Spear of Light (37 page)

Jason looked irritated but said,
I will.

“I'll lead you to the door.” Amfi did, and before she shut the heavy door behind them, said, “Be careful. Check on Manny for me?”

“We will.”

“And come back. Call it an old woman's instinct. But I am very curious about the secrets you're hiding.” She cocked her head. “Are you safe in the dark?”

“We can see in it.”

Amfi waved and shut the door behind them.

It felt good to be outside, where it smelled like waterfall and the night birds had started waking up and calling back and forth to each other. He jogged off, Chrystal moving easily behind him.

They reached the skimmer just as the sun cracked the eastern edge of the sky open.
Hey, it's safe
, he said as soon as they spotted the vehicle nestled under trees.

You were worried?

Of course.

Do you worry about everything?
Chrystal teased him,
Still?

Isn't that why you picked me? To keep your family safe?

That worked.

Hey!

I'm teasing. I love you.

I love you.

They didn't say so often enough. It mattered, even now. More now.
That was a great run
.

Get in and fly.
She tossed her dark hair and gave him a lightly smoky look. Very un-robotic. Still, it made him slightly wistful. Was she pretending to human feelings or just teasing him? Or did she still feel more deeply than he did?

They flew wide of Manna Springs. Yi brought them in on the Nexity edge of the spaceport. During their final approach, a Jhailing pinged him.
Meet us in the Mixing Zone.

All right.

While he parked, he set a piece of himself to reviewing the memory shots he'd made of the cave. He put together a stream of them, although he left out the last things they had seen. The endless rows of beds and medical machinery bothered him deeply. He wouldn't hide them from the Next, but he didn't want to talk about them yet.

The Jhailing met him and Chrystal at the open gate to the Zone and led them into the Hall of Choosing, where Katherine worked.
We're meeting here because it's handy and we need a private room.

Okay.

As they walked through the sterile corridors, they occasionally passed small groups of humans being led by soulbots or by machine-like Next. Almost all the human faces showed fear and longing and curiosity, although the measures of each differed greatly.

Inside of the private room, he found a Colorima, Katherine, Manny, and Yi Two. A surprising group. The Colorima and the Jhailing had chosen simple silvery bodies with basic humanoid forms. Probably for Manny's sake.

“What's up?” Chrystal asked out loud.

The Colorima spoke. “We have multiple topics. The first involves Manna Springs and Manny. There are calls for his return and for the removal of the twins. In addition, the Port appears to be considering taking over the town.”

“That's not acceptable,” Yi said.

“We swore to stay out of human politics. That's why we invited Manny to this meeting. We've verified the Port is supporting the impending attack against us at Next's Reach, and we must not have them in control here.”

“What do you mean by supporting?” Yi asked.

“Space-to-ground ships aren't approved to land at the base there, but they're allowing it. That's support of a kind.”

“Then you have to take the spaceport and the city,” Chrystal pointed out. “If you take the port alone, Manna Springs will rise up, and if you take Manna Springs, the Port will have an excuse to attack you.”

The Colorima grew serious. “To take both would require force so hard it would bring more war to us. So we have chosen to help Manny. To do that with an unseen hand will be . . . possible.”

Manny looked profoundly uncomfortable, tapping one foot from time to time and fidgeting. If he wasn't on board with this plan, what would he do? Yi was suddenly glad they'd left Jason in the cave.
So that's one hard thing
, he said to the Jhailing and the Colorima.
What's the other? Because I have one, too
.

The Colorima smiled. Not as good as a laugh. “So here's the second problem. The planned attack near Next's Reach is about to start. We have to decide whether or not to go in force. If we go, we will have to kill all of the attackers.”

Yi and Chrystal shared a quick glance. “
No!
” Chrystal practically screamed in his head. He could even see it on her face: panic and fear. “Nona's there!”

Calm
, he whispered in her head.
Calm
.

Her features fell into a softer look, but she stared hard at the Colorima, as if glaring at her could cause her to change her mind.

Manny's face screwed taut with anger and frustration. He didn't speak even though he looked like he had words pent up inside of his mouth and his hands gripped the edge of his seat tightly. He smelled of stress. Yi could imagine what it must feel like to be the only human in a room full of robots talking about killing your friends.

The Colorima continued placidly, ignoring Manny's discomfort, even though he was sure she recognized it. “People who attack us will be killed. Letting them live encourages more attacks. Our immediate challenge is that Charlie Windar and Nona Hall are on their way to Next's Reach. If they can get there and stop the fight, then we can pretend we didn't see it.”

Manny had finally gotten enough control over himself to spit out some words. “You can't hurt either of those two. Charlie is too important to Lym, and Nona is an ambassador. You could lose the Deep's support.”

“I don't think so,” the Colorima replied. “The Deep is too smart to fight us. But we will try to avoid hurting her if there is an option.” She spoke exactly as if she were discussing the number of places to set a party. “Nona is aligned with Satyana and Gunnar, who are allies. We need Charlie for the same reason we need Manny. They are the ones we negotiated with and the ones who have the authority to negotiate further with us.”

Manny looked like he had just eaten something distasteful.

Based on how Manny looked, Yi chose subvocals again, addressing the Jhailing directly.
Here is your third thing. We found some history. It might relate to what you wanted us to look for. Humans will find it soon.

