Twenty Cicada had much the same expression as she did, she suspected: a blissed relaxation of all the tension in his face. This was a place he loved—of course he did, how could he not—which meant, of course, that he’d brought her here to use it as a setting, a frame for the argument he was making to her. A place powerful enough to be worth a detour, rather than bringing her and her work straight to the yaotlek who had ordered it done. This argument must be deeply important to him.
She’d listen. She’d rather have the second-in-command of a Fleet flagship try to manipulate her with humidity and the amazing scent of rice, sorrel, and lotuses growing in hydroponic pools than think about Mahit Dzmare.
“How many people do you feed?” she asked, following Twenty Cicada to the edge of one of the terraced pools. The effect was like standing on a balcony: they leaned on the fine-wrought metal railings of a catwalk, looking down into green.
“The capacity is five thousand,” Twenty Cicada said. “On emergency rations, for three months. With Weight for the Wheel’s usual crew numbers, we’re entirely self-sufficient, at better than subsistence levels.”
“And enough flowers for every deck,” Three Seagrass added. “All those lotuses…”
“As I said: better than subsistence.”
Beauty, then, was part of his definition of self-sufficiency. Three Seagrass had always thought that homeostat-cultists weren’t supposed to like anything overly pretty or overly ugly, but this hydroponics deck was—gorgeous. And so were all the lotuses. Every color: blue and silver-pale, white and the sort of pink that looked like sunrises.
“What are the casualty rates looking like?” she inquired, after a moment of deliberate quiet, the both of them breathing the thick air like nectar. “Aside from Peloa-2. Our casualty rates.”
“Don’t you know?” He lifted the place where his eyebrow would be, under the cloudhook, as if to indicate her Information-issue dress.
“We’re not omniscient by virtue of being in the Information Ministry, ikantlos-prime. And even if we were, there’s a difference between reading reports and hearing from a soldier on the front.”
Twenty Cicada made a small, considering noise: a click of the tongue against the teeth. “Omniscience is somewhat crippled by lack of omnipresence, I’d agree. And—too high. That’s what our casualty rate is. Too high, for a Fleet that is waiting to decide what to do next, who has not yet found the source of these enemies, despite our best scouting efforts throughout the sector.”
We don’t know where they grow, Three Seagrass thought. We don’t even know what the garden heart of their home would look like, except that it wouldn’t look like this deck, this place that Twenty Cicada values. “You’d prefer action,” she said.
“My preferences are hardly the point, Envoy. I merely—dislike waste, and wasteful things.”
And you think these aliens are—offensive. Your word for “offensive” is “wasteful.” Three Seagrass wrapped her fingers around the railing, felt the slick dampness of the metal. “What would you ask them? If they do answer our message and come to talk to us.”
This time, the noise he made was not so considering. “What makes you think they’re going to want to talk? No matter how clever you and the Lsel Ambassador have been in your sound-splicing—oh, bloody stars, one of them’s gotten into the rice again.”
“One of what?” Three Seagrass started, but Twenty Cicada had already swung his hips up over the railing and landed with a splash, water up above his knees and soaking the pants of his uniform. He waded with purpose and annoyance—paused, entirely still, like an ibis waiting to spear a fish with its beak—and ducked to grab a small dark shape from amongst the stalks of rice.
It squalled. He held it out at arm’s length, by the scruff of its neck, and brought it back to her as if it was an unpleasant trophy. “Hold this,” he said, and shoved it through the bars of the railing for Three Seagrass to grab.
“It’s a cat,” she said. It was. A black kitten, by the size of it, with enormous yellow eyes and the usual needle-claws that kittens had, all of which were now sunk into Three Seagrass’s jacket sleeve, and her skin underneath. It was also dripping and damp, and unlike any other cat she had heard of, didn’t seem perturbed by the water.
Twenty Cicada clambered back onto the dry side of the balcony. “It was a cat,” he said darkly, “several thousand years ago before it became an arboreal pest that lives in the mangrove swamps on Kauraan. An arboreal pest that has escaped into the air ducts of my ship because someone on the down-planet team thought they were cute and brought back a pregnant one.”
The kitten climbed onto Three Seagrass’s shoulder. It was very sharp. It also was much better at holding on to her than she remembered kittens being, the last time she’d been close to a kitten, in the sitting room of some patrician’s poetry salon back in the City. That kitten had been fluffy, pale, and uninterested in sitting on her shoulder. This one had very long phalanges, like the fingers of a human being, and a sort of thumb that was quite nearly opposable. “They’re in the air ducts,” she repeated, dumbfounded and delighted.
“They, like me, are everywhere,” said Twenty Cicada, and sighed so as not to laugh. “And they shouldn’t be in here. They’re not native to the hydroponic ecosystem and their waste products have too much ammonia. You can have that one.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?” Three Seagrass asked. “I have a report to give to the yaotlek Nine Hibiscus—I can’t keep a kitten.”
“It won’t stay with you long. Just take it out with you and leave it on a deck that isn’t this one. And don’t worry about Nine Hibiscus. I’ll give her your message.”
