Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  "Eat," Perceval said. "Don't waste food. You'll need it eventually."

  And Rien supposed that was right. If Perceval could eat while being fed in chains, Rien could eat now. She put the bread in her mouth, bit down, and chewed. The onions were pungent and sweet and soft; the cheese sharp, but tasty. It made her sniffle again. "Perceval," she said, when she had swallowed the mouthful, "why did you challenge Ariane?"

  "Because she needed to be challenged," Perceval answered. Rien thought she didn't notice that Pinion flexed when she spoke, a gesture halfway between a falcon mantling its prey, and a cringe. "We met—I was on errantry. She was behaving villainously. I thought I was stronger than she. What do you mean you have a dead man in your head?"

  "Mallory gave me a peach," Rien answered. She chewed more bread to buy time, but had to wash it down with a mouthful of water. "It had an Engineer's memories in it."

  Perceval's face lit up. "Which Engineer? You said Ng?"

  Rien nodded.

  "Hero Ng." There was reverence in Perceval's voice. It startled Rien. "You have his memories?"

  "I don't know. Some. I remember him dying"— Perceval flinched in sympathy—"and I remember that there should be a side corridor here"—Rien sketched a map quickly in skin-oil on the floor—"that's not on our map. Are there cannibals there?"

  "I don't know," Gavin said, flicking himself loose from the wall plug with a flourish. "It's not in my memory banks either. Shall we try it and see if they eat us, then?"

  Once they got the door open—easy, after they found it beneath the overgrowth; the keypad code hadn't been changed since Ng's day—they were greeted by a stench like tannin and ammonia. "Space." Perceval pinched her nose shut. "I can see why it's not on the map."

  "At least we have boots now," Rien said, flexing her toes in the shoes Mallory had given them. Something fluttered inside the corridor, a rustling like the nighttime gnawing of thousands of mice, and there were sounds, squeaks so high she felt rather than heard them: a bone-conduction vibration.

  "Bats," Gavin said. With heavy wingbeats, he flapped into the air, and wobbled toward Rien.

  "Hey!" She ducked aside, but his great dry feet clutched her shoulder. She expected the grip and stab of talons, but they scarcely pricked, and then he was balancing on her shoulder as lightly as on a branch, his tail slipped once around her neck, heavy and leathery and warm. And far more pleasant than she would have expected.

  "I'm not dragging my tail through that." Primly, with a flip of his long, crossed primary feathers. "You wanted to go this way. We're going this way. And you can carry me."

  "Oh, whatever." But Rien didn't push him off her shoulder. "It's dark in there."

  "I know," Gavin said. "You're going to expect me to light your way again, aren't you?"

  "Well," Rien said, "if I could see in the dark, I wouldn't."

  Perceval, a step behind, cleared her throat. "By now you should be able to."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "The dark. You should be able to see in it. Not total dark, of course, but—"

  "Oh," Rien said. "Of course. The symbiont."

  "Sorry," Perceval said, her voice all small and almost

  lost under the distressing sounds of the bats.

  "It's all right." And squaring her shoulders, Rien

  walked forward. "I invited myself."

  It was awful. Gavin did shed some light—just barely enough. And Rien could have done with less.

  The guano sucked at her boots. She sank into it, and it fell all around them like a chunky, whispering rain, and bats disturbed by the glow swooped down to investigate. Whether they were dazzled or angry, some of them flew into Rien. After one such collision, Gavin shifted abruptly on her shoulder, and she heard a flutter and a crunch.

  And then more crunching.

  She did not turn to look. "You're not."

  "Not what?"

  "You're a machine," she said. "You don't eat."

  "Oh, very well." He must have discarded the bat with a cranelike flick of his serpentine neck. Rien was glad she couldn't see it. In fact, she told herself, she might as well be blind in that eye. There was nothing to see.

  Until something as big as a large dog lunged out and scooped up the discarded bat before vanishing again, back into the unrelieved dark.

  Rien bloodied her lip between her teeth, but managed somehow not to scream. Behind her, Pinion's agitated flapping did them no favors with the bats; Rien shielded her head with both arms and half crouched, eyes squinched nearly shut. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

  "Only to the ankles," Gavin observed. "It hasn't even pulled your shoes off yet."

