It unfurls its broken fingers with its other hand and examines the keeper it stole. Inside the optic, thousands of compressed recordings tagged wraith_construct.
“Don’t,” Century says, but makes no move to stop it. “You’ll only hurt yourself, Mere.”
Mere downloads the recordings.
V.
A crustacean guard drags Mere’s limp body from the surgical pods, where it was once more tested for pain tolerance (high) and fitted with a restraint collar beneath its throat-skin so it will not escape again (fourth time, the keepers say, disapproving).
“Why do you run?” the guard asks as Mere’s eyes open. “There is nowhere to go. Do you like being hurt?”
Mere hisses at the guard, always the one to find it. “Why do you stay?”
“There is no choice,” says the guard, quiet.
“I will make choice,” Mere says.
The wraith is put in stasis.
* * * *
Dozens of near-identical recordings:
Mere fulfills its duty as executioner.
It is taken to a containment chamber of sterile walls and faceless technicians. Its memory is selectively culled so it no longer remembers the details of the ones it has killed.
Sometimes, the wraith fights. Dead technicians are easy to replace.
But even technology fails. Mere takes advantage of the blocks in the feeds over the pool and slices open its arm to write on its bones; the flesh glues together before the technicians focus the light instruments into its head.
(The keepers hum interest to each other: Why does the wraith care about the names of the dead? Where is the fault in its programming?)
The keepers cannot find the anomaly.
* * * *
It has not attempted to flee in two cycles, so it is given privileges and allowed to wander the cityskin. It seeks out the Arbiter’s consorts, confined in luxury and pain. Zarrow and Jhijen, the newest consorts who still keep hold of their names, welcome Mere. It basks in attention and conversation. Zarrow teaches it laughter. Jhijen invites desire; Mere can experience pleasure as much as pain. Mere could have picked from any number of genders, but it does not have an interest in the choices, so it remains neutral, comfortable with its pronouns. Jhijen and Zarrow always respect its choice, as it does theirs, when their genders change like the fluid motions of a dance.
(Mere thinks, the keepers note. It thinks of the consorts as friend.)
There is no timestamp to show when Zarrow and Jhijen disappeared.
* * * *
The she bound in the pool looks like Zarrow.
“Who are you?” Mere whispers.
“. . . and thus the heavens are cleansed anew,” says the Arbiter.
Mere does not kill the she.
The keepers hastily feed a loop of crafted images into the broadcast so the universe watching will never know the wraith’s hesitation. The Courts of Tranquility see what is expected; polite applause follows.
Obey, the keepers send to its processor.
Mere shakes its head, snips the fibrous chains, and lifts the she from the water. “It will not kill this one. The she has committed no crime.”
The she that looks like Zarrow brushes her fingers along its cheek. “I’ll remember you.”
The Arbiter’s eyes burn with fury. “The she is an insurgent who disobeys the Six Suns.”
Mere laughs at the Arbiter. “So do I.”
The restraint collar activates and crumples Mere on the edge of the pool. The consorts lift the she’s shallow-breath body and carry her off; her true death will be private. Mere cannot stop it.
Mere hisses in pain as the Arbiter watches. It lifts its arm, shaking, and digs its knife-fingers into its throat. Blood and fluids drip into the pool as Mere cuts out the collar piece by piece.
The Arbiter backs away, a step shy of haste.
Mere’s body slides over the side, into the water. It floats there as its skin regrows and the crustacean guards come to drag it away.
All the Arbiter’s consorts are replaced and the wraith’s privileges are revoked. The keepers implant a block in its neural protocols that will never allow Mere to speak as an “I” again.
* * * *
In its stasis chamber, Mere scrapes sharp fingers against the wall, which throbs and erases each mark; still Mere tries to carve the names of the dead, transcribe them from its raw bones before the keepers or the security drones stop it.
VI.
Mere crushes the remains of the keeper’s optic and stands, shivering. There are many, many more files. It deletes them.
