“I’m perfectly capable of putting together my own team.” Gillian’s words are clipped, and she won’t look directly at Noemi any longer. “You don’t have a role to play here.”
“Yes, I do. I’m the only one besides you who understands that this Simon is really your son.”
When Gillian turns back to Noemi this time, her face is stricken. “I can—I can do it over again—”
“Maybe you can,” Noemi admits. She doesn’t know how a soul can be copied over and over—whether it’s still really a soul at that point or not—but for now she sticks to what she knows to be true. “It doesn’t change the fact that Simon’s soul is in that body, though, right? He’s just a little boy, and he’s alone and afraid. Even if you can make another, what happens to this Simon matters. It matters to him, and it matters to you.”
“It doesn’t matter to you,” Gillian says. “Is this meant to, what, drive a wedge between me and my father?”
It is, at least in part, but that doesn’t change the truth of what Noemi’s saying. “It does matter to me. Because when I look at Simon, I see Abel.”
“Abel’s different. Abel is for my father.”
Temper sparking, Noemi says, “How is that different?”
“Because my father is different!” A few sleeping people nearby twitch and stir; Gillian puts one hand over her mouth, like that will keep her feelings inside where no one can hear. “The Columbian Corporation—this expedition—it offered us the chance to explore the Inheritor project and bring it to its fullest potential. Have you asked yourself how the galaxy would change if the best of us could lead longer lives? Could, in effect, be immortal? Scientific discovery could be accelerated. Artistic works could be created on a grander scale than ever before in history. The skill of an elderly master surgeon could be given to a young, steady pair of hands. The strategy of an admiral who’s lived through four wars could be put into a body that’s never suffered a wound. But war itself might end, if the negotiators on either side had lived through enough wars before to know how best to avoid it. Have you considered any of that? Have you asked yourself what society might become if our most powerful were no longer motivated by fear?”
“No,” Noemi says. “I can’t get that far with it. I get stuck on the part where you talk about ‘the best’ of us. Who gets to decide who that is?”
With a slashing gesture, Gillian says, “Enough.”
She’s right. This debate isn’t helping Noemi’s cause. Time to get back on track. “We agree on one thing. We agree that Simon matters. He shouldn’t just be—thrown out so you have to start over.”
Although Gillian winces, she haltingly answers, “My father—he’s made it clear that I should—”
“You don’t have to disobey your dad. Let me be the one to go after Simon, bring him back. Then, maybe you can put him right.”
Gillian stares at Noemi so long that the whole conversation seems to have backfired. Noemi wonders if she’s going to get tossed out an air lock into the snow. At this point she’s almost willing to take her chances.
Then Gillian takes out a small scanner and offers it to Noemi. “The scanner is calibrated for mechs. Several are still functioning, at least partially, and Remedy may be using some Tares or Yokes, but…”
“It helps.” Noemi closes her hand around it. “Thanks.”
Instead of responding, Gillian simply turns back to work on her datareads. The console that might’ve been more useful dangles from the ceiling; in the deep shadows of night, it could be a gargoyle or a vulture, a dark hulking shape over them all.
The boundaries between the passengers’ part of the ship and Remedy’s sometimes shift as force fields blink on and off. Power supplies must be as damaged as everything else on the Osiris. Noemi walks slowly, scans every room before she enters it, and puts her hand out to test whether the air feels particularly warm, or charged with static electricity; both are signs of a force field in the area. She has no intention of winding up trapped on the wrong side of a boundary line.
Might not be so bad, she thinks as she crawls through one half-collapsed corridor toward what upside-down signs tell her was the grand ballroom. I could walk up to Remedy and go, Hey, I’m from Genesis, we’re kind of on the same side here? Except for the part where I don’t believe in terrorism, and—
Noemi sighs. She’s better off not switching sides at this point. Neither group on this ship likes her much, but at least she understands what the passengers want from her and has earned a little goodwill. If she can find Simon, her stock with them might go even higher.
But her main motivation is looking for someone who’s scared and alone, someone who’s closer to Abel than anyone else she’s ever likely to meet. She’ll never see Abel again, never get a chance to explore the mystery of what he is. All she can do is help Simon in his name.
She stops crawling, hit by a wave of sadness so intense it makes her breath catch in her throat. Noemi had believed she’d made her peace with the idea of never again seeing Abel. When she left his ship for the last time, she understood then it would be forever. Nothing that happened in the past several days could’ve changed that. That one glimpse of him through the hologram—even that was more than she should ever have expected to have again. As horrifying as that moment was, she still treasures it, holds it close. All that ugliness was transcended by the sight of Abel’s face, just once more.
If he had found her—rescued her, and they’d been together again—
What would I have felt?
What could we have been?
She pushes the thoughts from her head. There’s no point in wishing for what can never be, no matter
