They spoke of coming together, of unity, of harmony. They spoke of Lhonoja as an opportunity, a chance to bring people together – as if eight hundred million had not died, as if billions had not been scattered to the stars. All their speeches were directed to Theodosius, though hé showed no sign of caring. Magnificent Shine; extraordinary Shine. To walk into a room and ignore everyone, and have everyone still try to talk to you despite that. I wondered if the diplomats and foreign ministers churning through their notes understood just how much power they were giving hím.
A quan issued a statement on behalf on the non-human delegates, stating how much they appreciated the care their hosts were taking with the atmospheric conditions in their accommodation despite the acidic damage it was causing to inner hulls, and nothing more.
“It’s like they’re laughing at us,” someone said, and was immediately hushed.
Afterwards, knots of civil servants and quiet, thoughtful barterers who knew when to smile and when to say “that will not work for either of us” separated into huddles, while their more prominent, more recognisable masters gave commnet interviewsand talked earnestly about tragedy and empty hopes. And at the beginning of second night, that sweeping darkness that rushes through the Spindle’s halls, I went to sit by the messenger of the Slow, to wait for Hulder.
Hulder never came.
Qis absence was so shocking, so absurdly rude, that for a moment I was almost impressed. A deliberate no-show, a purposeful snub – in other individuals you could imagine an error, an accident or delay, but not Hulder. Qe was built for integration and communication. If qe chose not to make an appointment, qe chose it on purpose.
I waited almost an entire Normhour for qim. When finally I shook my head, rattled myself free of this frozen state, there was someone else behind me, looking up at the black cube on its plinth, a green-blue drink held in one hand, a single pearl embedded in her right ear. Riv Fexri, one of the two from the Executor’s entourage who didn’t belong, maybe a spy, maybe something else – and here she was, gazing at a manifestation of an entity that the Shine would almost certainly have called an enemy, with a curiosity that at once piqued my own.
I must have looked at her too long, because her eyes flickered to me, looked me over once, lingered on the scar on the back of my hand, before she blurted in Mdo-sa: “Hello.”
“Hello,” I replied, in the language of the Shine.
“You are dressed like a Xi but have the scars of the Shine. Are you a Unionist?” There was no rancour in her voice; a simple, flat curiosity, a scientist encountering something previously unknown.
“I was born on Tu-mdo.”
“But you escaped?”
I blinked in surprise, wondered for a moment if I’d misremembered the word – not “left” or “fled” or “departed” butescaped, as if the Shine were a prison to flee from. “Yes. A long time ago.”
“Uh. How long?”
“By now… over a hundred years.”
“You don’t look that old.”
“No. There have been… alterations.”
“I do not understand what that means.”
“My body does not age in an appropriate manner. Although you could say the same of the Executor, could you not?”
No smile, no frown. She is fascinated – that is all. Simply fascinated. Perhaps that is why she is here, standing before the messenger of the Slow. It is an incredibly dangerous curiosity; I find the effect hypnotic.
“Hé has access to the most expensive, most exclusive medical treatments in the galaxy,” she mused, as if solving a problem out loud. “Are you saying you do too?”
“I am not saying that, no. I am… uncomfortable with my condition.”
“That’s fine,” she replied, with an immediate flicker of her fingers – a thing that resembled hand-speak, but not of Mdo-sa, a dancing of fingers that on Adjumir might have expressed a kind of easy moving-on, a polite acknowledgement of the topic needing to change. As soon as it was there, it was gone, and I thought perhaps I had imagined it, and she was staring back into the blackness of the Slow. “We can talk about something else. If you are not a rebel, are you with the Xi? You are dressed like them.”
“No. I am assistant to the ambassador for the Consensus.”
“Within the United Social Venture, the Consensus is a banned trans-humanist organisation.”
“I know.”
“There is nothing valued so much in the Shine as diversity of thought and ability,” she intoned. “The Consensus kill that individuality.”
I could not tell from how she spoke whether she believed what she said; her voice was as flat and level as mine so often was, an experience both strangely comforting and unnerving. “The Consensus might argue,” I mused, “that most of society is nothing more and nothing less than a distributed consciousness. We rely onother people to do so much thinking for us – to design our ships, farm our food, solve equations or write poetry to help us unravel our feelings – that in many ways to live anything but utterly alone is already to be part of a hive mind anyway. All the Consensus does, they say, is deepen that bond. That is what they claim, at least. I can understand how, given that the only way to experience it is to become it, there is room for interpretation and doubt.”
“That is an interesting perspective I had not considered. I am sure I will find it flawed, in time. If you believe it, why haven’t you joined them?”
“I tried, once. The first stage of bonding is to share your mind with a circle of eight, a temporary connection to see if this is an experience you wish to deepen and create. But the eight I joined looked into me and broke the connection at once, and said I was incompatible with their thoughts.”
