What the Thunder Said

by Walter Blaire

  “It means you’re cornered and can’t get away, and you don’t like it.”

  “Then yes, that’s how it feels. One word which pulls a long train of other words. You know, I’ve heard that the coats of the Haphan officers are hydrophobic.”

  “‘Phobic’ means . . .” She hesitated. She could never tell when someone was teasing her, but for some unfathomable reason she was suddenly amused. Had he made that happen? For all love, was he trying to make her feel better?

  “If I had to be dull and self-centered, and talk about myself for one moment longer,” Shanter continued, “I’d say the most tiresome part of Pretty Polly is that she always leaves a little part untouched. Couldn’t she just swoop in and take it all, without leaving that part of me that sees her do it? She’d be less annoying that way. But no, every single time there is always a ‘little me’ sitting inside that sees it happen. A me that can only piss himself with frustration, his hands lifted from the reins of life.”

  “You’re a poet, Shanter!”

  He finally met her eyes. “I feel sad for you, Caulie.”

  “I—what? Why do you feel sad for me?”

  “I’ll tell you, if you wish. I’m not having a thought, or craving your attention, or anything so immature.”

  “Of course you aren’t, Shanter. That’s not you at all.” Teasing had never come easily to her.

  He smirked. “I’m only thinking that while I’m cornered and locked in, at least I know why: because service is a Tachba’s most important role. Also, if I’m going to succumb to an impulse and fall into violence, at least the Pollution helps me conduct myself with purpose.”

  “You’re saying there’s a bright side.”

  “I’m saying that you Haphans are just as cornered as we are. You have something that makes you give orders to us. As nice as Haphans might be individually, as full of charming blushes as you are personally, there is always that thing lurking beneath the surface of a Haphan. The thing that tells, orders, and controls others. The thing that has requirements to fulfill, that feels it deserves its requirements be fulfilled. You’re just like the Antecessors.”

  She suddenly wanted to lean away from him. “We are nothing like the Antecessors.”

  “Except the part of you that demands service and sacrifice from others.”

  Caulie didn’t know what to say. She had never been called an Antecessor before, and she didn’t like how well it seemed to line up. She drew out a stock reply: “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Now their roles were reversed: Shanter watched her closely as she tried not to meet his eyes. The shifting, soft light of the coals made his face unreadable. “Can you take one more crushing observation, Caulie?”

  “If I must.”

  “I have regret after Pretty Polly borrows my control, but I know it’s an affliction and that I cannot control it. For you it’s a different matter, because you Haphans aren’t Polluted. You have nothing making you do what you do. It’s innate, it has a source inside you. Where I have to explain, you have to justify. In the end, we Tachba may have regret, but you Haphans get the guilt.”

  Caulie had dozens of responses to choose from; she was a Haphan next to a servitor. She was an authority figure next to an assistant. A woman next to a prying male. She was a scholar, questioned daily and even hourly by students and professors, and she had profound and deep-rooted defenses against academic challenges. Still, she couldn’t think of anything to say to Shanter that wouldn’t sound like justification, like he’d said. It also didn’t help that she did feel guilty, and not just about locking Shanter down with her unthinking “stop” order.

  “I suppose,” she said carefully, “we have to look at whether Tachba give orders to each other. Does that happen on your side of the divide?”

  “Obviously. We’re always telling each other what to do. And you know about our women, our dashtas, and our manleaders who become queens if they live long enough. You can’t be in Ed-homse and not get an earful about fat Culleyho.”

  “So maybe we’re all culpable,” she suggested. “Maybe we’re all a little like the Antecessors.”

  He nodded, perhaps as relieved as she was by her answer. At least, he didn’t ask another question about it or offer another jarring insight. When the silence yawned uncomfortably, Caulie wished she had something to say, and realized she did.

  “Helpie,” she said, and he straightened reflexively. “Why did you come to the sacred grove that first day? You followed Fearan there, didn’t you? Why did he end up dead, with you taking his place?”

  He frowned at her. “You still think it’s some nefarious plot. Can’t I simply be a lucky coincidence?”

