The Faith of Beasts (The Captive's War #2)

One

One

F rom the archive entry of the regulator-librarian, first among servants of the Sovran:

… It is the Sovran’s will that those places in which the war against the deathless has opened new territory be investigated using tools and perspectives likely to yield new insight. In particular, the unexplored systems spinward of the fifth body…

From the archive entry of the monitor-librarian of the bodies of knowledge and memory:

… eighty thousand more. Locations where the war against the deathless opened previously unexplored territory will be identified and additional exploratory and information-gathering assets routed there. Deep-resonance information from the nova at…

From the archive entry of the endeavor-librarian of exploratory projects:

… eighth dactyl of the limb. Information-gathering assets will be identified and mobilized with priority given to equipment, animals, and combinations with potential to yield novel information from tactical and physical analyses. These will be delivered to…

From the archive entry of the supervisor-librarian of animal assets:

… with respect to their continued population levels.

Animals with sensory and cognitive potential likely to yield novel information will be grouped: [Group 1: aqueous, high acidity, silicate/carbon] [Group 2: terrestrial, oxygen-tolerant, carbon] [Group 3: terrestrial, anaerobic, silicate/carbon] [Group 4:…

From the archive entry of the keeper-librarian of provisional moieties:

… have been underperforming and will be culled.

Their assets will be reallocated to the Manacat of Paol, Red Sybillie of Soun, and Human of Anjiin moieties.

Additionally, Manacat, Red Sybillie, and Human moieties are to identify individual and small-sample groups for field use and ensure sufficient supply of…

Anjiin had been home to four and a half billion people. The Carryx had taken a little under four thousand of them back to serve in the world-palace.

One in seven died in the crossing or from illnesses and accidents after arrival.

Once humanity had proven its worth in the eyes of the empire, the groups—and sometimes even isolated individuals—scattered in the first days of their captivity were brought back together like a lost family finding itself in the wilderness, except for the almost five hundred people who were set apart and sent away on tasks that the Carryx alone understood.

The new space they now inhabited was like a vast single building dedicated to the human hive, simultaneously more authentic and deeply changed.

The gaps in Carryx understanding of humans had narrowed.

Bathrooms now had dispensers for the red cleansing gel instead of every shower beginning with it.

The mysteries of hair cutting and shaving, trimming nails and dealing with menstruation were accommodated.

The unspoken indignities of human life were a degree more dignified.

In exchange, the proportions of the passageways had become wider, the walls canted slightly in, the air had taken on a pungent smell like resin and salt.

The odd scent was everywhere, permeated everything, and so became unremarkable.

People only noticed it when they returned from travel out in the common areas of the world-palace or after spending time in the little garden at the top of the habitat where the breeze was cool and thin, like the air on a mountaintop. And the view was breathtaking.

To the east, two huge arcs rose up from the planet’s surface below, curving up beyond the atmosphere.

Lights dotted their sides—decorative, purposeful, or just the gleam of a million windows.

Below them, the dark forms of other ziggurats rose out of the clouds and stretched off to the distant horizon.

The garden itself was smaller than the quad outside Dafyd’s apartment on Anjiin had been.

A single tree with deep purple-brown bark and thick, leathery leaves, a bed of wild mint, and a fountain of black metal and pale stone that rose to Dafyd’s waist if he was standing, its flowing water a constant mutter.

It astounded him that something so modest could feel like luxury.

The little Sinen, looking like the cross of goat and cuttlefish, finished its announcement and left him pressing his thumbs against his eyelids. His headache didn’t diminish. He heard Jellit’s footsteps coming up the stairway and didn’t look up.

“Something wrong?” the other man asked.

“Another summons from my lord and master,” Dafyd said. “Ekur wants to talk about something.”

“More alterations in our duties and responsibilities?”

“I’ll know when I get there,” Dafyd said, and hauled himself up. “Anything I should know from the visualization lab?”

