There’s no ignoring them: They’re everywhere.
There’s a caretaker model, an Uncle, obediently carrying a child on his shoulders. A Yoke trudging along with a heavy pack full of cleaning supplies. A Fox strolls toward her next assignation—or, perhaps, to her owner, if someone wants to keep a pleasure mech around full-time. Sugar, the cooking model, holds bags of produce… or the limp, wan food that passes for fresh here on Earth. In one shop, there’s even a George, selling cup after cup of something that smells like coffee but isn’t.
Are there more mechs than people? No—but there are so, so many. Noemi would’ve thought her time with Abel would have desensitized her to being around mechs. Instead she can’t help contrasting their dull, flat eyes to Abel’s, which are so clear and intelligent and obviously alive.
Ephraim’s hands are in the pockets of his coverall, and he seems less curious about Earth, mechs, or any of the rest. As overwhelmed as Noemi is, she can’t ignore his grim expression. “Are you all right?”
“Depends on what you mean by all right. If you mean ‘not in pain right this second,’ yeah, I’m all right. If you mean ‘not guilty of treason or in danger of being turned in by a terrorist just so she can save her own skin,’ no, I am definitely not all right. I am as far from all right as I’ve ever been.”
“You think Riko would name you?” Noemi says in a low voice.
Ephraim shrugs. “How would I know? All I know is, Watanabe’s ruthless. I don’t know what her priorities and morals are, but they damn sure aren’t the same as mine.”
Noemi has tried to come up with a plausible scenario in which she and Abel forced Ephraim into helping them, something that would guarantee Ephraim’s safety when he returned to Stronghold—and she has come up with absolutely zero. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. If you could pay a debt of honor without it costing you anything, you wouldn’t have really repaid it, would you?” Ephraim sighs as the crowd surges around them. The clouds make it hard to tell, but Noemi’s pretty sure it’s getting darker. Night is coming.
Virginia steals another glance at the dataread in her hand. “We’re gonna take a right, and—whoa.”
They stand on the corner, staring. This street leads up a hill, passing through an enormous sentry gate. A faint shimmer in the air tells Noemi there’s a force field surrounding the entire area. Within the gate are trees, grass, a winding path… and, at the very top, a magnificent domed house, glowing golden and bright in the gloomy twilight.
Ephraim murmurs, “I’d guess we’ve found Burton Mansfield. But how are we supposed to get past all of that?”
“Oh, it can be done.” Virginia tosses her hair. “If I couldn’t get through a force field, I’d be ashamed to call myself a Razer.” Then she drops the cocky act. “I’d need a whole lot more equipment than I have on me, though. And it would take time. Probably a few days of testing different approaches, figuring out how to cover my tracks.”
A few days. Those are days her friends on Genesis don’t have. The Masada Run is so close now. Too close.
“Looks pretty nice up there,” Ephraim says, and he’s right, it does. Noemi can imagine Abel warm and safe there, basking in his creator’s welcome, happy to be home at last.
Wait. She doesn’t have to imagine.
Noemi grabs the dataread away from Virginia, who grumbles. A few quick twists turns it into a viewer, which can be held up to focus in tightly on the house so that she can see the garden.
And there, standing in it, are Abel and Burton Mansfield.
The image slices through Noemi, beautiful and painful at once: Mansfield so elderly he can barely walk, being supported by Abel’s arm. When they smile at each other, somewhat sadly, the affection between them is obvious.
“It’s Abel,” she whispers.
She wants to run to him, to say good-bye if for no other reason. But what right does she have to go barging in on him? It looks like he’s exactly where he wants to be: home.
Which is where she needs to be.
“Well?” Virginia asks. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He’s—good, I think.” Noemi swallows hard; her throat is tight, holding back emotion she doesn’t know how to process.
“So this whole trip was for nothing,” Virginia says.
Ephraim shakes his head. “Not for nothing.”
Virginia rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know, we checked to make sure Abel was all right, which is what friends do, and I’m not sure how I wound up friends with a mech, but—”
“Not what I meant,” Ephraim says, cutting Virginia off. His gaze locks with Noemi’s. “I owed Genesis a debt of honor. I’ve repaid it. But from where I’m standing, it looks like you owe me one now.”
“… I guess I do.” Noemi lets the dataread drop; Abel’s walking Mansfield back into his house, and for some reason she doesn’t want to watch him walk out of her sight for the last time. “So how do I repay it? Get you back to Stronghold?”
“Too late for that.” Ephraim smiles fiercely. “You’re going to help me break Riko Watanabe out of prison.”
34
“HERE, TAKE A LOOK.” MANSFIELD GESTURES TOWARD his desk, smiling benevolently at Abel. “Might as well see what a real Nobel Prize looks like, shouldn’t you?”
Abel picks it up, testing its heft and softness. “I thought Nobel Prizes were made of pure gold. This is an alloy.”
“Gold’s not so easy to come by these days. Purity either, for that matter. We’re running out.” Mansfield shakes his head. He sits on the velvet sofa of his great room, false firelight reflected onto him by the pendulum of the grandfather clock. Around them, in soft hologram form, stand the members of the Academy at the Nobel Prize ceremony—until it flickers and is replaced by an image of a younger Mansfield, maybe only a year or two older than he was when he abandoned Abel, with his arms around a smiling girl wearing a graduation cap. “Ahh, and here’s Gillian getting her master’s degree at Northwestern. I wish you’d get to see her again, Abel. She was always so entertained by you.”
He remembers Mansfield’s daughter, red-haired and coolly elegant. She wasn’t “entertained” by much—even back then, when he was new, Abel had more of a sense of humor than she did. But Gillian was never unkind or dismissive, the way humans are to many mechs. Her interest always seemed genuine. “Perhaps we’ll meet soon.”