Diverse Energies

by Joe Monti Tobias S. Buckell

  “What do you want me to do?” Ravi said. Tears had begun to well in his eyes. He clenched his fists at his side, thinking of all the boys who had been brought to the room, thinking of Atul, of his mother and father and the dreams that they had for their children.

  “I want you to kill the Archmagus,” Sharpe said.

  The morning of the Archmagus’s visit, Ravi came down with a sudden illness. Sharpe had coached him what to say, what symptoms to give to Minder Charles. He moaned and twisted in the driving chair. Magus Sharpe, at the back of the room, quickly came over. “We can’t have him like this, not with the visit today,” Sharpe said. “I want him kept away from the Driving Room and from the Greeting Ceremony.”

  Minder Charles had acquiesced to the magus’s wishes. Like everyone else in the whole facility, he seemed on edge and anxious for the Archmagus’s arrival.

  They sent Ravi to the infirmary, but not before Sharpe slipped him a primosite crown. Ravi hid it down his loose pants, then beneath the table when he arrived. To Ravi’s surprise, Noosa was already there. “What’s wrong?” he asked, wondering if Noosa was also in on the plan.

  “I feel weak,” Noosa said. His brown face was ashen, and dark circles ringed his eyes.

  “Me, too,” Ravi lied. So it was happening to Noosa, too. Ravi remembered the nosebleeds, the coughs, the headaches.

  “Looks like I’m going to fall behind, too,” Noosa said. He frowned. “One of us needs to get out of here. If I don’t make it, you have to. This place is shit. It sucks the life from you.”

  “Noosa . . . ,” Ravi said. “Hold on.” He went to check to make sure that no one was around, then told his friend everything. About the letters and what he’d been told by Magus Sharpe.

  Noosa began by shaking his head, but then his face fell. “If you had told me this a week ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. But now . . .” He slammed his fist against the cot. “Damn it! It’s not fair.”

  “But if I can help to stop it . . .”

  “Do you really think it will work? Can you trust him?”

  “I don’t know,” Ravi said. “What other choice do I have?”

  An attendant soon came in to give them a draught of medicine, then returned to other duties. Noosa was about to take his when Ravi snatched it from his hand and shook his head. He poured both draughts down the privy. “You need to stay awake,” he said. Whatever happened, he knew that he had to get Noosa out with him before he died. “Just rest,” Ravi said. “I need to go do something, but I’ll come back.”

  For the first time since he had been taken from his home, for the first time since becoming a golly driver, things were utterly quiet. It was almost peaceful. But the thought of what he must do roiled within him.

  Magus Sharpe had drilled the map of the facility into him. “You must get to the Hall where the ceremony is taking place. It will be guarded, but they won’t be able to stop you in your golly. You must dispatch the guards quickly and make your way into the Hall. They will try to stop you. And they will have weapons. But remember: You won’t be there; your golly will. It’s strong and it’s tough, and you should be able to make it to the Archmagus. Remember, this is the man behind much of what happens here. He is responsible for your brother’s death and all the others. He deserves this.”

  Ravi had nodded, but the thought of it had kept him up for most of the night. Could he really kill a man? Even a man who had been partially responsible for Atul’s death? Thinking of Atul made the tears come, and his fists would clench and he would tell himself that yes, the man should die. But then, after some time, doubt would creep in again.

  He wondered what would happen afterward. After he killed the Archmagus, they would surely know that it was his golly. They would search for him. Magus Sharpe had assured him that he would help Ravi escape, but would he be able to? And where would he go? What would become of Magus Sharpe? And what of the other drivers? Would they be sent back into their gollies as if nothing had happened?

  He realized with a chill that he still didn’t know much about Magus Sharpe or his friends. He’d said they aimed to bring down the system, but what did that mean for the drivers? Would they matter? Would they be sacrificed? Would he? He didn’t have any answers.

  He ran the map through his head again. His golly had been positioned to make it easier for him to reach the Hall. Assuming everyone was in the Hall as they were expected to be, no one would notice him until he was upon them.

  He rose from his cot and checked to make sure that he was alone. The place was deadly still.

  He took out the crown that Sharpe had slipped him. It was a simple metal band sized to fit his head, engraved with symbols that enabled the transfer to happen. The only problem was that he wouldn’t be able to remove the crown once it was on. He would stay in the golly until someone took it off. Hopefully, Sharpe would find him first. If not . . .

  He thought about where he should be when he made the transfer. In his cot? Or somewhere else? If somewhere else, how would Sharpe find him? They hadn’t discussed it. Ravi felt a tightening in his throat.

  With the crown in one sweaty hand, Ravi crept out of the infirmary and up the hallway. He listened as hard as he could for any sound, but all was silence. The map of the facility was still fresh in his head. He made his way to the room that Sharpe had taken him to, where his golly was. There, at its feet, he lay down and placed the crown on his head. Before his hands had even fallen, he was in the golly. Once more he looked down at himself, at the collection of brown sticks that was his body. Such a fragile thing. He could imagine using the golly’s powerful arms to crush the life from the Archmagus. To tear him apart. He could crush rock — flesh and bone would be nothing to him.

