Javier hung his head. His shoulders slumped. "I was only doing what my dad taught me, and all his iterations–"
"An iteration isn't a perfect copy, Dad," Matteo said. "It's just the next version."
"Yeah, and this version thinks this whole gilded cage thing is crap." Ignacio tried to wiggle his nose back into place by stretching his upper lip. It didn't work. "I wouldn't want to be on a feed. I hate feeds."
Léon snorted. "Leave it to you to whine about Dad grabbing the brass ring–"
"It's a valid concern, and it merits further thought–"
"Gabriel, I swear to Christ if you intellectualize this whole thing one more time–"
"I don't want to go!"
The others fell silent. In her arms, Junior pulled away to look at Amy. Javier frowned at her. "You don't?"
"No. I don't. Of course I don't. I don't want to be a tourist attraction. I don't want to live inside a zoo. I wore a costume and played nice for the humans at my last job, but at least I got to be myself at the end of my shift. If we go to Mecha, I won't be myself, I'll be a… a product. And so will you."
Javier tilted his head. "Querida. You're acting like I have a choice."
If Sarton is right, then he doesn't.
Amy tried to ignore the truth shivering through her systems. Slowly, she bent and put Junior down. The child looked up at her with huge eyes. Portia was right, and Amy knew it. If Sarton's theories about Amy held any significance, then she was no better than the humans who had victimized Javier his whole life. And even if he enjoyed it at the time, the failsafe limited his choices and his pleasures in a way that Amy had never experienced. It was why he'd abandoned his children so many times, and why he would abandon his youngest yet again to go to Mecha with her. She had a chance to adjust that imbalance, now, in some small way. She could grant him a kind of freedom, imperfect and incomplete – but improved. Perhaps a life exposed on camera was no more liberating than a life hidden in a basement. But a metaphorical cage had to be better than a real one. And Amy was the only one with the ability to choose freely – and in so doing, protect all of them.
"Rory," she heard herself say, "I want you to arrange passage for all of us."
The twins spoke in unison: "What?"
"Everyone goes, or nobody does," Amy said.
The room went quiet. Even the images on the scroll paused briefly. "That won't be easy, Amy. Arranging six more so quickly–"
"Make it happen, Rory. Please." Her eyes found Javier's gaze and held it. "We're not leaving anyone behind, this time."
Another pause. "I'll see what we can do."
"I'll make it easier on you. Dummy up five extra visas, not six." Ignacio crossed the room to stand inches from Amy. He leaned in so close she almost lost her balance. "You may have poached our code, but you don't get to transplant us across the goddamn Pacific without asking, first."
His face, the carbon copy of Javier's in his moments of deepest rage, registered annoyance and surprise when Junior scrambled to his feet and shoved him backward. The boy remained standing, arms folded, his tiny toes gripping the mat beneath. For a moment, Javier's first and latest iterations stared at each other silently. Then Ignacio turned his back to them, shaking his head. "Whatever."
Matteo looked at his twin brother. "What do you think?"
"I think we should defrag it," Ricci said.
Matteo's brows lifted. "That's my cue." He wagged a finger at his father. "Ser hombre bueno, viejo."
Ignacio nodded. "Qué él dijo."
Gabriel stretched. "Well, now that we have a rotifer in the clade, I should be rereading some biology." When he noticed the rest of them staring, he rolled his eyes in a way that Amy was now certain had to be patented somewhere in an animator's portfolio – and permanently attached to Javier's clade. "Amy is a rotifer. She produces only daughters, but she incorporates code from a wide variety of other species into every new batch."
"See, Dad?" Ignacio turned a little to nod at his brother. "Sometimes you even iterate nerds."
"There's a species that does what I do?" Amy asked. "An organic one?"
"It's one of the oldest on the planet. It lives at the bottom of the sea."
13
Failsafe
"Shouldn't you be inside, young lady?"
"I'm sorry, officer, I was just feeling a little cooped up at home. I'm really missing the sun."
"I can see you're quite the troublemaker. Think I might have to cuff you."