Chapter 9
Nine
“It’s not for us to judge the way that other people decide they want to live their lives. Even if those people are bog-stupid sometimes, it’s not our job to judge them.”
—Alice Healy
Moving through an extra-dimensional civic service building in the company of two near-strangers who need to explain more
HOLDING THE PARTITION FETCH HAD suggested at the front of my mind was difficult at first, because it was so unfamiliar: my name was Gather, I was a civic assistant, and I was here to help.
It was tempting to embroider the identity I’d been functionally assigned, to start adding frills and caveats, but in the end, I stuck with the simple skeleton my new maybe-allies had provided.
We moved through the building in a rough wedge formation, with Fetch at the front and me following in synch with Carry behind her.
As we walked, we began passing other Johrlac, wearing more of those strange jumpsuits.
Which, I suppose, weren’t so strange here; if everyone was wearing them, then I was the strange one for finding them odd.
They seemed to divide the people based on their jobs, or maybe by castes—I still wasn’t clear what distinguished the concepts.
Johrlac in gray and brown seemed to be janitorial: we passed them emptying wastebaskets and scrubbing floors.
Both janitors and civic assistants repaired walls, placing pieces of fibrous brown material in their mouths and chewing until it broke down into a thick gray-brown paste, which they then smeared on any cracks or breaks in the paper walls around us.
The first time I saw that happen, I managed, barely, to control my urge to gag.
Wasps built nests. Why shouldn’t we?
And no one gave us a second look. I had a jumpsuit and a public partition which I pushed forward every time we saw anyone who wasn’t a part of our trio, and that seemed to be enough.
We passed through a large room filled with desks, each occupied by a Johrlac in a brightly colored jumpsuit, their eyes flashing white as they did whatever job they had been assigned.
There was no metal, no plastic. Some things, like the desks, were made of wood, but I didn’t see anything I would have considered a computer, or even a typewriter.
There was paper, flat white sheets of it, and people dressed like Fetch and Carry sitting at desks around the edges of the room with pens in their hands, apparently transcribing something.
I couldn’t see or even conceive of what.
As we crossed the room, one of the workers, a man in gray and black, turned to look at us.
“Assistants,” he said, the first word I’d heard spoken outside the service closet. Fetch smoothly shifted her trajectory to move toward him, and Carry and I followed. He looked all three of us up and down, his thoughts showing nothing more than a flicker of curiosity. “I require a research packet.”
“Yes, assessor,” said Fetch.
“I was told there had been two of you assigned to our division,” he said, with what might have been a flicker of suspicion.
“There were, assessor,” said Fetch. “I am Fetch. It is my responsibility to collect and categorize information and provide it freely to my secondary function, Carry. The two of us were unsuited to the demands of the trial. We needed a third function to smoothly provide all that you required. It is complex, when a matter involves the rights of three species across four dimensions. This is Gather. She serves the function of collating the information that it might be delivered to you more swiftly.”
“Are you saying you are unsuited to your purpose?”
“No, assessor. I am saying my purpose involves the swift and accurate location of information, and that purpose is better fulfilled with a collator present.”
“Hmm.” He looked at me, eyes glazing white, and I felt his probe against the surface of my mind. I froze, suddenly glad I hadn’t elaborated upon the simple partition I’d been assigned.
He brushed his mind over mine, and I thought nothing that would betray me, allowed myself no relaxation of thought, only pushed forward what I had been told was safe: my name was Gather, I was a female civic assistant of the service caste, and nothing else mattered in this moment.
He withdrew with a small sound of distaste. “You locate large pieces of information and this one breaks them down into digestible pieces, to be transmitted by your third?”
“Yes, assessor.”
“Very efficient. I’ve been saying for transits that we needed to increase the number of assistants assigned to this division. It sounds like your labor is being fairly distributed. Are you on your way to the archives now?”
“Yes, assessor,” said Fetch. I realized she was projecting, when she hadn’t been before, radiating helpful willingness to serve like her life depended on it.
