Empire of Bones

by Liz Williams

  “Yes, it is.” She glanced uneasily behind her, somehow expecting to see the figure of Amir Anand step over the ridge, gun in hand, but the land was silent and nothing moved.

  “Where now?” Sirru spoke in a thin, distant voice, as if his attention lay elsewhere entirely.

  Jaya shouldered the gun to a more comfortable position and Sirru did the same, mirroring her with unnerving precision.

  “There’s a pass leading up through the Yamara. Comes out into Shiringri Valley.” She was speaking more to herself than to Sirru, reminding herself of the way, but the alien turned and began to stroll along the shore. She felt like shouting at him, Don’t you realize the danger we’re in? Don’t you care?—but she had the feeling that Sirru was following a wholly different agenda. Frustrated, she headed after him.

  She could see a single star, glowing above the faraway peaks of Nanda Devi. It was too bright for an ordinary star; it was undoubtedly a planet. The dusk that surrounded her seemed suddenly immense, as though she were standing above the universe itself. The lake that lay a short distance away was as vast as an ocean, and she could almost hear the dead as they whispered beneath its waters. Imagination, she told herself impatiently, it’s running away with you—but Kamal seemed suddenly very close. She could feel him walking by her side, and though she knew it had to be nothing more than weariness and grieving, she did not dare turn her head.

  Sirru stopped and faced her, and his eyes were yellow in the twilight. She didn’t know what to think anymore. She strode past him, leaving the ghosts behind, and stopped in dismay—the pass that led up into the Yamara was no longer there. The narrow fissure between the rocks was blocked by a fall of boulders and shale: a landslide from high on the cliff, too steep to climb. Nonetheless, a cursing Jaya started up the slope, but the alien pulled her back.

  “You should not. Not safe.”

  “Hell, Sirru…”Her voice was no more than a whisper as she realized that she had trapped them both. The only way out was back, or across the cold dark waters of the lake. But it was too far to swim—they’d freeze in minutes.

  “We’ll have to go back.” Make for the path into the valley, and wait. I’ll shoot whoever comes over the ridge. Once morning comes… She shivered, thinking of the cold night ahead. Patiently, Sirru said, “Then we will go back.”

  As they were returning down the shore path, Jaya stumbled, and the alien took her arm. She leaned against him. Thoughts spiraled through her tired mind: Is this the right thing to do? Should I turn him over to Anand now?… Then there was a pincer grip around her arm and she was thrown back against the rocks. She gave a small, startled cry, and a long hand closed over her mouth. Sirru whispered, “Be quiet. Up there, on the ridge.”

  “Where? I can’t see, Sirru, it’s too dark…”she said, her suspicions about his night vision finally confirmed. “Can you see who it is?”

  “Not see. Too far away, and only for a moment. But it is Anand.”

  Jaya thought so, too. She was halfway in his head, after all, and the sudden glitter before her sight was the starlight on the waters of the lake, seen from above. She could feel the past closing around her and cutting her off. Anand, we helped to make one another what we are. And you and I are not finished with each other yet. Her fingers closed around the gun, tucking it tightly against her side.

  “Nihalani!” Amir Anand’s voice echoed back from the mountain wall, and inside her mind. What does he expect me to do, shout back? “Listen to me. Your people are dead. You’ve nowhere left to go. You’re protecting something that will be the ruin of us all. If you give the alien up, I’ll let you go free.” Jaya said nothing. The hard edge of Sirru’s body was pressed against her own between the protection offered by the rocks.

  “What will you do?” the alien said, with soft and careful neutrality.

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve made my decision. I’m staying with you.”

  She could hear Anand slithering down the shale bank, and risked a shot. It ricocheted away into silence. Then a bullet whined away from the rock beside her, splintering the granite into sharp shards. She threw herself back, wriggled along the stones to the dubious safety of the escarpment edge. For all his threats, she thought, he was in the same position she was. He couldn’t see her any more than she could see him, though they were halfway inside one another’s minds. Then Anand’s voice said within her head, Do as I tell you. Surrender the alien, before he destroys everything we know.

  And Jaya replied with silent anger, But is that even worth preserving?

