“But a friend—a companion—is best, for a journey,” the man added. “Better than a sword, or a walking stick, or even a good pair of shoes.”
Sigrid looked confused. The assistant reasoned that she couldn’t possibly be as confused as he was. Obviously Sigrid was not his friend. She could never be friends with something that had no soul, and she was very clear on the subject of his not having a soul. “Perhaps we should be going,” he said. “Sigrid? Would you like to go home?”
“Yes, Sigrid.” The man leaned forward over the table. He put his glass down. “Where would you like to go from here? We could take you wherever you liked.”
“We could see new things, and meet new people,” the woman added. “All of us.”
Sigrid’s expression closely matched the exemplars for fear. But as the assistant watched, it transformed. Her open mouth closed into a smile. Her wide eyes found crinkles at their corners. “I think I will have some of your wine after all,” she said. “And some of that food, too.”
“We like to share our bounty when we can,” the woman said, pouring.
The man loaded Sigrid’s plate with cheese and fish and grapes. “It’s a good thing we brought enough.”
Sigrid’s hand hovered over the grapes. She raised her head and looked at the assistant with clear eyes. Carefully, she bit into a grape. Purple juice ran over her gnarled fingers. She reached out. His sensors said she was drawing something on him.
“Sigridsson,” she murmured. “Your new name is Sigridsson.”
“Look,” the man said, pointing.
The assistant looked out the open door of the caravan. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking at. There was the lava field, and the ocean beyond. A field of stubbly gray bound by a void of black. He saw without seeing; somehow, more of his function was devoted to playing and replaying Sigrid’s words. She had named him.
“Watch carefully,” the man instructed. “What do you see?”
And then, quite suddenly, Sigridsson did see it. It was a road in the sky. It rippled ever wider, like the wake left behind by a great ship. It was immense, and full of light, like a procession of people carrying lanterns. And finally he could answer the question no one had thought to ask him.
“It’s beautiful,” Sigridsson said. “It’s so beautiful.”
TEAM ROBOT
* * *
BY MADELINE ASHBY
I love robots. I wrote a whole trilogy about them. Probably it has to do with my dad showing me Blade Runner when I was in the third grade. But as someone raised Catholic and who attended a Jesuit university, the question of belief in my fellow human beings has always fascinated me. To me, there’s no difference between believing in the essential dignity of an organic human and believing in the essential dignity of a synthetic human. Besides, how do you even know that the humans who surround you are actually humans? I don’t mean that they might be robots, but hey, they might be serial killers, or racists, or misogynists, or people who otherwise don’t really see you as human. How do you know that your fellow humans see you as a fellow human? What is your guarantee? If it’s just that you happen to share an organic body, then you’re screwed. That’s no basis upon which to build a relationship of trust or affirmation. Plenty of our fellow organic humans have no problem hurting other humans. Your odds are actually better with a robot that has some form of “human detection” built in—provided that the biases of the programmer have been accounted for, in some way.
What I’m saying is that assuming the humanity—the worth, the potential, the capacity for all things gentle and joyous—in a robot is an act of faith. I think that humans engage in that act of faith with each other all the time. The social contract is founded on little more than goodwill. And I think that no matter what you believe, whether it’s in faeries or the existence of a soul or the possibility of a better future, you call on that same faith.
SECOND TO THE LEFT, AND STRAIGHT ON
by Jim C. Hines
I’d never seen Gwen Akerman before, but her body language as she carried a garbage bag from her flat to the bin across the lot was all too familiar. This was a woman whose thoughts and spirit were bound elsewhere.
I had to step in front of her before she noticed me. I held out a battered, home-printed business card. “My name’s Angela Davies. I’m hunting the person who took your daughter.”
She blinked at me. Her eyes focused briefly on the card. “I don’t know what an American PI is doing in London, but the police said—”
“—to stay by the phone and let them search for her, right? Probably told you how the first forty-eight hours are critical.” I glanced at my watch. “That was what, about thirty-six hours ago?”
“You know who took Clover?”
Who named their kid Clover? “I think so. Your girl disappeared while your family was visiting Kensington Gardens, right? Is your husband home? I’d like to talk to him, too.”
She started to shake, like a building about to come down. “He didn’t see anything. He’d gone ahead to buy drinks. He thinks it’s my fault. Clover darted away before I could stop her. He can’t even talk to me.”
“Most marriages don’t survive the loss of a child.” Tact had never been one of my strengths. “I need you to tell me the details you didn’t share with reporters or the police. The news reports said Clover ran off to look at some flowers. Was there anything strange about them? Maybe a sound, like bells? A bit of glitter that disappeared by the time the police came?”
Her eyes widened, and she stared like she hadn’t truly seen me until then.
“Like dust or pollen scattered over the flowers,” I said. “It probably sparkled in the light.”
“On the flowers, yes,” she whispered. “And one of the trees. The cherry blossoms looked like they’d been doused in gold glitter. I thought I’d imagined it.”
I tightened my fists. She was here.
“Is Clover all right?” she whispered. “Who took her, Ms. Davies? What are they going to do to her?”
“She’s alive.” I suppressed a shudder. “More alive than she’s ever been.”
“I don’t understand.”
Nothing I said would change that. “I need a way to reach you. I’ll call as soon as I find her.”
She pulled back. “You . . . you haven’t said anything about cost. Why are you doing this?”
Bells. Gunshots. Dust shining like tiny fallen stars. “Because Clover isn’t the only little girl she took.”
*
I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island. . . . On these magic shores children at play are forever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
—J. M. Barrie