  “That isn’t an answer,” Caulie said. “You didn’t answer me just now. Tell me, why did you want to take Fearan’s place?”

  “For this.” Shanter gestured at her, then himself, and then patted the air between them. “For exactly this, Caulie. I am . . . I am sick in my heart. I don’t know what I am, but I might be nothing more than a simple contrivance of life. A simple dumb machine that was made to fight. I’m not sure if it’s me that is thinking my thoughts.”

  She stared. “So you came to a Haphan to find answers?”

  “Nothing so structured.” Shanter turned away again. “Nothing so planned. Pretty Polly would see such a childish idea and poison it.”

  “At least you’re leveling with me now.”

  “But I’m not!” he exclaimed, swinging back to her. For a moment there was passion in his voice, and the trench talk dialect fell away. “I only tell you what I remember wanting. By now I’m entirely different: Pretty Polly has moved the furniture. That’s what should have me concerned, and it does sometimes. I know why I want to ask: I need to learn something that might keep me sane and whole. But it feels distant now, as if I’m asking for a friend. That, Caulie, is the Pollution.”

  Caulie stared at the fire, silent. She should have been more careful when she’d explained about Aelph Fantine Drogan, mechanical subject of the empire. She should have been more careful with everything. For the first time, she sensed how she sometimes let herself become mired in her anxiety and doubt and how it kept her from being able to turn outward to see others, to see Shanter. She thought of herself as a kind person, not as someone utterly self-absorbed, but she could have been much more kind.

  “You are not a simple contrivance,” she said. She pressed her shyness aside and rested a hand on his knee, where the touch would focus his attention. “You must not think of yourself as some kind of machine.”

  He smiled for her and it looked real—the dimples were back. But when he spoke, his voice was bitter. “I must not think of myself that way? If you say so. In fact, if you make it an order, I will have no choice but to obey.”

  Chapter 20

  Shanter had fallen silent. His breathing was easier and he seemed almost at peace. Caulie should have felt lulled herself, but didn’t. Even though she only wanted to sit quietly after the long day, and feel uniquely at ease next to this man, her mind spidered inexorably into deferred questions. She became aware that she suspected something, and she realized that her suspicion had been growing ever since Falling Mountain.

  Was Jephia lying to her?

  Something had brought the question into the foreground, and now she remembered the trigger. Back in the trenches, in the bunker with all the men, Jephia had said, “You’re routing through a panther with hardened communications.” Caulie hadn’t told her about the panther—had she?

  It seemed, if she let herself think about it, that Jephia was constantly herding her back to her research, announcing deadlines, closing off thoughts of safety and return unless she found answers. All of it—the secret police, the disappearance of Lieutenant Luscetian, the routed call through the thermal register of her tablet—all of it was conceivable, but she had to consider the probability of it happening to her, to Caulie, and in that light, it all seemed impossible, the stuff of popular entertainment. Much more plausible was the th
eory that Jephia was exploiting Caulie’s deep-set innocence and distrust of the world.

  If anybody could do it, it would be Jephia. Jephia knew more about her than anyone else, knew even things Caulie would never speak aloud again for the rest of her life. She knew about Caulie’s parents and how much she had needed them. She had witnessed that first day, when Caulie had discovered at twenty-four years of age that she was an orphan.

  Caulie’s parents had been commoners, but also famous academics. They had found toleration and protection as celebrity scholars for the loyal opposition, for whom they progressed a view of the Tachba as people, as actual fellow humans. Her parents were true believers, much too committed to their work; they didn’t fall expediently quiet when their protectors were hamstrung during political shifts in the Gray House. They hadn’t had a peer like Jephesandra Liu Tawarna to advise them to return to obscurity.

  It had happened on Caulie’s first day in her graduate program. She had moved away from home only twelve hours earlier, and suddenly her parents weren’t answering on any of their accounts. She was sat in a campus smoke shop with a narrow mug of tea forgotten in front of her, staring at the “No connection” icon on her tablet.

