The Stone Sky

by N. K. Jemisin

  As if to confirm my guess, he says, “Biomagestry says you now show more than sufficient compatibility to hold the connection for the required length of time.”

  He’s watching me, hoping I won’t protest. I realize suddenly that I can do so. With so much scrutiny on Gallat’s every decision today, important people will notice if I insist that the new configuration is a bad idea. I can, simply by raising my voice, take Kelenli from Gallat. I can destroy him, as he destroyed Tetlewha.

  But that’s a foolish, pointless thought, because how can I exercise my power over him without hurting her? I’m going to hurt her enough as it is, when we turn the Plutonic Engine back on itself. She should survive the initial convulsion of magic; even if she’s in contact with any of the devices that flux, she has more than enough skill to shunt the feedback away. Then in the aftermath, she’ll be just another survivor, made equal in suffering. No one will know what she really is—or her child, if it ends up like her. Like us. We will have set her free … to struggle for survival along with everyone else. But that is better than the illusion of safety in a gilded cage, is it not?

  Better than you could ever have given her, I think at Gallat.

  “All right,” I say. He relaxes minutely.

  Gallat leaves my chamber and goes back into the observation room with the other conductors. I am alone. I am never alone; the others are with me. The signal comes that we should begin, as the moment seems to hold its breath. We are ready.

  First the network.

  Attuned as we are, it is easy, pleasurable, to modulate our silverflows and cancel out resistance. Remwha plays yoke, but he hardly needs to goad any of us to resonate higher or lower or to pull at the same pace; we are aligned. We all want this.

  Above us, yet easily within our range, the Earth seems to hum, too. Almost like a thing alive. We have been to Corepoint and back, in our early training; we have traveled through the mantle and seen the massive flows of magic that churn naturally up from the iron-nickel core of the planet. To tap that bottomless font will be the greatest feat of human accomplishment, ever. Once, that thought would have made me proud. Now I share this with the others and a shiverstone micaflake glimmer of bitter amusement ripples through all of us. They have never believed us human, but we will prove by our actions today that we are more than tools. Even if we aren’t human, we are people. They will never be able to deny us this again.

  Enough frivolity.

  First the network, then the fragments of the Engine must be assembled. We reach for the amethyst because it is nearest on the globe. Though we are a world away from it, we know that it utters a low held note, its storage matrix glowing and brimful with energy as we dive, up, into its torrential flow. Already it has stopped suckling the last dregs from the briar patch at its roots, becoming a closed system in itself; now it feels almost alive. As we coax it from quiescence into resonant activity, it begins to pulse, and then finally to shimmer in patterns that emulate life, like the firing of neurotransmitters or the contractions of peristalsis. Is it alive? I wonder this for the first time, a question triggered by Kelenli’s lessons. It is a thing of high-state matter, but it coexists simultaneously with a thing of high-state magic made in its image—and taken from the bodies of people who once laughed and raged and sang. Is there anything left of their will in the amethyst?

  If so … would the Niess approve of what we, their caricature children, mean to do?

  I can spare no more time for such thoughts. The decision has been made.

  So we expand this macro-level start-up sequence throughout the network. We sess without sessapinae. We feel the change. We know it in our bones—because we are part of this engine, components of humanity’s greatest marvel. On Earth, at the heart of every node of Syl Anagist, klaxons echo across the city and warning pylons blaze red warnings that can be seen from far away as one by one, the fragments begin to thrum and shimmer and detach from their sockets. My breath quickens when I, resonant within each, feel the first peeling-away of crystal from rougher stone, the drag as we alight and begin pulsing with the state-change of magic and then begin to rise—

  (There is a stutter here, quick and barely noticeable in the heady moment, though glaring through the lens of memory. Some of the fragments hurt us, just a little, when they detach from their sockets. We feel the scrape of metal that should not be there, the scratch of needles against our crystalline skin. We smell a whiff of rust. It’s quick pain and quickly forgotten, as with any needle. Only later will we remember, and lament.)

