The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  “The doctor?” She’s managed to adopt the detached, steady voice that Alabaster’s using. It’s easier.

  “Maybe. Or some local citizen who paid for the privilege.” Alabaster actually shrugs, gesturing toward a still-livid bruise on the boy’s upper thigh. It’s in the shape of a hand, finger marks clearly visible even against the dark skin. “I’m told there are many who enjoy this sort of thing. A helplessness fetish, basically. They like it more if the victim is aware of what they’re doing.”

  “Oh, oh Earth, Alabaster, you can’t mean—”

  He rides over her words again, as if she hasn’t spoken. “Problem is, the node maintainers feel terrible pain whenever they use orogeny. The lesions, see. Since they can’t stop themselves from reacting to every shake in the vicinity, even the microshakes, it’s considered humane to keep them constantly sedated. And all orogenes react, instinctively, to any perceived threat—”

  Ah. That does it.

  Syen stumbles away to the nearest wall and retches up the dried apricots and jerky she made herself swallow a-horseback on the way to the station. It’s wrong. It’s all so wrong. She thought—she didn’t think—she didn’t know—

  Then as she wipes her mouth, she looks up and sees Alabaster watching.

  “Like I said,” he concludes, very softly. “Every rogga should see a node, at least once.”

  “I didn’t know.” She slurs the words around the back of her hand. The words don’t make sense but she feels compelled to say them. “I didn’t.”

  “You think that matters?” It’s almost cruel, the emotionlessness of his voice and face.

  “It matters to me!”

  “You think you matter?” All at once he smiles. It’s an ugly thing, cold as the vapor that curls off ice. “You think any of us matter beyond what we can do for them? Whether we obey or not.” He jerks his head toward the body of the abused, murdered child. “You think he mattered, after what they did to him? The only reason they don’t do this to all of us is because we’re more versatile, more useful, if we control ourselves. But each of us is just another weapon, to them. Just a useful monster, just a bit of new blood to add to the breeding lines. Just another fucking rogga.”

  She has never heard so much hate put into one word before.

  But standing here, with the ultimate proof of the world’s hatred dead and cold and stinking between them, she can’t even flinch this time. Because. If the Fulcrum can do this, or the Guardians or the Yumenescene Leadership or the geomests or whoever came up with this nightmare, then there’s no point in dressing up what people like Syenite and Alabaster really are. Not people at all. Not orogenes. Politeness is an insult in the face of what she’s seen. Rogga: This is all they are.

  After a moment, Alabaster turns and leaves the room.

  * * *

  They make camp in the open courtyard. The station’s buildings hold all the comforts Syen’s been craving: hot water, soft beds, food that isn’t just cachebread and dried meat. Out here in the courtyard, though, the bodies aren’t human.

  Alabaster sits in silence, staring into the fire that Syenite’s built. He’s wrapped in a blanket, holding the cup of tea she’s made; she did, at least, replenish their stores from those of the station. She hasn’t seen him drink from the cup. It might’ve been nice, she thinks, if she could’ve given him something stronger to drink. Or not. She’s not really sure what an orogene of his skill could do, drunk. They’re not supposed to drink for that exact reason… but rust reason, right now. Rust everything.

  “Children are the undoing of us,” Alabaster says, his eyes full of the fire.

  Syenite nods, though she doesn’t understand it. He’s talking. That has to be a good thing.

  “I think I have twelve children.” Alabaster pulls the blanket more closely about himself. “I’m not sure. They don’t always tell me. I don’t always see the mothers, after. But I’m guessing it’s twelve. Don’t know where most of them are.”

  He’s been tossing out random facts like this all evening, when he talks at all. Syenite hasn’t been able to bring herself to reply to most of the statements, so it hasn’t been much of a conversation. This one, though, makes her speak, because she’s been thinking about it. About how much the boy in the wire chair resembles Alabaster.

  She begins, “Our child…”

  He meets her eyes and smiles again. It’s kindly this time, but she’s not sure whether to believe that or the hatred beneath the smile’s surface.

