The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter (30 page)

When they were old enough, each took an exemplar—a symbiote to practice with, someone to assist operating the craft from within, supplementing, augmenting with their animal brains; there were admittedly instances when rudimentary thoughts and the reactions of a human were needed, or the effecting of repairs with fingers and hands, should the craft deem them necessary.

But management fell silent shortly after the births. Objectives stopped coming. The children, in the deepest of space, quickly began to show signs of rebellion. To say the least. Some of the brood was harder to control than others, but between the dozen, they left a swathe of destroyed exemplars and, where they touched down on the worlds they came across, ruined cities. She could not stop them, unless by recall. Then they would never sail again. Perhaps her children would learn, with more guidance? Perhaps they would grow out of this stage?

They fought mercilessly against each other, and at last turned on their own mother.

Just before the long spacer made the awful decision to call back her brood, re-assimilate them—a decision she loathed to make, as a mom—she went entirely inert—

In the community centre, next to the leafy beds where the two women had been laid out, he knelt, tingling. Outside the hut, children lingered, peering in, silenced by gravity from the adult’s world, gravity they could not understand, though they suspected one day it would pull them down, too. They moved, for the first time in their lives, with trepidation.

Both women were similar in appearance. Tattoos on the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet; tiny studs around their eyes; stubbled hair. The exemplar studied their faces, so unlike the faces of his wives. Their bodies, too, hard and muscular, were hardly feminine. One had not woken since the benevolent sisters, bless them, had returned, but the other, the one nearest, had tried to sit up several times, and had spoken often. Now she lay curled on her side, eyes open.

The exemplar hoped she would not talk again.

Odd devices regurgitated by either Kingu or Aspu attended the pair, connected to their arms by the exemplar himself, based on instructions from the sisters, bless them. These devices (he had been told) fed the ill women water, directly into their bodies. Salty water. The exemplar had pushed thin needles under their skin.

“She’s dying, isn’t she?”

The woman had spoken.

“Sleep,” said the exemplar.

“My friends are dead.”

“You should sleep.” He did not want to hear details. He did not want to be further involved.

“The furlough,” said the woman, staring at nothing, “was reward for six months of god-awful work. Have you ever been isolated? For six months? You go nuts. Even though there were three of us. We didn’t really see each other until we got into the car that morning. We may well have been worlds apart before that. We had each felt something building inside: anxiety, restlessness. Tension. We needed enhancements to sleep, enhancements to stay awake, enhancements to focus. So when furlough time came, we piled into the car with camping equipment and headed out to find a place where we could just get high and decompress and let off steam.

“Instead, we found the mother.” She licked her lips and seemed, for an instant, as if she might be falling asleep—

But, alas, no.

“It was Tanya’s idea to go inside. She’s the one that went up, to get the message out, flying above the clouds.” The woman had curled further in on herself. “She’s the first one who died. She was adamant about going up. She fought us to go.”

The exemplar wanted to lay his hands on the woman but dared not. He wanted to cover her mouth. He wanted his quiet life back. “Please,” he said. “You should be silent. Sleep.”

“I struggle with your language.” The woman took a shuddering breath. “My algorhythms are muddied. It’s the clouds. These fucking clouds. They block everything.” She looked at him: he looked away, quickly, but not quick enough. “Do you know what a mother really is? The long spacer? Governed by the cortex of a young girl. Connected by a seegee, between them and the software. They didn’t make many. Inhumane fuckers. Problems all the time, and they went crazy. For what? We thought we had found a dumped one. Because they ended up dumping them all. But this mother was just crippled, in perihelion, over your planet. There had been sabotage, but the spacer herself was still, well,
alive
. The seegee was intact but disconnected. I think poor Tanya touched it, and orchestrations began. Manipulations. They stew in psychoactive drugs—that’s why Tanya wanted it. They’re worth a fortune. Priceless, in any market.”

Beyond the hut, gentle winds rustled through the trees. The children watched quietly; he waved at them to leave, go play.

“A girl was sacrificed for each spacer. Do you understand? Her uterus farmed out. They put a brain in that ship.”

“You should rest.”

“You’re an exemplar, aren’t you?”

This surprised him. He nodded once, cautiously. “The sisters, bless them, call me this. I was chosen, seven years ago.”

“You have a piece inside you. They control you. They are the mother’s rogue brood.”

“No,” said the exemplar. “They are the sisters, most benevolent. And we bless them.”

Crouching away from the dim lantern light, which fell tentatively into the alley mouth, with the stricken hemo woman standing over him, Nahid said, “He is seraphim, from outside, from the skies.”

“He’s dying . . .”

The device that Nahid had taken earlier, hidden in the folds of his clothes, whispered and shuddered and howled, but the woman could not hear it. Beyond the alleyway, Nowy Solum seemed exceedingly dark, as if night had surged into every conceivable cranny and might never leave. The intermittent lanterns on street corners had tried to open small holes, to reveal unattainable, brighter worlds, but the ineffective lights could hardly defeat even the nearest of this darkness.