  It would certainly get people’s attention. The Archmagus’s death would even be heard of in Drina, if the Imperium let the word get out. And Sharpe’s Resistance would make themselves known. But Ravi could only think of the other drivers. Poor Noosa and the others. Did Sharpe really care for them? The Imperium’s path was wrong — he knew that now — but did that make Sharpe’s path better?

  Ravi bent the golly down and, carefully using its arms, lifted his body. It was remarkably light. Lighter than he would have imagined.

  Then he moved the golly out of the room. To his right was the corridor leading to the Hall and the Archmagus. Ravi turned left, driving the golly down the corridor, back to the infirmary. But the golly wouldn’t fit through the door, and the powerful arms of the construct weren’t delicate enough to remove the crown from his body without crushing his head. Ravi realized the vulnerability of his situation. He tapped at the door to the infirmary, but there was no answer.

  “What are you doing?” Ravi heard, the noise registering in his human ears. He turned the golly to see Magus Sharpe, his familiar scowl now returned.

  “I want to save Noosa as well,” Ravi said.

  “We don’t have time for this. We’re too close. Put your body down and get ready to do what we agreed.”

  “What happens to Noosa?” Ravi said. “What happens to the others?”

  “Don’t you want to stop the system?” Sharpe said.

  “But will it? Won’t they just appoint another Archmagus? And what if they choose to punish everyone here?”

  “You just have to have faith and trust me,” Sharpe said, his face softening.

  Something clicked into place inside of Ravi. “That’s just it. I don’t.”

  Sharpe’s face turned hard. “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll send the Archmagus’s guards after you. Noosa, too. I don’t want to, but this is too important. This is bigger than you and your friends.”

  A brown streak moved across the golly’s field of vision. Noosa. He held a metal instrument in his hand, and he swung at Magus Sharpe’s head. Only, weak as he was, it fell short and instead glanced off the man’s shoulder.

  Sharpe turned and smacked Noosa hard, sending him careening into the wall. Noosa hit with a cracking sound, then crumpled to the ground like a
bag of twigs.

  Ravi moved the golly forward.

  “Wait!” Sharpe held up his hands. “Let me check on him.” He moved over to Noosa’s still form, bending over him. He stood up and faced the golly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never wanted this to happen.”

  Even through the golly’s eyes Ravi could read the expression on Magus Sharpe’s face. Noosa was dead.

  Horror, sadness, and most of all rage flooded into him and through the link, as if the golly was filled with nothing but a chaotic flux of emotions.

  Ravi moved the golly forward, his anger directed at Magus Sharpe, raising the cutting arm. Sharpe turned to move, but the golly’s arms were long, and Ravi had already set them in motion.

  The arm moved through the air, straight for Sharpe’s head, and Ravi could imagine it cutting into it like a ripe melon. He wanted Sharpe to pay. Wanted to kill him the way he had killed Noosa.

  At the last minute, though, he diverted the arm, sending it into the wall instead, tearing a huge chunk out in a shower of dust. He wanted Sharpe to pay, wanted the Archmagus to pay, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill them. Who knew what that would set in motion?

  He saw movement at the end of the hallway: guards reacting to the sound of the broken wall. Sharpe was already moving toward them. Running to safety with other white faces.

  Still burning with fury, Ravi turned the golly and pushed it as fast as he could down the hallway to where the map had indicated an exit.

  The door was closed, locked, but carefully holding his body in one golly arm, he pushed at the door with the other, and with a screech of metal, it tore outward. The guards stationed outside went scurrying for safety. They were equipped to fight off people, not gollies. Still, he held one arm protectively over his body.

  More guards came forward, taking up positions near the perimeter fence. They raised weapons and fired at him. Cracks filled the air, then pings as the bullets bounced off the golly’s skin. Being careful to protect his body, he walked right through the gunfire, cutting through the stone perimeter fence as easily as he cut rock. Then he collapsed the fence behind him to discourage pursuit.

  The sun was bright outside the facility. Through the golly’s eyes, Ravi could see grassy fields and hills in the distance. He didn’t know where he was — somewhere in the countryside — but out there was freedom. But not just for him. Somehow there had to be freedom for them all.

  Together, Ravi and the golly moved off into the daylight to find it.

  Solitude

  by Ursula K. Le Guin

  My mother, a field ethnologist, took the difficulty of learning anything about the people of Eleven-Soro as a personal challenge. The fact that she used her children to meet that challenge might be seen as selfishness of selflessness. Now that I have read her report I know that she finally thought she had done wrong. Knowing what it cost her, I wish she knew my gratitude of her for allowing me to grow up as a person.

