A FROST-CHISELED EYE HUNG BLIND

1563 4D

“They seem inattentive,” Jeddin said to Andrew, smiling. The people on both sides of the table had slumped into unconsciousness, the sleep of ordinary humans in innerspace. He went on, “She’s wrong about the fuel. We found out how to produce it from the refined ores.”

“Was she lying, then?” Andrew asked.

“No. She can’t know.” Jeddin chuckled. “The biocrypt I brought into the city allowed Torre to decipher a message from Norgrist at the University. It solved the last puzzle we had about the ship drive. We can keep the drive matrix activated now — we won’t have to count on Gullinder for anything except supply of ore. The ore we have will last a long time.”

Jeddin shook his head. “Norgrist was Torre‘s triple agent, supposedly working for Gullinder, on the surface just on Arlen‘s payroll. When he suspected me, he decided to turn me in — to Gullinder. He was awfully embarrassed later. As it turned out, my escape led me to my first alien. A good thing.

“That woman of Arlen‘s, was it Carchesme? She worked out the last details for us. All we had to do was keep two andro guys available for her.”

Andrew laughed. “Young ones, right?”

“Yes. She wore them out, too, when she wasn’t playing with that drive matrix. She’s more dangerous than Marra and Deen together. But she’s ours now, as long as we keep her happy.”

Andrew looked at Ezzar, slumped against him. She’d fought for this victory. He said to Jeddin, “Too bad they’re all missing this part. You know, Arhnhashokha might like a new home. Would Ezzar object? She’d get to see all this.” He waved at the shadowy rock strata falling past them.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Jeddin said, his eyes gleaming with mischief. He stood, went to Ezzar, cradled her head and kissed her mouth for a long breath.

“Be careful,” Andrew warned.

She awoke, swinging a fist at Jeddin, and he jerked back. “Oh! Jeddin! Damn you, what… oh.” Her glance roved among the sleepers and across the wall vistas, listening to the voice of Arhnhashokha inside her. “So this is where… and I’m… But this isn’t the ship, is it?”

Jeddin said, “Yes, it is the ship. Andrew and I experimented with it before this meeting. In certain modes it can pass through planes of matter, it and its contents, without impediment. Its top deck matches exactly to Arlen‘s special chamber.” He paused, thinking. “The doors and hatches mapped perfectly. It’s as if the room and the ship were part of each other. When this meeting started, everyone on the other side of this table walked into what they thought was their own territory. Territory is everything, isn’t it?”

“Not quite.” Andrew pointed northward. As they watched through the walls, the ship sprang from the rock and skimmed north, whipping past the Northern Range’s serried mountains now hoary with a new snowfall, steering toward the great peaks of the Crash Range that rimmed the permanent arctic cap of ice. Soon he would see the flecks of darkness against the snow. His stomach churned.

“Is this really what’s outside?” Ezzar stared at the wall showing the ship’s direction of travel. She put a hand on her waist. “Oh. Oh.”

“An amazing view, isn’t it? We’ll see,” Andrew said. He looked ahead and down, and finally found the stitches of black and brown against a long white upward incline in a craggy pass. “There.” He brought them down to hover slowly across deep drifts of snow, then settle to a firm footing of rock.

You’re getting very good at this, Onnhasshakh tells me. But watch the fuel. Turiosten sounded sleepy. And Arhnhashokha likes Ezzar. She says Ezzar‘s full of sentattar, and more.

Ezzar looked out through the wall. “Gods and morons,” she said. “Oh, no.”

Andrew released the stem of the flower now an orchid again, steadying the vase on the now-slightly-inclined table. His hand showed no wounds. In his mind, the slow music welled. One by one the other woke up and stared around them.

“Why did the walls shift suddenly?” Frintar asked Gullinder.

He shook his head slowly and looked at Andrew. “Ask him.”

“We’re on the North Line through the Last Range, on the way to Reloc 65,” Andrew said. He knew the music now: the sandrukha, when he had held Leil for the last time.

“How do you know this? You’ve never been there, and you’ve never been up in this chamber either.” Frintar‘s voice dripped contempt. “You’re just a city tunnelman and a farmer who couldn’t make it. I’ve still got my question on the table.” She put both hands on the table and flexed her fingers, then frowned.

Andrew glared at her. “You’ve lost the manners you had earlier. Open the doors if you don’t believe me. Nazrelo, Jirinai, would you?” Andrew turned to watch. The two rebel officers drew open the great steel doors.

