Page 68 of Defiant

The delvers can exist here,I thought.They make a body when they come, a crude—and terrible—replica of the housing that carried them as AIs.So I felt this should work. I hoped it would, at least.

Hesho helped with the wiring, proving particularly useful with some of the fine details of the job. He hummed as he did, then softly broke into song, Doomslug fluting along. After a few minutes of that, he used his dashboard to play some samples for her from an instrument his people made—a kind of bamboo flute. She imitated that, and soon they were singing in harmony. Him a deep bass, resonant and soft—a mournful song. Her an airy flute, with sharp cuts between notes.

It was beautiful, so I turned off the translation function on my pin, which was spoiling it. I just listened, working, appreciating how this specific song echoed in the boundaries of the cavern. Enjoying the moment—rather than being overwhelmed by both past and future.

Inside my soul, Chet hummed along in his own way. Seeming perfectly content. But that was wrong.

Wrong?he thought.Wrong how?

Because this isn’t what life is about,I replied.

What do you mean?

WhatdidI mean? I found myself in an odd mood as I read through how to attach the canopy. I’d come down here to try to recapture the feeling I’d had as a lonely girl building herself astarfighter. But…I wasn’t that girl anymore. Instead of finding solace in the solitude, I wanted to share the experience.

FM would have loved to hear Hesho sing, and Kimmalyn would have had something to say—I’m sure—about the irony of building a hyperadvanced spaceship in a cave. Like I was some kind of overachieving Neanderthal. Nedd was recovering, and I wanted to hear his affable voice again. He complained, but enjoyed hands-on work, and Arturo would probably have spotted me getting the wiring wrong on this section of the throttle controls—and prevented me from having to redo it.

I wasn’t alone any longer. Why did I keep pretending that I was? I smiled as I stood up, wiping my brow—which was sweaty, but not a bit stained with grease. At least my jumpsuit was dusty from the ground. This was supposed to be messy work, but Rig had packaged everything too neatly.

“So,” Hesho said, hovering over the schematics on the table, “I believe that the booster controls and the central processing are all fully installed. The next task is to check wing control function before we put the plates on. She mentions we might want to look over the air intake channels first, as there is some tricky bolting to be done there.” He looked up at me. “Are you fatigued? Should we take a break?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m good. What about you?”

“Eager and ready,” he said. “I’ve never actuallybuiltanything before. It’s an engaging process. Blissfully laborious. Like the flow of water in a wash, depositing stones in just the right place upon the bed, making a roadway of colors once the rainy season is through.”

“Exactly as I would have said it,” I told him, grabbing the power driver to tighten some bolts. “Except I’d have used more blood.”

Hesho smiled and began laying out the next set of parts while I worked. I didn’t get far, however, before someone nosed in on my brain.

Hey,M-Bot said.I managed to sneak away. Except not “away” because nothing is “away” from anything else in here. It’s complicated.

Well…good, I guess,I sent back to him.Any leads on how to use whatever I am to stop the delvers?

No real leads,he said.Just confirmations. I can meld in among them, pretend to be one of them. They’re not a group mind, as we’ve discussed, just a bunch of individuals with the exact same…personality? Basic core self?

Regardless, it’s easy to imitate one of them, as I simply have to react as they all would. I’ve acquired a copy of their programming, such that it is. Again, this is complicated, but they’re not used to having a spy among them. So they have no idea how to look for me.

All right…I sent, trying to follow that, and to imagine him in a place that wasn’t a place among a bunch of delvers who just thought he was another one of them.

Anyway,he continued,as we figured out, they fear you because you know the source of their pain. They’re afraid that interacting with you will bring it back to the surface—because, Spensa, they havenotdone a good job of burying it. It’s there, within their substance, within their code. The loss, the agony. I feel it.

Right,I thought.And while they’re in the nowhere, if that pain were to surface, it would never fade—because time doesn’t pass.

There’s another reason,he sent back.We’re not AIs or robots any longer, no more than you are an amoeba, but we started there—and we don’t forget except on purpose. Emotional paindoesn’tdull for us over time, because we don’t have the process of natural mortal forgetfulness.

Huh. That seemed a relevant thing to understand. It wasn’t that the delvers were too weak to “weather the pain” like I’d done with my father’s death. They’d literallyneededto excise parts of themselves to make it fade. Like a wolf gnawing its foot off to escape a trap.

Realizing this made me ache for them even more. That was bad though. They literally threatened all life in the galaxy; they’d already wiped out millions of people, and would go further if they had to. This was one case where, empathy notwithstanding, I needed to be a warrior. They had a wound. I would exploit it, justlike you would try to hit an opponent where they’d already been stabbed.

We still need to know how to use this,I said to M-Bot.They’re afraid of me, because somehow I make them remember. But how? How can I do it consciously?

Not sure,he replied.I’ll keep studying and looking. We need to be fast though. As I said, it seems the deal between them and Winzik is still in force. He’s promised them that all cytonics—and you especially—will be silenced, and the Superiority will move to using slugs only. The delvers want that very badly, so they’re determined to join the confrontation and stop us.

I nodded. M-Bot’s confirmations were helpful, but we were still in the same position. When the delvers came to attack, I had to be ready to either immobilize them or inhibit them. Locking them up in their own cells of eternal agony…

If we manage this,I thought to M-Bot,do you really think they’d just lock up rather than run?

Yes,he said.It’s how we respond to things we can’t deal with. An infinite loop, locking up, frozen in time as we process the same terrible experience over and over—and see no escape. Do that at the right moment, and…

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