Six
Six
F or all the horrors that came with Carryx captivity—and there were many—there were also moments so surreal that they felt dreamlike. Moments that so utterly failed to fit into any mental category that the brain was left with no answer, like a computer trying to divide by zero.
Brun running into his office to say Tonner needs you because there’s a dancer refusing to clean equipment in the birthing lab was one of those moments.
Instead of asking any of the questions bouncing around in his head, Dafyd said All right and got up to follow Brun back to the lab.
When they arrived, Tonner was at one of the lab machines talking to Korham. He watched Dafyd from across the room with a barely concealed smirk. Tonner only got that happy when he knew Dafyd was about to have a bad time.
Dafyd started toward him, but Tonner nodded his head in another direction. A compact man of indeterminate age was standing near one of the lamb sack pods, radiating impatience. Dafyd didn’t recognize him.
“Hello,” Dafyd said. “I’m Dafyd Alkhor. We haven’t—”
“You are the one who assigned me to… this”—the dancer waved his arm around dramatically, encompassing everything in one gesture—“this drudgery ?”
Dafyd didn’t close his eyes or put his face in his hands.
He could imagine this exact conversation happening over and over again in the coming days: an endless parade of people who had been the absolute best ever at something the Carryx didn’t give a shit about.
Now they were janitors and carpenters and laborers of all sorts, and they were going to be very angry about that.
The Carryx didn’t seem to understand the debasement that loss of status carried for human beings, or if they did, they didn’t care.
Dafyd stifled his sigh and said, “Yes, I’ve had to alter some assignments based on the Carryx requirements. I understa—”
“My name is Ver Cannedan,” the little man said, waiting for him to recognize the name.
To Dafyd’s surprise, he did. When he was a child his aunt Dorinda had taken him to an incredibly elaborate dance performance at the Irvian Recital Hall.
Afterward, she’d gone on and on about how it had been Ver Cannedan’s masterwork.
She’d funded his troupe for the next decade.
“The master choreographer,” Dafyd said, taking the man’s hand and giving him a little bow. “My aunt Dorinda Alkhor always spoke so highly of you.”
If Dafyd had hoped that name-dropping his aunt would defuse the situation, it didn’t work.
“If only she were here, the organization of this place would not be such a disaster,” Ver said.
“I’m glad she’s not here,” Dafyd said, “though I agree she’d be a much better manager than I am. We still have to—”
“Rescind this ridiculous assignment at once.”
“I’m afraid I can’t—”
“At once,” the little man repeated, more forcefully.
And through all the bluster and arrogance, Dafyd could see the truth.
The endless fear and humiliation they’d all suffered.
How important the tiny bits of control over their own lives were now, when those tiny bits were all they had left.
The dancer stood, fists clenched, practically vibrating somewhere between fury and bursting into tears.
Dafyd put his hand on the man’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure if Ver was going to collapse into his arms or run away. He was ready for either.
Instead, Ver shifted lower, bending at the knees. One arm was raised high over his head. The other arm dropped low, almost touching the floor. For a split second Dafyd thought the man had begun some sort of dance.
Then the lower arm lashed upward in a lightning-fast uppercut, and something displacing happened.
Things went dark for a moment, and Dafyd was sitting on the floor.
Brun was holding a cold compress to his face.
Tonner was across the room with a grin on his face like a child who’d been surprised with the most wonderful gift.
Everyone else was staring at him in open shock.
The little choreographer was nowhere to be seen.
Dafyd’s Sinen… helper? Overseer? Partner?
It was difficult to say. Whatever it was, it scrolled through the Carryx librarian–style report Dafyd had written about the incident in Tonner’s lab.
Too many people had seen it to cover it up, and Dafyd knew the Carryx response to open insubordination was likely to be dramatic and fatal.
He was hoping to head that off if he could.
Not that he didn’t want to see Ver Cannedan get his ass kicked.
Dafyd had seen a soldier smashed to a rag doll in front of him.
He’d been part of the battle that triggered the genocide of a whole species.
He’d called down the slaughter of his fellow human beings, including people he’d called friends and the woman he’d loved.
He had seen his planet in chains. And after so much violence, he was surprised he could still be so rattled by a punch.