  "Gavin," Perceval said, with steely calm, "what was that?"

  "I don't know," he admitted. "Scavenger? It was humanoid."

  "That's reassuring." Rien felt Perceval fold her parasite wings around them both, although Pinion was invisible in the darkness when Perceval damped its luminescence. They were still warmer than ambient, and Rien had no idea how that worked.

  She took a breath. "Hey," she called out. "Stranger—"

  No answer. But somewhere in the darkness, she heard a sound she recognized from Head's kitchen; the sound of flesh stripped back from bone. And then there was crunching, and Rien gagged on the remnants of her own ' frugal luncheon.

  "Space," Perceval said, and then, "Poor creature."

  Rien tried for human charity, but couldn't seem to get past nausea. "How long do you think it's been trapped here?"

  "Long enough," Perceval said. "We have to help."

  "He'll probably give you rabies," Rien said, although there was no rabies in the world and never had been. They still learned about it in biology, though; some of its elements had been used to splice the inducer viruses.

  Those were illegal now. In Rule, anyway. Not that Rien thought it would have any effect on the Conns if they decided to use them.

  Beyond the border of the light, Rien heard gnawing.

  "It's errantry," Perceval said. "You go where it takes you, and mend what you find that needs mending."

  Before Rien could remind her that they were on a quest a little more direct that errantry, Perceval had pushed past her. Cold air stroked Rien's arms where the wings had cupped. They floated over Perceval's back, now faintly luminescent and incredibly visible.

  "Fuck," Rien muttered under her breath, and—to the basilisk's apparent wing-flapping chagrin—picked her way over the moldy mounds of guano to take Perceval's hand.

  Perceval spoke low, her voice humming on harmonics Rien found soothing. She blinked furiously, and would have shaken her head to clear it except whoever that was off in the darkness could see her, limned by Pinion's light.

  She realized that she hadn't consciously processed a single word Perceval said. And Gavin, bizarrely, was huddled against her neck like a worried parrot, compacted down to half his previously apparent size. Whether he was collapsing his form or just sleeking himself down like a bird, Rien didn't know, but the implication that she was meant to protect him concerned her.

  She concentrated on her eyes and let Perceval lead her forward across the sucking mess of the floor. It was warm and humid, the reek of ammonia unrelenting. Guano dripped in her hair, warm and sticky.

  So much for clean clothes.

  "Who the hell puts bats on a spaceship?" she muttered, expecting it to be lost under Perceval's chanted buzz.

  "Insect control," Gavin said against her ear. "Eventual terraforming. And bat guano is excellent for hydroponics and traditional agriculture." He was warm, which she wouldn't expect of a machine, and he fit just under the curve of her jaw.

  And how does a hand tool that thinks it's a mythical animal know that? she almost asked, but decided against it as long as his talons pricked the hollow over her collarbone. At least he was keeping the bat shit off one shoulder.

  Perceval moved forward slowly and Rien went with her. Now she saw the pale spidery shape crouched against the wall; it was hard, because he was streaked—coate
d— with the same filth that crusted every object. It served admirably as camouflage.

  Other than a coat of guano, he was naked, and he held both hands folded before his mouth, streaked with blood up to the elbows. His hair, if it was hair, was a spiked, matted, dreadlocked mass gray with guano and stiff about his shoulders. His irises reflected Pinion's light, two flat glowing discs floating in the darkness.

  He dropped the carcass of the bat, and Rien saw he had something else in his hand. Something short and flat, the part that was not enfolded in his grip about the size of Perceval's palm. "Perceval, watch—"

  The wild man lunged.

  Perceval might have caught him, and Pinion might have stopped him. Perceval dropped Rien's hand and stepped half in front, and the wings darted forward on either side of her—but Gavin had already sprung off Rien's shoulder, two heavy wingbeats carrying him aloft.

  The guano a few steps in front of the charging man sizzled, smoked, and exploded. Rien jumped back, skidded in shit, and managed to catch her balance by windmilling her arms at the cost of a strained inner thigh.

