Empire of Bones

by Liz Williams

  Do not be concerned, Anarres sent, as forcefully as she could. Please let me through. She took a risk. You know I dislike disobedience!

  The dome cringed. She had never felt a dome experience fear before, but this one was positively flinching with remembered pain. The part of Anarres’ mind that was not preoccupied with simulating EsRavesh gave way to outrage, that the khaith should so mistreat a dwelling. But then a small crack opened in the wall, and there was no time to waste on pity. Anarres pushed Nowhere One swiftly through, and dived into the sanctuary of the root system beyond the Marginals.

  SHE had felt sunlight on the dome of the Marginals, but when they eventually resurfaced, it was dark. It took some time to get their bearings, and when they did, Anarres realized that they were nowhere near the Naturals’ Quarter. They had come up through a seedpod in a park. It had spored in the night, and the air was filled with flying pollen. Choking, Anarres and Nowhere One stumbled down to a nearby pool where the air was clearer.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” the Natural said, batting away a night-bee. “We’d have to come out sooner or later. We don’t have the technology to reanimate IrEthiverris.”

  “What are we going to do?” Anarres asked. “Could we steal something?”

  “We’re going to have to be very careful where we go and who we speak to,” Nowhere One said. “I’m hoping that EsRavesh will assume we’ve been devoured by his plant, but if he finds out that we’ve escaped…He’ll already have put a watch on your family.”

  Anarres sat up straighter. “But I know who will help us. They’re probably under surveillance too, but if we can get a message to them and arrange to meet—”

  “Who?” Nowhere One asked, but she could see the realization in his eyes.

  “The EsMoyshekhali. Sirru’s family.”

  4.

  Yamunotri, Himalaya

  The network was starting to function. Sirru sat cross-legged by the small black pool and listened to what it had to tell him. He was lost in other people’s lives: images, sensations, thoughts. Occasionally he tested the taste of a word on his tongue. Much of what he learned surprised him, and much of it saddened. Pain lanced down the viral lines like lightning down a kite string: he rerouted it into his own nerves, learning what it was to hurt in the manner of these new kindred. It was too soon for the embryonic network to summon a depth ship; he did not want to impose too great a strain upon his new communications system. Instead he sent his single message of instruction: Wait. Listen to what I tell you. The time is nearly here.

  A mosquito hummed in from the bushes and settled on his hand, but he did not notice. It penetrated the thin skin on the inside of his wrist, sipped alien blood for a moment before realizing its mistake, then whirred away. Part of Sirru went with it. Distinctions which separated him from the world ceased to be meaningful. There was no insideoutside/ anymore, only the network of virally transformed consciousness which was slowly beginning to grow.

  He reviewed his nexi. There were now over four hundred: the virus was spreading fast, finding willing recipients and donors every hour. By and large, the nexi were all adult; the very young and the very old, being largely if not entirely free from sexual activity, remained untouched. And this was just as well, for Sirru did not yet know how fragile these new desqusai would prove. Generally, the infants of his own people bore such communication best when they were very young: babies who did not yet have the interference of language standing in their way and whose needs and desires might be easily met.

  From the symptoms he had observed of those around him, it would not be too long before the first infected nexi passed into the initial stages of coma, and then it would be down to himself and Jaya—also a nexus, but sufficiently revised during her sojourn on the ship—to coordinate the network. At some point, Sirru supposed, he was going to have to explain this to her. He told himself that it would be better to wait to do this until he had a greater linguistic grasp, but he knew, deep down in the wells of his conscience, that he was afraid of what Jaya might say at being so used.

  The thought that it might not be acceptable to employ people involuntarily in this manner was also a new concept to Sirru. He had been created for certain tasks, he reminded himself uncomfortably, like all the desqusai, but he had been accustomed to the idea from his Making, whereas these people had not. Only the thought that he might, ultimately, be able to save their lives and his own prevented the voice of his conscience from becoming overwhelming.

