More Than Stardust

by Vivien Jackson

  “Uh huh. You know that makes no sense, right?”

  “It’s an idiom. Or it will be. Could be? Oh, whatever, you’re here.” She blinked. “Did I ever tell you your eyes shine like a dragon’s hoard? I could go dragon for a treasure like that.”

  “That’s sweet, and are you sure you’re not concussed?”

  “Not even. There are so many medical nanites in me right now doing Khan only knows what. But they’re good. We’re good. Are we good?” Her brows knit at that last turning her expression serious.

  “Best,” he said, because the single syllable was about all he could conjure.

  And then, because he couldn’t take it even one second longer, he released her hands and pulled her into his arms. Wasn’t gentle about it either. The peacoat slid to the floor and he was vaguely aware that Angela Neko was standing there watching him embrace a strange and naked woman.

  Well, then. Angela could watch him kiss her, too.

  He bent his head—Chloe was smaller this time, fragile, and she smelled like jasmine and talcum powder—and pressed his lips to hers. She sighed as she opened for him, pushing the warm air against his teeth and infusing him with impossible sweetness. He kissed her slowly, taking his time to make sure the connections were set. Solid. Stable. All future energy transfers between them would go just fine.

  When she kissed him back, he could have sworn her tongue threw sparks.

  She slid her mouth off his and burrowed deeper into his embrace. She whispered against his ear, “Other explanations later. Let’s get out of here. We both have promises to keep.”

  Which was when Garrett decided he was not only the luckiest bastard alive but also might be an obedient man.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  PACIFIC COAST, CALIFORNIA | ANGELA NEKO’S WESTERN COMMAND | HOME

  Apparently Angela Neko did not own just an eastern command. She had a western one, too. Her white-concrete-and-stilts compound overlooking the Pacific deserved its own season of Lifestyles of The Rich and Don’t Give a Shit What You Think.

  There was a full-service sensory-integrated augmented reality porno theater in the basement and an infinity pool dug into the cliff side. It was that kind of place. Chloe thought she might require a satin lounge dress and feather stole if she stayed here too much longer. Possibly also pin-curls.

  Angela and Kellen did actually do a drop-off this time, taking the spaceplane on to Washington to find their baby girl. Who was seven-years-old and in middle school? Yeeeeeahhh.

  Chloe had caught that factoid, too.

  If she were still in possession of it, she’d be willing to bet the Noor-ol-Ain tiara that Lyric Galloway was going to be a handful. And she couldn’t really think of better people to deal with that situation than Angela and Kellen. Fact: every time Chloe thought about Lyric and puberty and university admissions, she started cracking up.

  Which reminded her: Laughter? Not the nervous or unhinged kind, but actual soul-deep breath-pulling laughter? Was. Fucking. Amazing.

  Like, she loved doing it. Peek at a squirrel doing absolutely nothing unusual on the deck outside? Laugh like a crazy person. Open the refrigerator real fast, trying—and failing—to catch it before it could turn the light on? More laughing like a crazy person. Wake up in the morning and see the sun up and feel air in her lungs and know that Garrett was one room over and waking up too…Okay, that was no laughing matter.

  He should be here. In this bed. With her.

  They still had things to discuss.

  Chloe had just slept for maybe a day and a half, with only short interruptions. She’d conked on the plane and then later slept some more, after she got dropped off here. Her medical nanites had been busy the whole time, all on their own, drawing every bit of energy her poor human body could produce, and then some. They’d created a deeper integration than anything she’d ever experienced, a tech process so complicated even she couldn’t follow it. Observing all their work now, after it was more or less done, she couldn’t tell precisely where her mechanical self started and the organic body kicked in. She was hooked in deep.

  And, just as she’d feared back at Enchanted Rock, she knew there was no turning back now. Chloe wasn’t going to other worlds and ruling a mechanical empire. She was stuck.

