Nine
Nine
I t was strange that the thing Dafyd associated Llian Andermus with most was the way she sat.
Whenever he met with his appointed head of security, she took her chair or stool or bench in a way that seemed natural and smooth.
If he’d only seen the movement once, he’d have thought nothing of it.
What caught his attention was that it was always the same: a glance at the seat, her left hand on it to steady her, then a swooping movement like a pigeon coming to rest and her left leg crossed over her right just above the ankle.
It was like she’d studied the best way to sit down and then drilled it to perfection.
For him, that mechanistic little quirk was the hook her personality hung from.
The obsession with finding the one right way for things to work, and lashing the world around her into the shape that matched it.
“For the most part, the last week has been calm,” she said. “Three violent assaults, an unwanted attention, and four reports of petty theft.”
“Unwanted attention?”
“Sorry,” Andermus said. “That’s the sanitized naming convention we used to use when somebody got groped.”
“The theft surprises me,” Dafyd said. “Do we have things worth stealing?”
Andermus smiled her fox-sharp smile. “If one of us had a grape and someone else wanted it, that would be enough.”
They were in his garden because Dafyd liked it there best. The evening sun was setting, and the sky that reached up above the Carryx world-palace was a symphony of gray and gold, peach and blue.
Far away, almost at the horizon, a thunderhead rose up, its crown still white as popcorn and its base as black as a bruise.
The Rak-hund bodyguard lay under the archway back into the building, its pale legs arrayed around it like a spiral of swords.
It seemed to enjoy the cool tile floor against its belly, a behavior Dafyd had seen in dogs back on Anjiin.
And like dogs, it didn’t seem to like leaving Dafyd out of its sight for too long.
“Two of the assaults were domestic,” Andermus continued, “and I have taken the liberty of separating the people in question. The other was a personality dispute. I coordinated with Korham to have them assigned to different shifts for the time being. The creep who likes putting his hand on people is known. He had a reputation on Anjiin. I issued a warning.”
“A warning?”
“I broke both of his hands and told him next time it would be his spine,” Andermus said. “But at some point we’ll need to talk about whether or not we do incarceration as punishment here.”
“I see.”
Andermus gave him a moment to go on, and when he didn’t nodded once and continued herself. “There is ongoing distress around the arrival of the Soft Lothark guards and the creation of the nursery. I believe there is a committee forming to discuss some concerns.”
“That’s good.”
Andermus made a small, involuntary sigh that sounded like impatience and her smile flickered. Disagreement. She didn’t think it was good.
She was right. Dafyd had been thinking that a committee would let him explain everything at once instead of a hundred times to a hundred people. In practice, it wouldn’t work like that at all. He put his hand to the back of his neck, pressing at the knot there.
“Have you talked with the visualization workgroup?” he asked.
“Jellit Kaul?” Andermus asked. “Yes. He’s still training up replacements for the scientists who were lost in the insurrection. He says that the team he’s assembled will be able to start doing new work in twenty days. Do you want to speak with him?”
“No,” Dafyd said, a little too sharply. “I don’t want to distract him.
I just… All this you’ve brought, I appreciate the report, but I don’t have the capacity to make decisions about everything that comes up.
I need to be able to delegate and then stop paying attention to some things.
And this all falls in the realm I need you to take care of. ”
“I understand and appreciate that,” Andermus said with a smoothness that made it sound like something she’d said often enough it had lost its actual meaning. “Perhaps instead of incident reports, it would be better to discuss guidelines.”
“Guidelines.”
“I don’t like operational autonomy. I’ve seen it go wrong too often.
I am happy to accept whatever authority you’re ready to pass on if you are prepared to back me when I make a decision that isn’t the one you would have made.
So yes, if you tell me to maintain order, I will maintain order.
But if there are tactics, strategies, or priorities you want to put on the table, or conversely things you want to take off, I need you to say it in unambiguous language.
I will absolutely take silence as permission, and so I need you to give me some guardrails.
And if someone complains, I expect you to back me and mine.
