She does not know why she has done this. Guilt? A sense of justice? Over-identification with Aminat and Kaaro?
It matters little. This is the simplest solution to the simplest problem, and that niggling thought, that feeling of unease is gone.
Now she can focus on her work, on Rosewater, the first new Homian city in centuries.
She makes herself visible outside the prison, just as Jack Jacques opens the door. He smiles, standing a little awkwardly on his new prosthesis.
“I can fix that leg for you,” says Alyssa. “Grow you a new one in less than an hour.”
“Thank you, but no thanks,” says Jack. Then he thinks, You’ll fuck it up and my knee will bend backwards or something.
“That was Anthony, not me,” says Alyssa, but she lets it pass.
“Would you like to come with me?”
Aminat is on his entourage and she winks to Alyssa. The rest are armed personnel wearing opaque visors. Alyssa is aware they are connected to a high-altitude drone that bears explosive weapons.
Jacques keeps up a monologue. “Most sections of the prison are empty because the prisoners were released to fight in the insurrection, but J-wing was always special.”
On the walkway, standing arms akimbo, is Hannah Jacques.
Jack says, “Honey, what are you doing?”
“I’ll get to you later. For now, I have words for this person.”
Alyssa seems patient. “Speak.”
“You haven’t saved your planet or your people. Those of you who survived should have stayed in the space stations. What you’ve done instead is commit mass suicide. The mind is an illusion, a hologram generated by the body. What you’ve encoded is memory, and personhood is not just memories. Personhood is embodied.
“Your billions are dead and what you have, what you are, is a new type of human. This exercise of yours is an expensive memory project, and all you’ve saved is your culture.”
“We’re just trying to stay alive, Mrs. Jacques. Any kind of life will do. You would act the same if our positions were reversed.”
“I can’t convince you to withdraw?”
“Not a chance.”
“Then kara o le. We will meet again.” Hannah strides off.
Alyssa continues along the walkway.
There are thousands of reanimates, some still, some milling, all with that empty-vessel feel in the xenosphere. Alyssa walks to the centre of the catwalk and enters the xenosphere. First she finds the exact number of reanimates, which turns out to be twenty-one thousand and sixteen. She queries for Lua and waits till she receives a response.
[transmission commences… ]
[error checking… ]
[stand by]
Alyssa loses contact with Lua for a minute, then the contact is restored, but different. It is now down among the reanimates. Alyssa jumps from the walkway to the floor. The reanimates all have awareness and self-consciousness now.
“Welcome to Earth; welcome to Rosewater,” says Jack Jacques, arms spread out in welcome. Alyssa is annoyed—she had wanted to say that, had wanted the first voice they heard to be a Homian one.
“I am Alyssa, the first, the footholder. We have much to discuss. Come.”
Scores of prison workers guide the newcomers to medical, for registration and a check-up.
Alyssa’s work is just beginning, but it is the beginning of the end.
The story continues in…
THE ROSEWATER REDEMPTION
Book THREE of the Wormwood Trilogy
Acknowledgements
Ashley Jacobs, Chikodili Emelumadu, Aliette deBodard and Kate Elliot for miscellaneous encouragement and reading.
My agent, Alexander Cochran, excellent as always.
The Orbit superteam: Jenni Hill, Sarah Guan, Nazia Khatun (Queen of the Universe and everything!!!) and Joanna Kramer for making me look good in more ways than one.
My SFF massive: Zen Cho, Victor Ocampo, Vida Cruz, Likhain, Rochita Loenen-ruiz, Alessa Hinlo.
My family, for putting up with my nerd-rage and general madman-in-the-attic histrionics.
Thanks!
extras
meet the author
Photo Credit: Carla Roadnight
TADE THOMPSON is the author of Rosewater, a John W. Campbell Award finalist and winner of the 2017 Nommo Award for Best Novel. His novella, The Murders of Molly Southbourne, has recently been optioned for screen adaptation. He also writes short stories, notably “The Apologists,” which was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award. Born in London to Yoruba parents, he lives and works on the south coast of England, where he battles an addiction to books.
if you enjoyed
THE ROSEWATER INSURRECTION
look out for
AFTERWAR
by
Lilith Saintcrow
America has been devastated by a second civil war.