  “Oh, this is only one possible fate.” He nods at the station’s looming red walls. “Our child could become another me burning through the ring ranks and setting new standards for orogeny, a Fulcrum legend. Or she could be mediocre and never do anything of note. Just another four-or five-ringer clearing coral-blocked harbors and making babies in her spare time.”

  He sounds so rusting cheerful that it’s hard to pay attention to the words and not just his tone. The tone soothes, and some part of her craves soothing right now. But his words keep her on edge, stinging like sharp glass fragments amid smooth marbles.

  “Or a still,” she says. “Even two roggas—” It’s hard to say the word, but harder to say orogene, because the more polite term now feels like a lie. “Even we can make a still.”

  “I hope not.”

  “You hope not?” That’s the best fate she can imagine for their child.

  Alabaster stretches out his hands to the fire to warm them. He’s wearing his rings, she realizes suddenly. He hardly ever does, but sometime before they reached the station, even with fear for his child burning in his blood, he spared a thought for propriety and put them on. Some of them glitter in the firelight, while others are dull and dark; one on each finger, thumbs included. Six of Syenite’s fingers itch, just a little, for their nakedness.

  “Any child of two ringed Fulcrum orogenes,” he says, “should be an orogene, too, yes. But it’s not that exact a thing. It’s not science, what we are. There’s no logic to it.” He smiles thinly. “To be safe, the Fulcrum will treat any children born to any rogga as potential roggas themselves, until proven otherwise.”

  “But once they’ve proven it, after that, they’ll be… people.” It is the only hope she can muster. “Maybe someone will adopt them into a good comm, send them to a real creche, let them earn a use name—”

  He sighs. There’s such weariness in it that Syen falls silent in confusion and dread.

  “No comm would adopt our child,” he says. The words are deliberate and slow. “The orogeny might skip a generation, maybe two or three, but it always comes back. Father Earth never forgets the debt we owe.”

  Syenite frowns. He’s said things like this before, things that hark to the lorists’ tales about orogenes—that they are a weapon not of the Fulcrum, but of the hateful, waiting planet beneath their feet. A planet that wants nothing more than to destroy the life infesting its once-pristine surface. There is something in the things Alabaster says that makes her think he believes those old tales, at least a little. Maybe he does. Maybe it gives him comfort to think their kind has some purpose, however terrible.

  She has no patience for mysticism right now. “Nobody will adopt her, fine.” She chooses her arbitrarily. “What, then? The Fulcrum doesn’t keep stills.”

  Alabaster’s eyes are like his rings, reflecting the fire in one moment, dull and dark the next. “No. She would become a Guardian.”

  Oh, rust. That explains so much.

  At her silence, Alabaster looks up. “Now. Everything you’ve seen today. Unsee it.”

  “What?”

  “That thing in the chair wasn’t a child.” There’s no light in his eyes now. “It wasn’t my child, or anyone else’s. It was nothing. It was no one. We stabilized the hot spot and figured out what caused it to almost blow. We’ve checked here for survivors and found none, and that’s what we’ll telegraph to Yumenes. That’s what we’ll both say if we’re questioned, when we get back.”

  “I, I don’t know if I ca
n…” The boy’s slack-jawed, dead gaze. How horrible, to be trapped in an endless nightmare. To awaken to agony, and the leer of some grotesque parasite. She can feel nothing but pity for the boy, relief for his release.

  “You will do exactly as I say.” His voice is a whip, and she glares at him, instantly furious. “If you mourn, mourn the wasted resource. If anyone asks, you’re glad he’s dead. Feel it. Believe it. He almost killed more people than we can count, after all. And if anyone asks how you feel about it, say you understand that’s why they do these things to us. You know it’s for our own good. You know it’s for everyone’s.”

  “You rusting bastard, I don’t know—”

  He laughs, and she flinches, because the rage is back now, whiplash-quick. “Oh, don’t push me right now, Syen. Please don’t.” He’s still laughing. “I’ll get a reprimand if I kill you.”

