Chapter 25
On Adjumir, many years later:
Gebre said: “It just arrived. Was delivered. A delivery to the Institute, three months ago – Adjumiri months; I simply cannot remember the Normtime equivalent – flagged for my attention, left by drone. Nursham and Hyakda think it’s from the USV Saracen, which went missing a decade ago.
There’s no way to verify that – neither Shine nor Adjumiri sources are in a hurry to talk about these things – but it’s the most plausible hypothesis, based on the available data. ”
I turned the interface over in my hand. A little thing – so little – designed to curl around an unwilling skull. It needed integration with an arcspace-capable ship, needed a Pilot – perhaps that was why I was actually here, perhaps that was why…
“Do you think it has meaning?” Gebre blurted, and for a moment I thought my Adjumiri had truly failed me, this word “meaning” so full of weight as to be almost incomprehensible.
“Maw,” te repeated, a little firmer, fingers brushing my arm.
“Do you think it has meaning? It would be… I would be pleased… to hear that it does.”
Te has never expressed terror at the end of the world. It occurs to me that this is the closest te has ever come.
“Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if it was true. “I think it has meaning.”
I thought for a moment te might stagger, might fall. I reached out to catch ter, a meaningless act, but te caught terself, straightening up, nothing to see at all. “Well,” te barked, a little too loud, a little too ready. “Now all we have to do is get it off the planet.”
“I came on the Emni.”
“I thought as much. Where is he?”
“In a lake, about… honestly, I’m not sure how far from here. Rencki was navigating.”
“Well then, we must see how Nineteen is progressing with your furry friend.”
“Gebre. I can carry twenty people – more at a push. The only limitation is immuno-adaptogens, but we can make port on a habitat somewhere, find a doctor while you claim asylum. At this point I doubt that anyone will—”
“We are more than twenty.”
“Nevertheless.”
“We will draw lots. I know it is crude, but at this stage in Exodus it is how things are being done.”
“I would like you to come.”
“And we will draw lots.”
“Why would you say that? You have a chance, you can—”
“Maw,” te barked. “We have had this conversation before. You know my answer. I am Adjumiri. We will draw lots. That is what we do.”
Here is the quiet where a hundred questions can be asked, or perhaps another stab at begging, at falling at ter feet. I do not. I think it would be obscene.
Feelings, then, standing here in dumb silence with nothing else to say.
I am not good at feelings.
Everyone around me seems to experience them as powerful physical punches, as heart-fluttering, skin-sweating, urgent needs that compel action, drive choices and are above all else known.
I don’t know if Mawukana – the Mawukana who went before – ever felt these things so strongly.
I don’t think so, but if my body is riddled with physical errors, who knows what happened to my mind.
I know that my emotions are there, somewhere inside, but when I look for them, they are slippery, just out of reach.
Unless, that is, they are urgent drumbeats of desperation – then it is as if a dam has broken, and I feel everything, overwhelming, dysregulated.
Here is one now: a clean, simple dread rising up from somewhere deep within me not too far from how I imagine it to be when an animal is caught in a trap.
“When will you draw lots?” I mumble.
“Tomorrow morning, after the dawn song. Those who are left behind will stay alive as long we feel able. There is a vault below the Institute that might survive the initial radiation blast; we are moving as many artefacts as we can in there. The neutrino blast – the one that will actually rip the planet apart – won’t arrive for thirty-three years.
Perhaps in the time between others will return and find the things we’ve left them, take them off-world before the planet is broken.
I have Grace, should I decide I cannot bear to watch the burning of my world.
Of course, this plan requires you to find your ship again.
That is all there is to say on the matter. ”
Adjumiris hate silence, but when they choose it, it is deliberate, absolute. When there is nothing more to say, there is nothing more to say. And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes.
Nineteen said: “There is extensive damage to qis hardware, but qis design is modular and much can be replaced. Qis memory banks and core processors appear to have been shielded, so qe should be qimself upon reboot. I cannot vouch for qis battery power or thermal regulation, but until qe is powered and has run self-diagnostics I am limited by diplomatic accord from further exploration and thus will not speculate.”
Rencki’s body – the living/not living form of my friend – was splayed out in all the wrong angles, all the wrong ways on the worktable in front of Nineteen.
Legs had been partially detached from sockets, nose lifted back, jaw hanging grotesquely apart.
Qis soft russet fur had been peeled away from much of qis body, revealing the metal frame beneath, a soft warmth still emanating from qis core where it was plugged into Nineteen’s diagnostic systems.
“How long do you need?” asked Gebre, gaze politely fixed on the single painted eye on Nineteen’s could-perhaps-have-been front.
“Qe is not of my mainframe. There are features to qis design that I am unfamiliar with and must redact from my memories upon completion of the repair. This slows me down.”
“I know you do not like to speculate…”
“Twelve hours.”
“Thank you.”
Nineteen gave a single beep in reply, and returned to qis work.
Gebre said: “You will stay in my room.”
“That’s not—”
“You will not hurt me,” te barked, firm, calm. “Even if the lights go out, I know that you will not hurt me. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Tomorrow we will draw lots, and then you can return to the Emni and all things will be as they should be. I had prepared a number of crates for transport too, just in case – they should fit in the back of the truck if we clear out some of Ngurta’s vigil nonsense.
They contain items of great cultural significance.
I have embedded the address of a curator on Xihana who appears to be invested in commemorating rather than just…
selling” – a notion so difficult in Adjumiri, for a moment te drops into Normspeak to fully encompass the horror of the idea – “our past to the highest bidder. Someone will know how to monitor their stability, I’m sure. ”
“I’m sure someone will.”
“Well then,” te muttered. And again: “Well then. That is all there is to say about that.”
Then te went to bed, and slept peacefully, as if outside the sky was not dancing with celestial light. As if it were not the end of the world.