It looks at Century.
Century rubs beneath her quicksilver eyes. “When I gave you to the Blue Sun Lord, a final gift to seal our peace treaty, I couldn’t take you back.” She turns away. “The wolflord was working on a way to unbind you. I refused. I do not wish to see war again.”
Mere wipes the keeper’s fluids from its hands. Bones have mended and the eel-ship has washed away the blood on the floor. “How soon before we are found?”
She shrugs. “We will find Rebirth first. We will finish this.”
* * * *
After it asks and receives permission from the ship, Mere etches all the names of the dead into the eel’s rib bones. The ship promises to remember them.
Mere murmurs its thanks.
And you? the ship asks. What would you like to be remembered as?
Mere hesitates. Of the possibilities it might choose from, it does not want to be: executioner, killer, weapon. But what else does it deserve?
“A wraith.”
Mere does not know what else it should say.
VII.
Li Sin (revolutionary): a neutrois poet whose work is known for biting wit, political critique, and transcendent beauty. No records can be found on Li Sin’s birthplace or their death. The poet stopped writing and disappeared after challenging the Gray Sun Lord in the Year of Unpraised Night 2984; the Gray Sun slumbers in the Arora Nebula, undisturbed and unresponsive since.
The ship drops from subspace over planetary designation Z1-479-X: Rebirth.
Mere peers through the ship’s gills at the blue-green-white sphere. It is devoid of cityskin; no metal-glass veins or infrastructure rising to the sky. Mere has never seen a world like this.
“I never thought I would see it again,” Century says. Her voice catches like skin on a metal burr. “Come.”
Mere says goodbye to the ship.
Farewell, friend, says the eel-ship.
They take a shuttle with two life-pods down to the surface.
* * * *
Kitshan Zu (warship pilot): Zu’s ship, Forever Brightness of the Sun, was killed in battle and disconnected its pilot prior to its destruction. Zu was comatose in an Olinara V field hospital until his disappearance following the visitation of the Violet Sun a cycle later. The ex-pilot’s whereabouts and fate are unknown.
* * * *
The night sky froths with clouds. Mere marvels at the prickly moss webbing the stony ground and the kiss of damp air against its body. This world is unshaped and wild, virile with flora and fauna it does not recognize from the Principality’s records. It has never seen so much uncultivated wilderness, even in holos. Field and forest pass, and still the map leads Century forward.
They landed in a dry canyon and followed the she’s implanted map.
They find a river, unsanctified and alive, bubbling past without notice. Mere stands transfixed. It wants to touch the water’s delicate skin but does not feel worthy.
This world cannot know its presence long. Mere yearns to stay, to wander the wonders it has only glimpsed on this planet. But it is a taint, a cultured, weaponized stain from the Principality, and it does not belong. It will take the shuttle and let the Arbiter chase it to the universe’s birthing place, so long as no harm comes to this world or any other.
“Here,” Century calls. In a clearing ringed in living walls of flowers, Century stands motionless in raw, rich soil. “Can you feel
it?”
Mere shuts its eyes and breathes in. Its skin and circuitry hum with power. “What is it?”
“Life. Potential.” A sigh. “The world welcomes us all. I remember . . . I remember. I was born here. That is how I know it, why it haunts my bones.”
Mere tilts its head. “What now?”
“Give the ones we carry rest. Perhaps they too will be reborn. Our part is done.”
Mere slits its abdomen pouch and lets the pebbled souls fall loose into the ground. The earth shifts and closes gently over each one.
Energy it cannot name loops through Mere—the world’s fingers caressing its mind.
BE WELL.
Wordless, an impression sweeps through Mere: the dawn kissing the earth, the souls wrapped in soil released from their pebbled shells crafted by the pool. When the sun rises, all will be complete. The dead will find their afterlives or their rebirth.
Century removes her armor piece by piece and runs her fingers along her scarred scalp. “Will you kill me now, wraith? That is your purpose. It is . . . what I deserve.”
