Nona the Ninth, page 22
Then she held Nona so hard that it very literally hurt. Nona’s face was squashed into the hard bits of her chest.
“Cam, I’m fine!” she said again, flattened and breathless. “I’m okay! Where’s Pyrrha?”
Camilla’s arms went slack so Nona could pull back a little way. She looked up at the door, as though she expected to see something there and had just realised she hadn’t; she looked down at Nona. When she looked at Nona again her face was horrible.
“Nona,” she said, “Pyrrha went to pick you up from school before lunch. I thought she was with you.”
JOHN 19:18
IN THE DREAM the waters kept rising. They started making a hut at the top of the hill. Bodies were bobbing up and down in the water. He was scared of that—he was always scared of the water—and he made the waters go away for a while, and he raised up some parts of the earth that had been covered by sea. She watched them explode upward, shedding tonnes of water back into the soup. She asked him if it was hard; he said the hardest thing was remembering that he could do it, and not just doing things the old difficult way.
On the new plank of land, all cut up from the water and the damage, there was a broken concrete building guarded by enormous shards of cracked bone. Like an egg that had been smashed from above. They wandered through the fields, slipping in icy brown mud, but they didn’t go anywhere near the building. They found the hood of a half-dead car to sit on, which was drying in the light, and he said: Politically, we were a landmine. Everybody was trying to get to grips with the timescale. We didn’t have much time left, and new data fucked around with the numbers every day. Every time you breathed funny, we wet ourselves. But the old backers, they were the most scared of us, kept saying we were working with this country, or that country, pushed the hardest to prove what we were doing wasn’t real and that anybody talking to us was helping us pull the world’s leg. They were all going round and round and round. I kept saying, give me a seat at the table, let’s work out if I can help, if I can do something.
He said, Turns out you can’t even talk about whether or not you can work out how to do something without twelve weeks of diplomatic dialogue. It was sick.
He said, Anyway, we all had Interpol warrants. Some of the guys inside our walls who’d joined us were like, we want out. Sometimes they wanted out because they were CIA plants and they had bosses to go back to; sometimes they wanted out because they were scared. Anyone who wanted to go, I let them go. I didn’t even care about those guys. Like, nice of them to show up, but they were small fry. I could only trust the inner circle. My scientists, my engineer, my detective, my lawyer, my artist, my nun, my hedge fund manager. My diehards. The ones keeping the lights on. And Ulysses and Titania, my two dead kids—but they were dead, they weren’t great conversation. I wanted to figure out if I could bring them back. If I could really do it, if I could make them come back to life.
He said, Problem was I couldn’t bring anyone back once they’d gone, just stop them from going if they were close. I could fix all the damage and even get the heart beating again and fix the brain. But there was nothing going on inside Ulysses and Titania: they never talked, they never responded. I’d get really scared now and again and turn off the hearts and the brains. I didn’t know what I was doing. And that ate at me.
He said, Our nun kept saying of course you can’t bring them back, their souls are gone. It took me way too long to listen to her. But I was a perfectionist, right? I didn’t want to believe that there was a thing like a soul, I wanted to believe I hadn’t got it right.
He said, Both of us were correct. But that’s for later. What happened then was we found out where the money had gone.
At this point in the dream, he stood up and walked three times around the field. He said, “Don’t follow me, I’m mad.” She sat on the car roof and watched as he kicked a piece of detritus over the edge of the big muddy field. He had sent it quite high, so it fell into the rising mist and then rattled a long way down the hill until she didn’t hear it anymore. She wondered again why anything that hurt them only hurt briefly, but that anger took such a long time to go away.
When he had got over it, he rejoined her on the bonnet of the car, and he tucked his knees up and the metal beneath them groaned at their weight, and he began again.
