The Stone Sky

by N. K. Jemisin

  No one she knows. Just a face … where there should be none. And as Nassun stares at this, dawning horror slowly pushing aside her anger, she sees another face—and another, more of them appearing all at once to fill the view. Each is pushed aside as another rises from underneath. Dozens. Hundreds. This one jowled and tired-looking, that one puffy as if from crying, that one openmouthed and screaming in silence, like Schaffa. Some look at her pleadingly, mouthing words she wouldn’t be able to understand even if she could hear.

  All of them ripple, though, with the amusement of a greater presence. He is mine. Not a voice. When the Earth speaks, it is not in words. Nevertheless.

  Nassun presses her lips together and reaches into the silver of Schaffa and ruthlessly cuts as many of the tendrils etched into his body as she can, right around the corestone. It doesn’t work like it usually does when she uses the silver for surgery. The silver lines in Schaffa reestablish themselves almost instantly, and throb that much harder when they do. Schaffa shudders each time. She’s hurting him. She’s making it worse.

  There’s no other choice. She wraps her own threads around his corestone to perform the surgery he would not permit her to do a few months before. If it shortens his life, at least he will not suffer for what is left of it.

  But another ripple of amusement makes the vehimal shudder, and a flare of silver blazes through Schaffa that shrugs off her paltry threads. The surgery fails. The corestone is seated as firmly as ever amid the lobes of his sessapinae, like the parasitic thing it is.

  Nassun shakes her head and looks around for something, anything else, that might help. She is distracted momentarily by the boil and shift of faces in the surface of the rusty dark. Who are these people? Why are they here, churning amid the Earth’s heart?

  Obligation, the Earth returns, in wavelets of heat and crushing pressure. Nassun bares her teeth, struggling against the weight of its contempt. What was stolen, or lent, must be recompensed.

  And Nassun cannot help but understand this too, here within the Earth’s embrace, with its meaning thrumming through her bones. The silver—magic—comes from life. Those who made the obelisks sought to harness magic, and they succeeded; oh, how they succeeded. They used it to build wonders beyond imagining. But then they wanted more magic than just what their own lives, or the accumulated aeons of life and death on the Earth’s surface, could provide. And when they saw how much magic brimmed just beneath that surface, ripe for the taking …

  It may never have occurred to them that so much magic, so much life, might be an indicator of … awareness. The Earth does not speak in words, after all—and perhaps, Nassun realizes, having seen entirely too much of the world to still have much of a child’s innocence, perhaps these builders of the great obelisk network were not used to respecting lives different from their own. Not so very different, really, from the people who run the Fulcrums, or raiders, or her father. So where they should have seen a living being, they saw only another thing to exploit. Where they should have asked, or left alone, they raped.

  For some crimes, there is no fitting justice—only reparation. So for every iota of life siphoned from beneath the Earth’s skin, the Earth has dragged a million human remnants into its heart. Bodies rot in soil, after all—and soil sits upon tectonic plates, plates eventually subduct into the fire under the Earth’s crust, which convect endlessly through the mantle … and there within itself, the Earth eats everything they were. This is only fair, it reasons—coldly, with an anger that still shudders up from the depths to crack the world’s skin and touch off Season after Season. It is only right. The Earth did not start this cycle of hostilities, it did not steal the Moon, it did not burrow into anyone else’s skin and snatch bits of its still-living flesh to keep as trophies and tools, it did not plot to enslave humans in an unending nightmare. It did not start this war, but it will rusting well have. Its. Due.

  And oh. Does Nassun not understand this? Her hands tighten in Schaffa’s shirt, trembling as her hatred wavers. Can she not empathize?

  For the world has taken so much from her. She had a brother once. And a father, and a mother whom she also understands but wishes she did not. And a home, and dreams. The people of the Stillness have long since robbed her of childhood and any hope of a real future, and because of this she is so angry that she cannot think beyond THIS MUST STOP and I WILL STOP IT—

  —so does she not resonate with the Evil Earth’s wrath, herself?

  She does.

