Empire of Bones

by Liz Williams

  “What are you saying?”

  Your neural pathways are filled with echoes. Of other traces. Look at me, Ir Yth said, and ignoring the bouncing of the vehicle she put her hands to either side of Kharishma’s face. Her palms were soft, and unpleasantly moist. Kharishma struggled to escape, but the raksasa held her fast.

  “Amir! Stop the car!” Kharishma squeaked, but as she opened her mouth even wider to protest further the raksasa’s long red tongue whipped between Kharishma’s lips. There was a sharp sting in the roof of her mouth, and the tongue was abruptly withdrawn. Ir Yth sat meditatively back. Kharishma’s mouth was flooded with the hot iron taste of blood.

  “Amir,” she cried, indistinctly. The ATV swerved off the road and stopped with a jerk. Tokai peered nervously over his shoulder.

  “What’s going on?”

  Anand leaned over the back of the seat and grabbed the raksasa by the collar of her robe, hauling her forward. The vehicle filled with the icy emanations of the raksasa’s fury, but to Kharishma’s considerable, if pain-filled, admiration, Anand hung on.

  “What are you doing to her?” Tokai barked.

  Let me go!

  “Let her go, Anand. At once!” Tokai’s voice carried the whip-crack of command. Reluctantly, Anand released Ir Yth, and she settled into the corner of the seat, grumbling inaudibly.

  The next time you lay hands on me, you will die.

  “It will be worth it,” Anand informed her coldly. Then he spun the wheel, taking them back onto the road to Khokandra.

  9.

  Khaikurriyë

  To Nowhere One’s manifest relief, IrEthiverris remembered a great deal about Arakrahali.

  “Uploads to my First Body were frequent,” he told Anarres and Nowhere One as he sat disconsolately at the edge of the living area. “I intended to make even more regular updates, but my khaith administrator kept coming to me with this, that, and the other. She also seemed to have become very friendly with her Receiver. He was quite a young man, and I suppose he found my administrator exotic—the people of Arakrahali were quite short, so maybe he saw her as tall and slender, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m sure they were lovers. I kept finding them whispering together, and after a couple of months I noticed that people would vanish whenever I came near them. It was as though they didn’t trust me. And by the time I did my last information upload the atmosphere in the place had totally changed. They’d never seemed particularly delighted that we were colonizing them, but they were resigned to it. But then they seemed to grow more and more hostile. And finally I discovered the truth—the khaith had sabotaged the communications network, and turned it against them. That’s when they started to die. It was the last upload I made. I’ve no idea what happened to my Second Body.” He blinked into the sunlight. “A dreadful situation. Those poor people. I must say, though, it’s nice to be home. Even under these conditions. And Arakrahali cuisine was awful. I’d rather eat house lice.”

  Anarres slid down beside IrEthiverris and explained about Sirru. He stared at her in horror.

  “Does anyone know what’s happening on Tekhei?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “But if anything happens to Sirru’s Second Body, then that’s it—he’ll be dead. And why wasn’t my First Body erased?”

  “I rather suspect that’s the plan,” Nowhere One remarked.

  “You’ve only got your First Body because I couldn’t find it,” Anarres said.

  “What?”

  “When I first went to the orbital, to erase Sirru’s manifold, EsRavesh gave me another set of coordinates and told me to erase that manifold as well. But I couldn’t find it without the locative. We’re sure it was your manifold.”

  IrEthiverris gaped at her. “You tried to erase my First Body? What have I ever done to you?”

  “I’m truly sorry.” Anarres faltered. “I was a different person then. I did what the khaithoi told me.”

  “I think I want a bit more of an apology than that, young lady!”

  “This can surely wait,” Nowhere One soothed. “We have an urgent matter on our hands. We have to contact Sirru and tell him to be very careful. Otherwise, he’ll be dead.”

  10.

  Yamunotri, Himalaya

  Next day, Rajira and Halil could not be woken. They lay against the wall with Rajira’s arm curled protectively around the child’s slight frame. Rakh stood over them, scowling with worry.

