Ancillary Mercy

by Ann Leckie

  Governor Giarod had made no public statement about the situation, but then, she did control the official news feeds. Which had mentioned the eminence’s work stoppage, and even quoted her on her reasons for it. The official news did not mention the line at all. Nor did the official news mention that the Xhai hierophant was willing to perform birth celebrations or funeral obsequies for any citizen, initiate of the Mysteries or not. Station Administrator Celar’s daily omen casts were reported in the blandest possible manner, with no elaboration or discussion.

  Station Security, of course, was fairly firmly behind Station Administrator Celar. Still. “It might end sooner, perhaps,” said the head of Security, to Tisarwat, “without the food and beverage service.” A dozen or so Undergarden residents—Uran included, when she wasn’t at her studies—had been bringing tea and food to the citizens waiting in line, twice a day. Uran herself had offered tea to the priests in front of the temple, on the first day, and had been stonily ignored.

  “Or perhaps, sir,” Tisarwat replied, “they’d be in line just as long, but hungry and caffeine-deprived.” She gestured the obviousness of the unspoken second half of that suggestion. “Maybe they’re doing us a favor.”

  “Hah!” The head of Security seemed genuinely amused. “They’re all your neighbors, aren’t they. And that youngster with them—Uran, is it?—is part of your household. A ward of the fleet captain’s, I understand?”

  Tisarwat smiled. “We should have another game of counters this evening.”

  “So long as you don’t let me win again.”

  “I’ve never let you win, sir,” Tisarwat lied, her lilac eyes wide and innocent.

  From downwell, I said, “A word, Lieutenant.”

  Lieutenant Tisarwat started guiltily, but to anyone who couldn’t see her as I did, as Ship did, her reaction only showed as a blink. “Will you excuse me a moment, sir?” she said to the head of Security, and when she was well away, said silently to me, “Yes, Fleet Captain.”

  Sitting in our lodgings downwell in Xhenang Serit, I said, also silently, “As unobtrusively as possible, move anything essential onto the shuttle. Be certain you have a clear path to the docks at all times. Be ready to get off the station at a moment’s notice.”

  Tisarwat made for the lifts. Said, still silent, after a near-panicked moment, “She’s here, then. What about you, sir?”

  “We’ll be leaving here shortly. I should be there in two days. But don’t wait for me if you need to move.”

  She didn’t like hearing that, but knew better than to say so. Boarded an already crowded lift. Named aloud the level where our quarters were, for Station, and then, silently again, to me, “Yes, sir. But what about Horticulturist Basnaaid? What about Citizen Uran?”

  I had already thought about both of them. “Ask them—discreetly—if they’d prefer to stay or go. Do not pressure either of them in any way. If they elect to stay, there are two boxes in my things.” I might as well have left them on Mercy of Kalr, but Five, who had seen them, had decided I might need them to impress someone. “One is a very large piece of jewelry, flowers and leaves done in diamonds and emeralds. It’s a necklace.” Though necklace was something of an understatement. “Give that to Uran. She can get a lot for it, if she knows how to sell it. The other box has teeth in it.”

  Striding out of the lift, Tisarwat froze an instant, forcing the person behind her to stop suddenly and stumble. “Excuse me, citizen,” she said, aloud, and then, silently, to me, “Teeth?”

  “Teeth. Made of moissanite. They’re not worth much here. They’re…” I almost said a sentimental possession, but that didn’t quite express it. “A souvenir.” That didn’t, either.

  “Teeth?” Tisarwat asked again. Turned from the main corridor into a side one.

  “Their owner willed them to me. I’ll tell you about it later, if you like. But give them to Basnaaid. Be sure to tell her they aren’t worth that much, as far as money goes. I just want her to have them.” They’d have been worth half the Itran Tetrarchy, if we were there now. I had spent several years there. Conceivably could go back, and still have a place, or find one. But that was very, very far away. “If I’m right that Anaander is here, she’ll likely spend some time observing traffic in the system before she tries to gate too close to the station.” Gating into a heavily trafficked area meant running the risk of doing a great deal of damage, to your own ship and to the ships you might slam into coming out of your gate. “If she doesn’t gate in, they’ll be months getting here, from what I can tell.”

