The chime was only a courtesy. Samael began to resolve in Dust's chamber almost instantaneously: not a full manifestation, but still something more concrete than a hologram. Real politeness would have waited for an invitation, but Samael was arrogant.
Dust flattered himself that he could have prevented the entrance. But perhaps it was better to appear less than one was, to keep something in reserve—
That he had lost his last argument with Samael did not mean that he would lose them all. Surely not. Still, politeness was a virtue.
With a half-breathed sigh, he resolved a tendril into a concrete state, meeting Samael halfway.
Samael's avatar was cleaning his nails when Dust stepped out of air beside him. It was an ostentatious nail- cleaning, involving a facsimile of a pearl-handled pocketknife, and the parings that fell to Dust's deck spread hairy roots and grew into some creepery vine heavy with fragrant, waxen flowers.
Dust ground it under his polished black boot. 'This is not the place nor the time to stake claims.'
However mildly he spoke, wherever Samael seemed to be looking, Dust knew his sibling's attention focused on him—at least as far as the current interaction went. He folded his black-sleeved arms over the silver brocade of his vest, aware that it glittered in the light like mail or scales, and let his stare rest on Samael.
Dust's sibling affected a pale and ascetic aspect, long white-blond hair trailing in locks around a narrow basset-hound face. He frowned, and it made him look soft-eyed, but Dust knew it for artifice as surely as the band- collared shirt worn with blue jeans and bare feet and an emerald brocade tailcoat with velvet lapels.
Self-consciously, Samael folded the knife away, and then picked lint from his shoulder. He did not flick that to the floor, but tucked it in his pocket. Which was something, Dust supposed.
He thought Samael would counter with some comment on Dust's lack of sibling hospitality, but Samael hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans. 'I want to trade,' he said.
Dust stared. He brushed invisible fringes over the edges of Samael's avatar, but for all Samael's reaction the caress— or test—might have been a breath of wind. 'Trade?'
'I'm the Angel of Death, aren't I?' The knobby hands turned palm-up now. 'And you're the Angel of Memory. So trade me a little knowledge for a little life. A little withholding of death, if you will.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' Dust said. 'You're not the angel of anything.'
'That's what they call us. And not just us. Some of them call the old crew angels and demons, too.'
'Ahh,' Dust said, willing his fingers to stillness when they wanted to worry his sleeves, 'but we know better, don't we? Besides, if you were the angel of anything, it would be the angel of... life-support services.' He scraped his boot across the deck, leaving a green smear of chlorophyll like a punctuation mark.
'Not very poetic,' Samael said, disappointed.
Dust shrugged. He only cared about his
'And anyway,' Samael continued, with a sweeping dismissal that pulled shirt and coatsleeves up his bony wrist, 'in the midst of life support we are in death, o my brother.'
Dust kept his attention spread through his anchore, for he suspected that Samael would have liked him to concentrate and neglect his boundaries. 'Your trade sounds more like a threat than an equal exchange.'
Samael's shrug, one-shouldered with disingenuously tilted head, was disturbingly reminiscent of that of a twelve-year-old girl. 'I think there's an Engine girl you've taken an interest in,' he said. 'What if I could help her?'
'An Engine girl?' Dust thought he could give Samael fair competition when it came to disingenuity. Once upon a time, they would have held this meeting in the channels of the world's analytical engines, but those were long unavailable. They met in the metal if they met at all. And Samael kept all his parts tucked in, like a cat tea-cozied on the rug, so Dust couldn't even brush microsurfaces with him and see if any stray electromagnetic intelligence was seeping free.
'Perceval Foucaulte Conn,' Samael said, and if he couldn't trim his nails, he could study them. How peculiar it was, Dust thought, that a century since any of them had had much cause to interact with their creators, they still wore human guise. 'She's trapped with her half sister on ep-silon deck, and she could be fumbling around down there for a good long time. She's also suffering from septicemia and a viral infection, and her symbiont is heavily stressed. She needs warmth and food. And medical attention.' 'And you're offering that assistance?' 'It is,' Samael said, 'what I was built to do.' 'And the recompense?' That was always the rub, wasn't it? They all dealt from a position of strength; they all had their unique fields. When the Core died, the world had shifted as many of its functions into its symbionts as possible. It had saved itself, against future need. But none of those symbiont colonies could hold the entire mind of the world. They were fragments. Specialists. With differing agendas.
They rarely got along.
'Navigation logs,' Samael said. 'Starmaps. Tell me where we had been, and where we were en route to.'
'Useless,' Dust said. There were no engines. There was no way to
'I want to know where we are,' Samael said. 'Give me j that, and I spare your pet.'
Then it was Dust's turn to fiddle his fingers. 'She's not I a pet.'
'Cat's-paw,' Samael said. 'Dupe. Whatever.'
The fragment of Dust that rode along with Perceval's gift-pinions stayed in coded contact with his main colony. He could feel her huddle tighter around Rien, shivering within the thin warmth of the wings. If she had been j closer, if he would not have had to withdraw the fragment I from contact with the suborned colony, Dust might have stroked her shaven head.
No doubt, he thought, the child could use a little love. 'Creator,' Dust said, fondly. 'Inventor and the daughter of inventors.'
'Heresy.'
'Nevertheless,' Dust said. 'Her kind invented ours.'
'How could something like
'Nevertheless,' Dust said. 'It is what happened.'
'You lie.'
'No,' Dust corrected. 'I remember.' He turned away— his avatar turned away. His own hovering attention never shifted. Not from Samael's sock-puppet, not from the boundaries of Dust's own domaine. 'Navigation logs.'
'Yes.'
'That's all you want.'
'For now.'
'Help the maidens,' Dust said. 'I'll share the logs.'
In all fastidiousness, he would have preferred not to touch Samael. It was less risk to his own system to chip off a packet and hand it over—but he did not wish to lose that much of his colony, would not take any of Samael in return, and didn't want to give his sibling that much insight into his program.
Instead, he bent down and 'kissed' Samael on the 'mouth.'
A meshing of programs, but only a surfacy one. A quick handshake and transfer of data, nothing more.
As they broke apart, the information safely handed over, the memory of the kiss left Dust full of an aching emptiness, everywhere his airborne nanoparticles drifted and spread.
8 poison angels
No matter how she tried to pull them under the covers, Rien's feet stayed cold. She wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged her face down tight, except then it was strange that her back was so uncomfortably warm. And she couldn't breathe. The air was still and stale and tasted of sweat. Perhaps her coffin was