  “We can’t leave them here,” Rakh said.

  “No, we can’t. But we can’t take the risk of Anand’s finding us, now it seems likely that he knows where we are.” Frustrated, Jaya leaned her cheek against the cool stone lintel. “How to avoid him, though? And we don’t know who else might be on our trail, either. The militia, foreign spies…”

  “We don’t know what’s wrong with Rajira and the boy. They might die. Can’t the alien do something?”

  “Sirru,” said Jaya grimly, “already has.” She explained about the communications network. Rakh’s eyes narrowed as he tried to understand.

  “So all these people—you, and these two, and others—are now linked. By a kind of virus. Why are you not in a coma, then?”

  “Because I think my system was modified on the ship.” She took a deep breath, not wanting to acknowledge her next words. “I might be more like Sirru now than I am like a human.”

  “You are still my brother’s wife. My sister,” Rakh said gently, responding to the sense of loss in her words.

  “Thank you, Rakhi.”

  “How does it work, this net of disease? And you say Amir Anand is part of it?”

  “Anand must have become infected through one of Rajira’s line.” She grimaced. “I can see how Kharishma might drive a man to seek out prostitutes…Sirru tried to explain about the network. He said that what we think of as diseases are mutations of systems that the írRas left when they first came to this planet, millions of years ago. They are our creators, Rakh. They started us off, linking our genes with a symbiotic set of diseases. But something went wrong on this world. Sirru’s people don’t get sick. They don’t live forever; they wear out eventually, or suffer heart failure, or simply choose not to continue. But they don’t suffer from the range of viral and bacterial infections that we do. They use diseases as mechanisms for all sorts of things: communication, information storage, learning. But those ‘diseases’ are benign. Sirru wants to set the world right again. Or so he says. And I’m not sure what ‘right’ might mean.”

  “And do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’m beginning to. But you see, Rakh, he can influence people to think things, and I don’t know how much of it is me and how much of it is Sirru making me have ideas.”

  “If you can think that,” Rakh said, “then it is possible that he is not influencing you. It seems to me that he’s powerful enough to make you unquestioning. Your uncertainty has always been your strength.”

  Jaya stared at him. “And here was I thinking you all followed me because of my wonderful sense of conviction.”

  “No. We followed you because you questioned yourself, all the time. You were never a blind leader, wrapped up in your own sense of surety. And that is why I am following you now. Do what you think is best,” Rakh said. “I will support you.”

  “Then stay here,” Jaya said. “Stay here with Shiv Sakai and guard Rajira and Halil. If they wake, then try to get them somewhere safer. I will go on with Sirru.”

  For a moment, she thought Rakh was going to balk at that, but then he gave her a wintry, rueful smile. “After all my fine words… Very well. I have talked myself into the trap, haven’t I?”

  “We don’t have very many choices. I don’t want to leave them here, but if we can’t wake them… There are no settlements anywhere nearby; vehicles can’t get up here. And I have to get Sirru to a place where no one can find him. I’ll explain things to him.”

  But when she attempted to do this, she discovered to her dismay that the alien had other plans.
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  “It is too late. I told you: Ir Yth already knows where we are, and so do her new allies,” Sirru explained.

  “How?”

  “Haven’t you heard them?”

  “I’m hearing things all the time, but I can close it off. I have to. It’s just voices whispering in my head like a damned echo chamber. I’d go mad if I couldn’t tune it out.”

  “Then you have not learned who it is who is whispering. Anand is now a part of the network—you know this—and so is his consort, your Second Body.”

  “Please stop calling her that.”

  “Kharishma, then.” He stumbled over the name. “We are all linked, now, by only a few degrees of separation. I can see through their eyes—flashes, glimpses, fragments, but enough. And they can see through ours. They do not yet understand what is happening, but I believe that Ir Yth does. I saw her, out of the eyes of your Second—via Kharishma. Anand knows this country, Jaya. He knows where we are, and he can come for us whenever he wants—at least before the network gains critical mass and comes on-line.”

