Goddess in the Machine

by Lora Beth Johnson

  He followed the dark hallway back to the First’s suite, where the Goddess was waiting. (His face felt warm. Was he blushing? Certz not. He never blushed.) He was bout to open the door when he heard Wead’s voice.

  “Favor me? Don’t tell Zhade.”

  He froze. His hand hung suspended, knuckles brushing the knob.

  “He won’t help me if he knows?” The Goddess’s voice was muffled by the door.

  A pause. “Perhaps. But also, I worry if you change Zhade’s past, you’ll change his future too.”

  His best friend and his . . . whatever she was . . . plotting together? Keeping secrets. He wished he could reverse time like he did on the scrying boards and catch the beginning of the convo.

  “Well . . .” The Goddess sighed. “I won’t tell Zhade if you think it’s best, but . . . I didn’t understand a word you said.”

  Lew-Eadin’s laugh wafted under the door. It was the laugh he’d used with Dzeni. “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you. I needed to talk.”

  Zhade had been standing there time and a half enough. He entered the room, making as much noise as he could.

  The Goddess and Wead pulled apart. She looked flush. He looked guilty. Had they been . . . ? Certz not. Not with the maid-girl there. Certz it was nothing more than a cheek-kiss. Or a hug. A one-armed one at that. Full friendish.

  For a moment, the tension hung in the air, thick as a sandcloud between them. Then Zhade stretched, plastered on his best grin, and scratched his stomach.

  “Bout time to get abed, marah, boyo?” he asked. His tone sounded too forced. Was he talking too loud?

  She’s just a tool.

  Wead visiblish relaxed and nodded to Zhade. He picked up his pack, then tossed Zhade’s bag to him.

  Zhade approached Andra’s skirlish little maid. What was her name? Something Hivish.

  “Charling, could you take the Goddess to her room?” He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. He expected a giggle or for her brown cheeks to darken, but she mereish stiffened and looked at the Goddess. Zhade did too. “And make certz she stays there.”

  “Certz,” the maid whispered.

  Mereish a tool.

  “Decide your fates,” he said. The Goddess scowled. Wead coughed. Zhade left.

  SEVENTEEN

  confession, n.

  Definition:

  an acknowledging of a fault, wrong, crime, or guilt.

  obsolete: the tomb of a martyr.

  Every day was the same pattern, even though the details shifted. Andra would wake from her restless sleep and Lilibet would help her into her newest ridiculous article of clothing. She’d then be escorted to meetings—mostly with important members of the government, though sometimes with select Eerensedian citizens. Sometimes they’d ask for things Andra couldn’t give, but wished she could—better crops, healing for a sick relative, more food. Sometimes they asked for spiteful things—for their neighbor’s rosebushes to die or for a business competitor to fall ill. No matter what, she gave them all the same answer Zhade had given her.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  She hated the response for several reasons, but mostly because it was a lie. She did her best not to think about all the things she couldn’t give them, not to focus on the people at all.

  The more she learned about the ’dome, the more she realized it wouldn’t be standing much longer. Apparently, there was a section southwest of the palace where the deterioration was so bad, people could see the links in the ’dome’s skin on moonless nights. Granted, the stars were bright here, but still. Once the ’dome failed, the Eerensedians would be just as vulnerable to the corrupted tech of the pockets as the Wastes. But if Andra started to feel sympathy for them, she would start to doubt her objective: to get to Earth. To no longer be in danger. To no longer be a goddess.

  She was already starting to feel guilty about leaving Lew-Eadin and Lilibet, and maybe even about leaving Zhade. She met with them each evening, after sorting through the ’bots Tsurina had sent her. They never included a colonial mech’bot, nor an AI, and she started to notice after a week of searching that Tsurina was sending her ’bots she’d already checked. Andra was going to have to come up with another way to find what she needed.

