Jione, a stick-tall Xi who added to eir size with the addition of peaked hat and orange-yellow robe that was mostly shoulder pad, did not approve of my presence. Ey had been briefed on my role as Pilot/assistant/sometime-partner-in-crime to Cuxil, and had expressed in language both formal and colourfully informal how inappropriate they considered it that a Xi be engaged in a matterof this nature without eir oversight and approval, let alone a quan companion to watch my every movement, judge my every breath.
“But we are Consensus,” Cuxil had patiently replied. “Our mission transcends borders, states and planets. And as Consensus, we choose to trust Mawukana.”
When Jione’s turn came to add eir leaves to the house, ey was quick, graceful, practised. Cuxil was called up with the cumbersome title “Ambassador of the Consensus of Interwoven Consciousnesses and Affiliated Sentiences” and kept her work short and unflashy. The Consensus never liked to draw attention to itself.
It took me a moment to recognise Hulder. The quan had tweaked qis design to be a little longer, a little thinner around the torso, a subtle but appreciable step towards the physiology of qis hosts, qis face set in a beneficent smile. As qe stepped away from qis weaving, qis eyes – a little larger than human norm, designed perhaps to encourage that instinctive trust a parent has for a child – skimmed over me, and the smile did not twitch, falter. I wondered how much of me qe remembered, archived data compressed down to a low-resolution image and a few lines of text in a memory bank. Or perhaps qe had written me out of qis mind altogether – the beauty of qis form could hardly leave a huge amount of room for battery, and qis processor and memory resources had to be dedicated to bartering with the assembled representatives of the galaxy.
Qe turned qis palms towards me in brief Xihana-style greeting; then turned away as if qe had not, all those years ago, told me that Gebre had requested my presence on Adjumir, and that had been a lie.
The representatives of the Shine came late to the weaving, swarming around their leader, the Executor of the Executorium themselves, and they were numerous, and they were there for Theodosius Rhode.
I had heard of hís ascension to Executor, of course. Hís name and face had been all over Consensus briefings. Hé was still thetallest man in the room, but what astonished me was how little hé had changed in over a hundred years, since I had seen hím last on that grey landing pad in Glastya Row. He still wore hís signature grey suit with high collar, the silver badge of hís Venture now replaced with the golden pin of Executor and the four golden stubs of a tenured Board member. Hís long silver braid still ran down hís back, and the scar across hís face had now been added to with a long scar carefully cut across the front of hís skull, slicing through hís hairline in a raised pale ridge. Five little cuts above hís artificial eye denoted hís genius for a deal; a white ridge through hís lower lip spoke of hís mastery at negotiation, another through hís upper lip spoke of secrets kept, bargains upheld. Yet though hís skin was now ridged with the markings of hís triumph, what was most remarkable to me was how little hé otherwise appeared to have aged. If anything, a century of bio-treatments and genetic enhancements had left his skin mirror-bright, taut where it wrapped around the visible contours of hís skull. Only a slight pinkness about hís cut lips, a slight tugging in the corner of hís mouth whispered that the virile face before you might be concealing reinforced bone and nano-clamped telomeres. The most senior Managers could live for centuries – the longest I’d ever heard of was one who made it to nearly three hundred and fifty – but in the streets of Glastya Row such numbers had seemed remote, absurd.
Well, they deserve it, don’t they? These brilliant men, they just work so hard, whisper the ghosts of Glastya Row, from beneath the rubble of the bombed-out city.They give so much.
Everyone in the Shine had wanted to live for ever. If they lived for ever, perhaps one day they’d finally experience the peace and contentment that the Shine promised would be their reward.
The assembled dignitaries of the Spindle fell silent as Theodosius was called forward to weave. Hé smiled politely at the mention of hís name, and gestured loosely towards the half-assembled structure. From hís entourage three people scuttled forward, heads bowed, fingers twined in golden rings that raninto golden bangles that clattered all the way up their arms to the golden brackets locked around their necks. I caught my breath, recognising the jewellery they wore – glamorous, indulgent debtor’s collars, but the marks of enslavement nonetheless. These three picked up the leaves that had been spread for Theodosius and set to weaving as the diplomats of the Accord muttered indignation, while the Executor stood on, smiling at their discontent, hís every move being quietly filmed by hís assistants, the rest of us just out of frame.
The non-human delegates – the aka-aka, the fujiva, the uke – watched from behind their sealed survival bubbles, and occasionally remarked through quan translators on how interesting the whole thing was. I tried to get a glimpse of one of them, but the windows of their survival units only went one way, shielding them from view.
Afterwards, there were drinks.