  But she was looking at Gavin, his eyes open, glaring torch-blue in the darkness with the internal radiance of his colony. There was smoke and the stench of burnt ammonia, worse than the unburned guano—like boiling piss on the stove, Rien thought, gagging, as every bat in the world shot off the roof for the passage and the air was wheeling with pin-scratching, squeaking, sight-defeating animals.

  "Laser-cutting torch," she said.

  The wild man had stopped. And as the bats cleared, Rien could see that he stood in the light, on the other side of the blasted patch, his right hand still upraised with what was now revealed as a broken blade clutched in it. Gavin hovered, his wingbeats stirring the air in the passage, his tail writhing behind him.

  "I want to help you," Perceval said, and this time Rien heard her clearly.

  The man with the broken sword put his hands on his knees and doubled over, gasping.

  13 the deck

  Dust is the answer—dust:

  dust everywhere.

  — CONRAD AlKEN,

  The House of Dust

  This time, Dust was expecting his brother. The anchore was hung with pennants, and everywhere flocked gorgeously gowned servants with hollow, scooped-out backs, so when they turned away you could see them from the inside, like the mold in which a person had been cast. They carried salvers and censers, platters and candelabra, everything as exquisite and enchanted as the servitors—and just as hollow. It was pageant, stage play.

  A masque, because that was how the story went.

  In the midst of all the exhibition sat Dust, or more precisely Dust's avatar, a Puritan magpie in his black frock coat and pewter weskit, his sealed pocket watch ticking in his gray-gloved hand. The chair he lounged upon was ebony, or the dream of ebony. He was a spot of glossy darkness surrounded by vacuous finery.

  The symbolism pleased him.

  He had been waiting only a fraction of a second—long enough, quite long enough, for an angel—when Samael materialized from a gyre of smoke and a shower of glitter. Still barefoot, affecting torn jeans and with his scarred chest shirtless, he glowered at Dust over crossed arms.

  "What snaps an unblade?" he asked.

  "I beg your pardon," Dust answered. "I am afraid I don't follow. A little context please?"

  "What snaps an unblade? We've seen one snapped, haven't we? In the hand of the man in the passage that isn't supposed to be there. The passage no one remembers."

  "Rien remembered it. Will you stay for dinner, Samael?"

  Slowly, Samael's arms uncrossed, as he no doubt considered whether he would get anything from Dust without playing along, and decided he wouldn't. "Stage your puppet show then," he said with ill grace, and stalked past Dust to the table. A chair materialized to take him; he seated himself, and scooted in.

  As for Dust, he stood, spun his own chair, and reseated himself at Samael's right hand. Elbows on the table, he leaned forward, peering around the wall of Samael's hair. "Surely you have time for entertainments," Dust said. With a gesture, he ringed the table with more chairs, each of them uniquely archaic, one red-cushioned with a tasseled rope knotted across the arms.

  Around them, hollow-backed waiters swayed and served and dipped and poured, a feast of roasted peacock and braised beef, with salats and subtleties and a dozen varieties of wine that vanished into smoke from the glass when the next was served.

  Samael tasted none of it.

  "What's the name of that unblade?" he asked.

  Dust amused himself with knife and fork, a self-conscious burlesque of a dining man. He answered without raising his chin. "Charity."

  He was prepared for the dead silence that answered him. But he couldn't quite prevent a smirk from curling the corners of his mouth upward. Really, he mused, chasing green peas up the back slope of his fork with the edge of the butter knife, all a smirk was, was what a smile turned into when you fought with it.

  "Tristen," Samael breathed—not an actual word, but a burst of processor activity so strong that Dust could read the resulting ionization disturbance in the air between them. And then he pushed his untouched plate away and said, "You sent them that way."

  The peacock was succulent, bestowing a puddle of pinkish juice upon the plate in response to the pressure of Dust's fork; as well it should have been, as it was conjured from his memory of a thousand elaborate dinners, real and fictional. He sliced and tasted and sipped red wine. It was exactly like duck: nowhere in his memory was the taste of peacock recorded.

  "Don't worry," he said, to patent disapproval. "No peacocks were harmed in the making of this dinner. And how could I have misdirected our gallant maidens, when your agents guided them? Agents whose introduction to the game I protested."

