by C. Gockel
Noa went rigid and her eyes went wide. Not noticing, or possibly not caring, Sixty added, “Of course, James would probably kill me for it. Someone didn't adjust all of his programming.” Noa felt her cheeks go warm in the real world, and was thankful for her blush-hiding dark skin tone. Sixty vanished, right out of her arms.
“I guess we can see the others now,” Raani said. “They're off Neptune.”
Tilting his head and giving her a wicked smile, James said, “Well, darling, would you like to see our children? They're all awake here in the Qcomm.” Noa couldn't help smiling at his jibe. Something snide was on the tip of her tongue but she erupted in a fit of coughing. Raani's apartment disappeared and Noa was lying on her back on the mattress in the fish cutter, her stomach and lungs spasming with such force that she sat up. When she finally could breathe, James was hovering above her, holding out her water bottle. Lifting an eyebrow, he said, “So you know, I actually explained the situation to 'our children.'”
“That they're adopted?” Noa managed to tease just before coughing again. She took a sip of water, and finally caught her breath.
James was giving her a tight, worried smile. “I told them the truth.”
“That I had a tawdry affair and you had to divorce me?” Noa supplied.
James rolled his eyes to the ceiling and he sucked on his lips, like he was smiling but trying really hard not to look like he was smiling.
Noa grinned in triumph. “Thank you for sparing me from what I'm sure was an uncomfortable conversation.”
“You're welcome.” He grimaced. “But it was my fault that uncomfortable situation existed to begin with.”
Noa flopped back down on the mattress, water bottle still in her hand, staring up at the ceiling. “You did what you had to do.”
“I did want you to see them all again,” James murmured, leaning on his knees.
Because she was still shaken by the intensity of her fit moments ago, Noa closed one eye, opened the other, and gasped melodramatically, “Before I die of an easily-curable lung infection?” She concluded the performance by sticking out her tongue, laughing at herself, and then coughing. She still felt better. The quips were making her feel more comfortable in James's presence.
“Not funny,” James said curtly. “I wanted you to meet my family, so that you would know that although we're not human … we're … real. We're alive.” He looked down at her. “But I didn't have to.”
Noa shook her head. “No, I knew.”
His gaze was heavy on hers. She wanted to put her hands on the battered side of his face, pull him close, and kiss him. She laced her fingers over her chest instead and focused on a point on the ceiling.
“Noa, 6T9 was wrong. I didn't miss anything when I adjusted my programming.”
He'd seen her intention in her eyes. Noa studied a tiny bit of chipped paint above her with the force of a phaser blast. The paint really should have spontaneously combusted. “Of course not,” she replied.
“I want to undo it,” he said.
Noa's lips parted. She didn't want to look at him, just in case she was not understanding what he was saying, but she couldn't not look at him. She gulped.
“I miss being in love with you,” James said. “I look at you, and I feel empty, when before I felt full.”
It was as good a description for an end of a love affair as Noa had ever heard.
“We were good together. We are not the same.” He huffed. “Not even the same species, but our evolution … it was convergent … and you make me laugh and I admire you.”
He made her laugh, and he'd destroyed one of his own kind and put his life at risk to avert a war and she'd seen that it hurt him. She more than admired him.
“I can reprogram myself … and I want to.” Shaking his head, he looked away. The muscles of his legs coiled as though he was about to stand. “That's probably terribly unromantic.”
Noa grabbed his hand, and his eyes flew to their fingers. Noa remembered Timothy all those years ago. He'd just decided he would be in love with her, too, as hard as it was. She'd made the same decision, she supposed, every day. “Whatever it is, it's real.” For her, and now for him. Their emotions might travel along different routes … but the destination was still the same. They were … convergent, she supposed. She swallowed, and looked at their entwined fingers. “If we get rescued—”
“When,” said James.
“Things will be tricky.” It sounded as though the truce between their people was an uneasy one.
