Authors: Brenda Cooper
Marcus had fallen silent, but then he said, “Sleep won’t help. In fact, not having sleep might be better. There’s art in creating.” Even though it was Kayleen’s question he was answering, he looked at me. “It’s all our knowledge of biology and machine nano and biomachines and art. You’ve got to have all that. And the ability to dive deep in data streams while you work. I do, and you’ve learned, you’ve been learning every day. Between us, we know more than enough to do this. But if data was all it took, a computer as dumb as a ship’s AI could do this—put it all together into a simulation and run scenarios until something happens.”
“Good idea,” Kayleen murmured. “Then we
could
sleep.” She shifted a little, giving me enough room to slide my hip off the hard lump it had been hugging.
I sent her a grateful thought, more a feeling, and she returned warmth.
Marcus sounded far away, as if he were in a conversation with someone else. “It doesn’t work. If it did work, we’d have machine-made organics everywhere. We have machine-designed machines, machine-monitored climates, little machines to weed and clean and organize our world, machine sensors everywhere.”
He’d talked about this before, lifetimes ago, during my first few weeks on Silver’s Home. “But machines can’t make life,” I finished for him, remembering.
He smiled. “Life speaks to life. And it’s not your head that does it, not the part of you that’s done all the studying. You need that part, too, but Making—Making is more, and less, than that. It’s something that comes through you but is more than you. That’s where you and I need to get to.” He touched Kayleen’s shoulder gently. “And you, too, if you can.”
She gave him a faint smile, but I could see the whites around her eyes, and I was sure that if I held her hand, it would be trembling. Maybe mine would, too. I knew what he wanted. And the last time I’d done it, the last time I’d let myself go and become all the world that I could sense, I’d used the power to kill. “I’ll do my best.”
He whispered, “That’ll do.”
And so we went down again. This time, more than exhaustion licked at me. Memory. A memory I couldn’t see without fear. It had been . . . so beautiful . . . to be so far outside myself. The strongest moment ever, a moment when my soul was the soul of the world and the soul of Fremont, and it felt like the entire universe was in me. The nano in my blood and the blood in my heart and the data in all of it had resonated as one note, one beat, then another, synchronous, a dance so deep and full it showed the way everyone linked, enemy and friend, predator and prey, sun and moons, machine and man.
I hadn’t gotten close to that moment ever again.
I couldn’t even remember how I’d done it. Why. It had come up on me unawares, and had made all the difference in our last battle. I’d had to find that place to win, even though I hadn’t been looking for it. Chelo had been next to me, always my strongest help. And the others had been in danger. I’d had more net—Fremont’s own, a net I’d built myself, and the Islan net put up by the Star Mercenaries. Different. But not so different as this one.
The day I threw the ship into the sea had started as a tiny tunnel on the net, as sensor data flowing innocuously into a starship. Only all the data in our world had been added, bit by bit, letting me expand into forever.
Marcus, show me. You do it here, you let go. I want to feel how you let go and stay safe. You’ve kept me out of their nets, but give me more. Give me the extra capacity in the war room next door.
Hesitation. Kayleen answered with feeling, showing me she saw the right of my need. She’d been there. She’d glimpsed where I’d gone, even though she hadn’t followed.
I still needed to get past the fear, but I’d need power to do it.
I need more,
I repeated.
If you don’t want me in the winged net, you have to let me in your other feed. The war feed. There’s capacity there.
It will be . . . distracting. If you lose control, I may not be able to shield you well enough.
If you think I’m strong enough to save the fliers, to save the Five Worlds from war, then you have to trust me now.
Still, there was silence. Did he believe in me as much as he said? He had to. He’d practically created me.
There hasn’t been enough time. The first sign of the wind that burns is disorientation. Promise me you’ll stop if you no longer know yourself?
Right. How do you know when you don’t know yourself? The drop from sanity off the wall of the wind into the fires of the burned was sharp and fast. I knew that much.
Kayleen spoke up.
I know what it feels like. I’ll watch for him.
