by J D Cortese
Agdinar looked up, trying to muster strength. The whirlpool of machinery was pushing its way up and into two collecting buildings, which had moved close to Central Park just for that purpose. They were up there, watching them.
He thought that maybe they should let the Towers capture them; inside their energy-shielded buildings, even a nuclear blast wouldn’t matter.
It was too late for that. He had taken sides, and now there was no choice other than to save the city, not himself.
“Sarinda,” he said, extending both hands to her. “Do you know what we are trying to do?”
“Oh, yes. Cut a path above us, with our suit's weapons.”
“Yes, the swarm of parts is weaker above. We're going to break a gap in it,” he said, looking up and wondering if that could be enough to save them.
“But why doesn't Faith do it herself?”
“I'm glad you called her Faith. Our military vehicles have weapons only to attack from the air; they're not supposed to fire above. And we can't turn Faith upside down now—the flow will take us like any other piece of junk.”
“Okay, let's do it.”
He smiled at her wonderful determination in the middle of such a mess; he wasn't even close to feeling confident. “Let's do it,” he said.
What Agdinar hadn't told Sarina was that they needed to coordinate their minds to be effective in responding to Faith's commands. He wasn't sure about how it all would work but couldn't argue with Faith's ability to calculate.
Sarinda froze, and Agdinar's neck muscles tightened up.
For someone who'd never experienced a mind conduit, she handled it very well. The surge of emotions and the shame of sharing all thoughts—past and present, private or public—with another human being could break the will of even a well-trained guard.
He felt a darkness and a space in him, not as big as when he was inside the Eye, but also intimidating, to the point of giving him vertigo. He had learned to let go of the blunt of these deep mental contacts, as the barrage of images was for the most part irrelevant—too many of them were a mix between reality and daydream—and they would fly by at a speed the mind couldn't apprehend.
He saw a young Sarinda, walking the path along the Hudson and holding her dad's hand.
He saw her family hiding after Chinatown, and crying while saying goodbye to friends she'd never see again.
He saw many views of Central Park, each closer to a barren and wild patch of land.
And he felt heat and cold, anger and despair, so powerful and different from his own emotions, which had been weakened by growing up in a controlled world where his body and mind had been fed by machines. But the lack of control of her mind when confronting people and events was exhilarating to him.
And he also saw that she was taken with him as much as he was with her.
She looked at him, smiling now with fierce intensity, while at the same time blushing like a child.
“That was powerful,” she said.
It was too much for any single day, but luckily for them, they wouldn’t have time to explain anything to each other. This had not been, and likely wouldn't be, a day even close to normal.
...WE NEED TO DO IT.
“All right, Faith.” Agdinar turned to Sarinda. “Open your arms,” he said.
“How much?”
“Like you're being crucified.”
He had no idea where that had come from.
“Now, fire,” he yelled.
Bursts of blue light lurched from his hands, and then from Sarinda's. They cut a path through the phantasmagoria of moving objects, pulverizing and exploding every single one in the line of sight of their weapons.
He kept yelling “fire” and triggering Sarinda’s main weapon, while helping to point it to where Faith indicated. Deeper in his mind, a push was coming from Faith's mechanical intelligence—she was more machine than mind—and it created cold lights, beautiful starbursts, out of every thought they had.
Agdinar was getting confused about those wandering thoughts, but he kept his eyes on Sarinda. Their connection had continued after establishing it with the help of Faith.
Every few seconds, he saw the world through her eyes. There was fear, but also a wanting, each time their sights intertwined.
...WE ARE MAKING PROGRESS.
He looked up and saw that, somehow, the fitful patterns Faith was creating with the energy weapon had distorted the swarming monstrosity around them. Each tool the Towers were recalling contained a tracker for a searching energy beam—the genius of Faith had been to figure out that their suit weapons would confuse this guidance mechanism, overwhelming the antigravity engines latching on to each object.
A gap was clearing around Faith. A few more discharges and there would be a path upwards they could travel to the lower clouds. He tried to communicate with Tysa, but she was distracted, bent on trying to hypnotize Faith’s forward console. It was pointless, as Faith was the only one who could drive them to safety.
As Agdinar returned his attention to the lightning coming from his fingers, the air he was breathing stopped coming in.
An immense container, too large and full of positional sensors to be dissuaded from its flight path by their puny blasts, was approaching them. The thing, which resembled a gigantic model of a corn cob, bounced hard on Faith's wing and slid over its surface, grooving a path of wrinkled alloy. The grating noise it made was loud enough for Agdinar to hear over the clamoring of a hundred air collisions.
The container kept moving over the wing, without slowing down, and it hit Agdinar with enough force to propel him up and over the fuselage’s edge. He couldn’t think of anything except that this was his end.
He was shaken from his stupor by Sarinda, who was holding his arm with both of hers. She was trying to send him a mind-comm saying she would help him. He grabbed the wing’s edge with his other hand and tried to stand, concerned about the cluster of debris passing over Faith. The effect of their weapon would be gone in seconds.
And then, another piece of debris flew over the transport’s wing and hit Sarinda. She disappeared in the shining tornado.
