Mansfield looks surprised. “Of course I did. You’re the greatest leap forward cybernetics has ever taken, and I thought I’d lost you forever. All other considerations aside, it would’ve been a crime against human knowledge not to see if I could make another.”
“Of course.” This makes sense. But Noemi was right about Abel having an ego, because it is now definitely bruised. Mansfield hoped to replace him, and now, perhaps, he is no longer the most advanced mech in the galaxy.
Yet his disappointment fades next to new, brighter curiosity. Losing his singular status hardly matters if that means he’s no longer alone. If other Abels exist, might they be brothers of a sort? “Are there other A models now?”
But that short-lived hope dies immediately as Mansfield shakes his head. “I said I tried. Never said I succeeded. You were so perfect from the get-go, I guess I thought I could always make another if the need arose. But I was wrong. The same plans, the same materials, but not the same results. Always, always, something was out of balance. That spark you have is yours alone. They came out so physically like you, and so clever—a few of them so close—but none of them could match you. None of them had the mind I was looking for. Had to deactivate them, one and all. Finally I gave up.”
Other mechs who looked like him, who had enough intelligence to possess a sense of self—and they were all deactivated. All found wanting, instead of being appreciated as the miracles they were. The idea is profoundly troubling, but Abel doesn’t know how to say so to Mansfield, or whether he even should. What’s done is done.
But those lost brothers haunt him.
For now, they have more urgent matters to discuss. “Will you send the message to Stronghold now?”
“What message?”
Perhaps senility has begun to set in. Abel explains, “To make sure Noemi departed Stronghold safely instead of being brought into custody. If she is in custody, then to free her.”
“You want your ladylove brought to you by a bunch of security mechs?” Mansfield chuckles. “I doubt she’ll find that very romantic.”
“I would never want her brought anywhere against her will. That’s exactly why I want to be certain she’s free. So she can go where she needs to go.” Once again, Abel thinks about the impending destruction of the Genesis Gate, but says nothing.
Mansfield waves him off. “All in good time, Abel. Let’s take a few new scans, shall we? I want to map this newly complex mind of yours.”
Abel wants to press his point, to make Mansfield understand, until it sinks in that he already does.
Mansfield knows Noemi could be at risk; he knows how deeply concerned Abel is for her.
He just doesn’t care.
Abel had discovered that he could disagree with Mansfield, even that he could criticize him. But this is the first time he’s doubted his creator.
Still he must obey Mansfield’s every word.
Slowly, Abel sits in the examination chair and allows the sensor bars to curve around his head. When Mansfield smiles at him, he smiles back.
33
THERE SHE IS,” VIRGINIA SAYS CHEERFULLY AS THE IMAGE comes up on the domed viewscreen. “Earth.”
Staring, Noemi covers her mouth with one hand. Beside her, she hears Ephraim whisper, “My God.”
Even from orbit, she can see how brown and dry the equatorial regions have become. Greenery exists only in narrow bands around the ice-free poles. Noemi learned Earth geography in school, in her pre-world history class, so she can pick out certain places, or at least what they used to be: barren China, still-green Denmark, and the home of her ancestors—Chile—almost completely inundated by the too-dark sea, with only the caps of the Andes poking up as an island chain. The nearby island where some of her people once lived, Rapa Nui, must long since have been swallowed by the ocean.
“Never seen this before,” Ephraim murmurs. “On Stronghold, they show you images, but old ones, I guess. Very old. It looks so green in those.…”
“Hasn’t been like that for a while, folks.” Virginia folds her arms behind her head and kicks back, setting her feet on an inactive part of the console. “Honestly, I think it looks a little better than it did when I left.”
Noemi would like to snap at her for being so blithe about a world so profoundly sick, but she hears the edge in Virginia’s voice. It’s less that Virginia doesn’t care, more that she doesn’t want to be caught caring.
Her family’s down there. Even though her family can’t be much more to her than an idea, even though she won’t have seen them since childhood and probably never expects to see them again—they’re still hers, and they’re trapped on this dying world.
As Earth’s image grows larger in the viewscreen, Noemi’s able to see the sheer enormity of the space junk around it. Every inhabited planet has satellites, of course. Even Genesis, while cutting back on all unnecessary technologies, never considered removing their main weather and communications orbiters. But tens of thousands circle Earth at every conceivable latitude, some of them ludicrously outdated. A couple of space stations remain operational, though they’re so old Noemi can’t believe anyone agrees to set foot inside. Probably they’re operated by mechs.
No standard planetary greeting is broadcast to the ship. This puzzles Noemi until she realizes—the other worlds have to identify themselves, to say why they matter. Earth doesn’t have to. It’s where they all came from, and where they all answer to in some sense. There is no other power, no other planet, that can ever compare to Earth.
To orient herself, she clicks through commercial channels—stunned by the incredible glut of information and entertainment being projected at Earth inhabitants from every direction—and how pure desperation exists side by side with the most trivial concerns. The translation program projects subtitles beneath the broadcasts in other languages:
“—THE PRIME MINISTER TODAY REMINDED CITIZENS THAT THEY BEAR RESPONSIBILITY FOR TESTING THEIR OWN WATER PURITY—”
“—THE BURGER SO DELICIOUS YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE IT’S NOT REAL BEEF—”
A man stands in front of a cityscape ringed with black smoke, and the subtitles read: RIOTING CONTINUES IN KARACHI AS FAMINE RELIEF EFFORTS FAIL.
“—SOMETIMES THE MECH JUST ISN’T ENOUGH, YOU KNOW?” A woman winks at the camera, nudges the half-naked Peter model next to her; he smiles vacantly in response. “SO WHEN YOU NEED A LITTLE EXTRA TO GET OVER THE EDGE—”
“—THE PROMISE OF BIOMEDICAL IMPLANTS THAT WILL REDUCE, ELIMINATE, OR MAYBE EVEN REVERSE COMMON DISEASES SUCH AS—”