  He blinked. A new voice had entered the fray, cutting through the mélange of sounds and impressions like ice water.

  What are you?Sirru asked, surprised.

  And the voice replied, I am the seed.

  5.

  Varanasi

  “You see, Amir, the situation is really very simple,” Tokai remarked. Amir Anand turned to stare at him, and Tokai reflected once again that the man did not look well. The handsome face was haggard, stripped down to the lean blades of cheekbone and the fierce arch of brow. His eyes seemed paler than ever, the color of a too-hot sky. It would be inconvenient if Anand fell sick, Tokai thought. Aloud, he said, “By the way, are you all right? It seems to me that you are not quite well.”

  “I’m perfectly all right,” Anand snapped, and Tokai saw that he had once again wounded the man’s pride. “Merely the heat. I hate this stinking city.” He prowled across to the window and stared out across the wasteland of Varanasi’s industrial estate to where the tower of the Temple of Durga punctuated the horizon like a needle pointing to Heaven. “I’ll be glad when we return to Khokandra.”

  “Which will be very soon,” Tokai reminded him, soothingly. “We head back tonight, once Ir Yth has finished her various preparations. She claims to be feeling the heat, too.”

  “Those preparations,” Anand said, eyes narrowing. “What is she doing, exactly?”

  “I am not entirely sure. Whatever it is, we may be sure that it is not what she says she is doing. That is what I meant when I said that the situation was simple. Ir Yth informs us, and every time she does so, she lies. That removes one more option from the equation.”

  Anand stared at him in obvious dismay. He shook his head, like a dog bothered by flies. Tokai watched him, wondering. He had seen Anand make this gesture several times over the last few days, as if trying to clear his head. Anand said with cold politeness, “That’s a big risk to take, Shri Tokai.”

  “I don’t think so. Remember, Ir Yth has come to us for help. This suggests that she does not possess extensive resources of her own. And indeed, I have seen no evidence that there are any resources other than Ir Yth’s own person. No landing craft, no weapons, no communications equipment…And some very reliable sources inform me that the great vessel that was orbiting the Earth has now decayed like a fallen leaf and blown away on the winds from the sun. I do not think, Anand, that it is Ir Yth who has the advantage here.”

  He could see that Anand was dying to ask him what his plans were, but he merely waved a hand in a dismissal that the butcher-prince had no option but to accept. “Go now. Prepare for our return to my palace.” He pretended not to see the sour glance that Anand gave him on his way out the door, but simply sat and smiled, waiting for Ir Yth’s latest news.

  6.

  Khaikurriyë

  Anarres hovered at the edges of the chamber, watching nervously as Sirru’s siblings fiddled with the manifold mesh.

  “I’m still amazed,” Sirru’s sister Issari said, looking askance at Anarres. “You persuaded our own house to give us your message? From a pod in the park? I didn’t even know domes could talk to each other.” She glanced across at the neat hole in the floor through which Anarres and Nowhere One had so recently appeared. “I hope you haven’t disturbed the house roots.” Her tone was disapproving. “And you say that my brother’s in some kind of trouble? I mean, when that colony of IrEthiverris’ started to go wrong, of course everyone was horrified, but I never thought—”

  “Did you know IrEthiverris?”
Anarres asked, curiously.

  “Yes, of course I knew Verris. He was one of Sirru’s greatest friends. I never thought I’d see the day when we’d be illegally reviving him in the living area. How did your”—she frowned at the shabby figure of Nowhere One—“friend come to know him?”

  Nowhere One hastened to explain. “When I became a Natural, I started thinking about the desqusai—why so many of the caste became Naturals. Was it some inherent tendency? I wondered. Or could it be that someone wants us to break the rules—so that we can be cast out and scapegoated? Once I’d started thinking along those lines, I began to look more closely into desqusai affairs. And then I found out about the tragedy of Arakrahali. I want to talk to IrEthiverris—find out how much information was downloaded into his First Body.”

  He stepped back from the mesh, which was beginning to glow.

