Toby sat back, trying to imagine what Shylif’s life had been like. Not like a life lived on Earth in his time. More like something out of ancient history. “And what about you?” he asked.
“I’m a maker.” He waited for Toby to react and seemed disappointed at the blank expression he got. “You know? Makers? People who are their own industrial economy?” He nodded at his complicated-looking bot. “Built entirely by me. It does everything—made my clothes, made the fabric for the clothes, mined the hydrocarbons to make the polyester … Between me and it, we don’t take any resources from the lockstep. That’s a maker. Me, though, my thing is collecting procedural computer code. It’s incredibly rare, but I have one of the biggest collections in the lockstep!” Suddenly he looked shy. “You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Computer programs. Preneuromorphic computers, the digital type?”
Jaysir slapped the concrete floor in delight. “Yes! You do know!”
“Well, we had a few on Sedna. They’re good for databases and … stuff.” A lot of Consensus had run on those old machines, but anything that had to interact with the real world—like the twentier—was based on artificial neurons. That reminded him of the data block he’d found in the little robot’s cargo bin. Should he show that to Jaysir?
“I’ve built my own code library!” Jaysir rattled on about it, but Toby’s eyes were starting to cross. The day’s adventures had caught up with him, and after a while he waved a hand and said, “I’m only understanding every fifth word you say. ’Cause I’m tired.”
“Ah, sure.” Jaysir laughed good-naturedly. “I can put even Shylif to sleep talking about this stuff. Crash for a while, then. You can use my roll. We’ll probably need to be on the move soon anyway.”
Gratefully, Toby rolled himself onto Jaysir’s bedding and, just like Corva, fell instantly asleep.
SOMETHING COLD TOUCHED TOBY’S nose. He started awake, to find the two golden eyes of the little denner centimeters from his own. He grinned at it. “Well, hello. Did I oversleep?”
He remembered everything that had happened over the past days, but somehow, at least for now, that small touch made everything okay. The gallery looked exactly the same when he sat up, but its other inhabitants were gone. Jaysir, Corva, and Shylif were waiting with breakfast: dry rolls and fruit, which Toby devoured voraciously. Nobody spoke while he did this. Shylif showed him where to refresh himself, and then they all sat down cross-legged on the floor and looked at each other.
Finally Toby had to break the silence. “What now?”
“They’re looking for you,” said Shylif. “It’s not a police alert; there’s a private query gone around to all the bots and now they’ll be keeping an eye out.”
“So whoever they are, they don’t want the authorities to know about you,” added Corva. “Which just goes with our theory that they’re dissidents or revolutionaries.”
Toby scratched his head. “Oh, I dunno about that. They seemed more interested in money than anything.”
“Whatever. The point is, they’re after you, and I don’t think you want to announce yourself to the police either.”
“Why not?”
There was that glance between Shylif and Corva again. “Fine! What do you suggest, then?”
Corva reached behind her, making a tsk-tsk sound. Her furry companion popped its head out from behind her hip, then climbed into her lap and began its deep, droning purr.
“I’d suggest you try to make a new friend,” said Corva, patting Rex’s head. “But it looks like you’ve already done it.” She smiled at the little black denner who was sitting loyally next to Toby. “You’ll need a denner. Otherwise, you’ll have to find a cicada bed at the end of the month—and you can bet they’ll be watching all of those, legal and gray tech.”
Toby wasn’t going to say no to the little guy by his foot, but— “Jaysir said you bought this one for your brother.”
She shot a sharp look at the self-styled maker. “What did you tell him?”
Jaysir shrugged. “What he says. You bought it for Halen.”
Corva’s own denner walked over, and Toby leaned down to stroke his head. “Can he—Rex, right?” he asked Corva, “can he really do everything a cicada bed does? Keep you alive through deep-dive hibernation? Even frozen solid?”
She reached down, too, and put her hands on either side of the furry face and rubbed. Ears and whiskers tilted back and forth, but the purring never slowed.
She nodded. “Yep. And yeah, that’s his name. As in, ‘Wrecks everything.’”
Wrecks turned his head and gave Toby a slow two-eyed wink.
SOMEBODY HAD SET UP a printer near the airlock, so Jaysir printed some watertight cases for their things, as well as transparent carriers for Wrecks and the other denners. Then they kicked through the parts heap until they found the makings of three diving suits, and Corva, Shylif and Toby let them climb onto their bodies. Jaysir watched, arms crossed. “You’re not coming?” Toby asked the maker, who guaffawed.
“Trust myself to that bottomless Hell? Forget it, I’m gonna walk. Besides“—he gestured behind him to where the cargo bot was gathering up his complicated hibernation gear—“salt water’s not good for my stuff. I’ll meet you guys there.”
“They won’t be watching for him,” Shylif added. “It’s you we’re hiding.”
Moments later Toby found himself in an airlock that, for the first time in his life, was not going to turn him over to vacuum on the other side.
“It’s funny,” he said, feeling the need to talk as water gushed in around his feet. “We were drilling on Sedna when I left. It’s got this big subsurface ocean, but it was kilometers down. Dad always said we’d be ocean people someday, but it never happened while I was there.”
“It did happen, Toby,” Corva said. She sounded sad, and the words made him feel that way, too.
He felt a claustrophobic panic as the water rose over the faceplate of his suit. Before he could react, it was above his head; when he could convince himself that he was still breathing, the panic began to recede and he suddenly thought, What about the poor denners? He lifted the carrying case that held his and found two calm eyes gazing back. He had time to notice a little readout on the top that said it had five hours of remaining air; then the airlock’s outer door opened.
This was not like being in space. There, Toby felt cradled in a way, by weightlessness and infinity. When he stepped out of this lock he immediately began to sink, and what was below, he knew, was far more hostile than vacuum.
“Clark, turn on your belt thrusters.” It was Corva’s voice, calm, almost droll.
“How? —Wait. Belt thrusters on!”
“No, silly. The big switch on your belt.”
He got the thrusters going and, when he knew they were keeping him up, finally snuck a look around. This was not space. The pearly ice ceiling stretched away to infinity on all sides; bright lamps were stuck in it at intervals, creating a regular pattern of white stars that, in the far distance, blurred together into a deepening blue line. They made the hazy water visible for many meters below, revealing its gorgeous color and the thousands of bizarre and wonderful living things that swam, pulsed, and snaked through it. Some looked like fish, though they had no eyes. They might all be native, or imported, or this whole biosphere might be bioengineered. Toby didn’t know and didn’t care: what mattered was that they were alive.