Goddess in the Machine Read online

  Zhade turned to go, but one of the words in his strange dialect cut through the fog in Andra’s mind.

  “A, uh, gods’ dome? Was it always there?”

  On this strange planet where ’bots were angels and a girl in stasis was a goddess, a gods’ dome must be a bio’dome. And this city Zhade talked about wasn’t replete with magic—or gifts from benevolent gods—but with technology.

  Zhade shook his head, a ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips, and Andra felt like she’d somehow stepped into a trap. “Neg. The First created it.”

  “The First what?” Andra asked.

  “The First Goddess,” he said simply. “Did you imagine you were the sole one?”

  Andra’s breath hitched, her heart stopped. Other “goddesses”? That could mean other colonists like her, who hadn’t woken with the others. People from her time. From Earth. Too many questions sifted through her head, and she spluttered out the first one she could catch. “How many?”

  Zhade shrugged, but the movement was anything but casual. “Three we reck. The First was the goddess of knowledge and light,” he recited. “The Second brought us chaos and fright. The Third—”

  “And the other two? They were like me?”

  “Impatient?”

  “Frozen. In a ’tank.”

  The side of Zhade’s mouth twitched. “Certz. Immortal and unchanging and powerful.”

  Maybe Andra wasn’t the only colonist left. She didn’t want to hope, but perhaps these other goddesses were women she knew. Whoever this First was, she’d created a fully functioning bio’dome. You had to be a certified genius to do that. There were a handful of people Andra could think of from her time who were capable of something like that. And one of them was her mother.

  But the ’bot had said Andra’s mother was dead. Maybe it was mistaken, or misinterpreting data. ’Bots weren’t omniscient after all; they could only recite the information fed to them. And they weren’t AI; they couldn’t deduce. Someone had sent Zhade to find Andra, and who would do that, if not her own mother? It was too much to hope for—that she had some family left—and she tried to tamp down the thought.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said, and watched Zhade’s smile spread.

  Something about it didn’t seem genuine. Too many teeth.

  “But you’ll tell me everything you can about the goddesses on the way.”

  Zhade’s smile twitched, showing a single dimple in his left cheek. He blinked slowly. “I’ll tell you as much as I can.” He gave Lew-Eadin a look Andra couldn’t interpret, then started to descend the hill. “Full good. We’ll peace in the moren. Decide your fate, Goddess,” he called over his shoulder, and then he was gone.

  Andra watched as his footprints filled back up with sand. “He’s a bit . . . much,” she said, but her mind was spinning with possibilities.

  “He’s intoleristic,” Lew answered, but laughter tinged his voice.

  The wind picked up and Andra was forced to cover her face or get a mouthful of sand. What little skin she had exposed started to sting, a million tiny pricks.

  “We aged up together.” Lew’s voice was muffled by his sweater. “He’s . . . more than he seems.” After a moment, he asked, “Why don’t you reck you exist a goddess?”

  “The same reason you don’t think you’re a giant. Because I’m not one.”

  “Certz to full small creatures, I am a giant.”

  Andra laughed.

  “Amid their own kind,” Lew said slowly, “gods might not seem so special, but among mere mortals . . .” He let the implication hang in the air and stood. “I’d best make certz he doesn’t set anything afire.”

  Andra eyed the rock town below. If anyone could set fire to stone, it would be Zhade.

  Lew bowed slightly, just a dip of his head. “Goddess,” he said, then caught himself. “Andra.”

  “Lew.” She nodded back and he smiled before following his friend down the hill.

  Andra waited at the top of the dune until the sun started to set. Not the sun she knew. Not Sol, but Andromeda. Her mother had named her after the star that supported Holymyth. With Earth’s resources dwindling, the only option for sustaining the growing population was to spread across the galaxy, to travel to the nearest habitable planet, orbiting a sun not too different from their own. Humanity’s last hope, her mother called it. Andromeda will save us all. What a joke, Andra thought.