He nodded, his focus on their fingers. “Noa, I don't think I will simply flip the switch back on. I need to go back through the code, and update it line by line.” Noa almost smiled at the imagery that conjured up, but then he continued, “I can't have you be everything, like before.”
Noa's burgeoning smile never emerged. “That would be unhealthy,” she blurted out.
He winced. “It was.”
Noa would have felt resentment, in his boots. Another thought occurred to her, just as gut wrenching. “You know, you're free now. You can pursue other people or agents … you don't have to latch on to me because I'm what you know.”
Looking down on her sharply, James raised an eyebrow. “I have plenty of experience with other women, Noa.”
Her eyes went wide.
He ran one hand through his hair. “Or rather, James the professor had plenty of experience. I know, philosophically, that there are other partners out there who I would be as compatible with.” Gently cradling her hand, he met her eyes. “It would be a long, hard slog to find them, though.”
Noa snorted. “You got that straight.” She squeezed James's hand. “And likewise.” He was funny, he respected her, they were attracted to one another, and they balanced each other out. James had an infuriating tendency to see everything that could go wrong; but it was good to know all the contingencies before she rushed in guns blazing. These were all qualities it was possible to find more than once in a lifetime, but it was so damnably hard, and right now their lives were tumbling in a similar direction, quite literally.
“I have to leave room for my people. I can't stop caring about them,” James whispered.
“Of course not,” Noa replied.
He smiled tentatively. “I thought you would understand.”
“I hope your people and mine will be our people, though,” Noa said, pulling their hands closer to her stomach.
He studied their entwined fingers. “I hope so. There is no other way forward, for any of us. I understand that now.”
Noa exhaled, feeling the bite of it in her lungs. Without the gates, billions of humans would die, but at war with billions of humans, the gates and their agents faced destruction, too. If the uneasy truce gave way to war … well, Noa would choose the side that favored integration. If it meant resigning her commission, so be it.
James inclined his head toward her water bottle. “Drink,” he said.
She gave him the side eye, but thought maybe he had some super-hearing way of knowing when a cough was coming on. When she was finished, she asked, “What was that for?”
James flopped down so he was laying on his side next to her. He smiled, blue eyes on hers. “I can kiss now, and I really want to kiss you.”
She wanted to lean in, to kiss him right away, but found herself getting misty-eyed. “Our first real kiss.”
His fingers slid beneath her chin. They were warm, not human, but they were real. “Not the last, though,” he murmured just before his lips met hers.
The mindscape of the Ark's cafe was crowded with agents. Dimitri was jumping up and down, demanding Monica's husband give him another pastry. “It's so good! And it's not like it can give me cavities.” He hardly batted an eye as James walked past.
James released a breath. Noa and James had awoken the two agents designed to look like children and reprogrammed them to believe Ryan was their father instead. Monica's husband missed Zoe, and didn't have faith that the doctor would ever let him near “their” child
.
“If James says it's all right,” Ryan said. “He looks too tired to envision more and maybe he wants it for himself.”
In the real world, James's mouth watered obscenely, but he was too tired to wipe it. He missed food so much. He waved his hand at Ryan. “Let him have it.” It wasn't real. The flavor would be pleasant, but the lack of nourishment would be a letdown.
Noa was standing in the 'scape, talking to 6T9. “Ghost was arrested?” she said, her voice dubious.
6T9 nodded. “For trying to steal from a bank. The gates caught it and reported him. Now he's under house arrest and all his Qcomm to the Luddeccean computers are monitored … word is they may try to extract his port.”
Raani said, “Word has gotten out in the financial community. The most prestigious institutions are falling back and using paper records.”
Noa raised an eyebrow, and James slipped his avatar beside her and pressed his hand to her avatar's back.