  Shortly after a robot probe reported people of the Hainish Descent on the eleventh planet of the Soro system, she joined the orbital crew as back-up for the three First Observers down onplanet. She had spent four years in the tree-cities nearby Huthu. My brother In Joy Born was eight years old and I was five; she wanted a year or two of ship duty so we could spend some time in a Hainish-style school. My brother had enjoyed the rainforests of Huthu very much, but though he could brachiate he could barely read, and we were all bright blue with skin-fungus. While Borny learned to read and I learned to wear clothes and we all had antifungus treatments, my mother became as intrigued by Eleven-Soro as the Observers were frustrated by it.

  All this is in her report, but I will say it as I learned it from her, which helps me remember and understand. The language had been recorded by the probe and the Observers had spent a year learning it. The many dialectical variations excused their accents and errors, and they reported that language was not a problem. Yet there was a communication problem. The two men found themselves isolated, faced with suspicion or hostility, unable to form any connection with the native men, all of whom lived in solitary houses as hermits or in pairs. Finding communities of adolescent males, they tried to make contact with them, but when they entered the territory of such a group the boys either fled or rushed desperately at them trying to kill them. The women, who lived in what they called “dispersed villages,” drove them away with volleys of stones as soon as they came anywhere near the houses. “I believe,” one of them reported, “that the only community activity of the Sorovians is throwing rocks at men.”

  Neither of them succeeded in having a conversation of more than three exchanges with a man. One of them mated with a woman who came by his camp; he reported that though she made unmistakable and insistent advances, she seemed disturbed by his attempts to converse, refused to answer his questions, and left him, he said, “as soon as she got what she came for.”

  The woman Observer was allowed to settle in an unused house in a “village” (auntring) of seven houses. She made excellent observations of daily life, insofar as she could see any of it, and had several conversations with adult women and many with children; but she found that she was never asked into another woman’s house, nor expected to help or ask for help in any work. Conversation concerning normal activities was unwelcome to the other women; the children, her only informants, called her Aunt Crazy-Jabber. Her aberrant behavior caused increasing distrust and dislike among the women, and they began to keep their children away from her. She left. “There’s no way,” she told my mother, “for an adult to learn anything. They don’t ask questions, they don’t answer questions. Whatever they learn, they learn when they’re children.”

  Aha! said my mother to herself, looking at Borny and me. And she requested a family transfer to Eleven-Soro with Observer status. The Stabiles interviewed her extensively by ansible, and talked with Borny and even with me — I don’t remember it, but she told me I told the Stabiles all about my new stockings — and agreed to her request. The ship was to stay in close orbit, with the previous Observers in the crew, and she was to keep radio contact with it, daily if possible.

  I have a dim memory of the tree-city, and of playing with what must have been a kitten or a ghole-kit on the ship; but my first clear memories are of our house in auntring. It is half underground, half aboveground, with wattle-and-daub walls. Mother and I are standing outside it in the warm sunshine. Between us is a big mud puddle, into which Borny pours water from a basket; then he runs off to the creek to get more water. I muddle the mud with my hands, deliciously, till it is thick and smooth. I pick up a big double handful and slap it onto the walls where the sticks show through. Mother says, “That’s good! That’s right!” in our new language, and I realize that this is work, and I am doing it. I am repairing the house. I am making it right, doing it right. I am a competent person.

  I have never doubted that, so long as I lived there.

  We are inside the house at night, and Borny is talking to the ship on the radio, because he misses talking the old language, and anyway he is supposed to tell them stuff. Mother is making a basket and swearing at split reeds. I am singing a song to drown out Borny so nobody in the auntring hears him talking funny, and anyway I like singing. I learned this song this afternoon in Hyuru’s house. I play every day with Hyuru. “Be aware, listen, listen, be aware,” I sing. When Mother stops swearing she listens, and then she turns on the recorder. There is a little fire still left from cooking dinner, which was lovly pigi root; I never get tired of pigi. It is dark and warm and smells of pigi and of burning duhur, which is a strong, sacred smell to drive out magic and bad feelings, and as I sing “Listen, be aware,” I get sleepier and sleepier and lean against Mother, who is dark and warm and smells like Mother, strong and sacred, full of good feelings.

  Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship, later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situations call such a life “simple.” I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been who found lif
e simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit.

  Certainly our life in the auntring was easy, in the sense that our needs came easily to hand. There was plenty of food to be gathered or grown and prepared and cooked, plenty of temas to pick and rett and spin and weave for clothes and bedding, plenty of reeds to make baskets and thatch with; we children and other children to play with, mothers to look after us, and a great deal to learn. None of this is simple, though it’s all easy enough, when you are aware of the details.

  It was not easy for my mother. It was hard for her, and complicated. She had to pretend she knew the details while she was learning them, and had to think how to report and explain this way of living to people in another place who didn’t understand it. For Borny it was easy until it got hard because he was a boy. For me it was all easy. I learned the work and played with the children and listened to the mothers sing.