Encounter with Tiber [v1.0]
Page 38
“They are not Nisuan, nor can they ever hope to become Nisuan. And though we’ll need their labor, the most important thing they will do for us is they make it clear that we’re all ‘Nisuan. The differences among ourselves are nothing compared to the difference between us and these animals—”
“If you consider them animals—” Poiparesis began.
Otuz glared at him. “What else are they? They aren’t people. We couldn’t possibly have a common ancestor. We came here to claim Setepos, and it’s ours, and just because some of the animals are building fires and using pointed sticks—”
Poiparesis seemed to be struggling for self-control. Finally he managed to squeak out, “So to give equality to Shulathians, you’ll make slaves out of a whole other intelligent species? One thing—”
“A domestic animal is not a slave,” Priekahm said, firmly.
A glance passed among the adults. After a long pause, Osepok spoke. “This sounds very much as if all of you have decided something, together, and we are just now being told what it is.” She looked directly at me. “Zahmekoses, do you agree with this?”
“Yes,” I said flatly. “And yes, we did discuss it before. A lot of you won’t talk to us anymore, remember? So don’t be surprised if we arrived at some agreement.”
They all looked angry; Poiparesis in particular seemed furious. “I would think a Shulathian might object to slavery,” he said, staring directly at me. “Not plan for it.”
I ignored that, as it deserved, and started to explain. “If we use these animals—”
“People,” Soikenn said.
“Animals,” I said firmly. “And I’m a little tired of hearing all this ranting about rights, and insisting that we have to treat them like people, when all of you act like we’re criminals for mating with a different race.”
Kekox stood up and glared at me; for a moment I thought he was going to lunge and attack me, but then he deliberately crossed the room so he could speak only to Mejox, with his back to the rest of us. “I see what you’re after. I should have seen what it was leading to when you were a little snot-nosed brat—which of course you still are. Emperor Mejox! And if not Emperor Mejox of Nisu, then Emperor Mejox of Setepos. Oh, better yet, Emperor Mejox of Setepos, the first emperor in more than a century to own slaves. Oh, yes. You can probably get the poor superstitious bastards to worship you as a god. With a Shulathian whore for an empress, of course, and by the time the colony ship gets here a whole bunch of mixed-race mongrels to be the aristocracy, and millions of slaves, so that decent people—”
“That’s enough,” Mejox said. It was strange—I had expected him to scream or shout, but his voice was low, even, and angrier than I had ever heard before. It chilled me to the bone, even knowing he was on my side.
Kekox’s eyes narrowed. “Oh. The Emperor of Three Brats objects to what I’m saying. Well, just listen to this, because I will only point it out to you once. For most of our history, we made do with pointed sticks and fire. You have no evidence that they are less bright or capable than we are. In fact, from what I have seen, they seem to be a lot smarter than you kids. So think about this. You may be products of a much more advanced civilization, but you have no experience with fighting. None. You’ve got three steam rifles and nowhere on the ship where you can practice using them. You’ll have to use them right the first time. They’ve been practicing all their lives with stone-tipped spears. And at their stage of civilization I would bet warfare happens every summer. It’s probably a whole tribe of combat veterans. They know what it’s like to see their friends die beside them. They know how to keep fighting when they’re hurt. They know their weapons so well that they’re like extensions of their bodies. You may have twenty thousand years of technology on them, but they’ve got all the skill and experience that really matters. So before we talk about the fact that your plan is disgusting—and that you’re disgusting, Emperor Mejox, Consort of Her Majesty the Long-Eared Whore—let’s just make sure you know that it won’t work. The Seteposians are the ones with all the advantages. Do you understand that?” As he said it, he stabbed his finger into Mejox’s chest. Mejox, glaring, slapped Kekox’s hand away.
Poiparesis stepped between them, pushing them apart. “Stop it!”
“Oh, yes, hide behind daddy,” Kekox said, reaching around Poiparesis to flick Mejox under the nose.
“Stop it right now,” Poiparesis said. “We can’t fight in here, and you know it. We are only disagreeing about where to land and what to do on Setepos. We don’t have to talk about everything else in the universe.”
“Sit down, Kekox,” Osepok said. “Please sit down. We will talk it out. Please.”
Kekox took a step back. Mejox was backing away, too, and Poiparesis had stepped out of the way, when Kekox drew a knife and struck at Mejox, a hard, sharp, underhanded blow. But Mejox had been training in combat sports for twenty years now, more seriously than any of the rest of us, and he had been training mostly against Kekox. His hands slapped closed over Kekox’s wrist in a fast, hard disarm; with a crunch, the old guard’s wrist shattered, and the knife fell to the deck.
Mejox snatched it up, his eyes burning at Kekox, and struck upward. Poiparesis turned and lunged into the fight, trying to stop Mejox, I think, or to keep him from using the knife. I’m not sure whether he slipped and fell, or misjudged the distance, but the blade sank deep under his ribcage, into his blood mixer; a great gout of dark purplish blood washed over Mejox’s arm, and, as he and Kekox stared in horror, Poiparesis fell dead on the deck.