  “Well, this is the moment of truth. Let’s see if IrEthiverris can speak for himself.”

  The glow deepened…Anarres and the EsMoyshekhali held their breath. Lights flickered over the surface of the manifold container. The manifold peeled back and a nanofilament grid began to form in the air above it. Anarres watched as muscle and sinew and bone began to be reconstructed along the grid. In a few moments, it was complete. A spindly form stood wild-eyed before them, quills bristling.

  “Where am I?” asked IrEthiverris EsTessekh.

  7.

  Yamunotri, Himalaya

  Sirru was sitting so still that at first Jaya did not see him. He gradually resolved out of the background, the shadows of the bamboo striping his skin. She breathed a sigh of relief at his emergence. She had not been able to find him all day, and was beginning to fear that he might have upped and left altogether. But no, it seemed that he had merely chosen to make himself invisible. This was not totally reassuring; if he chose to go, she was not only unlikely to be able to prevent him, but might not even notice. His eyes were open, but there was no sign that he was aware of her presence. Stifling the urge to speak, Jaya sat down opposite him and waited.

  At last, Sirru turned to her and said, “Jaya? Change is coming.”

  The words were so unexpected that for a moment she didn’t understand him. He had spoken in Hindustani, a little slurred, but perfectly intelligible.

  “Sirru! Can you understand me?”

  “Little.” That was in English, which Jaya read and understood, but could not speak well.

  “Please—the first language you used. How? I mean, how are you learning my language?”

  “Through illness. Not through pain.”

  “I don’t understand.” Then she thought uneasily of Rajira and Halil. Did you teach them, Sirru, through pain?

  “Illness connects. Everything wrong here. Here, on this world, illness brings pain, ending. This is not purpose. I have to make things right.” His speech was peculiar: the words were the right ones, and his pronunciation was adequate, but the rhythm of the speech was strange. He ran words together, or left pauses where none should have been. Jaya remembered the voice of the ship, speaking in her head throughout her life, and the worsening sicknesses which no one could understand or cure. Illness connects.

  “Have you brought an illness here?”

  “Many. When project first began, írRas started usual virus lines. But wrong mutations. Tekhein desqusai have not developed correctly; error in gene program, perhaps. Don’t know. This must be corrected.”

  “You said—you told me in Varanasi, at the temple—that we are to be harvested.”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Abilities must be harvested. Viral lines must be reformed if development is to continue.”

  “I don’t understand. Do you mean people will have to die?”

  “No, not die. Harvested. Redeveloped.”

  Jaya couldn’t help feeling that this sounded worse.

  “In this world, to harvest means to—to reap. To kill.”

  “But you have fruit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Harvesting fruit does not kill tree.”

  “No, but—”

  “I did not come here to kill,” Sirru said patiently. “Only to gather in the ones who could be made ready. Others will not be harmed.”

  “Sirru, what have you done? What’s happening to Rajira? And Halil?”

  “Rajira is a nexus.”

  “A nexus?”

  “A node for communication web. I began this, through sexual transmission with her. By blood, with the child. Perhaps wrong method.” He frowned, a startlingly human gesture.

  “Almost certainly the wrong method!”

  “With you”—and here he gave her a long, elliptical look, as if he was unsure as to how the words might be received—“with you, your genetic mutation was redeveloped by ship. Ship made you what you are now. A nexus, but the first. The strongest. The one who will not go under the sleep when network comes on-line.”

  Jaya stared at him. “What have you turned me into, Sirru? Some kind of transmitter?”

  She could hear something cold running beneath the steely calmness in her voice. Sirru said, with resignation, “This is what I came here to do. Blame me if you must. Since we are stranded, I have had new ideas. New concepts, understanding through the viral lines. I know you think what I do is not right. But it is what I have been created to do. I know about free will. But all will starts from concepts that are given. I do not have free will as you would like to think it, and neither do you. You could not teach me to be human-desqusai, Tekhein. I am not.” He stared at her gravely, letting his words sink in. “This thing I have done, this network, is common means of communication. Restructuring must begin with this. With desqusai, different castes. Hierarchies. Some are suited for communication. Some for other tasks, like you. You are a Receiver, a ship-speaker, foremost. The first, here, but there will be others.”