  Each night, Zhade brought her another piece of tech before goddess lessons. She had a vague idea of what she needed, and she understood the coding, but shuttle hardware was somewhat of a mystery to her. She’d put together a short-range one with her classmates in her sophomore engineering workshop, but they hadn’t done it manually. They’d programmed mech’bots to do it for them. She kept everything Zhade brought her, just in case.

  They continued to meet in the First’s rooms for the lessons, but Andra had yet to find anything to suggest the First had been her mother—or any identifying characteristics. It had been a fool’s hope anyway—that she would happen to know the two out of a million who had accidentally woken late with her.

  There was a different lesson every night. After dancing, they covered table manners, then Eerensedian history, then language. The last one was her favorite. The slang of High Goddess was easy to pick up, but the speech of the common Eerensedians was completely unrecognizable as English. At first glance, at least. The more Andra dissected it, the more she could see how one word evolved into another. How house had led to howz had led to ousz. How the grammar had simplified and verb tenses became implied. When she was done with a language lesson, her brain ached in a good way, like a muscle just exercised. If that was all her life was here, she wouldn’t have minded it so much.

  But it wasn’t. Her life was a labyrinth of royal etiquette and deific pretense, a parade of endless meetings and futile searches. It would have been boring, except she was always aware of the danger of messing up, of swaying even a little. She threw herself into goddess lessons, if for nothing else, as a distraction.

  Every lesson had a moral, a phrase Zhade wanted her to memorize, quoting it over and over, like his little sayings were pure brilliance.

  Answer a question with a question.

  Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

  Always pretend you’re one move ahead, even when you’re not.

  Lew and Lilibet rolled their eyes behind Zhade’s back while cheering Andra on. She’d started to feel a certain kinship with them. They formed inside jokes and communicated in shorthand. Zhade was stand-offish. He flirted and bantered, but the friendship that had been forming between them was gone. That was fine, Andra thought. She didn’t need to be friends with him. She didn’t need to stare at the jacket he’d left in her room that first day in the palace. She didn’t need to remember what it felt like to kiss him.

  She needed to get out of here.

  One night, after lessons, Andra stopped Lew-Eadin on his way out. She noticed Zhade pause at the door, but only for a moment before hefting his bag over his shoulder and leaving.

  “Firm, Andra?” Lew said. Lew was the only one who actually made any effort to call her by name.

  “I was wondering if you knew anything about the Angelic Guard?”

  Lew nodded. “A bit. When I was training with the Guv’s guard, we had to work closeish with them.”

  “The ones outside the throne room. Are they always the same ones? Or do they rotate?”

  Lew thought for a moment. “It’s diff to say. Many of the Angelic Guard look alike, but I reck that sometimes, as angels grow ancient, their magic decreases, and they’re sent out into the city for other use.”

  Bingo.

  Colonial ’bots would definitely be considered ancient, which meant a mech’bot with the capabilities she needed could be somewhere out in the city. She just needed a way to find it. Andra had yet to go outside the palace since her arrival. It was “too dangerous,” according to Zhade and Maret’s advisors. Lew, however, had no such restrictions. She hated ask
ing—he would say yes because she was a goddess, because he was a nice person, because she’d already confided in him that she was leaving.

  She didn’t know why she’d told him, only that she’d felt tingly and light-headed after dancing with Zhade during that first goddess lesson, and she needed to remind herself what she was doing.

  So she’d told Lew-Eadin everything. Not just reiterating that she wasn’t a goddess, but giving him specifics. About Earth and the Ark and her mother’s disappointment and the cryo’tanks and being forgotten. That the Goddesses before her had been just like her—if not unremarkable, at least unmagical. She told him all the particulars she’d told Zhade in sweeping vague statements a hundred times, but he’d brushed aside. Lew had listened even though she knew he didn’t understand. He believed her—not in the way she wanted to be believed (literally, not metaphorically), but it was enough.

  Then he’d asked her not to tell Zhade.

