by R J Theodore
“You truly are.” Illiya stepped around Talis and ran a gold-tipped finger along the top of the simula’s formless bulk. Talis fought the urge to pull her hand away. It was like watching someone fuss over a pin-pulled grenade as though it were an adorable baby.
But if Onaya’s high priestess was of a mind with her, looking to contact Meran and learn what could be done about the state of the world, rather than leave it up to the Bone goddess, things had truly had changed in the two years Talis was out of it. Illiya had never been one to follow without question but, once earned, her loyalty was ferocious. What had it taken to change it?
“So, tell me, how far does your curiosity for Meran extend? How long before you remember your place in the hierarchy of the temple?”
Illiya looked genuinely hurt at the question but didn’t get a chance to answer as, just then, a Vein woman rushed into the room, pale cotton scarves trailing behind her as though she’d run the whole way. Her fingers flurried nervously across the edge of the door and then, reaching in, touched the swaddled Yu tech. Her next breath was an intake, sharp with awe, and her words hushed with longing. “It’s true.”
“I’m Talis, the simula is mine.” She felt the urge to remind everyone present of that particular fact. “And this is High Priestess Illiya of the Temple of the Feathered Stone.”
“Ilum Neen.” She tilted her head. “You were not announced as arriving together.”
“Ah, they did announce me, then. I was beginning to wonder how long I would have to wait.” Illiya affected the regal tone she used in her audience chamber, covering the casual leather and silk purr she used around Talis.
“My apologies, it was never my intention to keep you waiting.”
Illiya sniffed, but Ilum Neen, who surely heard her, pretended not to. She instead waved her arms in a cyclone of excitement. “This way. Please bring it this way. Careful now.”
The assistant directed them into a room lined with acoustic panels, across which were rows of radio equipment. The Cutter Empire had nothing like it. The Vein could ask any price for a wireless system as powerful as this one appeared, but Talis knew it was not for sale. The best Vein technology never was.
“Illiya, was it?” Ilum Neen turned to the priestess as though she were a trivial matter to be settled before the important work began. Not a welcome the high priestess would be used to, but Illiya took it in stride. Well. In stride for an impatient woman accustomed to getting her way.
“Yes, and I have been bouncing around your universities for the better part of a week. I was told to ask for Huran Zy. I was told by Huran Zy to ask for three others who each sent me in a line, finally, to Ilum Wephin. And Ilum Wephin told me to ask for you. I’ve been waiting for an appointment with you for two days. Now, can your equipment reach out to the new identity at Nexus, or do you have some other name to send me after?”
Neen pat the air with her secondary hands as if fluffing a pillow. “Could be. It could be. Oh, how wonderful. Your timing is excellent. Talis, if I may?”
The researcher turned her attention to the lump on the cart. She lifted it with reverence and unwrapped it with graceful movements. Her fingers trembled as they explored the Yu’Nyun-shaped head and neck.
Within the translucent film, pearlescent gel gave the form the appearance of ripples and creases that were not indicative of its true shape. The gel had dried along the torso’s damaged edges and flaked away in brittle crumbs.
“Absolutely lovely.” Neen’s voice was breathy, even for a Vein. She placed it down on a cleared table near the radio equipment. Then, she gripped it firmly behind the jaw, where ears might be on a native, and twisted hard. There was an audible mechanical click.
“Hey now!” Talis shouted, stepping forward with a hand on her hip where her gun would have been had she been fool enough to come armed into a university. Illiya sputtered at the same moment, reacting similarly to the abuse.
“It is all right.” Neen held the head in her primary hands while her secondary hands pat the air again. “I have encountered these before, though previous samples were quite damaged. There is a joint within the neck at which the head may be disconnected and re-attached at will.”
Talis and Illiya exchanged a look.
“Just how many of these have turned up?”
Illiya made a small noise of displeasure. “Someone’s been sending her whatever they drag out of flotsam. That’s why I came.”
Ilum Neen held her fingers up, the three of both secondary hands and the index finger of one of her primary. “At least seven, but all were destroyed. This is the first functioning simula to enter these halls in the two years since Nexus opened and shut again.”
“They’re fragile, then?” Talis watched Ilum Neen connect an armful of cables and wires to the simula’s exposed neck connector.
“When they are deactivated, yes, or at least in their Yu’Nyun shape, they are apparently quite fragile.”
“So no stronger than that which their design is based on?” Illiya looked thoughtful. Meran’s might was all her own. At least that’s what Talis was thinking.
It did make Talis feel better to know the loose simula in the world were more likely to break than wake.
“What are you doing there?”
Ilum Neen looked up, surprised. “We are attempting to connect to the simula at Nexus. I thought that’s why you came?”
“And you just happened to be set up to place the call, already?”
“We have been attempting to reach out to the new presence for two years,” the ilum said, her fingers releasing the simula’s head to flutter in the air. “We have broadcast widely and tried a narrow band. But we do not believe she is tuned to hear the call. Our hope is that she, like all the simula we have examined, is equipped with a signal receiver that will allow a signal to travel from simula to simula across distances as wide as the span of our planet.”
