“Ah,” Caulie said. “I’m a distraction. Good to know.”
“Not long from now, there will be a leadership transition right where you are, and the Tawarnas won’t be able to keep you safe from all these politics. You must finish your assignment, whatever it may be, and prove your loyalty to the empire before all of this happens.”
“But how long do I have, Jephia?”
Caulie tensed as Jephia pursed her lips again. “We have a whistleblower in the Gray House who has leaked your case to the media. There will be an inquiry and some polite outrage, and all of it will leave your reputation in ruins.”
“How long?”
“At great cost to your name and mine, I’ve given you two days. Perhaps three. If you haven’t solved the problem of the dead battalion by then, you must go into hiding.”
Chapter 14
Despite Caulie’s days lost in sleep, the South still hadn’t recovered when she and Shanter set out again for the dead battalion. The A-beam’s explosion had scoured the eternal front of all life in a quarter-mile radius. It might take weeks or even months to rebuild the the sector to fighting strength.
Shanter guided her through the A-beam’s area of destruction. It was slow going. Ed-homse regulars were already rebuilding the trenches, filling sandbags with corrupted soil and stacking them in crenelated lines. Front East command had apparently decided to cede the crater to the front itself, and the revised trench lines circumscribed the pit. It added hours to their journey.
“Mind your hand,” one of the toiling boots snapped when Caulie tried to touch the soil. It was covered in the most delicate pink hoarfrost, and she wanted to stir it with her fingers. “Your pardon, sir,” the soldier added, when he deciphered her provenance. “I did not know you was a Happie.”
“What is that pink ice?” she asked.
“That is the bodies of our brothers, north and south, and a few Haphans as well.”
She snatched her hand back.
Shanter took it and pulled her onward. “The word at HQ is that the A-beam was a thoughtful creature. They said it had a mind and a temperament, which is more than you get from most Tacchies. They said it was given written-down orders, and that’s also more than most of us get. But it was a machine!”
“With some machines,” Caulie said, picking her words, “if they have intelligence, they qualify as people. Or rather, they’re said to hold a personage.”
“Contrivances can be people? From a bunch of parts you can pull out of a bag and snap together?”
“That makes it sound weird, Shanter.”
“Nothing weird about it, la,” he exclaimed. “Let me pick up this bucket and that trenching tool. And there’s a bit of copper wire. In no time at all, I’ll have-meh a wonderful new friend.”
“I’m sure that you and a piece of copper wire could be the best of friends.”
But he didn’t smile. “The contrivance—was its me the same as my me?”
“Its what now?”
They entered a less-crowded length of the trench, and Shanter guided her to the fore, steering her like a cart with his hand wrapped around her neck. She was almost sure that was another failure to recognize her imperial presence, but she found it strangely reassuring. Whenever she fell, he simply lifted her to her feet again, albeit by her neck.
“When I-thinking on me,” Shanter said, “and I say in my thoughts, ‘This is me tasting food,’ or ‘This is me feeling sad,’ it’s coming from me. The same commonplace thoughts shared, hour by hour, by millions of simple souls on the front. The bedrock kinds of thoughts, the kind that are beneath speaking aloud. Those thoughts are from me, about me, and I can hear myself thinking them.”
“Internal monologue,” Caulie clarified. “Self-produced sensory experience arising from corollary discharges in the brain, which result in ideated self-image.”
“Pish, words. Did the A-beam contrivance have those ‘me’ thoughts?”
She honestly didn’t know. “Probably?”
“To make it clear, bird bears don’t have those thoughts. Oar beetles don’t have those thoughts. Tachba children don’t have those thoughts.”
“The common assumption,” she said, “is that animals don’t have a sense of self, though someone might argue about the children. Depending on who you ask, I suppose you could get an argument about any piece of it.”
“I had to come upon my me-thoughts honestly, Caulie. I was a slave to time, building a hill out of dust motes in the air. Your clever machine was simply told to think, and la, it thinks! The same way the trench gods tell us to fight and we fight.”
They walked in silence as she took this onboard. She didn’t have a ready reply, and she certainly didn’t have a concrete answer, but she always had more questions. “Do you remember a time when you didn’t have your me-thoughts?”
“La-meh, of course I do. I was a voiceless, soulless animal until six years old, like everybody else.”
Now she had more questions, but before she could unleash them he muttered, “Well stab my eye, I think we’re here already.”
“How do you know?”
“All these dead people lying around,” he said.
He stopped, and Caulie looked up from the uneven path. She saw a trench like any other, but with extra Tachba scattered about, most of them in the middle of a nap.
“Shanter, are the dead people the, uh, the ones who are lying on the ground?” she asked.
He seemed perplexed. “That’s how it works, Caulie.”
She looked around the trench again. There were no corpses, no butchered and bloodless bodies. Merely sleeping soldiers with their arms and legs crossed, arranged as comfortably as possible on every surface. “Do they look dead to you?” she asked slowly. “To me, they look like they’re only sleeping.”
Shanter frowned, turning his head to take them in. “I . . .”
