The Swan Riders (36 page)

Daji and Renata, peeled his shuddering, gasping body out of Rachel's arms. They laid Francis Xavier on his back in the circle of cinders and ash. There were suddenly dozens of hands digging in pockets, packets of clotting powder and forcescar tearing open, needles flashing, lengths of gauze flying outward like ribbons in the wind that swept down the mountain and across the rose-petal sea.

Francis Xavier's eyes were wide and shocked and seeking Rachel's.

Rachel had been knocked back from the crisis by all the helping hands. “Francis,” she said, reaching for him with his blood on her hands.

Someone jabbed a needle in Francis's neck. His eyes softened like snow melting. And then he was gone.

The bloody hand dropped. “Elián . . .” It was Michael's voice, resonant with possibilities and yet almost breaking.

“It's okay,” said Elián. “Hey. I've got you.” He took Michael by the shoulders and eased him away, settling him with his back against the big stone.

Meanwhile Alejandro—the man who had choked Francis Xavier almost to death, and who had also held him while he wept—Alejandro had scooped Sri up and was settling her likewise, right beside Michael.

After all, they needed the stretcher.

Sri was wrapped in that brilliantly orange and infinitely familiar blanket. Michael's coat was rucked up behind him, bunching awkwardly over the shoulders. With their backs to the same boulder and their boots in the same ash, the two of them leaned into each other like the two inward falling halves of an arch.

“Clever,” said Sri.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Michael drew his legs up and wrapped his arms tight around them. Rachel was soaking through him like blood through a bandage. “Talk to me when he doesn't die.”

“He won't,” I said. Because what had been catastrophic in the ruins of Our Lady of the Snows was less so here—with a hundred hands at the ready, with a hospital on-site.

Speaking of . . . Swan Riders had wrestled the stretcher away from the robots (both of which seemed to have seized up) and were rushing Francis Xavier away. Michael watched him go and ran a hand across his face, smearing it with ash as if with war paint.

But I really didn't think Francis Xavier would die. With the knife left in place, his lung had not collapsed. There was no trace of the pneumothorax, the cruel squeeze of air against organs that had so nearly killed Talis. Michael who was Talis.

Just Michael.

“I'm going to need a name,” he said softly.

“. . . Tanim,” suggested Daji. There were only a handful of Swan Riders left now, but the green-eyed boy was one of them.

Michael looked at me for the translation.

“The wave,” I said.

“The wave.” Michael traced a crest and crash in the air. “Here and then gone.”

“We'd better get that door shut,” said Elián. I followed his glance up the mountainside, to where the portal in the blast door stood open. The AIs were still behind those doors.
Two
was still behind those doors. Elián wouldn't be the only one who would feel better if we could shut him in there. “We could, I don't know, jam them or something?”

Rachel laughed. “They weigh twenty-five tons.”

Elián looked at her.

“I'd never seen anything like them in my life,” she said. “Where I'm from—” But of course, Rachel had no history. She smiled, crookedly. “Well. After I got here, I looked them up.”

Overhead the weapons platform shifted on its station-keeping rockets. I could see us through its lenses; little figures amid little stones. We looked like a logic puzzle, like one of those pegs-and-holes games. What next?

“You don't need a name,” I said. “We'll manage.”

“It's a tradition,” murmured Sri. “New AIs rename themselves.”

But whatever Michael was now, it wasn't a new AI. And as the adrenaline left him, he was starting to shake.

“Look, Sri,” said Elián. “I'm sure sorry you're dying horribly. But what are we going to do? Was this seriously the endgame? Tell Talis you want to fiddle with his brain and just cross your fingers he'd say yes? That was the whole plan?”

Sri tucked the other half of her blanket over Michael's knees. “Yes,” she admitted softly. “That was the whole plan. Just to change one mind.”

“Great plan. What a shock—it didn't work,” said Elián. “And now”—he gestured upward—“death rays.”

“It did work,” said Michael, rubbing the quilt between thin fingers. “Because I say yes.”

“You can't make that stick,” said Elián.

“Yes you can,” I said—because finally I saw it, the whole scope of the Swan Riders' plan. “You know you can.”

“Yes,” said Michael, a word heavy as a gold coin. A word that cost him. “Yes. I know I can.”

“What—” began Elián, and then cut himself off with a yelp as the frozen robot behind him swung around and grabbed his arm.

“I have to admit,” said the robot. “That would be a hell of a vote of confidence.”

Elián swore and tried to jerk away. The robot's pincer sprang open and let him go. Suddenly freed, he staggered and bonked his shins against a stone.

“Sorry.” The thing approximated a shrug with a ratcheting of its uppermost limb. “Just a remote-control patch. It was the nearest speaker that wasn't, you know, actively plotting my doom.” The limb came down with a series of clicks. “On the day my microphones rebel, it's all over.”

Like a rack of wrenches sitting down, the robot lowered itself into the abandoned schoolroom chair. “So,” said Two. “That was dramatic.”

“Thank you,” said Michael. At least half of him was incapable of taking that as anything but a compliment.

“He won't be another—whatever you are,” said Two. “That body of yours was possessed for weeks, and you were clearly mulling on our personal history at the time.” The robot twitched as if the pronouns were making its nonexistent teeth hurt. “FX was possessed on and off for, what, forty-five minutes? And reflective self-analysis was
so
not my mood. So he'll still be Francis Xavier. Which was exactly your point, wasn't it? I am an idiot.”

“You know,” said Michael, “you truly are.”

