by Anthology
"Tell me about her?" she said. It probably wasn't proper protocol, but the keepers in the Cathedral on Saturn had warned her that Anselm was considered unconventional even for a human. Perhaps he would respond well to some initiative.
He glanced back over his shoulder, everything by the deep green of his eyes covered by his veil. "Chief Executive Lascelles is on the board of the Lilienthal Mining Company." Speaking to her did not seem to interfere with his navigating the crowd. Most people saw the wrappings of the Syzygian Church and simply got out of his way, making it easy for his pneuma machina to guide him smoothly around the rest. "In addition to their conventional mining activities, Lilienthal also runs a number of correctional vessels."
"You mean prison ships?"
Anselm nodded uncomfortably. "The ships function as mobile refineries. They collect the ore from the surface mines in the various asteroid fields and deliver blocks of finished metal and machine parts to the drop-off points on Earth, Mars, or wherever else—Excuse me, terribly sorry."
Anselm stepped around the lumbering body of a Cronian. It turned its head to watch them go. How unusual it felt to see one of them outside of the Cathedral. Shai's pneuma machina detected the patterns of the Cronian's consciousness reverberating against her own and responded with the equivalent of a psychic handshake before she even knew what she was doing. The Cronian nodded slowly and lumbered off into the crowd.
"Six months ago," Anselm was saying. "The prisoners rioted on board one of Lilienthal's correctional vessels, the Queen of Heaven. Since then, there have been four assassination attempts against members of the company's board. Three of them successful."
Shai frowned. "You think the prisoners on board the Queen of Heaven have found some way to kill those responsible for the prison ship," she said. "As revenge?"
Anselm nodded. "The Eye would like us to ensure that Executive Lascelles' trip to the trade conference on Mars is blissfully uneventful."
Before Shai had the chance to reply, they came up against the living wall of Executive Lascelles' security team. Their visors were all down so that they were indistinguishable from one another, but it was the one in the centre that spoke.
"Out of the way, please."
"Ah!" Anselm said affably. "Yes! Warden Alladice, is it? Executive Lascelles mentioned you were thorough. Very good. She is, however, expecting us."
The Warden shook his head slowly, his visor reflecting the light of the thousand tiny coloured lanterns hovering above. "I believe I would know about it if we were expecting—"
"And if you listened to me for even one moment," a voice came from within the crush of bulletproofed body armour. "Then you would do."
The security team hesitated for a moment and then parted around an ageing human woman in an angular and ugly suit that probably cost more money than Shai Laren would see in her whole lifetime. Shai's eyes skipped to the Selenite in a simple black dress at her side. Selenites were still a rare sight beyond Earth's wasting atmosphere and Her few remaining Lunar colonies. Shai had not seen another member of her species since she was a little girl. The Selenite's skin scrolled red-gold and deep pink in a cautious greeting, and for the first time since her Anointment, Shai felt stifled in her wrappings.
"Anselm," Executive Lascelles was saying, taking his hands in her own and clasping them together. "I would recognise that voice anywhere. How are you? It's been too long."
"Far too long, Chief Executive," Anselm agreed, bringing her fingers to his veil as though he meant to kiss them.
Lascelles smiled, flattered. "It's Marjory, Anselm, and I am so glad the Church could spare you."
Anselm dipped his head in a small bow. "It was my pleasure."
"And you have a new initiate with you too, I see."
It took Shai Laren a moment to realise that they were talking about her. A jolt of sudden embarrassment shot through her body, the thick purple stripes reaching all the way into the gap in her veil. When she looked up, Lascelles was still staring.
"And Selenite too, is she? My my. How very exotic. I wasn't aware the Empire allowed them to join the Syzygian Church."
Anselm inclined his head a little. "Not all of her people belong to the Empire. Shai Laren was born in a dancing hall back on Earth. When the company folded, the Church offered her sanctuary."
Lascelles nodded. "Very charitable of you," she said. "Yes. Very charitable. Well then, girl, let's see you. Take off those wrappings and let me have a proper look."
