Twenty #2
The structure of the archive was simple, and it was overwhelming.
If every world, every ship, every colony and deep holding and void station that the Carryx controlled had been the limbs of a single body, the Carryx themselves would have been the Great Beast’s flesh.
And like the cells of other bodies, the Carryx were differentiated according to their function—soldier and gardener and manufacturer and cleaner and builder taking the place of osteocytes and chondrocytes and keratinocytes and muscle.
Running through the complex, diffuse, unthinkably vast body of the empire were the librarians, each tasked with its bit of Carryx flesh like neurons.
Information flowed into the world-palace constantly, pouring in through ships or automated drones that traveled through asymmetric space to avoid the hard limit of light speed.
Any given hour bombarded the world-palace with a million reports from tens of thousands of worlds—production numbers, census data, battle analyses, surveys and inspections and audits.
As they reached the world-palace, the constant white noise of information was given shape.
Each message reached a librarian on the planet who formed a report on whatever realm they oversaw.
The reports were given to higher-level librarians who made these into versions of their realms with greater reach and lower resolution, and so on up the chain—each level encompassing more of the Carryx civilization in less detail—until it reached the Sovran.
Then the whole process reversed. The Sovran issued directives that passed back down through the nerves, each librarian taking the intent from the one above it and interpreting it with the more detailed knowledge that it possessed into orders to its own underlings, who would implement them by filling in the gaps with their own localized knowledge and judgment.
And at every step, the reports and orders were preserved. Every day, from every librarian in the empire, reaching back through millennia. The secret to unmaking the Carryx might be in there with step-by-step directions, and it would still take Dafyd and the spy a million lifetimes to find.
“I have to go now,” Dafyd said.
Jellit’s eyes refocused on him again. “Yes,” he said, but with a vagueness that meant he was only half aware.
“They use something called void tendrils to spy on planets they haven’t been to yet.
There’s a whole division of Carryx that just tend to them.
I think they’re almost alive. The void tendrils, I mean.
They talk about them like they’re adaptable in a way that… ” Jellit’s attention drifted back away.
Dafyd rose from the bed, pulled on his usual shoes, and left. The Rak-hund, waiting outside the door for him like a loyal dog, followed after him. The clicking of its knife-feet against the floor still made Dafyd’s flesh crawl.
“Is this the most recent assay?” Tonner asked, holding up a sheaf of handwritten paper. Brun looked at him blankly. It was infuriating. “The grass project? The thing we do here? Is this the most recent assay, or is there a newer one?”
Brun’s ridiculous larynx bobbed as the man swallowed. And then, “Let me go check.”
“That would be just fantastic,” Tonner snapped. “Thank you.”
He dropped the papers on his desk and started pacing the length of the lab room.
His jaw ached and there was a little buzz of blood rushing in his ear that he got sometimes when he was clenching his teeth.
The three research assistants became suddenly very interested in the static centrifuge and the electrophoretic slate.
Anything to avoid eye contact with the boss when he was pissed.
The truth was, Tonner knew the assay results were old.
He recognized the production curve and values, remembered how he’d interpreted them at the time, and the changes he’d made in response.
He knew there had been another run since that one.
If he’d been paying more attention to whether Alkhor had come back from his fieldwork, he’d have had them ready and a couple pages about next steps besides.
There wouldn’t be this last-minute half-assed scramble.
Now either Brun pulled the new run data out of his ass, or Tonner was stuck with two unacceptable alternatives.
He could make the report with the old data, and it would seem like he’d made less progress than he actually had.
Or he could give the overview of the new run—he knew what the results were in broad strokes after all—and admit that the specific data had been misfiled.
If it had been anyone but Alkhor, he could have lived with that. But it wasn’t, and he couldn’t. It was petty and it was small and it was just the way it was. Tonner already resented that he answered to Alkhor. Looking incompetent while he did it was more than he could stand.
So maybe it was time to bring out the other thing.
“Brun? Brun!”
The tall, thin man popped out from around a corner. His eyes were wide and anxious.
