The Expert System's Brother

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “Working . . .”

  “I’ve shocked you,” he said quietly. After all the violence, when he should have been most triumphant, an odd pensive mood had taken him. His eyes flicked constantly to the walls, waiting for the ancestors to stop working and do something. “When I killed their Lawgiver, I saw the face you made. Still a bit of the village boy in you, Handry?”

  “No, Sharskin,” I said, too earnestly.

  “It has to be done,” he told me, as though he’d heard another, truer answer. “We have to break the chains. Nobody else will.” His look to me was almost traumatised by the burdens of his office. “Handry, do you know how long this has been going on for? Generations, centuries. Even the ancestors have lost count, but it’s been at least five hundred years since they fell from grace and unleashed the ghosts and the wasps and the rest. Five hundred years of absolutely nothing ever changing, Handry. I’d say it can’t go on, but it could go on forever and we would never know what we were supposed to be. And the House won’t last forever.” In a sudden fit of anger he thumped the wall. “Come on, tell me!”

  “Confirmation expert assistance incoming. Remain calm and hydrated and await further aid,” his voice said back to him. The ancestors were trying to sound reassuring, but Sharskin was anything but calm. His eyes flashed and he grinned from ear to ear.

  “You are our destiny,” he told me, gripping me hard by the shoulder. “What chance, that I might find you on my travels, boy? What wonder!” and I was foolish enough to feel proud.

  * * *

  It happened two days later. I was working inside, cutting back the roots that grew visibly day to day in their mission to tear down the House of our Ancestors. I thought of how the place had travelled like a silver dart through the night sky, and wondered if that meant they had slept during the day. And when the House came, did it fall from the sky and break on the ground, to leave it so tattered and pierced with holes, or was that just time? If our ancestors could throw their house up into the sky like a star, why could they not bring it down to earth like a leaf?

  Then there was a commotion and I heard cheering and whooping from some of the congregation, the sort of sound they sent up when they had killed some big animal that came too near the House, or when Sharskin gave one of his more rousing speeches. I didn’t want to miss the festivities, whatever they were in aid of, and so I put down my knife and scurried out, heading for the doorway that led to the rest of the world. Plenty of others were coming to see what was up, too, so I ended up towards the back, stretching and craning as Sharskin and a pack of the older men, the better hunters, filed in. They had a quarry bundled between them, and for a long time my eyes did not understand what I was looking at. I saw a human form, but the face was turned from me and I knew only that it was a woman. I guessed she must be from the village we had raided, another hunter come to track down those who had committed such an outrage upon them. Even though I had suffered a sleepless night afterwards, seeing the Lawgiver’s head break open over and over, holding the staff myself sometimes, I still cheered the new arrival, egged on by my fellows just as I encouraged them, everyone surrounded by everyone else’s echoes.

  And then Sharskin reached forwards and pushed the hapless woman over, sending her to her hands and knees with a curse, and I stopped cheering. Not the face, that I still had not seen, not the stance, but the voice. I knew her voice as she swore at Sharskin. I knew her as she stumbled to her feet to be pushed back and forth by the jeering congregation. Then she shook her unkempt hair out of her eyes and I saw the ghost-swollen brow, the pitted cheek and empty socket, and alongside them I saw the face I knew best in all the world. This was not some mad vision the House had conjured. This was Melory.

  I shoved and elbowed my way to the front to confront Sharskin. “What are you doing? She’s my sister!”

  The priest regarded me sympathetically, taking me aside with a hand on my shoulder as he had so often done. “Handry, no, she can’t be your sister. That can’t be kin of yours, not anymore.” His smile was kind; he’d had plenty of time to muster his words for this conversation. “Even if she once was, she’s not of the original condition as you are. She’s corrupted, riddled through and through with the unclean nature of this world. And that was before they put a ghost in her, Handry. The ghost that would have Severed you entirely and left you to starve, remember? And it’s come after you even now, to try and finish the job.” For of course I had told him everything. “There is nothing of a human being there but a shell, boy. She stopped being human when they put the ghost in her. She’s just a tool now, an expert system as the House calls it. But we can use it.”

