by S. A. Tholin
The fate of the galaxy was at stake, and nobody knew but her.
She kicked a chair under the door handle and shoved the meeting table against the chair. The sofa too, pushed as hard against the barricade as she could manage. Then she went to the window, and shouted against the glass:
"Elsinore, can you hear me?"
No response. Her sensors indicated a weak heartbeat.
"Elsinore, you've got to connect me to the Prime Mover."
Still nothing.
"I know it's dangerous. I know it's hard. But you can do it, I know you can. You're the only one who can save us now. Please, Elsinore, you've got to–"
A wave washed the world away, and she flailed in the deep, drowning.
64.
JOY
A grey sense of harmony enveloped her, soothing and endless – and then a bitterness crept in, and the grey brightened into clear turquoise. Her hands found tawny rock slick with seaweed, and she pulled herself up and onto warm sand. Seashells cracked under her hands and feet. She scooped a handful up and held her fist tight to her chest.
Skald rose from the waves in the centre of the sea cave like a scaled pillar of gold and ebony. His teeth were long and needle-sharp, his eyes deep pools of amber light, but his hands were still Wideawake's, dressed in Tower gauntlets. Between lightweave fingertips, he held a globule of water. It floated, shifting and moving, sending quivering tendrils to touch his face.
"Little sister." Water crept over the edge of the rocks to slither around her feet, caressing her skin. "You are a naughty girl."
The water tugged her forward like an undertow, off the rocks and into more water, into more him, and once more she tasted his salt, his warmth trickling down her throat. Panic swelled against her ribs, but she forced it down. She had been here before and she had survived. She could do it again.
A sinewy arm wrapped around her waist. Skald brought his face close to hers, changing, warping, not the same for so much as a moment. Sometimes she saw familiar features – Finn's arched eyebrow, Miana's frown, Elkhart's smile – and other times she couldn't be sure that what she was looking at was even human.
He held the globule in the palm of his free hand.
"So young. So fresh. So limited by design. But there's no denying the beauty. Look, little sister. I hold the Primaterre Protectorate in my hand."
He pressed his fingers into the globule. It shivered at his touch, droplets falling into the sea. When he retracted his hand, tendrils were wrapped around his fingertips. Fine silver filaments glimmered within, encrusted with pearl-like nodules, some softly glowing, some a dull nacre.
"Don't be shy, little sister. Touch one."
Trembling, she reached out, felt the glossy surface against her skin and then–
Earth have mercy, I'm going to be late again, and of course it's raining too
–she pulled back, curling her fingers into her palm. The sea cave hadn't changed, but for a moment she had been elsewhere. A street, the pale pavement warm under orange streetlights. Displays had shown gentle reminders of purity and advertisements for a home furnishing store. The rain had been cold, almost abrasive, sediment-filled droplets leaving yellow stains on her new coat. She'd smelled jasmine on the wind, and a waft of fresh piney cakes from the nearby bakery, and she'd been thinking about going in to have one, because if she had one weakness, it was piney cakes.
Except Joy didn't even know what piney cakes were. She had been inside the mind of someone else, and it had felt just like being them.
"Another," Skald said and forced a pearl into her hand.
I'm so glad I wore this dress and the feel of satin against her skin, a sunset's glow captured in a wine glass and a man's pleasant laughter
and another one
get back get back get back the tunnel's rigged to blow and the smell of damp earth and a rush of stims in her blood, so electrifying that when the shockwave hit, she barely even noticed, just got back up on her feet and grabbed Private Raincy and stars, he'd lost an arm, but there'd be time to worry about that later, right now they needed to move
and
Skald's fingers closed around her wrist.
"The minds of billions, ripe for the harvest. The Prime Mover is young and the transfer will be quick. Soon I will be the Primaterre Protectorate, but even now, their secrets are mine. There is nowhere I cannot go, no mind I cannot touch."