  —rise, and hum, and turn. I inhale deeply as the sockets and their surrounding cityscapes fall away below us. Syl Anagist shunts over to backup power systems; those should hold until Geoarcanity. But they are irrelevant, these mundane concerns. I flow, fly, fall up into rushing light that is purple or indigo or mauve or gold, the spinel and the topaz and the garnet and the sapphire—so many, so bright! So alive with building power.

  (So alive, I think again, and this thought sends a shudder through the network, because Gaewha was thinking it, too, and Dushwha, and it is Remwha who takes us to task with a crack like a slipstrike fault: Fools, we will die if you don’t focus! So I let this thought go.)

  And—ah, yes, framed there on-screen, centered in our perception like an eye glaring down at its quarry: the onyx. Positioned, as Kelenli last bade it, above Corepoint.

  I am not nervous, I tell myself as I reach for it.

  The onyx isn’t like the other fragments. Even the moonstone is quiescent by comparison; it is only a mirror, after all. But the onyx is powerful, frightening, the darkest of dark, unknowable. Where the other fragments must be sought and actively engaged, it snatches at my awareness the instant I come near, trying to pull me deeper into its rampant, convecting currents of silver. When I have connected to it before, the onyx has rejected me, as it has done for all the others in turn. The finest magests in Syl Anagist could not fathom why—but now, when I offer myself and the onyx claims me, suddenly I know. The onyx is alive. What is just a question in the other fragments has been answered here: It sesses me. It learns me, touching me with a presence that is suddenly undeniable.

  And in the very moment when I realize this and have enough time to wonder fearfully what these presences think of me, their pathetic descendant made from the fusion of their genes with their destroyers’ hate—

  —I perceive at last a secret of magestry that even the Niess simply accepted rather than understood. This is magic, after all, not science. There will always be parts of it that no one can fathom. But now I know: Put enough magic into something nonliving, and it becomes alive. Put enough lives into a storage matrix, and they retain a collective will, of sorts. They remember horror and atrocity, with whatever is left of them—their souls, if you like.

  So the onyx yields to me now because, it senses at last, I too have known pain. My eyes have been opened to my own exploitation and degradation. I am afraid, of course, and angry, and hurt, but the onyx does not scorn these feelings within me. It seeks something else, however, something more, and finally finds what it seeks nestled in a little burning knot behind my heart: determination. I have committed myself to making, of all this wrongness, something right.

  That’s what the onyx wants. Justice. And because I want that too—

  I open my eyes in flesh. “I’ve engaged the control cabochon,” I report for the conductors.

  “Confirmed,” says Gallat, looking at the screen where Biomagestry monitors our neuroarcanic connections. Applause breaks out among our observers, and I feel sudden contempt for them. Their clumsy instruments and their weak, simple sessapinae have finally told them what is as obvious to us as breathing. The Plutonic Engine is up and running.

  Now that the fragments have all launched, each one rising to hum and flicker and hover over two hundred and fifty-six city-nodes and seismically energetic points, we begin the ramp-up sequence. Among the fragments, the pale-colored flow buffers ignite first, then we upcycle the deeper jewel tones of the g
enerators. The onyx acknowledges sequence initialization with a single, heavy blat of sound that sends ripples across the Hemispheric Ocean.

  My skin is tight, my heart a-thud. Somewhere, in another existence, I have clenched my fists. We have done so, across the paltry separation of six different bodies and two hundred and fifty-six arms and legs and one great black pulsing heart. My mouth opens (our mouths open) as the onyx aligns itself perfectly to tap the ceaseless churn of earth-magic where the core lies exposed far, far below. Here is the moment that we were made for.

  Now, we are meant to say. This, here, connect, and we will lock the raw magical flows of the planet into an endless cycle of service to humankind.

  Because this is what the Sylanagistines truly made us for: to affirm a philosophy. Life is sacred in Syl Anagist—as it should be, for the city burns life as the fuel for its glory. The Niess were not the first people chewed up in its maw, just the latest and cruelest extermination of many. But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. And now, if nothing else is done, Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them. There’s not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone must suffer, if the rest are to enjoy luxury.