She waited as he stared, watching his face. He seemed confused, but she saw irritation creeping in. Finally, he said, “Now that you mention it, it might be a little of both.”
He guided her farther into the trench. The recumbent and slumbering boots grew more populous. Caulie saw that the sleepers were from the same unit. Intermingled with them, but mostly awake and standing, were members of another unit. These were the actual boots manning this trench.
Shanter addressed one of the alert soldiers. “Looking for the officer of this group of layabouts.” He kicked the nearest sleeper in the ribs, something that Caulie would have discouraged had she seen it coming. The body rocked with the impact but didn’t wake.
“Which their colonel is the dead-iest one of all,” the boot replied. “A regular bag of fun, that one. What do you want him for?”
Shanter pivoted Caulie to face the boot and gave her a shake. “Service to the empire, and this Haphan wants to know.”
The soldier looked her up and down, weighing his answer. “She’s so small. She can’t want to know it powerful much.”
“Nevertheless, if you would be so kind,” Caulie said, feeling like a hand puppet.
“She’s small but she is very demanding,” Shanter explained. “Remember your service and kindly point us a direction.”
“Two more turns, and then take the lolly leading to the reserve trenches. You’ll step on him within ten yards.” The soldier smirked. “If you want him to talk to you, say you’re the eternal front.”
“Say we’re on the eternal front?” Caulie asked.
“Neh. Say you are the eternal front, actual. It’s not lying if you really are the eternal front, and aren’t we all?”
“Thanks,” she called, after being yanked back around. When Shanter’s hand didn’t leave her neck, she finally said, “Shanter, do you know you’re touching me?”
“Yes. So?”
“Well, Shanter . . . that means you’re touching me. I’m a Haphan. There are observances.”
He released her, and sure enough, she nearly somersaulted with her next step. Her boot sank into a pit of muddy wat
er.
“No offense, Dr. Alexandrian,” he said, hoisting her out by her scruff. “I fell to thinking about you more like a child or a sister to take care of.”
Well, that’s flattering.
“I thought Tacchies despised their sisters,” Caulie said.
“Depends which minute of the day you ask us.” His face lit with a sudden fond grin, as if he were a lamp switching on. “My own sister: lots to hate, lots to hate. But you peel that back, and you find, really, there’s even more to hate.”
“I think this is him,” Caulie said the next time she stumbled, which was over an older man blocking the way. This Tachba had more patches sewn onto his coat than the others, and he was askew in the narrow lolly trench as if he’d been trying to get to safety when he was struck.
“Help me straighten him out,” she said. “He looks uncomfortable.”
“There’s no point,” Shanter answered. “He’s beyond caring, the poor dead scrag.”
They listened to the officer snore for a moment. Caulie waited for Shanter to revise his opinion, and when he didn’t, said, “Help me straighten him out anyway.”
Shanter did most of the work, and not gently. When they had the officer propped upright against the wall with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap, Caulie crouched to examine him.
He was handsome in a brutal way, with features that were individually overwrought but that melded together pleasingly. He looked peaceful. He was an older specimen, old enough to have worry lines around his eyes and lips, and perhaps even a few gray hairs if the dirt were washed out.
“Can you read these patches? I haven’t seen these kinds of pictograms.”
“Before the Haphan landing, these were titles a man could hold. Today, they’re simple unit badges.” Shanter pointed to the largest. “This one says he faces the fire. Everybody thinks it’s about seeing the ancestors in the flames, but it only means that others watched the darkness for him. He could stare into fires and let himself go night-blind.”
“So it means he’s important?” Caulie asked.
“It only means he didn’t pull guard duty. This next patch says a woman sat next to him. She’d be a dashta in the old reckoning, someone with a little wisdom to balance against his bad decisions. Dashtalaxan are women who are valuable enough to be traded for food, though they never are. It means he could understand good advice.” He pointed to the third patch. “This one says he’s close to the queen’s tent, which means he helped make important decisions.”
That was more detail than Caulie had ever found in her books. She was briefly grateful, though more questions filled her mind. “Taken together, what do they mean?”
Shanter shrugged. “Depends who you ask. Usually, people would land on the idea that this is a top-drawer officer, leading a good-size party of boots, making frequent reports to the brass.”
“Can’t you just look at the patches and say, ‘He’s a colonel’? Why can’t it be simple like that?”
“And lose all the nuance?” He laughed, but it was a self-mocking laughter. “That’s the problem with simplicity, la. The minute you have to explain something you truly understand, it stops being simple. Have you ever known a simple fact?”
Maybe that’s why I can’t get a clear answer to anything down here on the front. “Questions only beget more questions,” she said aloud. It was her personal credo.
“Exactly, Caulie. Look closely at anything, and you’ll only see more to look upon. It’s a head game.”
The “corpse” in front of them stirred and parted its mouth. A slurry of sound escaped, none of it intelligible.
“I’ll give him some water,” Caulie decided.
“Wait,” Shanter said. “Let it be the water I carry.”
He pushed her canteen away and replaced it with his own water skin, which he held against the dead man’s lips. Some of it dripped down his chin, brown in the fading light, perhaps dark red.