  Lew seemed sad she was leaving, but there was something else there as well. It was almost like he was guilt-ridden. Which meant that Andra leaving messed up Zhade’s plans. She knew Zhade wasn’t telling her everything, but she’d been hoping Lew might. He hadn’t.

  He had promised to help her, though, even at great personal cost. Even though by leaving, she was betraying him.

  The guilt didn’t keep her from asking for his help finding a mech’bot though.

  He agreed, and she’d checked with him every goddess lesson since, but he hadn’t found anything, and the ’bots from Tsurina turned up nothing. Her chances of making it off the planet before she did something that got her killed were slimming.

  As her hopes began to dwindle, she grew more familiar with the cadence of the palace. Her life here was starting to fall into rhythm. Then one night, she came back from dinner, expecting to find a collection of useless ’bots in her suite, and found Maret instead.

  He was sitting in an upholstered chair, Zhade’s discarded jacket tossed aside. For a moment, she thought he was Zhade, and her heart did a funny lurch. But the figure shifted and the moonlight fell on his pinched face and pale hair, and her heart jolted for a different reason.

  “Guv,” she said, trying the bow Zhade had taught her the other night.

  Maret seemed unimpressed. He stood and made his way to the door. “Walk with me.”

  Andra froze. “No . . . thank you?”

  Maret was already out the door, but he called back over his shoulder. “It wasn’t a request.”

  Andra wanted to debate whether or not a guv could command a goddess, but given Maret had access to weapons, it was probably best not to antagonize him.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, catching up.

  “The ’dome,” was all he said, and Andra felt her stomach drop.

  She’d been searching the ’bots for colonial programming, giving them the Neo-Turing Test for artificial intelligence. She hadn’t been looking for other capabilities, like ’dome maintenance.

  She didn’t speak as she followed Maret, and he didn’t seem uncomfortable with the silence. He probably would have been more annoyed if she’d spoken, and the thought made her wish she could think of something to say. But her brain was too busy calculating risks and preparing for possibilities. Surely he wouldn’t demand she fix the ’dome right now?

  Zhade would be expecting her for goddess lessons in a few hours. She wondered if she would be back in time. If she would be coming back at all.

  Maret led her through the palace and out into a courtyard. As soon as Andra realized where they were, she took a step back.

  The place her maids had died looked different in the dark. The fountain was no longer bubbling, and though the tiled pathway was lined with candles, they had been extinguished. The metal platform was gone, but Andra remembered where it had been.

  It took the Guv a moment to realize he was no longer being followed. He turned and gave Andra an exasperated look.

  “What?” His silhouette was unmistakable in the dark, his figure tall and lean. His clothes blended perfectly into his surroundings, but his pale face shone in the moonlight.

  “Where are we going? Actually?” Andra asked, taking another step back.

  “To the gods’ dome. Actually.” He drew out the last syllable, mockingly. “Like I said.”

  “Why are we going this way?”

  “It’s peaceful.” He shrugged. Then flicked his hair out of his eyes. It wasn’t slicked back as it usually was, and it was surprisingly long—down past his chin. It didn’t look as effortlessly tousled as Zhade’s.

  “Peaceful?” Andra asked. “The place where you execute people?”

  Maret gave her a blank expression. “It relaxes me.”

  Despite the derision in his voice, he looked more comfortable than she’d seen him. In fact, he almost carried himself like Zhade, and if he’d had pockets, she bet his hands would have been stuffed inside. It was easy to forget they were brothers, but if she were to see them side by side right now, there would be no question they were related.

  She wanted to ask him about his guards—if he was just going to wander around outside at night without them—but she didn’t want him to think she was planning to take advantage of that. Even though she was. But did he even need his guards? The crown was dull in the darkness, his unkempt hair mostly covering it, but she still felt its presence like a weight. Just a few weeks ago, he’d used it in this very courtyard to murder. He could easily use it to attack her with a nearby ’bot. Hell, he could probably just overpower her physically.

