Thirty #2
The bare lines where the levels had been cut away still scarred the walls, but less so now.
Ladder crews were moving slowly around the perimeter, two people crewing each ladder to keep it stable, and two others buffing out the old marks in the flesh of the architecture with pads of something that looked like metallic moss.
The tall air danced with dust and light.
It was like seeing a beautiful sculpture still half trapped in marble.
“You like it?” Korham said through a grin.
“When we’re done clearing it out, we’ll have railings on the higher levels and a yard here at the bottom.
People will be able to look down and see the whole quad.
The classrooms will all be along the eastern side there, with coral-grown stairs like the Oversin Wall at Zashin Medrey. Did you ever see that?”
“Only in pictures,” Dafyd said. “I never went in person. I wasn’t much for travel back then.”
Korham laughed and put a companionable hand on Dafyd’s shoulder in the same place that Ekur-Tkalal had.
“Ferdan Bellenn is going to paint a mural across from the windows with great figures from human history. If I have my way, our children are going to grow up with our heritage. We will remake the art and architecture of Anjiin here, or anyplace else we’re sent. ”
Dafyd could hear Uuya Tomos’s influence in Korham’s words. He could hear his own plan, reflected.
“The children will live better because of you. I want you to know that. They’ll have better lives because you’re doing this.”
The big man’s face went sober. “I appreciate that. It’s what gets me up in the morning now, you know? It is.”
“Me too,” Dafyd said, and he wasn’t entirely lying.
Uuya Tomos was at the base of one of the long ladders, her feet braced where it met the floor to keep it from skidding.
Her hair was damp with sweat and wild as smoke around her face.
When she grinned, Dafyd saw that one of her teeth was brighter than the others.
A ceramic replacement that hadn’t yellowed with time and nature.
“I’m guessing you’ll want to talk to me in private again?” she said, teasing.
“If you don’t mind.”
She whistled twice, and a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man trotted over.
Dafyd recognized him and knew his name. The man had been a political leader once.
Dafyd had watched him debate before the world court.
Now he was a middle-aged construction worker steadying ladders, and a world of billions had become a moiety of three thousand.
“You look grim,” Uuya Tomos said as they walked away to a rest area Korham had set up for his workers. A wide bench with bowls of water and ceramic cups and plates of grapes from the hydroponic gardens and yeast-based cheese indistinguishable from the real thing.
“I’ve just met with the Carryx. They want another three hundred people to send out. And besides that, I’m fucking it all up.”
“Yeah?” Uuya Tomos asked, then lowered herself to the bench with a grunt. “How are you doing that?”
“We’re not keeping to schedule. With Tonner gone, maybe we can’t. He was a genius, and the new man… He doesn’t understand.”
“Or he does, and he has a different strategy.”
“He’ll get us all killed. Or I’ll get us killed. Or… God, I wish we weren’t bringing kids into this.”
“No shit,” the old woman said. “But that’s also history.
There’s never been an era you’d feel safe putting a baby into, but we keep doing it.
It was your idea, you know? Putting a handle on everyone’s back.
You didn’t think your back would be one of them, though, did you?
” When he didn’t answer, she reached into one of the bowls and scooped up a handful of grapes.
“They don’t understand us. The Carryx? They can’t fathom humanity.
Look what they did. The elite of a planet.
They acted like they were getting the best of the best, and here we are, bumbling our way toward making enough food and building a school. You want to know the secret?”
“I do,” Dafyd said.
“The elite exist on the shoulders of the unremarkable,” she said.
“Everyone here had a staff back on Anjiin. Everyone had someone else who was doing their laundry for them and making their food. Maybe a professional, maybe a lover or a spouse or an assistant. Their kids. Their research assistants. Korham’s done a brilliant job of turning academics and artists and managers into a construction crew, but we’re not anywhere close to the best construction crew on Anjiin.
Those poor bastards aren’t here, though, and we are. So why do you think that is?”
Dafyd sat beside her, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.
“Because the Carryx can change,” he said.
“Because they do change. All the time. Not just their jobs, but their bodies. They get bigger or smaller, they grow new glands, they shift genders. Any one of them can in theory be whatever any of the other ones are, so they treat us like we can do that too.”
“You start to see why they win, when any of them can turn into anything they need.”
“Not all of them change,” Dafyd said. “There is only one Sovran.”
“Exceptions are interesting,” the old woman said.
“If we could coordinate with the enemy and then create a moment of chaos. Something that they could exploit…”
“What are you doing here?”
“I don’t have anyone else I can talk to about this,” Dafyd began, but the old woman waved the words away like they were gnats.
“You don’t need to talk about that at all. Ever. That’s inside voice shit.”
Dafyd went still. There were tears in his eyes before he understood why they were there.
When he spoke, the words felt thick. Speaking took effort.
“Another one of my group died. Rickar Daumatin. He was in a battle and something went wrong with his evacuation pod. And now he’s gone.
And I don’t know what to feel about it.”
“Grief? That’s traditional.”
“I did. In the meeting, I felt grief, and then I fucked up. I told Ekur that Brun wanted to get rid of the guards. I phrased it as a lower group—an animal —giving orders to the Carryx.”
“Ouch.”
“I was able to walk it back, but I know better than that. I challenged it, and the best I could have hoped for was it broke my leg. It probably would have killed me. I lost focus. And I lost focus on the science teams that are what keep all of us alive. I can’t afford to get lost like that. I can’t afford emotions.”
Uuya Tomos scratched her chin like she was feeling for a beard. “You ever heard of wisdom myths? I did a book on them, but it was during my academic phase. Dry. I wouldn’t blame anyone for skipping it.”
“I skipped it.”
“I don’t blame you. There are a lot of mythic and religious forms. The one you’re commissioning from me is a justice story.
God will punish the wicked and reward the just, even if it takes a long time.
And then there’s origin stories that place communities in the world.
Explicatory stories that take a common experience and put a metaphoric context around it.
I was working on a set of those around menopause.
There’s a lot of good stories around menarche and menopause. ”
“I skipped those too.”
“That’s why you’re still single,” she said without missing a beat.
“But wisdom stories aren’t there to give comfort.
They tell the truth. The only consolation you get from a wisdom story is that someone else saw the same world you’re seeing.
They’re the stories where sometimes the good get screwed and it’s not made right.
The evil prosper, and God lets them. The plague comes and decimates and leaves, and there’s no rhyme or reason for who it kills and who it leaves standing.
And they’re very consistent about what you can do about it. ”
“I’m guessing you’re about to say ‘nothing.’”
She grinned again. The one white tooth among the bone-colored.
“Everything. You do whatever you can, even though it doesn’t seem to be working.
You keep shoveling the shit against the tide and you hope the tide goes out before your strength fails.
It feels meaningless. It feels overwhelming.
It feels like you’re a tiny, insignificant thing in a universe that barely notices you exist, because that’s just accurate. ”
“Wisdom stories sound shitty,” Dafyd said, but her words had loosened something in his chest. He hurt less. Maybe it would be enough.
“Well, there’s a beauty in truth,” Uuya Tomos said, and stood.
She put out her hand, and when he took it, she hauled him up.
“There’s also a beauty in work. Come take half a shift building something concrete for the children.
When you’re done, you can go back to beating all the human impurities out of yourself so you can be the sword of almighty justice. ”
“Oh, you think that’s what I’m doing?” Dafyd asked with a chuckle.
“I do,” she said. “And I’m never wrong, remember?”