The Blackwing War, page 11
It hadn’t been the Deep’s fault, the two of them had assured her, as Matthew sat beside her, rubbing her back as she wept. It had been a mistake. Nothing more than a careless mistake. When the Deep first arrived, it didn’t know how people worked. It had needed to learn that human bodies aged, that they could be injured. That they needed a balanced atmosphere to keep their insides on the inside.
That they could cease to exist.
It had been our fault, Matthew had said, many times. Not the Deep’s.
That hadn’t helped, not one bit. Tembi had been barely twelve, newly torn from her homeworld and thrust into a world of adults which had no real place for her. Learning that her best friend could be turned into a mass murderer with a misplaced word was too much. Her Adhamantian veneer had cracked, and she couldn’t stop crying.
Later, once she was older, she had applied a teenager’s grim curiosity to the Turtle Incident. There were very few visuals available: Lancaster maintained careful control over its brand. She had needed to ask Matthew to let her watch his grammalight display, and had gotten about halfway through the program before she decided that she had seen all she would ever need to see.
There hadn’t been much more for her to learn. The Witch who had been held responsible for the Turtle Incident was never named. The very memory of her had been purged from Lancaster’s records. All that was left of her was the story of how she had been playing a game with the Deep and had said something careless. It had been a terrible tragedy, but everyone agreed that space exploration was dangerous and much worse had happened. The Deep was blameless: the fault belonged to that nameless long-dead Witch, and to Lancaster. Now, let’s all agree to pretend it never really happened.
Tembi still thought about it at least once a week, usually right before she started on the latest bomb.
She glared at her second mother, and then nodded, cowed. Matindi reached over and patted her hand. “The Deep thinks that moving ships and buildings around is fun,” Matindi reminded her. “But we need to always remember how even that can be dangerous. Asking it to choose sides in a policy war? Who knows what might happen during that kind of game? I’m not going to lie to it with scenarios which make it seem like choosing one Witch over another is a puzzle without consequences.”
Tembi shoved a fresh cookie into her mouth, grumbling.
“Don’t rush into anything,” Matindi said, as she gathered up her tea. “That’s all I ask.”
“Do I have to think about it for twenty-five hundred years?”
“Good night, dear.” Matindi gave her a kiss on the cheek, then bopped Tembi upside the head. “Don’t be fresh.”
Tembi chuckled as she moved her dishes to the sink, took her usual handful of mini-meds to stitch her ulcers back together overnight, and ducked into her bedroom to get ready for bed. It had been a long day, and tomorrow promised to be much, much worse. All Tembi wanted to do was fall into dark, dreamless sleep. Her bed waited; soft, sweet-smelling, clean as anything.
She stared at it with great loathing.
“Deep?” she said aloud.
The taste of candied flower petals came and went.
“I need to sleep. Real human sleep. Just for a couple of hours, okay?”
There was no reply. Correction: there was no reply she could detect. Maybe the Deep was talking to her through methods which lay beyond the reach of her limited senses, and she’d fall into bed, thinking she could finally sleep, and the Deep would whisk her mind away.
“I’m serious, Deep. Please?”
“Oy!” Matindi, next door in the guest room, banged on the wall between them. “Deep, let the poor girl sleep!”
Three of Tembi’s houseplants uprooted themselves from their pots and walked themselves out of her bedroom, closing the door behind them.
“I’ll take that as a yes?” Tembi asked.
There was a pause, and then the pots disappeared.
Tembi wiggled into bed. The sheets were freshly washed and firmly tucked, their corners creased over to form a tight wrap around her shoulders. It reminded her of childhood, back when Matindi had managed her life. It was surprisingly soothing.
Sleep came quickly.
And then came the usual dream.
It always began with a crack in the world.
Which world? It didn’t matter. One world was very much like another after humankind had their wicked way with it. A thousand habitable planets in the galaxy, a hundred times that number which could be habitable if the engineers tinkered with landmasses and genomes—and if you could afford an entire planet, why wouldn’t you pay extra for the engineers to poke it, or you, into shape?—and this particular dream never came with a map.
