Meanwhile, the Dead were passing something around: a box roughly the size of one of Azamat’s spread hands. When it reached Kalypso she saw that it was battered and grubby, despite the reverence they showed it. It was Earthmade.
“We brought them to celebrate with,” Neko signed at her. “Cuban. When the first of you was born, we were going to smoke them. By that time there would be a surplus of oxygen.”
Kalypso looked at the neatly packed oblongs, touched the wrappers and closed the box.
“A fabulous waste of air,” she signed, yawning. “What decadence.”
“Yes,” Neko replied. “What folly.”
Kalypso passed the box on. They all touched it reverently, eyes closed. Their breathing grew slow and regular. Kalypso yawned again, feeling heavy.
Teres stood up.
“You must interface now,” Neko signed. Teres approached Neko first. Kalypso had begun blinking slowly, but she did not interface yet. She wanted to see what was going to happen. Teres put the brush into the fluid.
“Interface,” Neko signed again. Kalypso saw that Neko’s feet were trembling and jumping spasmodically. The others began to shift in place.
Teres bent over Neko and traced the brush over her ribs. Kalypso suppressed another yawn as Neko’s eyes squeezed shut and she convulsed. Her left hand flashed the sign for “interface.”
Kalypso didn’t want to see any more. She let go and fell into Ganesh.
The first things she encountered were Liet’s hands with their purple nail polish. She wanted to ask Liet to help her get access to Earth Archives, but Liet was busy massaging a female corpse. The corpse consisted of a mass of statistics. Tendrils of Diriangen functions swirled from the decaying flesh. Numbers and graphs jockeyed for position in the seethe that had been a person.
“Look closer and you go inside and are lost,” Liet said. “Comprehension is danger.”
But Kalypso wasn’t interested in riddles and tried to ignore Liet. Earth Archives. She held to the thought like a buoy, building the Core suitcase in her mind. The Dead would be in here somewhere too, blaming her if they couldn’t get a piece of their favorite desert island or whatever it was they each wanted to use as anesthesia. She saw the suitcase in all its detail, ran her hands over it, tested its weight. Of course she remembered the hole through which the jazz vine had passed — couldn’t not recall it— and suddenly she found herself inside the original Ganesh, the interstellar ship before it had been dismantled.
WELCOME TO EARTH ARCHIVES.
Lucky stars, thank you.
The interior of the ship was close and warm and Earthmade, which boosted Kalypso’s spirits. She roamed through the bridge to the passenger section, where Lassare was lying in a Dreamtank. Kalypso looked down at her face. She had never been pretty, but she had once been thin, and her face in repose still looked young, despite the years of the Crossing. Ganesh had slept her deep and true.
NOT HER. THEY WANT THEMSELVES.
Kalypso drifted down the rows of tanks, gazing on each of the Earthborn. Mari. Robere. Teres? The women had looked very different, before. When she passed Teres, the sleeping body smiled and Teres verbed, “Thank you. I am going home.”
Teres climbed out of the tank and stretched. A door appeared in the air in front of her, the kind that divided in half like a stall door; muffled voices came from within. Teres was wearing a long coat and gloves, and she pushed the door open. Kalypso caught the scent of cinnamon, the shuffle of children’s feet on the tiled kitchen floor and blown snow—then pulled away to the interstellar. She had six more Dead to dispense with. She continued down the line. Jianni. Stash. Rasheeda. Neko.
“Make the pain go,” Neko verbed. “It devours.”
ME, TOO.
Neko was weak, and Kalypso had to lead her to her destination. It was somewhere in Asia—Taipei, possibly. She felt Neko rising to the idea of a crowd. Streets jammed with people. Noise, humanity, bumping into strangers — ah, yes. Strangers. A remote and alluring concept. Kalypso was seduced by it: the idea of vanishing into a crowd of people who had never known you and never would, this was alien and thrilling and come to think of it she couldn’t understand the language either, so she was really lost. She fought the urge to stay and left Neko arguing with a rickshaw driver.