  Wryly, Jaya said, “That’s just as well. I don’t like being special.”

  “You are not special,” Sirru replied. “Others with same genes. You are merely first.”

  “You mentioned a caste system.” Whatever it is, Jaya thought ruefully, somehow you’ve always heard it all before. “Based on what? On—on abilities?”

  “On the—the diseases that are best for the person,” Sirru said. Jaya sat back on her heels and looked at him. No harm. And like all colonizers, he really does think he’s here to help. Maybe I should just kill him now, but it’s too late, isn’t it? Whatever he’s done has taken root and taken hold. Sexual transmission—how many people has Rajira infected? How long did it take for AIDS to take hold?

  “I do not know if I have done the right thing,” Sirru said, and she looked up sharply at the bewilderment in his voice. It was so familiar. “I only did what seemed right at the time. If I don’t do it, then I think we might all end now, Jaya.” And then, in a few words, he explained exactly what Ir Yth had been plotting.

  Jaya stared at him in horror. “We have to find her. I’m wondering now whether we should ever have left Varanasi.”

  “Ir Yth needs help. She cannot act alone. I know, now,” Sirru said, and his expression became curiously abstracted. “I know what is happening.”

  “How?”

  “Your Second Body—I can hear her thoughts. She is now a nexus. And so is the man called Amir Anand.”

  8.

  Khokandra Palace

  Throughout the short journey back to Khokandra, Kharishma complained. She did not like the dust, or the heat, or the flies, and she was increasingly worried about Anand. He was as attentive as ever, but she got the feeling that he’d only agreed to take her along to keep her quiet. She sat sulkily in the back of the ATV with a scarf wrapped over her face.

  “One would think you’d never grown up in Bharat, young lady. Why don’t you move to Los Angeles, if you don’t like it,” Tokai said over his shoulder. It was the only thing he’d said to her all morning.

  “This is my home,” Kharishma said, with as much dignity as she could m
uster. Beside her, Ir Yth gave her a glance that might have almost been one of sympathy. The raksasa’s plump face was pale and moist, and her gilded eyes were hollowed. Her arms were folded protectively around herself in a complex, jointed mass, like a dead spider.

  When will we reach the destination? Ir Yth’s voice echoed unhappily in Kharishnia’s mind, and the actress had to stifle a giggle. How much farther, Daddy? Are we there yet? Aloud she said, “Not long. That’s right, isn’t it, darling? We’ll soon be there.”

  “Another hour,” Anand said, then swerved to avoid a pothole, bouncing the occupants of the ATV into the air. Ir Yth’s face seemed to close in upon itself like a sour fruit, and Kharishma stifled a sigh. The long journey had taken its toll—she felt flushed and feverish, and her head was beginning to ache with a slow, dull pound that echoed the beat of her heart.

  To take her mind off the jolting vehicle, Kharishma closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat, imagining the demise of Jaya Nihalani. It had to be quick, she told herself. She’d been in too many films where the villain—not that Kharishma considered herself to be playing that role here, of course—took a leisurely few minutes to explain to the hero exactly why he was about to die, and how. Kharishma wanted no such chance of escape given to Jaya. A bullet in the back of the head and a swift, merciful death. She wasn’t a sadist, after all. But it was becoming increasingly clear to Kharishma that if Jaya lived, then she could not. They were like two forces which couldn’t occupy the same space without mutual destruction.

  Kharishma’s imagination spun away, traveling down long, strange roads, but she slowly became aware that Ir Yth was watching her with an unwavering, unreadable gaze.

  What are you doing? the raksasa asked, suspiciously.

  “I’m thinking.”

  There are echoes in your head!

  Kharishma turned on Ir Yth with such sudden fury that the raksasa’s eyes widened in alarm.