by Linda Nagata
It was then that the corridor lights came back on, spilling out across a loading bay crammed with corpses pressed up against one another so that most of them were still standing, their vacant, horrified eyes staring into emptiness. Across the charnel room, bodies were piled up against the transparent shield that walled off the elevator shaft, so that the sea of corpses seemed to rise on that side. There was no elevator car in the pit.
Lot told himself that Alta was not here and that Jupiter had escaped, and that Mama had gone with him, and they were waiting for him now, down below.
Believe in me.
Suddenly his amplified hearing caught the approaching buzz of a small remote unit. He jumped. Hard training moved his exhausted hands. He flicked on his suit’s camo function and grabbed his headlamp, dropping it into a pocket. Then he pulled up his hood and pressed himself against the wall just as the little remote unit buzzed around the long curve of the corridor. No bigger than the end of his thumb, the round, golden remote darted past him on beelike wings, to enter the loading bay, where it flashed back and forth across the ghastly territory. Three other remote bees quickly followed it, and shortly after, Lot could hear the soft tramp of footfalls.
A patrol of Silken troopers jogged around the curve of the corridor. There were five of them, three with bead rifles, the others holding devices Lot could not identify. He studied them surreptitiously, his eyes mostly closed so they would not give him away. The Silken troops wore beige armor, the design similar to the armor of Jupiter’s troops. Lot could see their faces beyond their helmets’ transparent visors, so apparently their tactics were overlaid on hard reality. They wore tense expressions, not quite looking at the bodies on the floor. Several civilians followed behind them, all dressed in soft coveralls.
The Silken troopers came to an abrupt halt when they caught sight of the loading bay. It must have looked worse in reality than through the images generated by the buzzing bees. Lot pressed himself against the wall, trying not to breathe. One of the troopers stepped forward. She was a big-boned woman, massive in her armor. Her gaze swept the sea of corpses, and in her aura lay a hollow structure of disappointment and disbelief. “By the Unknown God, what have we done?”
Her language was foreign. Lot understood it, though it sounded different from the version he’d learned, almost cruel, each syllable hard and coarse in a stranger’s mouth.
Most of the civilians lingered well down the hall, but one man and a woman had come forward too, threading through the knot of stunned troopers. The woman was slim and lightly built, reminding Lot of his mother in the way she carried herself. She almost brushed against him as she stepped up beside the armored trooper. One of the remote bees swept in from the bay, to hover a few feet off her shoulder. Soft anger filled her voice: “I’ll tell you what we’ve done, Clemantine. We’ve destroyed Jupiter.” She turned to the man who had come forward with her. “And didn’t we agree that would be right?”
“So,” Clemantine said. “We did a damn good job.”
The man frowned. He was an imposing figure: tall and strongly built like the trooper, with dark skin and sharply intelligent eyes. His black hair was fixed in a thick mass of tiny braids, one of which had been used to loosely tie the others behind his neck. He brought a strange, cool-metal taste to Lot’s sensory tears. “You know it wasn’t meant to go this way. We didn’t guess Jupiter had so many people.” He said this regretfully, as if he might have done things differently had he known. Lot wondered. He couldn’t find any taste of shame.
“We should have guessed,” Clemantine said. “Dammit, Kona, we should have seen it coming.”
Kona. Lot silently repeated the name. Kona. The dark man to whom it belonged glared at the carnage.
“At least get more crews down here,” the civilian woman said as she watched the remote bees continue to hunt among the bodies. Her long black hair was loosely bound, hanging in filamentous curves against her cheeks. Earrings glistened in the shadows behind her finely sculpted jaw. She didn’t look like a frontline trooper, and Lot wondered why she was here. “We need to sort this carnage through. These people can be restored.”
Clemantine lifted off her helmet. “Yulyssa, we don’t have more crews. Security’s fully occupied with the refugees, so all dead and critically wounded are to be routed to cold storage.”
“For how long?”
Kona answered that: “Yulyssa, we just don’t know.”
