Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 166

by Neil Clarke

  It had to happen. Oyārun had read a lot about the tensions between the two groups, threatening to drive apart the newly founded Free State of Eren. But she’d never before realized that it was someone who was neither a Seer nor an Undesirable who’d forced the issue.

  An Imperial noble who felt entitled enough to do so.

  Who shaped history.

  This was not the history Oyārun had been taught. And she needed, desperately needed, to know more.

  I.

  1.

  “Aramīn is . . . people will say he’s a sadist and a Falconer, I know. And I suppose some of that is true. But he’s also a brilliant surgeon, and a researcher, and . . . [P: 0.8v] Not what you expect from a noble. We all . . . [P: 0.5v] [to say] liked him might be too strong . . . [but] we appreciated him, certainly. All the folk up in HPR.”

  —Amasewun ta Yowasiru, Ereni Oral History Archives, War of Independence database, 32:11/23-EOF

  Oyārun looked up from the database and sighed. Of all the topics in the world, her mind had to fix itself upon Aramīn, well after she’d finished her homework and garnered an uncommon amount of praise from her teacher. This went beyond usual abuwen, special interests like floater races, public transport, or space weather—no, it had to be a person, a living person, a public figure, and Aramīn at that. Oyārun knew some people had specific persons as their abuwen, and that this phenomenon was slightly more common among girls, but still she wished she could be somehow more ordinary. At least Aramīn did not displace her primary abuwen, paper folding. Yet.

  Her fingers worked through the familiar motions and one of her special creations took shape in her hands—the paper airplane that set the Eren-wide record of time aloft. It wasn’t such a big deal: other than her, there were only seven people on the planetoid interested in paper airplanes, they didn’t have a large enough hangar to practice airplane throwing, the air conditions could not be adjusted precisely enough . . . and so on. Still, she was proud of the accomplishment. It wasn’t a special accomplishment—it didn’t improve on their living conditions or the volatile political situation, it didn’t garner a lot of public interest, it didn’t even help her find a career path. But at least it wasn’t actively harmful.

  She was beginning to suspect that her interest in Aramīn would prove to be actively harmful. He was a Falconer, people said—another cognotype just as undesirable as the Undesirable one, the one that became the Ereni cognotype upon Independence. Her own cognotype. But Falconers were supposed to be dangerous in comparison, even if they weren’t formally persecuted; maybe only because the Empire could not quite pin down the genetic basis to do so. Or maybe because there were fewer of them? She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure where the name had come from, either—people commonly said that Falconers were more like falcons, merciless birds of prey. Cognotypes generally weren’t named after animals, though she wasn’t sure she could list some of the less common ones. She had never been interested in this topic. The Jaya cognotype was named after a researcher, but before that, hadn’t it been named after some kind of small animal? She vaguely recalled people protesting about that, and she agreed with them. But no one was protesting about “Falconer.” She felt uneasy that she hadn’t considered this before; she’d accepted everything at face value. Was this the goal of her civics assignments—questioning social assumptions?

  She could not stop thinking of Aramīn. Was it this aspect of danger that he held in himself that allowed him to take that step? To force his will on a dithering, unformed High Council? Certainly, in the interest of equality and justice, but still . . . All that just to leave politics soon after?

  Oyārun turned around in her seat and threw the plane at the wall. Hard. It crumpled and fell to the floor of her small room. She turned back to the wall, closed her eyes, and rubbed first her temples, then her scalp. She pulled her soft cotton cap back on, sighed, and submerged in the data supplied by her neural interface.

  The more she read, the more certain she was that her abuwen was destructive and wrong. Most of the interviewees in the archives who talked about Aramīn were still alive, and she knew she could seek them out. Eren was a small place. They might even indulge her. But the interviews made her think it would be a bad idea to try to elicit information from these people. For the time being, she fiddled with the data at hand.