Bitter wind hit them like a barrage of knives. Ice and snow howled in to circle the room and dust the table with fine prismatic grains. The two men swung the doors shut again, and returned to their seats, brushing the now-melting dust from their faces and shoulders. Jirinai shook his head.

“What— where—" Frintar‘s words opened a gabble of noise that subsided only after Andrew stood and walked to the wall that framed the great doors.

“Look carefully at this wall now. It has my answer to your demands all across it.” Andrew turned to look himself, to see what he and Jeddin had found half a day before. The anger he had held in for so long rose slowly, like a vast and hungry deep-sea creature, to the surface of his mind.

The walls shadowed and shone white, waves of wind and blown snow whelming across it from left to right. Dim, dark forms, unmoving, appeared in the passing fog of ice, then faded once more, enveloped. Nearest to the wall, a clump of gray-brown smudges resolved itself into standing figures.

The center figure, bundled and shrouded against the cold, might have been a man or a woman, dressed in layer on layer of city wear, dulled red strips torn from some once-bright fashion coverall to hold extra panels of floral cloth in place on chest and back. The two smaller figures huddled close on either side of it appeared child-size, their clothing layered like the taller figure’s, their hands and heads bound in thick wraps of torn fabric from some bedwrap or sheet.

They stood immobile, anchored against the metal-weakening chill by feet rooted now in ice. Statues, maybe, but no one would wrap a statue’s hands and head in cloth to protect it from the cold. Under a patch of floral tempweave shrouding the head of the tallest figure, a frost-chiseled eye hung blind, shrunken in its socket, the lid half-closed.

Andrew stared, sickened, just as he had the first time he had seen them. Had they died slowly, waiting for some signal to move? He tried to open his mouth to speak but his jaw refused to unclench itself. He worked at letting go, and finally the words burst from him.

“This is the fourth SRD that was sent to Reloc 65. We found the records in Arlen‘s archives. There were six thousand, two hundred and eighty-one of them. Some were from Arlen‘s holdings, some from Durlow‘s, some from others. All with City and regional approval. If you want, I’ll take you up and down this long line and show you names and faces. The ones you’re looking at matched up as Darvelia Ans Kerran and her two children Nassa and Shellane. Darvelia‘s husband is there too, frozen thousands of strides behind them. They were my neighbors and friends.

“This was only the first reloc we’ve explored — the bank holds hundreds more relocation lists. We’re going to go through and catalog everyone we find. We’re going to keep all those names and remember them. And we’re going to take steps to see that this doesn’t happen again.”

The veins in Andrew‘s neck pulsed. “Did you get so far from everything that you can say this was outside your knowledge and control? You control what goes on here, all of you; did you think someone else was responsible? And do you think because I’m just a tunneler and a farmer with an andro beside him that you can dictate terms to me? Think again.”

Gullinder‘s deep voice filled the chamber. “Yet you know nothing. You are ignorant of all that must be done to keep this world in balance and alive. That has been our task. When you killed Arlen, you destroyed the balance. He took with him more knowledge of our past, more secrets of the Colonists, than anyone now living. And now you threaten the very people whose combined efforts have kept humankind alive here.

“We’ve rebuilt this planet, its lands and seas, and regenerated its air; and you want to hold this vessel hostage and control us all in your ignorance. How will you keep a planet running, and finish the rebuilding of damaged continents? Do you think it’s as easy as killing a man?” Gullinder‘s look drilled Andrew.

Jirinai‘s voice, clear and sharp, cut in. “But you, you played both sides of this game, this balance, you call it. While you controlled your allies here, your people sold us weapons.” He tossed a small card on the table. “That’s an archive unit from one of the helms in our supply. Jeddin decrypted its owner records. They lead directly back to your operatives. Shall I play the audit back for you?”

Gullinder glared at Jirinai and Jeddin, and took the card, putting it in a pocket. “The fight for the Complex was to end in stalemate.”

Frintar‘s mouth fell open; she turned on Gullinder, and said in a tone levelled with controlled anger, “Too many would have paid the price for that. Are the rest of us just pieces in some game of yours?” Murmurs of agreement swelled around her.

“No.” Gullinder answered her, his eyes still aimed across the table, now at Andrew. “If anyone in this city, in this region, gets too powerful, I’ll do what I can to keep him — or her — from taking complete control. Arlen tried to expand his power too far. And now these men — and I use that word carefully, because I’m not sure what they really are, now — have done what Arlen couldn’t.”

