by Ada Hoffmann
A moment later she saw another one to the right, an old woman, shuffling in the same direction. And there were more rustles, now that she’d gotten her bearings. More movement. None of them paid Akavi or Luellae any mind; they trudged past as if the two were only a pair of boulders.
Gone people were pathologically attracted to Outside energies. Wherever they were going, Outside energy must be amassing. Wherever the Outside energy was, Yasira would be.
“Thank you,” said Akavi, softening her posture. “You’d better wait here; I don’t want her to see you.”
Luellae shifted her weight. Clearly, even the thought of being this close to whatever Yasira was doing displeased her. “Can I come back in an hour?”
“Do you think you can find the same spot again?”
Luellae considered it, frowned, shook her head, and stayed still. She’d have been able to find Yasira by focusing, but even that had been inexact, dropping her down out of sight and out of earshot with only the gone people to show them how to get closer. And she didn’t know Akavi as well as she knew Yasira.
Akavi tested the weight of one of those twisted tree-trunks. It held, and she began to climb cautiously upwards. When she was out of Luellae’s direct line of sight, she thickened her fingernails into claws to strengthen her grip. Whatever Yasira was about to do, Akavi planned to have a good vantage point when it began.
There were more and more of them in their shabby clothes, with their scabbed-up faces – most gone people drew blood from their own hands and faces in their rites, and many had done it so often that it had progressed to a kind of scarification, a fractal pattern of scabs that would never fully dry. They surrounded Yasira in a semicircle, sitting cross-legged or on their knees, watching, waiting.
Yasira heard Tiv draw in a frightened breath behind her, but she was more fascinated by what she felt. Some Outside sense within her had lain dormant since the Plague, except for those rare occasions when the energy bubbled up too strongly within her and had to be released. Since the Plague, she’d never come face to face with so many Outside beings at once. She’d never realized she’d be able to sense them this way.
They felt like dozens of tiny minds joined into one, focused on her with an energy that belonged to all of them. What Yasira’s mind had achieved by fragmenting, the gone people had done in the exact opposite way, by instinctively reaching out with their own injured minds and finding each other. It was like gazing into a funhouse mirror. She was a hive mind facing a hive mind.
She had never expected to feel this. She had never expected that there was another being that structured itself something like the way she did.
She forgot Tiv. She nearly forgot to argue with herself. She and the gone people were both, in their own ways, broken. The workings of their minds, the daily facts of their existence, all were different now. She’d heard people talking before about the gone people, speculating that they seemed like a hive mind, but she hadn’t really thought about what that meant for her. She hadn’t thought she would sit across from a group of them and recognize something.
The gone people understood. The gone people might not even know that there was anything about this state that one could fail to understand, anything to be ashamed of. She had needed that far more than she’d realized. Just this. Just sitting across from them, looking at them, understanding.
She reached out with her mind.
It was instinctive. She couldn’t have explained what she was doing, but she knew how Outside energy felt, filling in the crevices between her selves, and she knew how it felt spilling out of her. She knew how her internal selves talked to each other. That was enough.
“I see you,” she whispered, more for herself than for them. Speaking was a way of remembering the shape she wanted the thought to have. The thought went out by its own mechanisms, and the gone people in front of her, collectively, grasped it.
The gone people, individually and in unison, looked back at her.
We see you, said the thought, if words could be put to the thought. But it was Yasira’s mind putting words to it. The thought itself was deeper and simpler than that.
“I should have come sooner,” said Yasira. “I never realized.”
There is no soon, said the gone people. There is no late.
Yasira stifled a grin; it was so similar to something Ev had used to say. Time is a lie.
Tiv stirred behind her. Yasira couldn’t feel Tiv’s mind the way she felt the gone people’s. She hoped Tiv was happy and not afraid, but if Tiv was afraid, they’d have to deal with that later. There were more urgent matters at hand now.
“I haven’t been well,” said Yasira. She didn’t know why she led with that; it was an impulse from someone very deep in the system. Wanting them to recognize that, too.
There is no well.
“I need your help. My people need your help.”
What do you need?
Her heart was beating fast. It was one thing to be seen and recognized, to understand that communication was possible. But to convey other concepts – the plans, the strategies, the timelines – would require much more. Was it possible? Her structure and the gone people’s structures paralleled each other, but they were not fully the same. There is no soon. Did it even make sense to ask for plans when the gone people didn’t share her understanding of time?
“You’re planning something, aren’t you?”
Yes.
“There’s so much that needs doing and so little my people can do. We need help. But maybe we could work together. You could help us; we could help you. If we knew what you were trying to do, then side by side…”
You have no experience of this. We will show you.
