to eat them plain. I have nothing to dress them with.”

He snapped his fingers and a flame leaped onto the kindling. “I might have something that’ll do.” His gaze flicked up to me, the fire dancing in the depths of his eye. “Thank you.”

In the end, we had the greens and a fish stew flavored with the onions and wild thyme. I didn’t normally concern myself with organic food since my cybertronic energy could sustain me, provided I remained sufficiently charged and hydrated. But there was something satisfying about sharing a meal with Zal, a meal we had prepared together.

Zal apparently felt the same way because he began to talk again, to my intense relief. The Infomancers had spoken at me rather than with me, but I’d missed communication, however utilitarian.

Zal fed another log into the fire. “Are you really Moon-born?”

“Yes. Or so they tell me.”

“‘They’? You mean these Infomancers you talk about?”

“That’s right.”

“What under the Sun is an Infomancer anyway?”

I gazed into the flames, their warmth comforting even if the firelight couldn’t add to my energy reserves. “It’s… a joke, I suppose. You call them Star-born, and in a way, that’s more literal than calling you Sun-born or me Moon-born. Those terms originated as references to your genetic make-up, expressed in skin and hair color, body characteristics and aptitudes. But they—the Infomancers, that is—are literally from the stars.”

I leaned back and peered into the dark sky until my eyesight recalibrated. I pointed to the lower-most star in the constellation the subjects called the Galleon. “That star right there, as a matter of fact.”

Zal scoffed. “Get away with you. You mean they’re not even from here?”

I returned my gaze to Zal. “Neither are you, you know.”

Zal frowned and tossed a twig into the flames. “I was born outside the capital, in the same cottage where my mother was born, and her father, and his father. Of course I’m from here.”

“Not originally. All life on this planet was seeded by people from the third planet orbiting that star. The Lab on the mountain was constructed so the Originators could monitor their experiment.”

“I mislike that notion,” Zal growled.

“Nevertheless, it’s true. They set the basics of your society in place and let it spin. But the latest researchers to staff the Lab have taken more onto themselves than was intended by the Originators. They’re starting to interfere.”

“Interfere how?”

“The virus that eliminated the C-27 strain.” At Zal’s blank look, I scanned my lab report files quickly and located the local nomenclature. “Lunaria.”

“You mean the plague that wiped out the Moon-born?”

I inclined my head. “Yes. That was a mistake. An experiment gone wrong. They’d intended to seed a new ability into the population, instantiate a C-28 strain. But they miscalculated somewhere, and it turned lethal.”

Zal stabbed the air with his forefinger. “You see? This is why it’s illegal to practice magic on someone who doesn’t choose the path.”

“It wasn’t magic. It was science.”

Zal’s lips set in a stubborn line. “I don’t care what you call it. It was wrong.”

“I can’t disagree.”

For a few minutes, Zal glared into the flames. Then he sighed and looked up at me. “So how did you escape? And how did they get their hands on you?”

I shrugged, readjusting my cloak when it slid off my shoulder. “They rescued me as a baby, but I would have died too. They”—I gestured, the sweep of my hand indicating my body—“improved me. Replaced the dying parts with synthetic ones. Over the years, they’ve made other modifications.”

Zal lifted an eyebrow, the one above his eyepatch. “Told you all this as a bedtime story, did they? Rocked you to sleep with the tale to keep you grateful?”

I snorted at the notion of the Infomancers deigning to provide any justification for their actions. “Hardly. They never told me anything about it at all. However, one of the modifications they made was to refit me for information storage. With the data cells in my spinal column, I hold the Lab’s entire data bank, including the files on my origin and subsequent schematics.” I swallowed against an unexpected lump. It had been years since I’d come to terms with the dry, factual—and yes, brutal—account of the death of my entire race. “Theoretically, I can access the data, provided I’m given the correct search parameters. I was… motivated to find them in this case.”

But now, I held more data, data that would never be merged with the Lab’s computers—my escape, my captivity, our journey. Direct experience was a heady thing. Empowering. All because I chose to leave. Perhaps the planet’s populace had a point when they valued choice above all else.