Lot blinked, trying to make sense of this. He’d heard of cold storage. In his fixed memory he carried a map of Nesseleth that showed vast banks of cold-storage units at her core. He’d never been to that part of the ship, but he knew the facilities were supposed to be used for emergency shelter, not medical repair.
Now another trooper moved forward. He looked confused; the point of his bead rifle dipped toward the floor. “I can’t believe it’s come to this,” he muttered. “I just can’t believe it.” He pushed his visor up, looking from Clemantine to Kona, and then to Yulyssa. “Were they all insane? What kind of stupid sots would follow a madman like that anyway?”
“Maybe a stupid sot like you,” Yulyssa said gently as she put her hand on his arm. “If you’d ever met Jupiter, you’d understand.”
“Uh-uh.” The trooper shook his head, his expression adamant. “This whole thing’s crazy.”
Yulyssa sighed. “David, have you ever been in love?”
He frowned. “Well, sure.”
“No. I mean really in love. You’d-die-for-her in love?”
David looked suddenly wary. “That’s kind of dramatic, isn’t it?”
“Passionate. Yes. Irrationally passionate. That’s how Jupiter could make you feel. The scariest part was, you’d like it.”
“Not me.”
“Even you,” she insisted. “Deep down, we all want to give into that kind of crazy faith. To be part of something bigger than ourselves; something that’ll outlast us. It’s a need inside us all.”
But the trooper wasn’t buying it. “Huh. You can get that from a patch. I’m using a patch right now so I don’t puke my guts out.”
Yulyssa’s lip trembled slightly as she admitted, “So am I.”
“It’s all chemistry,” Kona growled.
Yulyssa glanced at the remote bee that still hovered near her. “And does that matter?”
“Yes it matters!” Kona’s deep voice seemed to expand to fill the corridor. “Jupiter was beguiling people, and he must have been using psychoactive viruses to do it.”
Clemantine said, “I think it’s more complicated than that.”
Yulyssa nodded agreement. She turned again to David. “You’re very young. You don’t remember Jupiter from before, and the people who do—” She looked significantly at Kona “—don’t like to talk about it. But you should know that he once lived in Silk without city authority being aware of him. He persuaded hundreds of citizens to keep his presence secret, despite the possibility that he carried a Chenzeme plague. He assembled a society around himself the way you might assemble your morning wardrobe. I’m talking about our people, David. The very same people you’ll pass on the walks today. Maybe even your mother or father. And not one of them betrayed his presence to city authority.”
“Charismatic personalities.” Kona spat on the floor. “Human history would have been a lot less bloody without them.”
“Put the blame where it belongs, Kona,” Clemantine said. “We did this. Not Jupiter.”
“We did what was needed.”
“I hope so,” Yulyssa said. “By the Unknown God, I—”
She had reached out to rest a hand against the wall. Lot tried to dodge her inadvertent touch, but he was tired and slow. Her fingertips brushed across his hood. She gasped and snatched her hand back. “There’s someone here!” She darted away, giving the trooper David room to work. He snapped his visor down, at the same time swinging his bead rifle in Lot’s general direction. Clemantine moved in quickly to back him up.
Lot cringed. He glimpsed the lig
ht of changing tactics displays flashing across David’s visor. Then David’s rifle zeroed in on Lot’s skull. He felt his head on fire at that point, as if the bead had already hit and even now it was chewing a path through his metallicized bone.
But David didn’t fire. Instead, with a grunt of surprise, he let the rifle’s muzzle swing down until it pointed at the floor again. “It’s a kid,” he announced.
Lot flinched at the harsh Silken accent.
“Hey, it’s okay,” David said. He crouched, bringing himself to Lot’s level, ducking his head to get a look at Lot’s downcast eyes. “You startled us, that’s all. Want to shut off that camo? It’s all over now.”
Lot wanted it to be over. But he was so scared he couldn’t make his hand move.
“C’mon, kid,” David urged, as the remote bee hovered overhead. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
He was hungry. He remembered the ration pack he’d shared with Alta, and wondered again where she was. Not here. Please, not here. “I want to find my friend Alta.”
“We’ll help you find her. But turn off the camo.”
