Empire of Bones

by Liz Williams

  This had to happen now, Sirru thought, silently cursing his fate. His attraction to Anarres couldn’t be just any old sexual arrangement, either, some interclade status-swapping or interpretative transaction. This was love.

  Sirru sighed, trying to be philosophical.

  He was also not especially happy about the prospect of whatever was waiting for him at the other end of the translation plate. Who could have thought that a little colony like Tekhei would ever amount to anything? It reminded him of one of those plants that languished at the end of the terrace, sulking in its pot, growing maybe a claw’s length every year and then suddenly, just as you were about to lose patience and throw the thing into the recycler, putting forth some poky little blossom. Enough to give you hope that the thing might actually do some growing after all.

  With a rising sense of disquiet, Sirru remembered IrEthiverris’ first communication from the colony of Arakrahali…

  …all the locals are peculiarly charmless. Tiny little people with domed heads. Not one of them evinces even the slightest interest in their own project; they all say they’re happy as they are. And the food is dreadful… Then IrEthiverris had added, heretically: If the Core wanted these projects to be managed properly, they should have placed them under decent supervision from the start…

  But you’d never get that “decent supervision,” Sirru knew, because the khaithoi never wanted to get their hands dirty. Or whatever they’d replaced hands with these days. He remembered with distaste EsRavesh’s stubby digits pressed against his own, no more than buttons attached to a pad of flesh. Everyone knew perfectly well that the khaithoi had subsidiaries to do everything for them these days, so why bother with proper fingers? Pure affectation. His head twinged. The suppressants were likely to be wearing low. High time he got another implant.

  He glanced through the vane. Stars shimmered and passed as the raft departed the Rasasatran system and steered itself toward the local depth ship, humming all the while. There was a brief, liquid shudder as the raft docked and the mesh dispersed. Wheezing with the sudden change of air, Sirru stepped through the airlock of the shuddering raft and into the labyrinthine bowels of the depth ship. Neurochemical drifts, keyed into his personal DNA, directed him to the translation chambers, and he glided through the silent cells until he reached his destination.

  The hessirei translator was waiting for him. It sat on its mat with its six attenuated arms undulating around it, as though caught in a wind that Sirru could not feel. It was making a series of complex adjustments to the equipment. Its eyes were like two hot coals, glowing in the smooth darkness of its face. As Sirru watched, it reached out with a prehensile foot and tapped the translation mesh, sending a jangling coil of chemicals out into the air. The air became stuffy and hot, thick with synthetic alkaloids. Sirru sat down opposite the hessirei and took a deep, slow breath.

  Verification.

  Sirru delivered this, and the hessirei affirmed him.

  Remove your robe. If you are wearing scale, please deactivate fully. Lie down.

  Sirru did as he was instructed. He felt the mesh close around him—cool, slightly sticky, not unpleasant. His throat was dry with anticipation. In a few moments, he would lose consciousness. A billion fragments of data would be channeled through a quantum relay to the depth ship Eir Sithë, which currently orbited Tekhei.

  The depth ship, Sirru thought, trying to take his mind off what was about to happen to him, must be very patient. It had been waiting for an administrator to come ever since a day several million years before, when the project engineers had returned home from their initiation of First Stage. Eir Sithë had been stationed outside the Tekhei system ever since, occasionally grazing off sunlight and whatever nutrients might come its way, using its light-veil to hide its presence from whoever might have the technology to glimpse it, but mostly sleeping.

  Sirru’s last thought, before his Second Body was reconstructed inside the translation chamber on Eir Sithë, was whether the ship would be pleased to see him.

  4.

  Mumbai

  One of the rebels, braver or more foolish than the rest, leaped onto the battlements of the ancient fort and brandished his weapon. The army commander, a brutal man in an eye patch and a black uniform, gave the signal to close in, then took careful aim. A red fountain blossomed on the front of the revolutionary’s shirt and he fell, twisting as he went. Across the compound, the rebel princess cursed. She checked the time bomb strapped to her wrist: thirty seconds. One hand fumbled with the strap of the bomb as she sped across the compound, dodging a hail of bullets while racing toward the enemy commander. Glossy dark hair spilled down her back as she ran. Her beautiful face was barely distorted with the effort, and as one man, the rebel troops behind her burst into a song which praised her valor. She was close enough to her enemy now to detach the bomb and fling it in his mocking face…

  “Cut!”