Kekox, still clutching his wrist, stared down for a long moment, and then said softly to Mejox, “See what you’ve done.”
None of the rest of us could move. Mejox turned him over, but from the sheer volume of dark blood we knew what had happened: the blood mixer is up inside the ribcage, usually a safe spot, but if it is pierced, since it’s where the body’s whole blood supply returns to the hearts, the loss of blood pressure alone is fatal in moments. Probably he had been dead before he struck the deck.
The puddle of dark blood spread across the floor, huge and thick, and Mejox stood in the middle, his arm drenched with blood and the rest of him spattered with it.
“See what you’ve done,” Kekox repeated.
Mejox looked up at us, face distorted with grief, as if he hadn’t heard Kekox, and said, “Let’s move him up onto this table.” Looking sick, he drew the knife from Poiparesis’s abdomen and dropped it into a waste slot.
“That’s evidence,” Osepok said dully.
“It’s all right, I confess. And you’re all witnesses. Help me move him onto the table, and let’s compose his body and cover it.” Mejox’s voice was very soft and gentle. Though if anyone had really killed Poiparesis it had been Kekox, it was clear then that Mejox would take the blame to keep the peace.
He was talking to all of us, and I stood up; so did Captain Osepok, and the two of us lifted the still warm, heavy body up onto the table. We laid his arms gently across his chest, stretched out his legs to lie flat, and then— surprising myself—I closed the lids of his eyes and pressed his jaw shut. I was having trouble seeing, and my stomach was rolling over. The down on his face was as soft as I remembered from childhood. I gently brushed his long ears out as well, so that they lay straight on the table. Suddenly unable to bear it any longer, I turned away, and found myself huddled against the captain, who was beginning to sob.
After a long while, hanging onto each other, we both looked up. Mejox and Priekahm were standing side by side, holding hands, still looking down at Poiparesis’s body; Soikenn still hadn’t moved; Kekox stood with his hand dangling from its broken wrist.
No one had heard Otuz go out, but in a moment she came back with the medical kit. She murmured something to Kekox. He sat down and let her work on his wrist; after she got it stabilized enough, they went down the hall together to where Otuz had already changed one of the convertible chambers to an infirmary, so that she could splint his wrist and sedate him.
“So do I,” I said, feeling heavy and dull. I needed to cry or to sit and stare at a wall for hours, it didn’t matter much which. “Soikenn, do you-”
She had not even raised her head; her ears had not twitched at the sound of her name.
“Soikenn,” I said again. She might as well have been carved out of stone.
“Let her be,” Osepok said. “She has a lot to think about. Soikenn, do you just want to be here alone?”
Slowly, she worked her mouth a couple of times and finally said, “Yes.”
“All right, then,” Osepok said. She pulled a blanket down from a locker and I helped her put it around Soikenn’s shoulders. Then the two of us went down the corridor to our separate chambers without speaking again. The last glimpse I had of the common dining area was of Soikenn, still staring at Poiparesis’s body, the blanket wrapped around her, shuddering as if she were terribly cold.
I spent a long time, perhaps a fifth of a day, lying on my bunk and staring at the ceiling, sometimes drifting into brief sleep.
Three thoughts chased each other around in my mind. Impossibly, feeling foolish even for thinking it, I wanted Poiparesis back. On another level, I wanted someone to tell me what would happen next, and I wanted it to involve no effort or decisions from me. Most of all I remembered the touch of his two fingers on my forehead when he would tuck me in, long ago.
Mejox must be devastated, but knowing him, he would pull into himself emotionally; only Priekahm could talk to him right now. The captain had always been solitary; I doubted she would have anything to say. Kekox was knocked out at the moment, but when he woke up, I thought it was fairly likely that he would be busy blaming Mejox and too full of anger to talk to any of us; the captain or Soikenn would have to deal with him.
Soikenn. With a guilty start I remembered how we’d left her. I got up, washed my face, and hurried down to the common dining area to check on her.
I realized I would have to see the body again and braced myself for that. It was not quite as awful this time; I suppose I was beginning to accept that Poiparesis was dead. I looked at the body again, its face a clotted mess, and felt my heart sink, then turned my attention to Soikenn.
She had moved a little, pulling up a seat so that she could sit close to Poiparesis. She had not acknowledged my coming into the room. It seemed worse because she did not sob, cry, or keen over Poiparesis— she just stared, seeming to ponder, as if she were trying to decide whether or not to wake him.
She shivered again, and I went to move more of the wrap onto her shoulders. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I’m here if you need me,” I said, rubbing her thin bony shoulders and sinking my thumbs into the hard muscles of her back. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Don’t go away,” she said. “I might need to talk.” It was strange; she might as well have been the child, and I the adult. She felt as cold as a block of ice. She didn’t speak at all.
As I looked at the hideous matting of blood all over Poiparesis, I thought how distressed he would be to be out in public and looking such a mess. As soon as I could I was going to get a wet cloth and clean all that up.