“Will you?” Three Seagrass asked, knowing that what she was asking was closer to ought I to trust you, now that you’ve shown me how little you think these enemies are worth talking to at all?
“Nine Hibiscus asked for it,” said her adjutant, as if this fact rendered the universe entirely simple. “So I’ll bring it to her. I always know where she is.”
* * *
He could have gone straight to Nineteen Adze right after he left the Ministry of War. There was no reason not to: it wouldn’t be suspicious. Eight Antidote lived in Palace-Earth, same as the Emperor did, and he went to see her all the time. And he did have—well, not actionable intelligence, like people talked about in spywork holodramas, but useful information of the kind that Her Brilliance had specifically asked for. He could have walked right in.
But it felt wrong. It felt like—oh, like being a tattletale, not a spy. Like being someone else’s ears, instead of his own person, making his own decisions. He would tell her about Ambassador Mahit Dzmare and Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise, of course. And—maybe, probably—about Eleven Laurel’s concern that Her Brilliance didn’t trust the War Ministry. He’d even tell her today. But first—well. First he wanted to really understand, for himself, what he’d learned.
Which was why Eight Antidote had walked into the lobby of the Information Ministry, announced himself with all of his titles, and asked the nice asekreta trainee who was staffing the public information desk to find him someone who could spare a half hour to explain rapid communications through jumpgates to the future Emperor of all Teixcalaan.
“It’s for my education,” Eight Antidote had said, extremely cheerfully, and the trainee had actually stifled a conspiratorial giggle behind her hand. Yes, he thought. You’re helping the heir to the Empire with his homework. Keep thinking that.
He only had to wait a little while, and he kept himself amused by looking at the way the Information Ministry presented itself, so different from the Six Outreaching Palms: clear and clean, serenely white marble walls coupled with ever-present coral-colored accents, like the sleeves of their asekretim had bled into the architecture. Coral inlay on the floor, done in a carnelian-stone mosaic of an enormous chrysanthemum framed by smaller lotuses. Eternity, Eight Antidote remembered from some very long-ago tutoring session, when he’d been extremely small, hardly o
lder than a baby. Everybody learned flowers first. Chrysanthemums are eternity, and lotuses are memory and rebirth, which is why the Information Ministry sigil has got both. They like to think that they know everything and always have and always will. Or at least that’s what Eleven Laurel would say.
He wasn’t sure what he’d say. Yet.
The person who showed up to talk to him was a round, broad-shouldered man with an open sort of face, the kind of face that seemed friendly even when it wasn’t. A good face for an Information Ministry employee.
“Your Excellency,” he said. “I understand you would like to discuss interstellar communication?”
Eight Antidote made himself look like his ancestor-the-Emperor, composed his mouth and eyes into that same knowing, interested, serene expression that had made Nineteen Adze flinch back from him in surprised recognition. He was getting good at it. It worked even on people who hadn’t known his ancestor so well; it was an adult expression, and people got nervous in a useful way when he made it with his kid’s face. “I would, very much,” he said. “If I’m not taking up your valuable time, asekreta—I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“One Cyclamen, Your Excellency,” said the asekreta, “and I have the honor of being the Second Sub-Secretary of the Epistolary Department of the Ministry of Information, which means I am the person who spends a great deal of time on the intricacies of interstellar communication through jumpgates—a process, Your Excellency, which is so very automated and regular that my time is absolutely most valuably spent on informing you about it. Would you like to come into a conference room?”
One Cyclamen was amazingly obsequious, and in such a way that Eight Antidote felt more flattered than annoyed. He wished he could learn that skill. “Yes please,” he said, and wondered what the camera-eyes of the City would think of him now: following an Information agent into a white-and-beige conference room. No holographic strategy tables here, no star-chart outlines of the universe. Only a holoprojector at one end of a regular sort of table, decorously turned down to a low flicker of light. The chairs were too big for him. His feet didn’t touch the floor, so he tucked them up under himself, sitting cross-legged. It was better than letting them swing. He felt steadier.
“How does a message get to the Jewel of the World from thousands of light-years away in just a few hours, Second Sub-Secretary?” he asked, in tones of high politeness, as if he was speaking to one of his tutors. “And can it go faster than usual? Or slower?”
“In the most technical sense, a message cannot go faster or slower than it can be routed through a jumpgate, Your Excellency,” said One Cyclamen. “The jumpgates are our sticking point. Forgive me—you do understand how they work, do you not?”
“If I get confused, I’ll tell you,” Eight Antidote said, and folded his hands together to make a cup for his chin, looking up at One Cyclamen intently. Everyone knew how jumpgates worked. They were like narrow mountain passes: the only way to get from one side to the other was through the aperture. Except instead of two pieces of land with a mountain range dividing them, one side was a sector of space and the other side was a completely different one, which could be anywhere. There wasn’t a connection between the sectors, except for through the gates, and some sectors of Teixcalaanli space, well … no one knew exactly where they were in terms of vectors away from the Jewel of the World. But you could get there, just as easily as you could take the subway out to Plaza Central Nine, if you knew which jumpgate to go through.
And if you didn’t, you’d have to crawl at sublight speeds across the galaxy, hoping to run into where you meant to go before you died. Jumpgates were why the Empire worked.