  “Should we really be going to the ’dome at night? Weren’t you the one who said I shouldn’t leave the palace for safety reasons?”

  “That was Prezdin actualish.” He patted down his hair, mimicking the chief of security’s nervous tic. It almost surprised a laugh out of Andra. “Scared off by one assassination attempt?”

  Was that a threat? It felt like a threat.

  “All part of being a goddess.” She swallowed. “I guess.”

  The courtyard fountain bubbled away.

  “You promised to fix the ’dome, and you can’t do that if you never see it.” Maret huffed. “Are you scared? For certz? You’re a Goddess and I have this.” He pointed to his crown. “We’ll be evens.”

  The crown was exactly what she was worried about, but she couldn’t say that without revealing she had no godlike powers with which to protect herself.

  As though reading her mind, Maret said, “You’ve yet to perform a miracle. What good is a goddess without them? Sides, don’t you want to save all those people you say I murder needlessish?”

  Andra swallowed. Perhaps she should have been focusing on the ’dome. Amid all his pithy advice, Zhade had mentioned miracles several times, but Andra had blown it off. She’d decided to put all her efforts into her escape plan, but maybe she should be figuring out how to perform one so she wouldn’t be killed before she had the chance to leave. And even though Andra hadn’t seen an execution since her maids’, she didn’t doubt Maret would use her inaction as an excuse to kill again.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Finalish,” he muttered, and led her through the garden.

  * * *

  The city was a study in contradictions. Carts lined the streets instead of cars or hovers. Horse-like creatures drowsed, tied to posts at front stoops and in alleys, while overhead, drones flew rooftop to rooftop, window to window. Andra heard no steady hum of electricity or ambient noise of enviro’mods, but the tingle of passing nanos pricked her skin. It was habit to reach out with her ’implant, as was the disappointment that inevitably followed.

  Maret walked in silence. At first, Andra was surprised he wasn’t using some kind of carriage, but she got the impression he was sneaking around too.

  He took the easiest route to the ’dome, if not the quickest. The palace was on the edge
of the city, but craggy hills of rocks and forest stood between it and the ’dome’s wall. Instead, they walked in the direction away from the silver tower.

  The streets were mainly deserted, except for the stray drone or ’bot, which Andra mentally cataloged. She didn’t see any mech’bots, but there were definitely sections of the city that were more populated with ’bots than others. Occasionally, she saw someone smoking a pipe in an alley or gazing at the moonlight from their front stoop. The desertion, coupled with her current company, gave the city an eerie feel.

  “A magic bean?”

  Andra started. The voice had drifted from the shadows, coarse and aging, half grinding stone, half whispering ghost. Her gut reaction was to run, but her curiosity got the best of her, and she stepped toward it.

  Maret grabbed her arm, but she pulled away. She heard him mumble something under his breath.

  An old man sat huddled on a sheltered stoop. A craggy grin spread across his face, revealing a row of crooked teeth, rotting and yellowed like the keys of an old piano. He held out a tiny serve’drone. The moonlight shone down on the man’s modded arm, gleamed off the fluttering mini’drone hovering over his open palm. “A good price for a charred lady.”

  His modded arm was decorated with a design that felt familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She drew forward.

  Maret tried to usher Andra away. “No deal, boyo,” he said, his voice masked by the accent she’d heard Zhade use with the soldier at the gate.

  They’d barely taken a step before the old man wheezed. “I reck what you are, witch.”

  Andra froze, and she felt Maret tense beside her.

  The man stood, his legs wobbling beneath him, but his eyes never left her, hard as flint. “You exist a fraud.” His voice rumbled, his accent thick. “You use the people and corrupt our leaders, just like the others. There exist no goddesses, no gods. No angels or sorcers or magic. Sole tricks of light and sleight of hand. You happen dangerful. A liar and a thief, and you deserve what comes.”