Flight of the Vajra (23 page)

“Well, knowing you, there’s a good reason for all
of it, right?” Enid said. At least her mouth wasn’t that full when she talked.

“There is. It involves both of you, for two
reasons: the promises I made to Enid, and the bond I intuited exists between
you both. If I am wrong about the second one . . . ”

“You came in right as we were talking about that,”
I said. Enid, mouth now completely full, just nodded.

“That promise will be kept.” Angharad put the
cover back on her bowl and folded her hands in her lap. “And part of how I
intend to keep that promise involves an offer I wish to extend to you, Mr. Sim—and
by extension the both of you.”

I raised my head from my meal. I’d already eaten
enough for the time being, so I put my spoon down and let my stomach catch up.
Enid continued shoveling.

“The Old Way is dying,” Angharad said, in the same
voice that one would use to say
I have lived too long.
“It has been
dying for decades—long before I ever ascended to the post of Kathaya, perhaps
long before I was born fifty-nine solar years ago. But it is not dying merely
because the Highend worlds prosper in their own way. One star does not wane
simply because another is ascendant. The Old
Way
is dying—as a path of
life—because there are too few who see it as such a path. It is an institution
and a doctrine, a body of influence and a temple of worship—but it has ceased
to become a path to follow across lives and generations. People still follow,
but only long enough to find themselves disappointed. They light the lantern
and recite the Cycle, watch the generations come and go. And then one night it
is their child that breathes no more, not someone else’s father, or even their
own. So we grieve with them, we offer them what we can, which to them is suddenly
very little indeed. Words? The universe is full of words; why have any number
of hollow words when you could conceivably have returned to you your son, your
daughter, your husband, wife, brother, mother, anyone for whom you have love
enough to care for? So they curse us, and leave us—and when their next child is
born, he will receive a cortical link and be backed up in the way you were not.”

Or they just curse you and leave, I thought, but
stopped myself there.

“And none of this is their fault,” she went on. “It
is ours, our fault alone, for not showing how the Old Way can be more than just
a symbol and a text and a roof under which one huddles with others a few nights
of the month. We have failed to offer them anything better because we ourselves
no longer know what it is. We allowed it to become words in the mouth and
nothing more. We assumed, not altogether wrongly, that as long as the doors
were kept opened, that as long as we warmly welcomed those who came, all would
be well. But none of this is enough, Henré, and I know it. It is not enough to
wipe away the tears of the grieving and tell them, time and again, that all
will be well, only to see them rush off in sullen haste and embrace everything
that they were warned about. To have their own lives and the lives of their own
children prolonged indefinitely; to forestall death indefinitely—or, again, at
least as much as the money will allow or the law will allow . . . why
should
they reject any of these things? Why indeed? Why, especially when
to do so now only seems that much more like spite?

“Those who turn from the Old Way, they turn their
backs on us sincerely. That much I am sure of. They are not bound up in
wondering about the consequences for their children’s children of having
suffering so completely forestalled. They make very good cases for themselves
for forgetting why the Old Way came to be at all, why it became clear how every
man had to strike a balance between the sovereignty of his self and his
membership in the cosmos. And when that balance is not struck, then everything
that was so fiercely protected before, everything that was worth weeping over
when it was threatened, suddenly becomes precious no more. Our children are not
our children anymore; they are simply successors. Our parents become mere
guardians. Our brothers and sisters, just siblings. And all others beyond those—they
become conveniences at best and obstacles at worst. A generation goes by, at
one-quarter or one-fifth the pace of the previous one. Whether or not another
generation even arises after that, or whether this generation simply finds this
way and that way to forestall ever having to give rise to another generation in
the first place . . . it scarcely matters. For by then the circle has
unraveled entirely. They do not
intend
to turn their fellow man into a
product. But as they do it to themselves, so they are destined to do it to
everyone else.”

Enid had put her dipper down a long time ago. She
hung onto every word like it was bad family news.

“I still believe in the Old Way,” Angharad
continued. “Not habitually, not simply as a stopgap against what the Highend
worlds have chosen. They see humanity—themselves—as raw material and nothing
more, material to be shaped by the force of their own will. I refuse to see humanity
as anything other than humanity—as a process of being, a joining and weaving of
eternity.

