Thirty
Thirty
T he keeper-librarian’s cell was the same one that Dafyd had gone to the very first time. It was a small room, and the report that the Carryx librarian had given him made it seem smaller.
“No,” Dafyd said, looking down at Ekur-Tkalal’s feet without really seeing them. The news that Rickar had died on his mysterious mission for the Carryx felt like someone had hit him in the gut. “No, we don’t broadcast anything when we die.”
Ekur-Tkalal, keeper-librarian of the human moiety, shifted the glowing shapes—cubes, a cone, a hemisphere—before it into a configuration that meant something like The human contact denies this as a standard experience .
Dafyd made himself take a breath. Rickar Daumatin was dead.
Had died some time ago in an escape pod leaving some distant battle around a star that Dafyd couldn’t point to.
Another one was gone and wouldn’t come back.
Irinna, Nol, Synnia, Jellit, Else, Tonner, Rickar. Jessyn was in the field. Campar. They might be dead too, and the Carryx just hadn’t bothered to tell him yet. Even if he knew exactly where they were and what they were doing, he wouldn’t have been able to protect them.
Dafyd realized that Ekur-Tkalal had said something else, and he shook his head. “My apologies. This news of my friend’s death unfortunately distracted me. Please repeat your statement?”
The Carryx whistled and cooed again. The translation half-mind spoke in its uncanny, neutral voice. “There are references in your recordings to a spirit or soul that leaves the body at death, but no such phenomenon has been observed in other deaths by your kind.”
“Yes, it’s a religious story. It’s spiritual. It’s meant to describe the change between being alive and having awareness to being dead.”
“You will clarify that this spirit is made of information.”
“It isn’t made of anything. It’s just a story that tries to comfort us in the face of something we find terrifying and inexplicable. It makes it so we can stand the idea of dying.”
The Carryx shifted its feeding arms, moved the symbols glowing in front of it into some grammar Dafyd wasn’t advanced enough to understand yet, and saved the information.
Some version of all they’d just said would be passed up to the librarian that Ekur answered to, and then the one above that, and so forth up to the Sovran.
Dafyd wasn’t supposed to know that. Rickar Daumatin was dead, and the oceanic sadness distracted him enough that it was an effort to track what he was supposed to know and what he knew that was secret.
It took him a few seconds to realize that the keeper-librarian’s silence was his cue to continue with his report.
Dafyd tried to recall where he’d been when the questions about the details of Rickar’s death had come up.
He had Brun’s report, and the latest from the visualization lab.
Both were disappointing, and Dafyd knew it.
He had set the benchmarks himself, trying to balance between promising enough to stay in the Carryx’s good graces and signing them up for more than they could achieve.
Tonner’s death and Jellit’s—the spy’s—double duty complicated things.
Dafyd had erred on the side of overpromising and he knew it.
Ekur-Tkalal did too.
“You have given no reason for this failure.”
“There are several. Breakthroughs in the work can be hard to predict. Periods of struggle are just the same. And there were some unexpected complications with the staffing. Tonner Freis was… He was very important to the work. Losing him negatively affected the outcomes in the near term.”
“That is an interesting problem,” the keeper-librarian said.
“We will improve quickly once the new staff is in place,” he said, even though he knew that might not be true. His jaw ached and he forced it to relax. “Which brings me to another point of discussion. The Soft Lothark and Rak-hund guards? The biological group wants them to be removed.”
The keeper-librarian’s response was subtle enough that he would have missed it before.
A shifting of weight back toward its abdominal legs, a change in the angle at which its massive fighting legs met the floor.
It hadn’t gone as far as lifting its fighting arms. The threat hadn’t been made, but a chill ran down Dafyd’s spine all the same.
Imagine you have little kittens on each shoulder.
Dafyd coughed and brought his shoulders forward, pulling his chest in. His arms slid in front of him, the elbows almost touching. His collarbone ached with the effort.