  A young woman slid into the love seat next to her. Was even that timing contrived? The woman was too near, so Caulie couldn’t sneak surreptitious glances but had to fully turn her head. What she found was even more discomforting: a slim, gorgeous girl several years younger than her, with her hair pinned up in perfect coils. Each strand of her hair refracted the smoke shop’s dim illumination like nano-engineered light fiber. Even with that first meeting, Caulie could have spent an hour parsing through Jephia’s hair, so fine but so heavy with detail.

  That knowing smirk on the young woman’s lips. She knew her effect on others.

  Caulie had never had a friend, and neither had she known a single person who hadn’t first known her parents. When she spoke to new people, it seemed like only minutes until their mannerisms changed. It was painfully obvious that she wasn’t the same as them, so they adapted, starting with guarded confusion and ending in forbearance. Caulie was certain it wasn’t her imagination—well, mostly certain. These days, Caulie’s guard went up first thing, and perhaps it had never lowered, despite how she’d fallen into Jephia’s orbit.

  “A young lady wonders if this tall sip of tea next to her is the promising new brain in the xeno-anthropology department.”

  Caulie shrank a little. “Hello. I’m Caulie.”

  Amused sniff. “Is she really just ‘Caulie’?”

  Caulie shrugged and hid her face, lifting her tea for cover. It was still too hot to drink, but she cauterized her lips and tongue on it so as not to appear indecisive.

  A moment of regard from the gorgeous woman. If Caulie tried to reconstruct it now, she’d imagine Jephia reframing her approach. As a Tawarna, she would be used to people changing themselves to interact with her. Here, in this instance, in this smoke shop, Jephia had been forced to change herself to approach Caulie. Why had she bothered?

  “Well, I’m just Jephia. Or call me Jeph if you’re moving at a run.”

  “I am in xeno-anthropology,” Caulie mumbled.

  “You’re a soft little dear,” Jephia said, “for someone so tall.”

  A little louder: “I am in xeno-anthropology, focus on the Twisting.”

  “The Pollution: that’s the safe term. The Twisting is what the loyal opposition call it.” A perceptive pause. “Oh, don’t shrink away, Caulie. There’s nothing bad about the opposition, they’re not what people claim they are.”

  “I know.”

  “I wonder if that is a piece of boy trouble? I’m good at repairing faulty boys.”

  Caulie had to look up again to see what Jephia meant. Again, that dizzying angular face, structured to cause confusion. She was indicating Caulie’s tablet.

  Caulie shook her head. “I can’t reach my parents.”

  “The infamous Alexandrians, I wouldn’t be too far off to think.”

  Caulie only shivered. This woman already knew who she was.

  Jephia leaned closer. “Can I be blunt?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Then I’ll ask whether this is your first day away from home?”

  Caulie flinched, but nodded.

  “And, little dear, do you know who I am?”

  She shook her head.

  Jephia’s voice turned formal. “I am your Lady Jephesandra Liu Tawarna, a special friend. Acquaintance.”

  “Acquaintance,” Caulie said. If she’d had any practice in society, she wouldn’t have tried to curtsey while slouched in a love seat.

  “You just left home, and your parents have dropped out of contact.” Jephia poked at the tablet’s screen. “Let me ask, how strong are you? I mean, how strong are you in your soul?”

  Caulie’s beleaguered look gave Jephia all the answer she needed.

  “Let’s dig into your mystery.” Jephia’s voice was now less cheerful, as if she knew what she’d uncover. Had she hoped to find Caulie already understanding? “I have some skill in this area. You must rely on me for strength, until you have tapped your own strength.”

  At the end of the hour, after tablet connectivity tests, a message to her parent’s landlord, and then an oblique phone conversation with one of Jephia’s “friends” (though she was not polite with them), they determined that Caulie’s parents were simply gone. They were gone and they would never return, nor be found. The particulars went over Caulie’s head, but there was a daring, energetic new caucus in the Gray House that wanted to wipe the slate clean and settle on a simpler doctrine for the eternal front. At times like these, Jephia gradually explained, all confounding viewpoints had to be wiped away.

