“You could help us,” said Ranwha, squatting down in front of me, his voice hard and fingers dancing the hand-speak of entreaty, begging almost. “It’s just luck – that’s all it is. Some people got lucky, some didn’t. Do you really think it’s fair we should die – my child should die – because we didn’t get lucky?”
I felt tired now, a swathe of regret, knowing the things that were to come, Rencki at my feet, burning in my chest. “Do you really think it’s fair,” I sighed, “that people with guns should take the place of those who have none? That’s all we’re talking about here, at the end of the day. There aren’t enough places to fly. There werenever going to be enough places to fly. Someone was always going to be left behind.”
“So you want us to die meekly. You want us to say, ‘Well, if that’s how it is’, take our cups of Grace, feel happy for the ones who lived, is that it? You want us to be good little corpses. You sound like a Behkdaz.”
I sounded like Gebre, and I knew it. The thought of ter caught me momentarily off-guard, a shimmer of something shocking through my chest, a memory of why we were here – why I was really here.
I closed my eyes, could smell the bitter taste of Rencki’s singed fur on the air, hear Ranwha’s breathing, deep, ragged, resolved. “You love your child. I understand that. I have never loved a child, but I understand – intellectually, you see. I really do. You will do terrible things. I have always tried to understand the terrible things people do. Can I tell you a story? It’s not long, it goes like this. Once, when I was new—”
“Give us the fucking ship!” someone snarled, but another hushed them, leaned a little closer, listening.
“Once, when I was new, I went to a place called Hasha-to. I had escaped a laboratory, was wandering without purpose, saw the sign of the binary star. Followed it. Fell in with some rebels – Unionists, they are called in the Shine. They had these big ideas of freedom and salvation and all sorts of things, and me… well, I tend to go with the flow. Their words made me feel big, their emotions made me feel important, and so…
“But big feelings aren’t a substitute for a good plan, and they were dead minutes after we landed. I should have felt terror, going back to Hasha-to, but instead I was simply… curious. Curious to return somewhere so cruel, curious to understand how another human could treat their fellow humans so. I thought – is it because they hate? Is it because they hated the debtors that they do such things? But hate is a hot, burning thing, and their cruelties were cold, administrative, bureaucratic even. And then I had this idea:maybe it was love. Maybe the warders of that place believed in something – in an idea, in something important – or maybe they loved their family so much, had to do so much to protect them, had created all sorts of funny ideas about what ‘protection’ means – how to protect you must kill, and maim, and punish, and see those you hurt as less than human. Maybe it was love. And I had to know. The thought of it – why, why, why, why is Hasha-to, why is this place the way it is, why did these things happen, why – it consumed me. And I am… unsafe when I get into such a condition. It is important that I stay regulated. I need you to listen – I need you to understand. When I went to Hasha-to, the people there tried to kill me. But I am a monster made in the dark. I am a copy of a dead man, rebuilt by forces unknown. You cannot stop me. You cannot hold me back. Eventually the lights will go out in this place, and in the dark I will turn, and when I do, I will kill you all. If you love your child, you’ll get them out of here before that moment comes. That’s all.”
The numberless did not understand my story, but at least they took the child away before they started hitting me.
Chapter 19
When the Xi first found me, after theMyrmida, they tried to contain me, but I was curious, and would not be contained.
Then I wandered for a while, and had no purpose.
Then I met some Unionists – fiery, furious refugees who called the name of Sarifi, Glastya Row, Lhonoja, the binary suns – and with them I returned to Hasha-to. They planned to stage a heroic rescue, and they died.
I died too, shot through the chest, my body thrown onto the surface of the world to burn, my corpse devoured by an atmosphere of acid and fire. Thankfully, they didn’t throw me far from the airlock, and once they’d dumped my body, they forgot about me, and that made all the difference.
On Adjumir, in the last days before the end of the world, a group of numberless driven by a mixture of ego, terror and love hurt me.
They did not know how to hurt me. They were not inherently violent people. If anything, they seemed a little embarrassed at what they were trying to do, and kept on muttering among each other, asking if they’d gone too far, if they should stop.
Ranwha kept them going, of course.
Ranwha was the only one there who had a child, and he lovedthat child so much he thought his heart might break, and so he hurt me the most, because that was what he had to do.
Thoughts, drifting in a semiconscious state.
The people of Chulla’s World have only one word for sky and space – “above”. To them there is no difference between the thick atmosphere of their planet and the vacuum beyond; these things all lie above the surface of the ocean and are therefore all one, clumped together in a great big “above” that is spoken of with a mixture of awe and dread. Equally, many cultures who have crossed the stars still gaze down into the oceans beneath their ships and use words of doubt, unease, otherness. Abyss, deeps, depths; they construct horror stories of the fearful dark. Perhaps there is a limit to what any one mind can truly fathom, a corner of our brains that is always given over to terror of the unknown.
When not hurting me, Ranwha pleads.
“My child,” he whispers. “My child. My child!”
It would be easy enough to say yes, but fundamentally meaningless. Eight hundred million people are going to die; the life of a child is everything/nothing. I am aware that in his mind, I am the villain of this story.
“I am Mawukana-from-the-Dark,” I whisper through swollen lips. “I am the ghost of Hasha-to.”
I can feel a few people in the room starting to believe me, which will only make things worse.
A hand lifts me up. I am lighter than they expect – a couple of times someone wondered if they were going to accidentally kill me, if my weak off-worlder bones were going to shatter. They broke my exoskeleton an age ago; it is such an easy thing to break.
This isn’t working, someone says.
Someone else gives me water.
I drink automatically, and it tastes… peculiar. Something in the minerals, perhaps, something in the pipes. I wondered where it hadcome from, whether there was a spring somewhere in nearby hills, a place in the land where it just bubbled to the surface, flowing into streams into rivers that were themselves fed by another squeezing of the earth, if the water cycle on this world was like the water cycle on mine, how these endless rains were changing it, if the taste I tasted was in fact water plus supernova, the taste of radiation, the taste of Lhonoja, of a dying binary star.
Someone says:He doesn’t look right.