Shai Laren's eyes crept to Anselm, but he only shifted his weight awkwardly and looked away. She started with the veil, unfastening it on one side and then the other before unwinding the longer wrappings about her head. She ran her fingers through her headtresses, which mottled yellow-brown when the cool air touched them before returning to the almost-white of moonstone.
Executive Lascelles took Shai's chin between her thumb and forefinger and studied her carefully. "I prefer you like that," she pronounced. "Leave them off."
She offered Anselm her arm and they turned away before Shai had the chance to protest. The Laplacian Express was rolled into the station almost silently. Half a mile of mirror-polished steel and glass. Endless cabins of sparking crystal and thick purple velvet behind its windows. Warden Alladice yelled at the security team to bring the Executive's bags and clear the way to the cabin, while Shai fell in beside the other Selenite.
"I'm Shai," she said.
The other woman's skin mottled caution, although Shai noticed an unfamiliar green colouring along the exposed lengths of her arms. The meaning of the pattern was beyond her, but it made her feel safer.
"Serethi," she said. "Although it pleases the Executive to call me Selene."
Shai flushed with irritation and she looked up at Lascelles.
"Do the two of you have plans for dinner?" she was asking. "You must join me. No really, I insist."
Serethi took a blank disk of wet clay from the small bag at her hip and incised an number of small marks into it with the edge of her fingernail. She did it swiftly. Automatically. Without taking her eyes from the train. Shai folded it up into the sleeve of her wrappings just as quickly. Their eyes met for a moment. Then Lascelles called for Serethi, the doors of the Laplacian Express whispered open, and all of them were swallowed by the crush of bodies, light, and sound.
***
"I've seen those before," Anselm remarked, carefully re-pinning his veil. Shai Laren averted her eyes. "The slave dancers in many of the theatres on Earth exchange them as trinkets."
Shai Laren turned the clay coin between her thumb and forefinger, letting it dry underneath the desk lamp. "They're more than that. We…the Selenites, I mean…they use them to share information amongst themselves."
She was almost certain that she shouldn't be telling him, but she gave up any loyalty to the rest of her species when she joined the Syzygian Church. The keepers were very specific.
Anselm glanced away from the small mirror wedged into a corner of their cabin, his fingers still thoughtlessly brushing at the dirt on his sleeve. "And what information does that one have for us?"
Shai frowned, trying to work out which way up it was meant to go. "It's…not easy for me to tell," she said. "I was never taught much about Selenite culture before the Church took me, and I'm sure I've forgotten most of what I knew when I was small."
It wasn't a complete lie, but even Shai could make out the eyes and open mouth incised into the centre. The lines pointing outwards from it that meant danger. She turned it over and studied the reverse. The marks there were obviously intended to be a number, although she couldn't tell which one. The curved line a representation of the moon. Or the Selenites. Or perhaps Serethi herself.
Anselm turned his attention back on his reflection. "You should get ready for dinner," he said, and when she did not respond: "Is something the matter, Shai?"
"I…no, doula. It's only…this ship is very strange and it moves more than I am used to. I feel a little unwell, that's all."
&n
bsp; "That's hardly unusual," he said lightly. "It is after all very different to any vessel that you have been on board before." He frowned for a moment, drew a breath, and stepped back from the mirror. "Perhaps you should stay here and rest. I'm sure the nausea will wear off once we are above the atmosphere."
Shai remembered the way that he had kissed Executive Lascelles' hands on the station. The way that Lascelles had looked at him. She dipped her head in agreement.
"Thank you, doula," she said. "I'm certain that you're right."
***
Finding some space to move around on board the Laplacian Express was harder than it seemed. It took Shai almost a full hour to happen upon a mostly empty baggage car towards the back of the train. The silver bulkheads were exposed, the sound of the thrusters raw through the scuffed steel, and the coldness of space seeped into every nook.
It didn't matter. At least she was alone.