  She moved to the foot of the ’tank, where her belongings were kept. She pressed her hand to the scanner, and it beeped as it read her DNA signature. The drawer popped open with a hiss as the tech’stasis seal was broken. The compartment was the size of a standard suitcase—large enough for all the trinkets and ’bands and memories too precious to be parted from—and Andra had filled it to the brim with tablets and pre-books and clothes and the blanket she’d slept with until she was twelve. She’d filled it with home.

  She reached in, her fingers grasping for the blanket, but instead, they met nothing but air. No ’band, no tablet filled with pics and music and books. No dress she was going to wear on her first day on Holymyth. Everything was gone.

  “Looking for this?”

  Andra whipped around to find Zhade had returned. His hand was held out, and dangling from his fingers was her holocket.

  The faux-gold chain glinted in the dying light, ending in a star-shaped charm. It was stupid and pointless and sentimental, and Andra snatched it from Zhade’s hands, hanging it around her neck with a sigh of strange relief.

  It was a child’s toy. Outdated years before she got it. So obsolete, even if her ’implant had been working, it couldn’t have communicated with the ’locket. Cheap tech and even cheaper metal. There was no way it still worked.

  “Where’s the rest of my stuff?” Andra snapped. She thought about her security blanket and the first-edition pre-book copy of I Think I Speak for Everyone and the purple holo’band she’d gotten for her sixteenth birthday.

  “That was all there was,” Zhade said, his expression so disarmingly earnest, she actually believed him.

  “Oh,” she said. “Thanks.”

  He nodded. “Firm. Does it import?”

  “Yeah,” she said, her fist clenched around the ’locket.

  She’d kept it because Oz had given it to her. He’d won it at a raffle at school when he was five, and even then, he was enamored with outdated tech. He’d carried that thing around for weeks, agonizing over how to use the memory slots. One day, Andra was upset about something—she didn’t even remember what—but Oz had sneaked into her room, where she was curled up in a ball, crying silently, and he slipped the ’locket into her hand.

  She didn’t have the heart to tell him it was next to useless. ’Bands could store hundreds of petabytes. The ’locket had space for six single-gig memories. But she’d taken it from him, because she could tell he was proud of himself for his generosity. She’d used the memory slots to record random moments. They’d seemed mundane at the time, but now they were all she had of her past. Precious. Cruz was in there. And Briella and Rhin. Oz. Her family.

  The wind picked up, almost a cool breeze. Zhade squinted into the sun, his hands in his pockets.

  “I reck what it’s like,” he said, “to lose fam. To lose everyone.” His eyes met hers. “Sorries. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

  Andra pursed her lips, swallowing her grief. Zhade nodded once, something serious and reassuring in his gaze, and then, without another word, he sauntered away, humming to himself as he descended the dune.

  She turned to watch the sunlight fade to gray across the desert, ’locket clutched to her chest. It wasn’t until her namesake disappeared below the horizon that Andromeda made her way down the hill.

  FOUR

  THE SOLDIER

  Zhade hated the Wastes. At least in Rocco, or any of the other desert villages he’d visited, he could pre
tend he was somewhere else—some obscure part of Eerensed where nothing grew and everything was falling apart—but once he left the shelter of civilization, it was glaringish obvi he was mereish a small speck in a vast sky of sand. Oceans of sand, the First had called the Wastes. Zhade tried to imagine all the sand replaced with water, but it seemed impossible.

  Fishes and wishes, the Eerensedians would say. Meaning, You might as well wish for the ocean.

  Zhade didn’t believe the ocean had ever existed.

  The desert spread out ahead of them, barren and endless. Nothing for miles except the road they followed, marked by a yellow line in the sand. Heat waves wafted in the distance. Zhade huddled in the back of their (borrowed) cart with the Goddess, while Wead led the (stolen) horse (don’t you dare tell the Goddess, Wead) at an infuriatingish slow pace. Up and down dunes. Bell after bell. A dense fog of dust billowed ahead. Sandclouds. They were prominent in this part of the Wastes. Not dangerful, but not a piece of cuppins either.

