The Obelisk Gate

by N. K. Jemisin

  Okay, you’re following so far. “So I need to figure out how to chain all of them together.”

  He nods back minutely. “And you’ll need a buffer, at least initially. When I opened the Gate at Yumenes, I used several dozen node maintainers.”

  Several dozen stunted, twisted roggas turned into mindless weapons… and Alabaster somehow turned them against their owners. How like him, and how perfect. “Buffer?”

  “To cushion the impact. To… smooth out the connection flow…” He falters, sighs. “I don’t know how to explain it. You’ll know when you try it.”

  When. He assumes so much. “What you did killed the node maintainers?”

  “Not precisely. I used them to open the Gate and create the Rift… and then they tried to do what they were made to do: Stop the shake. Stabilize the land.” You grimace, understanding. Even you, in your extremity, weren’t foolish enough to try to stop the shockwave, when it reached Tirimo. The only safe thing to do was divert its force elsewhere. But node maintainers lack the mind or control to do the safe thing.

  “I didn’t use all of them,” Alabaster says thoughtfully. “The ones far to the west and in the Arctics and Antarctics were out of my reach. Most have died since. No one to keep them alive. But I can still sess active nodes in a few places. Remnants of the network: south, near the Antarctic Fulcrum, and north, near Rennanis.”

  Of course he can sess active nodes all the way in the Antarctics. You can barely sess a hundred miles from Castrima, and you have to work to stretch that far. And maybe the roggas of the Antarctic Fulcrum have survived somehow, and chosen to care for their less fortunate brethren in the nodes, but… “Rennanis?” That can’t be. It’s an Equatorial city. More southerly and westerly than most; people in Yumenes thought it was only a step above any other Somidlats backwater. But Rennanis was Equatorial enough that it should be gone.

  “The Rift wends northwesterly, along an ancient fault line that I found. It swung a few hundred miles wide of Rennanis… I suppose that was enough to let the node maintainers actually do something. Should’ve killed most of them, and the rest should’ve died of neglect when their staffs abandoned them, but I don’t know.”

  He falls silent, perhaps weary. His voice is hoarse today, and his eyes are bloodshot. Another infection. He keeps getting them because some of the burned patches on his body aren’t healing, Lerna says. The lack of pain meds isn’t helping.

  You try to digest what he’s told you, what Antimony has told you, what you’ve learned through trial and suffering. Maybe the numbers matter. Two hundred and sixteen obelisks, some incalculable number of other orogenes as a buffer, and you. Magic to tie the three together… somehow. All of it together forging a net, to catch the Earthfires-damned Moon.

  Alabaster says nothing while you ponder, and eventually you glance at him to see if he’s fallen asleep. But he’s awake, his eyes slits, watching you. “What?” You frown, defensive as always.

  He quarter-smiles with the half of his mouth that hasn’t been burned. “You never change. If I ask you for help, you tell me to flake off and die. If I don’t say a rusting word, you work miracles for me.” He sighs. “Evil Earth, how I’ve missed you.”

  This… hurts, unexpectedly. You realize why at once: because it’s been so long since anyone said anything like this to you. Jija could be affectionate, but he wasn’t much given to sentimentality. Innon used sex and jokes to show his tenderness. But Alabaster… this has always been his way. The surprise gesture, the backhanded compliment that you could choose to take for teasing or an insult. You’ve hardened so much without this. Without him. You seem strong, healthy, but inside you feel like he looks: nothing but brittle stone and scars, prone to cracking if you bend too much.

  You try to smile, and fail. He doesn’t try. You just look at each other. It’s nothing and everything at once.

  Of course it doesn’t last. Someone walks into the infirmary and comes over and surprises you by being Ykka. Hjarka’s behind her, slouching along and looking very Sanzedly bored: picking her sharp-filed teeth with a bit of polished wood, one hand on her well-curved hip, her ashblow hair a worse mess than usual and noticeably flatter on one side where she’s just woken up.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Ykka says, not sounding especially sorry, “but we’ve got a problem.”

  You’re beginning to hate those words. Still, it’s time to end the lesson, so you nod to Alabaster and get up. “What now?”

