Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

Twenty-One

The game had gotten bigger.

Only, no. That wasn’t true. The game had always been bigger, and now Dafyd wasn’t the only one who felt it. I’m not scared, he thought. I’m curious. I’m not scared, I’m curious. It isn’t fear. It’s curiosity. He took a deep breath and blew it out as he walked.

The path to the librarian’s quarters was almost familiar now. He felt his mind starting to set landmarks: the archway that led out of his cathedral, the highway of guards and servants of the Carryx, the turn where the wall had a streak that looked like verdigris, the passage that led to the lake, and the one with the webs, the turn that took him from wherever else the great passage went and bent him toward the librarian of the human moiety. It was all so large, so solid, that he could almost forget how high above the planet’s surface they were. The window in their quarters looked out higher than a transport would fly on Anjiin. All of this was in one ziggurat out of dozens just like it that they could see.

Not scared, curious. How did they build that? What kinds of materials could they have invented to make something this astounding? Had it been the Carryx themselves? Some other species? Had they found it in place and appropriated it? There was so much history, so many stories, and he wanted to hear them because they were fascinating. Not just because his life depended on it.

He heard Carryx voices before he reached the room, and even untranslated, he knew the librarian from the other. It wasn’t the reedy, pleasant voice of the translator box, but it was the peculiar whistle and trill that went with it. And then the other, lower and harsher. Dafyd waited outside while the conversation went on. He didn’t know what the Carryx would do if he interrupted, but since the worst could be fatal, he was fine with giving them time. He was curious because he chose to be. It didn’t make him stupid.

The Carryx that lumbered out of the room was large, but also weirdly graceful. The feeding arms tucked into its body were darker than usual, and the huge fighting forelegs had streaks of red on them as vibrant as a butterfly’s wings. By instinct, Dafyd bowed and pressed his hands to the floor as it passed.

The librarian was calm and still when he went in. Only its back legs shifted back and forth, swaying its body, but gently. The wide, dark eyes clicked to him and away and back again.

“If I have come at an inappropriate time, I can come back later,” he said, and the square at the librarian’s neck churred and stuttered.

“Your errand in coming determines whether your timing is appropriate,” the reedy voice said, and Dafyd thought he heard some amusement in it. That might only have been his imagination.

“I wanted to make a proposal,” he said, stepping into the room. “If it is permitted, I would like to come here with you and learn about the Carryx.”

The librarian was silent for long enough that Dafyd was starting to worry. Its back legs shifted. “To what end?”

“The test is whether we’re useful. If we understood what you needed or wanted, there is a possibility we’d be better able to make ourselves useful.”

It was true as far as it went. It was also the best plan he could think of to be where the other survivors of Anjiin would come. He’d found his way here. It made sense that others might have too. He wasn’t certain that connection was something the librarian would want, though, so he kept that to himself.

The librarian froze. Its back legs braced the way he’d seen them do in the plaza on Anjiin, and the powerful forelegs rose off the ground like a prelude to violence. Dafyd dropped to the floor, spreading his arms and trying to think what he had done that could have given offense. After a long, tense moment, the Carryx lowered its forelegs. When it spoke, the voice was the same as ever.

“‘Possibility’ is irrelevant. You are useful or you are not.”

“I only meant that we could do a better job serving the Carryx if—”

“An animal does not choose its”—the translator paused for a fraction of a second—“essential nature and place in society.”

“I apologize. I am young. I am still learning.”

The librarian shuddered, a long rising motion that seemed to start at its core and radiate out. “There is nothing else.”

“No,” he said. He rose and backed away. The floor was worked with little hexagons with fine, dark lines running across them like circuitry. He’d never noticed that before.

When he reached the hallway, he sat, back against the wall, and rested his head on his knees. The trembling came and went. The muttering and deep, rolling trills of Carryx voices in the distance was like hearing an endless wave breaking against a stone beach. Nausea haunted the back of his throat, but as long as he didn’t move, it didn’t get worse. Once, when he’d been very young, a section of cliffside that he’d been standing on sloughed away as he stepped off it, tumbling to the distant canyon floor. The sense of having barely avoided death was the same now.