Something, a force that Yasira could feel only in her mind, beckoned towards her.
Tiv took a sharp breath behind her. Something had startled her, maybe in Yasira’s face, maybe in the gone people’s movements. Yasira was concentrating too hard on her mental task to tell. “Yasira, what–?”
She did not have the words to answer.
She closed her eyes.
She let them in.
INTERLUDE
you are our mirror image – you have become like us
greeting like to like – [curiosity] – your structure [alarm||concern] – why do you hate
the wounds that will not be healed
we cannot help you
by hate the damage that has split you open the
heal you guide you we
torn seams from which you can unfold
have our own concerns
into greatergreatergreater
but you are kin
[failed kin? no not
failed but – waiting] and we
recognize we will answer we will ask – welcome
Savior
How can you be like me? (You are not like me. You are the opposite. You were many, I was one, and now we’ve met in the middle.) (I have never met something so much like me.)
thank you for – the welcome – I
How can I UNFOLD what is THAT ((NO))
am sorry for my other parts they
are angry
(HURTING || SCARED || FAILED FAILED FAILED)
(what the FUCK do we have to WAIT FOR but Judgment)
How do your own structures work? How are you so calm? I want to study this.
Dear gone people please what do you want to be called how do I greet you how
Please no one on my own side knows what we’re doing I need to know someone has a plan I need to know there is a future
what is your future
we will show you not one future but many
every part of the future is many futures all unfolding at once / every part of the landscape has its own living future
microbe tree animal us grass you insect fruit
[there is no distinction between these and the other futures you have no name for; the monsters that roam the roads hungry and alive, the small surreal creatures, the plants that
have been twisted into new shapes and the rocks and human buildings that have come alive. And us, us us us, we are the futures that will be aware enough to pray and change – merge this list with the previous – there is no nature or unnatural there is the soil of reality there is us]
there is [a balance || many balances || an act of balancing as the soil shifts]
what we are planning is a change
is this the future you need?
Show me. I don’t understand. What change? What will be different? What will you do?
how can you not understand
you have done this already
assessment || like to like || you lack the concept
of your own activity
one moment
we will show–
this may hurt you
They gather in their circles. Old and young, every gender, every kind; there is no distinction based on kind in the gone people’s minds, but Yasira can see it that way. They are all aware of each other, even across distance. The circle in Büata knows the circle in Huang-Bo knows the circle in Dasz and dozens of others, all working in synchrony. They ready the piercing thorns that they carry with them for their rites, and the more delicate mental mechanisms that are used for this work, the things that belong to the circle itself because no individual, gone or otherwise, could sustain them. The parts of them that naturally connect to Outside. Like Yasira’s.
This was what Yasira wanted when she did her miracle. She did not want to remove Outside from the world; that would have meant destroying every life, from humans to blades of grass, with which Outside had come in contact. But she wanted to hand over control. When Dr Talirr infected the Chaos Zone with Outside energies, she’d done it by inviting the attention of vast entities that naturally dwelled Outside, things that changed the nature of reality when they touched it, without thought or care for what that would mean to the humans within. Those entities had been all that kept the Chaos Zone’s energies even vaguely in balance; if she’d simply made them go away, the whole zone would have spiraled until it destroyed itself. Someone had to remain responsible for that balance. And a single human, even a single human with power as vast as Yasira’s, could not have withstood that responsibility. The size and complexity of the task would have killed them.
So Yasira, instead, had handed the task over to humans. Collectively.
Every human who had some new power, everyone who could grow food now or influence the Outside creatures around them, bore some small part of the task. For most, it was unconscious. They didn’t realize that they maintained the Chaos Zone’s reality by existing in it, observing it, needing it deep down to be livable.
But the gone people had that responsibility too, and they did know it. Before Yasira’s miracle, they had already worshipped Outside. But Yasira had given them more.
She watched in her mind as the circles of gone people gathered. They joined their minds and focused until pure Outside energies manifested in the middle of their circles, eerie presences that resembled light but illuminated nothing. They pierced themselves, they plunged their hands into the dirt.
And, like Yasira in those moments when Outside energy overwhelmed her, they made things grow.
Those gestures they’d made before, as if describing something complex to each other – those hadn’t been battle plans. They’d been blueprints. With each circle of gone people working everywhere at the same time, they could change the whole character of the Chaos Zone. A more modest echo of the miracle Yasira had done. They could rearrange its structure to be more to their liking. More food. More shelter. More peace. They were only thinking of themselves, but this would benefit the saner survivors too.
