In the small kitchen she poured herself a cup of water. It was ice-cold as it came out of the tap, chilling her hand through the rough earthenware of the cup. She wasn’t thirsty, in fact hadn’t been for what seemed like an eternity, but she still felt the need to do things like this, to mimic the little ceremonies of her life before. She carried her cup back into the lounge and watched the boys work.
They’d cleared the whole room of anything that might get in the way, shoving tables and chairs back against the wall, piling up books and discs and pictures to free up more space. In one corner stood a large container of wooden blocks of all shapes and sizes, some as big as a house brick, others as small as a finger. Squares, oblongs, cylinders, cubes. Using them, the boys had laid out a model of Karume on the floor. The facsimile landmarks stood out, somehow staying upright on the deep-pile carpet: the spokes of apartment blocks like the one she’d lived in radiating out from the centre of the wheel, the outlying factories with their teetering chimneys stretching towards the white-washed ceiling. In the very centre, piled high in a jagged, precarious imitation of reality, the Tower looked out over everything. Despite the ramshackle nature of its construction, she knew it was as stable as the real thing.
Just a couple of children, looking around six years of age, playing make-believe, or so it seemed. A closer look showed how accurate it was, every street and factory reproduced there on the carpet as a detailed plan. Soon, it would be ready to present to the new administration, then construction would start.
Ishah was over in one of the industrial districts, his brow furrowed as he contemplated the wooden blocks at his feet. His skin was still as pale as milk but since coming here he’d grown a head of the blackest hair she’d ever seen, so dark as to swallow the light around it. He was deciding what derelict structures to repair and what could be razed. Over on the other side of the model Deynal knelt, considering a half-built series of residential blocks. Since the Tower’s activation more people had flocked to the city, many of them confused and needing the comfort of community. There was high demand for living space.
Deynal was lithe and tall for his age, and his blonde mop of hair reminded her of Tani. The sight of him caused her a pang of guilt: she hadn’t spoken to Nebn yet. Perhaps soon she would find the time.
‘Mother,’ he called, ‘what do you think we should do next?’
Ishah looked up and nodded in silent agreement.
Kelbee picked her way over the model, stepping with care. She rested her hand on Deynal’s head and considered the city beneath her.
‘I always liked parks. Maybe there should be more parks.’
‘I think it should all be parks,’ said Ishah. ‘People don’t need to live in cities any more.’
Kelbee watched his frown deepen. Such a serious boy. Prone to outbursts of anger, though she could always calm him, especially if Deynal was nearby. But when he smiled it was as if Ras had emerged from behind a cloud. Dark or light, little in between, but she loved him as if he was her own.
‘People need time to accept change,’ she told him. ‘Give them a chance.’
‘When I was made, people lived under the ground or in the trees or in the ocean. Or floating in the air. Wherever they liked. Even in orbit. Why do they still want to huddle together?’
‘It’s all they’ve ever known, Ishah,’ she said, gentle but chiding.
He nodded but she saw he didn’t fully understand. He was impatient, still learning.
‘What about this, Mother?’ said Deynal. He pointed to a circular construction made of oblong bricks laid on their sides. Kelbee recognised the arena and felt a surge of memory.
The Lance Colonel by her side. Yellow blossoms. Ruby-rich blood and a single gunshot.
Both boys were looking at her; they’d felt it too, the memory like the ripple of a stone striking a pond, though neither understood it. Even Deynal’s open face was worried, so she smiled, waving a hand to reassure them.
The model of the arena lay at her feet, even its childish analogue frightening her. A quick check told her that the new factories had been brought online and were now producing manufacturing drones – annexes, as they’d been known all those centuries ago – which could level the structure in hours and recycle every stone and girder and pane of glass. This space could fit ten apartment blocks, but there was something about this patch of ground that felt tainted.
She leaned down and kissed the top of Deynal’s head. ‘Maybe another park here.’
Her son nodded and set about carefully dismantling the arena brick by brick. She could see it already, the image of a few hours from now when a cloud of annexes would swarm the structure, dismantling it piece by piece. The thought was like a cool breeze over her mind.
She spotted an open space, a rectangle of clear carpet bordered on all sides by little sticks placed upright to look like trees. She knew immediately that this was her park, the place where it had all begun; she’d followed him over its gravel paths, filled with nervous excitement. There was the row of trees where he’d plucked flowers for her, whispered in her ear. The blue blossoms – exact copies – still stood in a vase by the window, as bright and fresh as the day he’d picked them. It wasn’t him, she realised – she didn’t miss Nebn the man; it was more that she wanted to remember those moments when her existence had pitched on its fulcrum. In a million other fractal lives Kelbee the good wife walked on by to her life as a believer, a conformist. But in this one, she’d come to this extraordinary end, every strand leading back to this one shatter-point.
I should go to him, she thought. What if he hates me?
So much to be done.
The only feature marking the square of carpet was a single square block with another oblong lying on its side next to it. The Seeker’s statue toppled from its plinth.
She knelt and examined the piece. ‘You already took down the statue?’ she asked the boys.