By now she’d begun to nurture a tiny hope that the witch doctors had repaired the damage of the Crash and all would soon be well. The interstellar was holding its integrity for her: the Dream was working. She continued walking among the tanks bearing the Earthborn, looking for the remainder of the Dead.
Korynne. Azamat. Sieng.
She looked into Sieng’s tank. Sieng was not there. Where she had been was a handwritten note on a piece of paper. It said:
To: The Dead
From: Sieng
Re: The Oxygen Problem
Thanks for the memories.
Love always,
Azamat
After she read it, the note auto-combusted and she found herself up to her neck in cement.
A small boy with a trowel was nearby. His eyes were white and irisless, and he wore a red cape. He was laying bricks around her. Nearby was a wheelbarrow filled with mortar.
“Stop that!” Kalypso cried. “I’m trapped in here. Help me get out.”
“I am a Grunt,” he said in a deep voice. “I don’t think. I build things.”
He placed a brick beside her right ear, tapped it into place with his trowel.
IT HURTS. KILLING ME.
“You’re not a Grunt,” she wheedled. “You’re just a kid. I’ll teach you a bunch of stuff if you let me out.”
“Wow!” the boy exclaimed suddenly. “Lookee what’s in there!”
AH THE PAIN. WHY DO YOU CALL ME UP ONLY TO MURDER ME?
The sightless kid turned the trowel toward her and in the cement she could see many people with blindfolds. They were walking across a high structure over water. They carried all their possessions and dropped most of them as they went. The boy grinned behind his white eyes.
“OK, I’ll let you out,” he sang. She was free. There were bees everywhere. She kept seeing color charts.
I’M LEAVING. I’M GOING.
The boy waved his red cape at her, which was no longer red. “See these colors that only bees can see.”
The Color was Blue. It was everywhere. Blue Everything. She could taste it. A guitar chopped up in pieces played the sound of a trumpet. She was on a desert highway and a sign read: Sieng. 217 Miles.
Everything dissolved into code. Kalypso was tossed in a maelstrom of bad math. Once she thought she felt Tehar brush past her and clutched blindly at the place he might have been. Nothing was there but the Dead and their agony. The Dead were furious. The Dead were pissed off. If the Dead could have annihilated her, they would have already done so. Twice. Even as they became code they manifested their displeasure in sharp, hostile, sense-cutting functions.
The return was slow and insidious. Gradually the funeral boat and the Dead and the rattling canopy and the darkness crept over her until the fact of consciousness could no longer be denied and she found herself with open eyes, in the boat, surrounded. Teres was passing among the Dead with a conical sack. From the torso of each of her compatriots she scraped blue ooze, which slowly desiccated in the hot air to become Picasso’s Blue. Her body was bent almost double with exhaustion and strain.
Seams appeared in the single flesh of the Dead and its parts went their separate ways. Later they were all sick. The tent had to be taken down so everyone could retch violently over the sides. No one could speak or sign. They crawled and staggered and waveringly fell into their respective boats, until it was only Kalypso and Neko and Sieng, who probably was in better shape than either of her living relatives.
And Teres. Livid.
“You aren’t worth the air you breathe,” she accused. “Let’s kill her, Neko, and mate her to Sieng. She would be a good source of fresh tissue.”
Neko turned on her as well. “What kind of
witch doctor allows such chaos to overcome a node? Have I not given you days of interfacing to clear up these problems in the code? Explain yourself.”
Kalypso stammered and quaked for a bit before she got the words out. “I don’t know what I’m doing, OK? I admit it. I’m not a witch doctor. Not even close. Azamat lied to you. I thought if I told you, you would kill me.”
Teres turned to her. The bright skin. The invisible eyes. Kalypso cowered.
“He has stolen all our data on Sieng. How dare he?”
Neko said quickly, “Don’t hurt her, Teres.”
“Ah,” said one of the others. “So he steals the theory behind our livelihood, ruins our only pleasure in the world, and offers us a child who is not even a witch doctor as a consolation prize. Will we sit back and let ourselves be disenfranchised?”
There were angry signs passing among the others.
