Chapter 44
The Executor was waiting in a little room by the docking bay, as hís shuttle was prepared.
It was very brightly lit; more so than was comfortable, a whiteness that threatened to white out everything, taking away the edges of this space so that we seemed almost to float in an eye-aching void of light.
It made every part of me itch, want to crawl away on hands and knees, taste something like bile in my throat. Too late now.
Hé had no Corpsec, no attendants with hím.
Spindle security waited outside – dozens of soldiers, fully armed, yet strangely disarmed in hís presence, keeping at a safe distance so as not to violate hís space.
Hé smiled as I entered, rose from hís seat, a tatty office chair with a low, uncomfortable back.
Nevertheless, Theodosius Rhode stood as if were in a throne room and hé the king, as if there were not stains of unwashed ancient lunches in the fabric, a faint smell of rotten-egg docking bay sulphur on the air.
“Mawukana Respected na-Vdnaze, I believe,” hé said, in the language of the Shine. Did I imagine it, or had hís accent softened since the days of Glastya Row? Become a thing not quite of one place or another? “Won’t you sit?”
“I prefer to stand.”
“If you wish. But you don’t mind if I…?”
I clicked my tongue twice, and hé seemed to understand, or at least not care, and folded hímself back down as if hé expected cocktails now to be served.
“Do you still call yourself Mawukana?” hé asked, when I did not move. “Given all that has changed.”
“Yes.”
“Mawukana. And I am Theodosius.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do. I am giving you permission to be informal. You’d be surprised the verbal gymnastics people do when they address me.
In the United Social Venture everyone is equal.
Equal in our potential, in our possibilities – that is the point.
I have achieved certain things, things that others might perhaps envy or aspire to, but nothing more than another could do, with the right circumstances, right amount of get-up-and-go.
People always misunderstand this about us.
They mistake our hierarchies for crude, imposed things, rather than a reflection of where people naturally settle when the churning stops. ”
“Every Executive of every Venture inherited their Shine,” I snap. “They started their lives with wealth and promise, and used their wealth and promise to keep power to themselves. That is not the Shine of the first colonies, and you know it, so let’s not waste each other’s time.”
“Very well,” hé breathed, eyes bright, the smile not flickering, one leg crossed over the other, one hand on top of the other, resting on hís thigh. “Though your analysis lacks a certain vision. Tell me, Mawukana, did we kill someone you loved? Recently, I mean.”
I am a dumb, numb sack of flesh standing before this man. Hé sees right through my skin, and still hé smiles and smiles and smiles, so that nothing can be believed except the sight of hís teeth.
“Most Unionists – we killed someone. There are some foot soldiers who feel hard done by, who feel that they were denied opportunity, deserved advancement – but they are generally speaking cheaply bought. Their ambitions are petty, easily fulfilled, easily turned. And there are ideologues, but the problem with that sort is they get so invested in the value of their big ideas that they become rigid, difficult to work with. Some might want to take the USV back to the days of Ko-mdo, to an age where work was survival, primal, every gasp of breath a victory, every drop of water carved from the ice at the edge of the world. Others want to destroy the Shine altogether, believe that the whole system is rotten, a lie, that there are worlds upon worlds where the skies are blue and the seas are clear and if we could all stop trying to measure our dicks against each other then we could live humble, pleasant, contented lives. The Xi are of this sort, I believe. So many… average people, happily being average. They boast of having gone centuries without conflict, of everyone being content. Contentment, not growth. Nothing to tax the soul. I often wonder: what is even the point of that? What is the point of a people who are born, live without fire, die without note? What even is the fucking point of them, you know?”
Hé is so baffled by the idea, hé finds it almost funny. How strange it is to live a life where you do no harm, achieve no conquests, and die without a monument.
Gebre is dead, ter ghost tutting in the dark.
What even is the point? te wonders. When all we are and all we will be is dust, blown before the storm?
“And so I am forced to wonder,” hé continues, “did we kill someone you loved?”
I don’t answer.
Hé appears neither surprised nor disappointed at this development.
“I am familiar of course with the ghost of Hasha-to. Enough debtors saw what happened to tell the story; the story was repeated enough to become a legend. I have heard the legend, but also seen the truth. I told my security I would like them to kill you – lethally, of course – to see what happened. They advised against it. Said that if you survived, there might be… unpleasantness. That was the word they used. ‘Unpleasant’. Very disappointing. I pay for direct information, clean and precise, but a general sense of unspecified dread surrounds you, Respected. A non-specific sense that you are bad news waiting to happen, which no one is able to fully express. The Lordats have whole archives dedicated to the nature of your profanity – but well. Well. It seems to me that the kind of man who returns to Hasha-to and slaughters every officer inside, he doesn’t do that because he’s curious.
Alien. Something unknowable. Not at all.
