me nirvana and then brought Hell itself to my doorstep. What could I do once those graceless clods had destroyed my midnight garden?” His face went from absorbed to glowering in an instant. “The work of years, destroyed in minutes. Have I not suffered enough? I deserved something good after enduring so much bad.”
“So you snuck on board the Jiminy?”
“Fungi.” Gru’s silver insets lit on Denver’s face, and Denver shivered involuntarily. “Over a dozen strains, each one beautiful, each one with a thousand different uses, and you had no. Idea. What to do with them. None!” His voice turned frantic. “Do you even know how to differentiate heat from humidity, never mind testing the acidity of soil and the richness of your fertilizer. You would have let all these spores die! Waste! Crimes against horticulture akin to murder!” He shook the gauntleted hand at Denver, pulling OPAL around with it. She didn’t stir. “I couldn’t allow it!”
“Let our bot go.”
“Oh no. It’s my guarantee, my way of making you listen first, burn me with your welder later. You have to take me with you.”
“You’re already on board! You’re with us whether we want you or not!”
“You could turn back,” Gru argued. “Leave me at a rural station, jettison me into space. But you mustn’t. You need me. You are the conductor of an orchestra, but you can’t even read the music. Let me be your translator!” He stood up from his crouch, and even hunched as he was, he was almost as tall as Denver. Damn Loony height.
“You seek a new planet—oh yes, I heard the rumors as I trudged about Titan X wearing the ashes of my labor,” Gru said. “But people have to eat, and there’s no way of knowing if anything you find there will be edible or not. Your pod contains a cornucopia of treasures, a bounty unlike any the pathetic remnants of humanity have experienced in decades. It has the seeds that will feed generations, if tended correctly. But if tended poorly?” He shook his head. “They will amount to nothing. Your plants will perish or never even see the light. Who will test the soil for poisons, who will protect them from infections and parasites? It takes an experienced hand to avoid such pitfalls, and that hand must be mine.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.” That was Marit, who along with Laramie and Ginn had crowded into the doorway of the cargo bay. Not that Denver could see them. Not with the piles of crates between them. But he could hear them well enough. “How the hell did he get on board?” Marit asked.
“Faked it with some crates. We were in a hurry, we didn’t have time for a full inventory.” Denver narrowed his eyes. “Did you have anything to do with setting Gerald on us?”
Gru shrugged. “Who cares who started the fire as long as it was lit?”
“We barely got out of there alive!”
“Yet here you are. Here we all are. And I”—he held up the hand holding OPAL—“have the ability to wipe your bot’s hard drive at any moment with the device in my glove. Come any closer and I will reset her, abolishing all her knowledge.”
“It’s a fucking bot. Who cares what it knows?” Ginn demanded. “The destination’s already set. We don’t need it to show us the way anymore.”
“Is it just a bot?” Gru taunted. “Or is it family? The oddest things can become family when you have little else.”
Denver winced. Or maybe it was Laramie. Or maybe it was both of them together.
“You’re right,” Denver conceded. Just the thought of OPAL losing years’ worth of programming and learning and experiences made his blood run cold. “You’re right. She’s important to us.”
“Then I suggest you make the choice to preserve her, and also to preserve your own futures, by considering me from this point out as one of your crew. After all—” He smiled slightly. “—Treesa would miss her friend.”
“She is never going to be alone with you again,” Spence promised.
“Pah, what, you think I would harm a child?” Gru looked disdainful. “She’s the least offensive person on this entire ship. She at least has an open mind, and a taste for learning. And for mushrooms.”
Denver sighed. “Give us a minute to talk.”
“I’ll be generous. Take two.”
Denver pulled back into the hall, dragging Spence with him, until they were crammed into the hallway outside the cargo bay with Laramie, Ginn, and Marit. Looking between all their faces, he knew what he was