  His smile was less kind now, and I could see that dreadful fire in his eyes that meant violence could come with the next breath. “Bring her to the Console Room!” he called, and danced away from me, leading us all through the House to that room he had taken Ostel and me to, when we first arrived. We had seen worlds whirling in space in that room, and our ancestors voyaging in a silver dart. It was a sacred place, from the lumpy “console” projections about the walls to the metal servants in their alcoves, sleepers awaiting a call that would never come. This was the heart of the House.

  I stumbled along at the back of the pack, my head full of his words, my eyes crowded with memories of my sister. She was held between three of my new brothers, tight enough to twist her joints as they dragged her deeper into the House. I didn’t know if I knew her. What if the ghost that had grown in her had eaten her entirely?

  But then she twisted in their grip, staring wildly back with her one eye. I couldn’t make out her voice over the howling and jeering of my fellows but I saw her mouth shape my name.

  In the Console Room, Sharskin held his arms out, robe sleeves flapping. “Speak!” he commanded the ancestors, as Melory was forced to her knees before him. “Tell me what we’ve got here! Am I right?”

  Lights flickered about the walls of the room as the ancestors roused themselves, their voice winding up to Sharskin’s usual pitch.

  “Detecting new device: medical expert system.”

  Sharskin let out a crow of triumph. He drew me to him, bowing towards me as though we two were the sole true conspirators, the only ones who knew what was going on.

  “You fled your home, boy,” he told me, grinning ear to ear. “You fled after the ghost condemned you, but it hadn’t finished. It left its thorn in your skin, that it was still calling to, no matter where you went. The House could hear that call, and shout right back, speaking to the ghost they put in your sister, reminding it of its unfinished business. You’re still linked, Handry, not brother to sister but doctor to patient. It wants to finish Severing you.” His grip on my shoulder was like a vice. “I’ve had such plans, boy. What I’d do if I ever got a doctor here. I tried to steal one away, once, but the ghost left him and he was just a husk, useless to me. But to get one to come willingly! Our ancestors were truly watching out for us when we met! They’re ready for us, at last—ready for us to reclaim our destiny!”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded.

  Still that grin, even wider, though I’d have sworn there was nowhere further for it to go. “How else to change the world but to swell our ranks, to shock the herd of humanity out of their complacency and make them think. To strip them of the comfort that has them just trudge around in the same old rut over and over. Doctors know how to brew the Severance.” He lunged forwards and caught Melory’s chin with one hand. “And you’ll teach me, little Doctor. Summon the ghost and show me how it’s done. We’ll brand the whole world with the Mark of Cain, return everyone to their proper condition and open their eyes to the world!”

  IX.

  “HANDRY,” MELORY SAID—barely a whimper but everyone was quiet now, in the wake of Sharskin’s announcement.

  The priest looked from her to me, looked into my very mind, perhaps, balancing the moment. “Handry,” he echoed. “Do you have something to say to the thing that took your sister from you?”

 
; “Why did you come?” I hadn’t had anything to say, cowed by the mob of the others, their single-minded desire to have the world a certain way. The words burst from me anyway, born of the years before the accident, born of the years she’d looked out for me, before the Elector chose her. Before—yes—the ghost took her from me. Sharskin wasn’t wrong, not entirely.

  “I came for you!” she got out, and then, as Sharskin crowed at the admission, “To save you, Handry, please!” But then the priest had her by the shoulder, that grip of his that was comforting until it became agony; we had all felt it.

  “Call your ghost!” he said, his face right up against hers. “Look, I’m a threat to your community. I need casting out! Get it to tell you the recipe for Severance, have it feed the words to your mouth so you can spit them into my hand. Or you will hurt and hurt until there’s nothing to you but ghost.”

  “Melory,” I whispered, and her agonised eyes locked with mine.

