and ambitions now, but the core personality was derived from the same algorithms.
Cynric regarded the backs of her hands. When she drew them up, the draped sleeves of her robe fell over them. “They’re to change the future.” She shrugged. “They want to live. And they’re lucky. They have the stuff of Leviathan in them, and the stuff of Leviathan sometimes dreams true. It’s possibly them, their dreams of self- preservation, that have brought us here. Against all odds and the wishes of the Builders.”
“You are,” he said, “a sorceress.”
“So they tell me.” Her sigh, though, was any woman’s, and weary. “And if we don’t wish to disappoint them, we had best be about our work, Archangel Samael.”
If Sparrow Conn was not what she once was, then Dust would have to find someone who was—or, if not what she once was, one who had become something amenable to Dust. Someone he had been avoiding. Someone who had summoned him back from his oblivion, planted the tiny seed of himself in the shape of this toolkit, and let him grow.
Dust was an Angel. He was by nature a servant, even if his service often meant something more like mastery. It was no angel’s fault if flesh was weak, if memory was stronger than mere meat could bear.
This attempt at winning autonomy abandoned, Dust folded back his whiskers and went through tunnels and tightnesses, in search of the mortal remnant of Ariane Conn.
He found it curious that she had left the choice to him, that she had not commanded his attendance but only left in him the knowledge of where to seek her. Perhaps she preferred the possibility of a willing ally to the certainty of a treacherous slave. No fool, she had blocked his ability to reveal that information—but he could find her for his own self well enough.
She was disguised, which was only to be expected. But he knew where to look for her, although it took some time for him to travel by secret ways from the vale of the Edenites to the very heart of Engine.
When he found her, she was lost in the Conn personality she inhabited, bent forward and buried to the opposite shoulder in an access hatch. Leafy fronds surrounded her on every side—two curled tendrils supporting lights, another extended past her head and neck into the same awkward space her arm was jammed into. Three velvet-red snapdragon heads hung over her, their petals folded neatly back into comet shapes of concentration.
Dust paused at the door, observing. The body of the carnivorous orchid was comprised of tubers and sword- shaped leaves, pulled tight together now in deference to the cramped quarters. The body Ariane inhabited lay among those leaves with apparent trust, despite the orchid’s clawed thorns and toothed flower faces.
“Hand me the five-mil spanner,” the host said.
Green tendrils withdrew from the access panel, clutching a wrench, and snaked back a moment later with a different one. “It would be less awkward for me to reach,” the plant said, its voice a breathy hissing.
“Sure, but I’m stronger.”
That sound the plant made might have been agreement.
The host’s visage tensed, along with the muscles of one shoulder. A moment of pressure, and then a sharp metallic bang from inside the bulkhead, followed by soft cursing. The illumination cast by the miniature spotlights wavered.
“Ow,” the plant said.
“Ow,” the host answered, withdrawing a hand, shaking it, knuckles reddened. “How’s your tendril?”
“Bruised,” the plant responded. Not so programmed as to examine its damage visually, however, it did not withdraw from the access.
From his perch by the wall, Dust bared his rodent teeth and made a soft meeping sound. It was a call for attention, and one flower face and one human one swiveled.
The host sat up, delighted. “Toolkit! Now why didn’t I think of that?”
Dust scampered over, hopping plant tendrils, and pressed his cheek to the welcoming hand. This was good. This was the beginning. He had contact now. He felt the sparkle of recognition, and knew Ariane was aware in there, quiescent and biding.
Once he was alone with her, he could talk to Ariane without alerting her host. Until then—well, it was a toolkit that he inhabited. He would contrive to remain useful.
Grief is different to an old man.
The young lack experience of grief. It seems to them arbitrary, capricious, outrageous. They react to loss as to a personal affront, as something that can—and must—be fought.
The old know better. The old have learned better. Or perhaps they just go numb.
Or so it seemed to Benedick. The pain was what it was—but he felt none of the fury he would have once expected, none of the denial … and none of the rage.
He had become resigned, and that was how he knew he was old.
When he sat down across the display tank from Jordan of Engine and Damian Jsutien, Benedick was prepared and he was detached. Everything Caitlin had been, everything she had done, was gone—for now. And if she were restored from backup—if Mallory had her imprint somewhere in the vast orchard library of ghosts—she would not be who she had been anymore than Cynric now was more than a shadow of Cynric then.
The mother of his child was gone, and all he could make himself feel was a kind of dull, unsocketed ache.
Jordan and Jsutien each glanced up as he seated himself. Jsutien was just such a reminder of death in the flesh. He wore the face of Oliver Conn, who had died in Rule of Ariane and Arianrhod’s plots when they infected the whole domaine with an engineered flu and so destroyed Alasdair Conn and most of the old Commodore’s family.
The one who had grown into the crevices of Oliver’s body now had been the seed left over from the world’s last Astrogator. Benedick had not known Jsutien before, and so could not compare what he had been with what he was.
Jordan—the new Chief Engineer—was a lanky, tawny-furred flyer whose wings necessitated she choose a backless kneeling-chair to accommodate them. She had been Tristen’s apprentice and majordomo. Benedick had supported her elevation to her new role—that of an officer in her own right. He hoped he had done right. He hoped she would do better.
They were still waiting for one more. She was not yet late, and as Benedick turned his water glass idly on the tank ledge, the door opened and his youngest sister Chelsea entered the council room. She smiled, and glanced this way and that; each of the assembled acknowledged her.
When she had fetched her own glass of water and seated herself, Benedick cued the silent Angel hovering over them that it was time to begin.
“This is the first meeting of the five hundred and fifty-seventh Council of Engine. We are here to introduce new Chief Engineer Jordan, replacing Caitlin Conn, deceased. Also, to discuss contingency plans and outcomes of our forthcoming encounter with the existing colonists of the world called Grail. Present are myself—Benedick Conn, acting as secretary, Astrogator Damian Jsutien, Chelsea Conn, and Chief Engineer Jordan.”
Jsutien tilted his head in a peculiarly familiar fashion, though Benedick could not place where he had seen the Astrogator strike that pose before. It was a suspicious, considering gesture, and Benedick filed it away for later contemplation.
“Congratulations, Chief Engineer,” said Jsutien.
“Your name was raised as well,” Benedick said. “But your position as Astrogator makes you difficult to replace.”
“Please,” Jsutien said. “Jordan should have it over me. Over just about anyone.”
Chelsea bit her lip, but nodded. “I am confident she will perform brilliantly.”
Jordan gave them both a half smile. She would have to learn not to be so transparently grateful for approval. “The vote of confidence is more appreciated than you know. I am honored to be selected, Prince Benedick, and I will do whatever work is necessary to support my Captain and her ship.”
“Good,” Benedick said. “If that’s settled, once we’re finished here, Nova will have information for you—a briefing, I am told, from her memories of Hero Ng—and Mallory is preparing the memories of Chief Engineers past to