So. One world.
One vague interchangeable world.
(One world which smelled a little too much like Adhama, an unmistakable scent of arid desert sands mixed with the hard brine of the nearby ocean, but Tembi did her best to never think about that.)
In the dream, there was a humming sound, the ground beneath her vibrating. As she ran, the world fractured beneath her feet, fast as a fruit cleaved with a knife. She ran through streets filled with screaming people, crumbling buildings, dust, dust everywhere, in her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her ears, and none of that made sense! She shouted for the Deep to come and help, to come and save these people, but the Deep was gone, the Deep was—
What happened after that, Tembi didn’t know, as that was when she woke, gasping, sheets yanked high around her neck, as if the sheets were trying to do her body’s job of keeping the dust away from her.
Tonight, the dream began as it always did. The hum, the crack, the chaos, the nameless world turned to ever-blowing dust. A profound sense of loss, sweeping over her and pulling her down, down, down into nothing. But, instead of allowing her to wake in terror, the dream eased its grasp on her subconscious. She watched as the dust parted and the sky became clear, and two faceless beings clad in rainbow robes emerged, robes so bright and bold that Domino’s were nothing but mud-puddle brown in comparison. These beings shifted form again and again, growing smaller as they shrank down to her own size, losing and gaining limbs, fur, feathers, skin!
The dream relaxed its hold again, and now it crumbled around her, pieces of colors squirming on the ground. She looked away from these and—
Oh.
She recognized this place.
The vague haziness of dreaming left her, leaving her as awake and aware as if she was walking around in her own body instead of as her dream-self. She had been in this dreamscape before. It was a dream of the Deep’s own making, a dream where all Witches could come and touch the galaxy without the burden of physicality.
Tembi loved this place. It was reality without being real, an idealized version of what could (should?) exist in the waking world. The Deep stripped away nagging problems that tripped up the simple joys of experience. It wasn’t complicated. It didn’t need to be complicated! It was a world made up of small but meaningful things, like going on a picnic without insects, like lying in a grassy field to watch the stars without the evening damp seeping into your robes.
All Witches were welcome in this dream world, but few chose to visit. Why bother? This dream world was a mirror of reality. Might as well jump from here to there in the waking world, where their money meant something and their status as a Witch was worth much more, and keep their dreams to themselves.
Tembi wished she had that option. The Deep brought her into its dream when it had something to show her, which happened often. For her, sleep was usually a portal to more work.
Tonight, the Deep had placed her one of the decorative courtyards which dotted the Earth Assembly’s central pavilion. It was peaceful; the eager shrieking masses of the waking world had no presence here. She could take a moment to pause and look around, enjoy the grandeur of old Earth without the cloying presence of other people. It wasn’t sleep, but it could be worse—worse was the dream of the fractured world that couldn’t possibly be Adhama, really!—and she’d pop some ’rexies when she woke up to take the edge off her sleepdep.
In the Deep’s own dream, the courtyard was green and gold, with vegetation dropped over its yellow stone bones. All of the plants were native to Earth. The stone, native to quarries in the region. The courtyard took up ten square kilometers in the middle of a city by the sea, on a continent that had been mostly desert until some light terraforming had dropped the planet’s temperature by a few degrees. Now, it was paradise, with flowers draped across mammoth statues, and colorful birds darting about. Strange-looking creatures with long limbs and tails nipped back and forth within the trees, pausing in their business to scream at her as she wandered along the paths.
She was having a pleasant time until she found the posters.
