by Wil McCarthy
“What do you think I want?” she demanded coldly. “I want my children.”
Viktor's face dropped into a frown. “Obviously, yes. But then what? We tell these people what they want to know, and then what? Please, I'm serious: that Congress thing is powerful, and we can learn a lot from it in a very short time. How can we not? Give it a few hours, at least, and then we can all discuss what we've learned. You owe your children that much.”
A few hours. Damn. Malye was nervous and impatient and sick at heart, but there were definitely things she wanted to know. A great many things. And yes, she owed it to Elle and Vadim to understand the environment here before bringing them into it.
Cursing, she pressed the trigger down once more.
“Is Ghengis Khan out there?” she asked the Moderator, casting a look out at the Congress once she was inside the vaulted chamber again. “He's a man, right? If I want to know Ghengis Khan's opinion on something, I can ask him?”
“Genghis Khan is here,” the Moderator agreed, pointing to a figure in the audience. The figure stood, a black-haired man dressed up in animal skins. Not much else visible about him in the dim light.
“Ben Franklin?” Malye asked. “GovGen Xiouha of Sol System?”
The Moderator nodded. Two more figures stood.
“Well, I don't want to talk to them,” she said. “I need to know where I am, what's happened to... I need to know about the last two thousand years. Since the Waisters came.”
Suddenly, without a flicker of transition, she was in a much smaller, narrower, more brightly lit chamber, like a classroom. Only about thirty people up in the seats, though they were an exotic mix indeed. Some in uniforms, some in fancy brocades spilling over with bright metals and gemstones. One man was even naked, at least from the waist up where Malye could see him. The seated figures' skin color varied from pink to brown to blue-gray, the hair colors and styles even more varied. Only two of them had the green hair and copper eyes of the Gate colonists, though, and for this Malye felt a surge of relief, to go along with the dizzy incongruity of the scene change.
“Moderator,” she asked when she felt ready, “can I speak with any of these people?”
“Indeed you can. And should you wish to adjust the parameters of the conversation in any way, I remain at your disposal.”
“Thank you.” She turned to the seated Congress, leveled a finger at one of the green-haired men, apparently a Worker, very human in appearance.
“You,” she said. “And you.” Pointing at the other green-hair, a vast, muscular figure crammed into a desk that appeared tiny around him. A Drone, no doubt. “Which of you is the more recent, historically?”
“I am,” the Worker said, standing.
“You know the history of your people?”
“I do.”
“Very well then,” Malye said, weaving her fingers together and stretching them back. “Let's have a chat, you and I.”
CHAPTER NINE
214::02
CONGRESS OF ADVISORS: UNIT 312293, 8640th SESSION (PARTIAL)
CONTINUITY 5218, YEAR OF THE DRAGON
The Worker's interview lasted nearly an hour, and when it was finished Malye started in on the other one, the Drone, who seemed to know a lot less and posture a lot more. And when that was done, she spoke with another man, one Ken Jonson of Earth, who was apparently some sort of icon or figurehead to these green-hairs, these “Gateans.”
Jonson seemed to want to talk about the war, though, about fighting with the Waisters when they'd arrived at Sol system, only a few years into... Only a few years after the attack on Sirius, a few years into what Malye still considered to be her future.
Damn. It might be a long time before her brain, wholly unprepared to lose so much so quickly, really caught up with all that had happened. How could anyone be ready for events like these? Should one scurry through life, forever expecting to be hurled into incomprehensible futures? Catatonia as the only sensible alternative? Surely not.
Ken Jonson seemed not to know the things she wanted. Or not to wish to discuss them, at any rate; he seemed consumed by strange obsessions of his own. She ended up speaking with the Moderator instead, for what felt like another several hours.
Most of what she learned in these conversations made no sense to her, things that fit into some context and reference frame which she did not and could not share. That was normal in any investigation—the police and Central Investigators knew, better than anyone, the great diversity, and yes, perversity, of human communication. Within and between human societies, so much of what passed for mutual understanding was in fact illusion, or even outright deception. But still, she heard much that she was able to assimilate.