She had not fallen off. She’d been there, at the edge, tipping toward insanity, and love had brought her back. My sister and Liam. They’d loved her in spite of the bloom of craziness in her, helped her tame it. Bless them.
I’d be okay.
If he didn’t make me wait much longer. Waiting for him to decide might burn me all by itself.
Marcus’s silence seemed to go on forever, and so I picked up data threads one by one, absorbing the state of the sim, preparing. Anything was easier than waiting.
Maybe that is what we all need. Ready?
Good! But who would watch out for Kayleen? I’d have to do that, too. Somehow. I reached for her.
You ready?
Yes.
Okay.
I braced, but there was no flood, just all of us breathing together far away from my consciousness, but still in tune one with another. The simulation in front of us. The same, but richer, every detail more distinct. Paula, who wanted a baby she could grow wings on.
Paula, who was more than us and less than us, a complexity of machine and human, of biology and engineering.
I followed Marcus, Kayleen following me, all side by side and linked, together, but led one by the other by the other, there was simply more to accept. Enough, finally. I hadn’t fed on so much data, so rich and sweet, since we left
Creator
. Paula became huge inside me.
And then I was inside her.
We’d been the surgeons, the ones outside wielding the knives of change. Badly. Now we were . . . something else.
Marcus kept his word, showing me what he felt, what he did. No wonder we’d failed and failed and failed. I had been skimming the surface of her before, and I hadn’t even known it. Maybe he had been this deep in her, and I hadn’t seen it, but now she was open entirely to me. To all of us. I took a deep breath of the data, synchronizing my breath to Paula’s simulated breath, trusting Marcus and Kayleen to follow.
Kayleen felt strong, if distant. Marcus, strong and supportive, nearby, with me. He and I were outdistancing Kayleen.
No help for it. I sent to her:
Stay as close as you can. Watch me and I’ll watch you.
Of course.
Enough dataspace existed for me to use, more than enough. I expanded, breathing in more with every breath, my self-in-data linked to my physical body. With every out-breath, I simply held what I had. The biological rhythm served to ground and contain me, to keep me distinct as myself. If I forgot to notice my breath, I might become lost.
Unused room for data existed between the parts I needed and the flow of warship statistics and locations and chatter; a buffer. I left it there, remembering Marcus’s warning, appeasing myself by saying I would come back and taste it later. For now, I didn’t have any trouble keeping my focus on breath and heart and bone and blood vessels and ovaries.
We began to work.
Kayleen, as always, bolstered and commented and added strength. Yes, she watched me more closely. I watched her back. Maybe staying aware of each other would keep us safe, and grounded.
Marcus felt more sure, more confident. Perhaps he had needed this, too. We couldn’t be timid or afraid. If we were, it would take months to accomplish this, and we didn’t have months. The safety of our family depended on doing this right and now. Someone had Paloma. Jenna. That thought formed another bridge between this moment and the moment of Fremont. It goaded me.
So I focused and let go at once. There are no words that really tell how to let go. It’s being loose and tight, heavy and light as air.
Paula’s history and her being and her needs filled me even while the pulse of blood in a vein or the flash of a neuron attracted my attention. A universe inside a woman’s body. No wonder Marcus had thought a plant too much not long ago. Life was big and chaotic. Intricate magic.
Flier children were born from normal mothers and then changed. Paula had the right parts for sex, canted at slightly different angles since no flier could ever lie on their back without crushing wings, except in special harnesses. But sex didn’t need the parts for reproduction. Paula’s uterus and ova had been shriveled to nothing. Thankfully, not removed entirely. We built and strengthened, reminded the organs what they had been meant to become. This building and rebuilding was completely separate from any part of my sexual or love life, not relatable in my head to Alicia or Kayleen or my own parents or sex or birth.
Even though we had done this part before, it was different. It came more easily, almost a dance; still exhausting. It had taken hours before, but now it went fast, maybe just minutes. Hard to tell. I could feel it all working, feel us as part of a change that made her better and stronger. Beyond that, too: heart, blood, breath, nerves firing, and even hope. Feeling hope in a sim gave me hope, and better, looped it among the three of us.
