Chapter 62 #2
“We will build,” said the new leaders. “We will build to save – not the systems that went before, but our people. Our planets. Our worlds.”
Someone asked if I was important, when I docked at a military blacksite on my little ship. Someone asked if I was an important part of this big affair.
I thought about it, then said no.
A simple, back-of-the-tablet bit of maths. (This is what the planners of Adjumir did, all those years ago.)
First: a tally of the dead.
1.2 billion dead on Cha-mdo.
2 million dead in fighting on Nitashi.
Another 5 million at least dead in fighting on Tu-mdo, Yu-mdo, etc.
No one will ever get the exact numbers, everyone will lie about what they did, who did what, what was said.
The archives will be burned, sins blazed away, and like the generations of Adjumiris who are changed for ever by wandering the stars, so the citizens of the Mdo are changed by being the ones who stayed behind.
Call it an even 1.9 billion dead by the time the Shine falls.
The fall of the Shine, of course, brings in an era of change.
With people “we can work with”, as the Accord put it, resources pour in.
Magnetic shields are built, great rings of metal orbiting the worlds of the Shine. When the Edge finally arrives, when the bomb that was set off by the supernova at Lhonoja all those years ago eventually detonates in the skies above Tu-mdo, the blast will be deflected. Sheared away into the dark.
There are decades to go. Decades in which to get it right.
Billions will live. So many billions. Billions who perhaps would have died if the Shine had not fallen.
The Slow did this maths, and the maths was cruel, and we will never know if there was another way.
Wanted notices are put out for the few remnants of the Executorium who escaped.
Most strike deals for surrender.
They know it is better for the Accord – a sign of good intent – if instead of putting the Executorium up for a show trial, they instead convict them of a few minor misdemeanours and lock them away on an island somewhere.
As is always the case, the Accord are not in fact in a state of clean agreement on this matter.
The people of Nitashi cry out for blood and vengeance, vengeance and blood, and eventually a little group of the Yeh’haim will infiltrate one moderate-security prison where a member of the Executorium is held and cut hís throat, writing just one word – AHRMRET – on the walls in crimson when they depart.
The Accord tuts and says goodness, how barbaric, and the Nitashi grow angrier and angrier that their pain, their suffering is not being given meaning.
Is not being given justice, is not in any way being made right.
They blame the Accord as much as the Shine, and for decades to come the planet stays outside the normal bounds of polite conversation, wrapped up in a pain that will take generations to leave it.
A few Executorium try to run.
In the end, their own people turn on them.
The habits of the Shine – selling out your neighbour, making the best possible deal for yourself – do not encourage loyalty.
In the end, only one remains unaccounted for.
Theodosius Rhode.
I offer to join the search parties.
The authorities of Xihana advise against it, but by now they have largely given up trying to moderate my affairs.
Rencki asks why I want to go, and I say it just feels right.
Cuxil asks if this is a selfless act, and the tone of her voice implies that she thinks it is not.
I do not hear anything from the Slow.
Above the planets of what was the Shine, worlds that must now find a new name, a new way of being themselves, magnetic shields start to grow, and I do not go planetside, and I keep looking for reasons to be in the Pilot’s chair.
There is a rumour of a sighting of Theodosius here – but no, it was just a very tall, rather unpleasant man with an accent that was mistaken for Mdo-sa and was not.
A Nitashi ship vanishes; perhaps it is conspiracy, perhaps it is a kind of retribution – or perhaps it was a Pilot who should not have been allowed to fly, whose mind had been touched once too often by the dark, and who opened their arms to meet it.
I try to open my arms, but the dark is not interested in me.
The Lordat say that the dark is interested in things that are not of itself.
That it is fascinated by life unknown, minds that twinkle, souls that shine.
There is nothing malicious in its curiosity.
It has no sense of right or wrong, good or bad.
Rather, like a soft-winged bug drawn to the flame, it flitters and flits towards the warmth of a soul as it blazes through the night.
Does this mean, I ask, that I do not have a soul?
Possibly, one Lordat replies. But honestly, your question is a bit above my pay grade.
Theodosius is seen on a space station, boarding a ship.
Hé seems to be alone – or rather, he seems to be alone, the ur-hé and ur-shé of the Shine having been declared regressive, oppressive archetypes that exist only to crush people with their exclusivity and connotations of power.
By the time we reach the system where he was last seen, he is gone, and his ship left no flight data behind.
It is depressing to think that the power and connections he still has are enough to keep him safe.
Frustrating to imagine the great many people – so many people – who can look him in the eye, know what he has done – the terror of Nitashi, the scourge of Cha-mdo – and still decide his Glint is worth more than their conscience.
Any illusions I might have harboured about the ethical integrity of the Accord are vanished.
Eventually the search dries up.
Ships are reassigned.
Resources taken away.
I say I will keep on searching, and the Xi say sure, if you must, if you want, but he is gone by now.
He is gone.
This is a new age, and he is gone.
Even Rencki, when I ping qim, says it is time to move on.
The worlds of what was the Shine are still in chaos; corruption is everywhere.
