Empire of Bones (34 page)

It was beginning to impinge upon him now that he was in the company of three of his nexi: all infected in different ways. Jaya, as a genetic Receiver, would probably prove to be the most stable, and this pleased Sirru, who felt that he needed to explain things to her in rather more detail than he had as yet. She did not trust him, and this was upsetting. Sometimes, now, he saw through the eyes of Rajira, Halil, and Jaya almost as well as he saw through his own. Their thoughts, frag-mented though they were, lent meaning to his own vision.

To his private delight, he was beginning to learn the words for things, the layers of the world. He learned their senses of self, their places within their culture. He was startled to find that Rajira was one of its humblest members rather than a respected citizen, and wondered uneasily what reception Anarres might meet if she should ever visit this world. He learned that the child was still suffering from the lethargy left by the disease, but that he was planning to run when he recov-ered his strength.

Sirru sighed. He supposed that it had been a mistake to seize the child in such a savage way, but he had needed to demonstrate to Jaya that the disease which so preoccupied her was relatively simple to cure, and he had feared that she might not let him near the infant. Next time, gentler methods could be employed, but now one member of the party, at the least, hated and feared him. That would have to be rectified. If he had time, he would try to win the child over. Halil was a nexus, after all, and therefore precious. Besides, it was a mat-ter of common decency.

But it was Jaya whom he could feel and look into most deeply. Sirru felt that he was really getting to know his Receiver, and as the viral link between them grew, so did his affection for her. Rajira reminded him a little too much of a
khaith
, with her soft plumpness, but Jaya—small, lithe, and bony—was more recognizably
desqusai
. Ironically, it was Rajira who was attracted to him, in what was evidently a rather baffled way. The link effected by their congress was still extant; he had, in effect, hardwired himself into her hor-monal array. Sirru suspected that he would have to do some-thing about that before much longer.

He thought wistfully of a return to his First Body and his normal life. But who knew when, if ever, this would come to be; Core alone knew what havoc Ir Yth had already managed to wreak. Sirru experienced a moment of pure fury, an emo-tion so foreign to his usual state of equanimity that it took him aback.

His mood and concept suppressants were long gone now, broken down into harmless cells and faded from his blood-stream. Forbidden thoughts now came to him with increasing frequency: rage at the cavalier way in which the Core molded the castes to suit its own dark purposes; die manner in which Making was so carefully controlled; the way in which groups such as the Naturals were promoted as examples of die Core's tolerance but were in reality suppressed by being forced to live on the fringes of society.

The oldest legends related how the beings of the Core were the most ancient in all the galaxy, how every intelligent form of life stemmed from them, and how they were therefore enti-tled to absolute dominion over die thousands of worlds be-neath their sway. But was this true?
What are they, our Makers; what
manner of thing
? No one had been allowed into die heart of the Core for thousands of years; its demands were inter-preted and filtered down the castes through the multitudinous arrays of the Marginals.
Perhaps there isn't even anything there. Perhaps they're all long dead, and it is the
Marginal castes them-selves who run the universe. Perhaps there are no suppressants, and we are
so controlled that we police our own thoughts
.

This last thought frightened Sirru more than any other, and his skin flushed cold. The three nexi halted and turned to look at him, moving eerily as one. Sirru distributed hasty reas-surance as unobtrusively as possible; the last thing he wanted was to alarm them. He tried to turn his mind from new and disturbing thoughts and to concentrate instead upon learning from the nexi.

Gradually, he gleaned the words for sky and sun and rain, and for the feathered
hiroi
which flashed through the branches of the trees. He was intrigued to find that a few of the oldest root-words still persisted: words that were honored among his people for the length of their lineage. Without their customary layering of emotional tone, they were flat and bland, but they were nonetheless recognizable.

Phrases darted through his mind like the creatures in the trees and slowly, slowly, they began to make sense. The thought of being able to communicate effectively with Jaya, and to find out what she was really thinking, filled him with anticipation. That night, while her dark figure sat hunched over the gun and the golden moon floated above the mountains, Sirru sent out a tentative message.