Across the fire, Zal’s expression had turned speculative. “So you know everything they know?”

“I contain it. My data access protocols aren’t very efficient. My brain is one of the only fully organic parts of my original body that remains.”

“Did you choose this?”

“I was an infant. I had no concept of choice.”

“What about later? All these modifications of theirs?”

I shrugged, sending my cloak slithering off my shoulder again. “By then, it was habit.”

Zal frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“I owed them. If they hadn’t taken me out of the village after they unleashed the virus, I would have died too.”

“If they hadn’t caused the bloody plague,” Zal growled, “you’d have been in no danger in the first place. They murdered a whole race, Torian. There’s no excuse for that. No way they can ever atone.”

I picked at the edge of the travel-stained cloak, unable to meet Zal’s furious gaze. “So you think they should have let me die?”

“Shite, no!” Zal’s big hand was suddenly there, covering my own chilly fingers, stilling my fidgeting. “You deserve to live, but you shouldn’t have to thank them for it. And they shouldn’t have expected you to keep paying for it forever.”

The warmth of Zal’s hand sent an entirely anomalous data set coursing through my secondary processors. His touch didn’t come with the expectation of sexual release—and I wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. Zal was a very impressive specimen, and kind. I wouldn’t have minded if he wanted the one thing I was certain I was proficient at.

Could that be respect I detected in Zal’s earnest gaze? Simple affection, perhaps? I’d never received either from anyone at the Lab. Little wonder my sensor array was going haywire.

Zal took his hand away, and I was immediately colder than ever.

“I don’t think much of your Infomancers. Infomancers. What a stupid-arsed name. You said it was a joke?”

I nodded. “There’s a quotation from an ancient author from their home world. He wrote speculative fiction. He said, ‘Any technology, when sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.’ So the researchers like to joke that the subjects—”

“You mean us. The citizens of this world.”

“Yes. They call you subjects.” Probably the better to dehumanize you in the Infomancers’ minds. “They joke that if any of you, being primitive and believers in a system of magic, were to witness their technology, you’d consider them magicians. But they wield the magic of advanced information. So, Infomancers.”

“Arrogant arseholes,” Zal muttered.

I found his attitude unexpectedly comforting. “Indeed. That was their downfall.”

Zal gazed into the dark, toward where the moon hung low over the mountain. “They’ve fallen then? The Star-born? Is that what the explosion was about?”

“Yes. Word reached their supervisors of the nature of their experiments. The supervisors… disapproved. And reacted strongly. With ionic weapons.”

“Serves them right.”

I ducked my head and peered at Zal from under my lashes. “Do you think I deserve punishment too? For what I did in the village?”

He sighed. “I’m not so sure now. You say you’re not a mage, and I begin to believe you.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What’s likely to happen to your Infomancers, assuming they survived the… the ionic weapons, was it?”

“I think—I hope—that they’ve gone, either dead, fled, or taken into custody. Their trip back to face justice will be far longer than ours. Although”—I lifted one foot in its heavy, ill-fitting boot—“much easier on the feet.”

Zal’s mouth dropped open for an instant, and then he laughed—a great, rolling, basso profundo laugh that echoed through the trees. I could listen to that laugh to the end of days and not get enough. The Infomancers had never laughed for joy. I’d forgotten that such a thing existed.

“Do you sing, Zal?”

Both his eyebrows popped up. “Now and again, if nobody’s around to complain of the noise. Why?”

“Your voice is pleasant. So is your face and your…” I swallowed and averted my gaze. “… your body.”

In my peripheral vision, I glimpsed Zal shift on his tree-stump chair. “Thanks, but best not get into that or you’ll get us both into trouble.”

I peeked up at him. “You weren’t affected by the body enhancement program, nor the pheromones. Granted you haven’t seen me at my best”—understatement—“but why weren’t you affected? They’ve never failed on anybody else.”

Zal shrugged. “You say you know all about this world. Can’t you guess?”

“I only know what was in the Infomancers’ data sets, and I’m beginning to think they missed more than they realized.”

“Did they know that Sun mages are celibate?”