  Better the earth, Syl Anagist reasons. Better to enslave a great inanimate object that cannot feel pain and will not object. Better Geoarcanity. But this reasoning is still flawed, because Syl Anagist is ultimately unsustainable. It is parasitic; its hunger for magic grows with every drop it devours. The Earth’s core is not limitless. Eventually, if it takes fifty thousand years, that resource will be exhausted, too. Then everything dies.

  What we are doing is pointless and Geoarcanity is a lie. And if we help Syl Anagist further down this path, we will have said, What was done to us was right and natural and unavoidable.

  No.

  So. Now, we say instead. This, here, connect: pale fragments to dark, all fragments to the onyx, and the onyx … back to Syl Anagist. We detach the moonstone from the circuit entirely. Now all the power stored in the fragments will blast through the city, and when the Plutonic Engine dies, so will Syl Anagist.

  It begins and ends long before the conductors’ instruments even register a problem. With the others joined to me, our tune gone silent as we settle and wait for the feedback loop to hit us, I find myself content. It will be good not to die alone.

  But.

  But.

  Remember. We were not the only ones who chose to fight back that day.

  This is a thing I will realize only later, when I visit the ruins of Syl Anagist and look into empty sockets to see iron needles protruding from their walls. This is an enemy I will understand only after I have been humbled and remade at its feet … but I will explain it now, so that you may learn from my suffering.

  I spoke to you, not long ago, of a war between the Earth and the life upon its surface. Here is some enemy psychology: The Earth sees no difference between any of us. Orogene, still, Sylanagistine, Niess, future, past—to it, humanity is humanity. And even if others had commanded my birth and development; even if Geoarcanity has been a dream of Syl Anagist since long before even my conductors were born; even if I was just following orders; even if the six of us meant to fight back … the Earth did not care. We were all guilty. All complicit in the crime of attempting to enslave the world itself.

  Now, though, having pronounced us all guilty, the Earth handed out sentences. Here, at least, it was somewhat willing to offer credit for intent and good behavior.

  This is what I remember, and what I pieced together later, and what I believe. But remember—never forget—that this was only the beginning of the war.

  We perceive the disruption first as a ghost in the machine.

  A presence alongside us, inside us, intense and intrusive and immense. It slaps the onyx from my grasp before I know what’s happening, and silences our startled signals of What? and Something is wrong and How did that happen? with a shockwave of earthtalk as stunning to us as the Rifting will one day be to you.

  Hello, little enemies.

  In the conductors’ observation chamber, alarms finally blare. We are frozen in our wire chairs, shouting without words and being answered by something beyond our comprehension, so Biomagestry only notices a problem when suddenly nine percent of the Plutonic Engine—twenty-seven fragments—goes offline. I do not see Conductor Gallat gasp and exchange a horrified look with the other conductors and their esteemed guests; this is speculation, knowing what I know of him. I imagine that at some point he turns to a console to abort the launch. I also do not see, behind them, the iron sphere pulse and swell and shatter, destroying its stasis field and peppering everyone in the chamber with hot, needle-sharp iron shards. I do hear the screaming that follows while the iron shards burn their way up veins and arteries, and the ominous silence afterward, but I have my own problems to deal with in this particular moment.

  Remwha, he of the quickest wit, slaps us from our shock with the realization that something else is controlling the Engine. No time to wonder who or why. Gaewha perceives how and signals frantically: The twenty-seven “offline” fragments are still active. In fact, they have formed a kind of subnetwork—a spare key. This is how the other presence has managed to dislodge the onyx’s control. Now all of the fragments, which generate and contain the bulk of the Plutonic Engine’s power, are under hostile foreign control.