He said, They took the ships, our ones, the new ones. They said they were going to use FTL instead, faster than light travel. Stupid name for it, it was never really about light speed, but anyway. They said carrying everyone over so slowly was a risk, that they’d shut the cryo plan down because it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t okay or moral. They said we’d only managed to get it down to an eight percent chance of lasting damage once we thawed them, and we’d never fixed maternity—
Here he broke off and couldn’t speak for a while. When he spoke again he said, We were the ones who argued them down to 8%. They were ready to go when we were just in the seventies, they were all, ooh, everyone knows it’s a risk, and it’s not like it’s thirty percent fatality, it’s thirty percent chance of damage, what’s that even, ooh. He said, They hadn’t given a fuck about maternity, said people should terminate before they got packed as a rule. When M— had been all, I will not accept those numbers, I will not accept a plan that incorporates reproductive injustice, and we stood beside her, we said that’s not acceptable, they whinged about the money for a while and eventually said fine. And now they were acting like eight percent wasn’t good enough. Like we hadn’t tried.
He said, Their plan was to evac the whole population. First, send out a dozen guide ships. They said they’d managed to find some poor dipshit geek who’d fixed the FTL problem of getting locked in the chrono well, you know, moving so fast you were stuck doing quantum wheelies. They’d come up with something where you could oscillate out so long as the ship was attuned to a prearranged spectrum outside. I still don’t understand the maths. It’s going to take me ten thousand years to understand it. I couldn’t follow, but A— could. He said immediately, What is the point if you still have no fucking clue where your ship is going to end up when you shake out of FTL. They said, Aha, but we can track it once it’s out. A— said, It could be halfway across the universe or phasing through a planet. They kept arguing that probably wouldn’t happen, and that A— wasn’t following, and he had to admit that it wasn’t his area, but he said they were taking one discovery and acting like it changed the whole ballgame when really we now needed ten years of funding to discover whether it was any use, i.e., academia functioning as normal. But these trillionaires were acting like they’d got the Holy Grail. They said it was expensive, so twelve ships would go first, with one guiding them out with the beacon frequencies like a tugboat leading a cruise liner, triangulate for Tau Ceti, dump the population, and come back. They said that they were on track to finish a lot more FTL-capable ships by then.
He said, We knew how much those ships cost. We couldn’t even imagine how much FTL engines cost, but we could guess. We knew how much each ship could carry. In the cryo cans, we could cram in billions, that was cryo’s saving grace. Whereas they were staffing ships with a living crew, no sleepers, big-ass ships with thousands of live staff. When we pointed that out they kept saying we were crazy, we were kooks, we were monsters. They kept saying cows watched sunsets. At that point I wished I’d used the fucking conspiracy theorists instead of the cows. Nobody would’ve cared if I’d turned people inside-out who think vaccines have nanites in them that mine cryptocurrency. But cows watch sunsets, man!
He said, M— freaked out. Said this was the rats scattering. Said this was why they’d dumped the cryo plan in the first place. She said we were looking at a private flotilla carrying the rich bastards to safety. And A— agreed with her, which was how you knew it was really, really bad. He said this was a blind. He said he wasn’t even sure the FTL thing was real. He said they were going to try to generation ship it to Tau Ceti using stuff we’d come up with, tech we’d created, and just be all bye-bye, fuck you, planet, thanks for the oil and for the chicken yakitori, we loved that stuff.
And I said again, Guys, nobody’s going to fall for that. They’re going to have to give numbers. They’re going to have to prove they’re making the other ships. Nobody’s going to fall for that. Look at all the division we caused because we proved magic was real and turned Bidibidi inside out because we didn’t trust the cops. It’s not going to fly. I said, they can’t do this now. They can’t pull this off.
At that moment in the dream he got up off the car, and he said, “Fuck,” in a normal voice, and then he said, “FUCK,” so loudly that it echoed off the crumbling concrete shell and the bones and was carried off into the mist. She watched him walk the field, three times, five times, ten.
On the eleventh, he squelched through the mud to her and collapsed in front of the car and he said, They left you, they left you. They saw you suffering on dollar-shop life-support, and they didn’t look back. They didn’t give a fuck about trying to save you. They left.
She said, “I don’t remember.”
He said, “I can’t forget.”
