It occurred to me that after all of this, theEmniwas still just Rencki and me. We hadn’t picked up any passengers, hadn’t crammed a few extra refugees into our ship; just a single white box resting by my feet. We hadn’t even managed to load up any goods from the Institute, any paintings of ancient waterfalls or books of poems written by the river-mendicants. Nothing to take to their descendants, scattered among the stars, to say look, look here – these people lived, these people’s lives had meaning, look how they are still living now, captured in ink and pigment to tell their stories. You should be so lucky – we should all be so lucky – to have that kind of immortality, to still be so alive.
Still alive.
Still alive.
In these stories, they are still alive.
I wondered where Zanlan was, if the numberless child ever made it off-planet. Probably not. Wondered if an adult would give them Grace. What kind of adult could.
Mercy, murder, mercy, murder.
Only a monster would kill a child.
Only a monster would let that child live.
I breathed out, and it was the air of Adjumir leaving my lungs.
Then Rencki said: “We’re at speed. Ready for arcspace.”
I clicked in reply, and at once it felt strange, unnatural, an affectation that no longer had meaning.
“Are you going to be OK?” Rencki asked, voice neutral, worn at the edges by damage to qis speaker. Then: “You did the right thing. This interface, this journey… it will make a difference. All of it. Makes a difference.”
I closed my eyes as the interface slithered over the back of my head, didn’t flinch as the tendrils of it burrowed into my skull, said nothing in reply.
The darkness, when it reached for me, was an old and loving friend.
I reached back, happy to be coming home.
Interlude
Things that are true about this vasty, teeming, empty universe:
It is easier for life to develop from carbon than silicon. Carbon forms before silicon in the stellar core, binds with oxygen into a gas rather than a solid, makes stronger atomic connections than spindly silicon’s jagged chemical bonds. This physical reality, as fundamental as the fusion of hydrogen in a star, leads to certain chemical inevitabilities, as thus: carbon-based life uses water, stable as it is, as a solvent. Water-based evolution trends towards fins and flagella; air-born offshoots trend towards wings for flying, legs for walking. Being born with wheels for feet is not a sensible, sustainable evolutionary destination. From the deep-sea amoebas of boiling Ux to the mountain clans of Ikkulaxi, physics will tend towards pumps or muscular contractions as a mechanism for driving fluid through organs, gas-exchangers for respiration and a careful balance between cognitive power versus energy consumption.
In other words: most sentient creatures of the galaxy are capable of recognising other sentient creatures, no matter where they come from, however different they may appear at first glance. If they do not, it is a choice.
Most particles bouncing around the interstellar void are incredibly hot, in the sense that “heat” is a measure of speed. Zipping around, the energy of each wandering photon is remarkably toasty; but the distances they cover being so vast, you’re never reallybumping into enough of them to experience anything other than the empty black, into which your heat drains like the last light of the thunderbolt.
Matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light. This remains a reality despite the proliferation of arcspace travel. The boundaries between inspace and arcspace require a certain velocity to be safely breached – usually anywhere between 0.2 and 0.4 of the speed of light. This is more important on exit than entry – ships travelling too slowly as they crawl through the event horizon back into what is rather judgementally described as “normal” reality can be ripped apart at transition, and thus you want to get through that most delicate of phases as quickly and with as much momentum as possible. A number of societies, most notably the pan-planetary movement known as the Lux, refuse to travel by arcship at all, preferring slowships and the cryochamber to the dangers of the dark. Even then, the risks are not insignificant, for at a mere 0.3 of the speed of light, the pressure of the interstellar void against a slowship’s hull over centuries of sluggish flight is enough to grind the vessel down like grated butter. It must therefore be concluded that, given that the dangers of both forms of travel are roughly equal, people choose the slow because it gives them the illusion of agency, the apparition of control. This is irrational, albeit a common psychological feature of nearly every spacefaring species in the galaxy.
There is not a society existing that does not have some population groups who believe in conspiracies. Most of these are designed to explain away personal suffering or indignity, and the ones who are caught in these narratives usually want to protect others, defend their family, unmask a threat or keep others from a perceived danger. They are the heroes of their stories – and who living does not want to be a hero?
The real conspiracies – the actual plots and plans that will shape whole worlds – are often far too vast and far too impersonal to really grasp, and when theyaregrasped, they are not called “conspiracies” at all, but rather “policies” or “business plans”. They maynot serve you, may in fact destroy your livelihood, your life – but as you, personally, the hero in this tale, may be powerless to prevent a surprise attack or a corporate takeover that destroys your home, these things are not conspiracy at all. Just macroeconomic forces, and you happened to be there too.
Chapter 32
Later – some time later – theEmnidocked with a Xi military ship. TheMirabeiwas, as with all Xi vessels, a living leviathan, which swallowed up theEmnias if we were plankton drifting through her parted jaws. She carried a crew of seven thousand souls, including forty Pilots, of whom she had used seventeen.
No one asked Rencki how qe had lost so much of qis fur; perhaps qe had already called ahead to let them know. A Lordat asked if I needed to talk about what I was feeling. I said no.
Instead, I followed our guides to a Pilot’s chair, deep in the humming basalt belly of the ship. Military doctors and officers stood anxious all around as Gebre’s Tryphon interface was pressed against my skull, the slim object for which so many people who would have died anyway had died a few days earlier than the end of the world.
Everyone agreed – though no one directly asked – that I should be the one to do it.
It wasn’t just that I had returned from Adjumir with the object.
Not just that I had been/had not been/may have been requested by name to be its courier.