The people have spent years divided, fighting their fellow patriots. Now, as the regime crumbles and the bloody conflict draws to a close, the work of rebuilding begins.
One lonely crew, bonded under fire in the darkest days of battle, must complete one last mission: to secure a war criminal whose secrets could destroy the fragile peace that has just begun to form.
Bestselling author Lilith Saintcrow presents a timely and all-too-realistic glimpse of a future that we hope never comes to pass.
Chapter One
DETAILS LATER
February 21, ’98
The last day in hell ran with cold, stinking rain. A gunmetal-gray sky opened up its sluices, mortars and bigger artillery shook the wooded horizon-hills at 0900, and roll call in the central plaza—down to two thousand scarecrows and change, the dregs of Reklamation Kamp Gloria—took only two and a half hours. Pale smears peered from the red-painted kamp brothel windows, disappearing whenever the Kommandant’s oil-slick head and unsettling light blue gaze turned in their direction. Stolid and heavy in his natty black uniform, Kommandant Major General Porter stood on a heavy platform; the raw edges of its boards, once pale and sticky with sap, were now the same shade as the lowering sky. The skeletons in dun, once-orange dungarees stood unsteadily under a triple pounding—first the Kommandant’s words crackling over the PA, then the thick curtains of rain, and last the rolling thunder in the hills.
Not just partisans, some whispered, their lips unmoving. Convicts and kampogs learned quickly how to pass along bites of news or speculation, despite the contact regulations—worth a flogging if you were caught talking, a worse flogging if more than two kampogs were “gathering.”
Nope, not just partisans. Federals.
Feral rumors, breeding swiftly, ran between the thin-walled Quonsets, bobbing over the reeking, sucking mud like balls of ignes fatui down in the swampy work sites, drifting into the empty stone rectangle of the quarry, flashing like sparks off the sicksticks the uniforms and jar captains carried. Raiders, Federals, knights riding dragons—who cared? Hope wasn’t a substitute for a scrap of moldy potato or a filched, crumbling cube of protein paste.
On the second floor of the joyhouse, in a room with dingy pinkish walls, cheap thin viscose curtains twitched a little, and the narrow bed underneath them shuddered as he finished. The bedspread had been freshly laundered, and the white, sharp smell of harsh soap and dead electrical heat from the industrial dryers filled Lara’s empty skull. It was a darkness full of small things—a glimpse of the dusty silk flowers in the tiny vase on the nightstand, a twinge from her discarded body, the burn of slick soylon fabric against her cheek, the indistinct mutter of the PA as Kommandant Porter, the God of Gloria, spoke. Someone would later tell her the Kommandant, his hair swept back and his mirror-shined boots splattered with that thick, gluey mud, had made a speech about how the shivering pogs had paid their debt to society and were to be taken to a Re-Edukation Kamp. Porter audibly hoped they would remember the struggle and sacrifice the uniforms had suffered to remake them—brown immies, any-color degenerates, white politicals since the
brown ones were shot, traitors all—into productive members of the Great United States of America First.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered then but getting through the next sixty seconds. Lara heard all sorts of details later, without meaning to. Right now, though, she lay flattened and breathless under the weight on her back, life and hope and air squeezed out.
“I love you,” the Kaptain whispered in her left ear, hot sour breath against her dark hair. It had grown back, first in the sorting shed and now here, though the ends were brittle and fraying. She was lucky to be in the pink room; the plywood stalls downstairs could see as many as six, seven an hour between first roll call at 0500 to midnight, no breaks, no lunch. Up here in the rooms named for colors, though, there were special clients. A special diet too, more calories than the average kampog, especially a twenty-niner, could dream of. Exemption from even “light” labor in the sorting sheds.
Some of the uniformed guards, or the jar kaptains—the highest class of kampog, because why force a uniform to work in the stinking jar-barracks, where you lay three or four to a shelf-bed—brought “presents.” Tiny containers of scent, either liquid or paste, not enough to get drunk on. Lipstick—it was edible, more welcome than the damn cologne. They often brought food, the best present of all. Cigarettes to trade. Some of the girls here drank the colorless, eye-watering liquor the uniforms were rationed, instead of trading it away for more substantial calories.