“When you find the run data, put it on my desk. I’m going to the legacy labs. If I can’t impress them with your nonexistent competence, I’ll distract them with a clever side project.”
The late morning light spilled across the garden and made the single tree almost beautiful.
Uuya Tomos sat on a chair, one ankle resting on the opposite knee.
It made her look like a bricklayer taking a break.
Her grin was equal parts satisfaction and amusement.
Dafyd, standing apart from her with his arms out in front of him, felt ridiculous.
“Yes,” Ver Cannedan said. The choreographer was standing beside him, his own arms palms out like they were both surrendering to the older woman.
“To us, this pose means Look, I’m unarmed.
I’m not a threat . That’s because this isn’t how we fight.
But it mimics Carryx fighting arms. Now slowly raise your arms, and pay attention to your shoulders.
There’s going to be a point where the joint shifts a little. Right there. Did you feel that?”
“I did.”
“That little shift looks like what Carryx fighting arms do when they’re cocked and about to attack.
It isn’t, but it looks like it. You see?
I watched three fights between Carryx, and it’s there every time.
That little shift will absolutely tell them it’s violence time.
But our shoulders can do something theirs can’t.
Put your arms down. Shake them out. Loosen up.
Good. Now pull your shoulders forward, kind of like you’re hunching, but keep your head up.
Imagine you have little kittens on each shoulder and you want them to look right at each other.
Sink your chest back. Good. Elbows down and close in, so they’re just touching the top of your belly.
And now, all of a sudden, your arms don’t look like fighting arms anymore.
They look like those skinny little feeding arms.”
“This is uncomfortable,” Dafyd said.
“Stretch more,” the choreographer said. “You take shitty care of your body, it takes shitty care of you.”
“The point Ver’s making,” Uuya Tomos said, “is they don’t have their feeding arms out when they fight. They tuck them away. So if you’re in feeding arm position, you’re de-escalating.”
Across the garden, two Soft Lothark guards were watching him with what felt like amusement. That had to be his own projection of the awkwardness he felt, but Dafyd dropped the pose anyway. “That’s interesting. How did you see so many fights?”
“These fuckers fight all the time,” Ver said.
“But they’re fast. You could almost miss it.
There’s no chest bumping or shoving the way we do.
They don’t have to work themselves up to it.
It just happens all at once. And then the loser submits, and it’s like nothing happened.
I get the sense that they never actually fight each other to the death. Just submission.”
“That’s… that’s really interesting,” Dafyd said.
“And it brings up the other thing,” Ver said.
“I got one of the Emberi of Silos talking. Do you know them? Crab-shaped things with ten legs. There are also Emberi of Umpelt that aren’t the same thing at all.
That’s beside the point. The Emberi of Silos have been doing a very similar study for a very long time.
The one I talked to pointed out that almost all the lower-rank Carryx have deformations on their arms and legs. ”
“Deformations?”
“Scars, missing bits, old breaks,” Ver said.
“The way that Carryx aggression displays end is they break one of the other fellow’s arms. Definitive finish to the whole thing.
If it doesn’t happen during the fight, the loser actually allows it after submitting.
Which is why they tuck their feeding arms away, you see? They’re the most breakable.”
Uuya Tomos cleared her throat. “Also why they killed an eighth of us on Anjiin instead of a third or a tenth or something. Eight limbs, one broken.”
“I still think that’s an assumption,” Ver said, and Uuya Tomos shrugged. “But the point is that when the Emberi of Silos started wearing armbands, and especially ones that were about the color and shape of Carryx scar tissue, the Carryx started treating them better.”
Dafyd nodded slowly. In the distance, three pink lights flared and rose toward the gridwork sky. “Thank you,” he said to the choreographer. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“I will continue the effort,” Ver said with a sharp nod. Dafyd sat on the bench under the tree and watched until Ver passed the archway and the Rak-hund and moved into the shadows of the world-city.
“See?” Uuya said. “He just needed a job that made him feel important again.”
“You were right,” Dafyd said. “Setting him loose was a good idea.”
“I’m always right. You’ll get used to it,” she said.
“A terrible burden, always being right.”