"I did not say that. I said that the planning will take much longer."
Dimitri blinked. "You're actually considering it?"
"We need time to think."
The surprise on Dimitri's face would have been funny in any other context. He had clearly expected Dave to shut the idea down with the same blunt pragmatism that he and Petrov haddemonstrated yesterday. Instead, the collective consciousness was doing something that neither Dimitri nor Petrov seemed to be capable of doing. Keeping an open mind.
Who could have expected that?
Petrov hadn't moved from his bench, but he had stopped writing and was watching the conversation with hawkish attention.
"The logistics of moving hundreds of women off an island in the middle of an escape are not something you solve by thinking about it," his voice rumbled from across the lab. "You need to solve it with resources that you don't have."
"We might have resources that we haven't considered before," Number One said.
"Then we look forward to hearing about these resources when you've finished your ruminations." Petrov returned to his notes as if the subject was closed.
Number One's mouth twitched, but it might have been irritation rather than amusement. It was hard to tell with Dave.
"You don't have to rescue all the women at once," Mattie said, pressing the advantage while the window was still open. "Start with your mothers. That's eight women. Eight is manageable, even with your current escape logistics."
Number Five stirred, which was the first independent movement Mattie had noticed during the conversation from anybody other than Number One. His head turned toward her, and his expression was subtly different from the others. Softer. Or maybe she was imagining it.
"Our mothers," Number One said, and the clinical distance ofbiological mothersfrom earlier was gone. Justour mothers. Two words that were impactful in their simple, quiet delivery.
"Eight women," Mattie repeated. "You know the enclosure. You probably know exactly where they are. It's not a full-scale liberation. It's a targeted extraction. You, Dimitri, Petrov, me, and eight women."
"Nineteen bodies are more difficult to move undetected than eleven," Dimitri said, but the heat had gone out of his objections. "But not significantly so. There could also be siblings involved. If they haven’t been taken to the training camp yet, the mothers will likely want to bring them along, so the total number might be greater than that."
The Eight were silent again. The processing silence. They were feeling something. All eight of them, or all one of him, or however the mathematics of shared consciousness worked. The mention of their mothers and siblings had reached something that Mattie's strategic arguments had not.
Good.
"We need time to think and ruminate on the idea," Number One said.
"Before committing to anything," Number Eight finished.
"Take all the time you need," she said. "But please take into consideration how important this is to me. Not as a strategic add-on. Not as a nice-to-have. This is my condition for supporting the merge."
Number One's gaze held hers. "You understand that once we escape, we will not come back for the others. The escape will be a one-time opportunity. There will be no return mission."
The words were hard. Those they didn't take would remain behind, and the chance of a future rescue would shrink from improbable to impossible.
"I know," she said quietly. "I would like to save all of them. Every woman, every child. But if that's not possible, and I understand that it might not be, then some is better than none."
The silence that followed was of a different flavor than the processing silences. It was the kind of silence that happened when something had been said that could not be unsaid, and the people in the room were adjusting to the new shape of the conversation.
"We will consider your condition, Mattie," Number One said. "We will analyze the probabilities and give you an answer when we are done."
13
LOSHAM
The excavation report was waiting on Losham's desk when he arrived at his office in the morning. Rami had been at the site since sunrise to get it, which Losham appreciated.
Sitting in the high-backed chair behind the desk that had belonged to his father, he read it carefully. It was important not to get carried away by empty assurances of progress, and to evaluate the numbers realistically.
It looked promising, which was both good and bad news. Good, because he was getting closer to Navuh's buried treasures, and bad because it seemed that the only things of value hidden there were five coffins made to look like large chests, containing the bodies of five immortals in stasis.