  “Your friend. The slacker.” Tonkee, who hasn’t joined the Innovators’ work crews, doesn’t bother to pick up your household share when it’s her turn, and who conveniently disappears whenever it’s time for a caste meeting. In another comm they’d have already kicked her out for that kind of thing, but she gets extra leeway for being one of the companions of the second-most-powerful orogene in Castrima. It only goes so far, though, and Ykka looks especially pissed off.

  “She’s found the control room,” Ykka says. “Locked herself inside.”

  “The—” What. “The control room for what?”

  “Castrima.” Ykka looks annoyed to have to explain. “I told you when you got here: There are mechanisms that make this place function, the light and the air and so on. We keep the room secret because if somebody loses it and wants to smash things, they could kill us all. But your ’mest is in there doing Evil Earth knows what, and I’m basically asking you if it’s okay to kill her, because that’s about where I am right now.”

  “She won’t be able to affect anything important,” Alabaster says. It startles you both, you because you aren’t used to seeing him interact with anyone else, and Ykka because she probably thinks of him as a waste of medicines and not a person. He doesn’t think much of her, either; his eyes are closed again. “More likely to hurt herself than anything else.”

  “Good to know,” Ykka says, though she looks at him skeptically. “I’d be reassured if you weren’t talking out of your ass, seeing as you couldn’t possibly know what’s happening beyond this infirmary, but it’s a nice thought, anyway.”

  He lets out a soft snort of amusement. “I knew everything I needed to know about this relic the instant I came here. And if any of you other than Essun had a chance of making it do what it’s really capable of, I wouldn’t stay here a moment longer.” As you and Ykka stare, he lets out a heavy sigh. There’s a little bit of a rattle in it, which troubles you, and you make a note to ask Lerna about it. But he says nothing more, and finally Ykka glances at you with a palpable I am really sick of your friends look, and beckons for you to follow her out.

  It’s a long way up to wherever this control room is. Hjarka’s breathing hard after the first ladder, but she acclimates after that and settles into a rhythm. Ykka does better, though she’s still sweating in ten minutes. You’ve still got your road conditioning, so you handle the climb well enough, but after the first three flights of stairs, a ladder, and a spiraling balcony built round one of the fatter crystals of the comm, you’re even willing to start small talk to take your mind off the ground falling farther and farther below. “What’s your usual disciplinary process for people who shirk their caste duties?”

  “The boot, what else?” Ykka shrugs. “We can’t just ash them out, though; have to kill them to maintain secrecy. But there’s a process: one warning, then a hearing. Morat—that’s the Innovator caste spokeswoman—hasn’t made a formal complaint. I asked her to, but she waffled. Said your friend gave her a portable water-testing device that may save some of our Hunters’ lives out in the field.”

  Hjarka utters a rusty laugh. You shake your head, amused. “That’s a nice bribe. She’s a survivor, if nothing else.”

  Ykka rolls her eyes. “Maybe. But it sends a bad message, one person not joining any work crews and going unpunished for it, even if she does invent useful things outside of work time. Others start to skive off, what do I do then?”

  “Ash out the ones who haven’t invented anything,” you suggest. Then you stop, because Ykka has paused. Y
ou think it’s because she’s annoyed by what you just said, but she’s looking around, taking in the expanse of the comm. So you stop, too. This far up, you’re well above the main inhabited level of the comm. The geode echoes with calls and someone hammering something and one of the work crews singing a rhythm song. You risk a look over the nearest railing and see that someone’s made a simple rope-and-wooden-pallet cargo lift for the mid-level, but without a counterweight, the only way to get a heavy load up is to basically play tug-of-war with it. Twenty people are at it now. It looks surprisingly like fun.

  “You were right about the assimilations,” Hjarka says. Her voice is soft as she, too, contemplates the bustle and life of Castrima. “We couldn’t have made this place work without more people. Thought you were full of shit, but you weren’t.”

  Ykka sighs. “So far it’s working.” She eyes Hjarka. “You never said you didn’t like the idea before.”

  Hjarka shrugs. “I left my home comm because I didn’t want the burden of Leadership. Didn’t want it here, either.”