It let you forget, and that was worth a great deal. A few minutes of release from the tension was so seductive. The poison dulled you, though, and dull didn’t last long here. Soaking in bathtub booze was a good way to drown.
“I love you,” the Kaptain repeated, the hiss of a zipper closing under his words. The mattress had finished its song of joyless stabbing, and it barely indented under her slight, lonely weight. “I’ve organized a car, and gas. A good coat. I’ll come back and get you.” He bent over to arrange her, pushing her shoulder so she had to move, wanting her to look at him.
Rolled over on her back, Lara gazed at the ceiling, the damp trickle between her legs aching only a little. More raw lumber. Paint was a luxury—the red on the brothel’s outside was left over from something else. The only other painted building was the Kommandant’s House on the outskirts, with its white clapboard walls and picket fence. Lara had even seen the high-haired, floral-dressed wife once or twice, sitting on the porch with a glossy magazine back when the war was going well. Some kampogs used to work in the house or the garden, but that stopped when the siege of Denver was broken. Even the Kommandant’s family had to go back to the cities, retreating eastward.
The Kaptain was blond, his bloodshot blue eyes showing his worry over the war. He was her special client, and his status meant she didn’t have others. Black wool uniform with the special red piping, the silver Patriot Akademy ring on his left third finger mimicking a wedding band, the back and sides of his head shaved but the top longer. He’d begun growing it out a little while ago.
When the war turned.
He examined her while he buttoned his outer jacket, settling his cuffs, made sure he was zipped up completely. A hurried visit, for him. How many hours had she spent in this room, blessedly alone, and how many with him talking at her, unloading his worries, his thoughts, words dripping over every surface, trying to work their way in? Most of her energy went toward being impervious, locked up inside her skull. Building and maintaining walls for the steel bearings rolling inside her, so their noise could drown out everything else.
“I’ll be right back.” The Kaptain bent over the bed again, and his lips pressed against her cheek. There was almost no pad of fatty tissue over her teeth—still strong, they hadn’t rotted out yet. Childhood fluoride had done her a good turn, and with McCall’s crew there had been pine needles. Berries. Ration bars with orange flavor and minerals all in one nasty, grainy mouthful.
She was lucky, really, and how fucked-up was it that she knew? The question was a waste of energy. Here, you couldn’t afford to ask. Every effort was channeled into one thing only.
Survival.
“I love you,” he whispered yet again. Maybe he needed to convince himself, after all this time. His breath made a scorch circle, a red-hot iron pressed against shrinking flesh. Branded, like the Christian Courts were so fond of decreeing. B for “bandit” or P for “partisan,” or the ever-popular A for “scarlet woman,” because “adulterer” could possibly be the man, and you couldn’t blame him.
The Kaptain slammed the door on his way out. Yelled something down the hall—an order, maybe. Quick, hard bootsteps, scurrying back and forth. Looked like he was clearing the top floor. The girls up here might be grateful for the respite, unless they were waiting for a special to bring them something. If they were, they’d assume Lara had pissed the Kaptain off somehow, or something. They didn’t quite dare to band together against her—it wasn’t worth the risk—but the top-floor joyhouse girls were pariahs even among kampogs, and she was a pariah even among them.
Exclusivity, like luck, was suspect.
I’ll take care of you, he’d promised. Wait for me. Like she had any sort of choice. So Lara just lay there until he went away, his presence leaching slowly out of the small, overdone, dark little room. Nobody wanted bright lights in a joyhouse. A lot of the specials may have even honestly believed the girls in here were glad to see them, glad to be somehow saved.
As if anyone here didn’t know it only took one wrong move, one glance, or even nothing at all, and into the killing bottles you went.
It didn’t matter. She drifted, letting her ears fill with the high weird cotton-wool sound that meant she was outside her skin. Just turned a few inches, so she could look at whatever was happening to her body without feeling.
