by Sarah Zettel
Shall we teach them that? His thought came back to her. All the delight he felt, she savored and returned. It doubled and came back, and came back again. Delight. Fury. Power. Freedom.
Revenge.
Oh, yes!
No, said the Mind, but there was no force to the plea, just a minor tug of the conscience. Don’t make me do this. Not again.
But the heat of the task and the joy of their freedom ran through them. It spread out into the Mind.
The blood of the World began to quicken.
18—Station Thirty-seven, Section Eighteen, Division Nine, The Home Ground, 11:20:19, Settlement Time
“This is what the Aunorante Sangh cannot understand. Life cannot be controlled. Trying to keep your grip on it will break your own hand.”
—Fragment from The Apocrypha, Anonymous
“CONTRACTOR!”
Kelat tore his gaze away from the monitors on the artifact’s holding tank. Behind him, the Bio-tech Beholden had moved back from the bulge in the wall they had designated tank 4B. Although it had no seams or joints, a space had opened in the bulge and a shadow crawled out into the light.
It was a crablike thing, all legs and shell and no visible eyes. It made Kelat think of cleaning drones. Its body glistened with some gelatin-like substance, giving it a steely sheen. It skittered over the edge of the tank and the Beholden crowded away from it. Kelat took a step forward. It smelled like fresh soil and blood. It scuttled between the equipment racks and the holding tank without pausing. Kelat counted ten double-jointed legs protruding from the ocher shell as it passed him.
“Any change in the artifact’s condition?” Kelat turned one eye to the Bio-tech Holrosh. The crab had reached the communications terminal. It extended its front four legs and touched the casing below the boards.
“No, Contractor,” murmured the Bio-tech. His eyes had gone wide watching the crab cross the chamber.
Kelat felt a burst of hope and fear simultaneously. Has Jahidh won? Has he found the key to this place?
The crab drew its legs away, leaving tiny blobs of gel on the terminal. Kelat mentally shook himself. Until he knew for sure that this was Jahidh’s doing, he had to observe the proprieties. As the crab steadied itself upon its four back legs, Kelat touched his torque. “I require a Witness in Station thirty-seven, immediately,” he said, not taking his eyes off the crab.
“Contractor?” said one of the Engineers.
Kelat glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Another crab emerged from 4B.
“Seal that,” he ordered, not caring who obeyed. Observe the proprieties, go through the motions, he told himself. This has got to be Jahidh. Why didn’t that fool boy get a message to me first?
Maybe because it’s not Jahidh, whispered a treacherous thought in the back of his mind.
The new crab jumped to the floor and scampered for the chamber’s entranceway, which was sealed by an airtight membrane.
“Blood of my ancestors!” cried someone.
The first crab was scraping the casing off the comm terminal. It scrabbled six of its legs against the metallic panels. A shower of silver dust fell to the floor and, in a few seconds, it created a five-centimeter-wide hole that bared the first layer of fiber optics.
“No Witnesses are available,” said a voice through Kelat’s disk. “The settlement is experiencing a security emergency.” So are we, thought Kelat ridiculously. “Orders will be rel…” A Beholden thrust his hands into a pair of sterile gloves and reached for the crab at the comm terminal.
“No!” shouted Kelat, but the Beholden had already lifted the thing up. Its legs flailed helplessly in the air as he carried it toward 4B. The Engineers had a layer of polymer film almost stretched across it.
“Blood!” Bio-tech Holrosh pointed toward the entrance, and Kelat looked almost involuntarily. The second crab had pressed itself against the threshold and hooked its legs into the membrane.
“Suits!” Kelat snatched his helmet off the rack by the wall. A crab scuttled by his feet, heading straight for the comm terminal. Jahidh, you are overreaching yourself…
Someone screamed. Kelat slammed his helmet over his head and closed the seal, just soon enough to see the Beholden who’d picked up the crab engulfed by a blur of blue-grey gel.
“Val!” cried another Beholden, reaching toward him. The gel writhed for a moment and then, slowly, relentlessly, began sinking back into the floor.