  Earth eat her, she does.

  Schaffa has gone still in her lap. There is wetness beneath one of her legs; he’s urinated on himself. His eyes are still open, and he breathes in shallow gasps. His taut muscles still twitch now and again. Everyone breaks, if torture goes on long enough. The mind bears the unbearable by going elsewhere. Nassun is ten years old, going on a hundred, but she has seen enough of the world’s evil to know this. Her Schaffa. Has gone away. And might never, ever, come back.

  The vehimal speeds onward.

  The view begins to grow bright again as it emerges from the core. Interior lights resume their pleasant glow. Nassun’s fingers curl loosely in Schaffa’s clothes now. She gazes back at the turning mass of the core until the stuff of the sidewall turns opaque again. The forward view lingers, but it, too, begins to darken. They have entered another tunnel, this one wider than the first, with solid black walls somehow holding back the churning heat of the outer core and mantle. Now Nassun senses that the vehimal is tilted up, away from the core. Headed back toward the surface, but this time on the other side of the planet.

  Nassun whispers, to herself since Schaffa has gone away, “This has to stop. I will stop it.” She closes her eyes and the lashes stick together, wet. “I promise.”

  She does not know to whom she makes this promise. It doesn’t matter, really.

  Not long after, the vehimal reaches Corepoint.

  Syl Anagist: One

  THEY TAKE KELENLI AWAY IN the morning.

  It is unexpected, at least by us. It also isn’t really about us, we realize fairly quickly. Conductor Gallat arrives first, although I see several other high-ranking conductors talking in the house above the garden. He does not look displeased as he calls Kelenli outside and speaks to her in a quiet but intent voice. We all get up, vibrating guilt though we have done nothing wrong, just spent a night lying on a hard floor and listening to the strange sound of others’ breath and occasional movement. I watch Kelenli, fearing for her, wanting to protect her, though this is inchoate; I don’t know what the danger is. She stands straight and tall, like one of them, as she speaks to Gallat. I sess her tension, like a fault line poised to slip.

  They are outside of the little garden house, fifteen feet away, but I hear Gallat’s voice rise for a moment. “How much longer do you mean to keep up this foolishness? Sleeping in the shed?”

  Kelenli says, calmly, “Is there a problem?”

  Gallat is the highest ranked of the conductors. He is also the cruelest. We don’t think he means it. It’s just that he does not seem to understand that cruelty is possible, with us. We are the machine’s tuners; we ourselves must be attuned for the good of the project. That this process sometimes causes pain or fear or decommissioning to the briar patch is … incidental.

  We have wondered if Gallat has feelings himself. He does, I see when he draws back now, expression all a-ripple with hurt, as if Kelenli’s words have struck him some sort of blow. “I’ve been good to you,” he says. His voice wavers.

  “And I’m grateful.” Kelenli hasn’t shifted the inflection of her voice at all, or a muscle of her face. She looks and sounds, for the first time, like one of us. And as we so often do, she and he are having a conversation that has nothing to do with the words coming from their mouths. I check; there’s nothing in the ambient, save the fading vibrations of their voices. And yet.

  Gallat stares at her. Then the hurt and anger fade from his expression, replaced by weariness. He turns away and snaps, “I need you back at the l
ab today. There are fluctuations in the subgrid again.”

  Kelenli’s face finally moves, her brows drawing down. “I was told I had three days.”

  “Geoarcanity takes precedence over your leisure plans, Kelenli.” He glances toward the little house where I and the others cluster, and catches me staring at him. I don’t look away, mostly because I’m so fascinated by his anguish that I don’t think to. He looks fleetingly embarrassed, then irritated. He says to her, with his usual air of impatience, “Biomagestry can only do distance scans outside of the compound, but they say they’re actually detecting some interesting flow clarification in the tuners’ network. Whatever you’ve been doing with them obviously isn’t a complete waste of time. I’ll take them, then, to wherever you were planning to go today. Then you can go back to the compound.”

  She glances around at us. At me. My thinker.