Agdinar got to activate her suit's highest setting for the personal shield before she was taken away.
He had to duck before another container pushed him away, but then the slick floor under his feet started to move—the link with Faith's gravity had been lost.
He tripped and saw the wing's edge, a scary glimpse at a converging set of swirls coming all the way from the ground.
Too fast for him to see, Faith ensnared him with a whip of blue cords. The whiplash was considerable, and he almost lost consciousness.
He couldn't see Sarinda anymore from his precarious hold on the ship.
He hadn't known what true panic felt like until that very moment.
Chapter 47
“Where is she?” Agdinar had regained a foothold on Faith's wing, and he saw the whirlwind of metal still disrupted around them.
But not for long.
Where is she?
His thoughts came with unusual force, echoing in his own mind.
...SHE IS ALRIGHT...FOR NOW.
“Where? We have to get her.”
...THERE'S NO TIME.
...WE NEED TO DECIDE...THE BEST FOR ALL.
“No, we are not leaving her. Can you guide me to where she is?”
...YES, BUT YOU NEED MORE TRAINING TO OPERATE THE SUIT.
…FLYING WITH IT IS...
Agdinar was already running to the wing's edge and jumping onto a flat carrier that eerily resembled a tomb’s marble slab.
Faith had to help him, and as he jumped clumsily between the larger objects that circled the ship, he had trouble keeping his footing and lost his balance twice. Agdinar engaged the antigravity device on the suit; rather than flying, he floated a little farther and managed to lift a couple of the containers—they collided with others and shook the patterns of the swirling mass. He didn't see one large underground tunnel-making artifact, and i
t almost took his head off.
...I NEED TO PROTECT YOU.
So, protect me...
His blue suit suddenly turned red, and it started to emit a low-level yellow light. He felt the power raising, a strength both different from and alike to contracting his muscles.
And a counter started on one of his inner viewers.
Five minutes.
With the servo-flying engaged, Agdinar kept moving away from Faith and climbing the wall of objects. His jumps were getting longer, and he made some progress scanning the area and following Sarinda's suit beacon. The only time he looked up, Faith resembled a black crescent moon surrounded by a spiraling tube of gray metal.
Then, he saw her.
Sarinda was floating unconscious, protected from debris by the opened jaws of an excavator robot. A thin rim of green light flickered around her body. The energy barrier was almost exhausted.
Hitting with his knuckles several small cameras and drones—which exploded soundlessly and shrouded him with smoke—Agdinar crossed the few remaining gaps that separated him from her body.
He hugged Sarinda, trying not to hurt her with the servo-strength.
Two minutes.
He realized that her breathing was shallow, and she had a serious scrape on her right temple, with that side of her face coated in blood—the impact had probably launched the suit's emergency shield. A few drops of blood rose in the air, trapped in the gravity funnel.
One minute.
“Sarinda,” he said, almost yelling.
She moved and opened her eyes.
He hugged her again, realizing how he was both ready and unable to cry. And then she turned to him and hugged him, without opening her eyes. The inchoate world surrounding them disappeared for a timeless moment.
Agdinar then looked down and was startled by something he couldn't imagine happening.
Faith was gone.
And there were no more minutes to spare.
* * *
The carrier beams were slowly realigning, and Agdinar could tell they were being lifted together with everything nearby them. The disorganized gap they had created at such high cost was disappearing—the risks they had taken, her being hurt, had all been for nothing.
Above, several holding stations were collecting and organizing the incoming paraphernalia. Some of that equipment was so old that it looked as if it came from the world below.
But there was a difference from the present world, and it was their knowledge. The Towers knew what was coming, and the closest buildings had unanchored themselves and were slowly creating a gap on the sky. He could tell they were taking their time moving away, which suggested they still had a few hours. But their divergent paths told him that the departure had been calculated for a huge explosion—of whatever kind of bomb was down-world, and wherever it was hidden—a blast that would likely obliterate the city.
When he turned to see how Sarinda was doing, something jolted him so much that his eyes opened until they hurt.
...IT WAS ENJOYABLE TO SEE YOU SO WORRIED.
Faith. Somehow, she was approaching from the opposite direction of where she'd been before and creating a gap around herself. Her wing got close to them, as if she were tendering them a hand to grasp.
“But how? How did you make it here?”
...A LITTLE TRICK I LEARNED FROM A FRIEND.
...THE CREATIVE USE OF MY ELEVATOR.
He understood. It was against all Tower protocols to engage the elevator to self-target the ship—something to do with the mathematical equivalent of removing a bridge one was crossing—and a machine, even a high-level AI like Faith, would never do it without confirmation from a Watcher, preferably one more senior than him. But Faith had accepted that they were far too deep in trouble to worry about official confirmation.
As Faith approached the stranded friends, the wing came very close to them, but some floating boxes kept breaking the gap. Agdinar held Sarinda and tried to climb the wing; he didn’t have enough strength left.
“Hey, boy, give me your hand.” It was Tysa, her good arm wrapped by black strings from the ship.
Agdinar stopped, remembering the High Line and the extended hand that had once tried to push him to certain death. But there was also Sarinda’s hand, the way she’d saved him from oblivion.