“Given the way Tonner died, some of the researchers are distracted by the presence of the guards,” Dafyd said. “The fear response would be lessened if the research labs were only inhabited by humans.”
Ekur-Tkalal muttered and churred. It clicked the beak almost hidden by its flesh, and its eyes shifted. The half-mind didn’t translate anything. Dafyd waited for a moment, then went on.
“Humans have a history of working less efficiently when they feel they are unsafe, even if the feeling is unfounded.”
He scratched his fingers against each other, mimicking the movements he’d seen the Carryx make with their own feeding arms. It felt awkward and obvious.
“Is this request from your team or from you?” the Carryx asked. Dafyd wasn’t sure what the right answer was, but he was certain that It’s from them, and they’re threatening a work stoppage if the demand isn’t met was definitely the wrong one.
“Neither. We make no request. It’s information I have had from the new leader of the team, and which I have presented to you.”
A few seconds later, the keeper-librarian shifted its weight forward again. Dafyd didn’t know if the depth of his relief was justified, but he felt it sweep through his whole body like he’d just stepped back from a cliff edge.
“As it should be.” Ekur-Tkalal leaned forward on its fighting arms and reached out with its feeding arms in a gesture Dafyd had never seen before. It touched Dafyd’s shoulder, and all of its eyes looked at him as if to mark the importance of the moment. “There is only one Sovran.”
“I understand,” Dafyd said, even though he was fairly sure he didn’t.
The Carryx drew itself back to its customary position, but Dafyd could still feel the place where it had touched him. It was the first time he could remember a Carryx doing that that hadn’t resulted in the death of the human.
The rest of the meeting was an exercise in endurance.
He reported the progress of the babies in their lamb sacks, the new quarters and nursery that Bastien Korham was overseeing, and an overview of Andermus’s crime-and-authority report that showed less violence and theft.
It felt like walking through thigh-high water.
Whenever he felt himself starting to lose focus, he dug his fingernails into his palms or bit at the inside of his cheek.
A little pain to bring his focus back to the moment.
It was probably one of his least destructive habits.
The shock of Rickar’s death kept sinking into his mind.
Each time he remembered, it left a vast exhaustion that he couldn’t allow himself to feel.
Ekur-Tkalal listened and recorded what it heard, asking a few questions here and there, but Dafyd slowly came to hope they’d passed through the difficult part of the meeting.
The keeper-librarian’s instructions traditionally came at the end of the session. This time was no different.
“Within the next five cycles, you will identify three hundred individuals for use in exploratory fieldwork.”
Dafyd felt the weight of the command, but he only said I will see that it’s done .
The first time he’d made his way to the keeper-librarian, it had felt like a long passage through dangerous territory.
If he focused, he could remember his sense of daring and the fear that he’d pushed aside to find the place.
He could remember it, but he couldn’t feel it again.
The new human habitat was twice as far as his old room had been, and he made the trip like a commuter coming home from work.
The air was alive with voices from a hundred different kinds of throat, and the smell was heavy with all the richness like too much spice.
The wide tunnels with their strange, bright tile work were filled with Carryx and Soft Lothark and Rak-hund and a dozen other species from a dozen other worlds.
Some he knew by name—the Phylarchs of Astrdeim, the Maidel of Bess.
Others were new or rare or simply unfamiliar.
All these had in common was that they could tolerate the same gravity and atmosphere, and that—by their will or against it—they served the empire.
Even the new Rak-hund guard following at his heels like a well-trained dog felt almost normal now. Anything, however strange or astounding, could be made commonplace by repetition.
When he reached the human quarters, his first impulse was to go to his room and sleep until his heart ached less. His second was to find Uuya Tomos. He found her working construction.
Bastien Korham and a crew of maybe two dozen people had cut out most of the floors and walls from a section of the habitat beside what would soon be the nursery to create an open space three stories tall and as open as a church.
Wide windows looked out onto the curve of the world-palace: the great, dark ziggurats that reached up through the clouds below them; the busy sky; the gridwork that separated them from the stars, and at night, the stars beyond it.