“For what?” Chrystal asked, suddenly, completely certain they wanted to kill her. This man wanted it so badly she could see it in his eyes. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
The water-eyed woman spoke. “We’ll demonstrate that you aren’t human, and that you are more than a robot, and that you are a gross violation of the rules we hold dear.”
“And then what?” Chrystal asked.
No one answered.
“Put her away,” the new man said for the first time.
Nayli’s brows furrowed. “Wait.”
The man asked her, “For what?”
Vadim remained silent, his weapon still trained on Chrystal. Always the professional.
Nayli glanced nervously between the man and Vadim. “She feels. I know she does. And she has supporters. Maybe family. I saw how Nona looked at her, and the Historian.” She turned toward Vadim. Her voice softened, and she looked into his eyes the way a partner or a lover does, with knowledge and authority. “You might not have had time to notice. People care about her. This could be a mistake.”
The water-eyed woman said, “Don’t get soft. Put her away.”
Vadim stared at Nayli for a long time, and then shook his head. “You cannot be weak.”
She licked her lips. “I know.”
Vadim gestured with his weapon.
Chrystal almost reached out to grab it in the split second when it pointed away from her, but hesitated too long.
One man walked backward in front of her. Vadim and Nayli gave her voice commands for each turn, staying far enough behind her that she couldn’t spin and kick them.
Her footsteps and theirs echoed in the corridor.
They led her to the ship’s brig, a two-celled jail with three heavily armed guards. There, they herded her into one of the cells with no processing. The metallic click of the lock sounded like a slap.
A metal chair and a metal table were both bolted to the floor. A metal bed frame with no mattress fully occupied one wall. An open toilet took one corner, barely more than a hole into which she could pour bodily fluids if she had any. She felt the absence of tears, the ghost of a thing she should be able to do naturally but would never be able to do again.
“We’ll be back in the morning,” Vadim said to her. “Be ready for us.”
Nayli addressed the guards in a loud, commanding voice. “No touching. No roughhousing. She hasn’t got a vagina anyway. Consider this a sacred duty, a night that will make history for you.” She raised her voice so far it sounded strident. “Don’t screw it up.”
“We won’t,” the biggest one muttered.
Nayli looked at Chrystal for a long time, measuring. “Don’t antagonize them. We’ll bring you a fresh outfit for court tomorrow.”
Her captors left. She sat in the chair, since someone with a human body would probably sit. Three men with guns stared at her.
She entertained herself by imagining ways she might take down three armed guards and escape if she could get the door open. She might be strong enough to tear the door open. It would be fun to try.
But first the guards needed to leave, and that wasn’t looking very likely.
Chrystal sat at the table with light pooling all around her and tried to think of some way to at least message Jason and Yi. Then she imagined taking down all of the guards. Or just running and running and running. She tried to think of something to say to change Vadim’s mind, or to finish convincing Nayli.
The guards shuffled and moved from time to time but never stopped watching her.
After an hour and five minutes, one of them cleared his throat and said, “You really don’t have to sleep.” It was a statement with a question behind it.
She pursed her lips. “I don’t get to sleep. I’m not flesh. But I was born here—as a human baby, just like each of you, and I grew up here. My mother lives right here on the Deep.”
“We’re not on the Deep anymore,” another guard observed.
“Where are we?”
“Think of us as following the Deep.”
“Okay. You’re right though, I’m not going to sleep.” She paused. “Do you want to talk?”
“No.” The guard stepped back.
Too bad. It would have been nice to understand how they thought. The bars and the silence and the proximity of weapons wore on her.
All she could do was review her memories and plan. Whatever data sources the ship had, she couldn’t access them.
They had locked her up in the same place they usually put humans. Maybe she could make something of that in court. In all of her time on the Deep, and even the High Sweet Home, she hadn’t really cared about the murky past or the schism that created the Ring of Distance. Oh, it took up almost a week of one history class. But it had never come up in her real life.
She wasn’t well-equipped to be in a court. She’d seen court proceedings, of course. Everyone born on the Deep had seen some proceeding or another, and some people considered court high entertainment. But the only time she’d stepped into a courtroom was for a school assignment. She hadn’t even gotten a very good grade.
They weren’t going to give her a chance. This might be her last night.
Even though she could track time precisely, she didn’t have any tools for speeding it up.
Eventually Nayli, Vadim, and the water-eyed woman came for her. True to their word, they brought a clean outfit—a blue dress very like the one that Jhailing Jim had chosen when he introduced her to humanity on the Satwa.
She had no choice except to change right in front of them. Nayli had the grace to turn around, but Vadim and the others stared at her. The dress didn’t fit as well as the one on the station had, and the shoes they had chosen for her were too small, so she elected to walk barefoot.
Unlike yesterday, they had her lead, prodding her from behind with voice commands. She recalled all of the halls, all of the doors, and she used the walk to re-check her memories.
Even though she knew which way to go, she hesitated as she got to each turn, waiting for Vadim to nudge her ever so slightly one way or the other with his weapon. When he did, she complied.