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “Jump.”
Another container, smashed into an irregular lump, passed between them. Agdinar couldn’t jump holding Sarinda and still grab the wing. And if they fell, his suit didn’t have enough power in it to fly back.
“Please,” said Tysa, her voice strained. “I want you both here…I need you.”
He looked up, saw Tysa’s eyes, and trusting what little he knew of humanity, he jumped. Faith’s strings released Tysa and opened into a black octopus that covered Sarinda’s limp body and Agdinar’s sore one.
And, as if to answer beyond any doubt that the ship wanted them safe, they were all now sitting in the cabin, seamlessly flipped—even Tysa, sitting dazed on the back seat—with such promptness that Faith had not paid attention to try and fix Sarinda's bleeding.
Before Agdinar could ask for anything resembling an explanation, or control his nausea and a feeling of impending doom, Faith felt confident enough to take control of the navigation.
They took off, crashing against all kinds of debris and making a lot more in the process. If it hadn't been so terrifying, Agdinar and the other two stunned passengers would have enjoyed the passing fireworks.
Faith emerged from the mass of increasingly twisted metal, and she corrected her path to head straight north, like nothing had happened.
Agdinar knew, just by looking outside the cabin’s side windows, that this wasn't true. There were gashes on one of the wings, and its edge was bent upwards, causing the incipient clouds they were crossing to swerve irregularly around it. A small white-hot fire under Faith’s other wing was even more worrisome.
The self-repairs had started and, in an hour or two, Faith could be ready for battle again.
But hours were not in store for them, or the city. In a little bit longer, hours would cease to exist for New York.
And those hours suddenly turned into minutes, as Agdinar could see a whole squadron from the Towers taking off and starting a descent over the city.
The burst of alarms reddening Faith's main console answered any question he might have had about what they were doing near the ground.
Chapter 48
Out of nothingness, silence waited for Agdinar, and it was a total silence. It wasn't just the cabin; the world outside was in absolute calm.
They were floating in a small garden, surrounded by galleries that were familiar to him—he had taken some lessons in New York's history, but the place seemed to come from a much more ancient city, like Athens or Istanbul.
He looked back at his friends, and they were sleeping. This didn't worry him as much as it fed his weird sense of dislocation.
Did Faith take them back in time? It was possible, but not realistic, as a military ship couldn't possess the kind of massive accelerator that would trigger a jump back, especially one to the distant past. And accidentally finding a stray space-time wormhole that would fit their purpose was past possible.
He tried to remember what had happened after the other ships tried to attack them. Explosions. Blasts of energy. An AVM firing a hooking field at them but failing to ensnare them. Then, more smoke and fire all around the cabin.
And then nothing.
There were no people walking those columned aisles that squared the garden. But Agdinar had a memory of robbed men strolling by, and he couldn't tell if they'd come from his lessons or something he had seen.
...DON'T WORRY.
“Faith, where are we?”
...I TOOK YOUR ADVICE.
“My advice? What did you do?” The fear that he had said the wrong thing to his genie raised the hairs of his hands, which were already trembling.
...YOUR TRICK WORK
ED.
“My trick?”
...WE ESCAPED THE SQUADRON USING MY ELEVATOR.
“That was very dangerous,” he said. Now it was clear why they had been unconscious—luckily turning into deep sleep and not a coma. Faith had transported itself, and them, straight down from the high clouds. He had used the elevator to transport the AVM to the riverside, and in doing so had unwittingly taught Faith to trigger it to escape.
...WE ARE AT THE CLOISTERS.
...STILL IN NEW YORK.
This stopped Agdinar cold. He knew about the ancient monastery, transported block by block from Europe. His mind, still in a daze, connected this with the actions of his rogue servant, who'd risked their lives tele-transporting them atom by atom to a safe place.
He realized that he would have done the same thing.
“I'm proud of you,” he said.
...THANK YOU.
Agdinar looked outside. Total calm, with only the distant rumble of cars trapped on the West Highway.
“Can you find Rychar and his motorcade?”
...YES. THEY ARE TRYING TO CROSS THE HENRY HUDSON BRIDGE.
“Is that far from here?”
...JUST A MINUTE AWAY.
Agdinar saw that Sarinda was waking up, more sleepy than groggy. “All right, Faith,” he said, “but let's wait a second, until we're all together on this and have a plan.”
...YOU ARE GOING TO NEED IT.
“You're starting to sound like Dhern.”
...I HAVE COLLECTED SUBSTANTIAL PORTIONS OF HIM, AND I WILL SOON HAVE A WORKING SEGMENT.
“So, you're copying his style.”
...MAYBE.
* * *
Agdinar wanted a moment alone. He stepped out of the cabin and wandered to the corner of the garden. Faith was taking up most of the open space between the cloisters. She hadn't bothered to turn her invisibility on, as the place was eerily empty.
There was a penetrating smell of grass; it had been cut recently, and its shreds were strewn all over the garden. The world was so beautiful in the quiet of sunset, and he didn't want to tamper with it. But it was too late for that. The split nature of humanity, which had done so much to build the extraordinary city around them, had also developed the means and will to destroy it.