DAY FOUR
WHERE IS PYRRHA?—THE GANG SWEARS AN OATH—THE ANGEL MAKES A CALL— HOT SAUCE DRAWS HER GUN—FORTY-EIGHT HOURS UNTIL THE TOMB OPENS.
17
NONA WOKE UP, COLD AND ALONE, with very little idea of how she had fallen asleep; she was still wearing all her clothes, and she hadn’t had her bath. In the night someone had unbuttoned her dust coat, taken off her shoes, and loosened what she was wearing, which meant Camilla or Palamedes; only they would have thought of it.
Last night had been dreadful, too bewildering even to thank her lucky stars that Camilla hadn’t once asked about the broadcast—once she’d heard that Nona had waited at school when Pyrrha hadn’t turned up, then been driven home by a teacher, that was that. She didn’t ask anything else, except: “You heard about the broadcast?” and Nona said, faintly, “Yes,” ready to tell her about the girl from the dream; but Camilla had immediately changed tack, immediately gone to ask Palamedes what to do.
Nona, who by this point was perishing with hunger and exhaustion, had been placed on the floor by Palamedes and forced to suck on cubes of frozen fruit juice as he furiously scribbled on a sheet of paper. He only paused once to say, “You know what the Nine Houses have said, of course.”
Buoyed by blood sugar, Nona was ready to confess.
“Yes. More than. Honesty came in and told us everything they said over the radio, and then Hot Sauce wanted to see it, and…”
She paused. But Palamedes didn’t take the bait.
“Pyrrha was gone before we knew anything about it. She must have set off a full hour before any call came. Nona, did Crown say anything to you about the broadcast when she walked you to the classroom? Did she seem to know about it?”
Nona puzzled over the memory.
“No, she didn’t say a word. We only found out after lunch and I stayed because Camilla didn’t come to pick me up. Crown didn’t say anything”—this wasn’t quite true, and Nona was feeling in the mood to explain, so she tucked the ice cube in her cheek and said—“only Crown did tell the Angel that she was dating Camilla and I didn’t say, ‘No she isn’t,’ so I’m sorry.”
Palamedes was not so tired that he could not look amused, which was always funny on Camilla’s dark, serious face.
“On Crown’s head be it. Don’t worry, Nona. Keep at that cube, and take another when you’re done. You’re almost unconscious.” Then he said, more to himself than to her: “Pyrrha, why the hell did you go off half-cocked? What was so fucking urgent that you couldn’t even pick up Nona?”
“That’s two swears,” said Nona, so nearly asleep she was in danger of choking on the ice cube.
“Not a Teacher’s Aide right now, Nona,” said Palamedes.
She said, “Maybe someone told her about the broadcast on her way to get me. Maybe she went to see the shuttle land.”
Palamedes said, “Neither of those things would prevent her from getting y—” and then he stopped completely dead.
He said, “The shuttle. That fucking shuttle.”
“Three,” said Nona, forgetting.
“Oh, God,” said Palamedes. “Pyrrha Dve, please … Nona, your ice cube’s falling out.”
The last thing she remembered was the ice cube falling out for real and finally; nothing after. Now the alarm was ringing shrilly, far too close for her to stop it with one arm and fall back asleep. Camilla must have set it to make such a horrible sound at some point yesterday. Nona hunted around and pushed its buttons until the noise stopped.
She was completely alone in the bedroom. She panicked for a moment until she saw Camilla and Palamedes’s clothes hung up like normal. But neither of them was there: no Cam with her clipboard, no nothing. It was the first morning that Nona could remember when she hadn’t been woken up to tell her dreams. She heard the running of the tap in the room next door, and that comforted her, all the sounds of someone doing the washing-up. Except it wasn’t Pyrrha, which made her feel bereft. She did not know what to do without someone to give her the cue that it was okay to dress, and in any case she was dressed already. For a moment she lay there, helpless, until the noise of the dishes being wiped stopped and Cam was there in the doorway with one of the blue-and-white-striped cloths that Pyrrha used to dry things with.