CRADLED beneath a tree, Rajira Jahan stirred in her sleep, but did not wake. Halil mumbled, afraid, and Jaya raised her

(head and gave Sirru a long, uncomprehending glance. In troubled Varanasi, a woman lying on a bed tossed and turned. Her skin was already hot with fever; she had succumbed more quickly than the others. In the Punjab, a man sat by a window with a jug of ice water, for he could not sleep, but the dreams came to him nonetheless: regular pulses of coded information. He did not understand, Sirru saw, but this did not matter. After all, a radio does not comprehend the information it transmits and receives.

3o.
Research laboratory/ lokai I karmaceuticaU/ varanasi They had found one of the monkeys. Younger than the rest, and with a withered leg, it proved easier to capture than the others. Tokai's hirelings reported that the monkeys moved with an eerie, concerted effort, flitting like spirits through the labyrinths beneath the temple, but the little one was slower and had been left behind. Now, the monkey sat with listless indifference in the corner of its cage. Tokai had not yet per-mitted any of the research technicians to touch it, and ordered it to be placed in Level Four isolation. He now stood at the airlock to the isolation ward with Ir Yth, watching the little figure.

This place is your laboratory?

"One of them, yes. I have others, throughout Chile and Japan. Southeast Asia, too."

An extensive network^.

Tokai gave a small smile. "I should like it to be larger."

That is a distinct possibility.

Self-deprecatingly, Tokai said, "This world must seem very small and limited to one from such a vast empire."

Very small, yes. The Umpire consists of many thousands of worlds, many billions of souls. It is not
only the oldest civilization; it is the
only
one
.

Imperceptibly, Tokai sighed. Despite his distrust of Ir Yth, he found himself moving in and out of sympathy with her. Her modesty, her reserve, and her apparent need to maintain honor were surprisingly Asian, and appealing, but the arro-gance and the condescension with which she treated her new allies were surely not. Tokai was not used to being dealt with in this manner, and it infuriated him. He took care not to show this, and had dosed himself with a cocktail of pheromonal suppressants in order not to betray himself. He suspected that Ir Yth gained a great deal of unwitting infor-mation through these self-betrayals, as indeed he did himself.

/
will investigate the animal
, Ir Yth informed him now.

"We have an extensive range of precautions—" Tokai be-gan, gesturing to the protective suits that hung on the wall, and to the airlock itself. Ir Yth gave him a scornful glance.

There is no need for unnecessary encumberment. I do not re-quire protection.

"But there are a great many lethal viruses contained within this chamber. Do you see the containment racks? If you were to accidentally release something—"

/
am not that clumsy. Open the door
.

"Very well. But I'm going in with you. Give me a few min-utes to suit up and—"

I will go alone.

"No."

Tokai and Ir Yth glared at one another for a moment, and then the
raksasa
conceded.

Very well. I am here to assist, not cause further problems.

She waited with evident impatience while Tokai methodi-cally went through the rituals of suiting up. Then together they stepped through the door of the airlock, which hissed shut behind them. Tokai released the second door, and the
raksasa
strode into the isolation chamber as though she owned the place.

Ir Yth went straight to the cage in which the monkey was kept. Releasing the catch, she reached in and grasped the monkey by the scruff of the neck. It hung, squirming, from her stumpy fingers.

"Wait!" Tokai cried. "What are you doing?"

Hauling the monkey out of the cage, the
raksasa
studied it for a moment. Tokai watched in paralyzed revulsion as a long, thin, red blade extended from between the
ra'tsasas
furled lips and stabbed at the base of the animal's throat. The monkey gave a single small squeak and then went limp.

"Wait—" Tokai whispered, appalled at this vampiric dis-play. Memories of the stories of demons told to him in child-hood returned with alarming clarity. Ir Yth ignored him. The red tongue was straight and stiff, but occasionally it quivered. And then it retracted with lizard-tongue speed, its curled end flickering briefly over Ir Yth's lips.

Interesting
, Ir Yth said, as if to herself.