  It was a fault of his upbringing that he’d been full unprepped for the Wastes when he was exiled. He’d never been outside of the city til he suddenish was. He was clever, resourceful, a survivor. But navigating the streets and politics of Eerensed hadn’t prepped him for making his march through the Wastes. There was no one to charm food out of, nothing to trade for protection, and nothing—full nothing—he could do to hide from the pockets. He was powerless.

  He didn’t like being powerless.

  Most of his kidhood had been spent in hiding, tossed from cave to cave at the whim of others. His mam’s whims, mostish. It was full rare he’d had any say in the meteor. She determined where he went and with whom and when. For your own good, she’d said. Zhade had yet to see this “good” of his she convoed. Still, he was following her whims, though she was dead and sunk into stardust. It was habit.

  Take this, she’d said, giving him the icepick dagger, and he’d taken it. It still hung in a thin sheath at his side.

  Find the Third, she’d said, and he’d spent his full banishment searching.

  Don’t let Maret have the crown, she’d said, and there Zhade had failed.

  Maret already had the throne, and the best Zhade could do now was overthrow him.

  Fishes and wishes.

  At least he had found the Third—a nearish impossible task considering his searching radius was anywhere in the world. The Eerensedians would have called it fate. Zhade wanted to laugh at that. He had his own thoughts bout fate.

  The cart rocked beneath them as Zhade looked over at the Goddess—Andra, she kept insisting. She’d salted him with questions, almost nonstop, since they’d peaced. Why hadn’t she woken earlier? Why did people worship her? Who stole her from Eerensed? What are the other goddesses like? She got frustrated when he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer, stewing with her arms crossed and brow furrowed.

  The Goddess had lain in the Yard for most of Zhade’s kidhood—and for hundreds of years before he was born. He had memories of visiting her agrave, seeing her blurred shape through frosted glass, listening to the prayers and chants of the other visitors—the ones who believed in her and hoped she would wake soon to save them.

  Zhade recked too much to believe or hope. But he’d gone with his mother once a turn to visit the Second and Third. He never prayed or chanted or took part in any of the rituals. Zhade’s mam never prayed either, mereish watched, like she was waiting for something, but Zhade never recked what. Then the Second woke, and everything went to sands, and not long after, the Third vanished. Some said she’d woken. Others said she’d been stolen. It had always been Zhade’s goal to find her eventualish—he’d trained on how to wake her, what to do after—but his mother’s death and his banishment had sped up his plans a bit.

  Neg. Not his plans. His mother’s plans.

  After the Third’s disappearance, Zhade’s memories of the Goddess had warped and faded. Now, faced with the reality of her . . . Evens. He’d always imagined if she came to life, she would be like the First. Wise, brilliant, and intimidating. But this girl—this girl was nothing like a goddess should be.

  She was too unconfident, too uncomfortistic in her own skin. Shrewd and calculating, certz. But too uncertz of herself.

  Easyish manipulated.

  Zhade bit back a smile.

  This had happened better than he imagined. Not sole could she get him back acity (he was certz of it—Maret wouldn’t pass the opportunity to hoist his own popularity with a newish-arisen goddess), but he could use her to enact his plan.

  This time, it was his plan, and his plan alone.

  Decide your fate, the Eerensedians would say. It was hello and goodbye and the first part of an old saying fewer and fewer people had memory of. Decide your fate, or fate will decide for you.

  Zhade had enough of fate deciding for him. He was determined to shape his own future. A future that required the Third Goddess accompanying him back to Eerensed and staying whole and full well til the time came for her to be of further use.

  The cart jolted to a stop, and the Goddess slammed against him. He held back what he wanted to say—something bout her throwing herself at him. Flirting was its own kind of magic and there was a delicate balance to it—too much and it lost its power.

  She scrambled away from him. “Why are we stopping?” Her accent made Zhade’s stomach lurch. It was exactish like the First’s.

