by C. Gockel
“That's not being human anymore!” Kenji said. “And the gates aren't going to be your toys, Noa.”
She thought of One invading James's mind and rolled her eyes. “Of course not!”
Tone strident, he said, “One way or another, this alliance between the gates and the Republic spells the end of the human race.” And then in a softer voice, he said, “Come home, Noa,” and then looked away, fidgeting again with his thick green robes.
Noa swallowed. He was saying he loved her. But as much as he loved her, he understood her so little.
There was gold around the collar and the sleeves, she noted. Kenji was probably the most technically adept of the Luddeccean Authorities bureaucracy, but he had no inclinations toward power. Whomever came into real power would collaborate with him. His station in Luddeccean society was assured.
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn't.” For Noa there would be nothing on her home planet. She'd be shuffled to a corner—the eccentric, childless sister of an eccentric, but useful, man.
“Noa, you can have amnesty,” insisted Kenji.
Noa smiled sadly. She could try to explain all of that to him, but didn't have the energy. Instead she said, “No, I can't. I picked up a cryssallis infection in the re-education camp. It wasn't treated in time. By the time the Fleet picked James and me up, my lungs were so full of holes even nano repair wasn't an option. I have artificial lungs.” It was another reason she'd been stationed aboard the Humayun Khan. Outfitted for augmented refugees from Luddeccea, it was the perfect spot for Noa to resume her duties while still under techno-medical observation.
Kenji began to blink rapidly at the floor.
A lung transplant was no small thing. Trying to make light of the situation, the frightening first rejection of initial implants, and the painful month of recovery, Noa said, “But they're amazing. They're a new-fangled type that will allow me to breathe underwater, and I won't be needing an oxygen recycler ever again. Ha. James doesn't have that on me anymore.”
At last Kenji looked at her, or in her direction. “Don't you hate that final insult?”
“What insult?” Noa said, putting a hand to her chest. She couldn't feel the scars at all anymore.
Kenji put his hands behind his back and looked back out at the stars. “The LGI knows that the gates are inserting spies aboard your vessels and in your governments.”
“As they are our allies, we prefer to think of them as observers and ambassadors,” Noa countered. And the agents on the deep space vessels were very useful; allowing the vessels to stay in real-time touch with inhabited systems. The materials for the Qcomms were expensive and rare; some day all ships might have them onboard, but until then, it was only being implemented in System Six where hostilities had broken out again, and ethernet communication broke down in the asteroid belt.
He crossed his arms in front of himself. “That they would put the archangel here, after it deceived you—that has to be intolerable.”
Noa's jaw sagged. Had Kenji not seen the moment James and Noa had shared just before they'd entered the room? She frowned. Or had he seen but not understood? It didn't matter. Last vestiges of hope fading, she replied, “James's assignment here has been a happy circumstance. It has allowed us to be together again.” She released a breath. “If you'd spoken to Mother and Father, you would have known that.” He'd cut himself off from them all.
Kenji took a step away from her. “You are with … that?”
Noa's jaw got hard. “He's not a sex 'bot, Kenji.”
He huffed. “You're rationalizing.”
Noa's lips parted, about to defend her relationship with James … and then she caught herself. She couldn't argue with him, could not change his mind in the time she had left.
“Our meeting is done,” Kenji said, turning away, his long, fine, green robes swooshing around Luddeccean lizzar skin boots. Noa blinked at his attire as he walked around the table, and she felt pity rather than anger. She might have been him if Luddeccea were a different place where she'd had any hope of fitting in. Well, no, she couldn't be him; she wasn't a genius, but if she were a man, she could have been an officer in the Luddeccean Guard … she never would have met an agent, or communicated with One—a true alien mind. Her life would have been the lesser for it.
Just before Kenji reached the door, Noa said, “You know, if you change your mind … I know you'd find a way to get in touch with us.” The Fleet was pulling away from Luddeccea. A gate would be established near Adam's Belt to ferry ore to other systems where it could be processed, and for trade with Libertas. The Fleet would be watching Luddeccea from those outposts, and Noa strongly suspected they'd send drones to the planet's surface as well.
Kenji paused. The door whooshed open. Turning away, he strode through without looking back.