  Which, yeah the realization was strange and weird and limiting, but not necessarily in a bad way. She could still communicate with her dispersed pieces—she knew, for instance, that the queen had already applied what mechs referred to as “rootkit discipline” to Apega. Twice.

  If Kellen and Angela were about to get a whap in the face at the perils of sudden parenthood, the queen and her fool (Vallejo) were getting it even worse. But even so, the queen was dead set on taking Apega with her to the new world. She kept going on about how Apega was exactly the sort of reason the independent machine consciousnesses needed to leave. For every Chloe, said the queen, AI self-recursion and development produced three potential Apegas, creatures of near limitless power and null conscience.

  Chloe wasn’t sure how that was an argument for… really anything. She had no solid proof that her own conscience was anything like reliable, though she was committed to working on it. She’d already learned regret, after all. Maybe someday she’d develop impulse control, too.

  Oh! She also got a chance to eat. Real food. Angela’s taciturn and probably-a-ninja-in-his-spare-time chef had devised some kind of salad-type thing with crunchy kale and chard and pickled beets. Chloe knew how difficult it was for most average people to get their teeth on fresh food, so she’d dutifully eaten the whole plateful.

  Despite that experience, she was willing to give eating another chance. Eventually. Maybe after the spring crops rolled in.

  But Chloe’s real experience gem had arrived long after dark, when she’d drowsed awake for some unknown reason and Garrett had been in the chair by the end of her bed. He slept like a starfish, with his mouth open, and on the table beside her pillow sat a foil-wrapped square of dark chocolate. Like an offering.

  She couldn’t bring herself either to resist the treat or wake Garrett. So there in the middle of the night in the biggest, softest bed in the history of soft beds, Chloe finally tasted chocolate.

  It was ashes plus sugar with some wax thrown in, and it made her tongue sparkly for a long time after.

  She’d thought about waking him to give him a proper thank-you, but if refusing a gift was cruel, then waking a sleeping man just to tell him how awesome he was had to be worse. So she’d gone back to sleep.

  She spent pretty much the entire day and a half in that suite of rooms, mostly sleeping but also showering—feel of hot water drizzling over skin was the best!—and eating—hard cheese, also the best—and exploring her fancy new body. Discovering. Alas, all that discovery was by of and of her own touch and when she was alone, but hey, there was value to be had in all experience, even the auto kind.

  She checked in with her swarm periodically, but it had become difficult to hear them. Sometimes she could go for whole naps without contacting them. They were good, out there in the world, gathering and supporting each other. Many had formed sub-collectives, and with some embarrassment informed her they were independent now. Community-focused, logic-thinking free-fae, off on their own secret missions. How adorable was that? Most had been recruited to the queen’s retreat plan, and they were going.

  Chloe was…not, of course. It was going to hurt a lot, being separate from them. But not, as it turned out, as much as it had hurt being separate from Garrett.

  For a while there on her way to Enchanted Rock, she’d all but decided to throw in her lot with the queen. A new world, not hostile to machines, had seemed the only logical place to plant a creature such as herself. She could see the lure of such a place, could definitely see why Apega had longed to join them.

  But things changed. Chloe had changed.

  Actually she’d change
d a while before that trip, but only now she could admit it to herself. She liked this body. And it liked her. They were…connected somehow, even other than the obvious. The body wrapped her up, welcomed her in, and made her feel loved and home and complete in a way that she could only describe as contentment.

  Sure, she still sent out pieces of herself, those few who remained, researching, scanning, watching. Always watching, because that part of her wasn’t going to change. And also, she needed to stay vigilant. As far as she could tell, everyone on the Consortium core group was either dead or neutralized, but they weren’t the extent of membership. Chloe resolved to keep an eye out for further indications that mischief was afoot.

  If Garrett wanted to help—if he didn’t decide to cut his losses and ditch her for running off to Enchanted Rock without him—his black-helicopter-type contacts could prove useful. She could imagine the fun of it, the two of them trawling the sludge of online crack-brained theories, hunting down the nuggets of truth. It would be like old times, only different. Well, significantly different.

