Empire of Bones

by Liz Williams

  “I looked all over the place for you. Where were you?” Jaya asked.

  The raksasa said, apparently on Sirru’s behalf, The mediator hopes you are well. He apologizes that we have left you alone for so long. We have had much to do. Documentation for a reactivated colony requires much time.

  Wonderful, Jaya thought. She’d been left alone all this time whilst they got on with the paperwork. Reminding herself to try and remain polite, she said, “I get tired. Otherwise, I’m well. Thank you.”

  She was impatient to find out what their plans were, but held back the question. Ir Yth had proved so evasive in the past that Jaya did not believe a direct interrogation would get anything resembling a straight answer.

  The mediator wishes to know if you require anything, Ir Yth said.

  “Thank you both for your concern. Yes, I would like something. I’d like to go back.”

  Back?

  Jaya pointed through the viewport. “To my world. I’ve been here long enough, and you don’t seem to have much need of me. Take me home, please.” Her voice sounded imperious, and too edgy.

  Sirru leaned forward to murmur in the raksasa’s fluted ear. The mediator’s mood had changed. Jaya caught a sense of frustration, annoyance, and bewilderment, which moved over her skin like a cold, trailing hand.

  The mediator asks: What are your impressions of the ship?

  Jaya thought for a moment. “It’s very strange. I’ve never been anywhere like this before. It’s like being inside a vast creature… half plant, half animal… but it’s not really either, is it? It’s something completely different.” She glanced at Ir Yth for confirmation, but the raksasa’s face was bland and blank. “Look, about going back to Earth—”

  Sirru spoke; Ir Yth translated: Why such haste? Is it not preferable here? But perhaps you are overwhelmed by such luxury, coming as you do from that primitive, uncouth environment—

  “I’ve been in worse places than this,” Jaya snapped. The ship sent an anxious pulse, willing her to calmness, but it slid over her skin like oil and was gone. Jaya did not stop to think. In another second, she was across the floor and had seized Ir Yth by a lower arm. Her fingers sank into the alien flesh like steel wire.

  The raksasa rocked back on her heels; her lips pulsed in and out. A bolt of raw pain shot through Jaya’s hand, throwing her against the wall. Her arm hurt as far as her shoulder, with a sick neural ache. Her stomach churned. Sirru hovered solicitously at her side.

  That is a small warning only. Never touch me again! the raksasa commanded.

  Not unless it’s from behind, with an iron bar, Jaya thought, numbly. She had wondered what defenses the physically peculiar, unimpressive Ir Yth might employ. Well, now she knew. The raksasa spun to face Sirru, chittering. Sirru looked down at the floor, as if embarrassed. He said something that sounded conciliatory, and touched Jaya on the shoulder. She was flooded with reassurance and puzzlement, but her limbs still felt shaky and hot. She looked mutely at Sirru. After a moment, Ir Yth turned and walked away, and Sirru followed.

  Distress settled in Jaya’s stomach, and for once the ship did nothing to help. The mottled walls of the ship were more like a prison than ever, and she thought with longing of the filth and familiarity of Varanasi. It might not be much of a life anymore, but at least it’s human. At least it’s mine. She could feel the cold control that the ship was trying to exert over her emotions start to fracture and crack, like a fragile shell.

  She stumbled blindly through the cells of the ship, descending through the labyrinth of odors until she reached a small antechamber that opened onto the nutrient baths. She pushed the walls out of her way so quickly that they did not have time to part, and they folded back on her in waves of queasy, liquid flesh. Her hoarse breath echoed in her ears. She turned and struck the wall, and the ship yielded like a rubber punching bag. In sudden murderous fury, Jaya lashed out at the wall, raking it with her nails, and a long, slimy strip tore away and fell wetly to the floor.

