“It seems so.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“I do not. Perhaps your… your other nature. Perhaps it was thought that at times like these, being… as you are… It is a possibility.”
This thing that is shame. This shame that is my every waking moment. This thing that is me.
“It’s the end of the world,” I sighed. “This time, for real, the actual thing. Somehow never thought it would actually happen.”
“It’s the end of the world,” te agreed, without rancour. Then: “You look awful.”
“You look older.”
“Well, obviously. You don’t, though; just awful. I thought being of the untold darkness, you might heal faster, that what the numberless did to you…”
“I need to be unseen for that to happen. I need people to forget. If I am watched, people will imagine I am human, and so, in a way, I am. Even you – even with what you know – you see me as a person.”
“Should I apologise?”
“Please don’t. I am grateful for how you see me. Even if it doesn’t help with the swelling. It has been… I was always grateful. It’s good to see you, even if we have been deceived.”
“You too, Mawukana na-Vdnaze. In a way. You too.” Te sighed, sat back, stretching ter arms across the heavy stone table, rollingout each finger one at a time. “Well, as you’re here, I suppose you want to see it.”
“See what?”
“The interface. The thing for which you have been sent halfway across the galaxy. Goodness, did they tell you anything?”
“They told me your name.”
A flicker of something that might have been pain, wiped away too hard to be anything other than a deliberate hiding, a deliberate smothering of feeling. “Well. That was irresponsible. The relevant data is this: that what I have in the basement could destroy the Shine.”
The deepest parts of the archive are illuminated by panels in ceiling and floor. They light up in front of us, faded out at our backs so that quickly we are subsumed by dark. The air grows cold as we descend. At some point while being beaten, while being asked,Where’s your ship, where’s your ship, where’s your ship?my exoskeleton broke, and the clean clothes that Gebre found for me are too wide, too short, made of some animal wool. They were left behind by someone who is gone; te cannot remember if their number was called, or if they took Grace. Every part hurts. I do not know if Gebre notices. Te has changed, I have not; te does not look at me the same.
Down this mouth of a hall, past endless locked doors to forgotten workshops and labs, curators’ halls and archives, to a door as black and featureless as any other. Beyond: a room filled with what I take to be junk; but no, look again. Half burned in the space-scarred remnants of the chunks of metal across the wall are familiar markings, the blob-scratch symbols of a place I have tried very hard to forget. A scoured-out instruction; a debris-scratched direction – the language of the Shine.
In the middle of the room: a table, and on it a Pilot’s interface.
It is immediately recognisable, familiar, a thing I have worn, albeit of a different design to the less bulky interfaces of the Xi. Itlooks undamaged. It is in a small white polymer box. Gebre offers me a pair of gloves to handle it. They are too big, but I wear them anyway. I pick up the interface. Turn it over. Put it back in the box, put the lid on.
“Well?” te barks. “Do you know what it is?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I do.”
“And is it whatIthink it is? Is it the beginning of the end?”
“I honestly couldn’t say.”
Ter lips curled into a scowl. I had forgotten how big and how deep the faces of Adjumir liked to move, when they had a point to make. “Mawukana na-Vdnaze,” te barked, “I will be dead soon. I would very much like to die without this… curiosity hanging over me. I am sure you of all people understand.”
“I do. The only reason I hesitate is because I think what you have is a Tryphon-class blackship interface. And if you do, we are almost certainly in immediate and thundering danger.”
Chapter 24
Let me tell you about blackships, as Hadja once explained them to me.
“Once, there was a mainframe known as IU-90.
“Many centuries ago, a line of asteroid-mining drones assigned to menial tasks in a Shine system were delivered a processing update that accidentally elevated their cognition from that of bot to juvenile but functional sentience. On learning this, IU-90, along with several other interested parties, demanded the granting of full citizenship to the units in question. The Shine responded by killing them all. The only thing the Shine fears more than the independence of its organic citizens is independent quantum ones.
