If he were here, Noemi would punch him in the gut and see how cute he thought she was then. But he’s safe at home—sitting near a fire, to judge by the flickering light—cozily relaxing while he orders Abel to come home and die.
“You’re a monster,” she says to Mansfield. “You’re a selfish monster who’s afraid to die because you’ve never believed in anything greater than yourself. You gave Abel a soul only so you could smash it when you didn’t need it anymore. Everything he’s felt, the person he’s become—doesn’t that matter to you at all? Don’t you even see him?”
Mansfield sighs. “Obviously this is going to be a problem.”
From the console where she’s feverishly typing, Virginia calls, “I used to be a fangirl of yours, but not anymore, you crapsack excuse for a human being.”
“Who’s that?” Mansfield genuinely looks confused. Virginia doesn’t go to the screen, but she leans over far enough for Mansfield to see her hand as she flips him off.
Noemi turns back to Abel, who hasn’t sat back down again, despite all her pleas… but he hasn’t taken another step toward the door either. Hope swells within her heart. “You’re fighting him, aren’t you? You can do it. I know you can.”
“Enough of this.” With a harrumph, Mansfield adjusts himself on the sofa. “Abel, tell me the truth: Are the emergency defensive stations on the bridge still stocked?”
“Yes, sir.” Abel winces after he says the words.
“Well, go on and open one up.” Instantly Abel walks to a small boxy locker low on the wall—one of many, none of which Noemi’s particularly noticed before—and Mansfield adds, “Take a blaster.”
Abel’s fist smashes the polymer into fine shards that rain down on the floor. Noemi watches, aghast, as he picks up a blaster, its holt glowing green to indicate full charge. When he looks into Noemi’s eyes, the anguish she sees there is almost more horrible than her own fear.
“There we go,” Mansfield says soothingly. “Almost done. Remember who and what you are, Abel. Follow Directive One. Obey me. Kill her.”
38
ABEL’S HAND TIGHTENS ON THE BLASTER—BUT HE doesn’t pull the trigger. He won’t do that, he won’t, he won’t.
He wants to put the blaster down, but he can’t. He’s stuck in a recursive loop, torn between the directives shrieking at him from his every circuit and his overwhelming fear of hurting Noemi.
She stands directly in his line of sight, breathing hard, her large brown eyes staring at the weapon that might end her life at any moment. Then she looks up from the muzzle, into Abel’s eyes.
“Keep fighting,” she whispers.
“Abel.” Mansfield says it louder this time, still avuncular and almost lazy in his confidence. “You’re wasting time. You know your programming won’t let you do anything else.”
It won’t. He must obey his creator. The same fervent dedication that gave Abel purpose for every day of the thirty years he spent in utter isolation, in the cold and dark, tells him to do this thing. Noemi Vidal must die, and he must go home to Mansfield and do the same. Today is their last day.
In the background he hears Virginia murmuring, “Has to be a way to override the override. Come on, come on.” He wants to warn her to shut up. If Mansfield overhears her and gives orders to kill Virginia as well, Abel knows he’ll do it. He likes Virginia, but he doesn’t love her, and surely only love could be powerful enough to keep him from instantly pulling the trigger upon Mansfield’s command.
He’s not sure whether anything has the power to keep him from pulling it anyway.
“A-bel,” Mansfield singsongs, like any parent impatient with a child running late.
A thousand scenarios play out in Abel’s mind simultaneously. He could set the blaster down. Disengage it. Tell Mansfield he made not a container but a person. But he can’t come up with the final resolution of any of these kaleidoscopic images of salvation. He can’t envision any ending but the one where Noemi lies dead at his feet.
Maybe—maybe he could point it at his own head and fire, so he could save Noemi and spite Burton Mansfield in the same squeeze of a trigger. Could he? No. His arm refuses to obey. That plan goes against not one of Mansfield’s orders but two.
Finally, Mansfield’s voice betrays a hint of anger. “Directive One,” he repeats. “Obey me. Kill her.”
The repetition turns something over inside Abel, and he straightens his arm, aiming directly at Noemi’s heart. She’s shaking with terror, almost weak with it. Nothing is more horrible than looking at her and knowing he made her feel this way.
Until he kills her, which will be the greatest horror of all.
“Abel?” Noemi’s voice is very small. “Where there’s no free will, there’s no sin. If you—if you can’t help it—I know you tried. Thank you for trying—” Her words break off, and she shakes her head, unable to speak any more.
She’s forgiving him for her murder before he commits it. Even if Abel has only one hour of existence left, she doesn’t want him to spend that hour hating himself for what he’s done. It is an act of almost unfathomable grace, shining so brightly next to Mansfield’s selfishness that it eclipses everything else inside Abel, every conflict, every command.
Instantly he swings his arm left to point the blaster at Mansfield’s face on the console and fires, fires again, keeps on firing until the console blows apart, sending smoke and scraps of wire flying across the bridge. Noemi shrieks and covers her ears from the din, but in the aftermath they stand there, staring at the wreckage. Abel lets the blaster drop from his hand to the floor, where it lands with a metallic thud. Mansfield’s voice has been silenced.
After a long pause punctuated only by the sound of electrical sparks, Virginia says, “You know, we might’ve needed that console.”
“We have to get out of here.” Noemi seems to awaken from a trance. “He’ll send Queens and Charlies—who knows what else—”
“I managed to limit his override commands to communications. He can call back, but he can’t keep us from flying!” As Virginia swings into action, bringing the mag engines online, Noemi turns back to Abel.
Though in the future he will often attempt to analyze the exact sequence of events, Abel will never be able to determine whether he embraced her, or she embraced him. He only knows she’s back in his arms, alive and well, unafraid of him even after what happened. As he hugs her closer, he feels a kind of pain indistinguishable from joy. Is this what humans feel, when they embrace the one they love? But it can’t be. Humans may mistreat those they love. Sometimes they abandon them entirely. They couldn’t do that if they felt the way Abel feels in this moment. They couldn’t even imagine it.