by Linda Nagata
“No! I’m not like you.”
But he lost the thought as her will flowed through him, soothing him, just as she soothed the cells embedded in the matrix … each one of them a node of dissent? of thought? consensus mind.
… we never want to change, she mused. Who made you?
He shook his head, wanting to back away but not knowing how.
Speak of it: Were you made to subvert the Chenzeme? Or have you been aimed at us?
“Neither!” His fist flared brilliant silver. “It’s not like that. We came out of the Hallowed Vasties.”
She closed around him again, calming him. Aggressive cell, she whispered. Don’t fire. Don’t fire. I remember that time.
He hesitated. What did she remember? “Sypaon … what happened to your people?”
Brief confusion spilled from her mouths. He felt a flaw in her will, but it healed quickly. So very young. You don’t remember when I brought our people here. I’ve been away too long.
Our people? Did she even know what had happened? Hesitantly, he asked, “When was it you left us?”
A twinge of guilt flowed from her mouths. A few years, no? I’ve been distracted. Time is … hard to hold on to here. Oh, but it’s not a reason to be sad… . Child? Why do you feel this way?
If she didn’t know, he wouldn’t tell her.
She seemed apologetic. The ring is my body now, and human thoughts are alien, very difficult to grasp.
“What have you learned?”
That made her laugh, her multiple mouths all shaping different licentious expressions. Evil. I’ve learned to destroy whole worlds, little child. I am one with the old murderers now. Oh no, don’t be sad for me. War is change. I am a weapon in the hands of my people. For the first time, I can protect you. All of you. I love my children. All of them.
“I know you do, Sypaon.”
Then convince them that it’s right.
“What?”
But she was gone, the silver matrix washed out under a flood of blank daylight. The library’s director stood looking in the open door, frowning at Lot as if he suspected the equipment had somehow been misused. “What’s that smell?” he asked, wrinkling his nose.
Lot shrugged, squinting against the sudden glare.
“Well, anyway, they want you at city authority.”
“Who?”
The director shrugged, examining the blank walls with a suspicious air. “Were you in here all night?” He sniffed distastefully. “This chamber will have to be cleaned. An hour of downtime, at least. Go on. Go on now. Or they’ll be blaming me for not delivering the message.”
Lot got slowly to his feet, every muscle wincing in pain. He felt suddenly famished, light-headed and none too stable on his feet. But he tried to hide that from the critical eye of the director. He was halfway through the door when the director scowled again. “Your personal attendant: you aren’t going to leave it here, are you?”
Lot glanced back into the chamber. Ord still clung to a ceiling corner, motionless, and apparently unaware. “Ord,” Lot said in soft concern. “I’m going.”
A visible shudder ran through the robot’s golden body. Then it dropped to the floor and scuttled toward Lot muttering “Bad, bad, bad.
Lot held out a hand to it, and Ord crawled quickly up his arm and under his hair. A soft tentacle patted at this cheek, and as he followed the director out the tangled passages Ord whispered: “Good Lot needs to eat; good Lot needs to sleep; what happened, Lot? No good.”
CHAPTER
17
HE EMERGED FROM THE DIM INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY into air that tasted cool and moist, scrubbed clean of emotion. Kheth roved below the city’s horizon, its honey rays leaping up the prim slope to touch his face with a soft heat—igniting unexpectedly a doubtful inner voice … for didn’t the library face the eastern sky?
Lot stopped short in stunned surprise as he realized he’d stepped out into morning. But how could it be morning? He’d entered the library in the afternoon. He could not have been with Sypaon all night. “Ord,” he called softly, trying to ignore a sudden sense of dissociation. “What time is it?”
Camera bees swooped past as Ord consulted its internal clock. “No sleep. No good,” Ord mumbled. “No record of night.”
The courtyard outside the library was strangely deserted; the kiosks closed. But then he remembered: it was Founding Day, the anniversary of the Silkens’ arrival in the city. They would be with their families.
