Empire of Bones (17 page)

"The same? How can we be the same, Sirru? Oh, I wish you could understand."

/ship: lin't-bondl

His hand snaked round to clasp her own.

/come with me/

Reluctantly, Jaya rose and followed. He led her through the maze of corridors and chambers, which more than ever re-minded her of the veins of some great plant. As they de-scended, there was a smell of something green and growing, like walking through cut grass after a rainstorm. It reminded her of the watered lawns of the ashram. Sirru took her through the chamber with the growing tanks, but the shiny masses of seeds had been reduced to a cluster in a single tank. Jaya bent over to look as they passed, and Sirru patiently waited for her. The seeds were bigger, distended with water. Their membranes had become soft and pale, like fluid-logged skin. Sirru said something that Jaya did not under-stand.

"What?" But he only led her onward, past the tanks and through the wall of the chamber into a part of the ship that she had never seen before; by the time he stopped, Jaya's calves were aching. She couldn't see anything special about the chamber they were in. It was empty, with a domed ceiling that arched only a foot or so above the top of her head. Veins ribbed the walls, and these were prominent and wet. There was a disturbingly familiar smell, which she could not place. Sirru settled himself on the floor; after a moment, she sat cross-legged before him. His gaze rested on a point just to the left of her shoulder, in a disconcertingly oblique manner. She squinted round, trying to see, but there was nothing there. Sirru's golden eyes were distant and abstracted.

"Sirru?"

Something touched the back of her neck, like a quick soft hand. Jaya twisted around, striking out and meeting empty air—yet, not empty after all… The air was beginning to cur-dle around her. Her vision swam, as if she saw the world through tears, and she blinked, but nothing happened. Then, after a moment, everything became startlingly clear. Sirru was no longer sitting in front of her; he was nowhere to be seen.

And the voice that she had heard over the years of her life was murmuring in her mind's ear:

/This is what we must become/we must join, something new must come of us I
She couldn't breathe. The voice was growing thunderstorm-loud and with it came the heat, waves of fever washing across her. She could hear the rattle in her throat, and a long way be-neath the panic her small voice whispering:
So this is what it's like to die
. She tasted blood in her mouth, and her body began to analyze it: old blood, alchemically changed. Distantly, she re-membered smearing her menses on the wall of the ship, trying to mark her passage through the maze. She thought of Kamal, facedown in icy water that was turning red, not moving; never moving again.

Her tongue felt cold, like a lump of frozen river water in her mouth. Her vision was gone and she couldn't see the walls of the chamber, only darkness. And then, suddenly, she was looking inside herself. She could see a pattern chasing down her throat, changing as it went, corroding. And then, ab-sorbed into her veins, latching onto smaller and smaller ele-ments of her own body: a virus. It was a moment before she realized what was happening. The ship was infecting her.

For a split second she watched her own mutated lymph system gearing into action, challenging the invader, but it was too late. The virus had locked onto DNA, skeining down ge-netic pathways, and it brought her down into a tight black heat.

13. Depth ship/ orbit:'t,arth

"Link-bonding has commenced," Sirru informed Ir Yth. "Soon the seed will be fertilized, and we can send it out to find a world of its own to spore over. A new
desqusai
world—think of that." He tried to sound eager rather than smug, in order to allay suspicions, but the look that Ir Yth gave him was a sour one.

Excellent news
, Ir Yth said.

"Isn't it? And Jaya's link-bonding with the ship proves that the Tekhein
desqusai
are compatible with the rest of their kin-dred. The Receiver has demonstrated that her people have reached the required level of development for further evolu-tion"—Sirru couldn't resist rubbing it in a little—"and thus the future of this planet is assured. It'll take time and effort to bring the rest of the population up to this level, to repair the peculiar directions that the subspecies has taken, but at least we know it can be done. I suggest," he added, cautiously, "that we communicate die good news to the Core."

He was expecting Ir Yth to greet this news with relief. After all, if the project succeeded, it would enhance her pres-tige as well as his own. But in the moment before the
rahsasa
turned to face the viewport, she looked far from happy.

