Edge of Dark (32 page)

Nona drank some water, acutely aware that the others weren't drinking.

Yi continued. “We won't evolve backward into flesh.”

Chrystal glared at him.

He smiled, and the infectiousness of his smile drew a smile from Chrystal. He continued. “We'll evolve forward, until we too can inhabit silvery robotic bodies, or perhaps even the bodies of spaceships.”

A siren song about a robotic future. Nona shivered, the hand holding her glass shaking.

Yi must have seen it. “Yes, really. We are becoming more than we were. So much more. Jhailing Jim does not lie when he promises humans an evolution of their choosing.”

Jason took over. “But the Next don't comprehend what we lost, or that more is not always better.”

Nona hadn't known what to expect, but certainly it wasn't this conversation.

The white walls and simple furnishing and lack of any distractions but water were wearing on her mood, scratching at it like a swarm of not-quite-right.

Chrystal had spoken the truth. She moved with her own mannerisms, still had her own family—most of them—and still remembered her friends. She clearly cared what Nona thought of her. But she had also become something—different—than she had been. “Surely the choices are not as simple as they say,” Nona mused. “Surely they'll negotiate.”

“We don't know,” Yi said. “We are not
of
them. Not yet. We're in some middle area in their culture where they're teaching us things. It feels as if we're children, maybe not yet even in grade school. We have value to them. We were told it was okay to be honest with you, and we have been. We were told to tell you to trust them, that they keep their word.”

Yi glanced at Chrystal, who picked up the narrative. “I'm sure they will ignore you if you ignore them, as long as you give them access to the resources they want. They may want a lot, though.” Her voice softened. “I have never been to Lym. I don't know for sure what they want there, but I think it is rare metals. Perhaps they can be asked about treating it well, or even about putting it back in order when they're done.”

Nona imagined Charlie's reaction to being told Lym was likely to be ravaged, and if he was lucky, the bullies might fix it up before they left. “Lym is the most beautiful place I've ever seen. There are waterfalls and wild animals and untouched forests and sky. Charlie will die to protect it—I'm sure of it. And maybe he should. Nothing Gunnar created in his private reserves on the Deep is anything like it at all. Nothing.”

Nona was amazed at how flexible Chrystal's robotic features were, at how they looked sad in a deeply nuanced way at this moment. “The Next are very single minded.”

“Tell me all of the things that you know they want,” Nona asked.

Chrystal shook her head. “I've told you what they have shared with me. They want us to be examples of what you can become in the short term, and they themselves are examples of what you can become in the long term. In all cases they believe they are far better.” She looked down and then back up. “They
are
more capable. As are we.”

“Capable of life. But is that the same as capable of love?” Nona asked. “Is that what you lost?”

Chrystal smiled once again. “I still love my family.” She paused and then continued. “The Next don't want to be distracted by a war. If you become useful to them—in the way that they think of as useful—then you can come out and play. If you leave them alone, fine. But if you cause an uprising? You'll be squashed.”

Nona heard each use of the word
you
as repudiation of Chrystal's humanity, and she hated it. “And they really expect all humans to make the same choice? Are they that naive?”

“I don't know,” Chrystal said.

“Are they unified? Do they all want the same thing?” Nona pressed.

Yi answered. “The ones we've met are.”

Nona looked from one to the other. “If you were still human, what would you do?”

They looked back and forth between each other, their facial expressions subdued.

Nona finished her water, waiting, feeling awkward.

Chrystal answered. “Knowing what we know? Help them or stay out of their way, but don't become them. If you ask us this again in a month, we might say you should become them.” Chrystal glanced at Yi. “It doesn't take long to forget some of what it was to be flesh. We are trying hard to remember, but we don't have the same structures in our bodies any more, the same body memory, blood memory. Ours are the memories of machines.”

Yi nodded. “There is an attraction to what we are becoming. The closer we get to it, the more we forget what we lost.”

Jason cleared his throat. “I won't forget. Ever.”

Yi gave Jason an incredibly gentle look for a robot. “You're closer to your old self than I am, closer by far. But each time we learn something new, it intrigues you.”

Nona had expected it to be impossible for robotic bodies to blush, but nonetheless Jason's cheeks seemed to redden slightly as he looked away.

She had no idea what to say.

Chrystal gave her a long, measured look. “It's not a pretty picture. But you need to go and decide. You and the other humans. We can't help you.”

“I don't want to go yet,” Nona blurted out. “I miss you so much.”

Chrystal stopped dead in her tracks, as unmoving as a statue. Then she said, “I miss you, too.”

Chrystal talked like Chrystal, moved like Chrystal. But the creature in front of her didn't feel like Chrystal no matter how much Nona wanted her to.

Nona really needed to cry, but she wasn't about to do that here. She might hurt the robot's feelings.

CHAPTER FORTY

CHRYSTAL

As soon as Nona left, Jason took Chrystal's hand. The actual haptics of the touch were cool robotic hand to cool robotic hand, but she felt warmth from the gesture. “That was far harder than I expected,” she said.

“Really?” Yi asked. “You looked very happy to see each other.”

“I missed Nona long before this happened. I missed her the whole time we were on the High Sweet Home. We've been friends since we were little girls.” She let her words trail off.

“She said she'd be back,” Jason said.

“Talking to her made me feel more
different
than anything else has made me feel since . . . since this all started.”