  "Who else would have remembered a forgotten passageway?"

  "Rien remembered," Dust said, again. "Now, what about the unblade?"

  "I asked what snapped it." Samael shrugged. "And you are not going to tell me."

  "Because I don't know." Dust set his fork aside. With a wave of his hand, the plates vanished, the whole groaning table left stark and empty, without so much as a cloth to cover it. "Fine," he said. "Have it your way. I can't tell you what an unblade shatters on. But I can tell you where it comes from, in the moving times."

  "So can anyone. They're what became of the autodocs, but now, they can only maim. Sever things that can't be healed, not even by symbionts or surgery. You've infested the whole ship with your medieval madness."

  Dust smiled. "Not mine. Conn's. The Captain's word is Law." Samael was staring at him with open speculation, and he realized he might have said too much. A subject change was in order. "Shall I lay out the cards?"

  Samael did not stop staring. "It's not just fiction and history, is it, Jacob?"

  Dust made a flourish in the air, his lace cuff falling across his glove. Between his fingers appeared a glossy oblong, a steel case embossed with a black enamel dragon. He cracked it open with a thumb and flipped the cards into his hand.

  They were longer than a standard deck, though not much wider. The backs were plain black, the edges finished in silver gilt. They clicked like baccarat tiles when he shuffled them. "Choose a card," he said.

  "Silence is as good as an answer, angel."

  "No," Dust said, a token on the table to show willing. "It's not just fiction and history in my memory."

  "It's people, too."

  "Choose a card," Dust said.

  Because they sat side by side, inasmuch as either of them were their physical bodies, Dust fanned the cards facing away. The black backs, glazed-glossy, would have shown the smudge of skin soil, if they had ever been touched by a naked human hand.

  Irritably, Samael tapped one on the edge. "Pull it out," Dust instructed, and with ill grace his brother did. "Rome burns," Samael said. "And you fiddle with card tricks."

  "Is Rome burning?" Dust's voice could not have rung falser, or more innocent.
/>
  Samael grunted and laid the card face up.

  "Silence is as good as an answer, angel. Ah, the inverted Suns. The card in the first position represents the environment in which the query takes place, and the most pressing question." Dust fanned his cards wider. "Choose another."

  This time, Samael didn't bother with argument. He drew out the next card; Dust caught his wrist and guided him in placing it. It showed a man suspended upside-down in a cryo chamber, his wrists and ankles crossed. "The Hanged Man," Dust said. "Life in suspension. That which does not progress. But also, a time of rebirth, of hard-won knowledge. This is the card that crosses, the thing that opposes. Choose a card."

  Samael did, and let Dust show him where to place it. His wrist felt cold and rigid; his avatar had no more depth of seeming than the hollow-backed servants. "The Captain of Stars. There are six suits and six face cards in each, plus ten numbered ones. He is the root of the matter, the crux upon which the conflict rests. He is a man, or was one; a fiery and ambitious person, prone to quick action. His choices led inevitably to the situation we have now."

  "And that situation is?"

  "The inverted Suns crossed by the Hanged Man," Dust said, touching those. "Tarot readings are like stories, you see—they have characters, conflict, action, climax, theme, and denouement."

  "What are the six suits?"

  "Of course," Dust said. "You wouldn't remember. Memory is a spiderweb. It hangs in a corner and collects dust. Until you need it to catch a fly. The six suits are Cups, Stars, Stones, Blades, Wires, and Voids."

  "Voids? Plural?"

  "I know," Dust said, with a sigh of irritation. "But it wasn't me that named them. Choose a card."

  They went around the central cross clockwise from that third card at the bottom: left, top, right. The Angel of Wires, the Nine of Stones, the Prince of Stars. Dust touched the leftmost card with his free hand.

  "Metatron is dead," Samael said. But now, Dust noticed, he leaned forward, the front of his scarred shoulder pressed to Dust's left arm. He brushed the edge of the card, which showed a stylized, jewel-colored stained-glass-style image of an androgynous figure whose wings and arms were bound close with cutting-thin, multicolored strands. They were not barbed wire, but Dust persisted in thinking of them so.