Sol system's Colonial Age had ended with the departure of the last of the colony ships and the collapse of the Solar economy, almost a thousand years before Malye was born. In the aftermath of the Waister Conflict, though, in what had become known as the “Suzerainty of the Human Spaces” there had been a Second Colonial Age, during which the Gateans and many other groups had departed Sol system to reoccupy three shattered colonies, and to found a couple of new ones. But this Second Colonial Age was over and done with as well, the economy having collapsed once again. As in Malye's time, now known as the “Prewar” or “Interstitial” era, travel between the stars had proved ruinously expensive.
The Gate colony was allegedly founded as a diplomatic outpost, the nearest point in the Human Spaces to the Waister Empire, which she gathered to be of enormous size, and very distant. She learned that the Gateans were in the business of listening for signals from the Waisters (of which there had been none), and occasionally beaming signals of their own, which would not arrive at their destinations for thousands of years. But they had only been at it for a couple of decades, had spent centuries between the stars in a long cryostasis of their own, and had rejoined the flow of history only recently.
Like Malye herself, they were an anachronism, living in their own future, acting out an idea which, she began to suspect, had never been very much in favor. Yes, by all means, leave Sol system behind; take the long, slow journey to Gate, there to live as you please. Live as the Waisters do, yes, the better to understand them. And yet, the return of the Waister fleets seemed to puzzle Wende's people as much as it did any of these Congressional simulacra.
Still, the overwhelming image that came out of these dialogues was of an energetic human empire, encompassing eight star systems and a huge volume of space, and linked by an ansible network, faster-than-light signals flashing back and forth between the stars in constant streams. That had been the fading dream of Malye's “Interstitial” era: community, brotherhood, a bridging of the awful gaps of time and space that kept Sirius and the other colony stars apart. But as an engineering project, it had proved nearly as ruinous as starflight itself.
These people had followed through, though, had pinned up their sleeves and gotten the job done. It was, Malye thought, a major point in their favor.
Curiously, after hours and hours of these revelations, Malye noticed that she felt as fresh as she had when she'd started. Her voice had not grown hoarse, nor her skin greasy, nor her feet tired or sore from all the standing. But she did feel a creeping sense of guilt, of slowly building urgency—she was partly amusing herself in here, partly taking out her frustrations on imaginary people, cursing and shouting at them when she felt they were not cooperating. Partly paving the way for her children, becoming the well-informed mother they would need to protect them here. But if she were to be honest with herself, mostly she was just hiding.
“You have been very helpful,” she said to the Moderator and the reduced Congress.
And took her thumb off the trigger.
Strangely, the digit was not sore from holding that one position for so long. Strangely, when the white octohedral chamber reappeared around her, Viktor and Sasha were still sitting right where they had been, still playing their damned finger games.
“Names of Ialah,” she cr
oaked bitterly. “You said you would take care of things. Have you two moved at all?”
Viktor turned and grinned at her. “I told you it wouldn't be a waste of time, Colonel; you've only been sitting there a few seconds. I know, I know. It's like forever in there, isn't it?”
~~~
A while later, when Plate oozed through the membrane door and entered their little sanctum, the strange, quiet Dog following along behind him, Malye all but pounced.
“When will you be ready to revive my children, and the others?” she demanded.
“Why Madam, the deed is already done. Or being done, at any rate.” Though no less troubled than usual, Plate's expression was smug, not at all distant or unkind.
A pair of small figures burst through the white membrane, the smaller of them screeching, “Momma! Momma!” It was Elle, and the other child with her was, of course, Vadim. They bowled into her, grabbing fiercely at her waist, even Vadim seeming much younger than himself.
“Elle! Vadim!” Malye shouted with delight, scooping them up in her arms. “Oh, my babies, how are you? Were you frightened? It's all right now. Everything will be all right.”