Six turns away from the jail and the guards, she stopped, schooling a look of confusion onto her features.
Vadim’s hand jerked his gun away from her torso to point out the direction she should go.
For a split second, no weapon pointed at her.
She leapt high, her right front foot kicking the gun sideways.
It flew from his hand and clanged into the wall.
Nayli and the water-eyed woman were both reaching for their weapons.
She ran as fast as she could, using her ability to think quickly to run more deliberately, so that each footfall was confident, each movement perfectly balanced. Others would see her as fast, maybe even blurring out, but she herself lived a slow motion moment, a perfect moment of just now, only now, this bend in her ankle, that shift of her pelvis, that change in weight.
She was around the corner before she heard them scream at each other to catch her.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHARLIE
Kyle brought the Verdant Sun into the ranger station as smoothly as Yi had docked the Star Ghost up above. Charlie helped Jason and Yi unstrap the repair robot and get it onto the ground, and then he told Jean Paul, “Go ahead. I want to take care of a few things.”
Jean Paul grinned at him. “You want a moment alone.”
Jean Paul would understand how tough it had been for him to be surrounded by people all the time. “More than anything.”
“Shall I loose the hound?”
“What do you think?”
“Don’t be too long. Remember that you have a guest.”
“If I’m not inside in half an hour, come get me.” Charlie glanced at Yi and Jason. “You’ll be safe with Jean Paul. He’ll take care of you.”
Jean Paul led the others out of sight, still grinning.
Charlie stood still and closed his eyes.
Sunshine fell across his closed lids and a slight breeze stroked his cheeks, a feather of cool air. A bird called from somewhere overhead and the low hum of a skimmer in the distance indicated the presence of other rangers.
Lym smelled of air. He would never before have said he could smell the air—he would have noted flowers or trees or animals or cooking food. But right now, he could smell unfiltered air.
The beauty of it nearly brought him to his knees.
In that moment, when he was still soft with the air and home, he heard Cricket’s three-foot hop. She leaned her huge head against his waist and he buried his fingers in her fur. She made a contented noise deep in her throat, and he mirrored it as best he could and then gave in and fell to his knees. His arms snaked around the tongat. He buried his face in her fur and cried.
The tears were a complete surprise. He couldn’t remember crying, not for at least twenty years. Maybe more. The tears overwhelmed him, emptied him.
Cricket’s rough tongue licked the water from his face and he tightened his grip on her.
Jean Paul came back for him before he quite got ahold of himself. When he noticed Charlie’s tears, all he said was, “She missed you, too.”
Charlie clapped him on the shoulder. “I missed you as much as I missed her.” He looked up at the sky. “But I missed Lym most of all. I wasn’t born to live in a tin can.”
“Maybe none of us were. Amfi is waiting for you.”
“I was hoping to sit by the fire and have a drink before I had to go to work.”
“I can bring Amfi to the fireplace. I don’t think I can put her off. She didn’t ask to talk to me. So if you want, I can give your friends a tour.”
Charlie said, “I’d like you with me. Sometimes you see things I don’t see.”
“Someone needs to keep your pets safe.”
“They’re people!”
Jean Paul put up both of his hands in surrender. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Suit yourself. Does Amfi know the soulbots are here?”
“I have no idea.”
“Okay. Tell Yi and Jason to wear clothes all the time. Tell them I told them their lives may depend on them being seen as human.”
“Are you that worried?”
“You’re the one that told me people are killing household bots. And Kyle felt disturbed by them. No way to know what he’ll say to who.” Charlie started toward home, Cricket sticking close beside him.
“How many years did Kyle work for you? You can trust him.”
“I don’t trust anyone right now.”
Jean Paul stopped dead. “Even me?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
They arrived in the kitchen, and Charlie reached far into the cupboard for a decanter of good whiskey that they’d bought together at a summer fair. He poured two glasses.
Jean Paul held his up. “To you being home.”
“To me being home,” Charlie sipped and then held his glass up again. “To surviving the Next.”
“Spoken by a man who brought two home with him.”
“They’re—I don’t know what they are. You haven’t seen the real Next. We’re not going to convince them to ignore Lym by asking nicely.” He hadn’t said that to himself so directly.
Jean Paul stopped with his glass halfway to his lips. “It really is that bad?”
“Yes.”
Jean Paul finished his drink. “The fire’s hot. I’ll be right back with Amfi.”
Charlie took his boots off and sat close to the fireplace. Cricket flowed along with him, lying down at his feet and staring at the flames. Charlie hadn’t seen fire since he left Lym. It felt as good as smelling the air. Maybe for an encore he’d go sit by a river and dig his fingers into some soil.
It felt so good to be home, so warm and so true. He leaned sideways in his chair and stroked the tongat’s neck and shoulders.
Jean Paul whistled to alert him that he and Amfi were arriving.
Charlie commanded Cricket to stay in place. She stiffened for a moment and then relaxed under his fingers.