The robot, quite unbelievably, sighed. “You're really thinking about this?”

I could feel its uncertainty—Talis's uncertainty. His unspoken question:
Should I really . . . ?

“I—I think I've lost a lot of people. I think it would be nice to save a few.”

“The number of people we've saved is in the billions.”

“Sure.” A tiny, weary shrug, and a one-cornered smile. “Statistically.”

“You know,” said Elián, “I'm
not
an idiot. So why am I always the only one who doesn't know what's going on? What is this thing you're really thinking about?”

“The one person the Swan Riders wanted to convince wasn't Talis,” I said, with a nod at the robot. “It was Michael.”

“But he can't—he can't make that stick—”

“Yes he can,” I said. “If he becomes AI.”

“You're talking about upload,” said Elián. “You're talking Rachel—Michael—wavy person here getting uploaded. Getting a new datastore and getting reuploaded and turning back into an AI.”

“It's the only way to reintegrate,” said the collection of vise grips and plumbing parts that was currently being Two. The upper manipulator arms hinged outward in something approximating a spread of hands. “The only way to capture whatever grand change this true love hath wrought or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” said Michael. “It's—I—” One hand fisted in Sri's blanket. The other came up and pushed into that dip between nose and mouth. Sri wrapped an arm around him and his voice came out crackling. “To be honest I don't think I have the nerve.”

“Well,” said the plumbing parts. “Up to you.”

“Tanim,” said Daji softly. “My lady, please. It's the only way.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Michael. “You didn't ask me and you don't get to order me.”

“But,” said Elián, who could make
but
into a whole argument.

“You just don't get it. No one volunteers for that twice.” Michael's fist got tighter, hiding fear inside anger. “The upload . . . no one volunteers for that.”

Elián looked sideways at me. “Greta did.”

“
Twice
,” Michael repeated petulantly.

The sun had dipped behind the mountain, and the little meadow was suddenly colder, shadowed, though still under a high clear sky. I crouched in the ash and tucked the saffron blanket tightly around Michael's knees.

“They don't understand,” I said. “But I do.”

The grey room. I knew exactly what I was asking, knew exactly why the strange, newborn, ambiguous creature was shivering. I leaned forward and pressed my hand, not over the wound, but over the heart. The figure fell silent, and slowly lowered his—her—fist. “Be the best of us,” I said.

A little smile. “I think that spot's taken.”

“Be the first,” said Elián.

She closed her new old eyes. “Okay.”

Mountain twilight is so different than prairie twilight. The sun goes behind the mountains before the shadows can truly stretch and thicken, before the world can turn gold and full of contemplation. You stand in shadow and cast no shadow, and the sky above is still bright.

I looked at my hand with no shadow falling from it. And I thought of the grey room.

I looked at Michael—transformed and brilliant with the transformation; broken and shining.

I could also feel Two's eyes on my back, though it was hard to say how: the eyes of the satellite were on us, yes, and the sensors of the great mountain, yes, but it felt more personal than that. It was the kind of looking that puts an ache of awareness just behind the forehead. A human feeling. I turned. The robot in the ancient school chair had hardly stirred, and had no eyes in any case. I looked it in the uppermost pincer.

“You will abide by this,” I said.

“Hey. Anything that means that much to, well, me, for some value of ‘me' . . . anything that means that much is likely to stick.”

“Not good enough,” I said. “You will abide by this. You will allow the Swan Riders to continue their research into changing the nature of possession. You will implement that research as implementation becomes possible. And in the meantime you will conduct no purge of their ranks.”

“Awww,” said the robot. “Not even a little one?”

“You will seek a cure for the palsy.”

“Don't you think I already have?”

“Say so.”

“You put a lot of faith in my words, kiddo.”

“The whole world puts a lot of faith in your words, Talis. There's even a book.”

“Fine. I will abide by this. Skip the completely justified purges, do the research, implement the results.” The robot hesitated. “Change my mind.”

“It's been five hundred years,” said Michael. “It's past time.”

“What about the Pan Polars?” said Elián.

Two shrugged with a rattle and click. “What about them? As far as I can make out it's an entirely separate thing.”

Mostly. The Swan Riders' plan had needed a war, to get Talis in the field, to give them cover. This was always going to coincide with a war. But the particulars of the war—to the Swan Riders, they didn't matter.

To me, they mattered.

“Queen Agnes Little,” I said.

“Yeah, I like her,” said Two. “She's tough, and smart, and scary. Must run in the family. But she's got nothing she can give me.”

“Don't be too sure of that,” I said. “She's pregnant.”

The plumbing parts actually huffed with surprise. “How do you know?” But of course he was already reviewing the files, seeing what I had seen: the thermal clues, the hand on the weskit, the thickening mask of freckles. What he had missed, and I had seen.

“Let her hostage herself.”

“That's . . . irregular.”

“Please, my lord,” I said. “Just give me a little time.”

To do what? I did not know. I had failed to take over the world. But I could feel the world changing. The earth under us was spinning at eight hundred miles an hour. And Talis was considering.

“She'll never go for it,” said Two.

“Ask her.”

I felt that looking, again. The deep pressure. Behind my eyes, for the first time all day, Halifax stopped exploding.

“Okay,” said Two. “I'll ask.”

Above us sounded a taiko-drum boom. The great doors were opening. The target that had been pinned to all of us, that I had felt in my datastore and on the back of my neck, suddenly switched off. Only I could have felt that, but I felt that.

“Thank you, my lord,” I said.

“Greta,” said the robot. “I wish you'd call me Talis.”