Noemi believes her cause to be a noble one. She acts not out of hatred for Earth, but out of love for her own planet. She is as willing to give her own life as she is to sacrifice his. And as she proved when she condemned the actions of Remedy and Riko Watanabe, her defense of Genesis has its limits. She wants only safety for her world. She wouldn’t kill innocents to win it.
I cannot count as an innocent, Abel decides. Mechs are designed to risk their lives where humans cannot. Otherwise, they’d never have been invented in the first place. They are, by purpose and design, disposable.
So he doesn’t have to blame Noemi for what she’s doing. Only to come to terms with the realization that this is what he was made to do in the first place.
When they reunite on the bridge, Abel is wearing Mansfield’s silk clothes once more, and Noemi has put on a simple black top, pants, and boots. Although she probably chose these garments for practical use, the effect is unexpectedly flattering—but Abel has other, more pressing concerns. By now the screen is dominated by the blood-orange sphere of Cray.
“No oceans,” Noemi murmurs. “Not even a lake. I mean, I took exogeology like everyone else; I know surface water’s the exception and not the rule—but I didn’t realize it would look like this.”
Cray’s oceans and vegetation burned away long ago, leaving behind only barren, rugged sandscapes ridged with fault lines. The tallest mountain ridges ever discovered on any world scrape the red sky. A few golden clouds trail around these mountains, delicate and lovely, belying the fact they’re made not of water vapor but of acids. To have colonized a world this forbidding proves the desperation on Earth to find new worlds on which to live—even if that life will be very hard.
Noemi continues, “How did they even figure out people would be able to live underground?”
Abel decides to employ his subroutine for colloquial expressions. “Needs must when the devil drives. When I left Earth, Cray was the world most humans hoped to settle on.”
“This place?” Noemi looks stricken. “Is it really that bad, on Earth?”
He finds he no longer wants to make her feel guilty about the fate of those Genesis has left behind. Those decisions were made by others, and so long ago. “Don’t let the surface deceive you. To really judge Cray, you have to dig deeper—literally.”
Noemi’s eyes narrow, squinting in confusion. But she says nothing, only turns back to stare at Cray.
“Is something the matter?” Abel ventures.
“How do we go about getting landing clearance?” Noemi asks the question right away, yet Abel remains sure that’s not really what she wanted to know.
Still, it is a valid inquiry. “No Vagabond ships appear to be landing.” Only a few appear to be in the system at all, and those are clustered near an outer ring of asteroids where people are no doubt trying their hands at ore mining. Cray’s orbital zone is almost entirely empty, a sharp contrast to the mad scene at Kismet. “Cray’s resources are limited. If immigration is tightly controlled, visitors will be observed and regulated.”
The planet’s reddish surface casts a fiery glow on the bridge. Noemi’s black hair gleams maroon as she frowns, and once again Abel sees that little wrinkle between her eyebrows. “So how do we…”
Her voice trails off as the viewscreen lights up, brilliant white, revealing a young man wearing clothes that seem too casual for an official communication—but they’re artfully chosen, the same red and orange shades as Cray’s surface. “You’ve come to Cray,” the man says so warmly that Abel briefly wonders whether they’ve intercepted a personal message by mistake. But the patter continues. “You’re in an unregistered vessel, which means one of three things. One, you’re a friend or family member of one of the scientists here. If so, you know civilian visits have to be brief… but we’re sure you’ll be impressed with the lifestyle on Cray.” A montage of scenes replaces the man’s face, showing eager young students in a classroom with a holo of a molecule, a woman hard at work on a computer, and a group of people laughing and chatting in what looks like a plush, well-appointed sitting room. The young man reappears to say, “Two, you’re a merchant bringing us games, clothes, holos, or something else fun—in which case, we can’t wait to see you!” His smile fades. “Three, you’re a Vagabond or someone else hoping to sneak on-planet. If that’s the case, you need to know that unauthorized inhabitation is never allowed. You’ll be thrown off-planet… and into jail. So think twice before you try it. On Cray, we maintain high standards because we do our best to make our world better, and yours, too.”
The image blinks off, restoring Cray’s reddish surface to the screen.
“That was”—Noemi thinks it over—“amazingly passive-aggressive.”
Abel considers what was said, and not said. “No one is supposed to stay long, and no one without specific business is supposed to visit at all. Only the world’s top scientists and elite students are allowed to live here.” He remembers the many times professors and doctors tried to convince Burton Mansfield to move his cybernetics lab to Cray. Mansfield always said they didn’t want his company; they only wanted to take over mech production for themselves. Probably Earth’s leaders wouldn’t have allowed it, but it hardly mattered. Mansfield would never have left his home in London.
Noemi hesitates, and Abel remembers how young she is. He knows this—is incapable of forgetting it—and yet the truth of it strikes him with new force. This voyage has already cost her so much, threatened her so badly. The only reward for her conquering each challenge is to be given another. Abel has been given enough data on human psychology to know that even far older people than Noemi Vidal would be crushed by this level of pressure.
But then she brightens. “They keep these elite scientists amused somehow. The guy talked about fun, remember? So we’ll be people who help them have fun.”
“I thought you were opposed to engaging in prostitution to fund our travels.”
“That’s not what I—is prostitution your answer for everything?”
Abel decides not to reply to that question. “What is your idea?”
“Can you talk to the computers at the spaceport? Machine to machine?”
“More or less.”
“Then you could find out exactly what merchants are coming here soon—”
“And claim one of their slots as our own.” Abel nods as he begins typing on the communications panel.
If the two of them were aiming for a different goal, working with Noemi Vidal would be… a pleasure, really.
The George model looks from Abel to Noemi with bland curiosity. “We weren’t expecting the latest games shipment for another twenty-eight hours.”
Abel had found an opening for a hologame merchant ship to land, one with only two passengers, low priority, low security. All factors indicated this was the best possible identity for them to assume.