Raani shrugged. “Not sure how they'll handle agents when we come forward. Keep us out of ether range? Jammers? The gates are selling tech to the Fleet. The gates don't need money, but as agents come forward, the funds can be stipends for us, to help us meet our physical needs. It's a lot of money,” she said. “Some banks don't want to pass up on it, despite perceived risk. Others see gate assets in their accounts as offering protective benefits.”
“No protection for us if we come forward and aren't given status of legal persons before the law,” 6T9 said. “It's still up in the air … which is why none of us have come forward.”
Noa's eyes narrowed, and then her lips pursed. James knew that look. Before he could ask what she was scheming, 6T9 shook his head and said, “Not that any of it matters.”
Noa's expression softened. “Bad day, 6T9?” In the real world, James felt her fingers tighten on his shirt, and heard a raspy intake of breath and no exhale as she waited for 6T9 to give her Eliza's latest status.
6T9 shrugged. “No, it's better than most, but it doesn't change that I won't have her for much longer.”
Putting down her glass, Noa said, “You know when she's gone, you'll still have us, Sixty. We're family.”
6T9 blinked up at James and then at Noa with wide, hopeful, innocent eyes. “Do you mean we'll be a threesome?”
James felt all his circuitry go dark. That was a little bit much for his programming.
“Errr …” Noa said.
Before either could respond properly, all conversation in the room stopped, and the agents turned to them. Anita piped up, “James, Noa, Captain Wu of the Galactic Fleet is about three minutes from ethernet range.”
“You need to go!” 6T9 cried. “Or you'll die!”
Chen clutched her hands together, eyes moving back and forth as though reading invisible words in front of her face. “The humans still haven't decided what to do with us. The gates haven't given firm instructions.”
“The gates are using us as pawns,” James said. “For data. Just like they had no compunction against allowing me to be tortured.”
“You turned yourself in!” Anita argued, hands on her hips.
Noa's brow furrowed. “The gates want to see what humans will do.”
“Yes,” James acknowledged. He wanted to worry, to be afraid, but his circuits didn't have the energy to heat at the idea anymore.
Agent Ashley crossed her arms over her chest and snapped, “Less than one minute until contact, now. James, if you would re-establish your Qcomm connection to the gates, you would already know all of this!”
“I'll look into it,” he said. Someday, when he knew how he worked, he might. But he didn't like One in his head. One had been complicit in his torture. James relied on One for his processing power, but pretending to be friendly was too much to ask.
“Goodbye,” said James, letting himself and Noa fade from the mindscape.
In the real world, he blinked his eyes. He was laying on the mattress, and Noa's head was on his shoulder, one hand clutching his shirt. Carl Sagan was curled on his chest. The ship was cold and dark. The oxygen in the cabin was at acceptable levels, but Noa had a CO2 converter strapped over her face to compensate for her deteriorating lungs. The device emitted a constant low level hum that did not quite drown out the rasp of her breath.
“I'm going to go sit in my pilot's chair,” Noa said over the ether.
“You don't really need to do that,” James protested, speaking into her mind. It took too much effort to talk. The ship's power reserves had unexpectedly run low, and he was operating on energy siphoned from their plasma weapon power cells. They'd run out of those twenty-four hours ago.
Clambering to her feet, Noa said, “It's psychological.”
James lay on the floor, his vision dark. He should get up, he knew he should. He just clutched Carl Sagan tighter with one hand and pulled the blanket up with the other.
He listened in on the hail, Noa's answer, and Captain Wu's, “Are you alone, Commander?”
James knew from the other agents that Wu had been alerted to their presence. It was gate tech, honing in on the Qcomms, that was the impetus for Wu diverging from the rest of the Fleet, and what guided him here.
“He's fishing, Carl Sagan,” James whispered.
“I'm not alone,” Noa replied over the ether. “I am in the presence of sentient alien life forms.”
Carl Sagan sat up very suddenly, as though he'd heard something alarming from the pilot's chair.