Ishah shook his head. ‘They did that themselves.’
She could see the park, the trees rustling in the wind at the border of the open tan-green space. The golden statue lying on its side, the blank stare of the Seeker staring up into the sky. People had done this, free minds. Were they right there still, she wondered, gathered as they once did to bow to their saviour, now glorying in his fall? She could almost hear their murmurs like the tune of a half-remembered song.
‘Do you want us to put it back?’ asked Deynal.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Leave it there. They’ll know what to do.’
* * *
Cale heaved the last of the stones to the edge of the platform and stood back. Even out in the wind of the steppe he was hot, the effort of lugging all nine sculptures over to the pit singing in his muscles. The lifter harness had finally blown its motor and now sat smoking off to one side; as he contemplated the row of huge granite statues before him, he heard it tick over, give a plaintive whine, then finally die. He wouldn’t need it again.
In front of him, the Groan gaped.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and moved behind the first stone. It was the oldest, the first he’d attempted when he’d come here all those years ago; a crude essay, barely resembling Aime at all, but he remembered every grief-filled hack and grind of the chisel.
He kissed his fingertips and pressed them to the stone. His lips moved in silence, his eyes closed. Then he set his shoulder against it, planted his feet wide and heaved. The statue scraped on the iron platform, teetered on the edge, then fell. A few moments later he heard the impact echo up from the throat of the pit.
He did the same to each statue, kissing it goodbye before shoving it into the pit until only one remained.
The last white block was untouched, the one he’d dug out the morning Aulk had brought him the message. Even though no chisel had ever marked its surface he could see her face there. This one would have been the best, he knew it in his bones – her nose would have been fine, her cheekbones high. Her eyes would have looked out on him with a smile that never needed
to reach her mouth.
He rubbed his palm on the rough stone and whispered a farewell, then pushed. It was heavier than the others and he had to sink lower, grunting with the effort, hearing the block shift and grind. With a last burst of effort, he heaved it over the edge, felt it topple, then his own momentum carried him with it. The pit yawned under him as he fell, knowing in a frozen instant that it was too late to grab hold of anything, seeing the stone block falling away from him even as he followed it down towards the rocks far below. He opened his mouth to scream.
Something caught his foot.
He felt himself lifted into the air and deposited on the platform, his hands shaking. A silvery ovoid hung in front of him, bobbing gently as if in water. The shape seemed to be watching him, though it had no eyes or features of any kind. He’d felt its grip on his leg and knew it could have lifted ten times his weight, having seen swarms of others just like it dismantle entire buildings.
Annexe. That was it. Builder drone. Another marvel he didn’t fully understand. What was it doing all the way out here?
The drone seemed to lose interest in him and drifted out to hover over the pit, dipping slightly and appearing to stare all the way down to the bottom. He watched it, wondering again how it worked even as he told himself that all it would take was a brief time in the data corpus to find out. As usual, the urge to dive in to that sea of knowledge was pervasive, subtle and seductive.
Someone was standing nearby, watching him.
Kelbee wore a simple tunic and trousers, her long blue-black hair undone, though the gusts of wind didn’t move it. She was smiling at him.
‘That would have been a shame,’ she said. ‘It would have taken some of the solemnity out of it, to die like that.’
Cale picked himself up and nodded. ‘You’re here?’
She indicated the annexe, which had floated back from the pit and was now examining the broken lifter harness. ‘It can project my image. Another thing I learned. People seem to prefer it to me talking inside their heads.’
‘How are things?’
She toyed with the gravel under her bare feet. It didn’t move. ‘Since we brought the annexes online we’ve been improving the cities. Communication has flourished – I have a growing list of committees, focus groups, organisational forums.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Some more enthusiastic than others.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They want to hold trials. There’s a lot of anger.’
Cale nodded. It was inevitable, as much as he’d hoped that the amount of information available would guide the best choices. People were people and emotion could cloud even the most informed mind. He pulled off his gloves and bunched them into a pocket. ‘I heard there were some problems with Aspedair.’
‘They won’t allow us access to repair the transmitters around them, though at least we’re talking, which is more than the Hegemony ever officially did. They’ll come around once they realise what the corpus has to offer them.’ She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘What about you? How are you doing?’
‘I’m sure you already know.’ He indicated the bobbing machine. ‘Despite what just happened, I’m all right. Leg hurts sometimes, but nothing I can’t manage.’
‘Do you like it here?’ she asked.
He looked over at the derelict mining town some way off. ‘It was somewhere to disappear, once.’
‘I could assign you some annexes. You could be comfortable here, if you wanted.’
He considered this for a few moments. Behind her – through her, in truth – he could see the hangar-garage that he’d called home for almost a decade. He’d found it iced up on his return, his old home cold and empty as a tomb. The generator had succumbed to the weather and was useless, so he’d moved into one of the few buildings in town with an intact roof for a couple of days. Now that his task was complete, there was nothing to keep him here.
Kelbee continued. ‘Syn has a home in the cliffs off the Fleet Coast – by comparison, this would be simple.’
‘He mentioned.’
‘You should visit.’