One Cyclamen was talking, and had been talking for several seconds, and Eight Antidote wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that he had apparently learned to look like he was paying attention when he wasn’t.
“… electronic communication is essentially transmittable at faster-than-light speeds—practically instantaneous!—via our signaling stations within a sector, and has been for hundreds of years. But only physical objects can go through a jumpgate, and only nonphysical ones can be transmitted via the imperial signal service. You see the problem?”
“Someone has to carry the message on an infofiche stick through every jumpgate between its origin and destination.”
“Yes! Which is why I have a job, Your Excellency, incidentally. Or—why my job exists. The Epistolary Department staffs the jumpgate postal services. We’re the only Information workers who fly spaceships—though they’re quite short little flights, back and forth through the jumpgate with the mail, and most of them are automated these days.”
Eight Antidote nodded. “Unpiloted ships.”
“It’s a very simple routing algorithm,” One Cyclamen said, shrugging. “No reason to use a person unless it is a rush job or the jumpgate is very tricky or heavily trafficked.”
A rush job, like Sixteen Moonrise’s. Had Information passed the very message that was so anti-Information? Did Information read the physical messages, or did they merely arrive, a pile of infofiche sticks, like the worst possible heap of unanswered palace mail? Eight Antidote imagined a sack of the things, or a series of crates, and was a bit horrified at the idea of so many messages all at once.
He didn’t ask how a rush job got scheduled. That would be too—obvious. And he was being a spy today. (It was possible that once a person started being a spy, they were going to be one forever, which was definitely something he would need to think about later.) What he asked instead was, “Does Information process everyone’s mail? From all of Teixcalaan?”
One Cyclamen paused. There was a faint line between his eyebrows, a tension line, like he’d just remembered that he was talking to an imperial heir and not any crèche-kid doing an enrichment project. “We don’t process,” he said. “We transmit. Unless ordered to do otherwise by Her Brilliance the Emperor, of course. But I’m sure that’s not what you meant, Your Excellency—perhaps you wanted to know if there were other mail carriers?”
“Are there?” said Eight Antidote, and waited. The waiting was another adult trick. A Nineteen Adze trick. She did it to him all the time: made him answer questions while not knowing why she’d asked them, and learned what he was thinking by how he answered, whether he wanted her to or not.
“Aside from the Fleet, which carries its own orders on its own ships … no official ones,” One Cyclamen said, “but any vessel moving through a jumpgate can carry a message with them, of course. And then there are sector-wide mail services, a great number, some governmental and some private businesses—would you like a list? I can have one prepared and sent to your cloudhook.”
He wasn’t about to turn down information, even if it wasn’t information he currently could think of any actual use for. Except for that moment where One Cyclamen had said the Fleet carries its own orders on its own ships. Had Sixteen Moonrise’s message come in that way? “I’d like that,” he said. “Thank you.” Then he paused, as if he was suddenly remembering another question, and leaned forward on his elbows, smiling wide-eyed—I’m eleven, I’m small, I’m harmless, I’m doing my homework—and asked one more question. “Has anyone ever—delayed jumpgate mail? Or captured it, or changed it, or sent it through other jumpgates than the ones it was routed to?”
One Cyclamen laughed. Eight Antidote thought it was the kind of laughter that was meant to cover being uncomfortable. “Like pirates, Your Excellency? Mail pirates?”
Eight Antidote shrugged. Maybe. Go on. Tell me how this process can be fooled, or accelerated, or stopped.
“… Historically, there have been a few incidents, of course, but we try very hard to prevent them. And truly significant messages go through on Fleet ships, of course, just like the Fleet’s own orders; diplomatic communiqués, imperial proclamations.”
There. “Because Fleet ships have right of way through jumpgates.”
“Quite so, Your Excellency. If something needs to move fastest, it wi
ll be on a Fleet ship. But do be assured that the Information Ministry doesn’t lose your letters.”
“I would never think that,” Eight Antidote said, cheerfully. That tension line in One Cyclamen’s forehead deepened. “Thank you so very much for spending time with me and answering all these questions!”
“Of course. Giving out information—well, that’s what we’re for, here in Information.”
Yes, Eight Antidote thought. That’s what you’re for. And I wonder how many of your jumpgate postal offices Sixteen Moonrise skipped right over when she sent that message to the Minister of War. I bet it was most of them. And Eleven Laurel doesn’t mind that kind of circumventing protocols. Not when what’s being circumvented is the Information Ministry.
* * *
If she stayed on this ship for much longer, Mahit thought grimly as she turned one last corner and finally arrived at the sealed door of the quarters she and Three Seagrass had been assigned, she was going to have to find some way to requisition a cloudhook. For navigation’s sake, if nothing else. Weight for the Wheel was a tenth of the size of Lsel Station, and many thousands of times smaller than the Jewel of the World, and yet here neither her nor Yskandr’s knowledge of place sufficed for not having to ask, humiliatingly, for directions. More than once. At least she’d been headed away from the more restricted decks, instead of into the ship’s heart: no one asked her why a barbarian was alone, so far away from barbarian territory.
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