“Messages,” Ord said. “Lot is called to city authority.”
“I heard.”
“Lot must eat.”
A good suggestion. He considered for a moment, then headed for the grand walk. A handful of camera bees followed, though he didn’t see any people … not even when he mounted the broad stairs above the library and stepped out onto the walk itself. He gazed at the wide, empty expanse, wrestling with a sense of disbelief. Even on Founding Day, there should be people here. The camera bees recorded his reaction. He eyed them, suddenly wary.
“Lot is called to city authority,” Ord reminded softly.
“What’s happening?” Lot whispered.
Ord took an extra moment to answer: “A demonstration test has been scheduled. The event is accorded extremely high importance by media ratings.”
“A demonstration?” A chill slipped down his spine. Convince them that it’s right. Suddenly, he thought he understood Sypaon’s admonition. “They’re going to activate the ring, aren’t they? They’re going to use it against the planet.” That was the secret Kona had held to himself. How to make the Well safe? Sterilize it with the same type of Chenzeme weapon that had destroyed the Silkens’ home world. It had a grim symmetry to it; a ruthless balance. But it caught in Lot’s throat. “Jupiter’s down there. And the Communion… .” Would the Silkens really sterilize the Well? Without ever understanding it?
Hastily, he squinted past Kheth’s glare, then turned, to examine the translucent blue arch of the city’s canopy. But he couldn’t see the ring. “How could Sypaon do it?” he shouted at Ord. “When her people might still be down there.” In some form.
But then he realized: Sypaon couldn’t know about the phantoms; she believed the modern Silkens were her people.
Panic slipped under his skin. The Well was a living entity, supple and adaptive and ever-vulnerable in its willingness to receive the other.
It must not be attacked.
The thought came to him with the force of revelation, firing him to action. At a flat-out run he took off for the nearest transit station, determined to do what he could to stop the assault.
He found a car waiting beside the platform. For him? Kona would know where he was.
Maybe Kona had sent Sypaon to beguile him.
Crazy.
The car door slid open.
“Lot wait!”
“Alta?” He turned in surprise, to see her rushing breathlessly into the transit station.
She ran to him, catching his arms, spinning around him to slow herself. “Where were you?” she demanded. There was impatience in her aura, and deep anger, and something else too … shame? “We’ve been looking for you all night. Urban and David and I. Gent too, but he was trapped in the quarter when the gates were closed. I was supposed to go back. They told me to go back, but I didn’t. They wouldn’t tell us where you were. Do you know what they’re going to do?”
“Yeah. They’ll try to fire the ring.”
“The Well is our world, Lot. You have to make them stop.”
The horizons of her face were frosted with a dim silver glow. He touched her cheek, getting some of the glitter on his own fingers.
She caught his hand, pressing it against her face, and suddenly he felt himself drawn down into a well of shame—her shame, though for a moment it was so intense he wasn’t sure. She said, “I’m sorry for what Mama tried to do to you. Something happened to her that day. She wasn’t the same. She blamed Jupiter. She didn’t understand. But I do. I do. Can you forgi
ve me?”
Lot blinked in astonishment. “For what?”
“For what she did—”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“She was my mother.”
“Lot,” Ord interrupted, “is summoned to city authority immediately.”
Alta nodded, the thread of a communications wire glinting in her hair. “They sealed off the refugee quarter because they’re afraid of riot.” Her shame—so intense only a moment before—was suddenly gone. Anger dominated now, spilling around him in hot ghost voices. She touched her throat mike. “Urban’s on his way to the authority platform. He’ll meet you there. Lot, I want to come too.”
Lot drank in the elemental certainty of her aura, using it to harden his own determination.
She misread his hesitation. “You can trust me. More than anyone.”
He moved his head slowly back and forth, exploring the slick, steely taste of her aura. “You were always good at commando games.”
“I still am.”
“You could be my bodyguard.”
“You could need one.” She smiled and took his hand, just as she had that day in the tunnel. “We’ll make it all the way this time.”