Noa continued, “By Fleet Regulation 2143S1O3, I am declaring them allies of the Republic and collaborators with the Fleet, granting them rights as applicants for lawful permanent residence based on both their service and the potential they have to share their unique technology and act as ambassadors for the receptive members of their species.”
“Can she do that?” James whispered. James the professor actually had that regulation in his time capsule—he'd thought of it as an example of PR overreach and ridiculousness. That regulation was hundreds of years old and had never been used before.
“You're claiming cyborgs are alien allies?”
“See, Carl Sagan,” James whispered. “He knew we were here and what we are.”
The werfle settled down on his chest with a disgusted-sounding sniff.
“Yes, sir, aliens and allies,” Noa replied. “They helped me defeat Gate 8.”
“They are machines,” Wu countered.
“That may well be determined,” Noa said. “But, given Republic and Fleet bureaucracy, it may be many decades before they can be determined not to be cybernetic life forms, and until that time, by the regulation I mentioned, we owe them all courtesy reserved for alien dignitaries.”
“According to the gates' own intelligence, one of their species launched a nuclear strike on a Republic colony,” Wu countered.
“After Luddeccea attacked it, and against the wishes of the other gates,” Noa replied. “Like us, sir, they are not monolithic in thought. And they can aid us. They can give us faster than light communications with Sol System.” She took a deep breath, and James could hear the crackle in her lungs even from across the room. “We can't afford to fail at this … we can't afford more violence.”
An indicator light started to beep on her CO2 recycler.
“On that we agree,” Wu said at last. “I'm going to need to rearrange some accommodations.”
“We'll be here,” Noa said.
James imagined he'd just been upgraded from a shared cell in the brig—or worse—to at least an enlisted shipman's quarters. The agents would still be watched and carefully monitored, but it was definitely a step up.
James heard Noa stand. He needed to be there for Noa if she needed physical assistance … even if he didn't have much to offer. He struggled to his feet. Carl Sagan, perhaps wisely, hopped clear. Noa liked to joke that they were like an elderly couple depending on each other in their convalescence. His vision was tunneling rapidly. He heard Noa approach, but could barely see.
He took a step forward, and gr
avity seemed to upend itself. He slipped, felt pain and sparks at the back of his head, the world went white, and he felt rather than saw a familiar presence.
“Damn it,” he heard himself sigh.
From far away, he heard Noa's voice. “James,” but he was adrift in darkness. “Let me in. James,” he heard Noa say, and maybe because he thought it would irritate the consciousness in the dark, he did. Noa's avatar flickered into his mind and took his hand. In real life he thought she was doing the same—but the real world was hazy.
Noa's avatar whispered, “You fell, and hit the back of your head—” Her focus shifted to the darkness around them. “We're not alone here, are we?”
“No,” James said. He wanted to squeeze her hand, but couldn't make his joints move.
There was a flare of static, and then the voice James had heard before. “Hello, Commander Noa Sato.” In the darkness, a shimmering ball of light appeared.
Noa's hand tightened in his. Facing the light, she said, “Is this some sort of burning-bush routine? Because if you want me to think you're God, it isn't going to work.”
James laughed, never more proud of her. The light pulsed and shimmered. It took a moment for James to realize One was laughing, too.
“We are not gods. We need data.”
“I'm sure you do,” Noa said, her thoughts clipped. She'd told him that the gates did seem in many ways like children—cruel in the unconscious way children were, curious, and sometimes afraid. “And did you get the data you wanted?”
The light pulsed. “I did believe that we could be allies. Our agents as ambassadors was an interesting suggestion. We may use our influence to make it come to pass.”
Other lights danced in the gloom. “Diplomatic immunity seems a potential.”
“Allies seem a potential,” said Five.
“Allies against who?” asked Noa, her avatar's bearing becoming more rigid.
Somewhere Carl Sagan issued a frightened-sounding squeak.
“We don't know,” said Three.
“But there is little chance we are alone,” said Seven. “Alliance with another may not be possible.”