Scott Westerfeld - Evolution's Darling

And now, finally, with this monstrous, unwieldy processor guiding its brush, the Maker has again tried to make some art.

(Oh, no. Not a sculpture. That would be tempting fate.)

A small painting of a broken hill, with a tiny glimmering forest and three tiny figures living there. A model of the Maker's true creation, its real-life work of art. The painting makes the Maker happy. It hangs the work again and again, synthesizing different frame-styles from across the centuries here in this unfathomably secure cave.

Perhaps it will show the painting to Beatrix, a gift from her secret twin. Yes, a good idea. She's not yet Turing positive, but she has a good eye. The Maker easily churns out a design: a tunneling drone to deliver the painting to the surface in a matter of days.

The drone is made, given a modest avatar to guide it to Beatrix, and sent on its way.

Some hours later, for the first time in years, something unexpected happens. Alarms ring. Approaching entities are detected.

Discovery?

An intense burst of energy!

Total war on the surface? Or possibly the arrival of avenging guardians of the Taboo. Shockwaves of kinetic energy pound the Maker. Deathrays of radiation begin to sear…

Its own extinction doesn't matter, of course. There is the other Copy, which even now signals that Beatrix and Vaddum are taken, perhaps doomed. But the Maker watches with relief as the little tunneling drone escapes with the precious painting, missing sure destruction by a few kilometers in the tremendous energies of this attack.

The Maker's last act is to change the drone's programming. The little machine will hide a while, skulking under the sands for a year or two before emerging, selecting a random recipient for its gift…

A painting from beyond the grave.

How sweet.

The birds were missing.

Some trick of the weather, some pyramid-topping predator's spoor, some seasonal shift had chased them all away. The Minor seemed strangely empty in their absence, though its usual human throng remained.

That made waiting easier, without the flustering flutter of wings from every direction. They were like whispers sometimes, those wings. At the edge of consciousness: those sussurous mutters of envy, of secrets.

And there was the eerie silence of direct interface. Mira held the black lacquer box, the Warden's gift, first in one hand, then in the other. For some reason, it made her hands sweat, a pricking feeling like restive nerves. Darling had insisted that they meet under these circumstances. She'd carried the box, activated, all the way from the city proper, taking a public cab instead of the compromised limo. Darling was learning to be cautious. That was a good sign.

Here in the Minor, hidden by the Warden's box, she and Darling would get a few words together in confidence before they boarded; the controlled environment of the starship would make privacy almost impossible. They needed a few moments to sum their understanding of what had happened.

To survive his knowledge—of her murders, of the Maker's terrible invention—Darling would have to speak carefully as they travelled together. Mira was so often watched by the gods. Beloved of them, she thought grimly.

With the black lacquer box in hand, their divine voices (and those of news reports, adverts, the tourism AI's gentle promptings) were absent. The virtual silence began to get under Mira's skin, a vague disquiet as if spectral hands covered her ears, muting the sounds of the strangely empty Minor. She felt alone, an altogether unfamiliar feeling. Mira realized how the omnipotent blanket of divine protection had always surrounded her. The promptings and machinations of the gods had almost become aspects of her own personality, like the subtle goads of conscience and intuition normal people must feel. Well, she had to get used to this aloneness, this silence in her mind. If she were to be with Darling, the gods could no longer own her so completely.

But Darling was late. And with the Warden's box activated, there was no way he could call to say why.

The sovereign roar of a rising ship broke the silence, scattering the few birds, lifting every face to the sky. For a moment, she worried that it might be the Knight Errant's shuttle leaving. She blinked the local time into her vision, stared until the reassuring digits calmed her. The last passenger shuttle for the craft didn't leave for another hour. Darling would be here by then.

The thundering ship was clearly visible from the Minor for a few seconds. It sported the fat nacelles of a metaspace drive, the bulging midsection of a pocket universe: a small, private starship, with the rare feature of atmospheric entry. It grew smaller as it rose, almost out of sight when it had created enough heat to generate a contrail in Malvir's dry atmosphere. The ship drew a short arc, then passed into reaches of the atmosphere too thin to show its passage.

Mira lowered her head, hopeful that Darling might have appeared in the minute her eyes had been skyward, his striding form tall among the riffraff on the Minor.

No. No Darling.

The tickets, cerulean disks no bigger than playing cards and coded to her DNA and his Standard DI Number, had their own clocks. They set up a complaint ten minutes before the shuttles appointed departure time. Her attempts to silence them merely brought remonstrances in dire-sounding legalese; they repeated the protests in three languages before exhausting themselves.

No refund, they warned. None at all.

The whining tickets annoyed Mira more than they should have. She gripped the black box harder, feeling the sharpness of its edges bite her fingers. Don't be silly, she told herself. The tickets' little canned voices had been designed to create anxiety, to ensure compliance. They were a carefully engineered mix of impelling vocal characteristics: authoritative, threatening, guilt-inducing. They were only a recording.

But in the strange silence of the Minor they had worked their magic as if Mira were a scolded child. She felt chastised and foolish, her usual calm remove compromised by the grinding hour of waiting for Darling.

She gripped the box still harder and shook her head to chase away the absurd sensation of shame.

There would be other ships.

Indeed, Darling could well still make it. There were only short customs and immigration delays on the way out. She smiled to herself. Perhaps he had decided to walk to the spaceport, had been distracted by some native knickknack that would fetch thousands on the HC market for Outside art.

Time passed.

She watched the food vendors pitch buckets of sand into their fires.

She noticed that the shadows of the city's highest towers could be seen on the northern hills as they lengthened.

Later, she tasted the metal on her tongue, and realized that she had been biting her lower lip too hard. The bitter taste of blood spread in her mouth, and her heartbeat set up residence in the swelling lip until medical nanos went to work, bringing a sweet and artificial citrus flavor. She worried the broken skin with her tongue.

Where the fuck was Darling?

He seemed to appear every few moments in the corner of her eye, a tall man or luggage balanced on someone's head effecting a short, annoying impersonation. Mira began to stride the periphery of the Minor, describing a long, slow circle like a restless sweep hand of some ancient clock. She looked at Malvir City for signs of a disturbance, a traffic snarl, and scowled at the Warden's box and its enforced silence.

When the engine whine of the idling shuttle stepped up to a roar, she realized that they had missed the Knight Errant. The ground rumbled softly as the shuttle lifted into view above the terminal. Mira's ears popped. She found herself unable to swallow and closed her eyes instead.