“You may be right, Charl,” Neko agreed. “We have let them fumble along with their mission plans for long enough. If this goes on, we could lose the Archives completely, and then we’d have nothing of Earth.”
That this was unbearable to contemplate was obvious from their postures, whether or not Kalypso could understand the specific signage of their faces.
“I’m going to call Lassare,” Teres said. “Find out the meaning of this.”
“Ganesh won’t give you a reliable interface,” one of the others reminded her.
Teres went to the radio. “We’ll try this.”
“They’ll never hear you.” Yet the Dead all switched their interfaces to radio. Teres adjusted frequencies and whispered into the pickup. No sound came through the console: the speakers had probably been scavenged for some other use.
It took some time before Kalypso tuned her interface to the frequency they were using. The first thing she heard was Rasheeda’s voice.
“Halloooo? This is a reserved frequency. Jubellek, if that’s you being cute, pick another channel.”
“Rasheeda, it is Teres.” Kalypso could just make out the sibilant phrases.
“It’s not Halloween,” said Rasheeda in a strained voice. “Are you ready to talk terms?”
“I want Lassare.”
“I can barely hear you.”
“Then get me a com channel through Ganesh.”
“Very funny. You know we can’t do that. Look, just tell us what you want. You insult us by resorting to terrorism. We can work this out.”
“You need the Blue, don’t you?” Teres said with relish. “I can tell from your voice.”
“That’s a sick negotiating tactic,” Rasheeda answered. “You know we need it. We have done our best by you. There’s no cause for you to be so vicious.”
“Vicious? Marcsson has stolen our data and destroyed our territory within Ganesh. Do you expect us to sit still for it? If you think to get control of Picasso’s Blue yourselves, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise. You need us for that.”
Lassare came on the channel. “Calm down, Teres. We’re working on getting Marcsson back to First and repairing the AI. If you’ll name your terms, I’m sure—”
“Terms? Terms? We’re coming back: those are our terms. There will be no more Picasso’s Blue for you. Your policies have come to ruin. Earth Archives are under threat. What have you done for your children but let them be weak and ignorant, like this one?”
“You have one of our children?”
“Only a small one.”
“Which one? You have no right—”
“Kalypso. She claimed to be a witch doctor but she’s useless for anything except tissue harvesting.”
Kalypso couldn’t take any more. She flung herself at the console and screamed, “Lassare, save me! They’re insane. Don’t let them infect me—”
Neko seized her and pulled her aside. Kalypso fell down, tears streaming from beneath her interface. She lost the frequency for a second.
“—act of war. We had an agreement. You can’t simply come in and take over.”
“Watch us.”
“Teres. This is foolish. We must trust each other. Perhaps we jumped to conclusions in accusing you. We accept that maybe Marcsson was operating on his own. Or maybe it wasn’t sabotage at all. Or even if you are behind the Crash, we can come to terms so long as you give us Picasso’s Blue. We must have something. We’re losing control of the kids.”
Teres turned to the others and signed, “Weak-willed bats. What should we do?”
“Don’t give them any Blue,” Charl warned. “Find out the status of Earth Archives.”
We’re losing control of the kids. What the hell did that mean? Kalypso heard herself snuffling in the nomansland between laughing and crying.
“The witch doctors are insisting we not jam Marcsson’s interface or try to take him by force,” Lassare replied when Teres passed on the question. “They believe Ganesh can be repaired but they haven’t given us any details about individual nodes.”
“Where is Marcsson now? What’s he up to?”
“He’s been in the clayfields, but the witch doctors say he must not be upset. We are monitoring him.”
“A lot of good that will do. Give us his present location.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Then you must not need Picasso’s Blue as badly as you say.”
There was a long pause.
The Dead exchanged facial expressions. Kalypso sighed.
Rasheeda came on the line and read out coordinates.
“We will deliver the Blue shortly. You can pick it up at First.”
“But we’re at Oxygen 2—”
Teres cut the link. “What shall we do to Azamat?” she asked.