Another pearl in her hand, and
why would anything need that many legs, these things are disgusting, surely even Floz can't like them and the sensation of being trapped, barely able to move between slippery walls, the water dark against her visor, translucent centipede-like creatures wriggling around her fingers, but it was okay, because Florey was with her and
"Stop it!" Joy pulled her hand back. "If I wanted to know what Hopewell's thinking, I'd ask her. It's not for anyone to take."
"It is not about thoughts. It is about the wonders minds contain, the stories that can never be recreated. I would keep all this safe."
"You would keep it for yourself."
"Better than letting it go to waste. Here; this one." He directed her index finger towards a dull pearl.
First, she saw only darkness. Then it began to recede and
so close we came so close I had it in my hand should've killed them all while we had the chance, should have should have should have and this was death, bitter and cold, and it rained here too, water spattering her shattered camail. Augments shut down, one by one, and she could feel life leaving her body, could feel the edge approaching and oh mercy what will it be like what will I have waiting for me. Then the darkness came again, washing over her as a tall figure kicked the gun from her limp hand, and the last thing she ever saw was a damn banneret man–
No. Joy withdrew her hand. Not a banneret man – Hopewell.
"Lutzen's last moments, captured inside the Prime Mover. It is all in there, from moments after his birth to right up until the end. You can see the man as he was, whole and complete, his every thought and experience. His essence is eternal – just as Finn's is with me."
"Hopewell was there when Lutzen died. Nobody told me that. Nobody... Hammersmith's mistake. He sent Lutzen to, what? To kill the Cato team?"
"He sent Lutzen to collect primer samples that RebEarth had already provided me with. Foolish man. If he had trusted his team enough to ask their advice, you and I would both have told him no. We could have talked him out of it, little sister, and Lutzen would still be alive, and so would the men and women who died on Scathach Station."
So Scathach hadn't been about the banneret men at all. It had been about the primer samples, a great big bloody diversion, and she had played her part to nauseating perfection.
"Your soldier says there's nothing you would ever want from me, but I have given you plenty. How much he does not know. How much he will never understand. And there you go, little sister, once more I have given you answers. But now..." Skald's hand closed around her neck. Juniper-breath misted her face, needle-sharp teeth dimpled her lips. "Now it's time for me to take."
His mouth opened, water pouring over his scaled lips and down her throat. He filled her lungs, her stomach, her entire being, and his jagged nails scratched against her neck, promising that he could do far worse. When the water receded, he held her with loathsome tenderness.
"Oh, little sister." A serpentine tongue flicked his lips. "That was a good day. Just you, me and the open road. I remember the sharp corners, the dust pluming as I took them at speed. I remember the wind in my hair and your laughter and I remember thinking that this is what life should be, in full control, full speed ahead."
Her and Finn and the open road, not Skald – but if he focused on her, then perhaps the Primaterre people would keep their secrets a little longer. She struggled against him, and he liked that, hissing softly.
"Nothing would go wrong because I knew everything that could go wrong and I had prepared for every eventuality. I was in charge, I was invincible. Yes.
I remember, and now I also remember how the tires squealed so loud I was afraid they might burst, how I laughed because it was exciting, but also because I didn't want my brother to see how scared I was. This is how our parents died, I thought. An Atwood Avengers toy mascot dangled from the rearview mirror and I tried to concentrate on that and not how my fingers were digging into my thighs, and I laughed because I could see that Finn was happy. As soon as we left the city, it was like–"
Joy punched him in the face, grinding seashells and sand into his dark mouth.
He spat and licked his lips. "Again, little sister; again. Soon I will have this too. This rage and this sorrow, and all your beautiful patterns. Come, Joy; sing to me."