Mere has never been given choice. It has seen the wolflord to rest. What further purpose must it serve?
It tallies what it would do if freed: seek out the funerary holo of Li Sin and pay homage; sip wine on a far-flung world where identity is unnecessary; learn to dance without downloading precise diagrams of movement; travel the stars; write poems of its own; see wonders; live. And it would remember.
Mere retracts its knife-tips into fingerbones. “You gave it its freedom. It returns the grace. Do as you will.”
Century dips her chin, military acknowledgment. “Gratitude, Mere.”
Mere lifts its head, elated. If it can show mercy, it can do so much more.
Century smiles at Mere. “I will sleep, as I’ve not done in so long. When I wake . . . we’ll see. Farewell.”
“Farewell,” Mere says to its maker, and lopes toward the ship.
It is free.
* * * *
In the canyon gullet, the repulsors of dropships thrum. Mere slows, dry earth cracking beneath its feet. The shuttle is visible at the end of the ravine, caked in reentry burns and windblown dust.
The air brings the sharp scent of bloodied and oiled mechanics. Mere’s sensors link with other semi-biologicals.
The mercury-veined butchers, stained silver and red, squat in single-file rank along the canyon’s lip, sores popped from necrotic skin. Beneath the light-bent holoprojectors, the butchers’ forms are true: fragmented drones from the Gold Sun and the Blue Sun, vessels programmed with tireless efficiency.
The Sun Lords have found Mere.
But these are no hollowed shells. Mere sees the frightened eyes of armor-bound clones (of the Arbiter’s consorts, as they were before they were exulted—Zarrow is there, and so is Jhijen) unmasked behind targeting arrays. It knows each one of them, has shared memory and dreams with them. Once (so long ago) it dared think of them as friend.
Mere stands frozen between the butcher-clones and Century, the wolflord, and all the seeded. In a microsecond, realization:
—no longer must Mere kill—
—the seeded need but an hour more, until the sun rises and wakens new life—
—weaponized bones, detonator heart, poison blood: Mere can unmake all the Sun Lords’ drones, dismantle and slaughter until all that remains is gore-soaked earth, christen the seeded with the promise of eternal war, mark Rebirth for a fate shared by Olinara V—
—Mere wants to live—
The drones have come only for Mere, the Blue Sun’s disobedient trinket. Once the mission is complete, this world will be a forgotten sanctuary once more.
Mere steps forward as the butcher-drones approach. It will fight them, but not to win. The Suns will witness its desperation and be satisfied with its death. It will not be brought back to the Courts of Tranquility. It will remember.
This is its chosen purpose and its choice: to save the ones it can.
The butcher-drones attack. Mere lets them come.
It composes a final a poem, and though the last wolflord will never know, Mere dedicates the words to Kitshan.
Your eyes, grace-touched / forever refuge
We will live together
Tomorrow / when we see the sun.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. MERC RUSTAD is a queer non-binary writer and filmmaker who lives in the Midwest United States. Favorite things include: robots, dinosaurs, monsters, and tea. Their stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, Apex, Uncanny, Escape Pod, Shimmer, Cicada, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, and other fine venues. Merc likes to play video games, watch movies, read comics, and wear awesome hats. You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Rustad or their website: amercrustad.com. Their debut short story collection, So You Want to Be a Robot, is forthcoming from Lethe Press in May 2017.
BRING THE KIDS AND REVISIT THE PAST AT THE TRAVELING RETRO FUNFAIR!
SEANAN MCGUIRE
According to the scientists and engineers who came up with them, Dyson spheres are marvels in every sense of the word. They’re too big to construct anywhere but deep space, forming, one piece at a time, around their gravity generator hearts. The really big ones are built like pearls, layer by layer, each new shell constructed partially from the dismembered remains of the last. They can end up as large as a gas giant, eternally cascading habitats for mankind to occupy as we make our wild rush across the universe, claiming worlds everywhere we go, even if we have to build them for ourselves.
