“All right,” she said. “This is as private as I can manage on short notice.”
Vincent nodded and raised his eyes to the wall. “Kii, would you introduce yourself to Miss Pretoria?”
The swirling effect in the wall panels was just as before, though Vincent noticed that Lesa had turned off the jungle scenes in this room, leaving blank taupe walls. First eyes and then a tall lithe body coalesced from swirling pixels, and Kii lay at ease, its wings folded comfortably along its sides so it could recline on its elbows. It settled its plumed head between its shoulders like a somnolent bird and blinked at them.
“Greetings, Lesa Pretoria,” it said. “Greetings, Vincent Katherinessen and Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones. Kii anticipates your questions.”
At the sound of the mellow, neutral voice, Lesa lurched upright on the bed, hands braced to either side. “Dragon,” she said, and shook her head, many‑colored hair flying around her.
She looked to Michelangelo, not Vincent. “Simulation?”
“Transcended,” Vincent answered, when Michelangelo didn’t. “Kii, Michelangelo would like to accept your offer of medical treatment.”
Kii’s head settled more solidly between ridged shoulder blades. “Michelangelo, is that so?”
Michelangelo kept his eyes straight ahead, though Vincent was waiting for the glance. “Yes, Kii.”
“It is done,” Kii said. “You will find a document for your life support device available in the datastream. It should enable your implants to locate and eradicate the infection.”
“Kii,” Vincent said, “can you tell me where to find the lab where that virus was tailored?”
“It is not within Kii’s range of access,” Kii said. It angled its head and stretched its neck, as if regarding Lesa more closely than before. “The khir like you, when you come. The Consent is that you may stay, to please the khir. We are fond of the khir. And Kii is grown fond of you.”
Lesa sat very still, the bedclothes knotted in her hands. She licked her lips, pulse visible at her throat, and Vincent found himself in sympathy with her nervousness. The Dragon’s regard had a tendency to make him feel like a snack, as well.
“That’s you‑humans, not you‑Lesa?” Michelangelo, surprising Vincent.
“The khir approve of Lesa Pretoria,” Kii said, the long neck swaying slightly, plumage ruffled by an unseen breeze.
In his basket, Walter flopped on his side and hissed, showing his belly to the air. Lesa turned her head and looked at him, leaning forward on the bed without lowering her feet to the floor. Not trying to stare the Dragon in the eye seemed to ease her. Vincent remembered some Old Earth legend about snakes and hypnosis, or maybe turning people into stone.
“The khir really aren’t smart enough to…talk…are they?” she said. Walter lifted his head, neck craning around like a hand puppet, and blinked back at her with triangular‑pupiled eyes.
It was that look that did it. He’d been telling himself, over and over, that his gift shouldn’t apply to Dragons or to khir. That their kinesthetics, their everythingwas different from that of humans, and deceptive.
But that intellectual knowledge hadn’t stopped him from reading them, and reading them correctly–Dragon and khir.
Because the khir had been living with New Amazonians for 150 years, and the khir–nonverbal, with a predator’s extended jaw structure and limited facial expressions–were quite perfectly capable of communicating through kinesthetics, the rise and fall of their peculiarly expressive plumage that ruffled independent of any wind.
Just as the Dragons must have, when they were meat.
“Actually,” Vincent said, “I think the khir tell the Dragons rather a lot, don’t they?”
“The khir are invaluable,” Kii said. “They are the protectors of the old world. We make them safe denning, and they give the city purpose. As now you do as well.”
“Because the city is esthelich,isn’t it?”
“That can be no revelation, Vincent Katherinessen.”
“No,” Vincent said, aware of Michelangelo shifting a half‑step closer to him, a warm pressure at his elbow. “I’ve known that for a while. Since it helped me hide from the kidnappers. If it’s esthelichby your standards, it must have an aesthetic. And its aesthetic is…comfort? The care of its inhabitants?”
“Would you create a domicile that thought otherwise?”
“No.”
Lesa had looked away from Walter and was now sitting curled forward, the bedclothes dragged over her lap as she stared at Vincent. “And of course,” she said, “even if you were Transcendent, there’s always the chance that something could go wrong with the system, isn’t there?”
Smart woman. Which was no more a revelation than House’s taste in art had been. “The possibility exists,” Kii said, hunching between its wings.
Vincent said, “And if you needed physical bodies again? Could you read your…personality onto an organic system?”
“The possibility exists.”
“The khir are a failsafe.”
“The khir are not disposable,” it answered, contracting again, pulling itself back on its haunches.
“Kii,” Michelangelo said. “If you had to translate esthelich. What would you say it meant?”
The Dragon hesitated. Its head swung side to side, the tongue flickering through a gap in its lower lip. “It does not translate into merely one of your words.”
“Try.”
“Fledged,” it said, with no weight of emotion on the word.
If Kii were human, Vincent would have scrupled to press. He would have known he was millimeters from a moral pit trap, a bit of doublethink that would expose a violent defensive reaction when triggered. But the Dragons had Consent. They were as physically incapable of experiencing moral qualms about following orders as Vincent’s own hand was of rebelling when his consciousness instructed it to pull a trigger.
He said, “They’re not a separate species, are they?”
And Kii shifted, its wings furled tight against its sides, and blinked slowly. “The khir? They are not.”
“They’re young Dragons. Neotenous. With their growth and intellectual development intentionally retarded.”
“They are not esthelich. They have no Consent. We provided for them, and they protect us.”
“That’s horrible,” Lesa said. She dropped the bedcovers and climbed to her feet, wincing as her bandages touched the carpetplant. “You…engineered your own children into slaves?”
“Pets…no, domestic animals are not slaves,” Kii insisted. “They are without aesthetic. They are not people. Your infant creatures are immoral–no. Sociopathic. They are not people.”
Vincent reached behind Angelo to put a hand on Lesa’s arm, steadying. She shook it off. “But they could have been.”
“Not these, no. They were conceived to this purpose, and they breed true. They are animals, and would never have been born, otherwise.”
“Unless you remove the, what, the chemical inhibition? And then they transform into adults. Only with the minds of Transcended Dragons downloaded into their skulls, rather than whatever they might have become?”
“It is,” Kii said, “the Consent.”
Lesa might have wanted nothing to do with Vincent, but Michelangelo stepped closer, shoulder to shoulder, and Vincent leaned on his warmth, their wardrobes melding. “What if we lobotomized girl babies,” Angelo said. “Kept them as cattle. Destroyed their higher functions–”