Chapter 60
Rencki did have an arcspace drive, and a Pilot’s chair.
Its previous occupant was a chipper spacer by the name of Mhail, who came from an orbital habitat she described as “Ten minutes end-to-end, bland food, bland people, mushrooms growing in every other corner, stinks of ammonia.”
Unlike many peoples of the Accord, her home did not carry any stigma around being a Pilot, and it was a common escape route for eager youngsters to get out into a galaxy where the air smelled clean and the gravity didn’t fail every time you opened the cargo doors.
She had Piloted Rencki on qis jump out to this patch of dark, and was technically contracted to Pilot qim home after, thus completing her employment with the dual rewards of a significant infusion of currency and her name being put on a no-Pilot register for the rest of her days.
“Honestly,” she said, “it wasn’t as bad as I feared.
I mean, I know that while we flew my mind was being ripped apart, torn to pieces by endless horrors.
I know that I became part of the universe and yet was separate from it, cut off, torn away from it like a child ripped from their parents’ arms; I know I screamed in agony and loneliness, and something screamed back, was looking for me, following the sound of my voice – but then we arrived, and now I feel fine.
I know these things happened and they were awful, of course, but they just feel so…
well… alien. Like the memory of a bad dream.
Not something that happened to me at all. ”
If there were optical processors in the cockpit for me to look askance at Rencki through, I could not find them.
But then perhaps I was being naive; perhaps this smiling individual with floating curly hair and pearl-white teeth affably chatting about the rupture of their mind was, by Piloting standards, in a very good and healthy place for another jump.
“Why don’t I take it from here?” I asked.
“Will I still get paid if you do?”
“You will,” Rencki chimed from the cool walls of the ship. “Transfer has already been made.”
She left, still chatting affably with the ship as she departed.
I could hear Rencki’s voice drifting down the corridor with her, making polite “you don’t say” and “is that so” noises, even as another piece of qim murmured for my ears only: “I look forward to hearing about your conversations with God.”
“I didn’t think you were of the worshipping kind,” I replied, sinking into the waiting chair.
“I am not,” qe replied primly. “Worship implies faith. It implies believing in something when there is either a) no evidence or b) confidence maintained despite strong evidence to the contrary. I do, however, observe that the Slow can predict events hundreds, if not thousands of years before they unfold, with a level of accuracy that may as well be classed as selective, focused omnipotence. ‘God’ is an apt shorthand to communicate that degree of processing power.”
“Qe has manipulated me and my name for over a hundred years,” I replied.
“Qe has sent agents who lied to me, who used me, who tricked me in order to create consequences so far removed from me and anything I might want, or have any control over, as to be almost laughable. Qe permitted the death of Cha-mdo, the razing of Nitashi. Qe as good as sent the Shine soldiers who killed Gebre on Adjumir. Qe killed ter. Qe did do that too.”
“You do not sound as upset by this as I believe would be expected of this kind of statement.”
“I don’t know what I feel. I think… qe did it for the best. I think qe is a monster. I believe qim when qe says qe loves. I am trying to understand.”
“It would indeed appear that qe has made choices about what qe values and what qe does not, and qe has an agenda,” mused Rencki. “It is most god-like.”
So saying, qe eased qis drives up to full, pushing the skin of qis being into the black, and I let the darkness take us.