  He has lied to you. I am sure of this. Just as the other one did.

  Jaya said, Maybe he has. But I do not think that he intended to lie, and Ir Yth did. That is the difference.

  She turned to Sirru, but the alien was gone.

  Then, The networks coming on-line, Sirru’s voice said clearly, and she understood with the rush of his thoughts that the death of one of them could now throw the entire network off track, shatter the minds of the nexi, like crashing a computer program. Sirru was bending, reaching for the automatic rifle just as Anand swung around. She could hear the alien’s thought: If I kill Anand, the network could be damageddeath at the point of activation/a failed nexus I everything will be ruined/but if not, Jaya will die/.

  Doubting whether Sirru had ever fired a gun in his life, she reached inside her pocket. She had first formed the plan some time ago, on realizing that she and Anand shared thoughts, but she had hoped not to use it. There was too much of a risk that it might not work—but then, conjuring was all about risks and illusion.

  The trick would be to shut enough of herself off that Anand could not hear her thoughts. The tranquilizers that she had palmed in the hospital all those many weeks ago nested in a plastic wrap in her pocket. Swiftly, deliberately focusing on the scene before her, she swallowed three of the pills. They worked fast. A moment later, her vision blurred. She caught Anand’s confusion as her consciousness started to slow down and her thoughts become muzzy. She slid the gun down by her side, her finger on the trigger. The rocks were sharp beneath her, and she took the bag of goat’s blood from her jacket and punctured it with one of them, her hand trembling under the drug. Have I overdone the damn pills? She could no longer feel Anand: the tranquilizers were working, shutting him off. The blood seeped down her face, wet and thick. She lay still, her eyes half closed, her face and side as bloody as Durga’s own. She willed her mind into stillness.

  “Nihalani!” Anand’s voice was thick, the cultured accent stripped away. He shook his head as though trying to clear it. She could just see him, standing amongst the rocks above her. She did not yet have a clear shot. Torchlight glinted from the barrel of the AK47. She heard the intake of his breath as he saw her below him: crumpled, bloody, unmoving. The shock of seeing her below him, wounded or dead, was enough; all the conjuror needed was a second or two to make the illusion complete. He leaned around the corner of the rock to get a better look. She saw his shoulders slump a little, relaxing. She heard the click as he shot the bolt down on the gun, making sure, but she was already bringing up her gun. The tranquilizers made it hard, but she was used to fighting her body. Her finger squeezed the trigger.

  The shot was the loudest thing in the world. Amir was still standing over her, high on the rock, and her first stupid thought was: Why, he’s got married. There was a crimson tear between his eyes. His mouth was open slightly with surprise, and then he fell and the world changed. Then, for a fraction of a second, Jaya was ripped apart. The network had come online. She was everywhere at once again: she was watching from Sirru’s eyes down the barrel of the rifle. She was Rajira and Halil, relaying instructions down the complex network of an alien virus. Jaya followed the viral line down through a hundred minds; if not for the tranquilizers, she realized with horror, she might have gone mad. She sensed Anand’s consciousness as it fled away, snapped by death but still somehow present, receding fast and with a terrified sense of exhilarated freedom.

  The linked net
work was reaching out, sending messages across a relay so vast and alien that Jaya could not comprehend it. She could see her own sprawled form: Sirru’s viewpoint. He had reached the rim of rock where Anand’s body lay. And then another perspective: seeing a frozen tableau of Sirru’s small figure above the shore. Who’s that? Whoever it was had to be standing in the middle of the lake. Startled, she scrambled to the rim and looked out over the dark surface. Something was coming across the water, gliding like a huge, unfurling sail.

  An unfamiliar voice, directly overhead, said startlingly loud inside her mind, ReceivingCommunication network now on-line/Please respond/.

  But something was already replying. A depth ship, out near somewhere named Zhei Eren. A torrent of information flooded through Jaya’s head, too much to bear, but the curling thing above her picked it up and redistributed it calmly throughout the network.