  He pushed himself up to see why Lew-Eadin had stopped, and then slumped back down with a groan.

  “New one, sir,” Wead said, as though Zhade couldn’t see for himself. A pocket.

  “What?” The Goddess scrambled to see over the side of the wagon. She froze when she saw what was afront of them.

  A blackened, churning mass swallowed the road ahead, darkening the sky and sand and everything beyond. It reached past the clouds and across the desert, and now that Zhade recked it was there, he couldn’t miss its droning hum. No one was full certz what pockets were. The opposite of existence. Void and fire and nothing. A single monster or an amalgam of roiling, cloud-like spirits. The Three’s worshippers believed pockets were a corruption of magic. The sorcers sole recked they were death. Whatever they were, they appeared out of nowhere, with no warning. Living in the Wastes meant living in constant fear that one day a pocket would descend and you would blink out of existence. They always gave Zhade the fraughts.

  This particular pocket was enormous. The biggest Zhade had ever seen, as a fact. The yellow road that led them disappeared into the pocket, swallowed by the darkness. It would take them bells and bells to go round.

  Andra let out a low curse, voice trembling.

  Zhade tried to hide his smile. Not that he hadn’t felt the same kiddun-like awe and horror the first time he’d seen a pocket, but what was experience for, if not to deride those who lacked it?

  He stretched, twisting and popping his back. Sweat trickled down Zhade’s spine, and his full body was gritty with sand. He was used to it though. This had been his life for four years.

  “Go round,” he muttered, gnatted that Wead needed the instruction soon and sooner.

  “What is it?” the Goddess asked, her eyes stuck on the seething darkness. That was a good march to insanity.

  “A pocket,” Zhade answered. “Places nothing can live.”

  She nodded, but he could tell she didn’t full comp.

  That was perfect. The less she recked, the more she would rely on Zhade.

  Wead urged the horse forward and the cart gave another jolt as they turned off the road. The surrounding desert had grown more craggy and less sandy as they got closer to the city, and the cart jostled as they navigated the rocks.

  Zhade saw the Goddess give the pocket one last look before she sat back down. Then her dark eyes met Zhade’s, and he felt something most definitish not guilt twist his stomach.

  * * *

  The Wastes dragged
on, a collection of jagged boulders and scragglish flora. Wead resolutish made his march round the edge of the pocket, looking for the gods’ road, urging the horse to go as fast as it could, but many laps stood between them and their goal, and the horse was drained, both from distance and the desert heat. It got in their skin, and Zhade felt like groose wrapped in tin and put in the oven.

  The night was another meteor. The Wastes grew intolerish cold at night, but over the years, Zhade had learned to tolerate it. The Goddess, however, had not. Where she was from—the land of the gods or wherever—apparentish did not experience extreme temps. She never complained, but as they huddled together under the bed of the cart, tangled in blankets, Zhade could feel her shiver, hear her teeth chatter.

  She didn’t sleep. Not full true. She pretended, never admitting she lay awake through the night while Zhade and Wead slept, but she would give herself away by fidgeting with the necklace he’d returned to her, and he wondered why it imported. She snapped it open and shut. Whispered snick-snick snick-snicks in the darkness. After several bells, her breathing would finalish slow, her body relax, but then she’d jerk awake, as though something had scared her. Zhade didn’t say anything til the fourth night, when the snicking of the ’locket burnt his last end.

  She lay between him and Wead, who had long since sunk off, full asleep with his head propped on his carry-with. She was shivering especialish hard tonight. He tried to huddle closer, but each time he did, she would shift toward Wead. Zhade tried not to take offense, unsuccessfulish. He was an exceptional snuggler.

  snick . . . snick . . . snick . . .

  He reached over to stop her. She froze before slapping his hand away.

  He bit back his retort when he realized it was dark and they were basicalish strangers and he’d touched her without permission. “Sorries.” He coughed. At least the snapping had stopped. “You’re still awake, marah, Goddess?”