  The singing stopped, abruptly. The rebel princess skidded to a halt in the dust, ripped off the bomb, and hurled it petulantly at her feet.

  “What? What was wrong with that? You tell me!”

  “Sorry, Kharishma; sorry, darlings. The light’s still not right.”

  “For fuck’s sake.” Kharishma Kharim turned on her heel and strode from the set, ignoring her producer’s protests. “We’ve been here for nearly eight fucking hours. If your crew can’t do their jobs properly, you’d better get someone who can. I shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of incompetence.” She felt like adding, “Without me, this picture would be nothing,” but that was already obvious, and she had her dignity to think of.

  Inside the trailer, she crossed to the mirror that hung above her dressing table and gazed anxiously at her reflection. The vast, kohl-rimmed eyes that could so convincingly brim with tears made her look as mysterious as ever. And her fall of dark hair still reached her waist, still shone. Kharishma had once come across the term “mahogany tresses” in an English romance, and she supposed that it might have been a bit corny, but it still seemed accurate, somehow. The heavy nanofilament makeup had transformed her skin into a mask and Kharishma checked its perfection with obsessive concentration, occasionally glancing at the photographs of herself that were pasted around the mirror like a shrine. From the corner of her eye, reflected in the mirror, she could still see the crumpled-up copy of Screen in the corner of the trailer, where she had hurled it that morning, missing the waste bin.

  Word comes in from Mumbai that Kharishma Kharim—now taking a starring role as celebrated freedom fighter Jaya Nihalani in the new movie Warrior Tigress—celebrated her 29th birthday at the exclusive Ambar restaurant last week—We’d offer congratulations, but rumor has it that lovely Kharishma’s now been 29 three times in a row. What’s the secret, sweetie? Maybe screen goddesses really are like the real thing: they just don’t get any older…

  Bitch! Kharishma thought, not for the first time that morning. What do I care what some dried-up old hag of a hack thinks? But at the back of the thought, there was an edge of panic. After all, no one’s looks lasted forever, and it was beginning to look as though Kharishma’s ingenue days were long behind her. Still, if she could come up with just one triumph in a character part, it might be enough to get her firmly established in the canon of deified screen idols. And Jaya Nihalani was certainly a plum role, now that the government had decided that its formerly most wanted terrorist had better be rehabilitated as quickly as possible.

  And if the parts continued to dry up—and if envious people who’d never got any further than the production staff continued to spread that idiotic rumor that Kharishma was “difficult”…well, she’d just take her talents into other areas. After all, the state of Tamil Nadu had had superstar Ramachandran as its chief minister for years, and look what happened when he died. People had cut their own arms off in mourning. And look at his wife and mistress. Both had been revered, and neither of them could have held a candle to Kharishma Kharim. It had been the same thing in Karnataka five y
ears ago. So why shouldn’t she capitalize on her talents and go into politics? After all, she ought to be running something. India needed her.

  When Kharishma had finished adjusting her makeup, her gaze strayed past the piles of movie magazines down to the fuzzy photograph of Jaya Nihalani that sat on her dressing table. Jaya wore a bandanna around her hair, and her haggard face was lined with pain and despair. The photo must have been taken shortly after her surrender, Kharishma figured. Her shoulders were unnaturally rigid and her jaw was lifted, as though her arms were pinned behind her back. She was surrounded by guards, who towered over her tiny frame. Kharishma spent a long, blank moment staring at the now-familiar photograph and then she looked back at the mirror with a brief grimace of satisfaction. At least I look better than her.

