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  “That doesn’t sound too dangerous.”

  “The bees are over three feet long, and they can sting repeatedly with fatal results. They are exceedingly useful creatures, and we try to leave them alone as much as possible, but when we do go in, it is with a guard.”

  “If they are dangerous, why do you use them?”

  “They are all that we had. There are no large edible animals in this area, so when we have trouble with the rations and sufficient protein, we go to the bees.”

  “Can they maintain their population with you using them as cattle?”

  “One bee larvae feeds the protein needs of four hundred people for a week. The queen replaces them the same day we take them, and they are up to that growth level again within seven days. We leave their favourite foods for them in return for the dozen larva that we steal.”

  “Do you steal them often?”

  “Only when it is necessary. Our quartermasters let us know what we need to acquire, and we go and get it.”

  He paused for a moment. “It seemed awfully quiet in the valley when we left.”

  “The population was safe. Our population is second only to the bots, and once you guys were manned, there was nothing anyone could do. They got to safety.”

  “Sensible.”

  Corbyn chuckled. “Now, once we have the shopping list from the quartermaster, we get a bike. It is motorized, silent, and has a towing capacity of two tonnes. I get my collector, which is the person assigned for the day, and once I know what we are going out for, I get the appropriate weapons. With the crimson bees, I usually use a crossbow with a pulse gun as backup.”

  “No short-range weapons?”

  “If you are that close to a crimson bee, you are dead. The stinger goes through you over and over. I have had to retrieve a few bodies, and the venom isn’t quite quick enough.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The burn to the nervous system doesn’t kill them. They need to bleed out in agony.”

  “That sounds unpleasant.”

  “It is. Very. If I am lucky, I am sent out after they are dead. There have been a few who died in my arms.”

  “If it is so dangerous, why do you do it?”

  “It feeds the city. We do what is necessary to take care of the city. We support our mothers, our aunts, our cousins, and our sisters. Everyone at Bot City is a family member, and their survival is our prime focus.”

  “So, what do you do after you get your collector?”

  “I test the weapons, get on the bike, and she gets on behind me. We drive out to the hive on the map that has been selected for harvest, and we keep an eye on the sky. Harvesting during the day gives us the best chance of having the least amount of bees in the hive. They like to leave in the heat.”

  “How many bees are there?”

  “Two to three hundred in a large hive, three dozen in the smaller hives. We mostly harvest from the larger hives.”

  “What do you do next?”

  She got the feeling that he was distracting her from the drudgery of the gallop toward the city.

  “We create a hole at the rear of the hive that they rush to defend, and then, we run around to the front, rub ourselves on the comb and head for the outer edge where the honey is stored. She removes sections with a blade made of an old stinger, and we haul the honey out of the hive. We then return, moving past the bees and trusting that our exposure to the hive walls will protect us. It would be better if we could find the queen, but that isn’t always possible.”

  “How much do you take?”

  “Up to three hundred pounds at a time. Multiple trips into and out of the hive.”

  “What do you do if you are challenged?”

  “I try to temporarily disable any bees that challenged us, and barring that, I would deform them. Removing a piece of a limb or antenna would get the others to attack the member of their hive that was no longer conforming to standard biology. It is brutal, but it is quick. While they do that, we drive for safety with the comb covered.”

  “That sounds dangerous for a bit of sugar.”

  “It is far more than sugar. You really want to know about the rations from the city, don’t you?”

  “I was trying to get around to it.”

  She flexed her neck slightly and kept walking. “Fifty years ago, the rations that the city was sending began to be a little... less than filling. There was still enough rationing for the population, but the contents were dwindling with each Burning Day shipment. We already had underground gardens, water treatment and our successes with locating protein sources have been notable. They were not aware of that, so our only conclusion is that they wanted to starve us out.”

  “And yet, you still want to hand me over to the pilot that they have produced?”

  She sighed and gritted her teeth. “Duty is not a choice. This is our obligation. This is what we have sworn, and this is what we train for.”

  “Good little soldiers.”

  “They get regular weaponry. We are engineers. We build them as we go.”

  * * * *

  Lido murmured, “Are you okay, Cio?”

  “I believe that there is corrosion due to my temporary use as a planter two decades ago. It is so much a part of me, it didn’t register that I wasn’t able to access the propulsion trigger.”

  “I swear, my people are going to hear about this.”

  “They already know. The Padu clan leader came and had them clear it out.”

  Lido winced. “Of course, she did.”

  “Tell me, how does a gardener classify herself as an engineer?”

  Lido blinked. “Uh, I design and execute methods to gain and increase the output of our plants and hydroponic systems. Even the aquaculture is farming. Our diet is mostly fish based, and they require mechanical filtration, fresh water, pumps and filtering via plants.”

  “What do you do on a daily basis?”