Cuxil had, with some effort, convinced Jione to allow me to wear the formal garb of the Xi delegation. The shoulders felt loose and heavy across my back and the trousers itched against my calves, but I knew it was a kind of belonging, and that was something to be grateful for. The hat, which in its most extravagant form included a band lined with little wooden spoons for the ceremonial sharing of soup, I left in my room.
I have never known how to mingle in crowds. The gift of easy conversation, of speaking gentle nothings in a way that is at once polite yet familiar, of inserting myself with some easy witticism, has always evaded me. I would argue it evades most other people too – having observed sentient behaviour for nearly as long as the Executor, I have seen nothing so common as people butting into other people’s flow with a cry of “Gosh, how interesting – I have opinions too, you know, and shall now be sharing them all!” Even the most charismatic and seemingly charming of conversationalists seem to have a knack for hearing another’s tale of painand sorrow and exclaiming at the end, “Oh my dearest, I quite understand – why, something entirely dissimilar once happened to me too, you know!” Quite how they get away with it I have never fully fathomed. People tell me this is because of certain deficits in my nature. I think they deceive themselves, but blame me anyway.
Snatches of conversation, half overheard:
Cuxil exclaims: “But of course, the Consensus has changed a great deal even in the last decade. As people flee from the Edge, they find themselves drifting, alone. We offer understanding, a place where they can be seen and welcomed without having to fear cultural misunderstanding or a language barrier. Naturally refugees are drawn to us; it is sometimes simpler to be loved by a whole unconditionally than to try and be an individual, wandering alone.”
The ambassador she speaks to is wearing the garb of a world I do not know, and shifts uncomfortably at her words. Some garbled reply – but the individual, the mind, the identity – but it is hard to argue with Cuxil’s bright, open smile. The Consensus loves, she exclaims, we love, we love, we love! That is how we were first created, the bond between two lovers who were willing to share every part of their souls. But of course, when people join we give them our love, and they give us their pain. We are hurting, Ambassador – we are hurting too. And at the end of the day, we are only human.
I wonder if the ambassador hears the quiet threat in Cuxil’s voice. There are whole worlds where the Consensus is banned – including the Shine. The Consensus is evil, wicked, they say. It wants to steal your mind, suck out the very thing that makes you you.
In the face of this, the Consensus has always been very careful to present a positive, friendly front. I cannot conceive what it will look like should the Consensus go to war.
Hulder does not drink, since it would be an electronicallydestructive act, but rather plays with a thick-stemmed flower plucked from the long gardens of the Spindle. Qe does this because qe understands that humans like to cling to their glasses of water or fruity wine when they speak, for security, for comfort, discharging their emotions into little movements and gentle sips like a quan might discharge static. If fellow conversationalists are not holding a glass, then the humans are immediately more uncomfortable –other, other, other!rings the bell – and so, because it is easier to enable the limited powers of human empathy to latch onto something, anything at all, than it is to explain their own quirks back to them, Hulder plays with a flower and says: “Really? Please, do tell me more…”
A voice rings out: “But you know what’s happening, youknow…!”
It is loud, the precise Normspeak accent dissolving into something else, a localisation I cannot put my finger on. A few people – those less trained in the art of pretending that everything is fine – turn. I am one of them. I do not know the ambassador who has cried out, who is being hastily hushed, taken to one side. His face is red, his knuckles white, his skull is shaved and a network of tattoos in the blackest ink cover the soft, sandy skin – I think this is a thing common in a region of Nitashi, a planet where not even the most stringent of vaccines could keep me from rampaging hay fever the one time I visited. Then the crowd flows back over him, and the polite chatter of understandings being made, rumours spread, returns to the hall.
I eye up Hulder again, make my approach. Slip into qis presence with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. People shuffle politely to make room for me but no one acknowledges my presence until finally Hulder does, qis voice modulated bright, speaking precise Normspeak: “It’s Mawukana, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“A delight – such a pleasure to see you again. Mawukana na-Vdnaze, may I introduce you to the ambassador for Umm-ai’lanaand her assistant…”
And then they keep on chit-chatting, without a care in the world. I scrambled through the patterns of speech Cuxil had tried to teach me: questions about weather (unhelpful on the Spindle), a compliment about some manner of dress, a remark about the food or some ambient quality of the room – the music, perhaps, or an object of art if one could be seen. None seemed appropriate and so: “Ambassador,” I cut in, and it was rude, and everyone recoiled, just a little bit, to let me know it. “May I speak with you in private?”
“Of course. After second night? I am really rather busy now…”
“After second night is fine for me.”
“Then I shall see you by the Slow. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
And off qe went again, another dignitary spotted, another cry of “Ah, how lovely!” and an effortless transition to the language of the one qe greeted, the performance of some greeting ritual, the touch of a cool synthetic finger to just the right place on someone’s warm organic back.