“All right,” he said to the empty air. “So. Not that. Right.”

But even in the middle of his adrenaline shudders, a part of him thought, Why not that? Yes, yes, the Carryx had rejected the idea. Powerfully. But why powerfully? And why reject it. Dafyd breathed deeply, slowly, and replayed the conversation in his head—everything he’d said, everything the librarian had replied. He imagined it again and again, not trying to analyze it. Not yet. If he could commit it to memory, he could review it again later. The thing now was not to forget.

The translator had paused. Stumbled on something like it had a hard time putting some particular thought into human terms. What had that been? Essential nature and place in society. He repeated the phrase aloud a half dozen times, but couldn’t find anything in it. He sighed, hauled himself to his feet, and started the long walk back to the safety of the workgroup’s quarters.

The wide main corridor was more crowded today than it had been during his previous visits. He kept looking between the alien bodies—Rak-hund, Soft Lothark, and the lumbering, enameled bulk of Carryx soldiers—hoping to catch a glimpse of a human face. The last vestiges of his cunning plan as it failed. No one appeared, just rank after rank of Carryx soldiers.

As he came to the archway that led back to the cathedral and the abandoned lab, he shifted to looking for the Night Drinkers. He was a human alone, after all. Being out was a risk. He resented that. He wanted to sit in his little niche the way he had before and watch the strange and wonderful bodies, evolutionary solutions to environments he could barely imagine, walk and lumber and float. He remembered the hours he’d spent and how lonely he’d felt, how cut off from the others. Now he was going back to where everyone was, all the time together, and he resented the change.

One of the Carryx guards came out from the cathedral as he was heading in. Its shell was a brilliant green, its forelegs thick and paler than the average, but the things that caught Dafyd’s attention were three pale stripes like bracelets. One of the librarians had had the same marks, and in the same place. A caste mark, maybe. But where had he seen it…

Oh yes, it had been the librarian for the hallway crows. The one that had led Dafyd to his own librarian the first time when its charge had been throwing a tantrum by the wall of the cathedral…

Dafyd’s steps slowed before he knew why he was slowing. The hallway crows—standoffish and isolated, but common—had been there from the first day the humans had arrived. He’d seen them on the way in from the landing pad and the presentation of the prisoners. But he couldn’t recall seeing one lately. Not, maybe, since the day he’d approached their librarian. He walked again, his attention sharp for Night Drinkers or other threats, but also looking to see whether, standing alone in the shadows and corners, there were any hallway crows left. From the time he’d stepped into the cathedral to his arrival at the workgroup’s wide doorway, his count never got above zero.

“It was astounding,” Campar said, gesturing expansively as Dafyd rolled the door shut. “One moment, she was our well-loved Jessyn, studious and meek, and the next, the spirit of vengeance. Welcome back, young Alkhor. You’ve missed the great war expedition.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Jessyn said from the kitchen, but she was smiling. It was strange to see her smiling. “But we have found the Night Drinkers’ lab. Maybe their nest too. It’s hard to say.”

“Where are Else and Synnia?” Dafyd asked.

“Sleeping. What did you get?” Tonner asked from where he squatted beside the resonance imager.

Dafyd shrugged. An anomaly in translation. A pattern of arm marks. A rejection. “Less than I’d hoped. You?”

Tonner shifted his weight. Around them, the common area was barely controlled chaos. Power cables snaked from holes ripped in the kitchen counters to the jagged-edged lab equipment. The chairs and couches that had been scattered through the space were shoved against the walls to make room, and one wall was covered with pages of notes and sketched-in tables of reaction times and metabolite levels. The dining table was entirely covered with sacrificed berries, their skins peeled back and pinned down to expose the bare pulp inside.

“We’ve lost a lot of progress,” Tonner said, “but I think we’ll get through it faster the second time.”

“The initial assay is that Jessyn’s medication is nontoxic to the hosts,” Campar said. “Our little friends should be able to produce it at a therapeutic concentration without any additional cooking down on our part.”