Amfi followed Jean Paul in, sat, and stared at the fire. She spoke softly. “Thank you for seeing me.” Wrinkles spun out from bright brown eyes and puckered her lips. Either she dyed her hair the same color as her eyes or it hadn’t decided to go grey yet. She wore a typical gleaners outfit: all natural materials that had been hand-woven into a soft and loose multi-colored fabric. Modern brown boots with good soles covered her feet.
Jean Paul poured handed Amfi a glass of wine, returned to the kitchen, and brought them each out a plate piled with nuts, bread, and small orange fruits called hamis. “I’ll check on you later,” he told Charlie, and left the room.
Charlie took a hamis and bit into it, savoring another part of being home. Hamis had never adapted to space well; they were only easily available on Lym. When he finished the fruit, he asked, “What can I do for you?”
She sat back in her chair and said, “I was told to speak to you. That you would understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That the Next are here on Lym.”
“Freida showed me pictures the day they killed her.”
The fire popped. He sipped at his drink and tried not to think sour thoughts.
Amfi spoke quietly. “We must change Lym’s opinion about the Next.”
He looked at her surprised. “Into what? They’re murderers. They killed Freida and her family.” He remembered the dead bodies, including the boy. They’d probably still be alive if he hadn’t let Nona talk him down into Neville.
She stopped watching the fire and watched him instead. “Will you hear me out?”
“If we let them on Lym they might destroy it. We can’t have them land ships here.
She gazed at him, stoic. “Please listen.”
Cricket must have sensed his tension. She lifted her head and turned it toward Amfi. He patted her neck and whispered that it would be okay. “Go ahead.”
Amfi set her empty wine glass down. “At first, we gleaners wanted to kill them all. Murder for murder, death for death. We’d lost at least fifteen gleaners to the Next, and three tourists. We’re nomadic. The number could be larger. Far larger.”
He sipped his drink, thinking of Yi and Jason nearby and vulnerable, but also of his hatred of the Next’s demand to come here. It was too complex to relay to a stranger, so he said, “I understand.”
“In some moments I still want to kill them all,” she said. “They bring up a deep-seated fear that’s worse than the fear of the dark.” She laughed softly. “Or like the fear of the ice pirates that our mothers instilled in us.”
He laughed as well, remembering the same stories.
“We’ve been watching and documenting, trying to understand. After all, we can’t win through force. We only killed one of them. There is no army on Lym—only rangers like you. Mostly loners.”
He grimaced. “Guilty.”
She laughed, soft and low and laced with irony. “Lym cannot shoot a single ship from the sky.” He refilled her wine glass and his whiskey and stared into the fire. He had missed fire so much. “I met the Next on the Bleeding Edge, way out past most of the Glittering. They’re strange. We can’t possibly understand them.”
She nodded. “We know. Part of what drives us gleaners is a desire to understand the human experience. Among many things, we believe death is a teacher. If we have the ability to live for hundreds or even a thousand years, we lose the spiritual edge that death gives us.”
“I’ve heard that belief.”
She clasped her hands together and placed them in her lap, breathing deep. “Another belief I hold is that encountering the new is part of being human. We should see and feel death, and we should also see and feel its opposite—the new wonders that are arising in our world.”
He wasn’t sure what to say so he fell silent. He shifted to move his feet closer to the fire. Starships and stations were always the same temperature. While he couldn’t remember his feet
being cold in space, he also couldn’t remember them being warm.
Eventually, she continued. “We debate, always, who we are. The answer is not clear. We are not, after all, a religion.”
He nodded, scratching Cricket’s head with one hand and holding onto his whiskey with the other.
“I agree that we may never understand the Next. The simple fact that they don’t have to die makes them very different from us. However, We learned a few things while you were gone.”
“Go ahead.”
“There are far more robots here now than people realize. Mostly they live in the wild and the dead and unrestored places, which is why we gleaners encountered them first. They’re all connected one to another and can communicate through a network that is hidden from us. One theory is that they use each other as network nodes.”
“That seems elaborate.” Rather like a conspiracy theory. He added a few small logs to the fire, pleased when it flared up.
“I know. And we haven’t been able to detect the network, so we can’t prove it exists. But when something happens to one in one place, the others all know.”
“How is that possible?” he asked her. It sounded like a conspiracy theory.
“I don’t know. But we’ve seen it demonstrated more than once. Although not in our captured Next.” She looked like a cat with a mouse, or a young girl with a secret.
“You captured one? Tell me.”
“We’re keeping it in a secret place. It talks with us from time to time. It appears to be trying to understand humans.”
“I met the Next while I was in space,” he said. “Don’t assume they’re sympathetic to humans.” He wasn’t ready to risk Jason and Yi’s safety by telling her they were here, but he said, “I met some of the soulbots—human and machine hybrids in human-like bodies—that the Next created from the people on the High Sweet Home. They still feel their humanity. But the others, the true Next? They were . . . frightening. Very powerful, and very different.”
“Do you know what they want?”
“They want something from Lym and plan to come here. A lot of them. They haven’t exactly said why.”
Edge of Dark Page 33