Carnival

by Elizabeth Bear

  He grunted. “Miss Ouagadougou wasn’t working for the Right Hand,” he said. “She’s Coalition.”

  “Yes,” Lesa said. “Antonia just led a raid on another encampment and found more Coalition tech. It might save us an insurrection if we can find enough of them.”

  Vincent said, “And Katya?”

  “She’ll go to prison.” Lesa said it so calmly that Vincent looked at her twice. The tension lines around her eyes told another story. “But she’s young. And it won’t be forever.”

  Vincent had no answer. He leaned on Michelangelo and didn’t try to come up with one.

  Lesa cleared her throat. “And I also heard from Claude.”

  “And?”

  “She wants to set the duel for the sixth of Carnival.”

  Vincent glanced doubtfully at Angelo, but Angelo’s gaze was on the children in the yard. “Three days. Will you be able to walk by then?”

  That homeopathic smile didn’t flicker. She picked up another piece of sushi and contemplated it before she said, “I don’t need to walk to shoot somebody, Vincent.”

  “And are you as fast today as you were the other afternoon?”

  She didn’t answer, and he thought about her silence while she chewed. Angelo shifted on the bench, leaning closer while Vincent pretended not to notice. Funny how he could always tell exactly where Michelangelo’s attention was, even when Angelo was pretending it was somewhere else.

  “We need to find that lab. Then there won’t be a duel.”

  Too late, he remembered she didn’t have the context, and was opening his mouth to explain when she silenced him with a wave. “Mother told me.”

  “I thought she would.”

  “And I told Antonia,” she continued. Vincent opened his mouth, and she silenced him with one raised finger and a chipped stone glare. “If I don’t live through the duel, she needs to know what Claude is capable of.”

  Vincent didn’t answer, but he swallowed and nodded. All right.

  Lesa turned to Angelo. “Are you going to get the infection taken care of? Canyou get it taken care of?” She spoke to Michelangelo rather than Vincent, but Michelangelo didn’t look at her.

  “We can,” Vincent said. “And will. Which reminds me. There’s somebody we want you to meet.”

  “Where?”

  “Inside.”

  “Hand me my crutches.”

  Michelangelo was still at his shoulder when they came into the house, following the stubborn staccato of Lesa’s crutches. She managed them well, stumping forward grimly–though she winced when her weight hit her hands. Thick batting padded the handles; it obviously wasn’t enough.

  She paused before the lift rather than heading for the stairs. Just as well, because Vincent didn’t fancy carrying her up them, and Michelangelo’s feet were in no shape for chivalry.

  Stubborn or not, Lesa was swaying by the time she stopped, and Vincent steadied her with a hand on her shoulder as he commanded the lift. The venom had left her weak, febrile, and probably aching. Inside the lift, she propped herself on him without seeming to, and he smiled as he tilted toward her. He hadn’t slept in days, and though he still had chemistry it was wearing thin. If Michelangelo was too proud to lean, Vincent wasn’t.

  The lift brought them to the third floor, and Lesa paused before the doors to her bedroom. “Excuse the mess,” she said, and gestured them inside.

  Michelangelo went first, covering Vincent, and for once Vincent reveled in it rather than chafing. But there was no one inside except a sleepy khir in a basket, who lifted his ear‑feathers at them but seemed otherwise disinclined to stir. Vincent recognized Walter by his bandages and almost thought the khir grinned at him–if khir grinned.

  He turned to assist Lesa in managing her crutches through the door, but she didn’t need him. She clumped to her bed and flopped down, letting the crutches slide to the carpetplant alongside. She closed her eyes, face sallow with pain, and didn’t seem to notice when Angelo bent down, picked up the crutches, and silently braced them upright against the wall between her bed and her nightstand.

  “All right,” she said. “This is as private as I can manage on short notice.”

  Vincent nodded and raised his eyes to the wall. “Kii, would you introduce yourself to Miss Pretoria?”