Kelat grabbed the Beholden’s hands and forced them down.
“Suits!” he bawled straight at the Beholden’s face. Kelat grabbed a helmet off the rack and shoved it against the Beholden’s chest, backing him away from his lost colleague. He kept picking up helmets and tossing them to whoever was closest, regardless of rank. The membrane over the entrance was supposed to be self-repairing, but the crab had made a hole in it that was already big enough for Kelat to hear the hiss of escaping air.
A lifetime of training was getting the Beholden into their helmets and gloves. A third crab climbed straight through the polymer seal over the 4B tank. The ragged edges of the film fluttered into the tank. The polymer disappeared into the gel like the Beholden had disappeared into the floor.
The first crab was back at the comm terminal, scraping away at the casing again. No dust piled up on the floor.
Kelat locked the seals on his suit and pressed the emergency call button on his wrist terminal. Even if this was Jahidh’s doing, it was still Kelat’s job to get his team out of harm’s way. It was not part of the Imperialists’ plans to take more Vitae lives than necessary. “This is Station thirty-seven, we have an…”
“Station thirty-seven, report your personnel complement and make your way to Shuttle Pad eighteen,” came the response. “Do not, under any circumstances, touch the bio-artifacts.”
“Understood.” A rush of relief filled him. The team could get out of here. Not one of them was an Imperialist known to him. He couldn’t relay orders to Jahidh and the others in front of them. “We are a complement of eight Beholden, one Bio-tech, two Engineers, and myself.” He rattled off their names as fast as he could. As soon as he received the acknowledgment, he opened the general lines to his team. “We’re under orders to evacuate. Shuttle Pad eighteen. Walk quickly. Don’t touch the bio-artifacts.”
The Beholden grabbed hands, partnering up like they’d all been taught as children. In a quick march they stepped through the doorway. The crab ignored them. It kept tearing at the membrane. A third and fourth crab had found the air processor and had their claws into the hoses. The holes grew as if eaten by acid. A fifth crab hopped out of the tank and hurried to help chew away at the comm terminal.
The Engineers snatched up their personal terminals and dived out through the tattered membrane.
The Bio-tech hadn’t moved.
“Evacuate, Holrosh,” said Kelat. “Let’s go.’”
“The artifact,” he replied doggedly. “We can’t leave it.” His hands danced across the tank’s control boards. “Help me get it into the support capsule.”
“We will get another.” A sixth crab had emerged from the tank. It scrambled straight toward the analysis pads that the Engineers had laid against the chamber’s far wall.
“I’m sure that’s what the Ancestors said.” Holrosh watched his monitors intently. “Now help me, Contractor!”
Kelat palmed the control on the gurney that held the support capsule. It hummed as it came to life and he shoved it toward Holrosh.
“They’re taking Broken Trail!”
“We have to let them. We cannot leave her there.”
She is an Eye. I will keep her safe. If the Hand will reach and the Eye will see, there are still ways to fetch her back to you. I will keep this Eye safe as I kept you safe.
“Stop!” ordered a voice in the Proper tongue.
Kelat and Holrosh froze. The voice came from the walls, it came from the ceiling and the floor.
“You will not remove her,” it said. It was neither a man’s voice, nor
a woman’s. “She is not yours.”
The crabs had paused in their work like single-phase statues, or like drones suddenly switched off.
Kelat touched his suit’s wrist controls and opened the helmet’s speaker. “Who are you?”
“We are the Nameless Powers. This is our Realm. You will leave it now and leave the People alone.”
“No,” said Holrosh stolidly. “This is the Home Ground. This is our world stolen from our Ancestors.”
Kelat glanced down. “Holrosh.” He gestured to the floor. The entire surface gleamed with gel, the same blue-grey stuff that had swallowed the Beholden whole. “Holrosh, leave it. We need to get out of here, now. I hold your name,” he reminded the Bio-tech, committing a gross impropriety in doing so. “Walk out of here.”