  Caulie didn’t care about the details. On her first day at the university, Caulie had discovered she was truly alone in the universe. She was alone except for Jephia, who had taken an interest in her at precisely the right time, and who seemed to immediately understand what had happened.

  Why didn’t I notice? It seemed so obvious now. Jephia’s family was the loyal opposition on Grigory IV. Their skirmishes with the local empress were the stuff of daily news. Had the Tawarnas been aware of the danger to her parents? Had they cut loose some inconvenient hangers-on? Had they sacrificed her parents? Why had everything happened after Caulie left home and became a distinct legal entity from her mother and father? Who had wanted Caulie safe and manageable, her parents gone?

  A chasm seemed to open beneath Caulie. How much of her life had been orchestrated? How far had she been manipulated? She tried to comfort herself: Jephia was her good friend, proven now a hundred times. Still, Jephia had her own interests that were invisible to Caulie. When the person and the interests aligned, it was a nice outcome. When the person and the interest conflicted . . . well, Caulie didn’t know enough about people. It appeared that interests always overrode inclinations—it was certainly the case for her. All Caulie did was follow her interests: research, uncover questions, answer them with more questions. It was all as natural as a bird bear, and just as disagreeable if you got in its way. She couldn’t blame Jephia, she couldn’t blame herself, and she couldn’t even blame her parents. They were all puppets to their natures.

  But Caulie didn’t have to be innocent anymore. In fact, she couldn’t be innocent; she knew too much to be oblivious now. She would play along with whoever was behind it all until she understood what they wanted. Then she would do something they didn’t expect.

  Chapter 21

  Caulie realized she was unconsciously tapping the heavy wooden bench next to her. It was a little too close to Pollution behavior, and she drew her hand back—but then she was stuck monitoring her hand and keeping it still. When she let it wander back to the bench to resume its tapping, she discovered she was tapping out the warming song, the pattern she’d learned from the lookout in the trenches before the thunder had killed everyone. The warming song did nothing for her, and she found it irritating in its
lack of structure. It was like something a lunatic would conceive—random, illogical, only symmetrical when it repeated.

  She brought to mind what she knew of logic rings. Though Ouphao’an had associated the controls with the Antecessors, the concept of logic rings was in wide use throughout the interstellar community. Even a planet-bound and isolated colony like Grigory IV used control structures analogous to logic rings. They were the abstract meta-interface that could be adapted to any kind of software or machine, and if you learned one, you knew a little about the rest. They were indispensable in civilizations where technology was powerful, nuanced, and built into everything—as it had once been for the Haphans.

  Taking what she knew about the thermostat controls in her apartment in Falling Mountain, Caulie changed the warming song. She turned the rings in her mind—that was as close as she could come to describing the procedure. If the rhythmic patterns were the intersections of the logic rings, and if she turned them just so to adjust the settings, then the rhythm changed.

  As when she’d tried to keep her hand from tapping, direct attention or full awareness made the process difficult. Logic rings were the interface for instinctive use, for when precision was less important than approximate outcomes. They are supposed to be intuitive, she reminded herself. Don’t watch yourself thinking about it. When the thermostat controls did not clarify her rhythm enough, she thought about how she had filtered out the heat, or increased the cold, on the thermal sensor display screen in the panther: the circular sweeps of her fingers had conveyed dials being turned.

  “La-meh, I can’t decide if I’m melting or freezing,” Shanter muttered. “I hate these changing nights.”

  Caulie hesitated. He couldn’t have heard the rhythm, could he? The hissing coals were noisier than her tapping fingers. But questions beget questions. What if she tried an experiment? She was hungry again after the long night, and she needed something to focus on.

  She brought to mind the logic patterns for nutrition, specifically the controls that showed up in calendar sub-functions, the ones Caulie used to plan her meals two months ahead. Come to think of it, they were similar to those in resource-vs-population estimation software, which were related to the patterns for expected satiation—not so different from the depletion schedules in fleets of machines that required fuel to operate. Her cooling song shifted into something else, something even more irritating due to its tenuous, open rhythms, but which felt ineffably right.