Strangely, I did not feel curious on this subject.
I was finding that I was feeling less and less curious, these violent days; and yet that did not seem to make me feel more human.
Chapter 51
Messages, received across the dark.
Cuxil, ambassador for the Consensus.
She hopes I am well.
Reports that the Consensus has people all across the Shine, constantly learning, feeding information to the Accord, to the resistance.
Reports that the Shine knows this, has taken to executing its own people on the merest suspicion of being Consensus, that they claim to have developed a “hive mind detector”, which, she admits, can detect a Consensus-bound consciousness, but also delivers false positives 40 per cent of the time. Thousands of innocents are dying. She knows so much of what death is, now. She knows how it feels, and she is not afraid.
Agran, Adjumiri/not Adjumiri, child of the Spindle/child of Hadda, which is gone.
She says she has spoken to her kindler, asked her about what it meant, what it used to mean, to pass through the gate. Her kindler has taught her a few of the songs, and they are thinking of trying to organise a thing, some sort of ceremony to mimic how things were back on Adjumir. Rituals are important, she says. They bind us together; remind us that we are not alone.
It is too late for me, she adds.
I have tried so hard to belong in this place that I belong nowhere at all. I was not wrong. I was not wrong. How strange it is, the things we shape ourselves to be, without even noticing what we do.
A biologist on Xihana wants another sample of my blood.
They took one only a few years ago, but someone put it in a refrigerator and forgot all about it, and though the slide remains the blood is gone, vanished without a trace.
I write back and say I am currently unavailable, and do not know when I will be home.
Rencki.
At first, I could not quite believe it was qim, but qe speaks of things we have seen, experiences shared, memories. Qe could have uploaded these experiences to qis mainframe for storage and wiped qis own core, but then what is qe if not qis experiences? Where, in the great sea of memories that are the collective experience of qis mainframe, does Rencki stop and something else begin?
Qe says qe is enjoying being a ship, enjoying the new ways it makes qim feel, makes qim think. I can hear it too, hear the thoughtful slowness of one who can take qis time without worrying about running qis batteries down with too deep a contemplation.
Enjoyment – such a strange concept to one such as qim. Qe expresses it as a kind of safety. Qe does not fear physical damage, does not worry about the impact of a solar flare. Instead, qe can take time to appreciate the churning of a coronal mass ejection, sample the flavour of it across qis bows. It is a different way of living, qe says, and qe is enjoying being alive.
Qe says qe wants to talk to me.
That there are things to discuss.
Matters of import, best handled in person.
I think a while, then reply, say that regrettably, I am busy. I am on a mission. I am in the dark. I am lost.
Chapter 52
The next time we were betrayed, the Shine had changed their strategy.
Perhaps they had learned from our last encounter that theDutywas not so easy to kill in flight. Perhaps that was why they were waiting for us on the surface of the planet. They let us land. They let us begin the laborious process of unloading cargo from submerged vessel to submersible drone to the surface where the resistance waited. They let us get comfortable. Let old friends find each other; let laughter be shared. Then they came in the night, and killed everyone they found.
In the little town of Untdakh, on the edge of Typur Bay, a kill-squad of Corpsec descended with lights off and weapons muffled, and began a massacre. They were not discriminatory. The town was known to be a hotbed of resistance and non-cooperation, from schoolteachers who taught the syllabus they were ordered to but secretly whispered against the Shine, through to the water treatment plant, which still clung to the ancient rules of Nitashi that said fresh drinking water was a right for all, rather than a privilege to be paid for. Besides, it had been a while since a really good massacre, and the time had come to make an example, so the Shine came, guns loaded, and put down every living creature they saw.
They had killed thirty-nine people before someone ran to raise the alarm.
That roused a group of half-naked fighters, Pitt and theDuty’s crew among them, who rushed into the street to defend their people and their lives. I do not know what good their victory would have done; theDutycould not have carried all the people of the town if they had lived, and the survivors would simply have been bombed the following morning, or rounded up and sent off for execution or the debtor’s collar, which was just a slower way of dying. I imagine it feels better to die knowing you at least had a hand in how your life ended, some cruel semblance of control. I would like to say that Pitt fought heroically. I am told that at times like these, it is the duty of a friend to imagine him and his crew with backs pressed to a half-shattered wall, shots firing all around, nodding just once in comradely fellowship with those with whom he had served, a warrior-like understanding, before kneeling down into a shooting position once more and returning fire to the great massed of unseen, masked, nameless enemies before him. In such a narrative, Pitt and his crew are heroes. Their faces unmasked, you can see the love they share, the bonds of friendship, their passion and commitment. They are human – humanised – glorious fellows. Whereas their enemies, in tactical masks and heavy boots, are barely sentient at all. Merely symbols of a marching machine of death.
If Shine Corpsec had offered to recruit me when I lived on Glastya Row, I would have said yes. I would have been so grateful for the opportunity to drag myself out of debt. I don’t even know if they did wear masks when they went to murder the people of Untdakh. Maybe they did. Maybe the people of the Shine wanted to pretend they weren’t human too.
