Edge of Dark (28 page)

The voice startled Nona.

A woman sat casually in a big chair in the corner of the suite. She was tall and willowy, with a typical spacer's short haircut. Her hair was as dark as her eyes, with a bloom of light blue at one temple—a look that must take some effort to maintain. Nona braced and took two deep breaths, fighting for calm, then stuck her hand out, trying to offer something more personable than the livid, raging anger that filled her. “I'm Nona.”

“Nona Hall. I know. Gunnar told me to expect you.”

Nona still hadn't quite recovered her composure. It took a moment to pull the name Gunnar had given her free of her tangled and pissed-off mind. “Amia. You're Amia.”

“That's right. And you have a temper.”

“Not usually,” she snapped. “Just since people started abandoning me and locking me up.” Her hands shook.

“Are you mad at Shoshone or at yourself?”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Nona snapped.

“Take a few more deep breaths.”

Nona forced herself to stand still and do just that. Amia was here, behind the guards, just like Nona. At any rate, the woman didn't deserve to be cussed at. “You're right,” Nona said. “I'm sorry. I've never been locked up anywhere before, not for anything.”

Amia smiled. She stood up, or maybe unfolded would be a better word. The top of Nona's head ended under Amia's shoulder.

Amia pointed at the captain's insignia on Nona's chest. “You're used to being in charge.”

That made Nona laugh. “Not really. I'm actually kind of new at it, and given that my ship flew off without me and I'm in here now, I suspect I'm not very good at being in charge yet.”

Amia shrugged. “These are strange times. The bogey man's coming to get us.”

Nona didn't have anything useful to say about that. “How did you end up in here?”

“Shoshone knows I'm Gunnar's primary information source. She's still pretending to support Gunnar, but you shouldn't believe it.”

“Maybe I shouldn't believe anyone anymore.”

“I usually don't.” Amia smiled.

Nona didn't know what to make of her. Amia had gone from probing questions to being nice in a suspiciously short time. “What do you know about the pirates?”

“They aren't.”

“Pirates?”

Amia sat on the bed and stretched, slowly and deliberately. She had the flexibility to clasp her arms behind her back. “They're not that. Not usually anyway. Once in a while they take a ship that's stupid enough to come near the Ring.” She flattened her torso against the bed between her legs, a move Nona would fail at completely. “But what would you do if you were starved and someone put a tray of meat in front of you?”

“They eat the ships?”

“They learn from them. They use the energy and the metals and the knowledge that's there.”

“Is that what they did to the High Sweet Home?”

“They destroyed it.” Amia sat back up with her legs folded under her. “Nothing is wasted way out here.”

“I think they killed my best friend,” Nona offered.

“They don't care. I've seen their representatives here a time or two. Maybe I've even seen the Next themselves. You can't tell, you know. We all have robots. But there's a coldness about them, a way they're distant. Like they've gone so far beyond us they don't care about us anymore.”

“So what do they care about?”

“Power.”

“Power? Like over people?”

Amia laughed. “No. Power from the sun. Raw materials. They've built a whole thriving world—more than we know, I think, more than we know. They built all of that beyond the Ring, and now they want more.”

“Are they mad at us?” Nona asked. “For banishing them? Mom always said she didn't think so. She met one once, said it sacrificed itself for her and dad and Ruby Martin.”

“I know that story. I don't believe it.”

The story was so much a part of Nona's history, she didn't know what to say. Of course it had happened. “She did sacrifice herself. But that was after she killed some of my mother's friends. I always got both parts of that story. Mom made sure I didn't believe the pirates were good or evil.”

“I'd believe that part. The idea that they killed. You see, the trick is to stay hidden. They don't hate us at all. We might as well be asteroid dust that someone tracked into their solar system. If we get in the Next's way, they'll incinerate us.”

“So if we went out beyond the Ring, they'd just move in, and they wouldn't come after us?”

“Yeah. Like that.” Amia went quiet. “But we won't. First, we'd never survive. We're flesh, and we haven't done much engineering for the dark cold of nothingness past the Ring. Shoshone isn't going to abandon Satwa. Gunnar's not going to abandon Mammot.”

“And Charlie's not going to abandon Lym,” Nona whispered.

“Who's Charlie?” Amia asked.

As if he'd been listening for his cue, Charlie opened the door. “That's Charlie. He's an ambassador from Lym.”

Amia's expression suggested that Charlie wasn't quite what she had been expecting. Nona had to admit that he looked uncomfortable in his party clothes, and a little more like a ruffian than most of the men she'd met out here or knew from the Deep. He also had a really strange look on his face right now, as if he struggled with disbelief.

Maybe he'd never been locked up either.

They exchanged introductions, and then Charlie said, “Amia, will you excuse us? I need to talk to Nona alone.”

Amia didn't look at all surprised by his request.

When the door closed behind her, Nona looked over at Charlie. “She thinks we're going to die. She thinks we're all going to die.”

Charlie crossed the space to her and folded her in his arms. He warmed her almost immediately and she found herself melting into him, tears running down her face. He was smart enough not to tell her it would be okay, but to just hold her. He was trembling, but far less than she was.

After a while, neither of them trembled anymore.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHRYSTAL

Chrystal focused almost all of her processing ability on a virtual yellow cube in front of her, reaching out to bat it into place next to another yellow cube. The images fused and floated in front of her as if they were one piece. Yi was up to three. She used a simple swatting gesture to send the next piece that materialized in front of her to block one of Yi's red pieces, and at the same time Jason sent a blue block into her string of two yellows, which disappeared into thin air. She grunted and re-focused.

