Chapter 17 #3
Carry’s here? asked Fetch, almost frantic. They came for us while we were working, and they pulled us apart, and then the white walls came down, and when they fell away I was here, and I couldn’t reach anyone outside myself. Is she all right?
I’ll ask her. I’m getting words from you and only crying from her. Is that normal?
She may not be strong enough to reach you.
Fetch’s thoughts turned heavy, dripping with regret.
We came from the same creche, but her first instar was delayed, and she’s never been the strongest in the silence.
It’s part of why they kept us together when choosing our specific municipal placement. I can bolster and support her.
And Collate?
There was a long silence in answer to that question. It wasn’t the same silence as before: that had been an inability to communicate. This was an absence, marked by the soft, inaudible hum that told me her mind was still connected to my own.
Finally, in a regretful tone, she replied, Collate was the strongest of the three of us.
It fueled her desire for self-determination, and we didn’t discourage her, because we didn’t see the harm.
We didn’t believe they would revise her for her crimes.
But they did. They ripped her from us, and they claimed her as their own.
We—I—I hate the collective for what they did to her.
There was a light, almost-guilty hiss to her last words, like a child admitting to hating their teacher or a loyalist whispering rumors against their dictator. She spoke like she was breaking some essential law of reality. I caught my breath.
The story here was obvious, and straightforward.
Fetch and Carry hadn’t known that Annalist was already compromised; they’d been arrested for helping me escape, and imprisoned behind the same anti-telepathy wards as I was.
They couldn’t reach each other, or anyone else.
For telepaths in a telepathic society, that was a form of torture.
Why I could reach them, I didn’t know, but I was willing to bet it had something to do with the fact that the queens in the collective kept themselves so firmly apart from “ordinary” Johrlac: they were trying to remain distinct to reinforce their authority.
But that meant the cells here—because these were cells, no matter what they looked like—weren’t constructed with queens in mind.
And I was a queen, no matter how little the collective liked it.
I had just as much power as they did. Walls not built to contain me would eventually give way, whether I wanted them to or not.
Fetch and Carry were isolated in their individual cells, but that hadn’t been enough to keep my sleeping mind from seeking them out and opening the channels between us.
Not all the way, just enough to let us communicate.
They couldn’t reach each other because the anti-telepathy charms were still in place.
I could reach them because those charms had never been intended to truly contain someone like me.
The fact that they could contain me at all was probably a choice.
If the queens of the collective were anything like me as people, they wanted to sleep without other people in their heads from time to time.
Sharing someone else’s nightmare is a terrifying thing, and even when no one’s having bad dreams, having waking people’s mind impinging on your sleep can be awful.
It’s not restful, and it’s not restorative.
So make charms that can contain queens, at least enough to let them sleep when they want to, and you improve your world.
Honestly, I could see sleep being the entire reason they’d even bothered to figure out anti-telepathy charms on a world of telepaths.
The queens couldn’t maintain their control over the hive mind if they couldn’t reach their people whenever they wanted them, which meant anything that blocked them out wasn’t likely to be very popular.
It also explained why the Eldest Living was willing to work with them.
She probably felt she had to betray anyone like me, who ran from the collective, because the queens would eventually be able to wear through the resinous shell of her thoughts if they focused long enough.
The Kairos were safe, yes, but it was a safety bought with blood, and it would always be conditional, as long as the collective had any reason to look for them.
“I hate it here,” I muttered, aloud. Dropping back into silence, I said, It’s not your fault. Part of self-determination is taking risks because you want to take them, and it sounds like Collate knew what she was doing. Are you hurt?
No, she replied, sullenly. They were rough, but they didn’t physically hurt me. I saw them as they dragged Carry away, and I don’t think they hurt her either. Where did you go? Why didn’t you stay like we asked you to?
Annalist put something in the salad he made for me.
It knocked me unconscious, and the collective came for me.
They wanted to get my measure, I think, to figure out whether I was going to be a problem.
I smirked. The expression was only for myself, but I knew the feel of it would travel through my words.
I showed them I was definitely going to be a problem.
I was able to shove several of the queens out of the collective before they let me go.