Holrosh saw the layer of gel covering the floor. His hands fell away from the tank controls. He walked toward the entranceway, picking his steps carefully so he wouldn’t fall on the slick surface. The crabs returned to their work, scraping away the products of Vitae technology as if all the metal and polymer and silicate was as insubstantial as sand.
Holrosh vanished through what was left of the membrane. Kelat glanced at the pressure monitor on his wrist. There was no air left in the chamber. The gel had not receded into the floor.
“Jahidh?” he said, trying to force a measure of stern assurance into his tone.
“No,” said the voice.
Kelat’s heart slammed once against his ribs. “The artifacts,” he whispered. It had to be, that was the only other answer.
“The world,” the voice told him.
Kelat felt the littlest finger on his right hand, the one he’d had regrown, try to curl up. “This is our world,” he said. “This is the work of our Ancestors. It is ours to claim. You are ours.”
“Never yours. Three thousand years have passed and you still don’t understand that. Leave here now, Aunorante Sangh, or never leave at all.
“Leave.”
Kelat turned and fled. Shame followed fast on his heels. Holrosh was right. This was the Home Ground. This was what the Imperialists, what the whole of the Vitae, sought to claim. This was the war the Ancestors had left for them to fight and he was running like a child from a nightmare.
The world had ordered him to leave, though. The work of the Ancestors had ordered him. How could he defy the work of the Ancestors? How could any of them? His ears rang with the memory of the voice that had surrounded him like the walls of the chamber did.
How can we defy the Home Ground itself if it does not want us back?
He crossed the decimated threshold and kept on going. He joined a stream of Beholden and full-ranks. Even Witness’s green suits flashed in the flood as they all tried to remember how to evacuate calmly. They followed the lines of lights toward the shaft that had been rigged with a ladder, which was supposed to be a temporary measure until the Engineers designed a practical mechanical lift.
When Kelat reached the ladder, he climbed as fast as he could grip the rungs. A thin film of gel still clung to the bottoms of his boots. He felt the soles of his feet begin to itch, as if the gel had reached them already. His wrist terminal said his suit was sound and sealed, but the itching did not go away.
“Who are these new ones?”
These are their security personnel.
“What’s that they’re carrying?”
“Solvents, incendiaries, glues. Can we defend against them?”
Easily.
Kelat climbed out of the hatchway and onto the remains of a rained building’s main floor. Past the foundations, the Home Ground’s surface was alive. No crabs crawled through the near-vacuum. Instead, smooth, crystalline fingers as thick as a human torso thrust themselves out of the ground. A trio of living silicate vines wrapped around a transport and squeezed down. Kelat’s disk vibrated from the screams. A scarlet-suited security team launched themselves at the fingers, spraying solvents or glues from tanks on their backs. The fingers ignored them and continued to squeeze. The Vitae inside continued to scream.
“Keep moving! Keep moving!” The order came across his disk. Kelat forced his feet to keep going, forced his eyes to stay fixed on the shuttle pad that he could just now see between the colored backs of the other personnel.
Inside his glove, his regrown finger spasmed painfully.
Beware your own creations, Vitae, said a voice from childhood lessons inside his head. Beware your own creations.
We thought it was the human-derived artifacts we needed to tame. We thought the world was ours already. How do we fight the ground we’re standing on? When it’s ordered us away, what can we do to defy it?
Security was trying. A pair of them fired off an incendiary from a tripod-mounted launcher. It arced through the air and burst against one of the crystal fingers as it stretched toward a second transport. The crystal shriveled like a burning leaf. The sparks died quickly in the thin air. Another incendiary went up and the finger collapsed into ash.
The dust started to ripple. It hunched up under the security team’s feet. A whip of silicate wrapped around the Beholden’s ankles and dragged them down. More screams. Kelat’s hand slapped his helmet over his ear. He wanted to shut them out. He didn’t want to hear them die. They were dying. No question. They were being pulled under the dust and scrubbed to pieces, just like the equipment in the chamber. They’d be made into more dust for the Nameless Powers to use against the Vitae.