  Interviews were the kind of soft qualitative data that were so hard to tackle, unlike air humidity or paper thickness. Still, she persevered. The interviews could be grouped into two categories, very sharply defined. People who said positive things about Aramīn and people who said negative things about him. There was very little in between.

  She read the ones that seemed to be situated in this gray zone with especially strong interest. Amasewun, Inofu, Isanakewu . . .

  She tried to bring up a social graph, but everyone was connected to everyone else—Ereni leadership had been a very tightly knit circle back then, just after the War of Independence. She wondered if there was a way to quantify social closeness with the data at her disposal.

  She color-coded people: red for the ones who disliked Aramīn, blue for the ones who liked him, yellow for the ones who seemed to have mixed emotions about him. She hid the ones without interviews—mostly people who died shortly after Independence. Some people had oral history as their abuwen, and they jumped on the politicians as soon as the initial chaos wore off. In some cases, literally jumped on them. Oyārun smiled briefly.

  She stared at the jumble of primary colors. There had to be a way to organize the data! She returned to the interviews, eager for inspiration.

  “These days, people like to say that many of the nobility did support our efforts, quietly, from the background. I am skeptical. [P: 5v] During the months I was active in the resistance, I only met Armyn, and I hadn’t even heard of any others. Armyn made a clean break with his House when he left the planet with us, so I’m not even sure he should count. [P: 3v] But he was there, always.”

  —Inofu ta Afurawī, Ereni Oral History Archives, War of Independence database, 45:26/1-4

  Inofu spoke carefully and precisely, but the council member called Aramīn by his old pre-Independence name, Armyn, and that annoyed Oyārun. She chided herself: That had to have been because they’d known each other for a very long time. Unlike many others, Aramīn had never disavowed his pre-Independence name, and even picked an Ereni name that sounded similar. Calling him Armyn was a sign of familiarity.

  She bit her lower lip as she sat up straight. That’s it! She tried to list the interviewees who called him Armyn.

  There were disappointingly few results. She suspected it wasn’t as much because of a lack of familiarity—most of his coworkers survived the war, up North at the High Plains Research Institute—but because most people were eager to get rid of every last bit of Emeki Imperial convention, from spelling to religious rituals. Still, she listed the ones who called him Armyn as close associates. She had to try a different tack . . .

  His coworkers. Would they be the closest to him? Aramīn had no family, his family disowned him in his late teens—if they could’ve stripped him of his nobility and later his House leadership, they would’ve done so without hesitation. Oyārun had read the news articles from the period. Aramīn was disowned when he started to study medical science, a vocation entirely unbecoming to an Imperial noble. Blood and guts and tears . . .

  She shivered, suddenly reminded of her own family. They never disowned her, but sometimes it felt to her that was because they hadn’t even cared enough to do that. This was unfair, she reminded herself. Both her parents were running themselves ragged working in the Civil Engineering division. So much to plan, build, maintain . . . It wasn’t fair to expect them to be in touch even after she’d moved out, old enough to have her own tiny living space.

  She missed them, but she was frustrated. She had to get back to the data at hand. Even this qualitative analysis was easier than contemplating her own circumstances.

  Did the Research Inst
itute have some sort of organizational diagram? She had to dig hard to come up with the structure during Aramīn’s tenure, but eventually she managed. She could fill it with names, weight the links in the social graph with workplace closeness . . . would this work? She had no idea of knowing who met each other regularly after-hours, who liked to chat in the lounge . . . She knew it was a long shot, but she had to try.

  She listened to Aramīn’s favorite music as she poked and prodded the data into shape.

  In the power to yield lies liberation

  We are here, resurfacing from the serpent seas

  —Ephemera: Serpent Seas

  The answer was unexpected to Oyārun, though she reflected that it would probably have been obvious to anyone who knew Aramīn in person. The māwalēni who were trained by him, operated on by him, these people had positive reactions to him. His fellow researchers and other employees of HPRI were more likely to be averse to him the larger the organizational distance.