  Lido kept them thudding along with the rest of the pack. “I get up, I eat, and I do my work.”

  “Details. I need details. We have some time to use up.”

  Lido snorted. “Tell me what you want me to say.”

  “I want to know what happens at every stage in your day. This is intensely interesting to me.”

  “Fine. I wake up, shower quickly, get my routine sheet via my com unit, and then, I get dressed. I head to the gardens and go through what needs to be worked on.”

  She paused and then filled him in. “I check the watering systems, maintain the pumps, and taste test a few new vegetable crosses that we are working on. On the days that I work with the fish, I sometimes have to dive into the tanks and that adds a whole level of difficulty to the process.”

  “You swim?”

  “Yes. It is necessary for someone who works with as much water as I do.”

  “To someone like myself, I find it fascinating.”

  “I guess you sink.”

  “We can walk in most water bodies. We are water tight.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing.”

  “It is. There was a river at the bottom of the chasm. If we could not have maintained a grip on the wall, we could have landed and walked our way out, eventually.”

  Lido sighed. “That does make it a bit better.”

  They continued on for a bit.

  “Where did you get the fish?”

  She grinned. “We used to collect hatchlings in one of the local rivers, but after we perfected the mimicry of our systems, we are now able to have the fish swimming and spawning as they would do in the wild.”

  “Interesting. It works?”

  “It works very well. The original engineers started the system and we maintain it.”

  “Does that ever frustrate you? I mean, not being able to do your own work.”

  She sighed. “I have my own projects that I have brought to the clan council, and two have even been put into common use.”

&nb
sp; “What were those?”

  “I created a windmill to draw power back from the coursing water we had created for the fish. Small, confined balls strike the surface and sink. They don’t get in the way of the fish and can generate enough energy to work the feeders that we have in the large tanks.”

  “What was the other invention?”

  “I created a flower that buds into a vitamin-rich fruit. It is in its fifth year, and ways are being found to dilute it into something that the body can absorb.”

  “I am missing something.”

  “It is rather like plasma instead of the fuel for your burners.”

  “Ah. Same purpose but too strong. It seems you have been able to provide what is needed for long-term survival, even if the city falls to invasion.”

  Lido blinked. “I hope it doesn’t fall. We are not pilots; we were never trained as pilots.”

  “I believe you are doing very well.”

  She smiled slightly. “Thank you, Cio. You are a good instructor.”

  “You are an excellent pupil. Can you see in the distance? We are nearly to the city.”

  Lido looked up and out, staring into the night as the dome of light came into view. She sighed in relief. Her nightmare of playing warrior was almost to an end.

  Chapter Five

  Nyvett was able to keep up with the rest of the bots, but it took a lot of effort on her part. Yes, Iff could fly, but it didn’t mean that it was comfortable.

  Iff was moving more easily after his flight, and he was downright chatty. “So, Nyvett, I know you are in administration, but what does that mean you do with your day?”

  “Why the sudden curiosity?”

  “All of the bots are learning about the personal lives of their pilots right now.”

  “I thought you could read my mind.”

  “I can read your nervous system. Reading your mind is a little more difficult, and I can’t do it while you are jostling around.”

  Nyvett rolled her eyes. “Right. What did you want to know again?”

  “Do you live alone? What is your normal day like?”

  “I live in the dorms in my own small unit. I get up, brush my teeth, comb my hair and pin it up, get dressed and stop at the galley for a meal and a cup of tea.”

  “All very normal.”

  “I go for my combat training and spend the afternoon going over inventories, usage, and power-level reports. I am in training to take over the Norm clan.”

  “Interesting. Do you want to?”

  “It is what I have been raised and trained to do.”

  “You take combat training?”

  “Yes, all of my clan have to maintain their physical fitness via scheduled means as our occupations don’t lead to a lot of muscle development.”

  “Well, that is good planning on the part of your clan.”

  “It is, though it is annoying.”

  “Why?”

  “Showering in the middle of the day means that you are never clean when you go to sleep or when you rise in the morning. It puts the best time of the day to be next to me as right after lunch.”

  Iff paused. “That is not something I would have considered.”

  “Most don’t. So, after my work is done, I eat, study, and go to bed.”

  “You don’t socialize?”

  “Only when it is required. I have never been one for idle gossip, and as some of the knowledge I am privy to is classified, I can’t drink.”

  “Is alcohol important to you?”

  “In the valley, it is important to socialization.”

  “You do not have romance in your life?”

  Nyvett blinked. “No. I am not inclined in that direction.”

  “Will you have offspring?”

  She paused and didn’t respond.

  “Did I overstep my bounds?”

  “No, but the lack of genetic material is an issue. I would not want to take the joy of motherhood from someone who wanted it. That is my public opinion. However, if there is a need for me to carry the next generation, I will.”