Breathing in some of the trooper’s calm, Lot moved a slow hand to his wrist and flicked off the camo function. He slipped off his hood. That was easier. He felt almost light, as if he might float away if he could just relax a little… .
“Shut off the camera bees,” Kona said. There was a hollow note in his voice. “Now.”
A chill touched Lot’s spine. He looked from David to Kona to Yulyssa. “It’s done,” she said, as the buzzing ceased abruptly in both the hall and the loading bay. The remote bee at her shoulder dropped to the floor with a sharp crack.
Lot felt Kona’s anger build to a frightening explosion. “It doesn’t end!” he shouted, his fist impacting against the wall.
“If we’re lucky,” Yulyssa said softly, “that’s true.”
The rest of the troopers had come forward now. They exchanged puzzled glances. “What’s the matter?” David asked as he backed away from Lot, getting some cautious distance between them.
Yulyssa didn’t answer. Instead, she knelt in front of Lot, studying him with soft eyes that were full of concern. “What’s your name?”
Clemantine stepped up close beside her. “He’s dangerous, Yulyssa. Come away.”
“Clemantine, this is a child. He’s not Jupiter.”
“Not yet,” Clemantine said. “David!”
“Ma’am?” The young trooper stepped forward smartly.
“Get him out of here.”
“And keep him away from the rest of the refugees,” Kona added. “Well away.”
“Yes, sir.” The trooper looked uncertainly at Lot, then forced a nervous smile. “Hey, kid. C’mon with me. We’ll get you something to eat.”
Lot hesitated. It didn’t feel right to simply give up; but neither did he want to put up any resistance. Maybe David sensed that. He laid a cautious hand on Lot’s shoulder, guiding him away from the wall. “C’mon. You know it’ll never get any worse than this.”
CHAPTER
3
LOT LOST TRACK OF THINGS AFTER THAT. HE WAS TIRED, and when he noticed David carrying him, he only shifted a little, hiding his face against the young trooper’s armored chest before dropping off again. When he woke up the next time, it was in Captain Antigua’s lap. She was speaking to someone in the hard-edged Silken language, something about compensation and retraining. Her voice sounded strangely empty, almost machinelike.
He gazed up at her, staring at the fatigue lines that netted her serious face while her commanding voice echoed in his memory Go, go, go! as she ordered the first wave of troops out of the loading bay while Jupiter looked on. He jerked hard. Captain Antigua had gone down the corridor just ahead of Jupiter. Why wasn’t she in the Well?
Her cold explanation broke off in midsentence. She looked down at him, and he could see the anger in her eyes, a deep-down fury. The scent of it started his heart racing. Reaching up, he clutched at the padded neckline of her gray armor. “Where’s Jupiter?” he asked, in the graceful, lilting language that had been the common tongue of their polyglot crew. “What happened to him? Why did you come back?”
A soft breath hissed out between her teeth. “Those are the same questions Alta asked when we pulled her out of the tunnels. And I’ll give you the same answer. Jupiter’s dead.” She spoke in the Silken’s language, and she seemed to take a mean pleasure in saying the words. “The elevators wouldn’t run. Jupiter died in the crush at the lower terminus, and half the army with him. You saw it. Everybody down there died.”
Lot stared at her in shock. His fingers closed even tighter over the edge of her armor. “That’s not true,” he whispered. He had looked into the elevator pit. He’d watched the black capsule descend below the city until it disappeared with distance. “You know that’s not true!” He wrenched his hand free of her armor, then spun out of her lap, fully awake now.
Suddenly, he was conscious of other people around him. He turned slowly, to see Kona seated on a crescent-shaped sofa, surrounded by strangers. Silkens. They sat on the sofa or stood behind it with hips half-cocked on the sofa back, watching him curiously. They seemed subtly foreign, like a familiar object viewed through a slightly diffracting lens, so that the difference was elusive, but real: chins carried higher than natural, eyes that stared too long, and their scent … not unpleasant, but unsettling… .