  Appalled, Jaya stood, panting, and stared at it. The scored surface of the wall was seeping, oozing a translucent, reddish fluid. On the floor, the fleshy strip pulsed once, and then was still. In fascinated revulsion she reached out and touched the tip of a finger to the gash, and the wall itself flinched. Awful farcical thoughts raced through her mind, of trying to stick the strip back on. The wall was starting to smell, like something rotten that had lain in the sun. Jaya backed away until she was leaning against the opposite wall. Slowly, the wound flushed, a deep, dark crimson flecked with green. In sudden involuntary motion, Jaya stepped back, and the wall parted to let her through. Her chamber beckoned, and she stumbled toward it, filled with horror and guilt. This time, the ship did nothing to belay her mood.

  9.

  Depth ship, orbit: Earth

  “What do you think Jaya’s so afraid of?” Sirru asked.

  Ir Yth evinced bemusement. I do not know.

  “She is a Receiver. She spoke to the ship before; she can do it again. Why did she resist my suggestion that she develop a closer connection with the ship? Why did she attack you? You told me you’d explained everything to her, that she seemed amenable.” He frowned. “Perhaps she doesn’t trust us. After all, we’ve given her no real reason to do so.”

  Why should you wish to go to the trouble of placating her? She is here to serve us, not to be coddled and nursed like a hatchling from a vat.

  “It is a desqusai matter,” Sirru said, surprising himself with his temerity. “It is termed: consideration. I would not expect you to understand.” He regretted his remark instantly. Usually, protected by the scale, this was the kind of thing he might think but would never say. He expected a reprimand for his rudeness to a caste superior, but none was forthcoming—Ir Yth was silent. That was another strange thing to Sirru. In front of Jaya, Ir Yth acted almost deferentially toward him, but there was no reason for her to do so. He found that distinctly unsettling.

  He curled his feet beneath him and settled back on the mat. Delicately, with as much subtlety as he could muster, Sirru probed the air, but he could not detect anything emanating from Ir Yth’s plump figure. Presumably she was wearing scale of her own, or some khaithoi analog; her caste had secrets which were unknown to him, and there was worrying evidence of technology beyond desqusai understanding.

  Sirru could not read Jaya herself, for he did not understand her personal expressives. It would be easier when he learned her verbal tongue and could use it in the usual way to disambiguate the speech that he felt from her. It was a pity that Ir Yth had had so much longer to study human languages. This was the trouble with pheromonally conveyed information: it did not take semantics into consideration, and meaning was often lost in a morass of emotion. Verbal speech was no better: concepts meant different things in different languages. Thus, on Rasasatra, the two forms of speech had evolved together to bring about a more perfect understanding. At this thought, Sirru smiled ruefully to himself. In a caste-riven, hierarchical society, once understanding was achieved, the next urgent problem became the matter of learning how to lie.

  If, as Ir Yth explained, Jaya spoke without knowing that she spoke, then it could account for the odd discrepancies that he could feel from her. For if someone spoke unconsciously, like a child, then, in Sirru’s experience, they often told the truth. Jaya seemed confused, mistrustful, and secretive, but all of these things were to be expected. Apart from that one angry episode, however, he did not get the sense of hostility and resentment that Ir Yth had told him Jaya felt, or her hatred of the ship. The obvious explanation, therefore, was that Ir Yth was lying to him—and, in her khaithoi arrogance, not doing a very good job of it. But why?

  Sirru took care not to reveal any of this. He did his feelings behind the scale, knowing that Ir Yth’s abilities extended only so far. She could not tell precisely what Jaya was thinking, and she could not read Sirru’s mind as long as he kept the scale at maximum. Soon, he knew, the raksasa would rest, and then he would go and see Jaya on hi
s own.

  10.

  Depth ship, orbit: Earth

  Jaya was asleep when Sirru came through the wall. She woke to the sensation of his long fingers shaking her shoulder. He was kneeling by her side, dressed in his customary pale robes. In the half-light, his skin gleamed like the moon on water.

  “Jaya…” he murmured.

  “Sirru?”

  Rolling over, she sat up, drawing her knees against her chest in unconscious defense, ready to strike. The alien made no move toward her, but sat back on his curiously jointed ankles to watch her. No harm, Sirru conveyed. She felt a warmth in the pit of her stomach. Jaya said, too loudly even though she knew he could not understand, “What are you doing here, Sirru? What do you want?”