Shai stood still in the centre of the carriage. Eyes closed. Just listening to the resonance of the thrusters. The resonance of the blood in her own veins. Of the machine coiled about her hindbrain. The pneuma machina was reluctant tonight, as though it was watching from a distance to see what she would do. But then Anselm was insistent that those were the moments when she most needed to practise.
She relaxed every muscle in her body one after another. Breathing and listening and waiting. And when the machine quietened into compliance, she danced. The more she moved her body, the more she became aware of its position in space and time. Of every minor adjustment in the muscles running from her feet, through her core, to her arms and her neck. She didn't force the pneuma machina to guide her. Just allowed her body to move and waited for it to join in. For flesh and circuitry to melt into one another, twisting her body around impossibly quickly and smoothly, the filigree of her exoskeleton supporting her until she could push her weight right up onto the very tips of her toes…
"You move so beautifully."
The voice brought Shai back into herself with a jolt. Everything came apart in a clattering chaos that sent the blankness of her mind spiralling out into a thousand different thoughts. She almost lost her footing and reached out to steady herself on the bulkhead.
Serethi stood in the doorway, her skin cells patterning with a mixture of apology and amusement. "There are dancers in the slave pools on Earth who spend their whole lives learning to move their bodies and never manage to be so fluid." She walked forwards slowly, stretching out a finger towards the tracery of brass-gold metal woven over Shai Laren's skin. "Is it something to do with this? I heard someone say that you are fused to a machine."
Shai Laren pulled a face. "We call it Anointment," she said. "The pneuma machina aren't like the modern cybernetic implants that the Gradivusi make on Mars. They are very old and powerful. They get to choose who they want to be joined with. I…like to dance. The keepers encouraged me to keep doing it when I was brought to the Cathedral. After you've been Anointed, you have to figure out how to let the machine co-operate with you. How to allow it to move for you, because they can work so much quicker and more precisely than our brains can. Perform a billion calculations about our weight and speed in every second. Learning how to surrender to the machine, but also to guide it to doing what you want it to do…they call it going into resonance."
Serethi inclined her head a little and traced a curl of golden metal from Shai's cheek to her jawline. "That's what you were doing then," she said. And, when Shai nodded: "Can it feel me touching it?"
Shai laughed. "It's not like that," she said. "It isn't separate from me any more. Me, the machine, the memories it has of all of the people that it was joined to before me…we're all the same now."
Serethi drew her hand away and crossed her arms loosely, her skin showing uncertainty. Apprehension. "Executive Lascelles says that you are in some kind of church."
"The keepers call it a Church, and I guess the Cathedral on Saturn looks like one. Only we don't worship any gods."
"So…what do you worship?"
Shai struggled for a moment. "Just…the universe, I suppose. The patterns of it."
"Like physics?"
Shai shrugged. "Sure, that's part of it." She rolled onto the balls of her feet, felt the pneuma machina thrum against her thoughts. "I couldn't read the coin well, but I thought you might come to find me. Ever since I met you, you've seemed…scared."
Shai sat down cross-legged on the floor and leant her back against the bulkhead. For as long as she could remember, she'd felt like a lost child wandering an impossibly huge universe. It was strange to be the one who wasn't afraid. She motioned for Serethi to sit beside her. "Do you want to tell me what you're scared of?"
Serethi scoffed and looked at her hands. "What aren't I scared of?" she said. "One wrong word to the Chief Executive and I'm back in the slave pools on Earth. But that's…that's not why I'm here. I heard Major Alladice talking. About the Queen of Heaven. About how we're going to Mars so that Executive Lascelles can attend the trade conference."
Shai nodded and waited for her to finish. Serethi hesitated for a long time. The tone of the thrusters grew deeper and fuller as the Laplacian Express finally slid free of the last of Jupiter's gravity.
"The say the Syzygian Church are good people," Serethi said at last. "That you're not like everybody else. If that's true, then you and your master should stop her before she gets to that conference."