“Nothing that’s not in the report,” Jellit said. He seemed on the edge of saying more, but didn’t, and Dafyd went down the wide stairway into the body of the moiety without him. The Sinen clerk followed.

Campar was gone on some mysterious mission for the Carryx.

So was Rickar. And Jessyn. But so far as Dafyd knew they were still alive, wherever they’d been sent.

Nol, Synnia, Else, and Irinna were all dead.

Of the group Dafyd had known on Anjiin, the only ones around him now were Tonner, who hated him, and Jellit, who had gone from an almost-enemy to Dafyd’s accomplice in exposing the human rebellion against the Carryx.

They were now joined by the blood on their hands.

To everyone who hadn’t known him before, Dafyd was the voice of the Carryx. The man to speak to when something was needed, and the conduit for demands from the empire. The high priest interceding between his people and their godlike masters.

He stopped at his room. Papers and notes were in piles all through the place with the lists of every name in the human population, who they had been before the Carryx invasion, and what they were doing now. What they wanted. What they needed. He took half a dozen pages with the notes he’d prepared.

The report he needed most was still missing. Of course it was.

“I have to stop by the labs,” Dafyd said to the Sinen overseer. “Tonner was supposed to give me an update. It’s not here.”

The little box he wore at his chest made a series of wet coughs, and the Sinen replied with a small trill and sigh. The voice that came from the box at its chest was impassive. “If you do, you do.”

It wasn’t permission, and so it was half a threat. The tension at his temples felt like he was wearing an invisible crown as he went back out to the common corridor and headed down.

The promotion of the human moiety had carried in a wave of equipment and material even as it left any of the familiar human designs behind.

The tanks and refrigerators, incubators and protein assays, spectrometers and pseudo-lens microscopy in the new labs were the best designs of the Carryx empire, the genius and insights of a thousand other species.

The machines reminded Dafyd of the contents of some exotic tide pool, taken out and laid in order by a curious child.

Some of the objects were grotesque, some were beautiful, and a few defied comprehension.

Tonner’s new second was a tall, thin man named Brun with dark hair and an almost comically prominent larynx.

In a previous life, he’d been the leader of one of the most successful chemical manufacturing cooperatives on Anjiin.

Now he was standing with half a dozen of Tonner’s new team, considering what looked like the segmented back of a crayfish the size of a table. Brun’s eyes lit up when he saw Dafyd.

“It’s a static centrifuge,” the tall man said with a grin. “Can you beat that?”

Where’s Tonner? was in the front of Dafyd’s mind, but A static what? came out of his mouth.

“I know,” Brun said. “You tell the little half-mind thing what acceleration you want and for how long, and it generates the g-force without spinning. I don’t know how it even does that, but this thing can do specific gravity control like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s a kicker.”

“Where’s Tonner?”

“The legacy labs,” Brun said. “He said he’d be back after midday, but you know how he gets.”

Dafyd turned toward the common areas, the Sinen at his heels. He walked a little faster.

When they’d first come, the cathedral had been a circle of wonders and terrors—a crossroads of alien bodies with the power to overwhelm.

The deep tectonic strangeness had been enough to feel like annihilation.

Now Dafyd walked around weird almost-crabs the size of dogs without thinking.

The luminescent blue gnats so small they seemed like a living light meant that he shouldn’t breathe in as he passed through them to keep from sucking one into his throat.

The Phylarchs of Astrdeim with their glowing eyes and flickering joints lumbered by, as familiar as buses and bicycles had once been.

The Eddentic of Lof swirled in the high air, the Oumenti and Soun clicked to one another in the low.

Each of them had a place in the Carryx world, some function they fulfilled for their masters.

The fact that Dafyd had no idea what barely registered with him anymore.

His mind building walls between things he needed to know and things he could safely ignore.

He threaded his way across the wide public square of their shared moieties and cut across to the wall with the lab annex they had taken from the Night Drinkers, the little hallway with its high slate bench and recognizable equipment.

The glass cubes that had housed the berries and the not-turtles were empty.

That project was over, and the next ones had begun.