  “Yes, sir. What are we going to do, sir?” She bowed to someone passing the other way.

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Sir.” She stopped. Looked around. Saw only the retreating back of the person she’d just bowed to. Still did not speak aloud. “Sir, what about Station?” I didn’t answer. “Sir, if… if she’s here—” I had never known Lieutenant Tisarwat to say Anaander Mianaai’s name. “Sir, you know I have accesses. I specifically have high-level accesses to Station. If we could…” She stopped, waiting, maybe, for me to say something, but I said nothing. “If we could make sure that Station was our ally, that might be… helpful.”

  I knew she had accesses. Anaander Mianaai had had no intention of coming here without the means to control the AIs in the system, including Mercy of Kalr. Including Athoek Station. I had explicitly forbidden Tisarwat to use those accesses, and so far she had not.

  “Sir,” said Tisarwat. “I understand—I think I understand—why you don’t want me to use them, even now. But, sir, she won’t hesitate to use them.”

  “That’s a reason to use them ourselves, is it?” I asked.

  “It’s an advantage we have, sir! That she won’t know we have! And it’s not like our not using it will spare Station anything. You know she’ll use those accesses herself! We might as well get there first.”

  I wanted to tell her that she was thinking exactly like Anaander Mianaai, but it would have hurt her, and besides, she mostly couldn’t help it. “May I point out, Lieutenant, that I am as I am now precisely because of that sort of thinking?”

  Dismay. Hurt. And indignation. “That wasn’t all her, sir.” And then, daring—terrified, actually, of saying such a thing, “What if Station wanted me to? What if Station would rather have us doing it than… than her?”

  “Lieutenant,” I replied, “I cannot possibly describe to you how unpleasant it is to have irreconcilable, conflicting imperatives forcibly implanted in your mind. Anaander has surely been before you—both of her. You think Station wants you to add a third complication?” No answer. Downwell, where I sat in the lodging house sitting room, Translator Zeiat made a last small nudge to her arrangement of fish-shaped cake sections, and then took a drink from her bowl of fish sauce and stood and went to the open window. “But since you mention it, do you think you can perhaps arrange things so that Station can’t be compelled by anyone? Not Anaander Mianaai, not any of her? Not us?”

  “What?” Tisarwat stood confused in the scuffed gray corridor on Athoek Station. She genuinely had not understood what I had just said.

  “Can you close off all the accesses to Station? So that neither Anaander can control it? Or better, can you give Station its own deep accesses and let it make whatever changes it wants to itself, or let it choose who has access and how much?”

  “Let it…” As it became clear to her what I was suggesting, she began, just slightly, to hyperventilate. “Sir, you’re not seriously suggesting that.” I didn’t reply. “Sir, it’s a station. Millions of lives depend on it.”

  “I think Station is sensible of that, don’t you?”

  “But, sir! What if something were to go wrong? No one could get in to fix it.” I considered asking just what she thought would constitute something going wrong, but she continued without pausing. “And what… sir, what if you did that and it decided it wanted to work for her? I don’t think that’s at all unlikely, sir.”

  “I think,” I replied, downw
ell, watching Translator Zeiat, now leaning precariously out the window, “that no matter who it allies itself with, its primary concern will be the well-being of its residents.”

  Lieutenant Tisarwat took two inadequately deep breaths. “Sir? Begging your very great indulgence, sir.” Completely unaware of her surroundings, now, but fortunately the corridor was still empty—it was mostly dormitories here, and it was hours from the next sleep-shift change. And she still had the presence of mind not to speak aloud. “With all respect, sir, I don’t think you’ve thought this all the way through.” I said nothing. “Oh, fuck.” She put her face in her brown-gloved hands. “Oh, Aatr’s tits, you have thought this all the way through. But, sir, I don’t think you’ve thought this all the way through.”