  “It should be an easy enough trip,” she says to him, while looking at me. “They need to see the local engine fragment.”

  “The amethyst?” Gallat stares at her. “They live in its shadow. They see it constantly. How does that help?”

  “They haven’t seen the socket. They need to fully understand its growth process—more than theoretically.” All at once she turns away from me, and from him, and begins walking toward the big house. “Just show them that, and then you can drop them off at the compound and be done with them.”

  I understand precisely why Kelenli has spoken in this dismissive tone, and why she hasn’t bothered to say farewell before leaving. It’s no more than any of us do, when we must watch or sess another of our network punished; we pretend not to care. (Tetlewha. Your song is toneless, but not silent. From where do you sing?) That shortens the punishment for all, and prevents the conductors from focusing on another, in their anger. Understanding this, and feeling nothing as she walks away, are two very different things, however.

  Conductor Gallat is in a terrible mood after this. He orders us to get our things so we can go. We have nothing, though some of us need to eliminate waste before we leave, and all of us need food and water. He lets the ones who need it use Kelenli’s small toilet or a pile of leaves out back (I am one of these; it is very strange to squat, but also a profoundly enriching experience), then tells us to ignore our hunger and thirst and come on, so we do. He walks us very fast, even though our legs are shorter than his and still aching from the day before. We are relieved to see the vehimal he’s summoned, when it comes, so that we can sit and be carried back toward the center of town.

  The other conductors ride along with us and Gallat. They keep speaking to him and ignoring us; he answers in terse, one-word replies. They ask him mostly about Kelenli—whether she is always so intransigent, whether he believes this is an unforeseen genegineering defect, why he even bothers to allow her input on the project when she is, for all intents and purposes, just an obsolete prototype.

  “Because she’s been right in every suggestion she’s made thus far,” he snaps, after the third such question. “Which is the very reason we developed the tuners, after all. The Plutonic Engine would need another seventy years of priming before even a test-firing could be attempted, without them. When a machine’s sensors are capable of telling you exactly what’s wrong and exactly how to make the whole thing work more efficiently, it’s stupid not to pay heed.”

  That seems to mollify them, so they leave him alone and resume talking—though to each other, not to him. I am sitting near Conductor Gallat. I notice how the other conductors’ disdain actually increases his tension, making anger radiate off his skin like the residual heat of sunlight from a rock, long after night has fallen. There have always been odd dynamics to the conductors’ relationships; we’ve puzzled them out as best we could, while not really understanding. Now, however, thanks to Kelenli’s explanation, I remember that Gallat has undesirable ancestry. We were made this way, but he was simply born with pale skin and icewhite eyes—traits common among the Niess. He isn’t Niess; the Niess are gone. There are other races, Sylanagistine races, with pale skin. The eyes suggest, however, that somewhere in his family’s history—distant, or he would not have been permitted schooling and medical care and his prestigious current position—someone made children with a Niesperson. Or not; the trait could be a random mutation or happenstance of pigment expression. Apparently no one thinks it is, though.

  This is why, though Gallat works harder and spends more hours at the compound than anyone, and is in charge, the other conductors treat him as if he is less than what he is. If he did not pass on the favor in his dealings with us, I would pity him. As it is, I am afraid of him. I always have been afraid of him. But for Kelenli, I decide to be brave.

  “Why are you angry with her?” I ask. My voice is soft, and hard to hear over the humming metabolic cycle of the vehimal. Few of the other conductors notice my comment. None of them care. I have timed the asking well.

  Gallat starts, then stares at me as if he has never seen me before. “What?”

  “Kelenli.” I turn my eyes to meet his, although we have learned over time that the conductors do not like this. They find eye contact challenging. But they also dismiss us more easily when we do not look at them, and I don’t want to be dismissed in this moment. I want him to feel this conversation, even if his weak, primitive sessapinae cannot tell him that my jealousy and resentment have raised the temperature of the city’s water table by two degrees.

