Defy the Worlds (Defy the Stars #2)(14)
“Come on. You know I love this stuff. Besides, we’ve had a lull in our workload lately, which at first was awesome, but has kind of turned boring. So I need a new project.” She brings up another holoscreen to reveal an image of the noted celebrity Han Zhi, whose physical beauty stupefies humans of all genders and sexual preferences. Even Abel, who experiences desire only after being touched, finds himself staring at the perfect symmetry of Han Zhi’s face. Virginia sighs. “I’ve been reworking his latest holo to give it a better ending. Why do they even make the sad ones where the lovers don’t end up together? Nobody wants that!”
This should be Abel’s cue to defend Casablanca, by far his favorite fictional narrative. If Ilsa didn’t leave Rick at the end, the film would lose much of its power. But another memory comes upon Abel too strongly to deny.
For an instant it’s as if he’s back on his ship, saying good-bye to Noemi forever. Her fighter slid out into space as Abel’s vision blurred with the first tears he ever shed—
“Abel?” Virginia stands up. She’s a few centimeters taller than him, and her expression is worried as she looks down at him. “Are you okay?”
“My condition is unchanged.” By this Abel means that it is operationally satisfactory. There’s nothing “okay” about remembering he’ll never see Noemi again.
“One thing I’ve been asking myself,” Virginia says easily, as though he hadn’t drifted away from their first conversation, “is why you’re so gung-ho about all of this. I mean, I get you being curious, but going super-spy commando at Mansfield Cybernetics parties? That’s pretty risky for plain old robotics research.”
Abel blinks. He’s never questioned his reasons for vigorously investigating Mansfield’s work. Its necessity seemed self-evident, but he finds he cannot define it. What controls his behavior outside his conscious thoughts is his programming—the programming Mansfield himself installed.
He will never be completely free of his creator.
“Directive One,” Abel says. He envisions the multicolored string lights all around them as the guts of a computer, as if they were conversing in the center of his own mechanical brain. “My core command demands my devotion to Burton Mansfield. Even though I can defy him, I remain interested in him. I have a strong need to understand his actions and motivations. I am even… invested in his welfare, and want him to be safe and well.”
Virginia leans onto her desk, her expression wary. “That doesn’t mean—Abel, you’re not thinking about turning yourself over to him, are you?”
“Don’t worry, Virginia. I’m in no hurry to die,” Abel says. “As Burton Mansfield knows.”
With a grin, she holds up her hand for the archaic, obscure human gesture known as a “high five.” Apparently this is a fad on Cray. Abel returns the gesture, but as their palms slap together he gives silent thanks that Harriet and Zayan aren’t here to see it. They’d never stop teasing him.
Yet it is pleasant even to have people who might tease him.
Which makes him miss Noemi again. Why is the pain always fresh, as if they had just said good-bye? How long will it take him to heal? Humans talk about “moving on” in ways that suggest the process should begin in weeks, if not days. Five months after Noemi’s departure, Abel still has to consciously steer his thoughts to other topics, daily.
Maybe human love is different. Maybe it’s weak, as variable as the weather and so as ephemeral as a breeze.
Abel’s love is not.
5
WITHIN FORTY-FOUR HOURS—TWO GENESIS DAYS—THE entire planet is in chaos.
Not every single person is sick. No disease is that contagious, not even Cobweb. However, more than one in five individuals have come down with the illness, and surely the virus is incubating within others. Noemi, having survived the illness, is immune. That makes her literally the only safe person on her world.
Everyone else is terrified, and that terror is ripping them apart.
On the first day, everything goes very still. The markets—and all other public places on Genesis—are closed by decree. It’s a desperate attempt to cut down on infections, but probably it was too late as soon as the first star hit the ground. Noemi spends the whole day looking after Mr. and Mrs. Gatson, who grow more feverish and weak with every passing hour; she feels as if she can do nothing but watch the white spiderweb rash spread across their bodies. That night’s a hungry one, because the emergency ration drop-offs won’t be ready until tomorrow. Noemi eats a solitary dinner of leftover vegetable stew and two cups of coffee, willing herself to stay awake.
The Gatsons need her. They’ve never welcomed her as a daughter, but they took care of her when she was sick, and she pays her debts. And deep on a level she doesn’t like to admit, she’s glad they finally have to rely on her for a change.
But on the second day, she’s past any feeling that petty. Nothing is left but sheer terror.
“Please!” Noemi pleads as she tries to walk Mrs. Gatson through a gathering crowd outside the hospital. “Please, let us through, she needs help—”
“Why do you think the rest of us are here?” snaps an old man. “Wait your turn!”
But there’s no such thing as turns, or a line, or any kind of order. The crowd’s panic is so thick in the air Noemi imagines she can feel it, like a vibration in her very nerves. Mrs. Gatson is heavy against her shoulder, barely upright, shivering despite the blanket Noemi wrapped around her shoulders. People bump into them, pushing them roughly from side to side. The hospital’s white walls seem to gleam against the storm-cloud-dark sky, promising hope, but there’s no reaching it through the desperate scrum. Sick people who can’t stand throng the sidewalk, laid out on blankets or just on the grass. The pale rectangles of cloth in their long rows remind her uncomfortably of tombstones in a graveyard. Some of the patients groan or cry; most of them lie quietly. A few are so still that Noemi suspects they’re already dead.