Perhaps it’s right and proper, part of him wanted to laugh. Now they, too, are the work of the Ancestors. Dust coated the tips of his boots. He could feel it against his feet, working its way up his ankles. It lay against his skin, waiting for him to slow down. Waiting for him to ignore the orders he had been given to leave here.
Kelat stumbled across the edge of the shuttle pad. The ship waited like a gleaming haven. Dust crept across the edges of the pad and he bit down hard on his tongue to keep from screaming. It was coming for them. All of them. They weren’t moving fast enough. They weren’t moving well enough, just as they hadn’t come in well enough. They were unworthy and the Ancestors would take them back to become part of the real work if they did not obey orders.
Security flanked the shuttle doors, bodily restraining anyone who panicked. That was good. That was right and proper. All proprieties had to be observed now. Kelat moved, quickly, calmly, just like all the evacuation drills dictated. He climbed up the ramp. He didn’t push. He didn’t cry. He found an empty seat and he sat. His finger twitched, but he did not. He would not. He was calm. He was not panicking. He was Vitae and a Contractor. He was in control although the world itself had gone mad. He had not. He would not.
The Engineer next to him had switched on the seat’s terminal. The camera picked up the sight of two aircraft streaking overhead toward the World’s Wall.
“Maybe they’ve found what’s causing this,” suggested the Engineer. “The bombs seem to have some effect.”
“No.” Kelat’s voice was properly emotionless. “There’s nothing they can do.”
The aircraft faltered in their paths. Maybe the dust had found their navigation computers. Maybe some radiation or scrambling signal had reached them. They dived straight for the mountainside.
“You see?” Kelat said to the Engineer as the craft exploded in a puff of dust and fire. “This is the work of the Ancestors, and now, so are they.”
Kelat turned his eyes straight forward and folded his hands on his lap. His new finger ticked in time with his steady heartbeat. He’d have to see about having it removed again, as soon as they returned home.
They are gone, said the Mind.
“Not far enough. They still orbit the sun. They still watch. We must…we must…”
You are exhausted. This is a task for a hundred, not for two. You must rest.
“We must order them away! We must speak to them all!”
I have no machinery I can use for this. I have no such transmitters left.
“You do. Its name is Adu. It
should still be in range.”
Barely. Reach out.
The Hand stretched with all its strength.
Yes, we can touch it.
The voice rang through every terminal, every disk in the shuttle. “I am Adudorias. I am Voice for the Realm of the Nameless Powers.”
Kelat raised his eyes toward the shuttle’s ceiling. He began tugging at his little finger.
“The Rhudolant Vitae have been declared Aunorante Sangh,” said Adudorias. The voice of the Ancestors.
Kelat tightened his grip on his regrown finger. Tug, tug, tug.
“If you seek to contact the Realm and the People, you must do so in penance and peace.”
Tug, tug, tug.
“Until then, when the Eyes see you, the Hands will move against you.”
Tug, tug, tug.
“The Mind will accept no thought from you.”
Tug, tug, tug.
“Leave.”
Tug, tug, tug.
The Moderator’s voice, the one voice all Vitae knew instantly, sounded over the public channels. She sounded not calm, but half-dead. “Withdraw, Vitae. Come home.”
And that was all. Kelat tugged harder at his finger. Its joints began to strain.
With luck, he could have it off by the time they docked with the Grand Errand. He could feed it to the gel and dust that clung to his boots, and it would be satisfied. The Ancestors would be satisfied. They would not then call him to their work.
He would be safe then.
Kelat pulled harder.
Now they are gone. They are pulling their satellites and shuttles into their main ships. They are releasing their tethers.
“Not far enough. Not yet.”
You are placing too much strain upon yourselves. I will not let you die. I cannot. You will return when you have rested. Then we will work. I will wait.
The Mind pushed. The Hand and the Eye lost their concentration and fell away.
The namestone thudded to the floor and Eric’s hand dropped against Aria’s. Aria couldn’t hold her own hand up and it fell to her side. Her lips were cracked and dry. Her eyes could barely blink and every limb of her body felt like it was made of lead. She looked up at Eric. His skin had a grey pallor.