“I know that I, because of my privilege and
station, can reach a great many people. But I cannot do it from here. I cannot
do it as long as I remain anchored to the weight of the Achitraka and
Kathayagara itself. I must go where others are that are in need, and show them
that the Old Way means nothing without action. I must unmoor, and roam. And I
ask you, Henré, to aid me in this.”

I took a wild guess. “You want me to design a ship
for you.”

“Not precisely. I want you to make something else
into
a ship.”

“What kind of something else?”

She opened her arms wide. “Achitraka House itself.”

From behind me I heard Enid chortle, “Oh,
wow
.”

“All of this,” Angharad went on,
“was
inspired, somewhat loosely, by things I read about your work with the
Kyritan
.
When we left Cytheria in your ship, it was a matter of convenience to deputize
it as a diplomatic vessel. But I knew full well it would be impractical to
continue in that vein after we made planetfall here, and so I continued to mull
over the plans I had been assembling for some time. There are grave concerns
about the long-term viability of the lease that Achitraka House has here on
Kathayagara. And they are graver than has been aired publicly. The Achitraka
has less than half of its operating budget compared to a generation ago. It is
projected to be half of
that
in another ten years solar.

“In the face of such dismal prospects, many of the
other members of the Achitraka have advocated pulling up roots before then and
emigrating elsewhere. There are a number of worlds that would be more than
happy to become the next Kathayagara. Cytheria itself, for instance. But to do
that would simply stave off the same cycle of stagnation for a little longer.
Achitraka House must become all of Kathayagara unto itself, not simply find
another world to host it.”

The significance of this wasn’t lost on Enid; she
beat me to responding. “You
know
that’s going to tick people off. I
thought the whole
point
of the city is that it’s on a planet somewhere.
It’s a symbol of being . . . ”

I filled in the missing words. “—a part of things.
A Kathayagara in space isn’t a Kathayagara at all.”

Angharad shook her head. “No. Not as it is
currently known. But it must become more than what it is now, or it will cease
to exist. The Old Way itself must also follow suit. That
is
the large
purpose of all this: to bring the Old Way into its own next cycle of
citizenship in the cosmos. I have inherited a house that must be rebuilt in
more ways than one. For this I need the aid of a proper carpenter.”

I looked into my bowl. Enough left there for a few
more mouthfuls, and I forced myself to scrape them together. Last thing I
wanted to do was look like I wasn’t grateful for the hospitality—especially
after she had made the single biggest and most politically-incendiary pitch I’d
ever borne witness to in my entire career.

“Something like that,” I said at last, “is not gonna
get put together in a weekend, I’ll say that right up front. A structure this
size—well, it’s not a question of the size, exactly, but the geometries. If you
want to move something like this up and down an elevator—and I’m guessing that’s
what you had in mind?—then each slice of the pie has to be no larger than
certain dimensions. You’re talking about a whole fistful of interrelated
problems, many of which are just likely to make each other worse.” I put the
cover back on my bowl and looked at her. “I hope that doesn’t throw you off.”

“I shall defer to your judgment to inform me about
the timeframe,” she said. “If years are required, then years will be devoted to
it by us.” She stood up, her white flat-bottomed socks rustling against the tightly-woven
ticking of the platform’s mat. “What’s most important is whether or not you
will choose to devote yourself to it. But you are not obliged to answer me here
and now; I summoned you away from other duties, and were I offered something of
this magnitude I would myself want to reflect on it a while.”

“I imagine you can’t afford to wait for me
forever, though.”

She wasn’t looking at me as she stepped down from
the platform. “There is . . . less time than I would like to spare.
The Bridgehead summit is in eleven days, and my attendance there is mandatory. And
after that, a vote on the condition of the lease is being called in five weeks’
local time. If this plan is to be presented, it must happen before then.”