  The swirling effect in the wall panels was just as before, though Vincent noticed that Lesa had turned off the jungle scenes in this room, leaving blank taupe walls. First eyes and then a tall lithe body coalesced from swirling pixels, and Kii lay at ease, its wings folded comfortably along its sides so it could recline on its elbows. It settled its plumed head between its shoulders like a somnolent bird and blinked at them.

  “Greetings, Lesa Pretoria,” it said. “Greetings, Vincent Katherinessen and Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones. Kii anticipates your questions.”

  At the sound of the mellow, neutral voice, Lesa lurched upright on the bed, hands braced to either side. “Dragon,” she said, and shook her head, many‑colored hair flying around her.

  She looked to Michelangelo, not Vincent. “Simulation?”

  “Transcended,” Vincent answered, when Michelangelo didn’t. “Kii, Michelangelo would like to accept your offer of medical treatment.”

  Kii’s head settled more solidly between ridged shoulder blades. “Michelangelo, is that so?”

  Michelangelo kept his eyes straight ahead, though Vincent was waiting for the glance. “Yes, Kii.”

  “It is done,” Kii said. “You will find a document for your life support device available in the datastream. It should enable your implants to locate and eradicate the infection.”

  “Kii,” Vincent said, “can you tell me where to find the lab where that virus was tailored?”

  “It is not within Kii’s range of access,” Kii said. It angled its head and stretched its neck, as if regarding Lesa more closely than before. “The khir like you, when you come. The Consent is that you may stay, to please the khir. We are fond of the khir. And Kii is grown fond of you.”

  Lesa sat very still, the bedclothes knotted in her hands. She licked her lips, pulse visible at her throat, and Vincent found himself in sympathy with her nervousness. The Dragon’s regard had a tendency to make him feel like a snack, as well.

  “That’s you‑humans, not you‑Lesa?” Michelangelo, surprising Vincent.

  “The khir approve of Lesa Pretoria,” Kii said, the long neck swaying slightly, plumage ruffled by an unseen breeze.

  In his basket, Walter flopped on his side and hissed, showing his belly to the air. Lesa turned her head and looked at him, leaning forward on the bed without lowering her feet to the floor. Not trying to stare the Dragon in the eye seemed to ease her. Vincent remembered some Old Earth legend about snakes and hypnosis, or maybe turning people into stone.

  “The khir really aren’t smart enough to…talk…are they?” she said. Walter lifted his head, neck craning around like a hand puppet, and blinked back at her with triangular‑pupiled eyes.

  It was that look that did it. He’d been telling himself, over and over, that his gift shouldn’t apply to Dragons or to khir. That their kinesthetics, their everythingwas different from that of humans, and deceptive.

  But that intellectual knowledge hadn’t stopped him from reading them, and reading them correctly–Dragon and khir.

  Because the khir had been living with New Amazonians for 150 years, and the khir–nonverbal, with a predator’s extended jaw structure and limited facial expressions–were quite perfectly capable of communicating through kinesthetics, the rise and fall of their peculiarly expressive plumage that ruffled independent of any wind.

  Just as the Dragons must have, when they were meat.

  “Actually,” Vincent said, “I think the khir tell the Dragons rather a lot, don’t they?”

  “The khir are invaluable,” Kii said. “They are the protectors of the old world. We make them safe denning, and they give the city purpose. As now you do as well.”

  �
�Because the city is esthelich,isn’t it?”

  “That can be no revelation, Vincent Katherinessen.”

  “No,” Vincent said, aware of Michelangelo shifting a half‑step closer to him, a warm pressure at his elbow. “I’ve known that for a while. Since it helped me hide from the kidnappers. If it’s esthelichby your standards, it must have an aesthetic. And its aesthetic is…comfort? The care of its inhabitants?”

  “Would you create a domicile that thought otherwise?”

  “No.”

  Lesa had looked away from Walter and was now sitting curled forward, the bedclothes dragged over her lap as she stared at Vincent. “And of course,” she said, “even if you were Transcendent, there’s always the chance that something could go wrong with the system, isn’t there?”

  Smart woman. Which was no more a revelation than House’s taste in art had been. “The possibility exists,” Kii said, hunching between its wings.