  “You don’t have to knife-fight me for the headwomanship to give an opinion, for Earth’s sake.”

  “When a Season’s coming on and I’m the only Leader in the comm, I’d better be careful even about opinions.” She shrugs, then smiles at Ykka with an air of something like affection. “Keep figuring you’ll have me killed any minute now.”

  Ykka laughs once. “Is that what you would’ve done in my place?” You hear the edge in this.

  “It’s the playbook I was taught to follow, yeah—but it’d be stupid to try that here. There’s never been anything like this Season… or this comm.” Hjarka eyes you, pointedly, as the latest example of Castrima’s peculiarity. “Tradition’s just going to rust everything up, in a situation like this. Better to have a headwoman who doesn’t know how things should be, only how she wants them to be. A headwoman who’ll kick all the asses necessary to make her vision happen.”

  Ykka absorbs this in silence for a few moments. Obviously whatever Tonkee’s done isn’t so urgent or terrible. Then she turns and begins climbing again, apparently deciding that the rest break is over. You and Hjarka sigh and follow.

  “I think the people who originally built this place didn’t think it through,” Ykka says as the climb resumes. “Too inefficient. Too dependent on machinery that can break down or rust out. And orogeny as a power source, which is basically the least-reliable thing ever. But then sometimes I wonder if maybe they didn’t intend to build it this way. Maybe something drove them underground fast, and they found a giant geode and just made the best of what they had.” She runs a hand along a railing as you walk. This is one of the original metal structures that have been built throughout the geode. Above the inhabited levels, it’s all old metalwork. “Always makes me think they really must have been the ancestors of Castrima. They respected hard work and adapting under pressure, like us.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Except Tonkee.

  “Some.” She doesn’t take the obvious bait. “I outed myself to everyone when I was fifteen. There was a forest fire somewhere to the south; drought season. The smoke alone was killing the older people and babies in the comm. We thought we’d have to leave. Finally I went to the edge of the fire, where a bunch of the other townsfolk were trying to create a firebreak. Six of them died doing that.” She shakes her head. “Wouldn’t have worked. The fire was too big. But that’s my people, for you.”

  You nod. It does sound like the Castrimans you’ve gotten to know. It also sounds like the Tirimo-folk you’ve gotten to know, and the Meovites, and the Allians, and the Yumenescenes. No people in the Stillness would have survived to this point if they weren’t fearsomely tenacious. But Ykka needs to think of Castrima as special—and it is special, in its own strange ways. So you wisely keep your mouth shut.

  She says, “I stopped the fire. Iced the burning part of the forest and used that to make a ridge farther south as a windbreak in case anything set off a new blaze. Everyone saw me do it. They knew exactly what I was then.”

  You stop walking and stare at her. She turns back, half smiling. “I told them I’d go, if they wanted to call the Guardians and have me shipped off to the Fulcrum. Or if they wanted to just string me up, I promised not to ice anyone. Instead, they argued about the whole mess for three days. I thought they were trying to decide how to kill me.” She shrugs. “So I went home, had dinner with my parents—they both knew, and they were terrified for me, but I talked them down from smuggling me out of town in a horse cart. Went to creche the next day, same as always. At the end of it, I found out the townsfolk had been arguing about how to get me trained. Without letting the Fulcrum on, see.”

  Your mouth falls open. You’ve seen Ykka’s parents, who are still hale and strong and with an air of Sanzed stubbornness about them. You can believe it of them. But everyone else, too? All right. Maybe Castrima is special.

  Hjarka says, “Huh. How did you get trained, then?”

  “Eh, you know what these little Midlatter comms are like. They were still arguing about it when the Rifting happened. I trained my damn self.” She laughs, and Hjarka sighs. “That’s my people, too. Complete rust-heads, but good people.”

  You think, against your will, If only I had brought Uche and Nassun here as soon as they were born.

  “Not all of your people like having us here,” you blurt, almost as a rebuttal to your own thought.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard the chatter. Which is why I’m glad you’re training the kids, and that everyone saw you get the boilbugs off Terteis.” She sobers. “Poor Terteis. But you proved again that it’s better to have people like us around than to kill us or drive us out. Castrimans are practical people, Essie.” You hate this nickname immediately. “Too practical to just do something because everybody else says do it.”