Behind them, a long wall glimmered deep glassy black. Lot could see a vague image in it, just beneath the surface, a woman, her lips moving in speech while dark figures shuffled slowly behind her, tired troopers, hunched in defeat. A projection wall? Tuned to minimal brightness. Despite the tenebrous quality of the image, he recognized the woman as Yulyssa, the one who’d come down the corridor with Kona. He could hear her voice faintly: “City authority estimates casualties will run into the thousands… .”
He looked away. More glass bounded the other side of the room, this time a great, curving panel filled with points of amber and white light. An older boy leaned against it, his dark eyes coolly curious.
“Lot.”
Dread settled around his shoulders as he turned to Captain Antigua. She glared at him from a seat on a sofa that faced the Silkens. “Sit down,” she ordered him, in their language, using the same cold, machinelike voice with which she’d pronounced Jupiter’s death.
He shook his head, backing a step away. “You don’t understand. Jupiter’s alive. I saw an elevator car going down. Alta was with me, and she—”
“You saw no such thing!” Captain Antigua barked. “And neither did Alta. I’ve talked to her, and she saw nothing. Jupiter is dead. It’s over. And if you start any rumors to the contrary that get the surviving members of the army stirred up, I will personally see you delivered into cold storage. Do you understand that, Lot?”
She was lying. But the anger in her aura warned him not to argue. Not now.
“Do you understand?” she repeated.
He nodded slowly, wishing he could disappear.
“Then sit down and shut up.”
Cautiously, he settled to the floor. It had a soft white carpet. As his legs folded under him, he sensed a hint of anger from the boy at the window. Lot glanced at him, and the boy extended a slight nod toward the adults, while a brief expression of contempt flashed across his face. Pointless, the boy seemed to say. Arguing with them was pointless.
Lot wondered.
Kona observed this exchange. He’d changed out of his coverall, into a soft felt vest and loose slacks. His sharp eyes lingered on Lot, as cool as twin scientific instruments designed to assay the quality of human intent. Lot eyed him warily, wondering if he had ordered the psychoactive virus to be released.
On the muted projection wall Yulyssa’s faint image was gone, replaced by a dark field, featureless but for a poorly resolved image glowing dully red. The red deepened into the outline of a great ship, its extended cooling fins arranged in a pattern both distinct and familiar. “Nesseleth,” Lot whi
spered.
Kona followed his gaze curiously, then scowled. “Why is Yulyssa playing that again? Haven’t we seen it enough?”
Nobody answered.
Lot’s fingers dug into the carpet as Nesseleth’s image dwindled in size. He saw the lowest fin flare to white, then vanish. He thought he saw the side fins crumple too, but he couldn’t be sure. She’d become only a faint red blur on the dark wall, and suddenly that was gone too as incandescent white sheathed her entire hull in a brief flash that lasted less than a second, before she vanished completely.
“It was a mistake,” Captain Antigua said, in that awful, hollow voice. “We would leave, but our ship is gone. We must find another way.”
“There is no other way.” Kona leaned forward, his braids shifting slightly, a slow tide. “Unlike you, Captain Antigua, we did not come to Silk by choice. We were abandoned here, left to die. But we didn’t die. And we won’t let you die either. You and your people.”
Lot hunched against the poisonous scent of Captain Antigua’s fury. “These people are not my people, Kona Lukamosch. They are from many worlds. They were brought together by Jupiter, and without him, they are nothing at all.”
Lot flinched. That wasn’t true. They were one people. Jupiter had made them into one. He wanted to shout it, but he couldn’t form the foreign words through his stunned surprise.
Kona Lukamosch didn’t seem pleased with her answer either. “They are your people now, Captain. You are the only surviving officer. You are the closest thing to a leader they have left.”
Lot felt his heart catch. The only surviving officer?
“They won’t listen to me,” Captain Antigua insisted.
Mama had been an officer. Lot felt a flurry of emptiness swirl around him, as if the darkness in the muted projection wall had slipped out to flood the room.
“You will make them listen, Captain Antigua. That is your assignment. That is the price of your freedom. If you ever want to be more than a ward of this government, than you will make them listen.”