Malia snorted. "Right. That'll be easy."
"Easy or not, we have to do it," Peer said. "If we can't, we might as well decide now: die in here, or die outside."
Gorham watched Nadielle work. Having a plan in mind and an end in sight seemed to have settled her a little, and she moved about the vat room with a sense of purpose.
Gorham sometimes followed Nadielle and sometimes explored on his own. Those many-bladed things remained motionless in shadowy corners. He avoided them but felt no threat from them anymore. She'd told him they would not hurt him. It was amazing how quickly he could get used to something like that.
And perhaps over time he had become too used to the Baker. Because, watching her work, he realized once again just how incredible she was.
On occasion he fetched food from her rooms-chopped fruit and salads and dried meats-and they would eat and sit on some of the boxes and benches set around the perimeter of the vat room. If she spoke, it was to comment on the meat's taste, the fruit's ripeness. She said nothing about what she was doing, and he guessed it was because she was uncomfortable being observed.
But this is the last time, he thought. Soon she'll go, and I'll never see her again.
She climbed a ladder beside the womb vat she was working on most diligently. Others were steaming and hissing, popping and scraping, and she tended them quickly and efficiently. But this particular vat-she put her body and soul into tending it. Gorham's seed had gone in there, and something of Nadielle as well. He dreaded the times she asked him to climb and water, because he did not wish to see.
Soon, she had told him several times already. She was thin and pale, her face seemingly shrunken, and he wondered whether, by giving life to the thing in that vat, she was dying a little in the process.
When Nadielle descended the ladder and hurried through the door into her rooms, he dashed after her. At first he could not see her and he began to panic. Is there another way out? Has she gone without even saying But then there was movement in the corner of the room, and she emerged from the shadows carrying another book.
"I can't trust myself," she said. "My memory is… haunted."
"Haunted by what?"
"What I've seen." She dropped the book onto the table, and it fell open in a cloud of dust. "What I have to face."
Gorham coughed, wiping dust from his eyes. The dust of her ancestors, he thought.
"When will you go?" he asked softly.
"Soon." She did not even glance at him. The pages of the book were too important to her, and he left her to them, closing the door to the toilet room and leaning against the door as he pissed in the pot. His piss stank; he needed a drink. We're trying so hard to look after everyone else, we've forgotten to look after ourselves.
He wondered where Peer was right then and hoped that she was safe. Since last seeing her, he had been down to the deepest Echo of the city, seen things that few living people had ever seen, and discovered a monster that might mean the end of everything they knew. But if he saw her right then, his first inclination would not be to tell her these things. It would be to hold her.
Nadielle had never just let him hold her. There always had to be something else.
Outside again, Nadielle was leaning over the book, scanning its pages. She did not look up when he approached.
"I'm not sure I can let you do this," he said.
Now Nadielle looked up, expressionless. "You'd try to stop me?"
Gorham did not reply. Though there was no threat to her voice, she'd sounded so cold.
"No choice," she said. "It's happening now, and I can't turn it back." She returned to her book, and Gorham slapped his hand onto the table. The anger was sudden and unexpected, and it shocked him as much as it did her.
"Then include me, at least!" he shouted. "I'm wandering these rooms like a lost puppy, and you're working as if I'm not even here. As if I was never here."
"Are you serious?" she asked, smiling in surprise.
Gorham already felt cowed and embarrassed. He looked away.
"This is so much more than us," she whispered.
"Was there ever 'us'?"
For a moment so brief he wasn't sure he saw it at all, Nadielle's eyes softened and her lips trembled. Then she was hard again, flipping a page in the book and running her finger along the lines as she read.
"You told me I was your sunlight."
"It's dark!" she shouted. "Darker than ever. Get off your own ass and wake up!" She ran both hands through her hair, then turned the book on the table so that it faced him, spilling loose sheets and another book to the floor. "Here. You want me to include you? I need the chemicals listed on the top half of this page, in those exact amounts. Bottles and measuring jars are in my cupboards. All labeled." She leaned in close and he smelled her breath, knowing that she was already becoming a memory. "Don't spill a drop. Don't make mistakes. Don't mess it up, Gorham."
She left the room and he glanced down at the book, her family history written in a hand the Baker could call her own. Closing his eyes, breathing deeply, he wondered whether the next Baker could be so cold.
It took Gorham a while to collect the powders, fluids, and carefully weighed tablets. Carrying them all on a wooden tray, he went out into the vat room and spotted Nadielle tending the special vat once more. She sat on its rim, both feet on the ladder's highest rung, and she seemed to be whispering. She glanced at him, then pricked at her hand with a small knife. She squeezed several drops of her blood into the vat and then sheathed the knife, climbing down the ladder mindless of the blood smearing its wooden rungs.
"You should bind that," he said.
"I'll be needing it again. Thank you." She took the tray from him and placed it on the ground, mixing and stirring, careful not to spill or waste.
"How long will it be?" he asked.
"No time," she said. "I'll be leaving soon."
"So this new Baker…" he began, but it was too confusing.
Nadielle stood and took his hands. The move surprised him, but there was no affection or warmth to her touch. Just because she thinks she needs to, he thought.
"What I'm about to ask you is a true responsibility," she said. "Not like leading some underground political group or trying to take on the guilt for bad decisions you might have made. A real responsibility. My mother chopped me before she died and birthed me herself, and virtually every new Baker is welcomed into the world by the old Baker that chopped her. That's part of our duty and part of the way we cope with how and what we are. But I'm handing this duty to you. Because I must, and I trust you, and trust that you want the best for Echo City."
"I do," he said. "I always have."
"And this is for the best, believe me. I know what I'm doing." She glanced aside at one of the bladed things sitting against the wall. "Here, at least."
"And down there?" Gorham asked.
"Down there, I'll do whatever I can."
"To right a wrong."
"Bakers never make mistakes, Gorham. They simply explore too far." She smiled softly, let go of his hands, and grabbed the glass mixing pot by her feet. Climbing the ladder, she nursed the pot carefully against her chest, then emptied it into the vat as soon as she reached the top. She dropped the glass pot and bit at the cut on her hand, squeezing out more blood.
"Is it happening now?" Gorham asked, because he felt a sudden change in the chamber's air. The bladed things had gone from relaxed to alert and expectant, and it was as if their blades were held at attention, a potential of violence almost unbearable in its intensity. Some formed a wide circle around the womb vat, several more stayed back, going to the doors that led to the Echo outside. Guarding. Though guarding against someone coming in or something going out, Gorham was not sure.
"New weapons," Nadielle said. "My daughter will take a while longer." She was staring lovingly into the vat, her face softer than he had seen for some time. Not vulnerable, as she had been down in the Echoes when she demanded his intimacy, but strangely content, even with everything she had done and what she was about to face. Right then she was beautiful, and Gorham mourned for the woman she might have been.
Three other vats began to bulge. Some unseen, unheard message must have been relayed to them, and they started to spout steam and gas, sides cracking, fluids gushing from the ruptures.