Thirty-Six #2
Ekur-Tkalal shifted on its abdomen and modified the glowing shapes that floated in front of it to reflect the possibility of improvement.
Dafyd took a covert kind of pride in understanding the grammar of the reports as well as he did, but he pretended to be out of his depth.
The more the keeper-librarian underestimated him, the better.
The Carryx muttered and whistled, and the half-mind said, “These results are much improved. Your research group deserves whatever recognition is appropriate to your kind.”
“I will see to it,” Dafyd said.
He had a sense that the librarian’s vocabulary in human languages had started to improve.
He didn’t know if that was a sign that the half-minds had gathered enough samples of human interaction to grow sophisticated or if it was something specific to Ekur-Tkalal as an individual, but it was interesting.
Maybe concerning, maybe not. He added it to the semi-infinite list of things that he needed to look into, manage, control.
The next question—the one he’d been half anticipating and half dreading—was about the Soft Lothark guards and their status in the moiety.
He’d practiced several ways of expressing how the conflict with Brun and his team had been resolved, but the librarian didn’t press.
The results were good, and so the rest was beneath notice.
The meeting, so far, had been one of the better ones, mostly because there were positive results to report.
Not just the relative success of the grass protein translation, but some decent preliminary results from the visualization lab and the nursery.
The extra workload of the babies hadn’t caused any trouble yet.
There were more than enough people ready and willing to feed and change and hold and coo at the babies.
As they got older and more active, that might change, but it was a problem for another day.
Apart from the constant fatigue and the nagging itch of an idea not quite ready to present itself, Dafyd felt as good as he could remember.
The keeper-librarian shifted restlessly back and forth in a way that meant it was thinking, and so Dafyd didn’t interrupt.
“There is growing interest in this moiety,” Ekur-Tkalal said. “We will come to a point at which exploring new applications and uses may conflict with the needs of tending the population. You will draw up analysis of which individuals can be assigned out with the least disruption.”
That was actually an interesting thought.
If there was a central group who had what would essentially be careers as field agents, he could pick and choose who’d be best. Instead of grabbing whoever was available, he could design a core group that would both work well for the Carryx and serve as the backbone of his efforts to reach out to the enemy.
It seemed like the sort of thing Andermus would be good at arranging, except that every time he thought about folding her into the charmed circle of his conspiracy, he remembered Uuya Tomos saying You should be careful with that one .
“I see many possible benefits—” he began, and the sound came. It was made from Carryx voices, like a choir, and he couldn’t tell if it was a group of them vocalizing together or one vast but singular voice so rich in overtones and harmonics that it seemed too much for only one throat.
Ekur-Tkalal lifted its head like a dog hearing something exciting.
It rose up on its back legs, its fighting and feeding arms both outstretched, and sang along with the wide, vast song for what felt like a full minute.
When the silence returned, Ekur seemed to find itself, shaking off some little disorientation with a shudder that passed through its whole body.
Dafyd pulled his own shoulders forward and plucked at his hands the way he always did now when he was unsure of the direction he was about to take the meeting. “I apologize. I don’t know how to reply to that.”
Several of Ekur’s eyes flickered toward him and then away. “It was not meant for you. The Sovran has died. The new Sovran has announced herself. The consonance is not for animals. It does not affect your duties.”
Instinct told Dafyd this wasn’t the time to push for more context, however badly he wanted it.
They returned to the meat of their conversation—the frequency and detail of his written reports, the death of one of the human moiety from an underlying medical condition and old age, the possibility of adding a second task to Brun’s team now that the grass project was almost ended.
And when it was over, Ekur dismissed him with the same casual disdain as always.
Dafyd walked away, but slowly. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and the confusion needed time and maybe the motion of putting one foot in front of the other to resolve.
Something had just happened, and he knew it was important.
He knew it was connected to his hopes for revenge on the Carryx, but there was something else too.
Something that someone had said to him, and he hadn’t seen the significance at the time.
It was like trying to remember a dream he’d had.
It was there at the edge of his mind, and just out of reach.
He walked to the human moiety, and then past it.
The wide ramps led down toward the lower levels of the unthinkably huge body of the world-palace.
The mix of aliens around him shifted. Carryx, yes.
Always Carryx. And animals of violence—Soft Lothark, Rak-hund.
A thin thing he’d never seen before with an amber pelt and a flat face like nature had taken an elk and put a bulldog’s head on it.
A mob of spiderlike animals the size of his two fists together wearing uniforms with bright jewels set in them.
He thought they were called the People of Sotos.
It was funny how many species had names that translated to some version of The Real Ones or The Ones Who Matter .
He reached a nexus of hallways and ramps that converged in a space as high as a skyscraper.
He hadn’t been here before, but that didn’t bother him.
He knew the way home, roughly. Head uphill, and he’d find a landmark.
Or someone to ask. For the moment, he could be alone in the throng of bodies like he was in the central district of some foreign city.
Only a city inhabited by a thousand different species and designed by the Carryx for the greater glory of the empire.
Only, no. Designed by the bone-horse Phylarchs of Astrdeim. The moiety of architects whose genius had transformed the Carryx homeworld…
And he knew. The memory came back as clean and fresh as if his mind had put it in a sampling case for him, knowing that he’d need it. Dafyd took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Fuck,” he said to no one, then turned back and started up the ramp.
He found Clae in the labs, sitting on a static centrifuge and laughing with a woman who he thought was named Addira and a bearded man named Abfoss.
The older woman’s smile vanished when she saw him, and Abfoss crossed his arms and shifted, subtly putting himself between Dafyd and Clae. The spy. The swarm.
“Sorry to intrude,” Dafyd said. “Clae? Could I speak to you for a moment in private?”
“Of course,” she said, hopping down from the centrifuge.
The other two frowned as she walked away at Dafyd’s side, but they didn’t object or try to linger where they could hear them.
“Don’t blame them. They were both here when you broke Brun’s arm.
They’re just a little defensive in case you’re looking to do that to more of us. ”
“I don’t remember seeing them.”
“You may have had a little tunnel vision.”
“Maybe. Good that you’re fitting in well,” Dafyd said.
“I was designed to. It’s pretty much the central tenet of being me.”
“Something’s happened,” Dafyd said, and the playfulness fell away from her like it had never been. “The Sovran’s dead.”
Clae shook her head. “I don’t understand. There’s no way we could have—”
“We didn’t do anything. I only know about it at all because I was in Ekur’s office when the announcement went out. But that’s not the issue. Do you remember telling me that this isn’t their original homeworld? They came from somewhere else? Tonner had just died, and I came to you and you—”
“Yes,” she said. “I do. And yes, they came here about seven thousand years ago, give or take. Their original homeworld—the one they actually evolved on—was destroyed. It was kind of a shithole, too. Mostly salt swamps and shallow seas.”
“And how long did it take them to recover from that?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking.”
“The Carryx lost their center before. They lost their Sovran, assuming the Sovran was on the first homeworld when whatever happened happened. Losing those didn’t break the empire.” Dafyd crossed his arms. “Why didn’t it break the empire?”