  First Stage is confirmedpreparing to enter system orbit/ship’s Receiver prepare/

  Jaya was flung back into the confines of her own head, but not out of the link. She could still hear the others, but information was relayed around her, sidelining her so that she could concentrate on the ship. She knelt in the dust, shaking, covered with drying blood. Sirru dropped the rifle and crouched by her side.

  “Jaya? Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head.

  “The network is on-line. A ship is coming. And your child is safe.”

  “What?” She gazed at him wonderingly, and he reached out and gathered her against the cold folds of his robe. Something flickered over her shoulders; she could see light from the corner of her eye. Into her ear, Sirru murmured, “Jaya? Speak to your child, and it will speak to the depth ship.”

  “Speak to it? What is it?”

  “It is the seed, what else? The child of the ship, and of your own self. It has grown in the cold. Listen, and speak. That is what you have been designed to do, Jaya.” His voice was gentle, as always, but beneath it she heard the unmistakable note of warning. You have no choice anymore. The world is a different place from now on. For both of us. For everyone.

  “I’ll try.” Jaya shut her eyes and listened. It was as though a door opened in her mind. The well of the stars lay beneath and a god’s voice said,

  Maintaining orbit.

  It was not the voice from her childhood, the first and oldest ship of the Tekhein system. This ship was young by comparison, and its voice was green and glowing.

  “What shall I say?” Jaya whispered, and Sirru said, “Tell it that everything is well. That project development is proceeding normally, as planned.”

  TEKHEI

  1.

  Depth ship, Tekhei

  The warm walls of the ship pulsed with life beneath Jaya’s hands. It was in low orbit now, and Earth filled the viewing screen, Bharat on nightside, starred with veins of lights. She had been here for almost a month. Oracle, magician, goddess, terrorist, and now envoy to the stars. We are many things, we dalit. She had passed through so many transformations that surely, she believed, one more wouldn’t hurt.

  For now, like everyone else on Earth, she was desqusai. The visitors, themselves a caste of the írRas-desqusai, seemed pleased. It’s becoming a Tekhein ship now, they said of her improbable daughter, the seed, bonding to Jaya and to Earth before sailing out into who knew where to found a new colony. Welcome to the fold. Negotiations were opening up with the major pharmaceutical corporations. The visitors were overriding governments with airy insouciance. Jaya increasingly heard the name of Naran Tokai. Everyone was waiting for the desqusai overseer, one EsMirhei.

  Yet she was not only an envoy now. She was a mother, parent to a—what, exactly? She placed her hands flat on the viewing screen and leaned her head against its invisible surface, feeling once more as though she was standing with nothing between her and empty space. At the very corner of the screen, she could see the fold of sail that was the seed floating serenely in the darkness. She had seen the seed’s face only once. After the gun battle at the lake, she had gazed wonderingly up to see it hovering above her. The seed’s arms were crossed over her breast; fierceness was fading from a face that was the image of Jaya’s own. Pale hair streamed down the seed’s back, but her skin was a wan, luminous green and her torso terminated in a series of complex folds, extending out from hips and shoulder blades to form an undulating mass of material, sails rather than wings.

  Parent! Are you safe? Are you harmed? the seed had demanded back there on the shore of the lake. Jaya had quickly replied that all was well. The emotions emanating from the seed had been flayed and raw and needy, the only way in which she resembled a child.

  Is it time to go? Please?/Atmosphere—I cannot—/

  Sirru had stepped in at that point, directing the pod down from the depth ship. He had gently, but firmly, pushed aside Jaya’s pleas that they go back down to the fort first, give Rakh and any other of the dead a decent burial, see to Rajira and Halil.

  “We don’t have time. The seed needs to get above atmosphere, and I don’t think she’ll go unless you go with her.” With the unseen network now on-line, his spoken speech had at last become wholly fluent.

  “I can’t just leave them, Sirru. What about Rajira? What about Halil?” she’d asked frantically, but the alien had only responded soothingly, “They will be all right; don’t worry. Everything is under control now.”

  She had not found that reassuring. She was going to argue further, but then she’d looked up to where the seed’s sails were fluttering in distress.

  “All right. I’ll go up with her. But then, let me come back, see that the people we’ve left are all right.” She’d emphasized the “we,” but she did not think Sirru was listening. And she’d wondered how much any of them would really matter to him now that they had served his purposes.