“What’s in your water, Shanter?”
“Questions only beget more questions,” Shanter said.
Whatever it was—she suspected liquor—it worked. Color bloomed on the man’s cheeks, and he swallowed several gulps.
“What did you say just now, colonel?” Caulie asked softly.
“I said,” the man cracked an eye, “I can’t be properly dead with you two talking nonsense right over my head.”
She sat back. “Oh!”
“If you’ll kindly move your philosophy elsewhere, I’ll get back to my work.”
“Actually,” Caulie said, “we’re here to speak with you.”
“And who are you?”
“This is your Haphan overlord,” Shanter said, a little sharply. “You will remember your manners.”
The corpse squinted at them. “And who are the Haphans?”
“Goodness, Shanter,” Caulie said, putting up a hand. The helpie had drawn back a fist to punch the colonel. “Let me do the talking.”
“He’s not being respectful.”
For the briefest moment, Caulie forgot her omnipresent anxiety. “Respectful, Shanter? All day long you’ve been holding me up and shaking me at other Tacchies like I’m some kind of animal pelt you want to show off. How is this poor dead officer being any less respectful than you have been all day?”
Shanter’s eyes slid away. “That was me, but this is him.”
“Listen, Shanter, I’m the, uh, galactic overlord here. I’ll decide when I’m offended, do you understand? I have quite a lot of tolerance when it comes to being offended. You’ll have to be even that much more tolerant than I am.”
Shanter stewed but didn’t answer.
“Do it for me?” Caulie prodded. “I thought we were getting along so well. It makes me sad when we disagree.”
Shanter’s face folded into remorse, as if she’d swung a hammer into his nose and rearranged his expression. She had only wanted to appeal to his better nature, but had remembered too late how the Pollution rendered the Tachba susceptible to manipulation and guilt. As a female, she held a particularly heavy hammer.
“Bloody hell, that’s hitting below the belt,” the dead officer said. “A woman should have a softer touch, if you ask me.”
“I won’t apologize,” Caulie said. “I’m a Haphan.”
Nonetheless, she felt regret. It was lunacy, she knew, because all she’d asked was his forbearance and she’d only reminded him of how well they got along. Shanter finally acquiesced, sitting back on his heels to watch.
Caulie turned back to the officer. “Do you believe you’re dead?”
The corpse was impassive, as if it hadn’t heard her.
She added, “The eternal front brought me to you.”
The corpse’s eyes shifted to her. “How did it do that?”
“Ten days ago, I never thought I’d be doing this. If you told me I’d be freezing in Ed-homse and watching thousands of men die, I would not have believed you.” She shook her head. “That’s an understatement. I probably would have vomited on the table between us, and then splashed it at you.”
The corpse grinned.
“But then I came to someone’s attention,” Caulie continued, “and there followed a meeting. Then a strange trip to Ed-homse. Then a helpie. Then a terrifying trench fight. Then a long sleep. Then a long walk. None of these are things I expected for myself.”
“You were guided here,” the corpse summarized. “And what guides the universe? The front.”
“What is your name, colonel?”
“Ere I was living-meh, the other living called me Hir Haldontic.”
“Proper Ed-homse name,” Shanter said.
“Thank you, it served me well until I had to take it off.”
“Do you believe you’re dead?” Caulie asked again.
This time the man answered. “I think I really am. I have never felt more opposite to life as I do now.”
“What’s it like?” Shanter asked.
“It’s simply the pits,” Haldontic said. “I can feel-meh t
he death unwinding my flesh. I don’t have a heartbeat. Can’t breathe. Can’t smell or taste. Can’t move my arms and legs-meh. But at least I have a new perspective.”
“What perspective is that, colonel?” Caulie asked.
“The perspective that the world is . . . petty. The sky is trivial, the earth has no meaning. Our lives are inconsequential. Your meaningless questions come from your no-account concerns.”
“What about your concerns?”
The corpse looked briefly confused. “My concerns? You’re not just trivial, you also make no sense. I do not exist, not as such.”
He seems utterly certain, she thought. But his ruddy cheeks clearly showed he had a heartbeat. His breath steamed in the frigid air. His hands and legs still twitched minutely, the constant indicator of the Pollution at work inside him. His death is psychosomatic.
“Would you say your ‘me’ is gone?” Shanter leaned forward.
The officer rolled his eyes. “When I was living,” Haldontic said, “I would have sooner been shot dead than be heard asking a question like ‘Is your me gone?’”
Caulie didn’t need Shanter antagonizing this man, but when she turned to him, she saw he wasn’t mocking. Like Haldontic, Shanter was serious. Both of these Tachba considered the colonel dead, and it didn’t matter that the man was speaking and breathing.
For all love, these people! Luckily, Caulie was used to being baffled by conversations full of hidden assumptions and social cues, and she let the confusion wash past her for the moment. She was briefly even on the verge of laughter, and not the healthy, tension-relieving laughter so frowned upon by polite Haphan society. Her laughter would be more of the unstable, cackling sort, and if she started, she wouldn’t stop until someone slapped her.
What the Thunder Said Page 12