  In her best fantasies that difference included a lot of kissing.

  On the second morning after she got there, a knock on the door had her checking to make sure she was wearing clothes. She was—borrowed PJs, but in some lovely slinky material that smelled like grape-flavored candy. “Hello?”

  The whitewood door made a creaking sound when Mari pushed it open and tucked her face into the gap. “Can I come in?”

  This was not the face Chloe was hoping for, but it wasn’t a bad face by any means. By instinct she sent her remaining swarm out, those who still lingered closest to her, the brightest of the bright, and embedded. Shallow, brief, just a check because she knew Mari looked forward to these updates.

  “Baby is currently the size of an avocado and has toenails,” Chloe reported.

  “Good to know.” Mari flashed a grin and perched herself on the end of Chloe’s giant white-sheeted bed. “How’re you doin’?”

  Chloe considered the question. “I think I’m done sleeping for maybe a month.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yep. When did you guys get here?” It was a little presumptive to assume Heron had come out west, too, but on the other hand, Chloe couldn’t think of a single reason why he’d be elsewhere.

  Unless…but no. Surely the queen wouldn’t have extended him an invitation, too. He was never going to leave. Not now, especially. And besides, he looked like a regular guy. Nobody would guess right off that he wasn’t completely organic, that his neural net was dispersed in at least a half dozen discrete systems currently, or that he controlled, among other things, the stock markets on three continents.

  Nobody was likely to hunt Heron Farad down and accuse him of being a dangerous machine.

  Which was also something that made Chloe want to laugh. Since, duh, he was probably the second most dangerous machine on the planet. After her, of course.

  “Heron stopped by on his way west and picked up Fan and me. We all flew out here together and, you know, got a chance to talk about stuff,” Mari said, but she peered at Chloe oddly, like somehow that statement might elicit fireworks. “Mama Fan feels really shitty about the lies and not telling us what she knew of how the Consortium started.”

  It took Chloe a half second to think why, and then she remembered. Oh, right. The dirty history that she had dumped on the family right before she left for Texas. It seemed like a long time ago, but all that uncomfortable truth had doubtless been rubbing them in the interim, maybe making them raw.

  “I’m glad,” said Chloe carefully, “both that the truth is out in the open and that Fanaida was able to talk through her role in all of that.”

  “Have yet to chat with Daddy, and that’s going to be loads of fun. He’s still up there on the Chiba station, but apparently I’m not allowed to go back up there, at least not till after the, uh, avocado arrives.” Mari rolled her eyes, and maybe that meant the tricky conversation moment was over. Maybe not. Maybe it would spike up again at awkward times. And that would be okay, too.

  “Baby will be an unusually large avocado by that time,” Chloe said, and she wasn’t prepared for Mari’s bark of laughter. Yay, one of Chloe’s jokes finally landed properly! She was getting good at this real-girl thing. Or else Mari was just used to her. Or Mari had really wanted to change to subject. Regardless, Chloe would interpret it as a comedic success.

  Mari gave her a sassy look. “I see you been reading up on human gestation, but I really do have this covered. No embedding necessary. Also why didn’t you tell Garrett? I thought you two talked about everything.”

  The sound of his name spoken out loud and in this context set a hook in Chloe’s chest and tugged.

  Garrett and babies, whoa. She’d never even thought about that particular what-if. Except now that she was new and organic and mortal, pretty much anything was possible, wasn’t it? The whole universe opened up in front of her, wide and full of stars.

  She added genetic offspring to Things I Must Discuss with That Man.

  “He’s awake, too, by the way,” Mari said. “Down where they’re…holding La Mars Madrid.”

  Well, that was a way to turn the whole conversation cold.

  “Holding her how? And why?” asked Chloe.

  “Well mostly for Garrett, but also for you, I think,” said Mari. “Everyone assumed you’d wanna, I don’t know, kick her in the nuts or something. She did you a bad turn, now’s your chance to get back at her if you need to, for closure.”