Shai Laren frowned. "Why?"
Serethi's skin surged red-orange. "Because a lot of people are going to die if you don't," she snapped. She took a couple of breaths to let the colour drain away. "The Executive has me take all of her letters and messages down. The prisoners on board that ship, the Queen of Heaven, they are entirely dependant on everybody planet-side to help. Their ships can't enter the atmosphere. There are some places out in the colonies…docks that are controlled by the big unions that Lascelles has spent the last few years trying to wipe out…they're giving the Queen of Heaven support. Resupplying her with food and oxygen. She's going to the conference to convince the companies that own those places to lock their people out until the Queen of Heaven surrenders. Only…Only I'm not sure that she wants them to surrender. She wants them to suffocate. To use the whole thing to turn people against the last few unions still clinging on out there. Make it look like their fault somehow. I don't…I don't understand the details."
Shai shifted her weight uncomfortably. "That's terrible."
"She believes that if she doesn't crush the Queen of Heaven and the unions that are supporting her, then dissent could spread to the other prison ships. That they could lose a fortune. All any of them care about is their share price. And why wouldn't they? It's not like they know what it's like to be stuck somewhere. To be utterly dependant on someone else to keep you alive…"
Shai Laren got to her feet. "Then we have to make them understand," she said. "Come along. My doula is a good man, even if he is human. He'll listen to me, I know it."
***
"Absolutely not."
Anselm strode through the narrow corridors between the sleeping compartments, heading for First Class. Shai Laren had to break into a trot to keep up.
"But doula, Serethi said—"
"—It doesn't matter," he cut her off. "The Eye sent us here to fulfil an order. Not to play politics. It is not our place, Shai."
"Not even when hundreds of people could die?"
"The men and women on that ship are all murderers, thieves, and terrorists," he said. "They had their chance to serve the punishment metered out by their societies, instead they chose open revolution. It is up to the planetary governments and companies to decide how to react, not you."
Shai reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his wrappings. "Then what are we even doing here? Why didn't those companies and the governments send their own people to watch over the Executive? Why would the Eye intervene in this matter and ask us to go? Unless…the Church was responding to your personal request."
"What in th
e stars are you talking about? Let go of me."
Shai released his sleeve and stepped back. "You obviously know the Executive," she said. "Is it fair that you should be involved in this, when you obviously have feelings for her?"
"You speak out of turn, Shai. Be careful that you don't come to regret it."
The threat stopped her cold. She thought about returning to the stone corridors of the Cathedral. Even of going back to the dance halls on Earth that they had plucked her from as a child. About what the Church would do if Anselm decided that she was too much trouble. Decided that she could not be taught. And then she thought about the Queen of Heaven, Drifting helpless through the cold dark and slowly running out of air…
"Now," Anselm said. "I have to check the forward section before we land. Can I trust you to watch over the Executive while I am gone, or must I confine you to quarters until all of this is over?" He stopped beside a carved door where Warden Alladice was standing guard and turned around to face her.
Shai felt her skin mottle with rage. "I will do my duty, doula."
Anselm nodded. "Good. Now, if you will excuse me?"
He didn't wait for an answer, but turned and walked into the dining car leaving the door swinging behind. Shai Laren watched him disappear into the tinkling of crystal, the warm light fracturing through the chandelier, and the laughter of the guests. She took up her place on the other side of Lascelles' room and balled her hands up into fists. Warden Alladice glanced curiously across at her, but said nothing.
Difficult to tell how long she stood there before the light changed in the dining car and the blast shields rolled down over the windows. A chime sounded in the tiny speakers set into the moulded plaster ceiling and a sweet artificial voice washed over the faint hum of the engines.
"Attention all passengers. We shall shortly be descending into the atmosphere of Mars. Our expected arrival time at Oculus Station is four minutes past twelve bells, standard time. Please return to your seats and ensure that your restraint belts are correctly fastened until the blast shields are lifted. Thank you."