That is vengeance. Pure, cold, blackened vengeance.
And so you see, this whole ‘careful of the darkspawn, the creature of the unknown’ – it doesn’t make sense at all.
Not at all. I watched the footage – it took you days to crawl back to the airlock.
Live and die, live and die, live and die, over and over again, the agony on your face, the way your skin burned – if it was half as horrible as it looked, it must have been extraordinary.
How does it feel when your heart stops? Did you find yourself curious then? ”
Hé genuinely wants to know.
There is something repulsive about it, something that sickens me in its familiarity. I turn to go, cannot imagine anything good coming from staying.
“Wait.”
Hé doesn’t raise hís voice; hé has no need.
Years of being obeyed has resulted in an assumption that obedience will come, and that assumption lends an authority to hím that cannot be replicated by effort or affectation.
I hesitate just a moment, then keep striding towards the door, sheer spite keeping me in motion, until hís voice rings out again, stopping me dead.
“Did you actually join Sarifi im-Yyahwa in her rebellion, or were you just standing by? The court documents said you were a traitor, but in the transcript you denied it, and there were so many people swept up in those days, grabbed because the opportunity presented itself. You strike me as the latter – just an angry little nobody, Shineless, who could not handle the betrayal he felt when his world came apart. Had thought, perhaps, he had some kind of agency, and never got over the shock of realising he did not. Is that you? Am I right?”
Hé is so curious. It glows upon him, exciting, bright, enthralling.
I hate hím for that more than anything else, feel the edges of my reality growing thin, think I can smell electrons, taste the popping of photons against my teeth.
Hé should be scared of me, should coil back in dread at the otherness that creeps into the edge of my soul, at the way the sharp lines of my physicality start to grow a little weak, a little thin.
Hé does not. Hé leans forward, leans in, fascinated. Simply fascinated.
“There it is,” hé breathes. “There it is. There’s the ghost of Hasha-to.”
Adjumiri songs – the walking songs of the earth and the sky; the songs of ceremony and binding, of becoming one-who-is-bound, two-who-are-binding; the prophecy songs, sung to the stars, secret and sacred and soon to be lost – they are building new spires in new places but the acoustics aren’t quite right
and I want to rip Theodosius Rhode’s heart out.
Not just because I am curious, or can hear the soft pulsing of its valves within hís chest. Not just because I want to dip my fingers in hís blood and see if I can taste the genetic alterations that keep hím youthful, the pinched-off ends of the telomeres, the reinforced cell walls and nano-bonded cellular nuclei.
These things would be fascinating, for a little while, and then I would grow bored.
Rather, I want to kill hím for me.
Just for me.
I am loosely aware that the room is growing darker.
I have never had such an effect on my environment before, never been so unstable in the presence of so much light.
I could, if I wished, pull back, remember I am human, but in this moment I think I would rather be something obscene.
Photons are veering off-course, pulled towards me, into me, my breath starting to puff as the temperature drops.
Outside the room people are shouting, reaching perhaps for weapons, but Theodosius just watches, enthralled, still smiling – perhaps the smile is genetically woven into hím too, perhaps I shall eat it, spit out the teeth and see if, like particles beamed one at a time through a slit, they form a grin as they land.
By now Rencki would have shot me, called for more light, light, look at him and believe, believe with all your heart that he is human and can be harmed!
Theodosius does not believe that I am human, knows me to be a monster, and is not afraid.
(Gebre would be horrified to see me now.)
(Maybe not. Maybe te would shrug and say: well, none of it’s going to matter anyway, is it, once the stars go out?)
Someone has opened the door behind me, someone is making threatening noises – never a good idea, that – the sound travels as if through water, either shoot me now and believe – oh but do believe – that it’ll have an effect, or get out of the way.
Theodosius Rhode stands.
Walks towards me.
Reaches out with one long, white finger.
Runs it across my chin.
The atoms of my composition are a little frail.
I feel hís flesh pass through me, through the vast empty space that is all most of us are most of the time, electromagnetic and nuclear forces tangling with each other in mild indignation.
Usually these forces would be enough to keep us apart, repel each other with the illusion of solidarity, but the copy of myself that I am wasn’t wholly accurate in its re-creation, and so, with a little gasp, a little intake of surprise and awe, Theodosius touches me, then pushes hís finger, ever so slightly, into me, into the cold, black hollow of my flesh, hís eyes bright with wonder.
“Incredible,” hé breathes. “Incredible.”
I decide to reach into hís skull too, just to see what it’s like in there, but someone shoots me in the back before I get the chance.
The good news is that the shooter doesn’t know enough to imagine that shooting me won’t have an effect. The bad news is that some of the shot passes straight through me and into Theodosius Rhode’s chest, and together we drop, as the light rushes back to this strange, breathing world.