They don't know about it now?

No.

All right. Is it so urgent that we need to act now?

Let me send you some memory shots I took. You should have some clues in case something happens to me.

Very well.

Yi started a stream going.

Three hours after the meeting with the Jhailing and the Colorima, Yi and Manny sat in a bar just inside the Mixing Zone, Manny drinking water and Yi drinking nothing. They shared a tall wooden table with metal legs and sat on stools with soft orange cushions. Yi's cushion kept threatening to slide out from under him, so he had to pay attention to his balance. In spite of the crowd in the bar, everyone except the serving robots gave them a wide berth. “How long do we have to wait?” Manny asked.

“I don't know. As long as it takes. Are you nervous?”

“There are roughly a thousand things that might go wrong with this plan.”

Yi laughed softly.

Manny squinted at him. “Don't you worry?”

“All the time. My family teases me about it, but I can count at least three times I've saved their lives.”

“I heard that from Katherine once. She said you worry for all four of them, so they don't have to worry.”

“We should all worry.”

Manny finished his water and asked for another one. “Katherine and I used to sit together at night sometimes. I'd read or plan my way back home, and she'd sit and do her trance thing, and every once in a while we'd stop and talk.”

Art decorated the walls right behind Manny. Pictures of places on Lym painted with exaggerated colors. A sunset so bright it looked like an explosion, mountains the blue of a summer sky, a yellow flower so varied it looked real except the core yellow was so bright he'd never seen it in nature. “She told me about talking with you. She enjoyed herself. We don't spend a lot of time with humans anymore.”

“Aren't you supposed to show the other humans how to be robots?”

“They spent a lot of energy making everyone who survived the High Sweet Home into perfectly created soulbots with our old likenesses. Katherine works with them, and she said people can choose the bodies they want from a catalog. They are not as different from one another as we are.”

“That's too bad.”

“Remember, they made us to be ambassadors. Sometimes I think they designed us so precisely for Chrystal. So she could get close to Nona.”

Manny grunted. “That worked.” He fell silent, stroking his beard. When he spoke again, it was nearly a whisper. “But then they let the Shining Revolution kill her. Do you think that was on purpose?”

“Jason is sure of it. But I don't think it's that easy. The Next see death differently than we do. They had another Chrystal just as far through our training program as the first one. So no real loss, right?”

“But the Jhailings and Colorimas are different. I've had time to figure that out. It's not one entity named Colorima. It's a lot of copies, but they're all different. I met two Jhailings at once early on, and one had a sense of humor while the other one had a stick up its silver ass.”

Yi suspected he was more like the second one and wondered briefly if he should try to learn more skills at humor. “If they'd stepped in to save Chrystal, they might have started a war.”

Manny frowned. “Are all the Next really three original humans?”

Yi smiled at that. “Hundreds. But the Jhailings and the Colorimas took on the task of . . . communicating with the humans. It's hard, you know.”

“For you?”

“A little. Its gets harder as time goes on. That's why Katherine liked sitting with you. Some of the Next are thousands of years old, and the only humans they saw before this were smugglers.”

Before Manny could ask another question, a Jhailing came in. “We're done. You can go now.”

“Did it go well?”

“Better than we might have expected. Your advice appears to have been good.”

They walked through the gates of the Mixing Zone and into the bright lights at the edge of the spaceport. “We have a skimmer over here.”

“What happened?”

“We were able to make a case that five of them had violated the treaty. We mentioned that they could be sentenced to death. After that they started negotiating.”

“But you didn't kill anyone?” Manny asked.

“No.”

The big man relaxed visibly. “What happened to them?”

“They got to keep their lives; they will spend a few years of them in jail in Manna Springs.”

“Why here?”

The Jhailing said, “We don't jail humans. We befriend them or we give them the opportunity to become us or we kill them. It's simpler that way.”

“And you don't feel guilty?” Manny asked. “How can you
be
you?” He sounded almost as calm as the Colorima, and deadly serious. To his credit he didn't sound frightened at all, maybe even a little excited.

They finished buckling in. The Jhailing said, “You know you're really attached to the re-wilding here. You've devoted all of your choices to it?”

“Yes,” Manny replied.

“We're like that.”

Manny look offended at the comparison. “We don't kill as casually.”

“No?” They started off, the skimmer's movement driven by an absence of sound or stutter, as if it were a fast feather. “How do you deal with invasive species?”

“If we can, we move them.”

“And if you can't?”

Manny didn't respond.

Large spaceships loomed around them, reminding Yi of the cave, except that these were sleeker, prettier. The artifacts in the cave were more about brute force, or perhaps simply from before humanity or the Next had learned so much about nanomaterials.

What will we find?
Yi messaged the Jhailing.

Don't be impolite.

Yi sat back and waited. It had a point. Wind pulled at his curly, difficult hair and cooled the surface of his skin.

They could see the lights of Manna Springs. “What about the fight?” Manny asked. “Is it over?”

“At Next's Reach? It hasn't really started.”

A small crowd had gathered near the edge of the city where the hotels stood. Yi recognized Jules standing apart, and some of the business owners crowded next to each other. Most faced them, watching them bring the skimmer in. Jules kept his attention on the townspeople.