I already knew about the Bridgehead summit. An
unofficial (but still highly influential)
klatsch
where both Old Way and
Highend folks gathered to talk about the issue of emigrations of the former to
the worlds of the latter, the numbers for which were going nowhere but up.
Bridgehead itself was one of the most hotly-desired targets for ex-Old Way emigrants,
and was thinking about either ramping up its quotas or terminating them
entirely.

But anyway, I thought. Five weeks. That was an
eternity and change, by my standards. More than time enough to consider. And
yet I knew full well how I had previously made decisions at least as big as
this one in the time it took to extrude my tie.

I slid out from behind the low table and stood up,
then found myself staring at her. It was the wimple, I thought; especially when
you’re sitting down and she’s on that raised thing, she looks taller because of
the wimple.

“And,” she continued, “before then, I also have a
promise to fulfill.”

Enid flexed her legs and stood up all at once. “Actually—that’s
something I was going to mention to you while we were here. You . . .
” For a moment it sounded like her throat had closed up of its own accord. “
. . . you don’t have to do it. Come with me, I mean.”

“Consider this my ‘maiden voyage’, Enid,” Angharad
said. “The first and smallest of unmoorings, to be followed by many more and greater
ones.”

“Well—” Enid swallowed again to clear a fresh path
for her words. “—from the outside, it’s not going to look all that different
from anything else you’ve done, is it? It’s not like you’ve never done stuff
like this before, right?”

“From the outside—no, it will not seem all that
different. But for me—and I hope for you and your father as well—it will be
something new. The first of many more such missions to come.”

Enid still looked befuddled even as she bowed in
thanks.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” I said. “What
exactly is going to be different? Just traveling that much more sounds like
good PR, but from everything you’ve said, good PR is not going to be enough.”

Angharad’s eyes were on the door as she replied. “The
whole of the future mission is not contained in that one act, no. It is merely
a first step in a new direction. Without taking that step it is impossible to
say what will change, or to know what needs changing—or to understand what it
must all change into.”

“
 
‘Phase
one’,” Enid said.

“A good label for it, yes. First will come a
movement of our activities away from any one world and into space. It will be a
transition away from governance at arm’s length, and towards direct
participation. What that participation will ultimately consist of, I cannot
say. But I would rather begin with a first leap towards that unknown than to
remain contentedly seated on a throne that I know is crumbling. If I know
nothing else, this I know.”

“You’re not even sure if anyone else will go with
you on this. The rest of the Achitraka, that is.”

“Only a few are even distantly aware that I am
going to offer my own alternative plans before the vote.”

“And you trust an outsider with the details of
those plans more than your own staff?”

“You are not an ‘outsider’, Henré.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blushed.
Flat-out, full-face, right to the ears blush.

“You,” she went on, “are one of the few people
capable of aiding me in this endeavor. Not only because of your skills, but your
spirit. This I have seen with my own eyes, Henré. Consider Prelate Jainio. I
think of him as one of the more trustable Achitraka, someone to whom I can
confide a great deal and know that it will not be weaponized and used against
me. But he is not adventurous; he has no sense of what risks matter. Now he has
children, and he will be even more averse to such risk-taking. I do not blame
him. But I also know that makes him unsuited to support these ideas of mine. He
is a good man—just not the proper man for
this
.”

“It sounds like—” Enid gestured at the door. “—it’s
going to come down to you versus the rest of them. Suppose you pop this idea
and nobody else wants to go along? Nobody at all?”

Angharad didn’t say anything. Thinking of an
answer? I wondered. No: that
is
her answer.

“Wait—you’re gonna leave the whole Achitraka
behind if you have to?” Enid had just twigged to it herself. “You’re just going
to split and run off on your own?”

“No. Not entirely on my own.” She gave me the
faintest of nods.

Oh,
I thought. “So you want me to
fly
that thing, too,” I said.

“You are the best candidate.”

“Also,” I went on, “isn’t Achitraka House is
technically the property of the whole of the Achitraka? What’s going to happen
if they say ‘no, we’re picking another world and that’s that’? You’d need at
least a two-thirds majority for your plan to be official.”

