“I don’t mean that I am incapable of performing the transplant.” If she didn’t know better, she’d think Abel was offended. “And I cannot lie to you, as my commander.”
“That’s right. I’m your commander.” Noemi seizes onto this, the one weapon she has that might make Abel stop arguing and move, dammit. “So you have to follow my orders, and I’m ordering you to perform the transplant.”
“Noemi—” Esther whispers. The weakness in her voice slices through Noemi like a blade, but she doesn’t let herself look away from the mech. Abel is Esther’s only hope.
He doesn’t take a single step closer as he says, “Your authority over me is subject to a few strictly limited exceptions. One of those exceptions is that I must obey the wishes of a medical patient regarding end-of-life decisions. Esther’s choice is therefore final.”
Damn, damn, damn! The same programming that saved her life is endangering Esther’s. Why would Mansfield build legions of killing machines and then program them with mock morality? Just one more way the people of Earth fool themselves into accepting the machines in their midst, like the human skin and hair. Noemi wants to scream at Abel but knows it would do no good. Programming is final. Absolute.
Instead she bends closer to Esther, brushing her friend’s pale-gold hair away from her face. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me. We’re on this spaceship out in the middle of nowhere, and I need your help to—to—”
But it’s not help she needs. It’s Esther herself. Noemi knows she’s only made one real friend in her life, but she only ever needed one, because it was Esther, who knew every awful thing about her and loved her anyhow. Noemi’s bad temper and awkwardness and distrust—the same stuff that pushed Mr. and Mrs. Gatson and Jemuel and everybody else away—Esther was the only person who didn’t think those things mattered. The only one who ever would.
A sob bubbles up in Noemi’s throat, but she chokes it back to whisper, once again, “Please. You’re supposed to be the one who goes back. You’re the one who’s going to make it.” The one who can be happy. The one who can be good, who can love and be loved. Noemi can only be the one left over.
“You were willing to die for me,” Esther says. For one moment she’s really able to focus on Noemi; maybe the blood flowing into her is helping a little. “At least now you won’t have to. Not if you take your name off the list. You can now. Promise me you will.”
“Esther—”
“Tell Mom and Dad I love them.”
Abel chooses this moment to interrupt. “I had a thought.”
“Is it about getting around your idiotic programming?” Noemi snaps. Oh, why did she have to say it like that? She doesn’t want Esther to hear her being mean, not now.
“Cryosleep.” Abel points at the pods against the wall. “Often even severely injured people can be successfully put into cryosleep. If she weren’t brought out of it until an organ could be cloned, perhaps—”
Esther wouldn’t agree to cloning either, but cryosleep would be okay. What they’d do after that… Noemi doesn’t have to think of that now. She can leave it to the doctors once they’re back on Genesis. “Yes! Please, yes, put her in cryosleep!”
“I’ll check on the pods.” Abel’s on it in an instant, finally making himself useful again. But after a few moments, he pauses. “I’m afraid the cryosleep pods’ power source was damaged in the attack on the Daedalus thirty years ago.”
“Isn’t there any way around it?” On a ship this size, Noemi knows, every vital system should have backup.
“Normally the ship’s main grid would provide backup power, but I took that offline.”
“I thought you were supposed to be helping me!”
“I am now,” Abel says, his tone maddeningly even. “I wasn’t when you first boarded the ship. At that point you were considered an intruder and—”
“It doesn’t matter!” Noemi’s almost screaming by now, and she doesn’t care. “Just bring the main grid back up!”
Abel nods and rushes toward sick bay’s main computer interface. Noemi takes a deep breath to steady herself before she leans back down toward Esther. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispers. “We’ve got a plan now.…”
Esther’s eyes are closed. She doesn’t hear. Noemi looks up at the biobed and sees the dark truth the sensors reveal: Esther is dying. Right now. This moment.
“Esther?” Noemi touches her friend’s shoulder, stricken. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Please, God, please, if you won’t give me anything else, at least let me tell her good-bye. He’s never answered Noemi before, but if he does now, she’ll believe forever. I have to tell her good-bye.
The sensors flatline. Esther is gone.
In the very next instant, every computer interface in sick bay brightens to full illumination. The damned mech brought power back online just as soon as it was too late to save Esther.
Noemi stands as if frozen, staring down at Esther. Her eyes well with tears, but it’s like they’re crying without her. Instead of sobbing or shaking, she feels as if she’ll never move again.
She’s in heaven now. Noemi should believe that. She does, mostly, but the knowledge doesn’t comfort her. The words only echo in the hollow space that has replaced her heart. She finds herself remembering her family’s funeral more vividly than she has in years—the high winds that blew, tugging at everyone’s hair and clothes, and stealing the priest’s words before Noemi could really hear them. The way Noemi stared down into the grave and tried to imagine her parents lying there, baby Rafael between them, looking up at the sky for the last time before they were covered by dirt forever. More than anything else, she remembers Esther standing near her, all in black, crying as hard and loud as Noemi herself. Years later Esther had revealed that she made herself cry, so Noemi wouldn’t be alone.
Now Esther’s gone, too, and instead of being held close and told she was loved, she had to die listening to Noemi shriek at someone in anger. That ugly moment was the last one Esther ever knew.
It’s dangerous—being angry at God—but Noemi can’t deny the bitter rage she feels at this one last proof that she isn’t enough for God, for the Gatsons, for anyone at all.
The long silence is broken by Abel’s voice. “I didn’t attempt resuscitation because failure was all but certain. Her internal blood loss was too great. We would’ve had to begin the transfusion much earlier to save her.”
“Or we could’ve gotten her into cryosleep.” Noemi turns to stare at the mech. He stands near the computer interface, very still, so obviously unsure what to do that he looks almost human. This doesn’t move her; it enrages her. “If you hadn’t wasted time trying to kill me, Esther might still be alive! We could have put her into cryosleep and saved her!”