  Vincent said, “And if you needed physical bodies again? Could you read your…personality onto an organic system?”

  “The possibility exists.”

  “The khir are a failsafe.”

  “The khir are not disposable,” it answered, contracting again, pulling itself back on its haunches.

  “Kii,” Michelangelo said. “If you had to translate esthelich. What would you say it meant?”

  The Dragon hesitated. Its head swung side to side, the tongue flickering through a gap in its lower lip. “It does not translate into merely one of your words.”

  “Try.”

  “Fledged,” it said, with no weight of emotion on the word.

  If Kii were human, Vincent would have scrupled to press. He would have known he was millimeters from a moral pit trap, a bit of doublethink that would expose a violent defensive reaction when triggered. But the Dragons had Consent. They were as physically incapable of experiencing moral qualms about following orders as Vincent’s own hand was of rebelling when his consciousness instructed it to pull a trigger.

  He said, “They’re not a separate species, are they?”

  And Kii shifted, its wings furled tight against its sides, and blinked slowly. “The khir? They are not.”

  “They’re young Dragons. Neotenous. With their growth and intellectual development intentionally retarded.”

  “They are not esthelich. They have no Consent. We provided for them, and they protect us.”

  “That’s horrible,” Lesa said. She dropped the bedcovers and climbed to her feet, wincing as her bandages touched the carpetplant. “You…engineered your own children into slaves?”

  “Pets…no, domestic animals are not slaves,” Kii insisted. “They are without aesthetic. They are not people. Your infant creatures are immoral–no. Sociopathic. They are not people.”

  Vincent reached behind Angelo to put a hand on Lesa’s arm, steadying. She shook it off. “But they could have been.”

  “Not these, no. They were conceived to this purpose, and they breed true. They are animals, and would never have been born, otherwise.”

  “Unless you remove the, what, the chemical inhibition? And then they transform into adults. Only with the minds of Transcended Dragons downloaded into their skulls, rather than whatever they might have become?”

  “It is,” Kii said, “the Consent.”

  Lesa might have wanted nothing to do with Vincent, but Michelangelo stepped closer, shoulder to shoulder, and Vincent leaned on his warmth, their wardrobes melding. “What if we lobotomized girl babies,” Angelo said. “Kept them as cattle. Destroyed their higher functions–”

  “They would not be esthelich,” Kii said. “They would be as domestic animals, as the khir. But it would be immoral to destroy the potential to be people in one born with it.”

  “But the Consent finds no ethical failing in creating the khir?”

  “The Consent finds no ethical failing in the selective breeding of domestic animals.”

  “Lesa,” Angelo said, “please sit down. It hurts to watch you.”

  She stared at him, head drawing back as her neck stiffened, and then she nodded and sank down on the unmade bed. “I have another question for the Consent,” Vincent said.

  Kii lifted its chin, ear‑feathers forward to cup sound. Alert and listening.

  “If you can reprogram Michelangelo’s docs, can you rewrite other code?”

  “We can.”

  “The Governors,” Vincent said.

  And with a careful, human gesture, Kii shook its head. “It is discussed. The Consent is that it is unwise. And also that the Governors are not esthelich,but that they are art. And not to be destroyed.”

  “Fuck,” Michelangelo said, and Vincent didn’t blame him. “Then it’s a war.”

  24

  THE MALES LEFT SHORTLY AFTER THE DRAGON DID, LEAVING Lesa alone in her bedroom with the sleeping khir. Michelangelo wouldn’t let her rise to see them to the door, his stern glower as effective as a seat belt, but hiding a striking chivalry that Lesa wouldn’t pretend not to chafe at and couldn’t understand how she’d earned. It still carried a taint of chauvinism, but Michelangelo seemed to think it indicated respect.

  It didn’t matter. He was trying to learn, to accommodate. And she’d have fought for him even if he wasn’t. Her own honor was at stake now.

  When the door spiraled closed behind Vincent and Michelangelo–and stayed closed; Lesa was wise to that trick–she pried herself off the bed again and settled wearily on the carpetplant beside it. The pain was bad enough, though analgesics and anti‑inflammatories were some use–but the vertigo was truly incapacitating.