The Sinen at his side jittered the tentacles that came from its mouth in a way that made him think of a sneeze, but with a real meaning he couldn’t fathom.
The half-mind at the little thing’s chest didn’t translate it as anything.
It might have been the Sinen equivalent of rolling eyes and sighing at the stupid monkey that couldn’t figure out simple things.
It made some more pronounced noises that Dafyd recognized as speech. A moment later, the box spoke in the same calm, affectless voice that it usually adopted. “You have put the ending syntax in the center of the report.”
He looked at the glowing shapes floating before them, trying to find the failure.
The written language of the Carryx was as foreign as their rumbling birdsong voices, and trying to compose even the simplest versions of a report in it was proving too hard.
Plus which, his jaw hurt where Ver Cannedan had laid him out.
Ver Cannedan, whose life he was still trying to save.
“I don’t see it,” Dafyd said.
The Sinen reached out and shifted something that looked like a part of a gold-glowing cone slightly to the right.
“But doesn’t that…” Dafyd sank his head into his hands. “Doesn’t that make it say that I didn’t discipline him?”
“It does not,” the Sinen replied. “But it does indicate that the report continues. You are thinking of this.”
It turned the cone so that the point was canted thirty or so degrees off true. Which, sure. Of course. It was so obvious now. He wanted to choke the little goatfish to death and then slam his own head on the desk until he passed out.
“Isn’t there a way to have the half-mind do this for me?” he said, and he hated the whine in his voice.
“I will inquire,” the Sinen said, and Dafyd had the sinking feeling that the little alien had been hoping he’d admit failure.
“Please don’t,” Dafyd said. “I will continue to study.”
“If you prefer.”
The writing wasn’t really a language so much as a drawing in space of the information it meant to share.
The shapes each seemed to have a hundred different meanings depending on where they were placed in space, what shapes they interacted with, and the context of the he’d-call-it-a-document in which they appeared.
It took the place of a written language in part by having no relationship to sound or illustration, or at least none that Dafyd could see.
Using it was like trying to write poetry in advanced mathematical notations that he didn’t know.
The only saving grace was that he could take time to compose it before submitting its final form.
He could draft and redraft and redraft the same thought until his eyes bled, and Ekur-Tkalal only had to suffer through the final version of his incoherence.
Dafyd summoned another shape out of the air, and the little deck the Sinen had given him projected a green-blue square that he resized, turned on one vertex, and placed with the other objects. The Sinen didn’t react, so maybe he’d gotten that part right.
It was exhausting. He was exhausted. His body felt heavier and a little fevered the way it did when he’d had too little sleep for too long a time.
Once he was done here, the first reports were starting to arrive from the little slices of humanity that the Carryx had taken out into the galaxy.
The only one he’d had time to review was from a woman named Ames Sofar who had arrived someplace called the Estian Morok Starweb to be examined by the local Gar to determine human suitability for inclusion in the arantine.
Dafyd didn’t know what any of that meant, and it was the first of what would probably be hundreds like it.
Ekur-Tkalal, keeper-librarian of the human moiety and Dafyd’s master among the Carryx, seemed happy to drop all of it on his shoulders, and Dafyd had encouraged it to.
The more he knew, he figured, the more options he could discover.
But he still woke up some mornings remembering his teacher from lower university who would have the students grade each other’s work.
Dafyd didn’t know what Ekur-Tkalal did with its days apart from send its tasks to him, but he was starting to feel like the librarian’s disdain for working with animals might also be a disdain for working at all.
Or maybe he was just bitter.
“You have not impressed the report,” the Sinen said. “If you do not impress the report, it will not enter the archive.”
“Yes, yes,” Dafyd said. “I understand.”
He rechecked the glowing shapes of the report, cleaned up the syntax hopefully without making too many more errors, and let the glowing objects fade.
The Sinen didn’t offer any other comment but trundled away muttering to itself wetly.
Dafyd folded the little projector and put it in his pocket, ready for the next brain-cramping report.
The little garden was calm for the moment.
A soft breeze made the tree’s limbs shift gently.
Sunlight and shadows swayed on the stone walk, and the leaves tapping against each other sounded almost calm.