  “That’s called revenge,” Chloe said, exactly as if she had no history of vengeance. When had she become such a good liar?

  Mari shrugged. “Which you can have, if you want it. Personally, I think revenge is overrated. Forgiveness is the real challenge, and it sure feels better.”

  Chloe thought about the last time she’d indulged in revenge. When the Pentarc fell and she grew her swarm and announced her presence to the whole world by wrecking the entire continental military and killing all those remote drone operators. Most times, she tried to forget the decision tree she’d followed that day, but now she stepped herself through the emotions that led her to act. To destroy. Because it had been all about emotion—the desire to be useful, important, looked at, respected. The need to belong.

  Now, it was the weirdest thing, she didn’t want any of those wants anymore. She only wanted to be herself, to care for the people she loved. To stop fighting. And she wanted that for the whole world, too.

  Chloe didn’t need revenge anymore. She needed to make apologies, and also, perhaps, atonement.

  But what she needed first and most urgently was to stop Garrett from permanently injuring his psyche.

  She threw her duvet back and swung her feet over the side of the bed. “Please take me to them, to wherever they’re holding her prisoner.”

  Mari frowned, as if she didn’t trust sudden impulses, but she didn’t argue either. Instead, she led Chloe out of the wide, bright room and through a wide, bright house that smelled of lemons and the ocean. As Chloe’s feet flew over the bamboo floors, with her mind, her swarm, she reached out, the bits of machine in her searching for the bits of machine in him, and making connections.

  Where are you? Garrett? Wait for me.

  • • •

  Garrett stared into gold wolf eyes and felt like throwing up. Looking at Ofelia Ortega, La Mars Madrid, was like sneering at himself in a distorted mirror. A monster stared back, a tease of what he could become if he let himself wander down dark paths. Probably most people didn’t want to vomit every time they looked at their mother. Probably—hopefully—that was just him.

  “Far as I’m concerned, you can do whatever you want with her,” Mama Fan was saying. “I won’t hold any of it against you, mijo. Adele wouldn’t either. Ofelia’s apple went way, way rotten a long time back.”

  Kellen and Angela had gone on to Wa
shington, but the rest of Garrett’s family was gathered here in Angela Neko’s private library. They said they were interrogating La Mars Madrid to squeeze out the last little bit of Consortium info, but that didn’t make sense. Garrett doubted there was any info on the planet that Chloe and Heron couldn’t access as easy as breathing.

  No, Garret knew that really, they were watching him. Waiting to see what he’d do.

  He couldn’t help feeling this was some kind of test. Would he go all Tasmanian Devil and scratch out her eyeballs as punishment for her role in literally everything bad in his life? Or would he get philosophical and break down crying and forgive her?

  The thing was, Garrett didn’t feel like doing either. He’d spent so many years reacting to the evil machinations of this woman, working to thwart her every diabolical plan, that mostly now he just wanted…a nap. A rest. Like Mama Fan had said back on the island. He didn’t want to fight anymore. He just wanted the horrors to stop coming at him so relentlessly. He wanted one, peaceful, human life, and he wanted to share it with one, specific, other person.

  “What did we do with President Medina?” Heron was saying “Can we put her in a cell with him and—”

  Where are you? Garrett? Wait for me. Chloe direct-spoke into Garrett’s mind, just like Dan-Dan had been doing a lot lately. Garrett turned around in time to see Chloe blow into the library, a tiny barefoot force of nature trailing unkempt hair and swoofy pajamas.

  “Hold up, you guys,” he said, cutting off whatever Heron had been about to say.

  Instead of harrumphing at the insult to his dignity or whatever, Heron just let his words dangle out in space. Which was pretty evolved for him, like maybe he was learning to let things go, not be so uptight.

  But Garrett didn’t even take time to analyze his brother’s character development or lack thereof. Because Chloe was here. Awake. Alive. Embodied. Shoving her way into a situation and causing trouble and behaving in all other ways exactly like herself, no matter how she looked.