Elle was wailing now, her mouth widening, eyes pinching shut, fat tears rolling down her chubby face.
“Hush,” Malye said, kissing her twice, “hush, baby. It's all right.” But the child continued to howl, gasping only occasionally for breath. She knew more or less what had happened to her, Malye would bet—even at five years old, Elle was no fool. News reports, alarms, decompression, and then waking up in a strange place, surrounded by copper-eyed more-than-strangers. Probably, Elle knew that her father was dead. A glance at Vadim's face was enough to confirm that he certainly did.
Vadim was as heavy as his expression, though. Malye put him down, and he did not protest.
“Where is Papa?” Elle asked finally, in drawn, barely recognizable syllables. She drew in a stuttering, snuffling breath. “My father, where is he? Momma, where is he?”
“Hush, baby,” Malye repeated, bouncing her as best she could. “We'll talk about it soon.” Talk about what? About Paradise? Your father is with the Minitarians, dear, drinking bitter tea every evening at shift change.
Oh, Grigory.
“But where is he?”
Despite her best efforts, Malye began to cry again. Plate looked on with embarrassment.
“What is the condition of the other patients?” Viktor asked, striding up to the doorway, thankfully interrupting the Kurosov Crying Chorus, giving everyone something else to pay attention to. Even Elle quieted a little and looked at Plate and Viktor, as though the answer to that question were of some personal interest to her.
“The others are being repaired,” Plate said, also looking relieved. “Their condition is serious, however—none appear able to survive without gross intervention. They were suspended because they were sick?”
“I'm just a handyman,” Viktor said with a shrug, and turned to cast a meaningful look at Sasha. “But my friend Aleksandr Petrovot can explain that, I think.”
Sasha, sitting on his couch near the back of the room, looked up as if startled to have been consulted about anything. He cleared his throat. “Um, yes, well those were cases we didn't have the facilities to treat at the time. Two of them were about to be moved; the rest were awaiting custom surgeries or other treatments that would take time to set up. Ours was a very small hospital, and without buffering the really serious cases through cryostasis, our facilities would have been... overtaxed...” Like a toy, he seemed to wind down and stop. He looked around him, frowning, obviously reminding himself, oh, right, the world has ended, and I have lost everything.
“I see,” Plate said. “Our capabilities, though minimal, are apparently superior to yours. We have set up a surgical fog which we hope will correct the macroscopic injuries within the next hour or so. At the cellular and molecular levels, repair will proceed with increasing difficulty, because the fog is intended for our bodies.”
“But you are human,” Malye said with undisguised sarcasm.
Plate shook his head. “We are not. Whatever Crow told you, we have less in common with you and with the Suzerainty of the Human Spaces than we do with the Waisters themselves. Our sole purpose is to understand them, to communicate with them.”
“Yes,” Malye agreed, wiping her eyes, wiping her daughter's eyes. “You understand them so very well, even though you have never seen them or spoken with them or seen what they can do. They've come back to destroy you, and in your fear and desperation you have revived us, apparently at great cost, even though we know so much less than you.”
She set Elle down. “You have given up a lot of your humanity, Mister Plate, you and your people. But I've been watching, and I've been thinking, and I think you are far more human than you're ready to believe. If you were really Waisters, you would not be speaking with us now. If you were really Waisters, you would be making war on those who are different from you: making war on the Suzerainty of the Human Spaces.”
Plate flinched minutely. His sounds and colors shifted, his posture stiffening ever so slightly, and Malye received the message loud and clear: who says we are not? But when Plate actually opened his mouth, what he said was, “We don't know that they've returned to destroy us. We don't know anything about this at all. Madam, we have been running machine simulations of Waister neural activity for thousands of years, since before the war even ended. We know them very well indeed, and I tell you that this coming back, this returning to the scene of the conflict, is not in their nature. Their confrontation with us is complete; we should be of no further interest. And yet, here they are. We don't know what this means.”
