“If you’re feeling good enough to be smug, you’re definitely better.” Noemi can’t stop smiling. “Does anything feel like it might be broken? Malfunctioning?”
He pauses before saying, “Some inner circuitry I’d already questioned has been damaged further. But my operations are not significantly altered.”
What does that mean? Noemi isn’t sure, but Abel doesn’t dwell on it. Already he’s flexing his hands again, affirming his restored agility. It must not be anything worth worrying about.
When he’s ready, she slings one of his arms around her shoulder and walks him back through the ship to his quarters—really, Mansfield’s quarters, now home to the man’s greatest creation. This is the first time Noemi’s taken a good look at this room, and she doesn’t know whether to admire its beauty or be appalled at the extravagance. A four-poster bed carved of burnished wood stands in the center of the room, covered with a silk coverlet that shimmers emerald. A painting of water lilies, soft and blurry in shades of blue, hangs in an ornate golden frame. A wardrobe, like something out of Victorian times, sits in one corner, and when Noemi looks around inside, she finds a thick, wine-red velvet robe.
She slides this on over Abel’s clothes before tucking him in bed. “The more layers, the better,” she says.
“Don’t worry.” Abel’s smile is lopsided; he’s still thawing. “I’m improving rapidly. I’ll still be able to do it.”
“To do what?”
He gives her an odd look. “To take the thermomagnetic device into the Gate and destroy it.”
Noemi feels as though the floor dropped out from under her, horrified and a little sick. “Wait. You think that’s why I saved you?”
“Rationally, it would be a strong motivator.”
“Abel, no. You don’t get it.” Struggling for words, she sits on the edge of the bed. “Don’t you remember what I said to you before?”
“That I am responsible for my own actions, and therefore for my own mistakes.”
“Not that. Not only that, anyway.” Noemi takes a deep breath as she squeezes his cool hands. “If you’re responsible for attacking me when I boarded the ship, you’re also responsible for protecting me on Wayland Station, and for saving me in the underground river on Cray. For trying to save Esther. For understanding where to bury her. You did all those things for me.”
“That is a matter of my programming.”
“And you can disregard that programming if you want to badly enough.”
“So it seems.” He looks lost as he says it. Maybe Abel only just discovered this himself. It doesn’t matter when he figured it out, only that it’s true. “I have realized that I no longer follow your orders because I have to. I… I do it because I want to.”
How can he want that? How can he want to follow her even to oblivion? Noemi’s voice shakes as she continues, “Abel—you have a soul. Or something so close to a soul that I can’t tell the difference, and I shouldn’t even try. And if you have a soul, I can’t order you to destroy yourself in the Gate. I can’t hurt you, and I won’t. No matter what.”
Abel’s astonishment would make her laugh under any other circumstances. As it is, it’s almost painful to see how surprised he is to realize that someone believes his life has value. To realize she believes it. “But I attempted to kill you.”
“You attacked an enemy soldier who boarded your ship,” Noemi admits. “Pretty much anyone would’ve reacted the way you did. Human or mech. For that, and for Esther, I think… I think mostly I blamed you because you’re here to be blamed. I don’t blame you at all anymore.”
As stiff as he is, he manages to roll onto his side, the better to look her directly in the face. “Whether I have a soul or not can only be a matter of opinion.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. It’s a matter of faith.”
“You must still have doubts.”
“The opposite of faith isn’t doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.” So the Elder Council always says, reminding people to avoid the cheap platitudes of dogma, to rely only on deep insight. She may be a terrible believer in so many ways—but this lesson, at least, she’s finally mastered.
“But Genesis—the Gate, the Masada Run—can you give up so easily?”
“Who said anything about giving up?” She’d begun formulating a new plan within half an hour after her argument with Abel. “You said only an advanced mech could pilot a ship carrying that kind of device through a Gate. A human would die from the heat, and a lower-level mech would shut down. Right?”
“Correct.”
Noemi begins ticking her points off on her fingers. “We need an advanced mech. You’re an advanced mech, but you’re not the only one advanced enough to do this. Some other models could handle it, too, couldn’t they? Which ones?”
Abel nods, though he answers her as if in a daze. “Either of the medical models, Tare or Mike. Any Charlie or Queen. Maybe even the caretaker models, Nan and Uncle—”
“See? Lots of possibilities.” Her voice sounds too chipper even to her own ears. Noemi’s been going over this in her own head, trying to calm herself down, but every second, she expects Abel to point out a new complication or flaw, something that will crush all her hopes. “Like I said, I don’t need you to fly the device into the Gate any longer. But I do need you to help me capture a mech that can. One of the ones that’s really just a machine. Not like you. You’re—more.”
Abel seems younger to her somehow, almost childlike in his wonder. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yeah. I do.”
He doesn’t answer, only pulls the coverlet more tightly around him. He’s so cold every scrap of heat must be welcome, so weary he can barely move; Noemi knows how he feels. Ever since Kismet, she’s been tired. It seems like sleeping only makes it worse, not better. But there will be time to rest when this is all over. Oceans of time to spend on a free, safe Genesis.
“You realize that capturing a mech isn’t easy.” Abel can’t quit arguing for his own demise. “Even a lower-level one has the strength and will to resist. The smarter ones will prove even more difficult.”
“That’s where you come in.”
“Be serious,” he says. “The fate of your world is in your hands.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that I have your fate in my hands, too. I’m going to take care of Genesis, and I’m going to take care of you. I don’t care how hard it is. We’re going to make this happen.”
“And then—” Abel’s voice trails off. “Then what? After it’s all over, then what happens?”
Noemi hasn’t though this part through in detail, because it’s not hers to decide. “After that, you take me home to Genesis, and then you go wherever you want.”
“I would decide?”
“Yeah. Take the Daedalus and go.” She zooms her hand up in the air, as if it were the ship, then feels silly for doing so.