Floating Castles

I tried to explain. "This is only an extension of the vehicle, a lump of neomatter."

"You think I'm stupid."

The icon spoke. "Perhaps I can help." The icon flickered, became Nefrete — an exact copy, down to the tom green duster she wore.

Nefrete's face closed, and her lips had a bluish cast. She turned away.

"Return to your previous semblance," I told the icon, and she did, immediately.

Nefrete looked at me sidelong, eyes opaque. "It's too late for apologies," she said.

All the way home she sat in a deep contour chair, her eyes shut tight.

Her personal servants were waiting when we returned to the city, and I led her down the ramp and gave her to them. I went back inside for a moment.

The icon looked at me, and for the first time I saw strong emotion on the pale, perfect face. "I was angrier than I will ever be again."

"Why?"

"You used me as a weapon. You deceived me."

"I am your owner! I'll use you as I please."

"No.... Surely you understand that I cannot allow you to make me a weapon. That would contravene a very important Seed Corporation imperative. Impossible. I will be on my guard in the future."

The words of the trader came back to me. My bargain seemed less a triumph. But, I told myself, this is still a magnificent possession, an object of vast prestige, and, if need be, an impregnable fortress.

Perhaps I could trick it again, at need. "I understand," I said, and left.

I saw Nefrete in her favored spots, sitting on the stone bench in the water garden, standing by the windows of blue glass that line the library, walking the turret bridges. She had little to say, and I kept my distance.

But one day she came to me with a smile almost as warm as her old one. "I am better," she said, though her face was still too tense.

"I'm happy," I said cautiously. THis was uncharacteristic behavior. There had been no truly irrational outbursts of the sort she used to cleanse herself of grudges, and I worried that she still held one.

"I'm afraid, Taladin. The bandits.... Are you safe in your machine?"

I had a pessimistic insight into the direction of the conversation. "I'm safe. If the need arises, we can both take refuge there."

Her face fell a little, as if she had not expected my offer. But she persevered. "Give me a calf of your machine," she said. "I promise to keep it smaller than yours. I'll feel safe inside it, and we'll still have our privacy."

I argued against her proposal, but my resolve was weakened by our long separation. She did not even have to resort to tears.

SO I did it. When the new machine was ready, we laid our hands together on the pulsing green square. I turned to Nefrete. "What name will you give it? I warn you, you will never be able to change it, so choose carefully.

"I'll be thinking. Come with me inside." I was pleasantly surprised by her invitation. I half expected her to exclude me from her machine, as I had done.

We went aboard her neomach, and again there was that scent of newness, potential. A voice spoke to her from the air; the process went much as I remembered, except that the new neomach called her by her proper name.

I started to explain again about the icon, but she had already given consideration to that. In a crisp voice she ordered an icon. A stocky gray dwarf lifted from the floor, but she shook her head and pointed at me. "Use his form,” she said, and a moment later my twin stood there. The face of the icon attracted my attention irresistably. Could that flat, brutal face really be mine?

Amusingly, the icon spoke in the clear, sweet voice of the neomach, not my own harsh rumble, so after a moment I was able to laugh.

I showed her the use of the analog chair. As we raced over the desert, I looked down on her as she lay there. I wondered if I looked that way, still, coldly composed, eyes wide and bottomless, the only trace of emotion a hint of eagerness about the mouth. A thin tracery of black neomatter penetrated her temples. She looked like a corpse, laid out by an extremely skillful but eccentric mortician.

We stopped at the edge of a plateau that rose perhaps a thousand meters above the desert below. Suddenly the neomach flowed into the form of a seraphim fly, a small insectile predator with a long, segmented body and three pairs of gauzy wings.

Somehow I failed to understand what she meant to do until it was too late, and we were falling down the crumbling cliff. Our wings took hold, and we shot in a great skimming curve into the sky. The ground below whirled under us; the floor beneath us disappeared, as if our chairs floated unsupported over a great gulf. I thought my heart would stop.

Nefrete was smiling at me, and she brushed the probes away and rose from the analog chair. She walked toward me over empty air, laughing with delight. "Humility will fly for a bit, so we may enjoy the view. Oh, I see now why you love it." She gestured at her icon, and he went away silently.