Realization struck Sirru like a physical blow.
She doesn't want the project to succeed. She wants it to
fail, like Arakrahali. But why? If the project fails, the
desqusai
are up for termination
. Granted, there was a constant jockeying for position among castes, and projects did get sabotaged—but not at the expense of an entire caste. Why would the
khaithoi
do such a thing? Status? To take
desqusai
temeni and colonies for their own, to enhance their standing in the Core Marginals, perhaps attain Inner rank?

The idea was like a hot wire, singing down his nerves. It had never occurred to him before that one caste might deliber-ately connive at another's destruction. The Core occasionally terminated those castes that had passed their sell-by date, that had proved unviable… but what if they weren't unviable at all? What if such sabotage was a regular occurrence and everyone was just too mentally controlled to notice?

He could feel the surge of the remaining suppressants try-ing to clamp down on these disturbing notions, but for the first time in his life, they failed. He wondered if Jaya had felt like this when they had rescued her from the prison of her own body. He, too, had been a prisoner. His thoughts were racing.

Why had Ir Yth not taken action before? Presumably she'd had to wait for Sirru's arrival, so that any and all blame could be securely placed upon him. The thought made him grow angry and cold.
Well
, Sirru thought,
we'll see about that
.

Contacting the Core will of course be necessary
, Ir Yth told him.
However, I recommend that we
wait for a little while, until we are sure that the Receiver and the ship have truly lin't-bonded. We
don't want to ris't embarrassment by a premature announce-ment
.

"Of course not," Sirru said, and bowed. "I will be guided by your wise example."

Let Ir Yth thin't that she's bought some time
. He wondered, uneasily, whether he might have underestimated the
raksasa
, but she seemed to relax a little at his words.

How
is
the Receiver
? Ir Yth asked.

"She's resting. I suggest we undertake the tests when she wakes."

And Ir Yth, after a pause, said,
Very well
. She gave him a beady look. /
have been meaning to remind
you, now that we are so far from home, that there are obviously full facilities here for suppressant
refreshment. You will be wanting to maintain psycho-logical stability in the face of the demands of
a primitive culture, and I would recommend that you increase your dose
.

Was that a threat? Sirru wondered, alarmed. Had she picked up on any of his thoughts? He wondered if he could find a way to increase the scale's setting beyond its current maximum. If Ir Yth was starting to grow suspicious, he would need to work quickly to confirm this deduction. And to do something to stop her.

When Ir Yth had gone, Sirru made his way back down to the bonding chamber. He knew that this was foolish, literally like turning back the earth to see if a seed has germinated, but he was anxious and the urge was difficult to resist. He did not enter the chamber, but touched the wall so that a small slit ap-peared. The slit was very small and very grudging, which Sirru took to be a good sign. He was unnerved to see that his hand was trembling. He put an eye to the slit and peered through. The chamber had changed. It had shrunk to a little more than half its original size. Filaments of viral nexi hung in slender webs from the walls and the floor of the chamber had become slightly ridged. Sirru noted these faint ridges with satisfaction. Vestiges of a dark and rusty crust smeared the ridges, and Sirru frowned, concerned for Jaya. He stepped back, and the slit closed with a moist snap.

Sirru walked swiftly down the veins of the ship to where Jaya lay. As he went, he noticed that the ship itself seemed to be changing. The atmosphere within it was old and stale, and the walls that surrounded him looked suddenly brittle. He thought of dead leaves in the winter wind, and his skin felt suddenly cold.

He stopped and listened, but the ship told him nothing. He sent questions into the air, but the ship's awareness was turned from him, becoming distant and remote. Swallowing a tight knot of tension, Sirru hurried to find Jaya.

14. Depth skip/ orbit: L,arth

Jaya woke, and knew something was wrong. She ached all over, as if with the aftermath of fever, but her head was clear. Her mouth had a familiar, sour taste of metal, and when she put her hand to her face she could trace dried trails of blood from lips and nose. Her crotch felt bruised. Tense with sudden dismay, she slipped her hand down her trousers, between her legs, and when she brought her fingers back into the light they were wet with blood. It wasn't the dark clots of menstruation, either, but fresh and red.