He nodded. She’d seen the old man inside him. It made a difference. Cool and slick and steely she remained, but he was on the inside now, not walled out anymore.
They ran together to the waiting car. She sat close beside him. He was acutely conscious of the curve of her cheek, the pale skin of her neck. Silver glinted everywhere, and he felt sure she understood what he was feeling. “Is Gent your lover?”
Her lips twitched in a brief smile. “Sometimes.”
If she were married to Gent, she’d be married to Jupiter too. It seemed slickly efficient.
But then she surprised him with questions of her own. “And you? Is Yulyssa your lover?”
“No.”
Her doubt clouded the air. “I watched you climb the railings. Why did you do it?”
“It felt right.”
She didn’t like it. “If you’d slipped, city authority would never have revived you.”
“I didn’t slip.”
“You didn’t get anything from her either.”
He’d gotten information.
“Some people are born flawed, Lot. My mama was like that. She knew Jupiter. She loved him. But that love ate at her in a bad way. She saw it as something else. Yulyssa’s the same way. She knew Jupiter. Yet she’s not our friend. She’ll try to hurt you.”
Alta held his hand as she said this. She spoke to him as if he were eight years old. Lot felt the first stirrings of anger. “You don’t know that.”
“Gent says the same thing.”
“Not to me.” It was a cool, and smoothly efficient anger.
“He doesn’t want to scare you.”
“But you don’t mind.”
Alta hesitated, as the drifting charismata fell over her. “No, I don’t want to scare you either.”
That wasn’t true. She would like the advantage it gave her.
Lot touched her throat gently, strangely unmoved by her budding misgivings. Beneath the silvered interface of his fingertips he felt the quickening pulse of her heart. “I’ll always know it if you lie.” Ord shifted uneasily under his hair. Alta’s eyes grew so wide that they showed white all around the dark iris. Lot said, “Yulyssa is my friend. It doesn’t matter if you like it. It doesn’t matter if Gent likes it. You won’t speak against her. You won’t try to hurt her.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Alta whispered. Her voice was hoarse, as if he were squeezing on her throat though he was not. “I only want to help you.”
The scent of his charismata came back to him, cold and terrifying. “Then don’t hide from me. Be there when I need you. Open your door to me, and not just to Gent—”
“Stop it!” She ducked away from him, her head snapping around so hard he might have hit her. “Stop it, Lot! Don’t do this to me—” Her fingers scraped at the sealed door. Then she was pounding on it, demanding that the transit DI “Stop this car. Stop this car now.”
Lot watched this interesting display. He felt inexplicably detached, like a slickly efficient machine that could taste emotional issue without being changed by it. He’d never felt this way before.
Ord’s small voice tried to recall him. “Good boy, good boy. Lot be good.” Tentacles softly tapping.
Lot ignored it, feeling a flush of power in this strange and isolated state. “Listen to me!”
Alta froze, though she did not look at him.
Lot stroked her cheek with curled fingers while the car swiftly slowed. Her anger was wanton heat. He waited for it to dissipate, while the car came to a smooth stop and the door slipped open. Lot flexed his hand, watching the play of muscles that were still thin and weak from Captain Antigua’s assault. Deep inside he felt a stirring of shame at what he was doing, but he pushed that feeling down. He would finish this. “Things are changing, Alta. I’m not a kid to be lectured to, or led around by the hand. You know how I feel. Don’t use it against me. Understand?”
Her eyes squeezed shut, and she nodded.
“Fury?”
Urban leaned in the open car door, his gaze roving warily from Lot to Alta then back again. “Where have you been all night? Do you know what they’re trying to do?”
“I know.”
Alta slid out of the car. Lot followed. Alta touched his arm tentatively. When he ignored her, she withdrew her hand. It made a little fist at her side. Urban frowned at her. “Are you okay?”
“Sure.” Her voice was soft, but steady.
Believe in me.