‘I will, at some point. How about you? Have you seen Nebn yet?’
A flicker of something on her face. Regret? ‘He knows what happened, of course. Everyone does. I haven’t seen him yet, not… properly. With the boys.’
There’s still a kernel of the woman you were in there, he thought.
‘I don’t believe it would have lasted, if I’m truthful with myself,’ Kelbee said. ‘I don’t want to burden him.’
‘It’s not for me to say. But everyone deserves a choice.’
She looked out over the grey-green expanse of the steppe. There was a fraction of a nod. ‘So, you’re not staying here?’ she said.
‘No. Just came back to clear up a few things.’
The wind blew in and there was a faint moan from the pit. He knew it was just his imagination, but it might have been a farewell. Ras was nearing the horizon now and the temperature was dropping with the light.
‘Do you need help getting where you’re going? It’s getting dark.’
‘No, thank you. He’ll be here soon.’
They waited, watching the shadows grow long and begin to fade. After a while they saw a pinprick of light in the distance, a battered old skimmer navigating the trail over the steppe. Cale thought of the little house in Endeldam he was rebuilding with Derrin’s help, just a stone’s throw from the house of Aulk the fisherman. He could see it now, the glow of the storm lamps seeping through the shutters, salt in the air and the promise of a warm bed beckoning.
‘What will you do?’ she asked.
‘Driftwood is a wonderful thing to work.’ As he said it, he could feel the creamy smoothness of wave-bleached wood in his hands, each piece unique and hinting at the thing that lay inside it. Pliant where stone was unyielding, soft where rock was rough, an entire history written in knots and swirls. He favoured Kelbee with a small smile. ‘If not, there’s always fishing.’
She smiled back. ‘I think that’s an excellent idea.’
Bask 25 – 3
It feels beyond odd to write that new date, though also pleasant. The majority agreed to scrap the old chronology and start afresh, at Year 1, and though it seemed a token gesture at the time, I complied. I didn’t expect to feel so freed by it, as if everything to come is purely of our making, with no traditions or hangovers from the past.
Wild optimism! Perhaps it’s because I’m finally leaving after two years all alone. There is a sadness about it – I’ll be leaving him behind, but I know he’d approve. Mason wouldn’t want me weeping over his grave for the rest of my life, he would point at the potential for change. After all, don’t we now live in a world turned on its head, the unthinkable common and the profane embraced?
His grave is simple, as I asked. The machines put it together in mere hours on the site where he lay – a plain stone box with no markings, inscrutable to anyone who doesn’t already know, and that’s exactly what I intended. The marker had nothing to do with posterity, it was for me.
Those were hard months, especially at first. I kept asking myself why I insisted on staying here in the cold – I had everything I needed, the outpost was repaired and stocked, but the cold permeated body and mind. I could have gone anywhere and lived the same life of quiet contemplation and research: my old apartment in Karume, a quiet house by the sea, even the top of a mountain! No matter how far I went I’d still have access to the data corpus, the sum knowledge of a thousand lifetimes laid out for me with only my own stamina and curiosity to limit me. More, I could contact anyone I wanted just by reaching out with my mind and touching them. Just as knowledge was now boundless, instant communication had made the world a fraction of its old size, but I wanted nothing more than to be alone.
No, I didn’t want to leave him all alone.
It makes me grimace to admit it, but I can’t deny it. He anchored me to this place.
In truth, I liked that the annexes (my only physical c
ompanions) – those inscrutable, hovering devices – had no interest in talking. I’m not entirely sure that they can. I say ‘physical’ because I had another occasional visitor: Kelbee would appear from time to time (though I did put a stop to her literally popping into being in front of me, insisting that she at least do me the courtesy of walking through a door or something that didn’t give me a fright). I could tell she worried for me but understood my need for solitude, keeping her visits short and occasional. She always came to me in the outpost: I never go near the torus chamber, try to forget it’s even there. She may have tamed the thing, given it a name, talking of it as fondly as a wilful child, but I will never stop thinking of it as his murderer.
She told me stories of the outside world, thinking no doubt that it would help my mood (sometimes, I felt as if it was her that needed the conversation more than I did!). It transpired that most people, when they got over the initial shock and had it explained to them, embraced the new state of affairs. Some senior figures in the old administration who were not put on trial even formed a government of sorts, but gave up any real pretence of authority soon after – with instant communication came universal voting on any manner of issues, making any traditional notion of government archaic and largely pointless. It still lives on as a figurehead for those too old or too frightened to live without having someone in charge.
She told me about the trials and the executions that marred the first few months, when people were too angry to be rational. She was so deeply sad when she spoke of it, I’d forget for a moment that she wasn’t human any more. It was confusing for her, but I had to remind her that resentment and the need for revenge did not disappear with sudden enlightenment. And there was the other problem: the few who weren’t born able to connect to the network. These outcasts banded together, frightened and alienated; many went to Aspedair, the only place that has refused to allow itself to be integrated into the system. The irony of it! The vaunted Free City now digging in its heels against a tide of empiricism. Mason would be appalled, no doubt. I find it amusing.
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