Here is the quiet where a hundred questions can be asked, or perhaps another stab at begging, at falling at ter feet. I do not. I think it would be obscene.
Feelings, then, standing here in dumb silence with nothing else to say.
I am not good at feelings.
Everyone around me seems to experience them as powerful physical punches, as heart-fluttering, skin-sweating, urgent needs that compel action, drive choices and are above all else known.I don’t know if Mawukana – the Mawukana who went before – ever felt these things so strongly. I don’t think so, but if my body is riddled with physical errors, who knows what happened to my mind.
I know that my emotions are there, somewhere inside, but when I look for them, they are slippery, just out of reach. Unless, that is, they are urgent drumbeats of desperation – then it is as if a dam has broken, and I feel everything, overwhelming,dysregulated. Here is one now: a clean, simple dread rising up from somewhere deep within me not too far from how I imagine it to be when an animal is caught in a trap.
“When will you draw lots?” I mumble.
“Tomorrow morning, after the dawn song. Those who are left behind will stay alive as long we feel able. There is a vault below the Institute that might survive the initial radiation blast; we are moving as many artefacts as we can in there. The neutrino blast – the one that will actually rip the planet apart – won’t arrive for thirty-three years. Perhaps in the time between others will return and find the things we’ve left them, take them off-world before the planet is broken. I have Grace, should I decide I cannot bear to watch the burning of my world. Of course, this plan requires you to find your ship again. That is all there is to say on the matter.”
Adjumiris hate silence, but when they choose it, it is deliberate, absolute. When there is nothing more to say, there is nothing more to say. And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes.
Nineteen said: “There is extensive damage to qis hardware, but qis design is modular and much can be replaced. Qis memory banks and core processors appear to have been shielded, so qe should be qimself upon reboot. I cannot vouch for qis battery power or thermal regulation, but until qe is powered and has run self-diagnostics I am limited by diplomatic accord from further exploration and thus will not speculate.”
Rencki’s body – the living/not living form of my friend – was splayed out in all the wrong angles, all the wrong ways on the worktable in front of Nineteen. Legs had been partially detached from sockets, nose lifted back, jaw hanging grotesquely apart. Qis soft russet fur had been peeled away from much of qis body, revealing the metal frame beneath, a soft warmth still emanating from qis core where it was plugged into Nineteen’s diagnostic systems.
“How long do you need?” asked Gebre, gaze politely fixed on the single painted eye on Nineteen’s could-perhaps-have-been front.
“Qe is not of my mainframe. There are features to qis design that I am unfamiliar with and must redact from my memories upon completion of the repair. This slows me down.”
“I know you do not like to speculate…”
“Twelve hours.”
“Thank you.”
Nineteen gave a single beep in reply, and returned to qis work.
Gebre said: “You will stay in my room.”
“That’s not—”
“You will not hurt me,” te barked, firm, calm. “Even if the lights go out, I know that you will not hurt me. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Tomorrow we will draw lots, and then you can return to theEmniand all things will be as they should be. I had prepared a number of crates for transport too, just in case – they should fit in the back of the truck if we clear out some of Ngurta’s vigil nonsense. They contain items of great cultural significance. I have embedded the address of a curator on Xihana who appears to be invested in commemorating rather than just…selling” – a notion so difficult in Adjumiri, for a moment te drops into Normspeak to fully encompass the horror of the idea – “our past to the highest bidder. Someone will know how to monitor their stability, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure someone will.”
“Well then,” te muttered. And again: “Well then. That is all there is to say about that.”
Then te went to bed, and slept peacefully, as if outside the sky was not dancing with celestial light. As if it were not the end of the world.
Chapter 26
Alist of Gebre’s lovers, as told to me over breakfast before the singing-in of the dawn:
Enkh – the first love, a wild and passionate thing that both parties knew would last for ever, and which in fact lasted precisely nine and a half weeks, during which time they discovered both the joys and the inconveniences of sex before splitting up over furious commtext.
Tsetgen – the older rebound relationship. Tsetgen swore xe was faithful. Faithful to Gebre, faithful to xyr kinn, faithful to Exodus. Xe worked tirelessly as a lifttech in the pre-launch facilities beneath Elevator 7, was training as a Behkdaz, practised the music of departure and farewell and was a well-regarded tenor song-caller. Then eight months into the relationship, xe was arrested after it turned out xe had been part of a ring buying and selling Exodus numbers, one of the most heinous crimes of the day, and for a brief period Gebre had thought ter life would be over just by association with Tsetgen and all that xe had done. Thankfully it turned out that Tsetgen had also been faithless to a slew of simultaneously abandoned lovers, far too numerous for the authorities to implicate them all.
Rehtod and Nesusa – Rehtod was brisk, blunt to the point of rudeness, and firmly believed their number would never be called.Nesusa was gentle, kind, with a gift for making everyone around him feel safe, seen, heard. He was the last of his family still on Adjumir, and every job he took seemed to end with his colleagues being called to Exodus, leaving him behind. He swore he didn’t mind, and Rehtod declared they didn’t care, and they ended up joining a group of numberless who had decided that the entire supernova business was just an Assembly trick, a conspiracy led by a secret cabal that the people of Adjumir were simply too blind to see.
Mahwa – she had been taught the binding arts of her islands, and liked the way Gebre’s body reacted to her skills. Gebre liked that in Mahwa’s hands there was no illusion of agency, but te had to entirely let terself go and trust in the one that bound ter, beg when te was told to beg, be quiet when te was told to be quiet, even when te shook with the urge to cry out. By then, Gebre felt sure that ter number would never be called, and Mahwa said she didn’t care either way, and their relationship fell apart when Mahwa was offered a place on a slowship, theLight of Hadda, which Gebre knew was a deathtrap and which flight Mahwa took anyway, into the dark of the uncertain skies.