Which, for all I knew, it might. I had no idea how this society would react to someone being unable to perform their job—or function, I supposed. If my new friends could be executed for helping me, they were taking an even-greater risk than I’d originally assumed.
“What are you carrying?” He turned his attention abruptly to me. “Your function requires no physical efforts.”
I managed, barely, not to jump at the sudden weight of his regard.
I had almost forgotten the woven bag that held my clothing.
As I stared at him, reaching for something he might believe, I realized what was strangest about this whole encounter: all four of us were members of a telepathic species, and judging by the eyes of the people around me, they weren’t shy about using their telepathy here on Johrlar.
And despite this, we were speaking aloud, and all speaking the same language somehow.
It didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they communicate telepathically?
Charlotte and Isaac certainly did, and when I was a child, that had been my primary method of talking to my cousins.
Telepathy was easier and more pleasant than speech.
But telepathy also made it difficult to lie.
Maybe that was the key: these people wanted to be able to keep their secrets just as much as human bureaucrats did, and fully opening their minds would have rendered that impossible.
I centered my partition a bit more solidly, wanting to give him no reason or excuse for pushing past it, and said, in a level tone, “No, assessor. It doesn’t. ”
“Then why…?” From his current position, he could see our eyes. He’d know at once if we started communicating in silence. I needed to come up with a feasible lie based only on the things I already knew.
“I am sometimes called upon to collate and reconcile such large amounts of information that I become distracted. I was in a distracted state while moving from my original assignment to this one, and I dirtied my original uniform. I am taking it to be cleaned.”
“We are shortly to embark on our afternoon leisure time, assessor,” said Carry politely. “We will deposit Gather’s soiled belongings at the sanitary point before acquiring our middle meal, and will return in plenty of time for the remainder of our shift.”
“Ah,” said the assessor, seeming to lose interest in the mystery of my bag. “Very well, then. Continue.”
He turned away from us, back to staring into the distance.
As I watched, his eyes frosted white, but I didn’t feel his mind brushing against mine.
Fetch gestured for me to follow as she resumed walking for the other side of the room.
I fell into step behind her, feeling at once more and less secure about our escape.
My partition had been enough to hold against a quick inspection from a bored researcher, but would it hold up against anything more intensive?
And what the hell were these people doing, anyway?
We continued onward, leaving the room for some sort of wide, open atrium.
The ceiling was high and delicately domed, thin glass panels held into a filigree that looked almost like the veining on a wasp’s wings.
I looked up at it, trying not to gape at the sight of three suns traveling across a blue and yellow sky.
I had no idea what the filigree might be made of; I’d seen no metal since arriving here, apart from what I’d carried with me.
More Johrlac moved through the atrium, some talking quietly, others with whited-out eyes. Fetch steered us around the white-eyed ones, creating a clear space between us and the people who were actively using their telepathy. I began to think we might actually get out of here.
Then we approached the doors. They were made of sliding paper panels, at least four of them, so that people passed through one set and into a sort of airlock, then waited for the first set of doors to close before the second could be opened.
They were flanked by Johrlac in blue jumpsuits, like the ones who’d taken me from Mark’s hospital room.
They might even have been the same Johrlac; without mental contact, I had no way of telling them apart.
There were two of them to either side of the first doors, and two more inside the airlock, flanking the second doors.
Fetch glanced over her shoulder, feeling the tension rolling off of me, and reached back to touch my wrist with one hand. We’re almost there, she thought. Remain calm and focused, and we’ll be out before you have time to hear a cicada’s cry.
I took a deep breath, beginning to loop through the familiar, comforting chain of the Fibonacci sequence, one and one adding up to two, two and one adding up to three, and onward to eternity.
We moved closer to the doors, slowly enough that I had plenty of time to see how the process worked.
The people would approach, speaking briefly to the Johrlac in blue, who would then look forward, eyes flashing white, before the first doors opened.
Meanwhile, the same process—or something similar—was occurring outside, people entering even as others made their exit.