The Swan Riders (40 page)

There were things for Elián to do. Not enough of them, but still. Put the horses out to graze; pump them water. Start a pot of beans with onion and rosemary, seasoned with the black pepper that Francis Xavier had brought from somewhere warmer.

There were things for me to do. File the arrival report. Learn about morphalog dosages. Set and calibrate the stick-on sensors that we had brought to make the most of this death—to gather information on the palsy, and thus save the Riders.

I put the sensors on between the first and second attack. It seemed cruel to crown Talis like this, to put sensors where I had so recently set screws. The compression wounds were still fresh. But I did it, because he wanted me to, stuck on the mesh patches like band-aids to make it better, like diamonds to bind back his hair. They were dark, and they twinkled.

He roused as I did it—I'd drugged him; he was drowsy—and unfolded Rachel's softest smile. “But is it a good look for me?”

“Absolutely,” I said—and the seizure shook him to the roots of his teeth. I carded my hand through his hair and murmured
Easy, easy
.

It wasn't easy.

A third attack, and a fourth. Francis Xavier held Talis from behind, wrapped him and whispered things into his hair.

I took the readings. I upped the dosages. Elián brought the horses in.

A fifth attack, and a sixth. A seventh came when we were trying to eat soup, and Talis's aura had become so tangled, so stretched and smudged with the drugs, that I did not see it coming, not even after he set down his spoon with a clink. It knocked him off the stool before any of us could reach him, and when we did, his eyes were desperate, terrified.

Elián and Francis put him back on the bed, got him through it.

“Next rule,” he said when it was over. “Don't leave me.” His voice was ragged already. “Don't let go of my hand.”

The three of us looked at each other.

“We can take it in shifts,” FX said. A Swan Rider. Practical. I knew he could make this death very fast. I knew part of him wanted to.

“Of course we can,” I said.

Talis pushed a hand through his hair, showing his twinkling crown of sensors.

We had things to do. Elián washed the dishes. I took the data and upped the dosage on the drugs. And Francis Xavier sat up all that night, holding Talis's hand.

In the middle of the night I woke to yet another seizure, and to Francis telling a long story about the raft cities in the Pacific Gyre. A very young and very foreign Swan Rider, his first time saving the world. The children had been delighted in his false dignity, had made a game of dumping him off every tiny raft he set foot upon. He had saved them, those children who didn't even know they were going down. It was the best thing he had ever done.

It was a story full of dunkings and lullabies. It was full of waves and rocking.

The horses breathing.

We were all half asleep.

“Come here,” whispered Elián, lying behind me on the floor. “You're shivering. Come here.”

I moved back into his warmth and he wrapped an arm over me.

“My wings went to the bottom,” said Francis Xavier. And really it was Talis who was shivering. “It was the best thing I ever did.”

I had things to do, but I sat with my hand on Talis's hand. He was asleep. Limp. Innocent. The data showed him weaker.

But the data lied. Invulnerable people cannot be strong, for the same reason fearless people cannot be brave. For the same reason immortal people cannot be human.

Talis slept a mortal sleep, curled up with his back against Francis Xavier's front. The master of the world. The little spoon.

A seventeenth attack, and an eighteenth. I should admit that I had no more things to do. It was ugly and horrifying. It was graceless. I wanted it over.

Elián and I, outside, breathing clean cold frost, walking the horses. I had Gordon and Sri's horse, Roberta the Bruce. Elián had Heigh Ho Uranium and Talis's little firecracker, NORAD. The horses, who really needed more exercise than we'd been giving them, were snorting and misbehaving mildly, stopping short and pulling up mouthfuls of grass. We had stopped, in fact, because Roberta was doing just that.

“I—Greta?”

Though stopped, I froze. There was caution in Elián's voice, something extreme, as if he'd spotted a snake. “What's happening to Talis,” he said. “Will it happen to me?”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Elián. No.”

“But—”

“We're collecting the data. We're—” I remembered what Azriel had told me. “The AIs have nearly three hundred exaflops of computational—we have just staggering amounts of problem-solving power, Elián. We can stop it. We can fix it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I was going to save Elián. And Francis Xavier. And all the Swan Riders.

And maybe even myself. Obviously no one had told Elián about my own fate with the palsy. If they had, he would have asked about me first. He always did.

“So we're really going to do this, you and me,” said Elián. And he actually saluted me, or at least put his hand over his heart. The tattoo was nearly healed—shining black against his dark olive skin.

Elián would make a good Swan Rider. Not the blind obedience part, obviously (and I wanted to change the rules about that) but the rest of it—the impossibly daunting saving people part. The rescuing raft colonies part. He could do that. He could run vaccines over snowed-in glacial passes like a heroic sled dog. He could dig kids out of rubble. It would be his chance to be a knight-errant, and that would suit him down to the dramatically inclined tips of his new wings.

“As it turns out,” I said, “the world is full of problems you can hit.”

“And you're going to rule it?” he asked.

I closed my eyes. I tipped up my chin like Queen Agnes Little.

Gordon Lightfoot ambled forward and nuzzled the back of my still-short hair. Around me, the world spread out like a map, like a carpet. I could see it from space, as easily as I could see it from my own eyes. It was beautiful and glittering.

And small.

You cannot see the world small and rule it well.

You cannot see the world small and be human.

“Not rule,” I said. “Change.”

One last day.

“See?” whispered Talis, over some necessary fuss with a bedpan. “Not ennobling.”

I checked his aura carefully and judged him safe for a few minutes, so I left him with Elián and went outside to dump the pan. It was afternoon, but the moon hung in the blue sky. It looked as if someone had split it with an axe. Down the rill I could see Francis Xavier walking the horses. I lifted a hand to him—all well—and he lifted one to me.

I went back in.

Talis was lying there with his chin tipped up, his throat exposed, as if he wanted someone to cut it.

“I'm no good at this,” he said hopelessly.

“It's death,” Elián said. “You're not supposed to be good at it.”

“I don't see why not,” said Talis, pure bitterness. “I've had the practice.”

The horses needed exercise, and so Francis Xavier was gone some time. I took Elián's place, sitting with my hand on Talis's, both of us speechless. It was quiet. The space was cozy. Warm. Friendly with the smell of the hay and the horses.

It was a refuge and we were refugees. We could stay here only a little while.

“Do you know what to do?” Talis asked finally.

“I know what to do.” She would need to be connected to the portal after she died, so that her self could be reintegrated with the master copy of Talis. So that Talis would have been both Michael and Rachel. Lived twice, died twice. Faced the grey room twice. Known me. Known Francis. Loved and been loved.

Been human.

“I know what to do,” I said again. I did not want this to be over.

But it was. Almost. I could see it in the pain and damage rising inside her like water rising in a new-struck well. I could see it in the effort it took her to turn her head and look at me. “New AIs rename themselves,” she said.

“You don't need to,” I said.

“Not . . .” She swallowed, and her hand stirred in mine. “What will you be?”