  The door of the trailer swung open. Pale blue eyes met her own in the mirror. Hastily, in a reflex action, Kharishma turned the photo facedown. Jaya Nihalani’s picture wasn’t something that Amir Anand liked to see. He had even forbidden Kharishma to take the role, but she’d got her own way in the end. She usually did.

  “Amir! I didn’t think you were coming.” With a smile of welcome, she hopped across the trailer and threw herself into her lover’s arms. Amir held her in a tight embrace and rested his cheek against her hair. He murmured, “I’ve been sent back here. To do something that I think will make you very happy.”

  Kharishma twisted around to look into his face, thinking, as she always did, how handsome he was. It really was a true romance, like a fairy story.

  “What?”

  “To find Jaya Nihalani. And to kill her. But this time, without anything to stand in my way. No capture, no taking her back to prison. Just death. It’ll have to look like an accident, of course.”

  Kharishma went to the window of the trailer and lifted the net curtain aside, peering out at the glaring day. She bit her lip, thinking back to the photograph that sat on the dressing table. And that turned her thoughts back to her latest obsession: power.

  She remembered her mother’s sitting before her and telling her that their family should have been the ones tapped by destiny to rule. Not the Ghandis, not the Parbutans, but the Kharims. She had heard the story countless times: how her mother’s kin were cheated out of their rightful heritage by her great-grandfather’s scheming brother. How, if it hadn’t been for the sudden loss of their wealth, her grandfather would have been elected President of Bharat, and how it had surely been the shock of this disappointment that had killed him. Kharishma could have been the inheritor of a mantle of dynastic power; instead, she was up there on the movie screen, and something about this had never seemed quite right. She was made for wider audiences and greater adulation than she’d ever receive from Bollywood. She glanced wistfully at Amir Anand, another disinherited princeling.

  Don’t worry, my darling, Kharishma thought, one day we’ll both regain what’s rightfully ours. Deep in her heart, Kharishma had never quite managed to dislodge a fundamental belief in the precepts of her religion: good against evil, justice against injustice. Kharishma knew, too, how the minds of her audience worked. When the Ramayana had been filmed, many years ago, people in the villages had erected shrines to the actors who played the gods, insisting in believing that some element of divinity remained with them.

  Jaya had been popular among the country folk. Once they saw Kharishma on the screen in this new role, and once Jaya was out of the way, Jaya’s legend would become Kharishma’s own.

  She did not hear Anand move, but suddenly he was behind her and his arms were around her ribs. He squeezed just a bit too tight, hurting her breasts, and for a moment she found herself fighting for breath. She knew he adored her, but sometimes his devotion frightened her a little. He murmured into her ear, “You know I’d do anything for you, Kharishma,” then released her so abruptly that the air flooding into her lungs made her dizzy, turning the bright scene outside into a negative image of itself, like a shadow crossing the sun.

  5.

  Varanasi

  It was as though Jaya stood outside her body, watching once more as the events of her life unraveled. She saw the fortress vanishing in the smoke from the shells, the troops moving in. Then Amir Anand standing tall in the front of a jeep, his pale gaze searching for her. She saw Kamal’s round face, looking surprised as the first bullet hit and he spun, falling from the rocky ledge down into the cold waters of the Yamuna. Even in death he looked worried.

  The horror of the moment was still cold inside her, like a lump of ice that would never melt. Jaya watched herself start up from the hiding place, her mouth open to cry Kamal’s name, then saw Rakh pull her down out of sight. She watched herself fire and reload, fire and reload, mouth in a tight numb line, no time even to mourn. Now, she wondered how she could have done such a thing, how she could have been so cold as to just keep on going. Her heart felt as tight and hard as a clenched fist. Her hands were clammy with the memory.

  That morning, Kamal had been alive; he had even brought her chai in an old metal army cup balanced on a battered tray, as though she were a princess being brought breakfast in bed. And the next day, he was dead. Simply not there anymore. The transition still made her dizzy, as though she couldn’t grasp how it had happened.