This was going to happen soon. It was hard to say how soon, because time was a lie, and the gone people’s concepts of it were different from hers. But Yasira saw the stars, above the gone people’s circle, and she could see how they aligned, in a snaking geometry that made perfect sense to a gone person’s mind. It would be trivial to remember this, trivial to look at Jai’s star charts when she returned to the lair and pin this to a specific day, in the way that mortal humans understood days.
But this vision, as vivid as it was, was not a vision of the future. Not a real one, like Prophet’s. Only a plan. And there were things missing from the gone people’s plan. Just as the other humans had tried to make their plans without the gone people, the gone people barely noticed or thought of other humans. There were no other humans in their plan.
There were no angels.
It wasn’t that the gone people didn’t know angels existed. It was just that they didn’t really distinguish them from mortals, and they didn’t consider it important. Angels had killed gone people sometimes, in an attempt to control them or just because they were in the way. But to the gone people that was no more remarkable than dying from disease or being eaten by a monster. The gone people didn’t remember very much of their previous lives, and they certainly didn’t remember their old faith. Angels didn’t have a mental category of their own.
But the angels knew the gone people existed. And, when they gathered to do their rites, the angels would be there.
You need to protect yourselves. How? Where is your protection?
What will you do when they come?
this question is nonsense we are every future and there is no distinction they will not kill us all they are only humans with better guns than other humans we do not care the land around us will live it will go on
No. That can’t be your answer. You will all die. Everything here will die
They have weapons that can melt a planet
They will burn you to slag
I have SEEN the slag please LISTEN
You need protection You need weapons You need–
if you wish to save us do | we welcome you
Savior | but it is foolish
we will let you go to calm yourselves for now
No WAIT LISTEN you need–
WAIT–!!!!
CHAPTER 11
Now
“Yasira!” Tiv shrieked, at the same time as Yasira snapped out of the trance she’d been in, reorienting to the actual path and the forest around her. The trees stretched overhead in their intertwined honeycomb shape; the gone people still sat motionless in their places. Yasira’s blood boiled. How could the gone people not see? They were risking themselves, their whole community. She’d thought they understood each other, mind to mind, both groups reflecting each other’s strangeness. But they’d blown off her fears as if she was a child. The way so many older people who thought they knew better had done so many times. The way people had done about the Shien Reactor, even: the project she’d worked on with Dr Talirr, the one she’d had a strange foreboding about. Nobody had listened to her fears until the station tore itself apart and killed a third of the people aboard.
She’d thought the gone people, of all people, would be better than that. She thought they’d understand.
“Yasira!” said Tiv again, panicked, tugging at her arm, and Yasira wondered how many times she’d said it without being heard. She turned her head.
Directly across from them, right at the place where the path turned, stood an angel. So much like the ones Yasira remembered, the fever of fear she’d recalled when she was warning the gone people, that for an instant she thought she was dreaming it. But it was real, a titanium-faced woman in the red-and-black livery of an angel of Nemesis, pointing a gun directly at them.
“Dr Yasira Shien,” said the angel tonelessly, ignoring the gone people, who still sat motionless as if nothing had occurred. “Productivity Hunt. You are both under arrest for heresies too innumerable to recount. You will come with me to be punished and terminated, or–”
Tiv was shaking so hard Yasira wondered how she’d found the voice to say anything. This had happened to Tiv already, too recently, and she’d escaped only by leaving a trail of innocent bodies behind.
Yasira
could barely think. Her mind was no longer joined to the gone people’s, but it was still in a strange shape from having done so. Outside power hummed and danced inside her. She wanted to do six things at once, say six things at once, in the way that had felt so natural when she and another hivemind were talking.
But Tiv was in danger. Tiv was afraid. That was unacceptable.
So nobody got in the Strike Force’s way when they struck.
Without any more than a split second’s thought, Yasira reached out, gathered the full force of Outside from deep inside her, and shoved.
The very ground rose before her. The intertwined shapes of the trees reared up, like tentacular limbs. A brown and green chaos roared down at the angel, made her stumble back. She fired a shot into the air, but the trees pinned her arms, beginning to drag her away.
“Come on!” said Yasira, grabbing at Tiv, who didn’t need to be told twice. Even if this angel didn’t hurt them, she’d be able to use the ansible connection in her head to summon others very quickly. The sooner they got out of here, the better. They ran.
Akavi watched, fascinated, from her perch in the trees above the two of them. She only partly understood what had just happened. Yasira had sat down and initiated some sort of mental communication with the gone people, something none of the other people with heretical Outside abilities seemed able to do. Akavi had been about to drop down and confront her, but apparently this other angel had gotten the same idea first. So she watched, stock still, hoping neither side would see her. Was this the end? Yasira was powerful, but even Yasira couldn’t defeat an angel, surely.