I’m not interested in being your sin-eater. ”
Her voice had taken on a harshness and there was color in her cheeks.
He had the feeling that she was touching on sore spots.
Llian Andermus had been left holding the blame for something once, and she was still angry about it.
He felt a spark of curiosity about her, a little bright wondering about who she was and what had made her so accomplished in her field that the Carryx had chosen her.
In another life, he’d have sounded her out. But he was tired …
“People get to dislike what we’re doing, so long as they still do what we say.
The things the Carryx ask for aren’t up for debate, so the nursery, Tonner’s lab, and Jellit’s team all get priority.
And then anything else that rolls down from on high.
Our continued existence depends on us getting that part right, and we will behave that way. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I do.”
“Don’t try to make people into something they can’t be, but keep the disorder at a manageable level. Anything that creeps up to the level of work disruption needs to end immediately. And that one guy? The one with the reputation? He needs to stop.”
“I believe I explained that to him. Let’s see if he heard me.”
“Not sure about paralyzing people, though. That’s hard to undo if we make a mistake. We really do need to figure out if we do prisons here.”
Her smile went a degree more genuine. “Agreed.”
“And tell Uuya Tomos that I need to speak with her.”
“I have told her twice already. Personally.”
“Convince her.”
After Andermus left, Dafyd leaned his back against the little tree and closed his eyes.
He had meant to get back to work. Reports from the field were starting to come in more regularly.
The scattered humans that had been taken to off-world assignments were sending in their observations and letters and datasets.
Dafyd had to go through them all and find the bits that seemed to be important to Ekur-Tkalal, that seemed to address the tasks it had sent them on.
A dozen, two dozen, a hundred human experiences ready to distill down to something that a Carryx mind would understand and appreciate.
Plus making sure Tonner had whatever he needed.
Plus concealing the violence that humans committed against each other in case Ekur decided to add more Soft Lothark guards or else write humanity off as a bad bet.
But the bark felt weirdly comfortable against his back and the muttering of the wind was like the white noise his aunt had used to lull herself to sleep.
The exhaustion weighing him down didn’t even reflect any immediate danger.
He looked out at the darkening sky and waited for the stars to come out. There was a war out there, someplace. An enemy that hated the Carryx and fought against them on thousands of worlds. There was a war here, in the halls and corridors of the world-palace. A spy in the enemy house.
He thought of Jellit. The confusion and hope on his face that did, now that he considered it, remind Dafyd of Else. And then he was thinking about Else. And then he assumed he was sad, because he was weeping. He didn’t feel sorrow, though. He didn’t feel anything.
The great structures of the world-palace began to glow as the sunlight faded.
Just his little view was wide and broad as the largest cities of Anjiin all piled on top of each other.
There had to be billions of… people? Of alien things?
Sinen and Soun and Soft Lothark, Rak-hund and Phylarchs.
Meenan. Louk. Hundreds of species at least, just among the despised animal servants of the great and glorious Carryx.
How many billions of Carryx did the ziggurats hold?
Or the huge, arching towers that reached up past the sky?
And how many thousands or tens of thousands of worlds did the Carryx control?
And here he was, with a tree and a thunderstorm, its violence made beautiful by distance.
His body felt very good being still. His feet and hands seemed to have retreated, like the scope of his own body was becoming as wide as the world, or his place in it was shrinking.
And still, now, always , in the still center of his weariness, the secret rage.
The hidden desire to watch everything the Carryx had built burn to ash.
“I knew your aunt, you know.”
Dafyd started. Uuya Tomos stood between him and archways that were now lit with a soft golden light that made her more a shadow than a woman. Far behind her, the Rak-hund shifted uneasily like it was smelling a threat.
“I met Dorinda when we were… Fuck. Twenty-three? Twenty-four? Something like that. Young, anyway. I didn’t really get to know her until later.
I came out of the egg an academic, and she was always a politician.
We could never be friends, but I admired her for her ruthlessness.
I can’t say that I see much of her in you. ”
“You came,” Dafyd said, struggling to his feet.