“And you believe we can help?” Viktor asked, echoing Malye's sarcasm.
Plate looked at him and sighed. “We do not expect that you can help, but we hope that some chance of help exists. Did they do something unusual here the first time? Or find something, or learn something? This is what we need to know. We are Finders ring, what you might call archaeologists, though that term is not a good description of what we actually do. But many of the other rings have doubted our usefulness to Gatean society, and in finding you we have proven them wrong. Now, we find ourselves the subject of considerable attention.”
“How wonderful for you,” Malye said. Behind her, Elle began to cry once again. “Excuse me, I must tend to my family.”
“And I to mine,” Plate echoed.
He and the Dog slipped out through the membrane once more.
“Do you mind if I follow them, Colonel?” Viktor asked Malye. “I'd like to see this 'surgical fog' they're talking about.”
Malye glared. “You ask me? I am not your mother, Viktor. Do as you please.”
“All right. But I thought you were... our leader. After all, Colonel, who is more qualified? Who is it that put Queen Wende in her place? Not I.”
“There's no need for leaders here,” she said angrily. “How many people do you see? Go. See the surgery, and leave me alone.”
Grinning, Viktor clicked his heels together and saluted. “Yes ma'am! Sasha, you should probably come with me. It will be good for you.”
~~~
Viktor practically had to drag Sasha with him to see the surgical fog, which turned out to be a kind of aerogel suspension of microscopic machines that would surround and penetrate the patient, working small miracles on the inside and out. Similar to the “security fog” which surrounded Queen Wende, Plate informed them. But it wasn't much to look at; it really did look just like fog, like a hazy blurring in the air around the patient, and whatever it was doing was much too small and slow to see with the naked eye. Like watching a food plant grow.
The thought prompted Viktor's stomach, and when he asked about food, Plate brought them a basket filled with things like muffins, cold and soft to the touch, and tasting more like potatoes than like bread.
“These should not prove harmful,” he said reassuringly.
And then, with nothing else to do, Vikto
r and Sasha returned to the utterly charming company of Malyene Andreivne Kurosov'e, and waited for the arrival of the newly revived. They came, one by one, healed and disoriented and beginning to suspect how very long they had been frozen. Many had never heard of the Waisters, had entered cryostasis too soon to hear news of them. Of those who had heard, none had been frozen after the start of the attack. Which meant, of course, that they knew nothing of how they had come to this place.
One by one, they asked their questions and shed their tears, but thankfully, all Viktor had to do was hand them food and show them how to work the shitter. It was Malyene Andreivne who got the job of comforting them, of answering them, of introducing them to one another.
There was Svetlane Antoneve Vdovin'e, who did not find the rhyme in her name at all funny when Viktor pointed it out, and who seemed even in the depths of her grief to be showing off the body she had so thinly clad in one of the Gate colonists' white robes. Not a bad body to show off, Viktor supposed. The woman had been a restaurant hostess in her previous life, but had been struck down by a sudden and virulent cancer, she said, that began in her stomach and spread quickly to her other organs. Sasha, who had of course attended her cryosuspension, was able to confirm the story.
Next came Konstant Aleksandrovot Bulgakov, a bureaucrat of some sort who kept asking who was in charge, who was in charge here? He'd fallen from a high balcony and landed on his head, and woken up to the sight of Crow leaning over him. Must have thought he was in Hell. And really, what was there to disprove it?
Next, a woman: Ludmile Vitrovne Drozd'e, who had somehow located a wide strip of green cloth and had tied it around her waist in a broad sash. Two decades older than Svetlane Antoneve, she had not ever had a profession, had been a kept woman all her life, and seemed obscurely proud of the fact. She also had suffered a rare cancer, though not the same one as Svetlane Antoneve. Here and now, she seemed utterly devastated at the loss of her home which, she said, had contained 'everything of importance' in her life. Viktor tactfully decided to assume she included her lover on that list. Or keeper, or whatever.