Thirteen
Thirteen
S urur of the cohort Tlassen, regulator-librarian to the Sovran, lay folded in his niche and dreamed of being a mother.
He had begun his life and service to the empire (two concepts that shared a single word) as a brood mother for the sixty-fifth exploratory body.
For those years, he had done little besides eat and produce blank eggs for the public creche.
And while none of his own genetic material had entered into the eggs—no mere brood mother would be permitted so great a representation in the generations she brought to life—still, thousands of Carryx in the sixty-fifth body had come to be inside shells that his body had produced.
In his dream, he felt again the fullness of his abdomen, the insatiable hunger for stone and bone, and the subterranean desire to fill some of the blank eggs with offspring of his own.
That last was the ambition that had finally driven him to challenge the keeper-librarian of his brood, snapping its right feeding arm and claiming its place.
In the dream, he fought again, and feeling the enemy’s limb snap under his weight, he woke.
Surur-Tlassen unfolded, the blood reperfusing into his limbs, the hormones and signaling proteins seeping into his blood.
A third of his life now was spent dreaming, and in some ways the most important third.
He made his way now toward his private feeding trough, considering all that he had dreamed.
In sleep, the overwhelming flood of information that flowed in from the empire consolidated into forms that he could present to the Sovran.
It was too complicated a task for consciousness to manage, and so today, as every day, Surur ate his meal of black amask flesh and sweet lorrith and considered the products of his own mind.
When his meal was done and he had meditated on the product of all the information he had consumed, he would attend the Sovran.
His place was to deliver to her the state of the empire, and in return receive and disseminate her will.
That done, he would meet with the eight high librarians that attended him, delivering the will of the Sovran to each of them as need and specialization required, and receive from them the new day’s reports.
For hours upon hours, they would fill him with information from all corners of the empire until his mind was swimming in a sea of data.
And then sleep and dream and black amask and lorrith.
And so the will of the Sovran pulsed out every day, flowing to thousands upon thousands of worlds, hundreds of thousands of ships, billions upon billions of Carryx that were the flesh of the one great and developing body that was the empire.
This morning, his thoughts were on being a mother and ambition, on how he had at first given up gender to become a librarian, and how he had won it back by climbing to the apex of his caste.
How he had won the right to contribute to offspring and fulfilled the ambitions of the brood mother he had once been.
And how he would one day surrender everything again and return to the task of creating young—not the common young of the public creche, but the Sovran’s own daughters and successors.
From the maker of blank eggs ready for the genes of those deemed most useful to the next generations, to father of ten thousand Carryx throughout the universe.
One day to hold the limb of a future Sovran and guide her to her place at the peak of their society.
An upward spiral that led to more and more refined and powerful versions of himself, and more and more effective service to his species.
Not for the first time, he thought of his own ambition as a metaphor for the ambitions of the Carryx as a whole.
The thought filled him with a sense of ease and accomplishment, the pleasure any being of will felt in bending the universe to the shape it wished, the joy of aspirations fulfilled. And the war was going well. War , which, in his language, shared the same word as service to the empire and life .
Knowing that the ship was in conflict space might have been easier if they’d known better how their Sinen middle manager defined the phrase.
Campar had spent the first hours tensed against imminent violence.
His imagination played havoc with him. He waited for vast holes to be torn through the walls and deck of the ship.
Or sudden flashes of light and heat that burned him and the people around him alive.
Or the up-close, personal horrors of an enemy boarding party, the deathless anti-Carryx come to slit their throats in the name of victory.
He spent the first days of the battle in a haze, exhausted when he ate or sat in the common room, too anxious to sleep when he lay down in his cell. Every new sound or shift in gravity within the vast ship filled his bloodstream with adrenaline.
And then, slowly but inexorably, he found himself growing used to it.
Every hour the fighting didn’t come let him pretend more effectively that it wouldn’t.
That the battle would never be as harsh as he imagined it.
The Carryx were a species of violence. They knew what they were doing, and he and Ghati and Rickar and the other subject species were valuable cargo to their owners.
Perhaps there was some sense of being protected by that.
“Maybe,” Ghati said, and took another sip of his water.
“Then again, maybe not. Think about the things we do know. When the big fuckers came to Anjiin, they were weeks getting from the edge of the system to the planet. Maybe they have to pop out of asymmetric space when they’re outside a heliosphere and then walk the rest of the way. ”
“So we entered a combat space, and there are millions of enemy missiles screaming toward us at lethal speed, but they just haven’t gotten here to annihilate us quite yet,” Campar said.
Ghati lifted one thin shoulder in a half shrug. “Makes more sense than your ‘war is safe’ idea.”
The ship lurched like they’d hit a pocket of air turbulence in the vacuum of space. Ghati went a little pale, his small hand seeking out Campar’s. They sat together for what felt like a lifetime. The turbulence didn’t come again.
“You see?” Campar said, forcing a laugh. “They were listening to you. That was your fault. The pilot did that just to make you jump. Carryx are famous for their comedic timing.”
“Oh, yes, they’re hilarious,” Ghati said, and drew back his hand. For a moment, they just sat together. Then Ghati let out a long, shuddering sigh.
A Soft Lothark emerged from the hall, its small black eyes drifting over the prisoners like it was seeing if any of them had died and needed hauling away.
The only ones here were the two of them, the huge slug thing called Vaudai, and four Budon of Luus standing in the corner gabbling at each other.
They were all visibly alive, so the Soft Lothark guard lumbered back out.
The other humans were all in their rooms, or else each other’s.
The tension had apparently done something to the dysfunctional dynamic between the defense security trio which was now working itself out enthusiastically and in private.
Rickar… Well, Rickar was Rickar, and Campar wasn’t sure what if anything could be done to help with that.
He wondered if the security trio might be open to adding a fourth to their group, just to get Rickar some release.
“What?” Ghati asked. And then, “You have that smirk. That one you get when I ask for sex.”
Before Campar could answer, the four Budon of Luus began to sing.
Four alien voices lifted together as suddenly as a chorus of crickets.
They were awkward-looking things at the best of times, and now as their long, mobile throats swelled and shuddered, they seemed less like living things and more like some odd musical instrument made from flesh.
It was like birdsong, melodies and harmonies weaving from one voice to the next.
It was like the woodwind section of an orchestra coming to life and declaring its love.
It was like prayer. Campar leaned forward.
Ghati’s hand was in his again, but not from fear this time.
The tallest of the Budon waved its head from side to side like it was losing its balance, and the others helped to hold it up.
Doors opened from the cells and private rooms, the latches ticking like someone clearing their throat at a concert.
More of the Budon of Luus appeared at the mouths of the corridors.
Half a dozen humans, Rickar among them. A tall, dark alien whose name and species Campar didn’t know, and which he’d only seen twice in the long journey from the Carryx homeworld.
After a few moments, even the Soft Lothark returned, drawn by the sounds.
The massive slug called Vaudai shifted and broadened, almost like it was melting into the deck.
Campar had never seen it do that before.
And then, without reaching a crescendo or any clear climax, the song stopped.
Silence came in as sudden as the singing had been.
The four Budon of Luus twisted their necks around.
To Campar they seemed almost surprised to be there.
As if the song had been a possessing spirit that had just now let them go.
One of the humans began applauding, and the Budon turned toward the sound like it might be a threat.
“That was beautiful,” Campar said loudly enough, he hoped, that the half-mind would relay it to the singers. “That was astounding.”