"Never! I will never–"
He forced her underwater. She breathed him, swallowed him, drowned in him, screamed in him never never never. But he was strong and the sea cave his domain and when he stuffed seaweed in her mouth, she could no longer scream. When his tongue wrapped around her body, she cried. And when his talons ran through her hair so very gently, she–
–she was sitting in her old Kirkclair apartment. The kitchen chair was as unsteady as ever. Her hands were on the table, absently tracing the initials her brother had carved there as a child. Two steaming cups were on the counter, and she could smell the slightly chemical tang of instant noodles, one of the few meals Finn had mastered. The rumbling traffic just about drowned out the downstairs neighbour's music, thankfully, because he had awful taste and... and he'd been dead for over a century, and the apartment building had been turned into rubble.
"Please don't," she sobbed, as Skald had found a torture far worse than pain.
"It's nothing to worry about." Finn stood by the window, leaning over the sink to get a better view. The digital filter had been dropped. Instead of a day as sunny as it was fake, the window was showing the real Kirkclair. The traffic noise had gone, muted by the sound of howling wind and rattling facades. Dust had turned the outside into a swirling ruddy fog. The apartment building opposite was a shadow dotted with faint lights. "As long as we stay inside, we're going to be fine. In fact, it's a pretty good show. Come here, take a look."
Joy remembered this. She had been about fourteen, Finn still living in the apartment with her, and the news had called the weather conditions The Storm of the Century. If she went to the window now, she'd see her neighbour walking his dogs, struggling with an umbrella that the wind had turned inside out. She and Finn would laugh, and then Finn would grab his coat and head downstairs to shout: Get your stupid ass in here! Don't care if you take a brick to the face, but the dogs don't deserve it.
"This isn't going to work," she said, although seeing Finn made her tired and heavy with sorrow.
The thing pretending to be her brother didn't react. He didn't even turn around. He just repeated: "As long as we stay inside, we're going to be fine."
She stood, pushing through the fatigue. Finn was gone and would never come back, but Constant was relying on her. She had to keep moving.
Finn didn't react when she approached. That wasn't like Skald, or the real Finn. She reached out and touched his arm. Warm, alive, but somehow distant. As though she was touching him in a dream.
He moved aside as he had so long ago, making way for her to see out the window. Instead of red dust and a crazy neighbour, she saw the gold-and-black face of a serpent as large as the sky, as raging as the storm. But Skald too was distant, kept away by a glassy membrane. His talons clawed at it but couldn't break through.
And Joy sobbed with relief, because she finally understood, and she still had a chance to accomplish what she'd set out to.
"Prime Mover?"
No response. Finn had disappeared, but her apartment was still there. Quiet now, quieter than it had ever been, and so peaceful.
She collected herself and tried to remember all she'd been taught about purity. The Prime Mover had been designed to be a thing of contemplation, reason and logic, but purity wasn't without compassion. Primaterre protects us all was more than just a trigger phrase; it was the underpinning of their society. It was why the regiment sergeant had brought her a blanket on her third day in Basic Training; why Constant had shown poor Private Gogently leniency even though he'd wanted to break his neck; and why the Prime Mover now shielded her.
"Do you know who I am?"
"I'm Joy, Finn Somerset's sister," her own voice echoed back at her, before dropping into the cold flat vowels of Hammersmith. "Lieutenant Somerset, Tower Liaison Officer. Somerset's all right," came Lucklaw's voice, and then Rhys's: "The best thing that ever happened to you."
All right. So this thing was capable of communication. Archer had said that it wasn't meant to form its own thoughts or opinions. So far, that seemed to hold true. Its answers were the words of others, dredged from their memories.
But that was good. The limits had been put in as safeguards, but shields could be weapons too.
"Do you know what he is?" She pointed towards the window, now filled with the swirling amber of one of Skald's eyes. The glass rattled violently, but remained intact.
"Wideawake," a voice said, followed by a low whisper: "Nothing. Only darkness."
"That body's mind was stolen a long time ago, but its thief left roots. Can you see them?"
Silence followed. She held her breath – although she knew she wasn't really breathing at all – and waited. Skald, the Prime Mover and she were all connected, and if Skald could see into them, perhaps the Prime Mover could do the same.