One spot was much like another; the courtyard was designed to be a stately pleasure garden if you didn’t know where you were going, the tranquil uniformity of the place broken only by its hidden delights. She found a frozen custard stand hidden behind a rock, a palette of Earth flavors waiting for her despite the lack of robotic servers. Chocolate was chocolate the galaxy over, so she passed that up and went for the local flavors that couldn’t be found anywhere else. She was munching on a mystery blend of crushed berries in cream when she turned the corner and found a large glasshouse. There was garbage here, overflowing from bins and scattered across the ground, which was strange enough—Garbage! Here!—but posters had been pasted against the glasshouse’s walls.
Tembi recognized them at once. Perfect smiling faces, their hands placed over their heart, right over left. Some of them wore uniforms of black so pitch that shadows couldn’t catch the folds. There was text, but she didn’t need to read it. She already knew what it said.
This had been the site of a Blackwing recruitment rally.
“No,” she whispered, horrified. She would have preferred a battlefield.
The posters had been pasted against the glass. She gave a corner a tug and the yank adhesive released, the undamaged poster coming away in her hands. A souvenir for those who wanted one, she guessed. For those who wanted to remember the event.
It had reached Earth. No—it had reached the grounds of the Earth Assembly.
Or it had always been here, and they finally feel safe enough to come into the light.
A brief moment of panic, quickly replaced by anger.
“Kalais!” she shouted. “Get out here!”
The door to the glasshouse opened, and Kalais emerged, one hand in his hair as if he was slightly embarrassed. “How did you know?”
“The Deep doesn’t like politics, and it wouldn’t have stuck me in an Assembly courtyard unless it had a reason. Like someone asking it.” She turned to leave. “Kalais, I’m exhausted. Talk to me in person. Tomorrow.”
“No, Tembi, wait.” He crossed the distance between them, tearing down another poster on the way. “I didn’t stage this. The glasshouse is like this back on Earth. They left it up, Tembs! They meant for people like us to see it! They’ll swear it was a maintenance error and the ’bots didn’t get the cleanup request, but they left it up. They want everybody to know that the Blackwings have access to the Earth Assembly—”
“—and the Sabenta don’t,” she finished for him. “Yeah, Kalais, I get it. Believe it or not, I do understand what’s happening.”
Her memory kicked up the image of Dame Idowu staring at Bayle’s boots, and—No. Focus, Tembi, she reminded herself, as she shoved that memory aside.
He waited—sometimes she hated how well he knew her!—until she could steady herself, and then he said, “I’m sorry for what I said today. It just fell out.”
“I know.” She opened her eyes and began to peel the posters from the glasshouse. Wasted effort, as they’d still be there in the waking world, but it kept her hands busy and it was deeply satisfying to tear those hateful things down, to rip away the bright Earth-perfect smiles and crumple them into small balls. “Help me.”
He took a spot a few meters away from her, and they circled the glasshouse, tearing down posters in silent anger. Once they were done, they cleaned up the garbage on the ground. Dream garbage shouldn’t be as nasty as real garbage, but the Deep was a stickler for details, and once they were done they found a nearby fountain to clean their hands.
“I don’t know what to do,” she finally said.
“I know,” he replied. “But you can’t do nothing. Or, maybe I should say…” He backtracked quickly and tried again. “…that I never know what to do, either. So I find something I can do, and work at it.”
“Like the posters.”
“Yeah.”
She sighed. “I have something to tell you.”
The words came easily. Talking to Kalais was always easy when they weren’t at each other’s throats. In a matter of minutes, she had told him about her afternoon on Adhama, and the message Moto had left for her in the Crisp. When she got to the part about the Crisp, he froze, motionless except for his fingers knotting into fists.
Once she had finished, he said, “He could have killed you.”
She winced. “I’m fine, just—”
“Crisps soss with your head, Tembs! We’re already barely sane. I mean—” He spread his arms to gesture at the dream world around them. “Even the best Crisp can malfunction! Do you want to spend the rest of your life seeing and hearing Moto talk to you in his mirror, no matter what else you’re doing?”
Her stomach turned at the thought, but she pushed through it. “I’ll let you know if that happens,” she said. “What about his message?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Moto doesn’t panic. I’ve seen him in some bad situations, and nothing shakes him.”