According to me and mine, Dyson spheres are a pain in the ass. They don’t have the natural advantages of real planets—no grass, no sunlight, no features that weren’t planned and planted by the arrogantly careful hand of humanity. So they turn inward, creating populations who live in their own heads, creating virtual paradises to keep themselves amused.
Need proof?
There is not a single Dyson sphere with its own real-time amusement park. Loads of virtual parks—the last census put it at one park for every three citizens—but nothing made of metal and sweat and the sound of screaming. Nothing with a midway. Nothing real. The people who live in the spheres don’t care about real anymore. They care about the next way station, the next horizon, and the world around them is more an inconvenience than anything else.
That’s where the people like me and my crew come in. We’re in the business of peddling dreams to people who might otherwise forget about them. Somebody has to.
Might as well be us.
* * * *
“Is it broken?”
“Yes.”
“Hit it.”
“Violence never solves anything.”
I folded my arms. “Violence solved the problem we were having with the booster engine last week. I whacked it six times with a spanner and it came right back on line.”
“And please, I beg, don’t mistake my lack of enthusiasm for your abuse of our ship for anything less than abject horror at the fact that once—just once—your fondness for percussive maintenance bore fruit.” Doc emerged from beneath the engine feet-first, the multi-legged platform beneath him shuffling safely clear of anything he could hit his head on before he sat up. As usual, he had bows tied in his beard, although these were slick plastic, in deference to the engine’s tendency to drip. “That said, the fact that it worked once doesn’t mean it’s going to work again. Ever. It certainly won’t work on our gravity generator. Which is, in case you had forgotten, the thing that generates gravity. Do you need me to explain what gravity does?”
“Gravity sucks,” I grumbled, not unfolding my arms. “What’s it going to take to fix?”
“A new generator core. One that hasn’t been hit with a spanner. I’d guess the damage at somewhere around five thousand.”
I choked on my own spit. “Five thousand?” I demanded, unfolding my arms to make it easier to gesture wildly at the threadbare engine room around us. Everything that could be patched had long since been patched, along with some thing
s that regulations said couldn’t be patched. Half the floor was titanium scavenged from a wreck we’d passed out near Alowvin, and all the machinery bore the marks of my infamous percussive maintenance. Sometimes, that was the only way to get the engine to limp to the next stop with an actual mechanic. Doc might hate the fact that I thought violence was the solution to all problems big and small, but eventually he was going to have to accept the fact that we were a small entertainment ship, and we didn’t have a live-in mechanic. If hitting things got us where we were supposed to be going, then I was going to keep right on hitting them.
“That’s a conservative estimate.”
“Five thousand.”
“It would have been considerably lower if you had listened when I told you the generator needed repairs six months ago.”
“Five thousand.”
“We might have been able to get the problem fixed for as little as four. Maybe even three-five, if we’d been able to find a sympathetic mechanic who didn’t know us.”
“That’s not lower, Doc! That’s still more money than we saw last year! There has to be another way.”
Now it was his time to fold his arms and look at me gravely, brows drawing tight as he frowned. “We could sell some of the older entertainments. There’s little demand for them on the circuit, but there are always collectors—”
“We’d never be able to buy them back. Any reduction to the collection is a permanent reduction to the show. You know that.”
“If we can’t fly, there is no show, Nora.” Doc’s frown faded, replaced by a look of profound sympathy. “You have to decide which is worse: losing one of the puppet shows or game boxes, or shutting the whole thing down and going town. We can always do that.”
“No, we can’t. My father would come back from the dead just to slap me in the head if I let that happen.” There’s no fate more terrible than “going town”—losing the sky and the freedom to set my schedule to the show, rather than setting my life to someone else’s tempo.
“You have to choose, Nora. One machine, or the whole gig. You don’t get to have them both.” Doc shook his head. “I can’t choose for you, and you can’t smack the bill with a spanner. Choose.”
Cosmic Powers Page 21