Talis slid the bag off her shoulder. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” She dug out the box of control circlets and opened it. “Could we use our simula to control the remote one?”
Illiya made a sound like a startled viper. “You want to restrain Meran? Talis, I—”
Talis held up a hand. “She’s loose out there, and I’m not sure what kinds of checks are in place to stop her from doing whatever she wants.”
“But perhaps that is how it ought to be.” Illiya twitched as though she had not realized she was going to say the words until they were already vibrating the air between them.
Talis regarded her for a moment. Words failed her, at least so far as Illiya’s new devotion was concerned. It was almost enough to make her reconsider. Almost. Illiya hadn’t met Meran. She didn’t know the power that coursed just beneath the smooth synthetic skin. And she was only stronger now. She was one-fifth of her soul plus the elemental powers of two gods. She wasn’t even halfway to being as dangerous as she would be, potentially, and Talis wasn’t looking forward to her getting any stronger.
“I just think this is a mess we can’t easily sweep up. I want to have some level of control wherever possible. Okay, maybe Meran should be in charge, but we don’t know who else will end up with a simula and a ring. Without the balance of control in Meran’s favor, a person with a ring is in charge of their simula’s willpower. And I definitely don’t like the sound of that. This is my contingency plan.”
Ilum Neen lifted one of the circlets from the lined case and ran the fingers of her primary hands across the interior, probing the smooth circuitry and the rounded nodes. “Am I to understand these devices act as an override to simula behavior?”
Talis smirked. “If ‘behavior override’ means ‘go catatonic and wait for permission,’ then yes.”
“Fascinating.” Neen slid the circlet into place around the simula’s arching forehead. It was a loose fit but seemed to settle into place as if by magnetism. “Though there is onl
y one way to know if the effect works at long range.”
Talis winced. “If not, and Meran can sense that we are trying it, this might not go well.”
Illiya shifted her weight. “A very good reason not to try it.”
“Worried about making the right first impressions?”
The Bone priestess brought her chin up in defiance. “Don’t ruin this moment for me, Talis. We go back a long way, you and I, but I do not let the past define me.”
“Good advice. I’d like to believe we’re both working for the same thing.”
“Our methods are very different.”
“I’ve been hearing that a lot, lately.” Talis took a deep breath. “So, Ilum, can we communicate with Meran, and can we avoid her detecting the control collar?”
While Illiya and Talis faced off, Ilum Neen had been fussing about the bust of the simula, turning it over and examining the hardware from all angles. A panel was removed from the base of the skull, revealing a black rectangle of the smooth Yu’Nyun interface paneling.
“It is . . . I don’t think . . . Ah! Yes. Here.” She used putty to adhere a loose wire against the smooth panel and clipped the connector at its other end into a port on the bank of radio equipment.
Before Talis could stop her, static filled the room, loud enough that Talis involuntarily grit her teeth.
Static and an irritated voice. “Again with this! This is useless. Cease your attempts to reach me.”
“Meran?” Talis couldn’t tell if what she felt was relief or shock. “Meran, can you hear me?”
“Talis . . .” The voice changed from a cross admonition to a purr.
More than a little discomfited by being recognized by voice alone across the distance of open sky, Talis swallowed before she could find her words again. “Yes, I’m here.”
“When will you bring me my rings?”
Oh, the words came flooding, then. Talis’s jaw closed with a light snap before they escaped, and she pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. Gods-rotted rings. One of these days . . .
The others in the room were looking at her. Illiya’s eyes were wide, urging her to keep Meran interested. “I have only just recovered from the battle at Nexus. I . . .” she debated whether to tell Meran about the ring Hankirk had. Decided against it, both because Meran was focused enough on the rings, and because Illiya was going to leave Haelli and go off on her own mission. The less she knew, the better. She was about to reveal enough. Hopefully enough to get everyone acting with some sense. “I have something to ask you about Nexus, quintessence, and the aliens.”
“Ahh, yes. The corrupted souls. I can feel them. They are a violation of Nexus.”
Illiya looked almost as taken off-guard as Ilum Neen. So much for the intelligence network of the priestesses. So much for the stoic faces of the Vein. At least not everyone had a vault full of the alien solution—or knew to want one.
“Can you restore them?”
“Come to me, Talis. It would be better to talk in private. Leave the Bone priestess out of it. But you may bring the alchemists. I especially like Kirna. Tell the ilum to stop pinging me. I have no secrets to share with them.”
The static increased in pitch.
“Hello?” Ilum Neen repeated herself three times, the final plea desperate and loud.
“I believe she has . . .” Illiya searched for a word.
“Cut us off, at least.” Talis frowned, crossing her arms. “Sorry the invite didn’t include you. There’s no accounting for taste.”
Illiya folded her arms, the sharp gold caps on her fingers making small indentations in the flesh of her arms. “What’s this about souls and aliens?”
Talis shook her head. “I don’t know all the details yet, but beware of alien syringes full of silver liquid.”
“Wielded by whom?”
“That’s the thing. Aliens. Veritors. The Tempest.”
Ilum Neen ceased fiddling with the cables connected to the simula head. “Do you mean there’s more of it?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you lot found a crate of that, too? You haven’t played around with it, I hope?”