Intuition: the emotion of the Maker at the point of his creation matters. It affects the outcome.
Once the structural changes took in proteins and cells (new instructions placed in the building blocks of her), her glands needed balancing.
This was the point where the last two sims had begun to die on us. Runaway hormones made weak bones and unbalanced growth, and
affected the delicate bodies of fliers more than normal humans. Emotions had become unrecognizable, had eaten the health of the sims.
But this, too, came more easily. We worked through glands and endocrine systems together, adjusting and testing and redoing. This part felt even harder; something a woman should do. My own internal balances weren’t the same. Trying to pull Kayleen into the work failed; she was too insubstantial at these speeds and depths, a wraith with us but not with us. Faint.
Trust yourself.
Easy for him to say. Even if he was right, how?
Just keep working.
Oh. Oh! I did. Then we were past that, expanding into Paula’s nerves and muscles, testing organs to be sure nothing we’d done would cause too much stress. I could be her. Her heart beat louder than mine, drawing my own physical cadences to match hers.
Marcus, beside me, covering me, putting himself all around me, his energy firm and unyielding as ship-skin.
We’re done for now.
I’m not ready. There’s more I can fix.
I could. I could strengthen her shoulders more, build it into her DNA so her children would have the change.
His reply was full of laughter and accomplishment.
They did not ask to be remade!
So I was getting carried away.
Okay. See you at the surface.
I reached for Kayleen.
Ready?
Kayleen-in-the-data sounded thin and foggy.
Did we do it? Will she work?
Marcus answered her.
We did well. It’s bad luck to bet before time passes. Let the sim run.
Good. I’m taking a shower.
Leave as carefully as you came in.
Marcus was always warning. Almost always right. As we neared the surface layer of data, it felt like squeezing down and becoming small in order to fit into our bodies.
I’d done it! Not so big a space as all the webs on Fremont, but open enough to let go. As I came fully into it, I found my body had let a tear run down its cheek. A second one hung like rain on my lashes, and then dropped.
Kayleen touched it. “Why?” she whispered.
I didn’t really have an answer. I felt . . . elated and completely drained. I felt like the first time I gave all of myself to Alicia, for her instead of for me, the first time I passed the blushing-boy stage and made love to her like a man. I had floated then. “I guess . . . I guess I’m just tired.”
She gave a soft nod. “I’ve never been so tired.” She wrinkled her nose at me. “And dirty. How about we clean up and go eat?”
A half hour later, all three of us sat in the cafeteria, smelling less of sweat and salt and more of berries and bread and tea. Sasha curled under the table, making sure some part of her touched each of us.
I’d avoided col, wanting sleep. Needing sleep.
The fact that my eyes would only stay half open explained why I didn’t see Marcus’s friend Stark, from the war room, until he was sitting across from me. And even then I might not have noticed him except that Sasha had sat harder on my feet and was giving a low warning growl. I grabbed her by the collar.
His countenance looked serious and his eyes were dark in his dark brown skin. He ignored me and Kayleen. His being here did give me a spark of energy. “They’re coming. Islas.”
“When?” Marcus asked.
“They’re five days out. They’re already slowing, and they have an obvious trajectory. Looks like Oshai spaceport.” He frowned and looked down at his big hands on the table for a moment before looking back at us. “I should’ve seen it sooner. It’s not the military proper, but the Star Mercenaries.”
Of course it was. I should have a visceral reaction, but I just didn’t have the energy.
Kayleen grabbed for my hand. I gave it to her, watching Marcus’s face. Surely now we should go to the others.
Marcus nodded and pursed his lips, not looking at any of us. He must be lost in thought or data or both. Or as tired as we were. Who knew what? And I’d been more worried about the Port Authority. “Why would they follow us here?” I asked.
“Someone’s paying them,” Marcus said. “Maybe Islas. Or maybe not.” He sipped his col, and took a bite of bread, looking far less worried than I felt. “I wish we had Dianne,” Marcus mused. “She’d
have a good guess.” He looked back at Stark. “Can we be ready in two days?”