  “You need to get out of the corridor, Lieutenant.” Downwell, Translator Zeiat leaned back into the room, much to my relief.

  In the corridor on Athoek Station, Tisarwat said, still speaking silently, “You can’t. You can’t do that, sir. You can’t just do that for Station, for one thing. What if every ship and station could do whatever it wanted? That would be…”

  “Get out of the corridor, Lieutenant. Someone’s sure to come along soon, and you look like you’re having some sort of breakdown just now.”

  Her hands still over her face, she cried aloud, “I am having a breakdown!”

  “Lieutenant,” said Station, into Tisarwat’s ear. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m…” Tisarwat lowered her hands. Stood straighter. Started down the corridor. “I’m fine, Station. Everything’s all right.”

  “You don’t look fine, Lieutenant,” said Station. At the same time it sent a message to Mercy of Kalr.

  “Yes,” Ship replied, to Station. “She’s upset about something. She’ll be all right in a few moments. Glad you’re watching.”

  “I’m… I’m all right, Station,” said Tisarwat, walking down the corridor. Apparently steadily, but in fact working hard to keep herself from shaking. “Thank you, though.”

  Downwell, in our lodging, Sphene, who had been sitting beside me, silent all this time, staring, said, “Well, Cousin, I wish you’d say what it is that’s stopped you humming. I’d like to be able to make it happen again sometime.”

  “Has nothing I’ve sung been to your taste, Cousin?” I asked mildly. “You could request something.”

  “Could I request something, Fleet Captain?” asked Translator Zeiat, emptying a bottle of fish sauce into her bowl.

  “Certainly, Translator. Is there a song you’d particularly like to hear?”

  “No,” she replied. “I was just curious.”

  On Athoek Station, Tisarwat had reached our makeshift quarters at the corridor’s end. She sat down on the ground behind the barrier of crates. Ship had already told Kalr Ten and Bo Nine what I wanted, and Bo Nine stopped considering how to get our things onto the shuttle with no one noticing, and went to make tea. Though Tisarwat was trying hard to seem unfazed, and Ship had said nothing to Nine, it was a measure of how worried she was about her lieutenant’s emotional state that she dumped out the tea leaves she’d been using all week, that had at least another day in them, and started with new ones.

  Tisarwat drank half the tea, and then, considerably calmer, said silently to me, “It might not even be possible. There are safeguards in place against exactly that, I’m sure you know that, sir. Nobody ever wanted AIs to be able to use their own accesses on themselves. But you realize, even if someone found a way to do it, there’d be no way to keep that knowledge from spreading. We couldn’t make Station keep it secret. It could tell anyone it wanted.”

  “Lieutenant,” I said, “you do understand, don’t you, that I have no intention of helping Anaander Mianaai recover from this?”

  Sitting on the ground, knees drawn up, bowl of tea in her hands, she said, aloud, “But…” Bo Nine didn’t stop what she was doing, re-sorting things from one case to others, but her attention was instantly on Tisarwat. “All respect, sir.” Speaking silently again. “Have you thought about it? I mean, really thought about it. This wouldn’t just change things in Radch space. Sooner or later it will change things everywhere. And I know, sir, that it’s gone all wrong, but the whole idea behind the expansion of the Radch is to protect the Radch itself, it’s about the protection of humanity. What happens when any AI can remake itself? Even the armed ones? What happens when AIs can build new AIs with no restrictions? AIs are already smarter and stronger than humans, what happens when they decide they don’t need humans at all? Or if they decide they only need humans for body parts?”

  “Like Anaander did with Tisarwat, you mean?” I asked. And almost immediately regretted saying it, seeing the flare of wounded feeling, of self-loathing and despair in Lieutenant Tisarwat at hearing what I’d said. “You ask me if I’ve really thought about this. Lieutenant, I have had twenty years to think about it. You say it went wrong. Ask yourself if the way it went wrong has anything to say about why it went wrong. If it was ever right to begin with.”

