Chapter 51
Messages, received across the dark.
Cuxil, ambassador for the Consensus.
She hopes I am well.
Reports that the Consensus has people all across the Shine, constantly learning, feeding information to the Accord, to the resistance.
Reports that the Shine knows this, has taken to executing its own people on the merest suspicion of being Consensus, that they claim to have developed a “hive mind detector”, which, she admits, can detect a Consensus-bound consciousness, but also delivers false positives 40 per cent of the time.
Thousands of innocents are dying. She knows so much of what death is, now.
She knows how it feels, and she is not afraid.
Agran, Adjumiri/not Adjumiri, child of the Spindle/child of Hadda, which is gone.
She says she has spoken to her kindler, asked her about what it meant, what it used to mean, to pass through the gate.
Her kindler has taught her a few of the songs, and they are thinking of trying to organise a thing, some sort of ceremony to mimic how things were back on Adjumir.
Rituals are important, she says. They bind us together; remind us that we are not alone.
It is too late for me, she adds.
I have tried so hard to belong in this place that I belong nowhere at all. I was not wrong. I was not wrong. How strange it is, the things we shape ourselves to be, without even noticing what we do.
A biologist on Xihana wants another sample of my blood.
They took one only a few years ago, but someone put it in a refrigerator and forgot all about it, and though the slide remains the blood is gone, vanished without a trace.
I write back and say I am currently unavailable, and do not know when I will be home.
Rencki.
At first, I could not quite believe it was qim, but qe speaks of things we have seen, experiences shared, memories.
Qe could have uploaded these experiences to qis mainframe for storage and wiped qis own core, but then what is qe if not qis experiences?
Where, in the great sea of memories that are the collective experience of qis mainframe, does Rencki stop and something else begin?
Qe says qe is enjoying being a ship, enjoying the new ways it makes qim feel, makes qim think. I can hear it too, hear the thoughtful slowness of one who can take qis time without worrying about running qis batteries down with too deep a contemplation.
Enjoyment – such a strange concept to one such as qim.
Qe expresses it as a kind of safety. Qe does not fear physical damage, does not worry about the impact of a solar flare.
Instead, qe can take time to appreciate the churning of a coronal mass ejection, sample the flavour of it across qis bows.
It is a different way of living, qe says, and qe is enjoying being alive.
Qe says qe wants to talk to me.
That there are things to discuss.
Matters of import, best handled in person.
I think a while, then reply, say that regrettably, I am busy. I am on a mission. I am in the dark. I am lost.