Starsight

“I don’t know if I like that, honestly,” I said. “Making another of you feels wrong. Weird.”

“No more weird than identical twin human beings,” he said. “To be perfectly frank, I don’t know how my programming would respond to being confined in an ordinary computer system—one that doesn’t have trans-cytonic processing.”

“You say those words like I should know what they mean.”

“To create computers that can think as quickly as my mind, you need processors that can communicate faster than normal electric signals facilitate. My design achieves this by using tiny cytonic communicators, which pass signals at FTL speeds through my processing units.”

“And the station’s shield doesn’t stop that?”

“My own shielding appears to be enough to block their shielding. Or, well, that’s a simplified and maybe contradictory way of putting it. In any case, I can still process at my required speeds.”

“Huh,” I said. “Cytonic processors. So that’s why I can feel you thinking.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes, when I’m deep inside . . . whatever it is I do . . . I can feel you. Your mind, your processors. Like I can feel Brade sometimes. But anyway, talk of copying you is moot, right? We can’t transfer you to a new ship, because that ship wouldn’t be able to think fast enough.”

“I should be able to survive in one,” M-Bot said. “I’d simply think slower—I’d be dumb. Not as dumb as a human though, and you all seem to get along just fine.” He paused. “Um, no offense.”

“I’m sure you find our stupidity endearing.”

“Nope! Anyway, I’d like to at least try to find a way to replicate myself. If just to prove that . . . that I’m actually alive.”

I walked around him toward his other wing, smiling. After I’d joined the DDF officially—and M-Bot had come out into the open—the ground crews had taken over maintaining him. Before that though, it had just been me and Rodge. Rodge had done most of the difficult work, but a lot of the simple jobs—greasing, peeling paint, checking wires—he’d given over to me.

There was something satisfying about maintaining my own ship. Something relaxing. Calming.

Then I looked into the polished surface of his hull, and saw infinity staring back at me. A deep void in place of my reflection. One pierced by a handful of burning white lights, like terrible suns. Watching me.

The eyes. A delver, or more than one, was here. Right here.

I stumbled back, dropping the grease gun with a clatter. The reflection vanished, and I swear there was nothing reflected for a short time. Then, like a screen turning on, Alanik’s figure reappeared—the holographic image I was wearing.

“Spensa?” M-Bot asked. “What’s wrong?”

I slumped down to the rooftop. Overhead, ships coursed along invisible highways. The city squirmed and moved, a sickening buzz of annoying insects all around, suffocating me.

“Spensa?” M-Bot repeated.

“I’m all right,” I whispered. “I’m just . . . just worried about tomorrow. About having to fly without you.”

I felt alone. M-Bot was great, but he didn’t understand me like Kimmalyn or FM did. Or Jorgen. Scud, I missed him. I missed being able to complain to him, and listen to his overly rational—yet somehow calming—arguments back.

“Don’t worry, Spensa!” M-Bot said. “You can do this! You’re really good at flying. Better than anyone else! You’re practically inhuman in your skill.”

I felt a chill at that. Practically inhuman.

Feeling sick, I leaned forward, wrapping my arms around my legs.

“What did I say?” M-Bot asked, his voice growing smaller. “Spensa? What’s wrong? What’s really wrong?”

“There’s a story Gran-Gran would tell,” I whispered. “An odd one that never quite fit with the others. Not a story about queens, knights, or samurai. A story about a man . . . who lost his shadow.”

“How do you lose your shadow?” M-Bot asked.

“It was a fanciful story,” I said, remembering the first time Gran-Gran had told it to me. Sitting on top of our cubelike apartment back in the caverns, the deep, hungry light of the forges painting everything red. “One strange evening, while on a journey, a writer woke up to find that his shadow had vanished. There was nothing he could do, and no doctor could help him. Eventually he moved on with his life.

“Except one day, the shadow came back. It knocked on the door, and greeted its former master with joy. It had traveled the world, and had come to understand men. Better, in fact, than the writer himself did. The shadow had seen the evil in the hearts of the men of the land, while the writer had sat beside his hearth, entertaining only kindhearted fancies.”

“That’s strange,” M-Bot said. “Didn’t your grandmother usually tell you stories about slaying monsters?”