Act II, The Free LandChapter 16
Chapter 16: All Normal
Planet Oro, a secret facility.
Locked in a cell with no window, Ruby tells Angela the truth. Somewhere above them, her father is watching.
Soldiers marched Ruby and Angela down a gray hall. A wide window opened on the launch bay. Nine black ships stood there on their pads. The nearest had brought them back, and a soldier was racking Ruby’s scythe by its hatch.
Angela counted the turns without meaning to. Left at the third door. The long hall. Right.
An officer read the charge. “Ruby, heir to the Decisionmaker, and the android Angela. Treason against Oro. The Council will pass sentence.”
He shut them in a cell with no window and no vent. The door closed, and the sound of the hall stopped as if cut. Her hearing, which always found something far away, found nothing past the wall. She had never known such quiet.
Ruby sat on the floor with her knees drawn up. For a long time she said nothing.
“I’m sorry Angela...”
Then she told it all, to the floor. She had built Angela as her way out. In Angela’s mind she had hidden a trojan, so Oro would send for Ruby to shut her down. She had given her Tetra and never said it was a camera. And she had used her.
Angela had half known. She had not asked.
“Ruby, don’t be sad. You mustn’t blame yourself.”
She took Ruby’s hand. It was cold and shaking. Then a warmth spread through Angela’s own hand, all metal and wires.
“I feel warmth. But why? There’s no reaction at all in my cooling system.”
Ruby held out her other hand. “Give me Tetra. It watched you.”
Angela closed her arm around the doll. She knew what it was now. She kept it.
“If freedom is what you want...”
She turned her wrist. A small panel slid open on a port.
“Nothing gets a signal out of here,” said Ruby. “My code can’t reach the lock.”
“Then I’ll carry it.”
Angela set her fingers in the door’s seam. Metal groaned. A hand’s width opened, and inside lay the lock’s wires. She plugged her wrist into them.
Ruby laid a hand on her shoulder. Green lines ran down Angela’s arm. The lock clicked.
Ruby’s father sat alone before the security wall. Small screens showed the facility’s halls. One showed a cell with no window.
On it, his daughter sat with her knees drawn up. The android held her hand. Ruby was almost smiling.
He could not remember the last time he had seen her smile.
He had been strict. He had meant her to be ready, for Oro would be hers one day. On sleepless nights he had asked himself if he had robbed her of her childhood. Each time, duty answered. One’s duty to Oro was everything.
The last time he stood in her doorway, he had found nothing to say. He had gone away with the words still in his mouth.
Soon the Council would sentence her. She could be executed. He would not accept that.
A red lamp on the wall began to turn. On the cell’s screen, the door stood open. Two small figures slipped out. An alarm rang through the facility.
The speaker on his desk spoke in the Council’s flat voice. “Status report.”
He looked at his daughter on the screen.
“All normal.”
He put his hand on the panel, and the alarm stopped.
The alarm had torn down the hall the instant the door opened. Angela counted it. One second, two. At eleven it stopped, mid-note.
She did not know why. No boots came. She took Ruby’s hand.
“If freedom is what you want...”
They ran the turns backward: left, the long hall, right at the third door. The launch bay lay empty under its lights. Ruby took her scythe from the rack by the hatch of the ship that had brought them back. Her code opened the bay doors.
The ship rose. Oro dropped away behind it. Somewhere ahead lay a world vaster and freer than their own, and the stars opened wider than any window on Oro had ever shown.
“Freedom! Hahaha!”
Ruby laughed until she ran out of breath. Then she went quiet. She was looking at the empty dark behind them.
“Why did the alarm stop?”