With a sound like a sigh, an apartment wall fell away. A dark expanse spread beyond, endless and eternal. Winged things perched on shadowy spires and there was a sound like the clacking of claws. Joy had seen this before and knew better than to look. She turned from what should remain unseen, resisted the fear of the dark and the promises of gold.
Instead she focused on a fine strand of moonlight and followed it towards Skald's branching self. How frightening it would be if it didn't look so much like a mycelia network. The fragile root-like structure made her think of earth and grass and the uncomfortable seats of an old classroom. She held onto that, turning Skald into something comprehensible, a thing that she had written an essay on and got an A-, even though she'd left it until the very last second. If she could do that, if she could write an A- minus essay on a dust-tracked, rickety train barrelling through Kirkclair's slums, then she could do this too.
And so she looked, seeing things she'd been too afraid to notice the first time. Skald was vast, but among his reaching silver roots, gnarled branches cast shadows. A darkness coated those branches like corruption – or a blight.
She reached for a dead branch, and though Skald was as immense as a galaxy, distance had no meaning inside a mindspace. Her fingertips brushed it and
staring at me they're all staring at me they think i can't tell but i can, and one day i'm going to take their eyes and then they won't be staring anymore
She withdrew, her heart beating fast. She had seen an office, completely normal, except everyone had been looking at her. Their eyes had been as huge as saucers, monstrous and hungry.
She found another dead branch and, with some hesitation, touched it.
oh god i only checked that i'd turned off the oven three times and if i don't do it four times there's going to be a fire, i know there will, have to go back, have to check, but i can't get off the train on an odd-numbered platform so
The next one showed her an overweight woman's reflection in a mirror, though the scales she was standing on showed that she weighed barely anything at all. She saw angels in clouds and bad luck in stepping on manhole covers; she saw house spiders as big as dogs and things that made no sense at all but made her think of jade light and the sound of shattering glass.
And then she saw the Hecate, but not like it had been in the surveillance footage. It had been bad enough there – but here, its walls moved and swayed; here, the dancing shadows had claws and the hands that tore at her dripped with corruption, and in the
laughter of dying men, she heard all the sounds of hell.
It was the Hecate as Constant remembered it, and it festered, twisted and rotting, in Skald's moonbeam network.
"A demon." Constant's voice, but the conclusion was as much the Prime Mover's as it was his. How could it see Skald any differently than Constant did? Doctrine stated that demons were violators of the mind, a creeping invisible corruption, and the Prime Mover's every thought was doctrine. It believed in demons, because if it didn't, neither would the Primaterre people.
"Yes," she said, trembling as thunder rolled against the apartment walls. "And with that in mind, what are you?"
It thought about her question for what seemed like an eternity. The membrane around the apartment quivered. One of Skald's nails pierced it, impaling Joy's old sofa.
In the end, the Prime Mover came to the only conclusion it could and spoke to her in Major Juneau's voice: "A thing that might as well be a demon."
"Yes. I'm sorry." Connected to the Prime Mover, she could feel the harmony and clarity that Hierochloe had sought to cultivate in the minds of men. It was neither evil nor good, but it was innocent. "Do you understand what must happen?"
"There's only one mercy for demons," Constant's voice growled.
"Yes, but... do you accept it?"
Another silence as something like defiance rippled through the serenity. The Prime Mover might not be fully sentient, but even the lowest of creatures had survival instincts.
"What do you think happens next? What about our souls? Where do they end up?"
Joy didn't recognise the woman's voice, but the touch of death was unmistakable. Someone's last words, repurposed by a thing that had no voice of its own, but more sentience than anyone had given it credit for.
And she couldn't lie to it, or leave it afraid. All she could do was tell it the one thing she believed with all her heart.
"Wherever it is, my brother is there."
"Finn Somerset is afraid of nothing," her own voice echoed back at her.