“Pittsburgh . . . ,” the Abbot mused. “Erasing whole cities seems a bit excessive.”
“The hell it is. They sent soldiers to my Precepture. I’ll have it back from them double-quick, and then I’ll make an example of Armenteros that will make three-star generals and two-bit presidents think twice for generations to come. I’ll make a story out of her. A myth.”
“She’s a patriot, Michael. I’m sure she’s taken her personal risk into account.”
“Patriots,” snarled Talis. “Spare me.”
“And what of my Children?” said the Abbot, cupping one hand over my ear. “I’m sure the Cumberlanders must have made some wholesale threat against them, to keep the UN at bay. Now that you’re here, what will become of them?”
Talis popped the air out of his cheeks. “Well, losing all the hostages would be a blow. But Armenteros will never go that far. I’d turn Kentucky into a crater and send her kids to lap up their damn drinking water from the bottom like dogs. She knows that.”
The hand cupped over my ear, the pain roaring in my hands, made the next words echo dully. “So, not all of them, but some . . . ?”
The AI shrugged. “Tell you what, if they come looking for kids to line up against the wall, give them someone young and cute. I don’t think Armenteros has the stomach for it.”
“But you do.”
“To save the Preceptures? Absolutely. Call it the morality of altitude. I’m an awfully long way past my snot-nosed days. Now quit nattering at me. I need to punch a hole out through this snow so I can wipe out Louisville.”
“You were human, once, Michael.” The Abbot spoke in his most gentle, teacherly voice. “I know you remember.”
But Talis didn’t answer.
19
A THIRD SKIN
I lay on the map table. My hands pounded in time with my heart. They seemed to have a second skin, a swollen, stretched-tight skin made out of pain itself.
Shock, I thought. I’m in shock. The world was going grey. Then suddenly the Abbot was leaning over me. I jerked with surprise, then froze.
“It’s only—” The icon of his mouth narrowed, as if with sorrow. “Anti-inflammatories and a local anesthetic. The soldiers brought it, but I have examined it. Would you trust me?”
I knew he was seeking a response, but I didn’t understand what his question was. I did not understand anything at all. The Abbot opened his damaged hand, and I caught the glass-glitter of a syringe. An injection? Injections, a bullet to the head. We were at war. The grey room.
“Greta?” The Abbot’s voice echoed oddly. “Greta, do you want—” But I still couldn’t answer. Insectile, the Abbot took a scuttling sideways step down the table. He slipped a needle into the vein on the back of my left hand.
Injections, then.
Numbness bloomed out from the needle, and in seconds it was a third skin—a skin of no-feeling between the skin itself and the skin of pain. The Abbot did the other hand, and then the pain was gone. He wasn’t murdering me. Of course he wasn’t. I was only in shock.
The Abbot lifted one of my hands in his damaged one, and used his good hand to softly trace the lines of bones. I felt the pressure of his touch but not its sensation—a strange thing. I was unbecoming myself, unraveling.
“I think there is some chipping fracture in the trapezoid carpal, and perhaps also the metacarpophalangeal joint of the index finger,” he said. “But I am no doctor.”
Talis scrunched his nose. “Broken? Really? Thought I was in time.”
The Abbot glanced at him sidelong.
“Don’t look at me like that. What was I supposed to do, blow the place up with my hostages still in it? I came as fast as I could. Took a trickle download to the nearest Riders’ refuge. My brain still feels like toothpaste, and I probably killed my horse.”
Another beat.
“And I’m not apologizing. It’s your Precepture. What were you doing?”
“As it happens, I had a tokamak shackle around my mind and a bolt through my hand.”
“Toka— I’m so blowing up Pittsburgh. I’ll tell them you said hi.”
The Abbot hmm’d. “Please, don’t go to trouble on my account.”
“Broken?” It was my own voice, though it seemed to come from somewhere else. “Are they broken?”
The Abbot tipped his face down toward mine, tinting it a gentle shade. “They’re minor, Greta. The breaks are minor.”
“A sonic knitter would fix you right up,” said Talis. “Amish here objects to all that tech stuff, but the Cumberlanders will have one.”
“No,” I rasped. “The Cumberlanders—”
“Barring that,” said the Abbot, “I think ice. Would you?”
Another pause.
“I’m not fetching you ice,” said Talis, when it became clear even to him that he was the only person the Abbot could possibly be asking. “I don’t fetch.”
My hands seemed to lose contact with the table, like balloons. Time drifted.