After some indeterminate period of time—maybe a half hour, maybe more—the throbbing beat of the ancient wheezebox downstairs thumped-ran down to a stop. Without that heartbeat, the expectant hush inside the red-painted building turned painful.
When Lara pushed herself up on her sharp-starved elbows, stealing back into her body bit by bit from the faraway place where not much could hurt her, the first rounds took out two of the watchtowers, splashing concrete, broken glass, slivers of red-hot metal, and rags of guardflesh down into Suicide Alley along the electrified fence.
The Federals—and Swann’s Riders—had arrived.
Chapter Two
REGRET
It took longer than Adjutant Kommandant Kaptain Eugene Thomas liked to finish his arrangements for a retreat, mostly because Kommandant Major General Porter, unwilling to delegate or make a goddamn decision, kept Thomas for a good half hour, going on about paperwork. Maybe Porter never thought the Federals would have the unmitigated gall to actually interfere with his little slice of republic cleansing, or maybe the old man had cracked under the pressure. He was certainly sweating enough. There were dark patches under the kommandant’s arms, sopping wet, and his flushed forehead was an oil slick under the crap melting out of his dyed-black hair.
At last, though, Gene saluted and was released with a packet of “sensitive documents” to take east, flimsies and digital keys rustling and clacking inside a tan leather pouch. The stairs outside Porter’s office were choked with guards, but no officers—Gene’s fellow shoulderstraps would know better than to possibly be sent on some bullshit detail while the degenerates were already so close. If Gene hadn’t been such a believer in prudently covering his own ass at all times, he would have already collected her from the pink room and would be speeding past the gate in a shiny black kerro, watching the girl’s face as she opened the box and the fur coat, vital and black and soft as a cloud, rippled under her chewed fingertips. Even her habit of nibbling at her nails was enchanting.
She’d be grateful for the coat and the escape—she would have to be. He’d finally see her smile.
The Kaptain accepted the salutes of the black-clad guards still unfortunate enough to be on duty with a single, frosty nod as he passed
, keeping his step firm and unhurried in shining, scraped-clean boots. The ancient yellow lino in the hall of the admin building squeaked a little under his soles; there were no kampogs in striped headscarves or faded dungarees working at streaks of tracked-in mud with their inadequate brushes. One or two of the guards enjoyed smearing the worst filth they could find down the hall and kicking pogs while they scrambled to clean it, but Porter frowned on that.
The smell alone was unhealthy. Just because the pogs lived in shit didn’t mean the soldiers, being a higher class of creature, should get it on their toes.
Soldiers. Gene’s upper lip twitched as he lengthened his stride. As if any of these assholes had ever seen real combat. Kamps were supposed to be cushy jobs, good chances for advancement once your loyalty and capacity were proven. An endpoint like this meant hazard pay and extra alcohol rations, both useful things. So what if combat troops looked down on them, or if his fellow shoulderstraps were a collection of paper pushers and rear-echelon weekend warriors? He was probably the only true patriot in the lot.
A thumping impact made the entire admin building shudder just as he reached the side door, and he took the stairs outside two at a time. Mortars. At the fence. The degenerates weren’t in the hills anymore. They were moving fast, just like the hordes descending upon Rome back in the day. That rather changed things—he had to get back to the joyhouse and collect the girl—
Another wump. Something smashed past the fence, and a high whistling drone screeched across Gloria before the admin building shuddered again, hit from the opposite side. There was an instant of heat in Gene’s left calf, a flash of annoyance as the world forgot what it was supposed to do and heaved underneath him. Then the world turned over like an egg flipped on a griddle, and after a weightless moment he hit gravel with a crunch. It was a minor wound, all things considered, but the guard he’d paid and left with strict orders to watch the kerro dragged his superior to the now-dusty, low-slung black vehicle. Before Gene could shake the ringing from his ears, he’d been tossed in the back like a sack of processed starch lumps, and the guard—a weedy, pimple-faced youth who had less than twelve hours to live, though neither of them knew it yet—was already accelerating on the wide macadamized road out of Gloria.
The Rosewater Insurrection Page 31