  “When will that be?”

  “It is not far off now. But Ir Yth has other plans. I have learned from Anand that she is concocting an antidote to the virus that facilitates the network. This is what Anand has been told, anyway. I doubt very much that Ir Yth will stop there. I believe she has a more wide-scale termination in mind.” He was speaking fluently now, Jaya noticed, and the accent was flattening out to resemble her own speech.

  Jaya said, “Then how can we stop her?”

  “We need to use her allies to our own advantage. The truth,” Sirru said, “needs to be spread. But I will need your help, and that of Rajira and the child.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Come here,” Sirru whispered.

  She took a step back. “Not before you tell me what you’re going to do.”

  “I am going to send the truth down the lines of the network, to Kharishma.”

  “Why to her?” His gaze met her own, and she could see the calm ruthlessness in his eyes. She wondered whether he even realized that it was there.

  “Because she is already half mad, and she might be easier to convince than others. I do not know if this is possible yet. But I need you, now.” He held out his hands, palms upturned. Warily, Jaya edged forward and took his hands in hers.

  “Jaya,” he said, almost fondly, and pulled her forward so that her head was resting against his breastbone. She could hear the slow beat of his heart, far within. And then it was as though the wall of his chest was opening up, so that there was no flesh and bone and blood between them, but only limitless space. She wondered, for an unnerved moment, what sex with him would be like. It felt strange, to be both invader and invaded.

  She could sense Sirru—the outer walls of personality, emotions ebbing and flowing like a tide, carefully regulated and controlled for the most part but with sudden eddies and currents that, Jaya suspected, took Sirru himself by surprise. Across what seemed like a great gulf, she could sense constraints, the duties and compulsions and functions that formed the core of his being. For a disconnected moment, she experienced herself as Sirru did: similar in structure, but far less ordered and cohesive, as though she were nothing more than a rind encasing a mass of undifferentiated impulses. The impression was not a pleasant one.

  But then they swept by each other and into the embryonic reaches of the viral net. Jaya was suddenly aware of the sleeping forms of Rajira and Halil, and the mesh that was forming itself inside their minds: an array, ready to receive and transmit. Beyond them, at what seemed like no greater distance, were others.

  Ready? Sirru’s speech reverberated through her body.

  Ready. I think.

  Now.

  11.

  Khokandra Palace

  Kharishma lay very still, hoping that the voice would go away. She had been hearing it off and on throughout the night. She tried to ignore it, but the voice was lodged in her head like an insect in amber. It was soft and insidious; it poured poison into her ear, but it was also seductive. It spoke to her sense of honor and necessity, flattering her vanity and her need for power. It told her that she and she alone could set matters right. It told her that Ir Yth had lied. It told her that Ir Yth must be disposed of, and how this might be done. The thought of killing the raksasa was an appealing one. Kharishma had come to fear Ir Yth: the terrible assault in the car, the way the raksasa could turn her knees to water with a single glance, the manner in which she could make Kharishma feel emotions that she had no desire to experience. Kharishma huddled against the pillows, thinking that it would be good to do the bidding of the voice and get rid of Ir Yth. But then the door opened and the raksasa herself appeared.

  It took only a single glance for Kharishma to see that Ir Yth was perfectly well aware of what had just transpired. She tried to leap from the bed and run, but she was paralyzed. A chilly languor spread through her veins, and her head was suddenly too heavy to support. It lolled grotesquely back against the pillows as though she were nothing more than a broken doll. She could feel a thin thread of saliva trickle from the corner of her mouth.

  “Don’t,” she whispered, through locked lips.

  The raksasa glided closer, to stand over Kharishma. You have been listening to lies. I know. I can hear them in your head. But since you have become a nexus, you might as well be made use of.

  Methodically, the raksasa began to fold back her sleeve, baring a pale, soft forearm.

  Do you know what you have become?