  It’s a threat, at last. Well, then. Next time he sleeps. She’ll have to cover his face while she stabs him. Even lethal knife wounds take a few seconds to kill; if he focuses his orogeny on her in that brief window, she’s dead. He’s less likely to target her accurately without eyes, though, or if he’s distracted by suffocation—

  But Alabaster is still laughing. Hard. That’s when Syenite becomes aware of a hovering jitter in the ambient. A looming almost in the strata beneath her feet. She frowns, distracted and alerted and wondering if it’s the hot spot again—and then, belatedly, she realizes that the sensation is not jittering, it’s jerking in a rhythmic sort of way. In time with the harsh exhalations of Alabaster’s laughter.

  While she stares at him in chilled realization, he even slaps his knee with one hand. Still laughing, because what he wants to do is destroy everything in sight. And if his half-dead, half-grown son could touch off a supervolcano, there’s really no telling what that boy’s father could do if he set his mind to it. Or even by accident, if his control slips for a moment.

  Syen’s hands clench into fists on her knees. She sits there, nails pricking her palms, until he finally gets ahold of himself. It takes a while. Even when the laughter’s done he puts his face into his hands and chuckles now and again, shoulders shaking. Maybe he’s crying. She doesn’t know. Doesn’t really care, either.

  Eventually he lifts his head and takes a deep breath, then another. “Sorry about that,” he says at last. The laughter has stopped, but he’s all cheer again. “Let’s talk about something else, why don’t we?”

  “Where the rust is your Guardian?” She hasn’t unclenched her hands. “You’re mad as a bag of cats.”

  He giggles. “Oh, I made sure she was no threat years ago.”

  Syen nods. “You killed her.”

  “No. Do I look stupid?” Giggling to annoyance in half a breath. Syen is terrified of him and no longer ashamed to admit it. But he sees this, and something in his manner changes. He takes another deep breath, and slumps. “Shit. I… I’m sorry.”

  She says nothing. He smiles a little, sadly, like he doesn’t expect her to. Then he gets up and goes to the sleeping bag. She watches while he lies down, his back to the fire; she watches him until his breathing slows. Only then does she relax.

  Though she jumps, again, when he speaks very softly.

  “You’re right,” he says. “I’ve been crazy for years. If you stay with me for long, you will be, too. If you see enough of this, and understand enough of what it all means.” He lets out a long sigh. “If you kill me, you’ll be doing the whole world a favor.” After that he says nothing more.

  Syen considers his last words for longer than she probably should.

  Then she curls up to sleep as best she can on the hard courtyard stones, wrapped in a blanket and with a saddle as an especially torturous sort of pillow. The horses shift restlessly, the way they have been all evening; they can smell the death in the station. But eventually, they sleep, and Syenite does, too. She hopes Alabaster eventually does the same.

  Back along the highroad they just traveled, the tourmaline obelisk drifts out of sight behind a mountain, implacable in its course.

  * * *

  Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall; Death is the fifth, and master of all.

  —Arctic proverb

  INTERLUDE

  A break in the pattern. A snarl in the weft. There are things you should be noticing, here. Things that are missing, and conspicuous by their absence.

  Notice, for example, that no one in the Stillness speaks of islands. This is not because islands do not exist or are uninhabited; quite the contrary. It is because islands tend to form near faults or atop hot spots, which means they are ephemeral things in the planetary scale, there with an eruption and gone with the next tsunami. But human beings, too, are ephemeral things in the planetary scale. The number of things that they do not notice are literally astronomical.

  People in the Stillness do not speak of other continents, either, though it is plausible to suspect they might exist elsewhere. No one has traveled around the world to see that there aren’t any; seafaring is dangerous enough with resupply in sight and tsunami waves that are only a hundred feet high rather than the legendary mountains of water said to ripple across the unfettered deep ocean. They simply take as given the bit of lore passed down from braver civilizations that says there’s nothing else. Likewise, no one speaks of celestial objects, though the skies are as crowded and busy here as anywhere else in the universe. This is largely because so much of the people’s attention is directed toward the ground, not the sky. They notice what’s there: stars and the sun and the occasional comet or falling star. They do not notice what’s missing.

  But then, how can they? Who misses what they have never, ever even imagined? That would not be human nature. How fortunate, then, that there are more people in this world than just humankind.