  No harmTrust/

  “How can I trust you if I don’t know what you want?”

  Very carefully, Sirru slid forward so that he was sitting beside her, leaning against the wall. Jaya gave him a wary look that for once needed no interpretation, and Sirru smiled. His arm hovered over her shoulders; the golden eyes were inches from her own. No harm. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

  “All right. Go on, then. Just don’t try anything funny.” Though she knew that if he had the same talents as Ir Yth, she wouldn’t have much of a chance anyway…

  Reaching up, she took his hand and put it on her shoulder. Slowly, as if reluctant to startle her, Sirru pulled her against him. His left hand slipped beneath her vest to rest against her abdomen. Jaya stiffened, ready to strike, but the touch was impersonal; there was no urgency in it. She tried not to hold her breath. The alien leaned forward so that the side of his throat was touching hers. Jaya squinted, trying to see what he was doing, and suddenly realizing that her teeth were clamped tightly together. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the long curve of his nose; a pensive mouth; a hooded gilt gaze. His skin felt cool and hard, with a flexibility like the surface of horn. His porcupine quills brushed her face. Where his skin touched her own, there was a thin film of moisture. Willing herself into calmness, she relaxed back against him and let his feelings move through her.

  Want? Sirru conveyed.

  Hell, Jaya thought, panicking. I was right after all. Men! She sat up abruptly. The alien drew her carefully back again. There was a prickling of needloss/regret/hurt/something/.

  “Sirru? What’s wrong?”

  Want?belonging/place/loss/

  She twisted round to look at him. He blinked down at her patiently. She’d had this feeling before, but not often. After the ashram burned down—though that had been mingled with an odd, guilty sense of relief. And before that, the countryside: full of rich earth and growing things, heavy spring rain, frogs to play with. Her father’s hut, smelling of smoke and spice. Then the mountains, where she and Kamal had been happy for a while, and last of all the city, Varanasi, though crowded and stinking of petrol and death and the silty reek of the river.

  Her mood met Sirru’s, meshed, was almost understood.

  “You’re homesick? Or do you want to know if I want to go home?”

  She thought, carefully and deliberately, of Kamal and the mountains, and then of Varanasi, the city of light, which she had come to love in spite of it all: the way the light fell across the roofs at dawn; the familiar smell of food and fire and traffic.

  “Yes, I do. I want to go home.” Thank the gods I’ve finally managed to get that across. And then she thought, wondering just how much she and the rest of the world would come to regret it, “Will you come with me?”

  surprisepleasure/success/ and then a strange sense of time flickering by. Soon Ship?/

  She turned her head against his shoulder.

  “Ship? What about the ship?”

  link-speak-bondconnection-ship/

  She thought of the ship, pointing to the walls around her, and remembered pain and decay.

  “Oh, God. I think I hurt it, Sirru. I think I’ve injured the ship.” Fear and guilt flooded through her. “Is the ship all right?” But he did not seem to understand, for his grip on her tightened: comfortsoon home/no harm/. He smelled complex: somehow fresher than the raksasa, but the range of odors was unfamiliar to her.

  Summoning the courage to ask him the question that had been preoccupying her ever since Ir Yth’s arrival, Jaya said, “Sirru? Can you understand me? My people are dying, from a disease. If you can help them…” She tried to picture her hopes in her mind, imagining the little boy in the sewers beneath the hospital, his skin marked with the eerie traces of Selenge. She thought of her release from her illness, and the guilt that she had been so fortunate, when so many others were not. She tried to send the images to Sirru, but he did not seem to understand anything beyond her personal pain. His grip tightened; she felt reassurance seeping into her skin.

  “Can you help us? Sirru, you’ve got to understand me!” She grew rigid with frustration, but he shifted so that his arms were linked around her, murmuring to her in his own soft ambiguous language, and he held her until, against her will and with her still lacking an answer, unconsciousness took her.

  11.

  Depth ship, orbit: Earth

  “I believe I have resolved the difficulty with the Receiver,” Sirru informed Ir Yth, not without a trace of smugness. “She will make the connection with the ship, and then we shall go with her to the planet. I’m sure everything will go smoothly from now on.”