  They said he tortured his charges. He was cruel. He was heartless.

  His charges said he was cold, but fair, always very fair.

  The rest was history: he left the planet; he left the Empire. He had nothing in common with his new chosen people: he wasn’t a māwalēni himself and he didn’t have the Undesirable genotype either. He could’ve stayed on Emek, he wasn’t marked for elimination or a lifetime of servitude, like most of those who fled. He joined the refugees because of . . . his conscience?

  Did he have a conscience? Could he have a conscience? She tried hard to bridge the gap between unfamiliar cognotypes and social classes. He was an Imperial noble, even if of Plainsfolk origin. Had been a noble. He had worked extremely hard for the cause of independence. He helped build the country. But even the people who had positive attitudes toward him remarked that he was a sadist; a Falconer, even . . . She felt bad that a people whose cognotype used to be so reviled were now reviling another cognotype in turn. There had to be some kind of expression for this, but a few quick searches did not turn it up.

  She couldn’t wrap her head around any of this. She had to talk to some of these people to understand Aramīn. But was there a way to find an answer without talking to people, in general? She had to see for herself.

  See.

  She could see him. From a distance. See how he acted. Feel the impression his mind made on her, for she was a māwalēni herself. For a moment, she reflected on how she had the Undesirable genes at the same time. The former Undesirables were in the majority on Eren, and they were free from the Imperial yoke of Emek.

  She was everything he wasn’t. He was everything she wasn’t. She had to see him for what he was.

  She kept on listening to the music as she snuck out of her living quarters.

  The stream never-ending,

  the overwhelming, the never-escape,

  white corridors

  the pain all-encompassing,

  everything is close;

  you are close . . .

  —Trees as Towers: The Never-Escape

  Oyārun turned the music down only as she approached the block where he lived. A neighborhood quite far, but still looking much the same as her own; houses transformed from old miners’ barracks and office buildings, crammed full of rooms barely large enough for a bed across. Aramīn was still an influential figure, but Eren was a very equal society: there wasn’t much for anyone, and most resources went into maintaining life in a hostile environment. She’d heard enough from her parents to know that, from their arguments about a lack of resources in muffled tones well past her bedtime. There was never enough space.

  She knew he was due back relatively soon. She sat down behind a chute and turned her attention inward. She read the latest paper-folding news, but her thoughts kept on drifting back to him. Besides, the latest talk about how to create large modular figures from oddly shaped packaging leftovers disillusioned her. Does freedom necessitate poverty, she wondered, and closed the news.

  He was always spotlessly dressed. I used to work at HPR before the war, but when the hostilities broke out, I was stuck at the capital. And then I ran into him, just in, you know, this war zone. [P: 1.2v] In the middle of this war zone. [P: 0.7v] And he still looked, he was, you know, dressed unbelievably sharp. There was blood around and . . . [P: 0.5v] and dirt, and he was just there in the middle of it looking for all the world like, like he came from, I don’t know, a Court reception or something. No idea how he did it.

  —Omoyedār? ta Beyun, Ereni Oral History Archives, War of Independence database 8E:2-8.

  Oyārun glanced up at the sound of steps approaching, refocused her attention. She pushed herself between the chute and a wall, hoping the shadows would hide her. He passed by her without noticing anything, but she was too scared to breathe a sigh of relief.

  He was still spotlessly dressed. He wore an aubergine-colored overcoat over his rather generic dark blue tunic and loose pants. She was surprised for a moment. Blue was the color of knowledge, information, the māwal, so it was understandable for him to be wearing it even if he was not a māwalēni himself—she wondered if that was what the dark shade signified. She never cared much about color symbolism. But aubergine, aubergine did not stand for anything. It was just a color, and an uncommon one at that. The cut of the coat suited him exceptionally well, she thought, then wondered if it was just her abuwen talking. Still, the coat looked custom-made, a rarity on the planetoid. How did he get ahold of it?