  Kharishma tried to gesture “no,” but she couldn’t move her head. She tried to think of nothing, fixing her gaze on the cracks in the plaster and concentrating with all her might. But slowly her body arched back, until her heels were dragging along the sheets and she was bent in a strychnine curve above the bed.

  Let me into your head, the raksasa commanded, or I will snap your spine.

  Kharishma, bent like a bow, was abruptly unstrung. She collapsed back onto the bed, and the raksasa’s presence surged through her mind.

  You will be the first weak link, Ir Yth said, with grim satisfaction. The skin of Ir Yth’s forearm peeled back, layer by layer, until it oozed droplets of dark and oily blood. The raksasa held her wrist above Kharishma’s gaping mouth, and then a single drop of blood coalesced and dropped. It seemed to the stricken woman that it took an eternity to fall, as though the world had slowed and stopped. Then the blood splashed across her tongue, stinging as it went. Kharishma began to shake, a tremor that began at the tip of her tongue and passed down her body like lightning, leaving a trail of neural fire in its wake. Her mouth gaped open, but her throat was sealed, the muscles refusing to respond; she could not scream. The virus was racing through her cells, searching for the initial infection. Distantly she understood what Ir Yth had done. The virus would itself infect the communications network, sending instructions of mutation down the viral lines until each nexus convulsed into death.

  Amir! Kharishma shouted, inside her head, but he was already awake and aware. She snatched a glimpse of the stairwell that led from the main hall of the palace to her bedroom as he raced up the stairs. She tried to shut herself down, but she couldn’t fight the invader within. The enormity of what Ir Yth was prepared to do suddenly crashed in upon her consciousness; it was as though all Kharishma’s inflated self-importance and paranoia and sense of destiny had contributed to this moment and to her realization of what she had to undertake. Anand was coming through the door, the gun raised; Ir Yth turned, but he was already poised to fire.

  No! Kharishma cried, inside his mind. Me, Amir! She’s infected the network You have to kill me! Before it’s too late!—And to her horror and triumph and surprise, he turned the gun on her and fired. The bullet hit her square in the chest, and she was flung back against the wall with the force of the impact. There was no pain, and the virus held her fleeing awareness together for a split second, enough for her to see Anand drop to his knees beneath the weight of the raks
asa’s fury, and of his own grief.

  You next, then, Ir Yth hissed, but for Kharishma there was nothing but darkness and stars.

  12.

  Yamunotri, Himalaya

  When Jaya recovered consciousness, it was dawn. She raised her head and discovered that she had been lying in Sirru’s lap. Her cheek was marked with the pattern of the folds of his robe. She was very stiff and very cold, but the life moved swiftly back into her aching limbs. She recovered faster these days; she could not have done this ten years ago. Above her, Sirru’s grave face looked down.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. What happened?”

  “Ir Yth fed something back into the network—instructions for the virus to change, become lethal. But the termination of the nexus prevented further infection.”

  Jaya sat back on her heels, rubbing her neck.

  “You mean Kharishma Kharim died, Sirru. I might have despised her for making a mockery of my life, but that isn’t the point. When you live with death, you learn what it means. She may have been mad, she may have done the right thing for the wrong reasons, but she saved us. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  Sirru said, very gently, “Yes, it does. But death to us is not the same tragedy that it is to you. When you are developed, you will understand this.”

  “God, Sirru. That’s development?”

  “We don’t identify themselves as you do. We can remake her, if you wish.”

  The golden gaze was bewildered. Jaya looked at him and sighed.

  “Just before she died, I saw Anand…If he’s infected too, why didn’t Ir Yth get at him? What happened, Sirru?”

  But the alien only shook his head.

  “I do not know. Anand is like a light that has gone out. I cannot sense him.” He added, diffidently, “If you wish to be away from me for a while, I will understand.”

  Jaya nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. I’ll talk to you later.” She felt as fragile as a moth just emerged from its cocoon, a legacy not only of the time on the network but also of the renewed realization of the differences between Sirru and herself. He was the colonizer, someone to whom the natives were no more than resources to be utilized. And like all colonizers, he thinks he’s doing us a favor.