He realizes this kiss is something Noemi’s doing for him. It could never happen except as good-bye. That tarnishes nothing; the knowledge only makes Abel love her more.
When they pull apart, she frames his face with her hand. He smiles at her before turning to kiss her palm. Without another word shared between them, he knows this is the end.
So Abel lifts one hand to the ceiling, which is close enough to touch, and propels them back to the floor, within easy reach of the gravity control. As soon as he presses it, their feet thump down harder, Noemi’s hair swings back to chin-level, and a few nuts and bolts clatter down beside them. They let go of each other at the same moment.
“Are you ready?” he asks her.
She lifts her chin. “Yes.”
Together they walk back down the corridor, and they’re almost to the door before Noemi stops. “Oh, Abel—I’m so sorry—I meant to ask you to do something for me before you—before, and then I saw you in the pod bay and I—I guess I lost track.”
He made her lose track. Maybe that means she enjoyed the kiss as much as he did. Abel’s pleased to think he did it well. “Tell me what you need.”
“I ran a couple of sims on how to land the ship by myself, but I’ve never actually done it. You always landed it, except on Earth, and Virginia did that. After this I think I’m going to be too—” Noemi’s voice trails off. He wonders what she might’ve said. “Could you lay in an automated landing? Just to be sure?”
Landing the ship is well within Noemi’s capabilities, but emotional upheaval can play havoc with both human skills and human confidence. So can exhaustion. Granting this small favor is more important than easing any insecurities she may have. “Of course.”
“I’ll wait for you here,” she says, as he begins walking toward the bridge.
This is vaguely disappointing. He’d have liked to remain with her as long as possible. But she may find the extended length of their farewell difficult; his scans of certain fictional dramas suggest that humans sometimes do.
Abel even runs to the bridge, to move things along. That it takes seconds away from his remaining life doesn’t register as a concern.
As the doors open for him, he walks directly to the helm—and stops. A light is blinking on one of the consoles, signaling ship operations in progress, but nothing should be taking place.
Then he sees it’s the light for the docking bay doors.
Noemi lied. She’s leaving with the device to sacrifice herself in the Masada Run—
—to save him.
He runs from the bridge so quickly the doors barely have time to open for him. Human speed is no use to him now; there’s no one to keep up with him, no one to fool. Abel pushes to his full speed, reaching the docking bay mid-cycle.
“Noemi!” he shouts. “Noemi, don’t!”
A small image appears on the screen in front of him—Noemi’s face. She must have tied her fighter’s communications into the ship’s. Her helmet is in her lap, and he knows without having to ask that she’s taken the thermomagnetic device, too. “Are you going to tell me I can’t do this, Abel? We both know I can.”
“Don’t. The Masada Run won’t end the war. You’ll die for no reason.” As terrible as it is to think of her dying, worse is thinking of her dying without purpose. She has lived every moment with intensity and feeling. To throw her life away—
“I’m not going on the Masada Run. I’m returning to Genesis to try to stop it.” She leans back in her pilot’s seat, smiling crookedly. “They don’t know how bad things have become for Earth. They don’t know that there’s a resistance rising up on the colonies. That changes things. If they understood we might have allies, that there’s really a chance—maybe it can change everything.”
“You can’t take that chance,” he says. “Not when you know I can save your world.”
“That’s the thing, Abel. You can’t.”
“But I—”
“Genesis isn’t just where we live. It’s what we believe. A victory that comes from the sacrifice of an innocent isn’t a victory. It’s the end of us.”
“I chose this. It’s my decision.”
“You’ve only been truly alive for a couple of weeks. You’ve only just won your freedom from Mansfield. You can’t give up a life that’s never been your own.” Noemi leans closer to the camera; he can imagine her face close to his again. “From now on, you decide where you’ll go, what you’ll do—who you’ll be. But today? You’re just Mansfield’s creation, or mine. You deserve to be yourself. You have to keep going. You have to claim your own life.”
He hears what she’s saying, but he can’t take it in. All he can think about is that she’s going away, putting herself in danger when he could save her. “Please, Noemi, let me.”
She shakes her head no and somehow manages to smile. “This is my moment of grace, Abel. All those years I prayed, and nothing—but now I don’t have to believe anymore. I know. You have a soul. That makes it my job to take care of you. To protect your life like it was my own.”
“But I—” It’s his job to take care of her. How can she owe him the same duty, the same debt? Abel doesn’t understand and he can’t yet force himself to try. All he knows is that nothing has ever devastated him this way.
Arguing with her is impossible. He’d pull open the bay door if he could, but from thirty years’ hard experience, he knows he can’t. This is it. Noemi is leaving him forever.
That leaves him nothing but the truth. “It hurts more to lose you than it did to give up my own life,” he says. “Does that mean what I feel isn’t only a copy? That I do love you?”
Tears well in her eyes. “I think maybe it does.”
The air lock cycle ends. Noemi presses her hand against the screen; Abel does the same, the closest he will ever come to touching her again.
When the image changes, he lets his hand fall. The wide view of the docking bay shows him Noemi’s ship, and within it he sees her slipping on her helmet just as the outer doors open. She releases her moorings and drifts into space until she’s cleared the ship. Then she fires her engines, a burst of brilliant orange and fire, and soars toward her home.
Abel’s vision is malfunctioning. When he touches his fingers to his cheek, they find warmth and wetness. These are his first tears.
41
GENESIS. HOME.