  The raksasa exuded a small bolt of astonishment, closely followed by chagrin, before smothering it beneath a steely control. Sirru noted this with private amusement.

  Without my help?

  “Naturally, without your expert and valued assistance it was extremely difficult,” Sirru said, sending soothing expressives right, left, and center. “But I really felt it would be most inappropriate to disturb your rest for yet another tiresome session. No one could attach any blame to you for that,” he added hastily. “Shall we say it took one desqusai to understand another? I’m sure that in her awe of you, the Receiver became confused, sent out the wrong signals.”

  Ir Yth eyed him suspiciously, but Sirru oozed sincerity. He emitted the subtext inexperienceexcessive enthusiasm/ naivete/which he had been endeavoring to maintain in the presence of Ir Yth ever since his arrival. A sigh whistled through the raksasa’s inverted lips.

  The Core would be most unhappy if anything were to be… misunderstood. Might I remind you of the unfortunate incident on Arakrahali? I understand a temeni contact of yours was the victim—IrEthiverris EsTessekh?

  “That’s correct,” Sirru said warily. Why remind him of Arakrahali at this particular moment? He was certain that Ir Yth was delivering some oblique threat. He would have to make note of it in the next information upload to his First Body, just in case.

  As if she had sensed the thought, Ir Yth said coldly, I suggest you mention Arakrahali in your next report—and mention, too, my concern. The Core would not want to see such a disaster take place again. They might even question the viability of all the desqusai projects, not just this little colony.

  “Surely not!” Despite the suppressants, which clamped down on this agonizing thought, Sirru managed a level of startled shock that surprised even himself. Perhaps, if he ever got back to Rasasatra, he might consider a career on the shadow-stage. He thought back to his interview in the Marginals with EsRavesh: And yet, there has been talk that the desqusai castes are degenerating, their colonies proving unsuitable for sustained development. It would be a pity, if that were so. Your caste remains a valued part of this society. I’m sure your future success with Tekhei will help to redeem desqusai standing in the senses of the higher castes… The khaith’s words had burned themselves into his brain. And yet another mention of Arakrahali…

  Once more, Sirru edged closer to the idea that this was why he had been sent here: to stop his investigations, to get him out of the way. He noticed, then, that these difficult thoughts were becoming a little easier to sustain. His head seemed clearer. What with all the bureaucracy, and the proble
ms with Jaya, he still hadn’t updated his suppressant prescription. It occurred to him that without the rigorous controls of the monitors, this must be the longest he’d ever left it.

  He was about to examine the ramifications of this when Ir Yth said, It is recommended that you leave me to handle the subtle nuances of communication between yourself and this particular branch of your kindred.

  Sirru sent: apologyhumble realization of crassness/.

  The light of suspicion in Ir Yth’s filamented eyes did not diminish, but the raksasa appeared somewhat mollified.

  Very well.

  Sirru said, “And since it appears that the Receiver has no objection to bonding with the ship after all, I’ll see to that now.”

  He inclined his head politely in the face of Ir Yth’s frosty silence, and stepped through the wall.

  12.

  Depth ship, orbit: Earth

  Jaya was by no means sure that she had understood what Sirru was trying to convey. But after her encounter with him, she was aware of a curious connection between them, a blurring of boundaries. She did not know whether she found this reassuring or disquieting. Probably both. The reality of her situation—that, as far as she knew, she alone out of all humankind was to have direct contact with an alien species—was getting too much to bear. She tried to tell Sirru this.

  “It’s the responsibility, you see.” Sitting cross-legged in front of him, she reached out and took hold of his thin hard wrists. She tried to send a sense of weight. “If this all went wrong, it’s my fault, isn’t it?” The hierarchies of caste, which had dictated the course of her life, now seemed to matter so little. “How can I speak for everyone?” I tried that once before, and look what happened. Her father’s body, huddled against the wall; the members of the ashram lying dead; the failed revolution. She must have been radiating guilt and dismay.