Jason squeezed her fingers. “I felt that, too. Like in the time it took her to start to reply to a comment, we could have had a whole conversation.”

“I think that's part of why the Next created us,” Yi said. His words came fast, the way they always did when he was learning something. “They can barely slow down enough to talk to us, to help us. I had a long talk with Jhailing Jim once about it—the one in our heads. He said it's very hard to work with the newly born, that we're slow.”

“Don't use the word born,” Jason snapped.

“I agree,” Chrystal said. “We were born from our mother's wombs. What the Next did to us was death and engineering.”

“Meeting your friend made me feel more like a robot.” Jason swung his purple hair around, looking more like a person than a robot in that moment.

Chrystal laughed and withdrew her hand and stood up. “If anything happens to her I will come apart. I can't take it if they do this to her.”

“Even if she
chooses
to become like us?” Yi asked gently. He reached across the table and picked up the water pitcher and the single glass and the box of tissues that had been there for Nona to use. “It's not that far-fetched. I might have chosen it.”

She stared at him. “Really?”

“I'll never know what I might have done if asked.” He looked away from them, staring at the wall. “I've always been fascinated with artificial intelligences. I talk to all of the ship's AIs that I can. There will be others like me. There will also be old people, and young. There will be poor people and the sick and the lost. The curious. Some will choose this.”

“Nona won't.” Nona had been horrified to see her like this. She hadn't come out and said so, but Chrystal knew every nuance of her friend's facial expressions and body language. She had been horrified and uncomfortable, and at least a little bit glad to leave when Jhailing Jim had come in to separate them.

“You won't come apart if she does,” Yi said. “You're stronger than that. Besides, you are a person and so are Jason and I. We're just not human. We still have free will and dreams.”

“Do we?” Jason asked. “What do I dream?”

“I want to go help them decide,” Chrystal said. “I want to show them what we are, tell them, make them see what they lose.”

“I think that's been the plan all along,” Yi said. “That we would go into the inner system. I think they'll take us on the
Bleeding Edge
, as soon as they get through the volunteers here.

“Shoshone will regret her choice.”

Yi frowned. “I heard that three others have come forward and asked to become like us.”

Chrystal sat down again, feeling the tiniest bit of despair. Anyone who would die on purpose just to live forever was insane. If only there was a way to explain that.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

NONA

To Nona's surprise, she found Charlie in the waiting room where she'd left him, sitting in a chair and staring at his slate. He looked so relieved to see her that she immediately went to his side. “What did you learn?” she asked.

“There's no one clearly in charge here. No decisions. People are planning to flee or turn on each other. Shoshone left a mess, and everyone's afraid. Everyone. I have a way for us to leave.”

“Leave? Now?” She stared at him, dumbfounded. “I can't leave Chrystal.”

“What was it like to see her?”

For a moment she didn't know how to answer. “She's still my best friend.”

“Really?” He looked doubtful.

“Now I wish you'd come with me. You'd have seen.”

He responded with a wry smile. “I want to hear all about it. But first, we really do have to leave. Whether or not the station survives, it's dangerous here. Probably especially for you.”

“I can't leave,” she said. “Not until I see Chrystal again, not until I know when I'll see her after that. Can you imagine? Hi Satyana. I flew all the way out there and I got a half hour visit and I came home.”

“I'm sure Satyana wants you safe.” He looked miserable and intense all at once. “I don't want to leave you. I want you to come with me. But I have to go. I can't be turned into a robot or captured here. I have to save Lym.”

“I see.” She did. It made her cold and frightened, but she understood. “I'd give you the
Savior
if we still had her.”

“I have a way out. A different ship. And I . . . I don't want to leave you here.”

Her head spun. “I can't abandon Chrystal. Who knows what will happen to her?”

“Worse than
has
happened to her? She's less destructible than you.”

“I have to see her again.”

Charlie glanced at his slate. “We have half an hour. Can they come with us?”

Oh. Oh! “I don't know.”

“Think about it,” he said. “If they're prisoners, then they can't come, but you should leave before you get locked up by either side. None of us knows if we're trapped here, not really. Not until we try to leave. But the plan is for a lot of ships to go at once.”

“They must have weapons on the
Bleeding Edge
.”

He looked resolute. “I know.”

“It's running,” she said. “I don't think we should run.”

He put a hand on her cheek, his palm warm. “Do you think we should stay? Really?”

She stared at him, trying to read the look in his eyes. Stubbornness, and fear. And concern. He was concerned about her. “Half an hour?”

He nodded.

“You be ready to go. I'll try to get to the bays in half an hour. If I'm coming.” Everything was happening too fast. “I need to talk to Chrystal.”

He looked miserable.

She took his hand in hers and brought it to her lips, kissed it. “For luck. Whether we leave together or not.” She stood up and turned around, going immediately back toward the
Bleeding Edge
.

“Nona!”

She stopped.

“Good luck.”

She nodded and turned away from him, blinking back tears.

Nona was pretty sure she remembered how to get back to the room she'd met Chrystal in. She stepped through the airlock and into the right hallway. Her footsteps were soft on the slick surface, a detail she didn't remember from her first trip along this corridor. Before she even got to the first turn, a small herd of tiny drones chittered in her face. She stopped. They must have some kind of propulsive force to keep them off the ground, but she couldn't tell how they worked. They moved too fast for her to get a good look, zipping here and there in front of her.