One #2
The time since Anjiin had diminished Tonner Freis.
It was more than physical. Before their subjugation, Tonner had been—at least in the moment—the most celebrated researcher on the planet.
His prematurely gray hair had been a contrast with his youth and vigor then.
Now there was a harshness to his face. It wasn’t age, but it mimicked it.
He leaned against the old protein assay.
The fingers of his nearly-healed broken arm poked out of their splint and rubbed together like they were trying to find something. When he saw Dafyd, he shook his head.
“The new lab machines are a mistake,” Tonner said instead of hello.
“We need to get to work. Work . Not spend half a year figuring out the controls on a bunch of new equipment. Institutional knowledge is a valuable thing. You can’t just throw it all out because the cockroach kings decided to give you some pretty toys. ”
The translator on the Sinen’s chest burbled Tonner’s words at it. Dafyd flinched, then patted the air in warning. This thing is listening. Calm down. “That wasn’t my decision.”
“I thought it was all your decision,” Tonner spat back at him. “Aren’t you the boss around here?”
“You know I’m not,” Dafyd said.
Tonner glanced over to the Sinen loitering in the space behind them and smirked. “Whatever you say.”
“I’ve been called in to the librarian. I need your report.”
“I don’t have it,” Tonner said, and then, seeing Dafyd’s expression, “My team is gone. I am training up a new one, and it’s not like you’ve given me a bunch of impressionable new research assistants.
Brun ran his own union, Addira has two decades of her own research, Abfoss was due for retirement in a few years.
Everyone thinks they know a better way to do everything.
None of them will just do as they’re fucking told.
I had a group. I had people .” Tonner’s voice cracked on the last word, and he took a few seconds to gather himself.
“So yes. Please let the cockroach kings know that I am doing what I can to get up to speed, and sometimes writing down a note saying so is less important to me than doing the actual job.”
“Can you just tell me about where things stand? Just verbally.”
Tonner shrugged and the protein assay chimed the way that meant it was shifting to a polymerization phase. Tonner looked out past his shoulder. He looked exhausted.
“Making our own food supply is going to take about twice the hydroponic capacity we have right now. That’s tanks, lights, filtration, micronutrients, everything.
It looks like we will be able to adapt the silicate microfarm from the berries to general use, so low-volume production’s mostly covered.
Training more people to do the analysis for protein translation—which should be the most useful thing we do for them—is going to take me months. ”
His shrug meant What the hell do you want from me?
“So. Double the hydroponics,” Dafyd said.
“Sure. Start there,” Tonner said. He almost turned away, then paused. “Have you heard from any of them?”
Them. Jessyn, Rickar, Campar. The only ones left.
“No,” Dafyd said. “Not yet.”
Ekur-Tkalal shifted its abdomen on four thin legs while Dafyd finished his report.
Its thorax and head stayed steady, the two massive black-and-red fighting arms planted against the floor.
Which was good. As long as those arms stayed on the floor, it wasn’t ready to kill him.
Its four eyes moved independently as if each was distracted by a separate thought, and the mantis-like feeding arms in its chest unfolded and manipulated small shapes of floating light whose projectors Dafyd couldn’t identify.
Every now and then, the Carryx chirped or burbled to itself, but the half-mind at its throat didn’t say anything.
If there were words in its vocalizations, they weren’t meant for him.
The Sinen who’d brought the summons stayed in the room with them, which was new. And, Dafyd thought, a little ominous.
While the Carryx finished whatever work occupied it, Dafyd waited.
The room Dafyd thought of as the keeper-librarian’s office was small, and the sounds of other Carryx singing to each other carried from the passageways behind him.
Ekur shifted the objects of light for another few moments, then began to speak.
Its living voice was like birdsong, only deep, slow, and threatening. The voice that came from its half-mind was human and featureless. If it seemed to have a dismissive quality to it, that might only have been Dafyd’s prejudices.
“Your efforts in making one animal species nourishing to other species are of interest to the empire. Your work with imaging and gravimetric lensing is also of interest. You will put your efforts into these two things. No other human activities are of interest. Your other efforts are wasteful and will end. Reorganize your moiety around those things which are useful.”
“I understand,” Dafyd said. “We will.”
“Also, I have no use for animal scratchings. You will submit your reports in proper archival form.”
Dafyd lowered himself to his knees and spread his arms wider, palms against the floor. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“This one will instruct you,” Ekur-Tkalal said, gesturing at the Sinen with one of its feeding hands. “Your moiety has been found of interest by the Sovran. You will prepare for greater use in the empire. Anticipate assignment on thousands of worlds.”
“Ah. There are only about three thousand of us here,” Dafyd said.
The Carryx shifted its weight. Three of its eyes came to rest on Dafyd. “Yes. Your population is insufficient to meet future need.”
“Will you bring more from Anjiin? Are there other people coming—”
“You are to breed locally for the empire’s use. A moiety that cannot sustain its own population is not useful and will be culled.”
The air had gone thin. Dafyd tried to catch his breath. “I don’t know… I mean…”
“If you have requirements to support a generation of young, express them. If they are not overly arduous, they will be provided.”
“Our children… Our young take a long time growing up,” Dafyd said. “They grow slowly. They have to be educated.”
“I am aware,” Ekur-Tkalal said. “The will of the Sovran compasses eons. Begin now. Have them ready when we have use for them.”
And if they don’t want to? he thought. But he knew the answer. It was the same as always: Find a way or get them all killed.
“I understand,” he said. And the hell of it was, he did.