  She could live with pain.

  Her citizenship piece was still missing. Lost to her forever, probably, along with her daughter and her mate. But she had more than one weapon and it wasn’t as if she could go about unarmed. There was a pistol and an old holster in the bottom of the nightstand.

  Lesa pulled the box out, inspected the weapon–clean and smelling muskily of gun oil–and strapped the soft, worn leather of the gunbelt around her waist. Then she loaded the honor, safetied it, and laid it on the bed. It took the same caseless ammunition as her citizenship piece.

  Standing was unpleasant. But she couldn’t settle the holster properly while hunched on the floor, and whatever bravado she’d issued to the males about not needing to be able to walk to shoot, she had to be able to stand to duel.

  She slipped her new honor into the holster, checked twice to make sure it was locked and no round was chambered, and pulled one of the crutches away from the wall to brace herself on.

  “House,” she said, “I need a mirror.”

  The long interior wall with no doorways was her usual mirror. It misted gray and glazed reflective as Lesa limped toward it, transferring as much weight to the crutch as possible to keep it off her feet. She paused two meters from the wall and stared at her reflection in true color.

  She looked like ragged death. Her face was puffy around the scratches and shiny with antibiotic ointment. Her hands were red‑fleshed and torn, her forearms more scab than skin. She wobbled, and leaned against the crutch hard enough that her whole body canted left. The fingers of her right hand, hovering over the butt of her honor, looked like undercooked sausages, and the gouges on her palm had cracked open again and were leaking pinkish fluid.

  “I am,” she whispered, “so fucked.”

  The draw was reflex, wired into nerve and muscle by decades of practice. She shouldn’t have to think about it. She should barely be conscious of feeling it happen.

  The air dragged at her wrist, thickened around stiff fingers. The hand was slow, the fingers inflexible; they didn’t hook the butt of the honor and glide inside the trigger guard as they should. The weight was wrong, the balance off–

  Her honor skipped from her hand, spinning, and hit with a thud butt‑first on the carpetplant, tottering a moment before toppling onto its side. The crutch skipped, and Lesa hit a split second later, down on one knee, her right hand slamming the floor wit
h all her weight behind it.

  The pain was asphyxiating. She fought for breath–diaphragm spasming, the gasp more like a whine if she was being honest–and blinked until her vision cleared. And then she picked up her honor, holstered it, found the crutch left‑handed, and forced herself up, to face the mirror again.

  The twenty‑fifth attempt was no more successful than the third.

  Pain couldn’t force her to stop, but eventually the bleeding and nausea did. She holstered her honor one last time, resettled the crutch under her armpit, and hobbled to the balcony. Julian was still down there with the other boys, running and laughing. The echoes of his voice carried to her room before she stepped outside, and she found a smile for that. The only thing he loved better than handball was his numbers.

  Lesa hitched to a stop a few steps shy of the railing. She stared down, at the running children, at the watching tutors. Her gouged hand tightened on the crutch; she barely noticed.

  She took two steps back, into the frame of the doorway. “House,” she said. “I need to speak to Julian. Please have Alys send him down.”

  When Lesa summoned them again, even Kusanagi‑Jones could tell she had not been resting. Her color was worse, her hair tangled and the knees of her trousers stained with chlorophyll. And then there was the matter of the slender dark boy curled on the seat before her terminal, pecking at the keys with concentrated precision.

  “Miss Pretoria?”

  She gave him that eyebrow, but stepped aside to allow him into the room, Vincent at his heels. The door clicked as it contracted shut behind them, and Kusanagi‑Jones paused and glanced over his shoulder. Vincent caught him looking, of course, eyebrows quirked and the faintest hint of a smile–an expression that slid through Kusanagi‑Jones’s heart like a skewer. He would have sworn he could feel the muscle contracting around penetrating metal, trying to beat and only managing to shred itself a little further.

  Three months, on the Kaiwo Maru. Three months they could have had. And he had been too much of a sodding coward to even reachfor it.