“I don’t think we should do anything to him,” one of the others signed. “We don’t know his reasons, but neither do they. Nothing will be accomplished by taking revenge on Azamat for damage to Earth Archives.”
“We can stop him from doing more damage,” said Teres. “He can’t make things any worse if he’s dead.”
“But things are not worse. We have some access to Earth Archives. Yes, he was impertinent to take the Sieng data—” Neko had to stop signing when Teres grabbed her hands and slapped them down imperiously.
“Impertinent? Is that what you call it? We could use that data to find new psychoactive agents. Something better than Picasso’s Blue. That’s the only way we’ll ever get Earth’s attention.”
“Everything Marcsson is doing is happening by interface,” Kalypso said. They all jumped at the sound of her voice. “You can attack him physically, but the only way you’ll ever solve anything is through Ganesh. I may not be a witch doctor but I know he’s working the interface.”
“She only says this because she wants to return to First, and she hopes we’ll take her there.”
“That doesn’t make it any less true,” Kalypso said. She had been able to follow the conversation because they’d been using standard Sign; but as soon as she’d spoken, some of them reverted to their private language to exchange secret signs.
“The value of Sieng’s data is questionable,” Charl said. “We’ve been doing studies on her body for years, but Picasso’s Blue is the best agent we’ve found. The idea that Marcsson can come along and steal our invention and sell it to Earth or something like that— it’s ridiculous. If it did happen, we should applaud him, anyway. Who cares who makes the discovery, provided we get Earth’s attention?”
Their gestures indicated they found the idea of Marcsson making a great discovery laughable.
“Whereas Sieng’s body,” Teres added thoughtfully, “is absolutely essential. Yes: as long as we have these tissues, we are in power. As long as we can make Picasso’s Blue, nothing else can truly threaten us.”
“I don’t know about you, Teres,” one of the others remarked, “but I don’t want to make any more Blue without the Archives. I don’t think I could take another extraction like this one.”
Signs of agreement.
“We should get ourselves some real witch doc
tors,” Neko said. “It’s time to go back to First.”
Charl nodded support. “If they can’t save Earth Archives, we can always take the station anyway. Get as much hardware as possible. If necessary, we’ll take the Core of the AI and start over.”
Kalypso made a choking noise.
“You,” Teres said, pointing at her, “will wait here. Neko, stay with Sieng and the chid. We will deliver the Blue as we promised, and then go to First. It’s been too long since we were there.”
Once the decision had been made, everything happened fast. Teres would take Neko’s boat and leave Kalypso and Neko in the funeral boat.
“I could be highly useful to you,” Kalypso said eagerly, dogging Teres’ every movement. “I know First like the back of my hand. My closest friend is a witch doctor. I don’t want to stay here—”
Teres ignored her for some time, then suddenly turned and cuffed her across the face. “According to Neko, you’re lazy, you’re sneaky, you can’t take care of yourself, and you’re a liar. Stay with Neko and be glad you’re alive.”
Kalypso took the hint. Before she knew it, the Dead had moved off in ragged formation up a broad luma channel. She and Neko were alone again.
“Teres likes you,” Neko said.
WHO OWNS THE AIR
KALYPSO WAS IN A DEEP SLEEP WHEN something thudded into the hull. It had taken her hours to finally rest: the Dream had over-stimulated her neurally, and the discussions of the Dead afterward had only made things worse. The flashing hands of their fateful speech haunted her when she closed her eyes.
When the noise woke her, she rolled over sluggishly, disoriented, and bumped into the glowing column of Sieng’s luma. Her eyes opened when she realized something had struck the boat. Another vessel had come alongside and hooked them with a magnet. A tall figure was silhouetted against the gray and red clouds that reflected the light of the System.
Marcsson stepped across the gap just as Neko lurched to her feet. Kalypso scooted as far away as possible, half-asleep and confused. Marcsson towered over the Dead woman, yet his manner was appealing, almost childlike. Not everything they said to each other made sense; Marcsson’s signing was fast and manic. He punctuated his gestures with the poly-rhythmic body-tapping she’d seen him do before.
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