Gullinder raised a heavy arm and pointed a thick finger at Andrew and Jeddin. “Can either of you two show us that you are not just the biopuppets of aliens? I think not.” He spread his arms to indicate Jirinai and Torre and Raffina. “You have taken in these, I would say, misguided malcontents who sit with you and think you serve their cause. In reality they’re serving yours. What are you? You aren’t humans, not any more. You cannibalize us for parts and supplies.” Gullinder rested his arms on the table, still spread wide, and smiled, narrowing his eyes.

Andrew shifted uncomfortably. No words came to his mind, and for a moment the walls seemed to close in. Nazrelo whispered; then Torre rasped, “Gullinder, you know nothing. He speaks for us as our appointed representative. We honor him.”

Jeddin‘s higher voice cut the silence that followed. “As one who supported Arlen‘s part in the balance, you had no scruples about cannibalizing others like me.” He gestured toward Cortevail. “Shall we show you our marks of honor, our membership and descent in the – Survivors’ – Coll of the andros? Shall we spawn children to certify our humanity? We owe you no such proof — you are in no place to judge.”

The music returned to Andrew. He added, “You wondered whether we were men or aliens. I wonder whether you are even human. I would rather live with aliens than be controlled or killed by you and those like you. The Archives of our past tell me why our city zones are named the way they are. It’s to commemorate the millions, even billions of innocent dead, killed by other humans.”

“We all know that,” said Gullinder, contempt in his voice.

“Do you? What good is your knowing, if you commit the same crimes? The frozen bodies at the mountain pass, the dead rotting in the northwestern marshes, the acid-eaten corpses on Harvath, the heaped and tangled bodies at the base of the andro vats, these are the descendants of the massacres at Babi Yar, at Lefortovo, at Dannemora, at Sobibor, at Nagasaki, at all the other homes of horror on Earth long ago.

“Yes, of course you all know that. You all know nothing.” Andrew spat the words and gathered a deep breath.

My friend, Turiosten said softly to him, you are doing well. They have nothing for you. Let’s return to the City.

Andrew twitched a nod in reply, and continued, his eyes burning as he scanned those opposite him. He focused on Gullinder. “You think and you manage. How many centuries old are you and your thinking and your managing? First you wanted population growth, and you cranked up the hormones and you got it. Then you decided you wanted andro labor, and you got it. Then the City, no, all the cities, got too crowded and you decided to solve that problem this way.” Andrew pointed at the wall. “If I were like you, I’d solve my problem the same way you did. I’d leave you here.”

He returned to the table, where Frintar had taken the orchid stem in her hand. “That’ll do you no good. If you want to go somewhere, tell us what you want and we’ll discuss it. Otherwise you can play with that until it falls apart.”

“It’s the aliens, isn’t it?” Frintar asked, releasing the stem. “The aliens control you, as Gullinder said.”

“That’s the only way you can see it, isn’t it?” Jeddin said. “It’s all control. Either you’re on top or on the bottom. You sound just like the ancient humans. Demons, witches, angels, devils, possessors; now you have aliens. Blame the Other. Divert attention. Cling to your shreds of control. It doesn’t change over thousands of years.

“I could show you the mines at Transellas, where the andro life expectancy is one season. Or the hold of this ship, where Arlen‘s andros got remade into killing machines, or into red meat for the food chain.” He paused. “Andrew, I’ve had enough of this.”

Andrew looked left and right at the others. They nodded agreement. He said, “We reject your offer. I’m taking us back now. We’ll keep the ship. If you want something, you’ll negotiate with us.” Andrew sat down again and seized the orchid’s stem; with its metamorphosis, pain devoured him. The listeners folded again in instant sleep. In a flash of light, the walls unraveled the snowy mountains. Andrew said to Jeddin and Ezzar, “Do you think they heard any of it?”

“I don’t know,” Jeddin said, shaking his head.

“I doubt it,” Ezzar said. “You won’t change them with a few words and an ugly picture. They’re outside it all. It’s always been that way. And we’ll be fighting them, always. What place can we name to keep their crimes in remembrance? How will we remember all the dead? Who will remember my family when I am gone?” She gazed out through the wall’s shifting panorama.

On the wall behind the sleeping Frintar, the sky gathered blueness in a day growing warm with light. The ship plunged into rock; the walls darkened and shuddered their stars to view once more.

The long dance of the sandrukha faded from Andrew‘s mind. With bitterness and longing he let it go. Maybe that child had made the music for him. Goodbye, Leil. Maybe some day.