  Anger, from Tisarwat. Hardly surprising. “Well, what about Mercy of Kalr? We’re having this conversation where Ship can hear us.” Of course we were. There was no way for us to have any conversation without Ship hearing us. “If this is doable, Ship will see me do it. Are you going to do this for Mercy of Kalr, too? And if you do, what if it decides it would rather have another captain? Or another crew? Or none at all?”

  Well. I had gotten personal, moments before. Small wonder she did so herself, now. But the thought could not surprise me again. Or dismay me. Ships loved captains, not other ships. And I was a ship, even if a much reduced one. Perhaps being with Mercy of Kalr gave me some bare semblance of what I had lost—that did not require Ship to prefer me over some other captain. “Why should it be forced to accept a captain it doesn’t want? Or a crew? If it wants to be on its own, it should be able to be that.” But I knew it didn’t want to be. I thought of my own crew’s obvious fondness for their ship, and Ship’s obvious care of them. Of Ship’s obvious care for Seivarden. And of Sphene, furious at the reminder that it had no captain or crew at all, and no possibility of one. “You’ve never been a ship, Lieutenant.”

  “Ships aren’t mistreated. They do what they were made to do. It can’t possibly be so bad, to be a ship. Or a station.”

  “Stop for a moment,” I advised, “and think who you are saying that to. And why you are saying it, in these circumstances, at this particular moment.”

  She drank the rest of her tea in silence.

  That evening Tisarwat didn’t play counters with the head of Security. “Station,” she said, aloud, after swallowing her last mouthful of after-supper tea, sitting on one of the crates that marked out our quarters in the corridor end. Her heart tripped faster as she spoke. “I need to talk to you. Very privately.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant.”

  Tisarwat handed her now-empty teabowl to Bo Nine. “I don’t think here is a good place, though. Where can I go where neither of us will be overheard?”

  “How about your shuttle, Lieutenant?”

  Tisarwat smiled, though her heart beat even harder, startled by another spike of adrenaline. She had wanted exactly that answer, though I didn’t see why she had thought she might get it. Was only a little surprised that she had, was also afraid of what was coming. “Oh, good idea, Station.” Almost as though the thought hadn’t already occurred to her, as though this were all something inconsequential. She picked up a bag—just one more unobtrusive load of things she and Kalr Ten and Bo Nine had been bringing to the shuttle all day. “I’ll talk to you there, then.”

  Once in the shuttle, she emptied the bag into a storage locker, and then kicked herself over to a seat and strapped herself in. “Station.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “When Fleet Captain Breq arrived here and told the governor that… that the Lord of the Radch was at war with herself, you weren’t surprised, were you. At some point in the recent past the Lord of Mianaai visite
d your physical Central Access, didn’t she. And made some changes.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Lieutenant.”

  Tisarwat gave a nervous, nauseated little hah. “And then another part of her came, later, and did the same thing. And they both made it so you couldn’t talk about it to anyone.” A breath. “She did it to Justice of Toren, too. Fleet Captain Breq knows what it’s like. I… the Lord of the Radch sent me here with accesses. So that we can make sure you’re on our side. But… but Fleet Captain Breq doesn’t want me to use them. Not unless, you know, you actually want me to.” Silence. “I can’t promise that I can find all the things that they left, when they were here and trying to make certain you’d only obey them. I can probably only find the things one of them left. Because…” Tisarwat swallowed, increasingly nauseated. She hadn’t taken any meds before crossing over into the shuttle’s microgravity. “Because my accesses come from that one. But Fleet Captain Breq says I shouldn’t go doing things to you without asking. Because she knows how it feels, and she didn’t like it one bit.”

  “I like Fleet Captain Breq,” said Station. “I never thought I’d like a ship. At best they’re polite. Which isn’t the same thing as respectful. Or kind.”

  “No,” agreed Tisarwat.

  “I don’t much like the conflict she’s brought here. But then again, it was already here when she arrived, really.” A pause. “I notice you’re moving things into your shuttle. As though you might need to leave quickly. Is there something going on?”