  With that, she resumes the climb. After a moment, you and Hjarka do, too.

  You’ve gotten used to the unrelenting whiteness of Castrima; only a few of the building-crystals have touches of amethyst or smoky quartz about them. Here, though, the ceiling of the geode has been sealed off with a smooth, glasslike substance that is deep emeraldine green in color. The color is a bit of a shock. The final stairway that leads up into this is wide enough for five people to climb abreast, so you’re unsurprised to find two of Castrima’s Strongbacks flanking what looks like a sliding attic door made of the same green substance. One of the Strongbacks has a small wireglass utility knife in her hand; the other just has his big folded arms.

  “Still nothing,” says the male Strongback as the three of you arrive. “We keep hearing sounds from inside—clicking, buzzing, and sometimes she yells things. But the door’s still jammed.”

  “Yells things?” asks Hjarka.

  He shrugs. “Like, ‘I knew it’ and ‘that’s why.’”

  Sounds like Tonkee. “How does she have the door rigged?” you ask. The female Strongback shrugs. It’s a stereotype that Strongbacks are all muscle and no brain, but a few of them fit that description more than they should.

  Ykka gives you another This is your fault look. You shake your head, then climb up to the top step and bang on the door. “Tonkee, rust it, open up.”

  There’s a moment of silence, and then you hear a faint clatter. “Fuck, it’s you,” Tonkee mutters, from somewhere farther away than the door. “Hang on and don’t ice anything.”

  A moment later there’s the sound of something rattling against the door material. Then the door slides open. You, Ykka, Hjarka, and the Strongbacks climb up—though all of you except Ykka stop and stare, so it’s left to her to fold her arms and give Tonkee the exasperated glare she’s earned.

  The ceiling is hollow above the door. The green substance forms a floor, and the resulting chamber is molded around the usual white crystals that jut down from the geode’s rocky, grayish-green true ceiling, perhaps fifteen feet overhead. What makes you stop, your mouth falling open and your mind stuttering from annoyance into silence, is that the crysta
ls on this side of the green barrier flicker and blink, transitioning at random from shimmering images of crystals into solidity, and back again. The shafts and tips of these crystals, which poke through the floor, weren’t doing this outside. None of the other crystals in Castrima do this. Aside from glowing—which, granted, is a warning that they aren’t just rocks—the crystals of Castrima are no different from any other quartz. Here, though… you suddenly understand what Alabaster meant about what Castrima is capable of. The truth of Castrima is suddenly, terrifyingly clear: The geode is filled with not crystals, but potential obelisks.

  “Flaking rust,” one of the Strongbacks breathes. This speaks for you as well.

  Tonkee’s junk is everywhere in the room: weird tools and slates and scraps of leather covered in diagrams, and a pallet in the corner that explains why she hasn’t been sleeping in the apartment much lately. (It’s been lonely without her and Hoa, but you don’t like admitting this to yourself.) She’s walking away from you now, glaring over her shoulder and looking distinctly irritated that you’ve arrived. “Don’t rusting touch anything,” she says. “No telling what an orogene of your caliber will do to this stuff.”

  Ykka rolls her eyes. “You’re the one who shouldn’t be touching anything. You’re not allowed in here and you know it. Come on.”

  “No.” Tonkee crouches near a strange, low plinth at the center of the room. It looks like a crystal shaft whose middle has been chopped out: You see the (flickering, unreal) base growing from the ceiling, and the plinth is its (flickering in tandem) continuation, but there’s a five-foot section in between that’s just empty space. The plinth’s surface has been cut so smoothly that it gleams like a mirror—and the surface stays solid, even as the rest of the shaft flickers.

  At first you think there’s nothing on it. But Tonkee is peering at the plinth’s surface so intently that you walk over to join her. When you hunker down for a better look, she glances up to meet your eyes, and you’re shocked at the barely disguised glee in hers. Not really shocked by that; you know her by now. You’re shocked because this high gleam, plus the new undisguise of her clean, short hair and neat clothing, transforms her so obviously into an older version of Binof that you marvel again you didn’t see it at once.