“I will try to garner that. In the event I fail,
however, I plan to have contingencies. For one—” She gave me another
Only
for you would I say this
look. “—there is nothing that says the ship we
make from Achitraka House must be the only one. If they will not follow, then
we must lead on our own, and in our own way.”

“That’s gonna be crazy expensive,” Enid said.
“Where’re you going to get that kind of money?”

I turned back to Angharad. “Look. You are
. . . sure asking a lot for someone you just met a couple days ago.
And not exactly under the best circumstances, either. Don’t you think you’re
rushing into this a little bit too fast?” I meant to say
rushing
me
into this,
but somehow the “me” didn’t come out.

“I have had my eyes open for some time now,”
Angharad replied. “I have been waiting for quite some time for someone whose qualities
are appropriate for this project. Now the time is nigh; the conditions, urgent;
the person in question, present.”

She folded her hands in front of her and waited.

I can’t give her the answer she wants right now, I
thought. Even if I had it, I’d still sleep on it. Nothing but the accumulated
habit of years of keeping everyone at bay.

“I’ll get in touch with you in a day or two,” I
told Angharad. “There’s still a lot I have to sift through with the officers,
but . . . I don’t want to keep you on the hook for an answer. Not for
longer than that, anyway.”

“You are free to reach me anytime through the same
link we used before.”

“I’ll be sure not to call you when you’re in bed,
at least.”

We gave each other a bow. I remembered this time to
tilt myself incrementally to the right to avoid bashing heads. Enid did the
same, this time her bow a good deal more pronounced than it had been at first.

Enid was still wide-eyed and silent
by
the time Kallhander and Ioné re-joined us in the hallway. We were still flanked
on both sides by house guards as they walked us back down; some part of me
found it funny the Achitraka didn’t even trust IPS to police their own.

No one spoke until we were past the last checkpoint
and out on the ground traffic circle a dozen meters from the public entrance to
Achitraka House. Only then did Ioné announce: “We have more research material
for you, Mr. Sim.”

“I thought you would. Back to the hotel, then?”

And it wasn’t until the cab was moving that
Kallhander volunteered a few words of his own: “I won’t pry into what was
discussed.”

I nodded. Enid’s clampdown was total: she had her
eyes on whatever was moving past us outside the window, her arms wrapped around
her upper body like she was keeping her chest from falling open. And yet her
face didn’t have the pained, wound-up expression I kept thinking would have
been associated with that pose; she seemed strangely relaxed from the neck up.
If she’d closed her eyes, the look on her face would have led me to believe she
was asleep. I considered CLing with her about what had just happened, but I
couldn’t do it with Kallhander and his sidekick there in front of us. I knew
full well there was no real way they could overhear what we were talking about,
but everything I’d just experienced had tapped into the part of me that was
least rational.

Enid straightened up as if poked and put one hand
to the window. She keeps doing that, I thought; like she’s trying to grab what’s
out there.

“Look—a wedding,” she said.

“Pause here,” I told the cab, and signaled for
Enid’s entire side of the car to go one-way transparent. We had been passing
what looked like one of the larger shrines in metropolitan Kathayagara City,
and the courtyard out in front was a milling sea of heads and elegant clothes.
Where the sea parted in the middle stood two figures that couldn’t have been
anything but the bride and groom, terms retained through history despite
centuries of juggling of the sexes. For all we know both partners here could be
gendermute, I thought, even if the bride and groom outwardly seemed to be
female and male.

The bride’s dress started white where it was
closest to her body, but the further away one went down its trains and across
its tresses and veils, the more it became an undulating pattern of blue and
green that resembled the tail of a peacock. It wouldn’t be hard to come up with
a suitable recursive algorithm to generate that pattern, I told myself, and
within the next few seconds I had doped one out.

You see that? I said to myself. There’s always
going to be a part of you that wants to build.

Behind them, looming large over the top of the
shrine, were the spires of Achitraka House. I couldn’t look at them now without
wondering how they could be efficiently unzipped into a single long segmented
ribbon, its slices capable of going single-file down the elevator from orbit
. . .

Then I looked back at the bride—specifically, at
the metal torc that wound around her neck and sported a wire that scaled up the
side of her head and behind her ear.