  I am a proud creature at my core; this is intolerable. The onyx was given to me to hold—and so I seize it again and shove it back into the connections that comprise the Engine, dislodging the false control at once. Salewha slams down the shockwaves of magic that this violent disruption causes, lest they ricochet throughout the Engine and touch off a resonance that will—well, we don’t actually know what such resonance would do, but it would be bad. I hold on throughout the reverberations of this, my teeth bared back in the real world, listening while my siblings cry out or snarl with me or gasp amid the aftershakes of the initial upheaval. Everything is confusion. In the realm of flesh and blood, the lights of our chambers have gone out, leaving only emergency panels to glow around the edges of the room. The warning klaxons are incessant, and elsewhere in Zero Site I can hear equipment snapping and rattling with the overload that we have put into the system. The conductors, screaming in the observation chamber, cannot help us—not that they ever could. I don’t know what’s happening, not really. I know only that this is a battle, full of moment-to-moment confusion as all battles are, and from here forth nothing is quite clear—

  That strange presence that has attacked us pulls hard against the Plutonic Engine, trying to dislodge our control once more. I shout at it in wordless geyserboil magmacrack fury. Get out of here! I rage. Leave us alone!

  You started this, it hisses into the strata, trying again. When this fails, however, it snarls in frustration—and then locks, instead, into those twenty-seven fragments that have gone so mysteriously offline. Dushwha senses the hostile entity’s intent and tries to grasp some of the twenty-seven, but the fragments slip through their grasp as if coated with oil. This is true enough, figuratively speaking; something has contaminated these fragments, leaving them fouled and nearly impossible to grasp. We might manage it with concerted effort, one by one—but there is no time. And until then, the enemy holds the twenty-seven.

  Stalemate. We still hold the onyx. We hold the other two hundred and twenty-nine fragments, which are ready to fire the feedback pulse that will destroy Syl Anagist—and ourselves. We’ve postponed that, however, because we cannot leave matters like this. Where did this entity, so angry and phenomenally powerful, come from? What will it do with the obelisks that it holds? Long moments pass in pent silence. I cannot speak for the others, but I, at least, begin to think there will be no further attacks. I have always been such a fool.

  Into the silence comes the amused, malicious challenge of our enemy, ground forth in magic a
nd iron and stone.

  Burn for me, says Father Earth.

  I must speculate on some of what follows, even after all these ages spent seeking answers.

  I can narrate no more because in the moment everything was nigh-instantaneous, and confusing, and devastating. The Earth changes only gradually, until it doesn’t. And when it fights back, it does so decisively.

  Here is the context. That first test bore that initiated the Geoarcanity project also alerted the Earth to humanity’s efforts to take control of it. Over the decades that followed, it studied its enemy and began to understand what we meant to do. Metal was its instrument and ally; never trust metal for this reason. It sent splinters of itself to the surface to examine the fragments in their sockets—for here, at least, was life stored in crystal, comprehensible to an entity of inorganic matter in a way that mere flesh was not. Only gradually did it learn how to take control of individual human lives, though it required the medium of the corestones to do so. We are such small, hard-to-grasp creatures, otherwise. Such insignificant vermin, apart from our unfortunate tendency to sometimes make ourselves dangerously significant. The obelisks, though, were a more useful tool. Easy to turn back on us, like any carelessly held weapon.

  Burndown.

  Remember Allia? Imagine that disaster times two hundred and fifty-six. Imagine the Stillness perforated at every nodal point and seismically active site, and the ocean, too—hundreds of hot spots and gas pockets and oil reservoirs breached, and the entire plate-tectonic system destabilized. There is no word for such a catastrophe. It would liquefy the surface of the planet, vaporizing the oceans and sterilizing everything from the mantle up. The world, for us and any possible creature that might ever evolve in the future to hurt the Earth, would end. The Earth itself would be fine, however.

  We could stop it. If we wanted to.

  I will not say we weren’t tempted, when faced with the choice between permitting the destruction of a civilization, or of all life on the planet. Syl Anagist’s fate was sealed. Make no mistake: We had meant to seal it. The difference between what the Earth wanted and what we wanted was merely a matter of scale. But which is the way the world ends? We tuners would be dead; the distinction mattered little to me in that moment. It’s never wise to ask such a question of people who have nothing to lose.