Noa's shoulders fell, and she sighed. She reached to her connection with James … and couldn't find any words.
“Noa?” James asked.
“It didn't go well,” Noa admitted across the ether.
“I'm sorry. I know it … hurts.”
“Yeah, I know you do,” she replied, thinking of Eight.
Noa left the conference room and headed in the opposite direction her brother had taken, passing by some medics with patients on hover stretchers.
She heard a techno-medic talking to a little girl. “So you don't have family in Sol System?”
“I have an auntie at S5O11,” the child sniffed.
“There's no gate in that orbit or agent near there. It will take a while for a message to get to your auntie. But we'll send it, okay?”
She kept walking, passing into the section of the deck where the temporary hospital beds were, distracted by her conversation with her brother. Kenji was right, the universe had changed inexorably. She thought of Ghost in his prison cell, and how exclusive banks and institutions were beginning to revert to paper records and signatures. All ether conversations could be eavesdropped on with the power of a gate. As it became generally known, would the Republic fall into chaos? And as much as she wanted to believe in symbiosis, the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were emigrating to Luddeccea every week meant they did not share her vision. If humans became hostile, would other gates go the way of Eight?
A techno-medic ran past her, and Noa heard shouting down the long aisle of temporary hospital beds. “His neural port is damaged! I can't get in to restart his heart.”
“We don't have any more augment hearts here—we need to get him stabilized and back to Sol—but we can't access it via hard link to restart it.”
“James!” Noa cried into the ether.
“I'm there,” he answered.
She heard the pounding of feet behind her, and stepped aside as two men in med uniforms ran past her. She heard machines beeping, whirring, a woman sobbing, and a man's voice. “We know his heart is too small, but we were afraid to go to the hospital.”
Over those sounds, she heard James's voice. “Try to reach the ether, and I'll follow your signal.”
Noa passed by another cloth divide and saw James in front of a boy who couldn't be more than fourteen. His face was covered in a mask, and she heard air pumping, and a sharp beeping in the rhythm of a heart, getting slower. The boy shook his head, eyes wide and frightened.
“Think of anything so I can find your channel,” James ordered. A moment later, he rolled back on his feet, a dazed look in his eyes as he connected. James turned to one of the techno-medics. Giving James a curt nod, the man stood straighter and put his hands behind his back. “Channel received, have medical override for this model ... connected, running diagnostics … found problem, can temporarily re-establish beat …”
There was a flurry of activity from the technos and doctors. She heard calls for sedatives, for anesthesia, a battery. She heard her Chief Medical Officer say to the parents, “He's stable for now, but as soon as we get to Sol System, he'll need a transplant.”
The woman put her head on the man's shoulder. He looked he
avenward and murmured a quick prayer of thanks. The parents didn't ask how James accessed the boy's personal ether. Among the crew there had been some grumblings about lack of privacy with James being aboard, but for now, as he helped them do their job, they didn't care.
She swallowed, and flexed her hand with her miscolored augmented fingers. There would always be purists. She frowned. It had taken hundreds of years for the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas to reach an equilibrium. War wasn't inevitable, but there would always be those who'd scream for it.
“Noa?”
Noa's eyes met James's across the crowded space.
“You look like you need this,” he said, tossing their ball of light at her in the ether. Catching it, Noa sent it back. He smiled, and Noa felt her chest grow warm. The galaxy had changed, but humanity would adapt because love and hope still remained.
~FIN
This is the end of Noa and James’s journey, but I will be revisiting this universe. There are other ideas I want to explore and 6T9 and Carl Sagan still call to me, as well as a few new characters that desperately want to be introduced.
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Other Books
The Archangel Project
Carl Sagan's Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe: A Short Story
Archangel Down
Noa's Ark
Heretic
I Bring the Fire - an Urban Fantasy/Sci-Fi Series featuring Loki, Norse God of Mischief and Chaos
Wolves: I Bring the Fire Part I (free ebook)
Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II
Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III
In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5
Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV
The Slip: A Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir’s Point of Smell
Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V
Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI
The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story
Atomic: A Short Story
Magic After Midnight: A Short Story
Other Works
Murphy’s Star: a Short Story of First Contact