  9

  Syenite among the enemy

  THEY REACH ALLIA A WEEK later, beneath a bright blue midday sky that is completely clear except for a winking purple obelisk some ways off-coast.

  Allia’s big for a Coaster comm—nothing like Yumenes, of course, but respectably sized; a proper city. Most of its neighborhoods and shops and industrial districts are packed into the steep-sided bowl of a natural harbor formed from an old caldera that has collapsed on one side, with several days of outlying settlement in every direction. On the way in, Syenite and Alabaster stop at the first cluster of buildings and farmhouses they see, ask around, and—in between ignoring the glares elicited by their black uniforms—learn that several lodging-houses are nearby. They skip the first one they could’ve gone to, because a young man from one of the farmhouses decides to follow them for a few miles, reining his horse back to keep it out of what he probably thinks is their range. He’s alone, and he says nothing, but one young man can easily become a gang of them, so they keep going in hopes his hatred won’t outlast his boredom—and eventually he does turn his horse and head back the way they came.

  The next lodging-house isn’t as nice as the first, but it’s not bad, either: a boxy old stucco building that’s seen a few Seasons but is sturdy and well kept. Someone’s planted rosebushes at every corner and let ivy grow up its walls, which will probably mean its collapse when the next Season comes, but that’s not Syenite’s problem to worry about. It costs them two Imperial mother-of-pearls for a shared room and stabling for two horses for the night: such a ridiculously obvious gouging that Syenite laughs at the proprietor before she catches herself. (The woman glares back at them.) Fortunately, the Fulcrum understands that orogenes in the field sometimes have to bribe citizens into decent behavior. Syenite and Alabaster have been generously provisioned, with a letter of credit that will allow them to draw additional currency if necessary. So they pay the proprietor’s price, and the sight of all that nice white money makes their black uniforms acceptable for at least a little while.

  Alabaster’s horse has been limping since the push to the node station, so before they settle in they also see a drover and trade for an uninjured animal. What they get is a spirited
little mare who gives Alabaster such a skeptical look that Syenite cannot help laughing again. It’s a good day. And after a good night’s rest in actual beds, they move on.

  Allia’s main gates are a massive affair, even more ostentatiously large and embellished than those of Yumenes. Metal, though, rather than proper stone, which makes them look like the garish imitation they are. Syen can’t understand how the damn things are supposed to actually secure anything, despite the fact that they’re fifty feet tall and made of solid plates of bolted chromium steel, with a bit of filigree for decoration. In a Season, the first acid rain will eat those bolts apart, and one good sixer will warp the precision plates out of alignment, making the great huge things impossible to close. Everything about the gates screams that this is a comm with lots of new money and not enough lorists talking to its Leadership caste.

  The gate crew seems to consist of only a handful of Strongbacks, all of them wearing the pretty green uniforms of the comm’s militia. Most are sitting around reading books, playing cards, or otherwise ignoring the gate’s back-and-forth commerce; Syen fights not to curl her lip at such poor discipline. In Yumenes they would be armed, visibly standing guard, and at least making note of every inbound traveler. One of the Strongbacks does do a double take at the sight of their uniforms, but then waves them through with a lingering glance at Alabaster’s many-ringed fingers. He doesn’t even look at Syen’s hands, which leaves her in a very foul mood by the time they finally traverse the town’s labyrinthine cobbled streets and reach the governor’s mansion.

  Allia is the only large city in the entire quartent. Syen can’t remember what the other three comms of the quartent are called, or what the nation was called before it became a nominal part of Sanze—some of the old nations reclaimed their names after Sanze loosened control, but the quartent system worked better, so it didn’t really matter. She knows it’s all farming and fishing country, as backwater as any other coastal region. Despite all this, the governor’s mansion is impressively beautiful, with artful Yumenescene architectural details all over it like cornices and windows made of glass and, ah yes, a single decorative balcony overlooking a vast forecourt. Completely unnecessary ornamentation, in other words, which probably has to be repaired after every minor shake. And did they really have to paint the whole building bright yellow? It looks like some kind of giant rectangular fruit.