So very, very curious.
And I knew that it, the thing that slunk through the dark, thatwasthe dark, found me really rather boring next to these screaming, broken minds.
Or no, not boring.
Familiar.
And thus not worth any more of its attention.
Then, nine years after I first wired my mind into the blackship interface, first connected with the Pilots in the black, the signal stopped. I sat in the Pilot’s chair, and reached out, and there was nothing there.
Chapter 44
The Executor was waiting in a little room by the docking bay, as hís shuttle was prepared.
It was very brightly lit; more so than was comfortable, a whiteness that threatened to white out everything, taking away the edges of this space so that we seemed almost to float in an eye-aching void of light. It made every part of me itch, want to crawl away on hands and knees, taste something like bile in my throat. Too late now.
Hé had no Corpsec, no attendants with hím. Spindle security waited outside – dozens of soldiers, fully armed, yet strangely disarmed in hís presence, keeping at a safe distance so as not to violate hís space. Hé smiled as I entered, rose from hís seat, a tatty office chair with a low, uncomfortable back. Nevertheless, Theodosius Rhode stood as if were in a throne room and hé the king, as if there were not stains of unwashed ancient lunches in the fabric, a faint smell of rotten-egg docking bay sulphur on the air.
“Mawukana Respected na-Vdnaze, I believe,” hé said, in the language of the Shine. Did I imagine it, or had hís accent softened since the days of Glastya Row? Become a thing not quite of one place or another? “Won’t you sit?”
“I prefer to stand.”
“If you wish. But you don’t mind if I…?”
I clicked my tongue twice, and hé seemed to understand, or at least not care, and folded hímself back down as if hé expected cocktails now to be served.
“Do you still call yourself Mawukana?” hé asked, when I did not move. “Given all that has changed.”
“Yes.”
“Mawukana. And I am Theodosius.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do. I am giving you permission to be informal. You’d be surprised the verbal gymnastics people do when they address me. In the United Social Venture everyone is equal. Equal in our potential, in our possibilities – that is the point. I have achieved certain things, things that others might perhaps envy or aspire to, but nothing more than another could do, with the right circumstances, right amount of get-up-and-go. People always misunderstand this about us. They mistake our hierarchies for crude, imposed things, rather than a reflection of where people naturally settle when the churning stops.”
“Every Executive of every Venture inherited their Shine,” I snap. “They started their lives with wealth and promise, and used their wealth and promise to keep power to themselves. That is not the Shine of the first colonies, and you know it, so let’s not waste each other’s time.”
“Very well,” hé breathed, eyes bright, the smile not flickering, one leg crossed over the other, one hand on top of the other, resting on hís thigh. “Though your analysis lacks a certain vision. Tell me, Mawukana, did we kill someone you loved? Recently, I mean.”
I am a dumb, numb sack of flesh standing before this man. Hé sees right through my skin, and still hé smiles and smiles and smiles, so that nothing can be believed except the sight of hís teeth.
“Most Unionists – we killed someone. There are some foot soldiers who feel hard done by, who feel that they were denied opportunity, deserved advancement – but they are generally speaking cheaply bought. Their ambitions are petty, easily fulfilled, easilyturned. And there are ideologues, but the problem with that sort is they get so invested in the value of their big ideas that they become rigid, difficult to work with. Some might want to take the USV back to the days of Ko-mdo, to an age where work was survival, primal, every gasp of breath a victory, every drop of water carved from the ice at the edge of the world. Others want to destroy the Shine altogether, believe that the whole system is rotten, a lie, that there are worlds upon worlds where the skies are blue and the seas are clear and if we could all stop trying to measure our dicks against each other then we could live humble, pleasant, contented lives. The Xi are of this sort, I believe. So many… average people, happily being average. They boast of having gone centuries without conflict, of everyone being content. Contentment, not growth. Nothing to tax the soul. I often wonder: what is even the point of that? What is the point of a people who are born, live without fire, die without note? What even is the fucking point of them, you know?”
Hé is so baffled by the idea, hé finds it almost funny. How strange it is to live a life where you do no harm, achieve no conquests, and die without a monument.
Gebre is dead, ter ghost tutting in the dark.
What even is the point?te wonders.When all we are and all we will be is dust, blown before the storm?
“And so I am forced to wonder,” hé continues, “did we kill someone you loved?”
I don’t answer.
Hé appears neither surprised nor disappointed at this development.
“I am familiar of course with the ghost of Hasha-to. Enough debtors saw what happened to tell the story; the story was repeated enough to become a legend. I have heard the legend, but also seen the truth. I told my security I would like them to kill you – lethally, of course – to see what happened. They advised against it. Said that if you survived, there might be… unpleasantness.That was the word they used. ‘Unpleasant’. Very disappointing. I pay for direct information, clean and precise, but a general sense of unspecified dread surrounds you, Respected. A non-specific sense that you are bad news waiting to happen, which no one is able to fully express. The Lordats have whole archives dedicated to the nature of your profanity – but well. Well. It seems to me that the kind of man who returns to Hasha-to and slaughters every officer inside, he doesn’t do that because he’s curious. Alien. Something unknowable. Not at all. That is vengeance. Pure, cold, blackened vengeance. And so you see, this whole ‘careful of the darkspawn, the creature of the unknown’ – it doesn’t make sense at all. Not at all. I watched the footage – it took you days to crawl back to the airlock. Live and die, live and die, live and die, over and over again, the agony on your face, the way your skin burned – if it was half as horrible as it looked, it must have been extraordinary. How does it feel when your heart stops? Did you find yourself curious then?”