The people of the Mdo cannot believe in generosity, in kindness, in compassion or sharing.
They have been raised from birth to think such things are at best an opportunity, at worst a trap.
The patience of the Accord is running dry; the victorious fleets thought they would be heroes, and are discovering that it is all far more complicated than that.
It is becoming harder and harder to convince people to help.
“You could be useful on Tu-mdo,” qe says. “You could do some good.”
I think for a while about going back, and eventually say no. I can’t imagine how returning to a world where I have always done it wrong would be any better than staying away.
Rencki is disappointed in me, but won’t explain why.
In the end, the search for Theodosius was called off entirely. I returned the little scout ship that had become my world, and transferred instead to the only vessel that anyone in the galaxy was willing to lend me.
I went back to the Emni.
He was in spring when I boarded.
Little white flowers were blooming down his internal corridors and passageways, fresh buds of green blossoming in the soft warmth above his life-support generators and in the swaying breezes of oxygen scrubbers.
Whoever had managed him over winter hadn’t done their weeding properly, and a few roots were starting to poke up in the living quarters and around the Pilot’s chair, which I chopped back and disposed of his in bio-tanks.
The dining room table had grown and been pruned since I’d sat at it last, and fresh green ferns sprouted around the shower cubicles, their tips uncoiling in languid curls.
A family of three-toed yellowbills were nesting in the engine room, and I contemplated letting them stay to help keep the insect population in balance, but in the end decided against it.
I did not know where I would go, or what diseases might creep in through the airlock, and did not want to be responsible for trying to catch and inoculate a nest of tiny wild birds, however sweetly they sang in the dawn cycle of the ship.
When we first pushed towards arcspace, the Emni and I, his hull creaked with the sound of old and new wood straining against each other, and I smelled sap seeping through some old cracks that were bending with the forces of our flight.
But he flew well and true, and spring was a good time to push the engines, find the faults and broken barks of his system, let them heal in the warm light of a yellow sun.
With nowhere else to go, I flew to Adjapar, to the sleeping moon watching over the still-terraforming planet.
Hundreds of millions of Adjumiris slept still in the cryofacilities above that world, guarded by generation ships whose inhabitants would never walk upon the finished world they were waiting for.
I told my story, explained who I was, and was surprised how easily Adjumiri returned to my mouth, tinged with the accent of the Black Mountains.
I was given a tour of the cryofacility, past the sleepers in their endless corridors, and shown samples of the latest algae blooms that were blossoming across the oceans of Adjapar, far below.
“We are due for a great dieback soon,” explained one terraformer, eyes bright with excitement at the impending ecological shift.
“After that, we enter the final phase of floral seeding, and then…” tears glistened in their eyes, their voice shuddering with emotion; I had forgotten how small these things were in Adjumiris compared to the people of Nitashi, and how great they were when their feelings finally broke, “pioneer domes, the first families, the first children born on our new world.”
I asked them if they had a museum, a place where the artefacts were kept.
They said yes, deep below the moon, in cold storage.
No one really went down there, though. Everything was held in stasis; neither my guide nor their children would see these things that had been saved.
But one day – one day – in generations to come, the people of Adjapar would open these boxes and precious crates, and see the things made by their ancestors, and hear their voices, and sing their songs again.
“I hope it helps them understand something,” said my guide. “I hope it teaches them something about who they are. Reminds them that they are not orphans. Not lost after all. That they still have a story that is their own.”
There was singing when I left.
There were only eight of them, raising their voices in farewell. Hardly enough to make a proper Adjumiri chorus. They had been born on Adjumir, and would die on this moon, never seeing blue sky again. They sang for themselves, not for me, as I said my goodbyes. Singing reminded them why, they said.
A cup of kol, on the Spindle.
Agran says: “I am not going to lie, I doubt I’ll ever get round to studying this,” when I give her a copy of Black Mountain Adjumiri grammar.
“It doesn’t take up any room,” I reply. “And someone might find it interesting later.”
She nods, blows steam off the top of her cup. Then: “I hear that the worlds of the Shine are going to be saved. That the death of the suns will pass them by.”
“So I hear.”
“There are some people here who are pretty angry about that. Some who say that the people of the Shine – no matter who they were – must have known what happened on Nitashi. Must have known what was happening on Cha-mdo. Chose not to care. Aren’t worth saving.”
“What do you think?”
“I am a Spindler. We are far too polite to think anything so controversial. What about you?”
“I think you don’t save the worlds of the Shine for who they are. You do it for who you are. You want to condemn the people of the Mdo for turning away? Then don’t turn away.”
“That’s a very messy position, if you think about it too long.”
I click my tongue in the roof of my mouth, once, to agree without agreeing.
“More kol?” she asks.
“I’ll take another cup. One for the road.”
Agran also sang when I left.
She struggled with the words, found it hard to catch the tune, and though these songs should never be sung solo, in her it was beautiful. In music, accents tend to become softer, fuzzier, the edges burned away, and so she sang in Adjumiri, because it was the Adjumiri thing to do.
I reached out to the dark, one last time.
It did not pay me any heed.