Finally Soikenn spoke. “Poiparesis was different from the rest of us. Osepok likes it out here, she’d have sailed the ship, all by herself, to wherever they told her to, and been happy to have it all to herself. I like getting papers written and doing science. And Kekox—well, you understand, don’t you, that he’s from a minor house? His family isn’t very high in the Palathian order of things ... so what he has been doing is serving out a difficult, boring duty, so that his nephews and nieces can rise in the world. But Poiparesis wanted to go there and see. He wanted to actually go to another world.
“How strangely it’s all turned out! There was one thing that we all thought we were united about—that we were going to put an end to the deep split between the races, somehow we were going to be the first really fair and just society Nisu ever produced. Maybe not enough people ever tried before, or maybe we didn’t listen to the ones who had. Eight people can’t undo hundreds of years of history in just twenty years. Not even within themselves. I try so hard to accept the cross-mating and I just make a fool of myself. Kekox turns out to have principles better than his feelings. And Poiparesis . . . well, that was where he was different, too, a little.”
“We always felt welcome around him.” I pressed the knotted muscles behind Soikenn’s ears; she must be giving herself a headache.
“He used to have arguments with all the rest of us, trying to get all of you a fair shake. He thought it mattered, I guess, that all you kids felt welcomed and accepted. More than the rest of us thought about it, anyway.” She groaned and I thought now maybe she would cry, but instead she said, “I guess I need to get some sleep.”
I walked her to her chamber; we didn’t speak. She looked down at the deck the whole way.
Afterwards I realized I was so tired that I might as well just go back to bed myself, but then I remembered that I had wanted to clean Poiparesis’s body. I got the things to do it with and went back to the room; when I got there I found Otuz already doing it. We didn’t speak at all, but we cleaned him up together and arranged the body more carefully than the hasty job the captain and I had done. After that we cleaned the floor, so that when we were done it looked as if Poiparesis had just gone to sleep on the dining table.
Still without talking, Otuz and I went back to my chamber, holding hands. The bunk was really too small for both of us, but we curled against each other tightly. It was the first time we had ever dared to share a bunk for the whole night.
* * * *
10
THE FUNERAL WAS THE FIRST TIME SINCE POIPARESIS’S DEATH THAT WE HAD all been gathered together. Soikenn was chief mourner and sat closest to the body; she shuddered through the whole service. When her time came to give the first eulogy, she merely got up, stood behind his body, raised his hand between hers, and stammered that we had loved him and would remember him. Captain Osepok had enough composure to stand still; her eulogy was delivered in neat, crisp, military sentences, a brief summary of Poiparesis’s career, but as she gave it her face became wet with tears, and we could see that she clutched Poiparesis’s hand hard.
The funeral lots may choose wisely but never kindly. Tradition was that after the chief mourner and the captain, the rest of the order of speakers was determined by lot, and though we had no reason to maintain any particular tradition, we had no cause to change this one. The lots decreed that the other three children spoke, then me, then Kekox. Mejox, Priekahm, and Otuz said essentially the same thing: that we had always relied on Poiparesis and looked up to him, and we would miss him terribly.
I had spent most of the past day thinking about what I would say, and now, as I stood before the others, holding Poiparesis’s dead hand in both of mine, I had a sinking feeling that it was a terrible idea and a terrible speech, but it was too late to think of anything else to say. His hand was so cold, his dead face so empty ... I swallowed hard and began. “This is our first parting. When they sent us, they assumed that if we were not directly linked by family ties, we would have none of the problems of a family. But they were wrong ... As we gather here to say good-bye to Poiparesis we discover that this is our family.” I worked from there to what I really wanted to say—that somehow we all needed to come back together again, even if it meant some of us would have to give in on any number of issues. I was really talking to Mejox and Kekox, of course, but I tried to address it to everyone. I finished by saying something that I knew was true—that Poiparesis would not have wanted us to quarrel.
Then I set the heavy weight of his arm down, looked at his face one more time—thought of ten thousand little things from childhood and my education—and sat down. Kekox rose and walked to the speaker’s p
osition behind the body.
He looked down for a long time before picking up Poiparesis’s hand with his good one; the other, in its splint, reminded us all of what had happened. Then he looked out and said, “I had thought I had a speech. I had thought I had three speeches or so. And now I find I don’t want to deliver any of those.” Kekox seemed to stare at his face. “Now I find that what Zahmekoses said is so bitterly true.
“We are a family; we are joined more intimately than most families of either Palath or Shulath, and nothing matters more than that, nothing can matter more. As Nisu has receded behind us, it has ceased to be our home; now it is merely where we are from. We don’t feel much kinship with the ones who sent us anymore. Poiparesis mattered more to us than our whole home planet and all the generations yet to be born.” He gasped, choked, and broke down a little, looking at that cold hand in his own, struggling to get enough control of himself to go on. After a moment Otuz got up and stood beside Kekox, resting her hand in his elbow.