"I'm sure," Tokai remarked, weakly.

It will take a little time to analyze.

Something was moving beneath Ir Yth's robe. Tokai could see the material above her ridged breastbone fluttering, as if stirred by an invisible breeze. Ir Yth's golden gaze was bland and blank.

I see… It is indeed a virulent plague.

Without his cane, and sealed off from Ir Yth's betraying pheromones, Tokai could only assume that she might be lying.

"How terrible," he said, sincerely.

But it can be treated. An antidote can be manufactured.

"That's wonderful news."

But it will not be easy. I require assistance. I also require… certain considerations.

"Perhaps you would be good enough to instruct me."

I require knowledge of your operations. What is this
? The
rak-sasa
held up a glistening phial.

"Please put that back!"

You seem agitated
, Ir Yth said.

"That is a sample of the virus that causes a disease called Selenge, an illness of which you may have heard. There is no way of knowing what it might do to you—you are not hu-man, after all, and—"

But once again he was too late. With a deft twist, Ir Yth re-moved the stopper of the flask, then tested the contents with her tongue.

"Madam! Ir Yth!"

The
raksasa
turned a gilded eye upon Naran Tokai.

This is manufactured.

"What are you talking about? It's a retrovirus; it—"

/
have had some experience of the diseases of this world. They are naturally occurring, harmful
mutations of the original com-munication mechanisms with which the irRas supplied this
bio-sphere. This is not natural. This has been made. I congratulate you, To'tai. This branch of the
desqusai
is more advanced than I had believed. What is it for
?

"What do you mean?" Tokai asked, trying to recover his shattered composure. The prospect of being blackmailed by Ir Yth was not an appealing one.

Its function. Such things are not manufactured for personal amusement. Permit me to speculate. I
know that certain societies here are divided by caste, just as my own society is. Jaya has told me
that her own caste is extremely lowly, but that they used to have a more equal position. That
equality was eroded with the ad-vent of a new political order, and subsequently sealed by the
advent of the disease called Selenge, which affected primarily the lower castes and therefore
caused them to be mistrusted and shunned, and confined to the filthier jobs. It must have been a
very good ex-cuse for the authorities to continue to revoke their privileges. You have a virtual
monopoly on the pharmaceutical industry in this part of the world. I wonder what you have done
to earn such a po-sition.

"Very well," Tokai said warily. "You seem to have an ad-mirable grasp on political realities."

/
am not here to challenge your actions. Local politics hold lit-tle interest for me as long as they do
not interfere with Core plans. Indeed, the use of such mechanisms to control the stability of a
so-ciety is a method that the Core itself has employed; it is the sign of a developed order. But your
manufactured viruses might serve as a

carrier for the antidote. And now, I should like to make further in-vestigations.

The fragile body of the monkey lay unmoving in its cage. Tokai felt equally drained as he watched Ir Yth bustling about the laboratory, tasting and testing Tokai's fatal creations with all the enthusiasm of a child in a sweetshop, feasting on poi-sonous candies.

YAMUNOTRI

i.

bouthern Himalayas

Jrfi
They had now been traveling for over a day, heading up iky^into the high passes. Rajira and the child were clearly
m%
finding it difficult, and Jaya planned to leave them at the ¦ i first place that seemed reasonably secure. Unfortunately, jP this was not proving easy to find. Once, these lower
SaBd
slopes had been covered with small-holdings and sum-mer pastures, but Amir Anand's scorched-earth policy had taught this part of the north a hard lesson. Now, the hills were silent and bare, with only the thin grass growing sparsely on the heights. The ruins of houses by the side of the road, bullet holes still stitching the faded white plaster of their walls, were another legacy.

It was not only the past that preoccupied Jaya—-she was be-coming increasingly certain that Sirru might be ill. He had grown silent and withdrawn; his narrow face seemed pinched and paler. When dawn once more broke over the mountains, she stepped stealthily across the ranks of sleeping bodies and stared down at him. They had taken shelter in one of the ru-ined compounds, in the moldy hay of a cattle shed.