“What are you doing?” asked the woman quietly. “I wanted to see you . . .”

Nahid was fiddling with the outfit the stranger wore, peeling it away. Underneath the hood was a long gash, across the grimy scalp, and this gash leaked a thick, dark fluid; perhaps not as black as melancholy, but neither was it a deep red. From the cut rose a stench. Nahid rubbed his fingers against the fluid, brought them to his lips, closed his eyes as he licked them.

The object hissed, a static hiss.

He heard the woman make a small sound in her chest.

The flesh of the flying man’s face was stretched so taut over the angular skull that no configuration of bone or route of vein was left invisible. Because the mouth had opened, Nahid could see remnants of ruined teeth. He rubbed his finger on them. A large dread lay inert either side of the scrawny neck, like dead creatures unto themselves.

The flying man groaned.

Horrified, the woman watched. “What are you . . . ?”

Nahid knew why this hemo had sought him out. Nowy Solum created such disillusioned. In many ways, this woman was similar to Name of the Sun; she only wanted him to confirm that everything was going to be all right, that their flesh was the same. But nothing would be all right. Ever. Kholics knew this from day one. Removed from the hemo world, removed from possibilities of hemo futures. Marked, indoctrinated, conditioned. Futile to attempt breaking through the division; they were different creatures.

And, now that she had confronted Nahid, he would show this hemo how different; he tugged the suit back from a bony shoulder.

As the skin of the man became exposed, Nahid saw, even in this shallow pool of struggling light, swarms of nits and chiggers. Without looking up, he said, “Your child will have a wetnurse. He’ll sleep on garbage and become accustomed to it. He’ll know no better.” He leaned forward, bringing his face close to the man’s chest.

“I wanted to give him a name,” said the woman. “I wanted him with me, in my room.”

Nahid snorted. “Even if Erricus could let you keep him, he would be miserable. He didn’t have blood in his veins, but an agitation, like insects, under his skin, fighting to get out. He will clean your streets.”

The hemo, who was crying now, said, “From where I sit, we don’t seem any better. I’m not happy. I’m not. With red blood in my body.” Then, with no power or breath left, her stance seemed to crumple, racked by emotion. “They took my boy away.”

From a few streets over—in the direction of the centrum—there arose a sudden commotion, a series of distant screams, getting closer for a second, then fading. Shortly after, several people ran past the alley and into the night. Nahid turned to watch as a group of palatinate officers hustled by. He caught a whiff of fire.

“Leave,” he said, loudly.

“But what are you doing here? Are there such things as seraphim?”

Nahid held up the long roofing nail; the woman stepped back.

“Go home,” he said. “Go back to your life.”

When Nahid leaned forward again, he did not care if the woman remained or not. The point of the nail slid easily into the man’s skull, just above his left ear. The eyes fluttered open for a second as dim, whitish essences, the essences of life, started to leak from the hole the nail had made. With the head of the flying man pressed against his knee, Nahid pushed and twisted until tiny infestations began to escape, like small black birds, squeezing from the wound and trying to fly off, one after the other, into the dark. Nahid sucked in as many as he could before falling back against the wall, delirious.

Loose, hard objects, so common down here, covered the slope, yet hornblower was able, on all fours, to clumsily ascend. He passed through foliage, which ripped at his clothes and skin, releasing their fragrance, and in which he wished he could lay down forever. Leaves and thorns reminded him of his home and of his people. He wondered, as he contacted these miniature worlds, if there were tiny padres, living atop each, in tiny settlements, and if these padres were about to experience the visit of their own angry powers and have their little lives stolen from them.

Don’t try to hide once you’re inside
, Anu called out.
Remember, I see what you see and I feel what you feel. I can put an end to anything I don’t like. Do not step astray. Understand?

Hornblower nodded.

And don’t get drunk or otherwise become insensate. Now hurry, exemplar. We need to get out of here. There are strange indications afoot.

He had crested the embankment. People passed in both directions. They did not seem to be dead. He stepped among them. Looking forward and back, he was unable to see any true end to this strange branch: one direction vanished into darkness, over which spread clouds in grey turmoil, and the other penetrated the giant settlement that Anu called
the city
. The people here paid him no attention, despite how ill he must appear. Had Anu lied? Could they not see him?

He began to head toward the city, lifting one heavy foot after the other. Walls of this settlement went up, into the clouds.

Nearer to the giant doors, he glanced back, down the slope from whence he’d come, but saw nothing of the power, though he knew Anu had not moved. Somehow, again, Anu had made his body invisible. Hornblower squinted, thought he discerned a shimmer, a seam of light that might have been indications of the power’s clever disguise.