The goal of the game was to create strings of at least three similar blocks of your own color while keeping the other two from doing the same. Three or more stuck together and couldn't be destroyed. The person who built a whole wall first won. As easy as it looked, the game would have been impossible in her old body. She wouldn't have been able to hold her hands up and keep them dexterous for so long, not with nothing but air to rest them on. But this body didn't even tremble with the effort.

The game posed an interesting challenge, but Chrystal wasn't really enjoying it. Part of her attention remained split on the upcoming docking. She hadn't seen a human since they . . . since their bodies died. Were killed. What would it be like to see Nona? Would they let her see her right away?

Yi had looked distracted for the last hour,
and
he was losing the game. Chrystal was certain both that he wanted to say something and that he would only do so in his own time.

Jason muttered about the game as he played, calling out colors and verbally telling himself what to do. Annoying, all the more so because he was winning.

A screen on the far wall displayed the positions of all known ships and stations in the vicinity at all times. The Satwa had just begun to show on the screen, a small dot in the right hand corner. She switched the view to one of the screens on her wearable so she'd have better track of it, setting an alarm for an hour before they actually approached.

Yi elbowed her. “Is there anyone inside?”

He meant inside of her, the way their teachers occasionally seemed be under their skin or cohabiting with their brains. She shook her head. “I think I'm clear.”

Yi glanced at Jason, who nodded, made a final flourishing move, and won the game. “Sure, let's try again.”

Braiding had begun to feel like a mysterious power out of a comic instead of something they might actually be able to do. She didn't want to spend more time on it. “We have to get ready for the station.”

“I know,” Yi said, with a slight grin. “Trust me. I have an idea.”

She sighed, an affectation she'd had to relearn. She could take in air with her new body and let it go, even if she didn't need it. Forcing minor human mannerisms gave her comfort. “Go ahead. Tell me what to do again.”

“This time I want you and Jason to try it. We've been trying it with me, since I have a little experience. But maybe you two can do it while I talk you through.”

Jason looked at her warily. “I'm game.”

She had never really been able to refuse Yi anything. “Let's try it.”

The pulled their chairs closer together so that their bare knees touched in a big circle. Jason took her right hand and Yi took her left. “Close your eyes,” Yi said. “Humor me. Forget your bodies. Forget that you have bodies.”

He was so sure of himself. Yi the engineer, certain of something that seemed more art than science, more mystical than mathematical. He muttered in low tones, in a slightly melodious rhythm that was different from his usual speaking voice.

“Let go of all of the things that you feel. Become larger. Become larger than you are. Reach out for each other with no boundaries, as if you were blending into each other's skin.”

Katherine would have been good at this
, she thought.

She would have,
Yi replied
. I miss her
.

They were becoming better at talking to each other in their heads. Yi had explained that they must all share the same networks with the whole ship, maybe even the whole Edge society.

Yi remained convinced the braiding was more, almost to the point of obsession. “Become one with each other. Share your perceptions. Try a simple one. Share what my voice sounds like.”

Even though they could both hear it?

As if he heard her question, Yi said, “You both experience the same thing differently. This is an opportunity to share the experiences of the other. Chrystal. Concentrate on the way that Jason hears me.”

She did. Nothing.

“Jason. Concentrate on how Chrystal hears me.”

She felt the faintest whisper of Jason inside of her, a feeling rather than a specific thought like those they had learned to exchange in conversation. It was both like and unlike the presence of Jhailing Jim, but if she'd had to explain how it was different, she wasn't sure she could.

Yi kept talking. “Let go of yourselves. You're safe. You'll return home wholly yourself after you touch each other's essences.”

At least he hadn't said each other's souls.

That wasn't her thought even though she was thinking it.

Yi has become more human since he became a robot. I want to hear how Chrystal thinks, to touch Chrystal, to fold her up and protect her from whatever happened to Katherine. Sounds like. Focus on what Yi sounds like. Desperate. And good. Yi sounds desperate, and good. I want this to work for him.

She was feeling Jason's feelings. It wasn't exactly words. But if she had to write it down she'd manage an approximation. She heard Yi from two points of view, as if Yi's voice was isolated in two separate speakers and they each rendered him differently.
I love you
, she thought at Jason. Only she wouldn't describe it that way. That would be like saying she loved herself. She felt lost here, felt the missing fourth that was the absence of Katherine more than she herself felt it, felt Jason understand that she felt guilty for that, felt Jason sending her—sending Chrystal—a scrap of forgiveness and she sending back comfort and thanks.

They were two people still, but she could move between Jason's point of view and her own.

Yi guided, his voice sounding happier to them both, as if he knew they were feeling this together. “Stay simple. Think about when you met. Think about how you felt when you first saw each other. Remember that your minds work faster now. You can do many things at once, share and listen.”

Chrystal wasn't interested in Yi right now, she was interested in Jason. In the night they met. Years ago. Maybe five years. She had already been with Katherine, the two of them together in a bar, dancing. She had seen Jason moving across the room toward them, and he had seen them as two beautiful women so clearly in love that he envied them. Katherine's long hair attracted him, and the dragon tattoos they both wore. Sometimes in the light the two tattoos blended as if the dragons made love when they danced close and Jason coming toward them was large and bright and warm and he had a smile that stopped them both—they had been having this talk, she and Katherine, about how they loved each other more than light, more than music, more than dance, but they needed a balancing force, a third or a pair to add spice and the two women were looking at him like they might fall out of their world and actually notice him maybe even invite him and Katherine whispered in her ear that they should offer the man a drink and the smaller one smiled a smile so welcome he suddenly liked them both the same and when she asked him if he wanted a drink he told them he did.

It felt like magic. She was him and herself at the same time, remembering things she had forgotten and not sure if they were her memories or his.

After a time Yi's voice rose and intruded. “Start to talk in sentences to each other, start to separate.”