Nauseated and shaking, she crawled across to the nutrient drip and used the glutinous extract to clean herself as best she could. When her hands were clean, she milked more nutrient into her palm and licked it. The nutrient didn't taste the same. It was sour, like milk on the turn, with a moldy aftertaste. Jaya hastily spat, thinking:
God, what's the matter with me? What happened? Was I raped? By whom? Or
by what
?

She huddled against the wall, arms wrapped defensively around her knees, trying to make herself as small and unob-trusive as possible. She couldn't remember a thing, and it pan-icked her. She'd rather know the worst; at least then she could get angry. Her ribs ached with the legacy of physical exertion.

Colonists always bring the gifts ofsichtess. The British gave us cholera
… But not only colonists; die colonized, too, had weapons at their disposal.
What if I've poisoned the ship? Given it something
that will kill it, like thrush or the common cold
? She could not know what she was dealing with, and neither, per-haps, did Sirru and Ir Yth.
We're all in a great experiment: we're all rats in the maze.

What the hell has happened to me
?

She found herself suddenly missing Kamal with a raw tor-rent of sorrow. Somehow, no matter how bad it got, he'd al-ways been able to comfort her. He'd always known the right thing to say, the practical, sensible thing that defeated panic.

The wall was opening. Jaya glanced sharply up and saw Sirru. The mediator's eyes were anxious, and she could feel a tension emanating from him like a taut wire. He crouched by her side and reached out to touch the remnants of blood on her face, making a curious clucking sound such as one might make to reassure an animal. She scrambled away.

"Don't touch me!" He drew back immediately. "Sirru? What's going on? What have you done to me?"

Her hand brushed the wall, and it felt as frail as paper. It crumpled beneath her fingers and tore away in a thin epidermal skin. Sirru reached out, and the grip of his hand around her wrist was painful. She tried to break free, snapping back against his thumb, but the long digit just bent and rotated, twisting her arm.

"Let me go!"

"Jaya' chantha…" His exasperation washed over her, fol-lowed by a sense of urgency and panic that left her limp.

/Ship/Ir Yth
—
danger/
. Suddenly, she was filled with his own mistrust and alarm.
/And ship is sic't.l

"The ship's sick?" Jaya stared at him in dismay.

Ilr Yth
… /—followed by a cool rush of certainty flowing from Sirru's skin to her own.

"Are you trying to tell me that Ir Yth has done this?"

A twinge of uncertainty, then again:
Ilr Yth/danger/
.

"I
knew
it." Jaya hauled herself to her feet, disregarding the pain. She couldn't trust either alien, but from what she'd seen of the
raksasa
, she'd take Sirru's side any day. There seemed a good enough chance that he was the lesser of two evils. She wished she knew more about these people, but until that knowledge could be gained, she'd just have to rely on her in-stincts. The trouble was, those instincts had to some degree been guided by the voice of the ship, and now the ship was dy-ing.
First Kamal, then
this. Now I really have to rely on myself
.

She reached down and pulled Sirru to his feet.

"Come on," she said, aware that she was effectively talking to herself. "If there's nothing we can do about the ship, we're at least going to get some answers out of the
raksasa
."

15. Depth ship/ orbit: Carth

It would have to be carefully played. Antagonizing the
raksasa
would be a mistake. Sirru hoped he had understood Jaya, but he was by no means certain that they were acting in accord. Jaya stood beside him now, silent and with arms folded.

"I do not wish to worry you, Ir Yth, but the ship is dying," he informed her.

Indeed?

Sirru said with as much restraint as he could muster, "Forgive me for my impertinence, but why is it that you do not seem more alarmed?"

Ir Yth gave a fluid four-shouldered shrug. Desqusai.

"And what is
that
supposed to mean?" So much for re-straint.

Ir Yth's petaled mouth fluttered in a simper.
Your caste is not, of course, to be blamed for its inability
to control its instabili-ties. It is primitive, with little appreciation of the aesthetics of modulation.