“Hello?!”
A great pair of black doors are sealed on the side of the courtyard furthest from the entry gate, blocking a mouth of stone and bio-resin that curves down into the cliffs, as if the building were about to shout. Even the architecture on Adjumir is designed to sometimes swallow the sound of the wind and make it sing.
For a moment, the old familiar feeling of having done everything wrong.
I’d come so far, and there was blood on my hands, my arms, my clothes, every part of me. The gravity pressed me down, Rencki was heavy in my arms, bruises were layered on bruises, and I was a monster after all and here—
“Stay where you are!” a voice barked, and I nearly laughed, the idea of moving so strangely absurd.
Someone had eased open a smaller hatch in the slate doors that barred the way to the interior of the Institute just enough for an eye, the barrel of a gun, a hint of a threat to poke out, wave towards me. “Who are you?” An accent I struggled with, and I was tired, so sore and tired. “What do you want?”
I tried to mumble: here to help, a message, a message came, I…
Wondered how I looked, crimson in gore, a stranger at the end of the world.
“Gebre,” I said instead, and when nothing happened, tried again, thought perhaps I hadn’t been heard. “Gebre Nethyu Chatithimska Bajwahra sent for me. My name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze. I have a ship. I came from… from above. Gebre sent for me.”
And then, because there didn’t really seem much more to add, and the gravity of this world really was exhausting, I lay down in the middle of the yard, Rencki across my chest, and closed my eyes and let someone else try to work all this out.
The person with the gun was called Ngurta.
Ey was a vigil, one of the last officers left on watch on the whole planet. Ey had shaved eir head and drawn thick black lines across eir eyes and lips and a painted line down eir chin. I knew this would have some meaning, communicate something – something about death, perhaps; this was Adjumir – but I didn’t know what. The planet was too big for me to have learned all its traditions, too full of changing people facing the end. Eir gun was a simple stun pistol, designed for keeping order in a provincial town, not fighting off numberless as they tried to storm the elevators, claw their way onto the last departing ships. Ey had come here because eir partner was here, and neither of them had had their numbers called, and they were both desperately sad for each other, consumed with loss and pain to know that the one they loved was going to die; and also quietly relieved that they were not going to die alone.
Ngurta stood over me, weapon drawn, and sent someone else to find Gebre.
“Whose blood is it?” ey demanded.
“Mine,” I replied. “And other people’s too.”
“What happened to you?”
“Numberless.”
“Are they following you?”
“No. They are dead. It’s just me and Rencki.”
“The quan?”
“Yes.”
“Is qe dead?”
“Death… is an interruption.”
Then a new shadow fell over me, and as I squeezed my eyes open, I did not recognise the shape, did recognise the voice, deep and familiar, and it was Gebre, and te said:
“Maw? What in the name of the blackened abyss are you doing here?”
Chapter 22
Te took me to the bathroom, a communal hall of cold, cliff-dripping water and warmer wooden tubs. Most were dry, their users long since departed, one way or another. I shivered on the side as te filled the only one that looked like it had any regular use, fetched soap from an old pearlescent box and ointments from a basket. Waited as the tub filled. Let ter prise the bloodied clothes from my back, my legs; ease me down into the water.
Gebre was old, of course.
Ter straight black hair was streaked with grey and cut short about ter skull. The strength of ter shoulders had grown a little curved, along with the softness of belly, expansion of backside that came with all bodies ageing. The wrinkles across ter face were a light spider’s web, not yet edged too deep, and when te scrubbed my scalp I could feel the power of ter fingers thrumming in my ears.
For a while, we did not talk, as carefully te uncovered which part of my body was bruised and which torn, which sweeps of blood washed off easy and which came from settling scabs beneath. Te emptied and filled the bath again, washing away scarlet, and said not a word.
