Chapter 37 #2
The light in the room is stretching, growing a little thin.
It is a thing that is unnatural – I know that is the word for it, “unnatural”, a behaviour that is not of this world.
Usually at this point people start running in terror, scrambling away from me in fear, calling out monster, monster, plague of the dark and so on and so forth.
Not Ulannad. The Lordat sits before me, hands folded over his belly, watching with the same curiosity that I know is reflected in my eyes, and suddenly I feel…
… incredibly tired.
And not curious at all.
The light slithers back to its normal state, no cruel magics cast unnatural shadows up the walls.
I stood, brisk and fast. Muttered: “I should go.”
He rose too, touched his fingers to his chin in greeting and farewell. Said: “You are always welcome here,” and seemed, remarkably, to be sincere.
As Ulannad walked me to the door, the moments before seemed to fade like yesterday’s dreams. My bag hung empty at my side, the last thing that Gebre had given me now in a stranger’s hand.
In the door, a thought, a question that I couldn’t keep down.
“Have you seen Corpsec? If the Executor is coming, then Shine security will be here too.”
“They’re here,” he answered with an easy ripple of shoulder, tilt of head.
“We had one lad come by a few turns ago, said he was a refugee from the undersea mines, spoke all the right words, talked about revolution, freedom, the binary suns. All too good, too convincing. Most people who come to the Union are terrified, find it impossible to trust, won’t even whisper the words – freedom, change – in case they get bitten.
Corpsec sometimes swallows its own propaganda, I think; imagines we’re all raging ideologues. ”
“I’ve met plenty of Unionists these last ten months; there are more than a few of you who can get worked into a passion about collective action.”
He laughed. The laugh was strange, neither the tight, chest-held-in chuckle of the Shine nor the great rolling bellow of Xi, who do not laugh until they do, and then are almost incapacitated by their passions.
I wondered if this was how people experienced merriment on the Spindle – with a soft drift of irony, a sideways quirk of humour that skewed all it saw.
“Absolutely!” he proclaimed. “There are some tedious rebels out there, pumped up with purpose. Most of us don’t start that way – most of us start tiny, frightened and alone. ”
“Your accent… Cha-mdo?”
“Theymem Group, born and bred. Yours?”
“Tu-mdo. Antekeda Venture. Heom.”
“Right. Heom. Makes sense.” His eyes sparkle; he is an intelligence-master at the end of the day, set on the Spindle for precisely the same reason as everyone else – to hear the gossip of the galaxy.
“There was a rebellion there, over a century ago. Sarifi im-Yyahwa, martyred – complicated word, ‘martyred’, but a good one for feelings, for making people feel – martyred for her ideas. Not many of her words survived, and they’re somewhat problematic in some of their reasoning, but that doesn’t matter.
People don’t really need the reality, just the stories, and she…
Glastya Row… If they hadn’t bombed it, maybe people would have forgotten all about her. ”
“Perhaps.”
“City’s still paying off its debt, they say.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“No. I suppose not. Management’s good at making you pay, without telling you what for.”
This is the place where we should ask each other, as all who speak the language of the Mdo do, how the other one got out.
How did Ulannad come to be here, so far from the Shine, singing the endless chant?
He has five scars on his left hand – marks of an engineer.
But no – it is not acceptable to ask these things at a first encounter.
First there must be small talk, an establishment of safety.
Later, there will be a sharing of food and drink, and maybe after that – many hours after that – we will share our tales of horror and pain, lives lost and blood shed, and the guilt of being among the few – the very, very few – who made it out alive.
I am curious, of course. But I am also ashamed, and for a while now my shame has been greater than the lure of fascination.
“Are there many Unionists? On the Spindle, I mean?”
“Enough. Every year, more and more come to us from the Shine. The Union is growing, the Executorium can’t stop every transmission – people know that the Edge is coming.
Cha-mdo is less than twenty light years from destruction, and they haven’t done anything.
Nothing. Some talk about a magnetic shield, but at that distance it won’t be enough, will burn out within a week.
That’s one point three billion people, and they talk about twenty years as if it’s enough time, as if it’ll all be fine – but it’s just talk.
Talk and talk and talk so as not to be scared.
We’re going to stop these bastards. Well – we’re going to try. ”
He seemed so certain that for a moment I almost believed him.
That moment passed, as with all things.
“Good luck,” I muttered, and turned to go.
“Heom,” he blurted, and the name stopped me.
“Glastya Row. There’s a legend among the Unionists – a folk tale, if you will.
After they killed Sarifi, one of her lieutenants – a lover, some say, her husband perhaps – either way, a rebel was taken from Heom, sent to Hasha-to.
They say the dark did something to him. They say there were almost sixty Managers, Middlemen, security in the factory on Hasha-to, all armed, and they weren’t enough.
In some corners of the Union – some rather impious corners – people pray to the ghost, beg it to come back, set them free. Have you heard of it?”
“Sounds like a nightmare,” I replied, and walked away with his gaze – or rather, no, worse, far worse, his expectations – on my back.