Брендон Сандерсон - Cytonic

“But you’d make the same decision again, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “As much as it pains me to know I hurt you, if I were in that situation again…yes, I’d go save the people of Detritus.”

“It makes logical sense,” he said. “But I don’t feel it. What do I do to get rid of these feelings? I don’t want to be angry. So it’s stupid that I’m angry. It makes no sense.”

“It makes a ton of sense, actually,” I said. “You don’t have many friends—basically just me and Rig. When I left, you were being abandoned by everyone you’d known and loved. It’s not the sort of thing you get over easily.”

“Wow,” M-Bot said. “You know emotions really well, Spensa. Particularly the stupid ones.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“So what do I do?”

“Weather it,” I said. “Get better. Learn to accept that sometimes what you feel isn’t invalid, but that it doesn’t mean you have to act according to those feelings either.”

“Again I’m supposed to feel things, but then ignore those feelings. Act opposite of how they direct. Why is that?”

I shrugged. “It’s just life. But sometimes talking about it makes it feel better.”

“Huh. Yes, I believe that I do feel a little better. Strange. Why is that the case? Nothing has changed.”

“Because I’m your friend, M-Bot. And that’s what friends do. Share.”

“And do they also abandon one another to certain death?” he said, then hovered down lower. “Sorry. It just kind of slipped out. I’ll do better.”

“It’s all right,” I said, climbing to my feet. “Again, it’s okay to feel angry, M-Bot. But you’re going to have to learn to deal with it. We’re soldiers. We have responsibilities that are bigger than any one individual. So being friends doesn’t mean I won’t someday have to leave you behind again.”

“What does it mean to be friends, then?”

“It means,” I said, “that if something like that does have to happen, I’ll do whatever I can to return to you once the crisis is over. And you’d do the same for me, right, bud?”

“Yes,” he said, hovering higher. “Yes, because I can move on my own now.” He turned, looking toward Chet. “And maybe you’re right about him too. Maybe it doesn’t matter what he thinks. It’s hard to feel that, but I can say it. That feels like a different kind of lying. One that’s not all untrue.”

“We’ll make a human out of you yet.”

“Please no,” he said. “From what I’ve read of it, I really don’t want a sense of smell.”

I smiled, intending to check on Chet. I hesitated, however, as I saw we’d drifted closer to the fragment with the waterfall. We weren’t going to hit it—in fact, our current fragment seemed to have slowed to a normal speed. Serene and peaceful, as if it hadn’t just been in a horrific collision.

Something was standing on the edge of that other fragment, near the waterfall. I couldn’t make out much because of the distance, but it seemed to have…

Glowing white eyes.

I felt a mind pushing against mine.

What…did…you…do…

…TO THE US?

I backed up a few steps. The delvers had found me. Chet had said it was possible to hide in the belt out here, but…I supposed that in using my powers to initiate the vision on the Path, I’d drawn their attention.

Determined not to be intimidated, I quested out with my own cytonic senses. And I found…strength? I’d grown, here in the nowhere. I was able to brush that distant delver’s mind as it projected anger at me. I picked out things it didn’t intend to broadcast. They had indeed sensed what I’d done in activating the Path of Elders, and they’d sent the battleship fragment to destroy the one I’d been on.

That had taken a remarkable amount of effort, and was something they couldn’t do often. It had actually been an experiment, as they felt they needed to push farther into the belt to try to find and stop me. These glowing-eyed things were the same. An experiment. Isolated individuals, who had lost a lot of their memories, were susceptible to the delvers’ touch. But only non-cytonics, for this particular thing they were trying.

Saints…I felt so much more in control now, even after only one step on the Path of Elders. The experience had opened something in my brain, showing me how to hide and not draw attention while spying with my cytonics.

This delver still wasn’t aware of how much I’d gleaned from it. I felt like gloating, but then I sensed it trying to attack my mind. That manifested as coldness and pressure; it was as if I’d been plunged into an icy lake, the cold seeping like water through my skin, toward my heart.

And those voices…

What have you done…to the Us…to the Us…

“The Us” referred again to the delver I’d changed. The others were angry, furious at me. Because I’d touched and spoken to that one delver I’d persuaded not to attack Starsight. In so doing, I’d corrupted it forever. Essentially destroying one of their kind.

That made me feel sick. The friendly delver and I had connected in a beautiful way; I’d thought my actions would change things. But if the others refused to listen to me… I shivered as our fragment drifted farther from the one with the waterfall.

Chet stepped up next to me then, and jarred me from my thoughts. “You felt it too, I presume?”

“The delvers possessed someone over there,” I said.

Chet nodded. “Whatever we did with the Path attracted their attention,” he said. “I find it amazing they’d risk individuality by entering the belt, but it is obviously happening. We will need to be careful moving forward.”

“Agreed.” I took a deep breath. “You finished planning our route?”

“I did indeed, Miss Nightshade,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “Tell me. What is your opinion on sailing?”

Chet led me back to the small wooden building I’d discovered, saying that we needed to salvage some supplies. I tried explaining that it had been picked clean, but once we arrived he proceeded to take the doors off their hinges.

We each carried a door to the edge of the fragment, where we waited an hour to jump across to the next approaching fragment. It was a tropical one, full of tall trees with bare trunks and leaves only at the tops. We took our time crossing this one, scavenging for some strange oversized nuts the size of a person’s head. They weren’t coconuts—I knew those from my studies on Old Earth—but were similar.

We spent the evening hollowing the nuts out by prying off the tops and pulling out the long, stringy pulp by hand. Afterward we stretched the interior membrane of each one over the hole we’d made and set it to dry.

That night, I again failed at contacting Jorgen. But I woke up eager and excited for the day’s trek—because while we’d slept, our next fragment had approached.

An ocean.

It was the most bizarre thing I’d seen here yet. The sides were stone like the bottom, but they were only about a meter thick. Beyond was water; essentially the fragment was an enormous bowl. It seemed larger than most fragments we’d traveled on, extending for kilometers into the distance.

Chet showed me how to use the pulp—which had become cordlike as it dried—to tie the doors together and lash the hollowed-out nuts to them. The nuts were watertight and filled with air. So when we shoved off into the ocean, we had a functional raft.

It was awesome.

Even M-Bot was impressed. He buzzed around us, complimenting the raft’s “structural integrity” and “remarkable buoyancy.” We named the ship the Not-ilus and I stood proudly at the prow—well, the flat front end I declared the prow. Chet chuckled softly, weaving oars from bent reeds and leftover nut-guts.