She nodded. People from Adhama had a habit of bottling up their emotions until it got them in trouble. Moto had been the one who had taught her how to control herself. The man in the Crisp wasn’t the one she knew.
Kalais added: “I think something else might have happened to him.”
“What?” Tembi started walking. As long as they were here, there was a pub a few shady pathways over. This was the kind of conversation—small hells, this was the kind of day!—that went better with a bottle or two of whatever beverage the Earth Assembly chose to tout to offworlders. Probably beer. Everybody knew beer, and what was familiar made for reliable sales.
“There’s a rumor going around that the Blackwings are poisoning their enemies on the Council.” Kalais knew where she was going, and he took the first turn towards the pub. “Not killing them. Slipping them a new mindfuck which knocks their resilience and intelligence down.”
Tembi grimaced. Use of cognitive disruptors was routine, even in peacetime. The right blend could create whatever workplace disaster its user wanted. A common blend was used to heighten anxiety while also exacerbating aggression. Spike the drinks in a critical meeting with a few drops of that stuff, and then sit back to watch the chaos ensue. Except mindfucks were used so often that meetings were held behind a veritable gauntlet of air and water filters, all surfaces in the room were scrubbed before anyone could touch them, and there were legions of ’bots on molecule patrol darting away in the background. Not to mention that people in positions of power had to endure every conceivable form of biotest a couple of times a week.
A new type of mindfuck that didn’t ping on the security systems? If it lopped a chunk off of intelligence and resiliency… That was a scary, scary thought! You’d have people in command positions making decisions without full control of their senses, and nobody would know it. Or maybe they would know it, or at least suspect it, and suspicion would fester like an open wound.
They reached the pub. Tembi found the taps, and pulled a couple of tall mugs full of beer for Kalais and herself. She leaned against the smooth stone surface of the counter and cupped her hands around the mug, wondering to herself if hydration in a dream might count towards self-care.
“We need to get Moto back,” Kalais said. “If he did get hit with a mindfuck, we need to clear out his system so he can tell us what he learned.”
“We need to get Moto back, full stop,” she sighed. “Time’s caught up with him. He’s out there right now, still in stasis. He’s alone and helpless.”
Kalais spent a long moment busy with his drink, very obviously not shouting about how the Deep couldn’t move through time! Instead, he chose to swallow and then said, very cautiously, “Yes, we need to get him back.”
She grinned at him. “Where do we start? I’ve already asked the Deep.”
“For advice?”
“No, but that’s not a bad idea.” Tembi pushed herself away from the pub’s counter. “Deep? You know we want to find Moto, right?”
One of the pub’s taps turned on. Another mug of beer floated over to the counter and joined theirs. Kalais watched it move in silence, eyes wide.
“Good fortune,” Tembi said, as she held up her own mug, and tapped it lightly against the third. She gestured for Kalais to do the same, and he did, shooting his mug out and back so quickly that she feared the rest of his beer might whip straight across the pub. “Deep, do you understand that we’re worried about Moto?”
The third mug bobbed up and down in the air.
“We know you’re keeping him safe, but we’re still worried.” Tembi paused. She wished Matindi was here. Matindi knew what to…well, no, Matindi didn’t know what to say to make the Deep understand, either. Nobody did. Probably not even the Deep. But she’d still feel better if Matindi were here. “We need to find him so we can take him out of stasis. Can you help us find him?”
Somehow, Kalais guessed what would happen. “Wait, Tembs, no!”
Too late.
There was a snapping sound as a stasis pod appeared, as if something in the local ecosystem had been broken. Tembi gasped, sick to her stomach, as Moto’s pod cracked through the eggshell boundaries of the dream and clattered against the pub’s sandstone floor. The world bent around them, a wobble in a manufactured reality, before it stabilized itself again with the pod in the middle of the room.