That must be how they got a feel for the shape of you, said Fetch. I am sorry. We didn’t think he would … He came to us. He should have been willing to keep his word, and help you.
I’m not sure he thought of what he was doing as wrong. I got to commune with the collective, after all. Maybe he thought he was helping us all.
I felt Fetch’s disdain like a ripple down our tenuous connection.
That communion told them who we were. They came for us because they had been with you.
They would never have known to come if not for Annalist. That was not help.
That was serving us up to the queens like a prize.
I just don’t understand why he would do that.
You hate the queens because they took Collate away from you. Is there any reason he would be loyal to them?
All Johrlac are loyal to our queens, even when we have reason not to be.
We don’t have a choice. The closer they are, the harder it becomes to be anything other than loyal.
I would still die for them if they commanded me to do so, and I would be joyful at the opportunity.
We are all one swarm, even if some of us are restless and ungrateful.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. It was so alien to my own way of thinking, a sort of self-annihilation shaped by culture and proximity into something immutable.
Very much, she was who I could have been if I’d grown up here, and I couldn’t be angry at her for it.
It wasn’t like she’d had a choice. I forced my thoughts to calm, and tried to sound soothing as I replied, There’s nothing ungrateful about wanting to live as yourself, not an extension of someone else.
You’ve done nothing wrong. I’m going to try to reach Carry now.
Do you have anything you’d like me to tell her?
Tell her … in case we’re never in the same place and these selves again, tell her I loved her very much. Tell her she was probably my favorite thing about being Fetch.
You’ll be able to tell her yourself, I said resolutely, and pulled my thoughts away, shifting them off to the side, where the vague impression of Carry lingered.
No matter how hard I focused on her, I couldn’t get much more than the shape of her. She was more idea than individual.
Can you hear me? I asked.
No words, but a wave of affirmation from her direction.
Fetch is here too, I said. She can’t reach you, but she wanted me to tell you that she loves you very much. She’s going to be here when I get all of us free. You have to hold on for her.
Confusion, and then resignation, and sorrow. She didn’t believe she was ever going to see Fetch again, and maybe she was right; she understood the situation far better than I did. But I had one advantage that she didn’t.
I was a Price. And Prices don’t give up on their people when they’re in danger.
I had to survive this in order to save my people, which now included Fetch and Carry.
I opened my eyes, taking another look around the small white room.
There was nothing here that I could use as a weapon, not even the bench I’d been sleeping on.
It was fastened to the wall with some sort of adhesive, no bolts or screws in evidence, and even when I got off it and pulled, I couldn’t get it to shift in the slightest. I had myself, and that was all.
I’d done more than enough with less. I stood at the center of the room, reaching for the math that defined the world around me. It could be used to freeze rain in the act of falling, to open tesseract passages through the fabric of reality. It could get me out of this cell.
The numbers weren’t so different here on Johrlar.
Math is a universal constant. I didn’t dare tesseract my way much further than Fetch and Carry’s house: this math wasn’t complex enough to move me from one dimension into another, and I didn’t know many of the places I’d been so far on Johrlar to feel confident jumping for them.
Throwing myself heedlessly into the void has never been my idea of a good time.
I reached for the numbers, beginning to move them into position, and stopped as they came apart in my mental hands, dissolving into nonsense.
I blinked, shaking the idea of the failed equation off my fingers, and tried again, to the same result.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch the math the way I needed to. It was like it was somehow evading me.
Their shields weren’t good enough to keep a queen fully contained, but they were enough to knock me back to where I’d been two instars ago.
If I focused hard enough to make my head swim, I could see the math I needed, the glittering guidelines of reality …
but that was all. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch it. It refused to be contained.
I was trapped.
I dropped my hands and sat back down on the bench, resisting the urge to start punching the walls.
I don’t get physical very often, but when I do, I’m better at bruising my knuckles than I am at doing any real damage.
If I was going to be stuck here for a while, the least I could do was not distract myself with unnecessary suffering.
My family was here, on Johrlar. They knew I was here, too. They would be coming for me soon. I knew they would.
All I had to do was be patient and they would come for me.
All I had to do was wait.