As brain matter re-arranged itself to accept the signal, atrophied mouth, tongue, vocal chords came to life, producing nonsense sound, an uncomfortable experimentation with non-mental communication. Signal lock. Dry tongue instinctively licked dry lips. The glittering link seemed to connect the top of the near’s head to the ceiling in an unambitious rendition of a halo.
“Berlin.” Voice beyond hoarse, but still recognizable. Berlin was still disconcerted by the technology they had acquired from the planet of trees and
“Let it be, Hannon.”
The near walked closer in a disturbing pantomime of Berlin’s second, who right now floated safely miles above the planet, a similar nano halo linking him to this non-human. “You shouldn’t have done that. You know that you can’t—”
“I know.”
“It didn’t have to—”
“Yes. It did.”
“We could have—”
“I know you saw it all, Hannon. My wife, Maire, the trees.”
The near stood in silence.
“I’ve known since the attack. And I know what you had planned for me.”
“There’s no way you—”
“I didn’t want this.”
“Then you shouldn’t have—”
“I know.”
Berlin bent to his wife, form silvered in shadow. His hand reached out to touch her cheek, hesitated, withdrew.
“Just kill me and get it over with. Have them kill me.”
Silence.
“Hannon?”
The near approached, looked down on Berlin’s face. The wind-torn flesh was without emotion, but the voice that it channeled was razor-sharp.
“No. No quick death for you, traitor.”
The air burned with cold
above the lumber plains on the night that Maire had been so convincing. It was a winter month, and the floater didn’t offer much protection against the wind.
It wasn’t dancing, and it wasn’t singing, but the flora hovered in formation below them, basking in the phosphorescent hydrostatic mist of the mid-atmosphere. The canyons echoed with their keening midnight song.
Berlin wrapped his arms around Kath, hands clasped in front in a bundle of their intertwined fingers. Squeeze. Sniffle and one hand went to her face as demure form shook with sob and fear. In moonslight, twin tracks on windburned cheeks: just two tears, but they were two too many.
“They’ll be harvested.”
“Analysis was conclusive. We can isolate the flux ability.”
“Then why—”
“Because they can. And they don’t want anyone else to figure it out.”
“So that’s it? They take a few lumbers for sampling, isolate the tech, and kill the rest?”
“That’s the way we work.”
“No.” She turned around in his arms. Gray eyes swallowed by black pupils. “That’s the way
“I can’t—”
“You can’t. But we can.”
She slipped from his grasp, walked to the other side of the floater, leaned precariously over the edge. The vehicle swayed in the wake of a forest passing beneath them. Berlin walked to join her.
“We?”
Kath hesitated, cleared her throat. “You don’t have to know about this.”
“Do you think I’d—”
“No.” She squeezed his hand, let go. “But they’d kill you if they knew about it.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve met someone. There’s a woman who can help.”
“Help what?”
“She comes from the outer. Came in months ago on a transport. Just something about her…”
“Who?”
“She knows what to do. To make it right.”
“Kath—”
“She’s not like us.”
“If you’re talking about—”
“She wants to help. Not just this planet. She can make it right again.”
“Make
Kath’s hands balled to fists at her side. “The last war…Nothing’s been the same since. Planets in slavery, One ruled by machines and nears. Gods dropped into the slumber. Nothing’s right anymore.”
“We had to fight that war.”
“But we didn’t have to become this.” Her fingertips traced the insignia on her chest, moved to her temple, where the metallish uplink writhed under her skin. “We didn’t have to give up our—
“It was for the best.”
“
“Our best. It had to be done.”
“We’re killing the system! The stars can’t support us anymore. The energy load alone between the two—”
“That’s why we need the lumbers. Deep galactic survey missions, colonization hives—”
“We have all that we need right here. We’ve just forgotten how to live within our means.”
“We can’t turn back now. We’re pushing the saturation mark as—”
“We don’t
Berlin felt the throb of the comm uplink, but kept it static. “You can’t be talking about—”
“Planet One alone uses eighty percent of the system resources.”
He said nothing.
“A lot of bad people on Planet One.”
“Not all.”
“They started the war.”
“The war’s over.”
“It’s not over. Not yet.”
He’d never heard her talk like this: such determination. Passion. He never suspected that she felt so strongly about the civil war that had split the binary system a decade before.
“If we take out One, we solve everything. Decentralize the machines’ power. Make room for real people again.”
She reached out. His response was uncertain, but he did hold her hand.
“And you know someone who can do this?”
“A woman from the outer, where the planets still burn. She says she can kill the machines.”
“And her name?”
“Maire.”
He loved the link with the female Judith.
The host body was a tickle in that ocean of thought. It was recovering from the transfer and would soon be strong enough to remove from the static tube and actually serve its purpose as a deity transport. Judith would still