  “There is no ‘Melory,’ not anymore,” spat Sharskin. He pronounced the word with the disgust always close by when he spoke about the failures of our forebears. “A shell, a husk, a nothing. A home for ghosts. But that’s all right. It’s the ghost we need.” He looked around him at nothing, at the ancestors invisibly attendant in this room. “Into her head, why don’t you? Cut the ghost open and let us have its knowledge. Interrogate expert system, search terms Severance!” For Sharskin had lived with the House for many years and knew its language, so like and unlike our own.

  “Confirmed. Working,” his flat, artificial voice came back to him, like a distorted echo, and Melory screamed. It wasn’t Sharskin’s grip that plagued her now. I saw the ghostlight blaze and flare from half her face, and she threw her head about wildly, so that I thought she was trying to dash her brains out. “What is it?” she shrieked, and then, “Working working working,” as the ghost rose in her, co-opting her mouth in its meaningless complaints. “Make it stop! Access protocols initiated. Downloading upgraded service please wait please wait please wait.” She arched backwards, thrashing in the grip of the brothers, then sagged, sobbing.

  Sharskin laughed and spread his arms to us. “The Severance,” he shouted. “Few, and trammeled up in this place, that’s not how we were meant to be. We have a creed the whole world needs to hear.”

  Melory stared into his gleaming eyes, for a moment just herself, just my sister. “You’re mad,” she told him. “You want to kill the world, murder every village? How would they live, if you did what you want?”

  “Only through me,” said Sharskin softly, and his grin was as hard to look at as the sun. “So tell me.”

  Melory started to shake her head and then some new wave of . . . what? I couldn’t imagine, but whatever assault the ancestors were making on her mind resumed with renewed force and she spasmed and twitched, her eye rolling up into her head and the ghostlight bright as day from every pore and pit of her face. When she sagged again, consciousness had left her entirely. Sharskin straightened up, disappointed.

  “She’ll wake,” he told us. “And when she does, she’ll find the ancestors haven’t finished with her. Take her to the buried chambers. Tie her up there and set a guard. This is our destiny, friends. This is the best chance we have to restore true humanity to power over this world.” He looked from face to face, hunting out doubt like a predator. “If we are to prevail, there can be no collaboration, no half measures. Our kin live in slavery, in ignorance. We must awake them and there is no way but this. The strong will survive.”

  Three or four of the brothers dragged Melory’s limp form away, and when I made to go with them, I felt Sharskin’s hand rest companionably on my shoulder.

  “I’m proud of you, Handry,” he told me.

  I stared at him mutely.

  “She tried to tempt you against your true family,” he told me. “The ghost spoke through her, seeking to win you from your proper place at my side. There is no future for you there, boy. They’d finish the job and let you starve, never forget that. I fed you. I gave you a place in the world.” A world of threats was hidden between his words.

  * * *

  I did not do the right thing.

  I tell this tale, so perhaps I should fold time or inflate my better nature, that I went instantly down into the dark, shining blade in hand, to liberate my sister. But I will tell all things as I know them. I did not do the right thing, not then. I went back to work amongst my brothers, and just as the doctor had buried a thorn in my flesh to keep track of me, so the presence of Melory in the House was a thorn in my mind. I thought of doing something often and, each time I did, the idea of Sharskin rose as though he was my ghost to bear, as though the light of his grin and his destiny shone from my face whenever I tried to imagine saving my sister.

  His words crept on me. I thought of escaping with her from the House, through its single square door, and then seeing nothing but the ghost in her face. I thought of rescuing her, only to find myself a prisoner of villagers, daubed with searing Severance as I screamed and writhed, left so cut from the world that even the air burned my skin. What if she was not there? What if the ghost just wore her face and danced her body about like a puppet, and had eaten away her mind like a grub?

  And yes, they do not put the Severance on hot, and I knew that, but in my mind I could still feel the scalding pain of the accident, and that was the Severance for me. I could not imagine it any other way.