  He glares at me. I gaze impassively back. I sense tension in the network. The others, who of course have noticed what the conductors ignore, are suddenly afraid for me … but I am almost distracted from their concern by the difference I suddenly perceive in us. Gallat is right: We are changing, complexifying, our ambient influence strengthening, as a result of the things Kelenli has shown us. Is this an improvement? I’m not certain yet. For now, we are confused where before, we were mostly unified. Remwha and Gaewha are angry at me for taking this risk without seeking consensus first—and this recklessness, I suppose, is my own symptom of change. Bimniwha and Salewha are, irrationally, angry at Kelenli for the strange way she is affecting me. Dushwha is done with all of us and just wants to go home. Beneath her anger, Gaewha is afraid for me but she also pities me, because I think she understands that my recklessness is a symptom of something else. I have decided that I am in love, but love is a painful hotspot roil beneath the surface of me in a place where once there was stability, and I do not like it. Once, after all, I believed I was the finest tool ever created by a great civilization. Now, I have learned that I am a mistake cobbled together by paranoid thieves who were terrified of their own mediocrity. I don’t know how to feel, except reckless.

  None of them are angry at Gallat for being too dangerous to have a simple conversation with, though. There’s something very wrong with that.

  Finally, Gallat says, “What makes you think I’m angry with Kelenli?” I open my mouth to point out the tension in his body, his vocal stress, the look on his face, and he makes an irritated sound. “Never mind. I know how you process information.” He sighs. “And I suppose you’re right.”

  I am definitely right, but I know better than to remind him of what he doesn’t want to know. “You want her to live in your house.” I was unsure that it was Gallat’s house until the morning’s conversation. I should have guessed, though; it smelled like him. None of us is good at using senses other than sesuna.

  “It’s her house,” he snaps. “She grew up there, same as me.”

  Kelenli has told me this. Raised alongside Gallat, thinking she was normal, until someone finally told her why her parents did not love her. “She was part of the project.”

  He nods once, tightly, his mouth twisted in bitterness. “So was I. A human child was a necessary control, and I had … useful characteristics for comparison. I thought of her as my sister until we both reached the age of fifteen. Then they told us.”

  Such a long time. And yet Kelenli must have suspected that she was different. The silver glimmer
of magic flows around us, through us, like water. Everyone can sess it, but we tuners, we live it. It lives in us. She cannot have ever thought herself normal.

  Gallat, however, had been completely surprised. Perhaps his view of the world had been as thoroughly upended as mine has been now. Perhaps he floundered—flounders—in the same way, struggling to resolve his feelings with reality. I feel a sudden sympathy for him.

  “I never mistreated her.” Gallat’s voice has gone soft, and I’m not certain he’s still speaking to me. He has folded his arms and crossed his legs, closing in on himself as he gazes steadily through one of the vehimal’s windows, seeing nothing. “Never treated her like …” Suddenly he blinks and darts a hooded glance at me. I start to nod to show that I understand, but some instinct warns me against doing this. I just look back at him. He relaxes. I don’t know why.

  He doesn’t want you to hear him say “like one of you,” Remwha signals, humming with irritation at my obtuseness. And he doesn’t want you to know what it means, if he says it. He reassures himself that he is not like the people who made his own life harder. It’s a lie, but he needs it, and he needs us to support that lie. She should not have told us that we were Niess.

  We aren’t Niess, I gravitic-pulse back. Mostly I’m annoyed that he had to point this out. Gallat’s behavior is obvious, now that Remwha has explained.

  To them we are. Gaewha sends this as a single microshake whose reverberations she kills, so that we sess only cold silence afterward. We stop arguing because she’s right.

  Gallat continues, oblivious to our identity crisis, “I’ve given her as much freedom as I can. Everyone knows what she is, but I’ve allowed her the same privileges that any normal woman would have. Of course there are restrictions, limitations, but that’s reasonable. I can’t be seen to be lax, if …” He trails off, into his own thoughts. Muscles along his jaw flex in frustration. “She acts as if she can’t understand that. As if I’m the problem, not the world. I’m trying to help her!” And then he lets out a heavy breath of frustration.