  If these aliens have the power to do anything—anything at all—then maybe I’d forget all the noble causes and the struggle and everything, and just go back and live in a hut with a little garden, just Kamal and me in the middle of nowhere. In the mountains, maybe, with the hawks and the silence. Kamal had never wanted to be a revolutionary, but he had hated the unfairness of things, and she was the same way, though she sometimes wondered how true that really was.

  It never was about power, or glory, or sacrifice, she told herself. It was just about trying to secure a reasonable life for everyone. Giving them something to believe in. But Kamal had died anyway.

  She saw herself helping carry Kamal to his resting place at the lake on the glacier’s edge, and then the tattered remnants of her army creeping up into the barren heights to lick their wounds. And then Jaya watched herself, as silent and bodiless as a ghost, walk back down, to pick her way between the dead and surrender to Anand’s troops, in return for the lives of the captured…

  She woke with a start. Her heart was pounding erratically against her ribs. The darkness swam with lights, as though a fire blazed above her head. It took her a moment to realize that her eyes were filled with tears, and that the illusory flames were Ir Yth’s golden gaze.

  People are here, the raksasa said with manifest disapproval.

  “What people?” Jaya’s head felt muzzy with the sadness of her dream. “Do you mean my men?”

  It is difficult to tell you apart, Ir Yth said, pursing her petaled lips. But I am certain. These are not your assistants. I believe they are carrying some kind of weapon.

  Now Jaya was fully awake. She scrambled to her feet, hissing, “Where are they?”

  In the courtyard. They came over the wall. There are four of them, perhaps more. Why did your assistants not intercept them?

  “I don’t know, Ir Yth. Show me.”

  With a sound like a sniff, Ir Yth’s incorporeal form drifted toward the door. Jaya followed, sidling along the wall until they reached the balustrade that overlooked the courtyard. At first she could see nothing, then the faintest glimmer of movement drew her attention. Someone was standing over by the gate. She could see into the gatehouse, and there was no sign of Rakh. Jaya swallowed a cold lump in her throat.

  The person at the gate glided forward. Jaya’s hand slid toward the gun at her hip, and then she was picked up and carried backward. A hand like a paw was rammed against her mouth. She struggled and kicked out, as hard as she could. Rakh’s voice whispered, “Sorry. But there are too many of them. We can’t risk a firefight.”

  “Who are they?”

  Imperceptibly, Rakh shook his head. “I don’t know. Anand’s men, at a guess.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be under g
overnmental protection!” So much for that, Jaya thought. She’d never believed it in the first place.

  “Best that we leave,” Rakh murmured, and Jaya suppressed a rueful grin. He’d certainly changed; years ago, his brother had been the cautious one.

  “Agreed.” The temple was no more than a convenient shell; all their advantages now lay on the ship orbiting hundreds of miles above their heads. It gave Jaya a curious sense of security.

  “What’s the best way out?” she whispered.

  “I’d say the cellars—there’s a concealed door beneath the stairs. But they’re already in the hallway. We’ll have to go over the wall.”

  Jaya nodded. “All right. Let’s get going.” Rakh’s hand gripped her arm, helping her up the steps that led to the gallery. As they reached the balustrade, Jaya peered cautiously around the side of a column. She could hear voices below, a susurrus of sound amplified by the echoing halls of the temple. Directly beneath her, the shrine of the goddess Durga glittered on its metal plinth. Jaya found herself murmuring a prayer: for fierceness, for safe flight. Fleetingly, she wished she had a tiger to ride, like the goddess.

  Rakh pulled her on.

  Where are you going? Ir Yth asked petulantly, gliding behind.

  Hastily, Jaya whispered, “I think these people mean us harm. We’re leaving.”

  But where to? the raksasa demanded.

  “Anywhere but here.”

  I do not wish to accompany you. This is a great inconvenience! I have duties in my solid form; I can spare little attention at this moment.

  “Well, don’t come, then,” Jaya snapped under her breath. It felt good to stop kowtowing to this condescending creature. “It’s all very well for you. You’re not even really here, so I don’t see why it’s so inconvenient. I’m in contact with the ship, aren’t I? And I can’t stand here arguing.” Urgency nagged her like a kite tugging a string.