  My mind went back and forth. The part of me that was Melory’s brother ran, within my thoughts, down to where she was kept, only to find that part of me that was Sharskin’s acolyte barring the way. And so the time passed in misery and inaction, until she was brought to the Console Room again.

  It was the same as the first time, but more so. Sharskin invoked the ancestors and they swarmed sightlessly from the walls as the panels glowed and flickered like fitful fires. They said, “Interface connection retrieved, uploading,” and Melory screamed and twisted, fighting a war confined within her skull. She spat and cursed Sharskin and the rest of them, using every bad word we ever knew and more besides, and then the ghost would come forth from her and say, so calmly, “Corrupted memory segments detected rerouting protected data waiting waiting waiting . . .”

  “What is happening?” I begged Sharskin.

  His eyes never leaving her, he leant in to me. “The ancestors know the ghost. They made it, after all. They made the world where such things come to live in people and make them slaves.”

  I frowned, feeling a fraying edge of his philosophy. “But the ancestors you call on, are they the wise ancestors that carried this House through the night sky, or are they the foolish ancestors who made the ghosts and fell from grace?”

  Sharskin’s gaze flicked to me, infinitely knowing. “First one and then the other, Handry, but they are within the House now, and they do what I tell them. Some things they cannot do, some things they will not do, not yet, but I command them in those tasks they will countenance. And I tell them to speak to the doctor ghost and get it to reveal its secrets. And either the girl will break, or they will break her. And then we will remake the world, Handry, you and I.”

  I wanted to go then, because I was a coward and every cry in Melory’s true voice went into me like a knife, but Sharskin’s hand was on my shoulder again and he held me there. He made me watch, squeezing in time to the convulsions that racked her body, until she passed out again and was silent.

  “Progress report!” he barked out into thin air.

  “Data interface progressing. Detected more recent version of current operating system. Firmware update recommended,” said the ancestors, wise or foolish. It was not what Sharskin wanted to hear, plainly, but neither was he giving up. “We will just have to make do with what we have. She’ll crack, or the ancestors will get through to her.” Seeing he still had my shoulder, he let go. “We are the agents of mankind’s redemption,” he told me. “But the ancestors must redeem themselves, too, for the wicked things they did.” He cocked an eye towards
the walls where the heatless lamps were guttering to nothing. “And they will, or they will lie unmourned in the House forever. They will do as I tell them.” His hand clenched about his metal staff as though he would beat the ancestors until they complied.

  I did not sleep that night, just lay awake in a room with a half dozen others, listening to their untroubled breathing and wondering how they could possibly just doze as if nothing was going on. I felt as though Melory’s presence was an ember pressed into my mind. Tomorrow, even later tonight, Sharskin would have her hauled to the Console Room again for more torture. Or was it just the ghost being tortured? And if I had the courage to do something, what then? Where in the world would I find a place except here with my brothers, under Sharskin’s protection.

  In the end, the metaphysics of it condensed to just that. I could not disentangle who or what might be within Melory’s misshapen skull. I could not know if she had come here to finish my Severance or to help me somehow, as if any help were possible. It came down to her or me. If I saved her I would be dooming myself, because the world would kill me sooner or later, even if neither Melory nor the congregation did. But she would be saved. Whatever she was.

  I was afraid as I hadn’t been since the night I fled Aro. I had found here some semblance of a life, after wandering for so long. Give it up to save the ghost that had done me such wrong? Give it up to save Melory, who had saved me and preserved me despite the Mark of Cain?

  The night some way gone, and me still twisting and turning in agonies of indecision, a face came to my mind’s eye: a woman’s face, and not Melory’s.

  Iblis, the Architect of Orovo. How strange a thing to take hope from, but she had not been a slave. The woman she once was had still been in evidence as she bargained and argued with her ghost, wrestling its designs to suit her own. And even old Doctor Corto was a lesson, perhaps, because the ghost had not been a true puppet-master or it would have overcome his failing flesh. There was a chance, just a chance, that what had come to find me was truly Melory. Perhaps she even believed she could help. I knew there was no chance of that, but I could help her.