“No, no.” The researcher fanned her fingers apart and then back together. “But there was a horrifying report on the wireless. The Yu’Nyun injected the Cutter Empress with a syringe of some sort of silver colloidal during her coronation and she . . . Well, I’m sorry to say. Your empress . . .”
Ilum Neen couldn’t complete the sentence, for which Talis was very grateful.
Her mind traced the consequences and landed squarely in a mess of her own making. “Hankirk.”
“He’s involved again?”
“He’s about to be. Put that head back where you found it, please. I need to go.”
Fortune’s Storm felt lighter and faster on the return, some of the heavy alien crates in cargo exchanged for two light, ivory boxes filled with sheets of Vein currency. Ilum Neen was only too happy to buy the strange alien kit and schematics—Talis didn’t mention Kirna had stolen some of it to craft Scrimshaw’s new leg—though she was very disappointed Talis wouldn’t leave her the simula bust. Circlets or no, Talis didn’t want any functioning simula bits out in the world, unsupervised.
Payment. Contracts. Haggling. And cutting through the skies, letting the wind push her back to collect a pay day. She would have been thrilled, feeling a part of her roused after a too-long hibernation, except there was no time to enjoy any of it.
She had a sense Illiya was likely to cause trouble, and she knew that once Hankirk heard about Emeranth, he’d be way past ‘likely.’
Below decks, stacks of cages in Amos’s traveling lab were arranged into two piles. On one side, docile critters munched on leafy greens, slept in wicker baskets, or groomed every inch of their glossy-coated selves, not a care in the world.
On the other side. Well.
Ruined cages, bent and broken, were absent of their former occupants.
While Fortune’s Storm flew to Haelli and back toward the border, Amos and Scrimshaw worked, and tested, adjusted, and tested again. Wrinkled pages on a clipboard documented their detailed and careful process. From the oldest page to the newest, myriad red strikes crossed out one formulation after another.
Talis pulled Kirna aside. “I don’t want to bother Amos while he and Scrimshaw are working, but . . .”
Kirna chewed her lip. “But it’s not going well.”
“Is there anything we should be doing differently? Supplies that would help?”
Kirna dropped her voice even lower and pulled Talis farther away from where the pair was working. “This is . . . How do I explain? Alchemy is a bit of an art. There’s some expression, some room to be creative and free about it—to build up properties of the elements and get them to form something new. But what the aliens used is pure chemistry. There’s one answer, but in our case, it’s kinda like we don’t even know the question first. I think when we can collect the sample of Nexus that will give us a deeper understanding.”
“And Scrimshaw doesn’t know either?”
“It wasn’t sist department, Captain. There was no reason for Scrimshaw to know any of the ingredients. Just that the injections did what they did. You can’t take a cake apart and put the ingredients back in their canisters. You can just . . . try to replicate the recipe as best you can then take a bite to learn whether it tastes right.”
Talis blinked. “I don’t even know where to start with that. You’re not tasting the stuff, I hope?”
“The cake was for comparison only, I promise. But those happy animals in there? Good news for them. Bad news for us.”
“So, you’re trying to replicate the solution, instead of trying to counteract it.”
“We need to know what’s in it before we can counteract anything. We can’t just treat the symptoms. We need to know the cause.”
“I still don’t like the idea that we’re creating more of it before we figure out how to destroy it. And without the counteragent? Is there nothing else we can do?”
Kirna pulled her along, one more time, to the cabin where she had been fine-tuning Scrimshaw’s leg. That project was now complete, and Scrimshaw moved as gracefully as si ever had on sist natural legs. Kirna reached into the locker beneath the rumpled bunk curtain and retrieved a small leather folio.
“I might have an idea. But I’ve got no way to test it except in a very final, or-else, hope-is-lost situation.”
“Using art?”
Kirna grinned and opened the folio to reveal a stick of dark charcoal, chalk dust, and mica powder. There were also metal needles, a reservoir for mixing pigments, and an alchemical sigil drawn in green on a slip of paper. “Using art.”
She sighed. “All right. What’s one more tattoo?”
“Might be your favorite yet, Captain.”
In a few hours, Kirna’s cabin was heady with the smell of rubbing alcohol and tack soap, and every member of Fortune’s Storm’s strange assembly was preening or hissing over a new tattoo, competing with each other for a view of any reflective surfaces aboard. Kirna had carefully stuck-and-poked a small round sigil at the notch in their throats. The ink was . . . non-traditional, to say the least. Kirna had begun to list the ingredients, and when she got to crushed beetle wings and snail teeth, Talis had begged her to stop.
“Now, I’m not saying run headlong toward a brandished syringe needle.” Kirna completed the last line on Scrimshaw’s carapace. They had no idea if si would be affected by the solution, but Talis ordered sin to subject sist-self to the same precaution. Kirna set the needle on her tray and wiped the extra ink away. “But if you are exposed to the solution, the theory behind this sigil is that you’ll have a chance to reconnect with your quintessence. It’ll escape your body to stay protected while the alchemical ingredients expel the solution out through your pores. Then you’ll need to reel your soul back in.”
