Abel knows how a biobed functions. These readings are consistent with the injury Noemi has received. Yet he cannot believe them. Never before has he understood the human emotional response called “denial.”
“Where’s Akide?” she murmurs.
Hopefully in hell, Abel thinks, but he says only, “He’s not a danger anymore.”
“…Did he hurt you…?”
How can she worry about him while she lies on the biobed with a burned-out crater in her chest? “No. I’m all right, Noemi, I’m fine, and I’m going to make you well.”
“Liar,” she says softly, and somehow it sounds like the kindest name she’s ever called him.
The heart remains intact, he thinks, looking up at the readings. The lungs are badly compromised, significantly past recommended regeneration limits but not absolutely beyond the range of possibility. Liver, spleen, and gallbladder destroyed, but only the liver is critical and could in time be regenerated.
Time. He needs time to save her, and all his intelligence and ability can’t give it to him.
“It’s starting,” she murmurs. “You can feel it a little… like your body isn’t yours really….”
“Try to remain conscious.” Why does he feel such a strong need to say this to her when he knows it’s beyond her power to obey? He wants to believe it’s up to her. He hates even the idea of heaven, because if she has faith in some better place she’ll want to go there. “Stay with me.”
“Wish I could.” Noemi’s eyes close for a moment; when she opens them again, it’s obvious she’s fighting for even that. “…I’m going to find Esther’s star.”
“Noemi—”
“Come to me there someday,” she whispers. “A long time from now.”
Then her head leans to one side as her eyes fall shut again.
Abel stares up at the biobed monitor. Her heart’s still beating; her shallow lungs are processing what oxygen they can. But she’s no longer conscious, and if this were any other human patient, he would judge it unlikely that she’d ever wake again.
This isn’t any other patient. This is Noemi, and he will not endure this.
She deserves her life. He’s going to give it to her.
Swiftly he gathers her back into his arms and crosses the sick bay in three long strides, which take him to the cryosleep pods. He hits the activator with his elbow. One of the pods slides from its place on the wall onto the floor; its translucent panels fold open like the petals of a flower. Abel settles Noemi onto the pale green interior, and the soft, elastic substance gives slightly under her weight.
Maximum skin contact is recommended for optimal results. The words from the cryosleep training manual are right there in his memory bank; they’ve waited there all these years for the moment when he’d need this knowledge. He gets to the surgical tools, pulls a scalpel from its robotic arm, and uses it to slash away as much of the exosuit as possible.
But her life signals are now in the red zone. Further delay means failure. Abel steps back and hits the activator again. The panels fold around Noemi, and he stares down at her face as the pod fills first with vapor, then with liquid. Her features blur; her black hair floats around her in an uncertain halo.
A light on the control panel blinks green as an automated voice says, “Cryosleep activated.”
Abel feels as though he can breathe again. While the cryosleep pod rotates back into standing position, he watches the readouts to monitor her life signals. Already they’re slowing as the chill settles into marrow, blood, and brain. That’s entirely normal. But he also knows that she was so weak when he put her in that, even preserved this way, she might not survive any attempts to replace or regenerate her damaged organs. All this has bought her is a chance.
Abel will take what he can.
He waits until the process is complete, watching her the entire time. She seems to be floating in mist like some ethereal spirit in a fairy tale. His imagination is normally not so given to metaphor and simile; he has to gentle the truth of Noemi’s condition to come to terms with it. She is suspended between life and death.
In a fairy tale, the hero would have to face great trials to bring the heroine back to life: slaying dragons, undoing spells. Abel only has to remember where he came from, and what the future generations of his people will become.
The Inheritors won’t be equal parts man and machine; they’ll be far more organic. More powerful than even Abel himself. And they’ll live even longer. Gillian Shearer can’t transfer a human consciousness yet. But what if Noemi’s consciousness remains in her body, and then that body can be changed?
There must be ways to add organic mech components to a human body. The new transhumanism Gillian Shearer dabbles in—those technologies would be linked, too. It would be possible to synthesize both real and artificial DNA to make Noemi… not an Inheritor. Something else. A mech and yet not a mech. Something entirely new, but not someone new. It will still be her.
Abel’s cheeks feel oddly stiff—salt from the tears he must have shed without realizing it. He can tell that now because he’s begun to smile. The pain he feels is even greater than what he felt in the moment when he parted from Noemi before, greater than what he felt in the instant when he realized Mansfield had abandoned him alone in space, in an imprisonment that would last for thirty years. But he now possesses what he didn’t have back then: hope. This pain is endurable because it points him in the direction he needs to go.
The pain will lead him back to Haven. To Gillian Shearer. And possibly to his own doom.
He can’t do this without Gillian’s help. The price of that help can only be one thing: Abel’s surrender. She’ll want to replace his soul with the stored consciousness of Burton Mansfield. If it comes to that, Abel will agree. His life