  Sirru had agreed, but once they were in space and on the newly arrived depth ship, Jaya had been sucked into a seemingly endless bustle of conferences and tests and meetings with her strange new kindred. The only spare time she had was spent sleeping, or standing for a few minutes by the viewport while the seed drifted alongside, her hands pressed against the invisibility of the screen like a young seal alongside a boat. They spoke, mind to mind, Jaya teaching the seed everything she knew about the world below. When it is time for you to begin a new world, remember this. You may need this knowledge. And the seed had been totally compliant, drinking in information with all the eagerness of the young. But the seed’s face was growing less human by the day, as though it was an effort to sustain it under the onslaught of the immense genetic changes taking place within, and what Jaya felt for her was responsibility and concern, not the love that she believed she should have felt for her daughter. Or even the affection that she had, come to that, felt for Halil.

  At that thought, she experienced a measure of relief: she had spoken to both Halil and Rajira, now part of the new network. They were excited, and scared, and being well looked after as a crucial part of a new society. But would that society really be an improvement on the last? Jaya wondered. The desqusai seemed benign enough, but her relationship with Ir Yth hadn’t exactly given her a high opinion of the khaithoi. She recalled Sirru’s explanation of what was in store for Earth.

  “Tekhei is in such a mess, Jaya. All these conflicts, these wars based on nothing more than aggression and territorialism—”

  “You’re a fine one to talk! What about the khaithoi’s attempt at genocide?”

  “Don’t worry, Jaya. Everything’s going to be sorted out. No more wars, no more damaging diseases. The caste system will be dismantled. And we’ll make sure the problems with the environment are put to rights.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Jaya had said, skeptically.

  “Don’t you believe me?” He’d looked a little hurt.

  “Oh, I believe you, Sirru.” She’d reached out and touched his arm. “It’s just—will you make the trains run on time, as well?”

  He’d frowned. “Transport should be the least of your wo
rries.”

  There were some metaphors that emotional speech left untouched, Jaya had reflected. Then she’d smiled and said, “I just mean that there will be a price, Sirru. Very few things come free. You know, there is a belief in my country that there are four ages of human existence, or yugas. And people say that these are the Kali-yuga, the last and darkest days. It does not make me very hopeful.”

  “Neither you nor I can say if that belief is true, Jaya. But I can tell you this—there will be a price.”

  “Do you think this is the right thing to do, Sirru? To come to other worlds, take them over without so much as a by-your-leave? I know you say we are your kindred, but that doesn’t mean a lot to us, you know. A lot of folk are going to think that you’re here to exploit the planet.”

  “I know. But colonization is what we do. The drive behind our society is to expand always, to increase our cultural order. It is not economic—it is an overpowering sense of social duty. It is dharma.”

  The familiar word had startled her, coming from alien lips. It seemed Sirru had learned something of her culture, at least. After that conversation, she had not felt quite so misunderstood. Not all the old guard were gone, either: she had spoken also with Shiv Sakai, himself now a part of the network. She didn’t dare ask how he’d managed that, but he seemed to be in his element. And Rakh, he had told her, now lay beside his brother on the shores of the lake, in peace at last. Jaya still grieved, but at least Rakh hadn’t been left to lie on the stony hillside for the vultures and kites. The dead were always forgotten in the midst of the making of history; Jaya was determined that this would not happen to Rakh.

  “Jaya?” Someone placed a bony hand on her shoulder, calling her back to the present. She came across to join the írRas: her own kind, or so they kept telling her. Everyone was very friendly, evidently anxious to make the Tekhein kindred feel less like poor relations. The visitors conversed in whispering, sibilant voices, their quills rattling like the wind in bamboo, sending careful modulations of emotion across the air. The scale nano-armor that they had given her felt cool against Jaya’s skin, and it sealed her off from their emotions. Unfortunately, she thought, it did not protect her from her own. Among the desqusai, it was difficult to pick out Sirru. They all looked alike to Jaya: tall, thin, pale, golden-eyed. This inability to recognize him made her feel sad, and somehow guilty.