“Push the red button and tell the recorder anything you remember,” she said. “I’m making breakfast. Press the one second from left when you’re done.” Then she disappeared again.
Nona didn’t like this at all. Last night’s dream was already mixed up with Pyrrha being gone and the girl on the broadcast, so that she now doubted whether or not the girl on the broadcast had had the face of the girl in the dream or if it was all part of some long nightmare. For a moment she thought about hunting out the picture to confirm, but Cam had told her to record herself, and she’d already forgotten which button to push. Her face burned with embarrassment, so she pushed buttons at random, and the recording within made awful sounds. She turned the volume down low so that Camilla couldn’t hear her screwing up. There was static, and then she heard Camilla’s voice coming out of the speakers, sounding tired.
“—ant her to be Harrowhark, Warden.”
Another plastic echo of buttons. The same voice answered, but not the same person. The conversation that followed was filled with weird pauses, as though they were actors in a play who couldn’t quite get their cues right.
“Yes, but the question we need to ask is, Why? They hate zombie wizards so much more than zombie thralls. To wit, Judith Deuteros. Why do they want a Lyctor on tap?”
Another pause, another clack.
“To remove the R.B.?”
Pause. Clack. “Not sure. Get the feeling that the R.B. is more a crimp in their plans than the plan itself. At first I thought they were keeping Deuteros alive to see if they could make a Lyctor out of her instead, but I’m not so sure. I think I buy Corona’s story that she’s the getaway vehicle … put crudely. But it’s Harrowhark they want—or at least, it’s Harrow that We Suffer wants. I don’t think Merv Wing and the Hopers want Harrow at all, or at least—they’re not holding out for her. Everything comes back to the Tomb, Cam. God, I wish I could see your face.”
Clack. Pause. “Look in the mirror.”
Pause. “It’s not you. It’s me wearing you. I keep turning around to find you, and there’s nobody there.”
Clack. “I know the feeling.”
Pause. “Of course you know. Of course I’m telling you what you already, intimately, know. I have spent three-quarters of my life telling you what you already knew and one-sixth telling you what you didn’t. And now here I am, installed in your body, mere minutes from chewing up your soul … Camilla, I can’t bear this. I’m eating your life.”
Clack. Pause. “I’d carry you with me either way.”
Pause. “What do you mean?”
Pause. Clack. “I’ve carried you, Warden. And I’ve carried your memory … I’d rather carry you.”
Clack. “What about carrying nothing? What about Camilla Hect, the independent entity? Free to live her life outside the shadow of her necromancer? Free from his agenda dictating hers?”
Pause.
“You thought it was your agenda? Huh.”
Clack. “I cannot bear the thought of using you.”
Pause. “Love and freedom don’t coexist, Warden.”
Clack. “This is all there is to love? Simply by being in your life, I have added indelibly to its weight?”
Pause. “Yes.”
Clack. “Camilla, I mean it.”
Pause. “I meant it too. You used to say it to me.”
“We are one flesh.” Clack.
“I am your end.”
Pause. “That didn’t mean I got squatting rights in your soul. I never would have asked for that. I never had rights to that.”
Clack. “Sure. That’s why I gave them to you.”
Clack. Pause. Pause. Pause.
“I hope you know that I adore you, Scholar.”
Clack. “Indubitably, Warden.”
Pause. “Cam, have you thought about what it means if Nona’s actually—a completed merger? One we will never actually be able to unpick, a successful soul gestalt?”
Clack. “Yes.”
“Yes? And? Thoughts?”
Clack. “Lucky them.” Another pause, and in the same tones: “More seriously. Keep neutral.”
Pause. “Yes, agreed. Roger that.”
Clack. Pause. Pause. One of them said, Nona couldn’t tell which, “About the Captain and Corona—” but then with a loud static squeal and a garble the recording swapped over into Nona’s own voice saying—
“Water-mouth, water-salt-mouth,” and Camilla’s, saying, “In the dream, there’s salt water in their mouth?”
“Nn-hnn.”
“In your mouth?”