Dafyd opened his mouth until the swelling started to hurt, and then a little wider.
He closed his eyes, and his own thoughts assailed him.
There were so many things he had to do, so many projects that had to move forward, that he couldn’t keep them all clear in his head at the same time.
Every time he remembered another thing that he was supposed to do, he felt himself forgetting something else.
There might be only a dozen top priorities, but he could spend hours cycling through them until it felt like standing under a waterfall.
He would have thought that they made rest impossible, except that the sound of footsteps woke him.
He recognized Jellit by the cadence of his gait. He wondered, if he’d stayed asleep, if Jellit would try to wake him or leave him in peace. He wondered if he wanted to be woken or left. With an effort, he opened his eyes.
Jessyn’s brother came into the garden with his fists at his sides and his eyes wide.
When he saw Dafyd, he started back, but then seemed to relax.
He was a tall, thin man with a limp he’d acquired in the time since they’d left their homes behind.
His sister was much shorter, much less angular.
Dafyd could only see the resemblance between the two in the warmth of their skin and the shape of their eyes and mouths.
Dafyd leaned forward in his chair. In the sky, a pattern of pink lights appeared behind the screen of clouds, descending slowly toward the planetary surface.
The breeze shifted, bringing a smell that was part rotting plant, part burning plastic.
Jellit’s pace slowed as he got closer, and his gaze moved around Dafyd’s jaw and neck like a physician doing triage. Then, slowly, the man relaxed.
“You heard,” Dafyd said.
“I did. It’s not as bad as I thought. The version I got said Ver knocked you on your ass.”
“He did. He has a hell of a punch for such a little guy. Guess I should have studied dance when the bullies were beating me up in primary school.”
“What now?” Jellit asked.
“Well, I just got finished writing the report about the state of things including that. I tried to imply that I’d broken one of Ver’s limbs over it.”
Jellit leaned against the tree, his arms folded. “What are you actually going to do?”
“Talk to Andermus, and then maybe break one of his limbs.”
“Seriously, though.”
Dafyd poked at the bruise with the tips of his fingers. “Seriously, I don’t know. I can’t let it pass, and I also don’t want to lose people’s trust. It has to be the community enforcing standards and norms, not Dafyd Alkhor taking revenge.”
“If he’d punched Tonner?” Jellit asked. “If he’d punched me?”
“That’d be easier. You think you can get him to pop you one?”
Jellit lifted an eyebrow. “I’m willing to try. But are you all right?”
“As well as can be expected?”
“How well is that? Honestly?”
Dafyd felt his breath go out, felt his ribs sink in.
Honestly was a simple word, but dangerous.
It had weight. “I don’t know. I really don’t.
I can’t really afford to know. I feel fine except that I’m falling asleep in the middle of the day.
My jaw ached before Ver hit me because I’ve been clenching it in my sleep.
My back aches. I get headaches. I’m fine. ”
Jellit’s shoulders sank. The pain in the other man’s eyes was like an echo, and Dafyd hated to see it. “I’m sorry,” Jellit said.
“It was easier before,” Dafyd said. “It was easier when we had Else.”
Jellit’s breath caught.
“No,” Dafyd said. “I’m not angry. I don’t blame you for anything.
And I hope… I mean, I hope you don’t blame me.
But when she was here, the…” Dafyd stopped, took the plain square of the half-mind off from around his neck and put it under his chair.
When he walked away, Jellit followed. Dafyd kept his voice low.
“When she was here, the spy was here too. Our connection to the war. I keep feeling like we sacrificed so much for a splinter of hope, and losing it…”
Dafyd felt his eyes watering. He knew there was sorrow, but he didn’t feel it.
He only saw the symptoms of it in himself.
Jellit stepped in close, putting his arms around Dafyd’s shoulders and chest, pulling him close.
If it had been someone else, Dafyd would have pushed them away, but Jellit had lost so much that the embrace was comfort the other man needed too, and Dafyd couldn’t bring himself to refuse that. Even if it meant being vulnerable.
“If there are allies for us out there, I can’t reach them,” Dafyd said. Tears and despair had thickened his voice. “Else and her spy were the only way. And they’re gone.”
“They aren’t,” Jellit breathed.