“Why?”
“TO SET A TRAP.”
“I don’t understand.”
“YOU ARE THE GHOST OF HASHA-TO. THE UNIONISTS OF THE SHINE ARE GROWING IN POWER, BUT THEY ARE NOT FEARED. THE SHINE FEARS YOU. IS FASCINATED BY YOU. THEODOSIUS RHODE IS FASCINATED BY YOU. A MONSTER HÉ CANNOT KILL. A CREATURE OF THE DARK. FEAR MAKES THEM PREDICTABLE. THEY WOULD IMAGINE THAT THROUGH THIS INTERFACE YOU COULD ACCESS THEIR SYSTEMS, FIND THEIR SHIPS, REVEAL THEIR ENTIRE NETWORK TO THEIR ENEMIES. THEY NEEDED TO BELIEVE IT WAS POSSIBLE.”
“I couldn’t do any of it. There was too much noise, too much madness. It didn’t work.”
“THE INTERFACE WAS NOT THE TRAP.YOUWERE THE TRAP.”
“Explain.”
“YOUR EFFORTS TO ACCESS THEIR COMMS THROUGH THE TRYPHON INDUCED THE SHINE TO ISSUE AN ENTIRELY NEW BLACKSHIP COMMS PROTOCOL. OLD SYSTEMS WERE RETIRED. NEWSYSTEMS INSTALLED. STEPS TAKEN TO KEEP YOU FROM PENETRATING THEIR COMMUNICATIONS. YOU HAVE MET THE ENGINEERS INVOLVED – VALANS COLAN RENGABE AND RIV FEXRI. HE SERVES THE SHINE. SHE DOES NOT.”
I have often struggled with hospitality customs.
There is nothing strange about hospitality – most species that have made it past the hitting-nuts-with-rocks stage have a degree of social bonding and integration; it is how they survive. Indeed, the necessity of social bonding is so strong that tonotunderstand the local rules of hospitality is an immediate warning sign, a marker of otherness, of danger, of threat. Did you touch your bowl with your right hand? Did you mention politics before dessert, pass the nectar to the left, look an elder in the eye or not look an elder in the eye, agree when you should have been arguing, laugh when you should have been sad? Alien, alien, threat, threat! You try so hard, but you are doing it wrong.
You are doing it wrong.
You are doing it wrong.
No one has explained how to do it right – you’re meant to just know, to understand this thing, this important, vital, obvious thing. But you’re doing it wrong.
You are doing it wrong.
And no one will ever love you while you are doing it wrong.
Of the two engineers who worked on the replacement for the Tryphon interface, it was Riv Fexri who was the traitor.
Her parents knew about Glastya Row, whispered the name of Sarifi im-Yyahwa long after the woman was dead. They told their daughter about the binary suns, about the end of the world, about what it meant to fight to stay alive.
Riv Fexri was a very serious child, as you would be when you carried the weight of the world on your back.
When she was nine, her parents’ unorthodox inclinations wereexposed. Nothing could be immediately proven by Corpsec, so they weren’t simply arrested. Rather, they were promoted sideways – she into a job that was meant for two, he into a job destined for failure.
She was injured first, which meant she couldn’t work.
He was then let go, for his failure to do the impossible.
They were put in remedial measures, given food and shelter, their debts rising with every mouthful, every night of sleep. If the parents – when the parents – could not pay it, that debt was put onto the child, and it was obvious where that particular tale was going. Restitution would be through indenture, first of the parents, then the daughter. These things were far more reasonable than disappearing the family overnight – their collapse into servitude was languid enough that people who might have been outraged simply shrugged their shoulders and said well well.
Well well.
Such a shame.
In the end, Riv’s parents abandoned her, fled into the drylands and quickly died.
Abandoning her was the merciful thing to do. Though Riv would continue to accumulate debt through her placement into the Halsect orphanage, the debts of her parents would no longer keep piling on her too, and thus she would only have to work sixteen years to clear her dues before she could seek employment elsewhere.
Of course, as a nine-year-old, you don’t see it that way.
All you know is that your parents have left you.
That they didn’t stay to fight for you.
That you are alone, and unworthy of love.