Lot looked away, refusing the shame that still wanted to come.
“Have they got full control of the ring?” he asked Urban.
“Yeah. They say so. It’s only a test today, but eventually they want to use it against the planet.”
Lot didn’t like the ambivalence he sensed in Urban. “Do you want it?”
“Easy, fury. A lot of people don’t like this thing.” He glanced questioningly at Alta. “Where have you been all night, anyway? You look wired. This isn’t going to play well in the media.”
Lot figured he could handle the media. He started toward the authority doors. “What’s the poll on this … ‘test’?” he asked.
Urban kept pace with him. “No polls on election day. You know that.”
“Sooth. But who wants it?”
“The very real.”
The oldest citizens then; those who’d left the ruins of Heyertori. “You’d think once would be enough.”
“They watched Heyertori die. Maybe they figure they’re owed a world.”
Alta caught up with them just as the doors slipped open. Her aura sang like a high, hard note. She wasn’t calm, but she was working hard to get rid of the fear he’d put on her. That was efficient too.
An abundance of voices spilled out of the chambers. Lot caught anxiety, doubt, cold determination. He guessed at least a hundred people were present. The walls between the lobby and the space-systems chamber had been removed, creating a large room of an odd, sickle shape. A bit different from the last time he’d been here, but then, this was a great day.
“There’s a sculpted entity in the ring,” Lot told Urban, as they edged into the crowd. “That’s how they worked out the control function.” He scanned the room, looking for Kona. “It’s Sypaon.”
“Who’s that?”
Lot scowled in irritation, while Alta answered for him: “Sypaon’s the sculpted entity who made the city.”
Lot caught sight of Kona deep within the diamond-shaped spur of what had been the space-systems chamber. “There’s your daddy. Come on.”
They worked their way forward. A holographic projection presided at the chamber’s center, displaying a finely detailed image of the swan burster, glowing silver with its own light as it soared over the night-black limb of the planet. The space inside the ring looked like a black, satiny cloth, pulled tight and m
arred by shiny coruscations. At the very center Lot could make out a tiny circle like a window onto true night, with a handful of stars peeking through.
Kona stood on the far side of the projection, a circle of council members around him. He looked up at their approach, soft satisfaction lying deep in his eyes. Lot could not understand such desire.
He pushed forward, while around him the hum of excited voices gradually faded. Geometries shifted, and suddenly Lot found himself separated from Kona by an empty gulf, while the crowd pressed in on all sides. “You can’t do it,” Lot said.
The crowd muttered. But Kona—he responded in a tone of calm reasonableness: “It’s only a test today.”
“But it’s wrong.”
“Compared to what? We’ll do what we need to do.”
Kona’s attention seemed only partly on him, and Lot wondered if he was really playing to the crowd, or perhaps engaged in some other, more significant conversation through his atrial link. Lot moved his head slowly back and forth, tracking Kona’s sense, trying to guess his thoughts. An exercise in futility! It was impossible to understand the very real. “You can’t bring Heyertori back by repeating the crime that destroyed her!”
Urban stepped up swiftly. “Easy, fury. It’s only a test today. There’ll be a plebiscite before any action is taken. We’ll have the vote by then.”
Lot considered. Urban could be right. After the election tonight the ados would be able to vote their opinions, and they didn’t carry the same scars as their elders.
Kona nodded, as if he approved of the rational progress of Lot’s thoughts. “I told you before, there are always options. I wanted you here, to witness that. You’re part of this city now. It’s time you learned to make responsible decisions. Don’t let yourself be pulled down by myth, or sentimentality. We’ll do what needs to be done.”
“You mean Sypaon will do it.”
Kona gave him an appraising look, his head cocked curiously. “Did you enjoy her company?”
“Did you send her?”
“I didn’t have to. She’s fascinated by you. She sees herself in you, and no wonder. We could hardly talk to her before you came here. But when we copied your neural pattern onto a translation DI the language became suddenly clear.”