  “You are short on genetic material?”

  “Well, yes and no. There is a limited amount of genetic material, but we have already been recycling it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We harvest the genes from exemplary members of our society and seed them into an ovum to create the next generation.”

  Iff paused for a moment. “You clone.”

  “We do. It was the simplest thing to do when the city ceased to send genetic material. My clan keeps strict lineages so that we know where the repeaters are in our society. We don’t want the clans weighted too heavily with repeater DNA.”

  “Where do the others come from?”

  “Oh, we cryo froze all of the sperm and extracted them carefully, wasting nothing. We still have some of the original samples, and we use them as needed.”

  “The original? Over two hundred years ago and it is still viable?”

  “Yeah, those little suckers are sturdy. Once you remove the heads, it is easy to put the material where it needs to be.”

  Iff paused again. “So, there is genetic manipulation all around.”

  “Not really. The genes aren’t altered, just put into an egg so that the moment of activation can take place.” She smiled. “Similar to your AI being inserted into this bot. Together, you make a complete unit, apart, neither of you are very mobile.”

  “That is rather accurate. Thank you for the comparison.”

  “You are welcome. Anyway, keeping tracks of births and genetic lines is part of my job.”

  “And what about the harvesting of the genomes of the dead?”

  “All citizens have a medical exam every two years. A genetic sample is taken at that time. They don’ know that it is for their immortality.”

  “Is that what this process offers?”

  “No. But it offers continuity, and we needed to keep the same mindsets that enabled our ancestors to repair and reclaim as many of you as we did. Those minds deserved to be born again and again.”

  Iff asked the question she was hoping he wouldn’t. “How many of the temporary pilots are reborn from the original engineers?”

  She tightened her lips and look into the distance. “Hey, is that the city?”

  “It is, but you didn’t answer me.”

  “All of us. Each one of us is the genetic copy of the original engineers, but we are a bit taller.”

  Iff’s voice was amused. “You are. I was wondering about that.”

  “It is our diet. We get a lot of nutrition when we need it the most.”

  “It is quite the change from the first humans I met.”

  She kept her brisk hike going. “We have increased in height by over forty centimetres on average.”

  “How do none of your people comment on that?”

  Nyvett kept walking. “Most species have offspring slightly taller than they were. The first generations blamed the change on the pilots, and since no other generations actually met the pilots, it was a fiction that was propagated.”

  “You seem worried.”

  “I am. If you fit our bodies so easily, and we have had the bonuses of diet and exercise. I am worried that the pilots that were supposed to be trained might not be in suitable shape to pilot you.”

  “Funny. I was worried about the exact same thing.”

  * * * *

  Xaia kept her mind on the systems and the changes that had occurred after the jump.

  “What are you focusing on, Xaia?”

  “The increase in nanite flow and reaction time of your systems. It was as if the jump had woken you up.”

  “You are very intent on your examination. May I ask you a question?”

  She kept the light jog up, and she checked the position of the city in the long-range scanners. “Sure, what do you want to know?”

  “What is the normal pattern of your life?”r />
  “What?”

  “What would you be doing if you were not here?”

  “Ah, I would be asleep. That isn’t what you want to know though.”

  “No, while I have seen flashes of your life, I wish to know what you do so that I can learn how you perceive the world.”

  “Ah. Well, I get up before dawn, eat, shower, go to my workstation, and repair all the small items that have made their way there since the previous day. Once the necessary repairs are done, I go and work on some of my own inventions.”

  “What do you normally work on?”

  “I like designing air scrubbers. Breathing is one of my favourite things to do.”

  “Do you ever work on medical equipment?”

  “I do, but for that I have to go to the med centre. It is a bit of a hike, but I manage it about three times a week.”

  “So, you can repair anything?”

  “I can. I am a repair specialist. That is my destiny.” She chuckled. “This particular occupation is a surprise.”

  Ai persisted. “Have you repaired any items that you wouldn’t think the valley was using?”

  Xaia frowned. “A few times in the last six years there have been air conditioners and plasma conduits at my station. I fixed them, and they disappear by the next morning.”

  She paused. “Do you know what they were?”

  “You have been repairing items for the city. Standing and staring out at the monorail, I was able to see it sliding in the dark of the night. It returned to the city the following night.”

  “That explains quite a bit. Do you know why?”

  “No, but if the city doesn’t have a set of engineers any longer, they may need to farm out their repairs.”

  Xaia made a face. “I think I have some questions when we get to the city.”

  “You should. So, were you planning on having a daughter?”

  “Interesting change of subject. Um, yes. Maybe. Eventually. I am getting close to my decision age.”

  “What happens if you don’t?”

  “Well, if I am suitable and they say yes, I will have a daughter. If I am not suitable, I will continue on with my work for the valley.”