  As the fear left her and her limbs slowly unfroze, she realized she had not paid any attention to his presence beyond the immediately prevalent visual details. She had to have perceived his mind, because she didn’t remember a lack, but she couldn’t recall any details. Just the coat, one of its corners almost brushing her feet. His regal bearing. His firm, purposeful steps. Again, she hadn’t even seen his face.

  She called up his profile. His face was smooth and oval, his jawline small. He had single-lidded eyes, and eyebrows that might have been touched up with liner or just uncommonly sharp. His skin was pale shading to brown, not pink; somewhat lighter than hers. His expression was elegant, even a trifle haughty. The large skullcap covering his bald head looked hand-embroidered, the same aubergine color decorated with a thick grayish-blue thread.

  She wondered how long he’d taken until his profile picture looked just right. His appearance was probably very important to him, if he could procure an aubergine overcoat. The colors of his Imperial house had been teal and lilac, and aubergine was close. But he had no love to share for the Court, and for him his house had only been a tool to achieve his aims. Maybe, she thought, the coat was a way for him to assert his uniqueness?

  Her thoughts ground to a halt. Footsteps from the opposite direction. He was coming back! Did he just drop something in his room and then head out again? His tasks were finished for the day. Where was he going?

  Her fingers gripped each other so strongly that for a moment she was afraid her bones might snap. She desperately tried to imagine herself invisible. He passed by her again without noticing and went down the alley, then turned right.

  She forced herself back on her feet. Her muscles protested. She had to go after him!

  The first two steps were the hardest. Eventually, she fell into a rhythm of following him, like a game: halting when he did, ducking into side alleys and doorways, even predicting his moves. She wondered briefly if she was supposed to be bad at this because of her cognotype. It went smoothly, even though it felt improper.

  He passed through an industrial area, and for a while there was no cover that would hide her. She willed him not to look back. It seemed to work—he was increasingly lost in thought. He strode along thin, snaking corridors, and she was shadowing him without difficulty. He wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings, she thought, but she kept herself as far from his mind as possible, due to some irrational fear that he might notice. He wouldn’t have a correct sensation of being watched. He wasn’t overly cautious either, at least as much as s
he could tell from the interviews. He himself had never been interviewed by the historians. Did he say no, or did no one ask him?

  The corridor suddenly opened up to a large cavern—a hall, she corrected herself. He strode on. She halted just before the exit, peering outside. Memorial Park, she realized with a startle. But he had no family—?

  Could she get any closer? She had to get closer! Fortunately, the carved memorial steles were chest-high and densely spaced. Many deaths in the war. She stepped among the steles and realized just what she had been thinking. Fortunately? She shuddered. Was Aramīn having a bad influence on her? She had to bring this to a close as fast as possible. Just as soon as she found answers to the questions burning inside her.

  She weaved through the steles in a wide arc ending just behind Aramīn. She peeked out from behind a stele and could see his back. He was standing in front of one of the many war memorials. A long list of names was etched into the stone.

  He took a step backward—her body froze again—then bent forward from the waist. Again, a step backward, again a bow. A third time. She didn’t recognize the ritual. Three steps forward, without bowing.

  “In the name of the One Most High, exalted and elevated, transcendent and all-encompassing.” His voice was sonorous, but not particularly deep—just like in the rare recordings. She held on to the stele as she slowly, cautiously leaned out from behind it.

  “You console the souls of the dead as you console the souls of the living. All the world is in the hollow of your palm, you, who inhabit the heights and the depths. I call out to you and beseech you, just as you called out to our ancestors to show them your paths.”

  It didn’t sound like an Imperial ritual—the requests for the God-Emperor’s intercession were markedly missing. Was this a lesser House tradition? She called up her interface, tried to search for the phrases while he went on and on, at a slow but steady pace, with chant-like inflections. She found an exact match.