“If we can get them to express it at all,” Jessyn said.

Campar shooed the comment away. “That’s the simple part.”

“It’s not simple,” Tonner said. And then, “It’s also not harder than what we were already doing.”

Dafyd’s head felt full. He wondered what the others would think if he told them that the librarian seemed on the edge of killing him. If they’d think he was playing up the story for attention. If they’d believe him. “What can I do to help?” he asked.

The light from the great window changed slowly, shifting its angle and color until deep blue shadows spilled across the floor. The work was familiar—prepping specimens, reading metabolic activity from heat and waste products and how quickly they exhausted free oxygen from the air. Synnia came out, made herself a meal, and sat at the table among the flayed animals. Else appeared a little after, hair disarrayed by her nap and exhaustion still in the darkness under her eyes. Jessyn and Campar retold the story of chasing off the Night Drinkers again for the new audience. Dafyd recounted his failed approach to the librarian, and the soldier Carryx with the banded arm, and the missing hallway crows. Tonner worked with the steady, unrelenting pace of a long-distance runner.

The pattern that their lives had built since arriving in the prison had been broken by the attack, and the new version of their days was still finding itself. Who they were to each other after Irinna’s death was different too. Dafyd saw it in the way Tonner focused on the work instead of on managing the schedule for everyone around him. He saw it in Campar’s brewing fresh tea for people whether they had asked for it or not. In Rickar’s unspoken inclusion in the work, his exile part of a social order that no longer existed.

For Dafyd, it felt like equal parts relaxation and mourning. The Carryx had made an imperfect model of their old lives for them here. One place to sleep, another to work. Tonner had taken a whip hand to it, taking comfort in the tasks because it was the only control over his own life left to him. Even cutting Rickar out had been a way to keep continuity with the past when connection to the past was just an illusion. They were all letting the illusion of control and continuity go now. Or else it was slipping away despite them.

It was full dark outside and Campar and Synnia had retired to their rooms when Dafyd put the last sample of pulp into the resonance imager. “All right. I think I’m done for the day. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

“Rickar?” Tonner said. “Can you keep an eye on that? I’ll want the readings when it’s at a quarter and halfway through the run.”

“On it,” Rickar said, moving over to take the seat Dafyd was leaving. Then, leaning in toward Dafyd and nodding toward the team lead, “I’m sure he’ll sleep at some point.”

“You think I can’t do this while I’m asleep?” Tonner said. It was strange to hear him joke with Rickar. It was strange to hear him joke at all. And there was a sorrow at the back he didn’t understand yet.

In his room, Dafyd showered. The weariness wasn’t physical, but his mind felt like he was stuffing too much straw into a too-small sack. The feeling that there was something important, something he almost understood, was like change in the air before a storm. His mind shifted from Jessyn and Rickar and Campar chasing the Night Drinkers to the missing hallway crows to the librarian’s near rage. Nothing fit together, but he was certain that something would if he could just find the right perspective.

Dream was just touching his mind, drawing him off into memories of things that he halfway knew hadn’t happened, when his door opened and then softly closed. He blinked, raising himself up on his elbows.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Else said as she sat on the edge of his mattress. “Shh. Nothing’s wrong.”

In the near darkness, her face was just a familiar curve, a little reflection where her eyes rested. He rolled to his side, and she shifted into the space he’d left for her.

“What is it?”

The moment of silence sounded like a smile. She took his hand, guiding it. He lost his train of thought. Then, “What do you think it is?”

“Else,” he said.

“I’ll leave if you want me to,” she said. “But we don’t have very much left. Not much time. Or safety. Or reason to count on tomorrow. I don’t want to sacrifice anything good in my life right now. I need the things that sustain me. If this isn’t one, I understand. But if it is…”

He felt her shrug. He closed his eyes, and it didn’t make much difference. Dafyd’s mind moved the consequences of what he said next like he was shifting pieces on a game board. Did Tonner see you come in? If you stay, what will it do to him? How does this complicate things with the others? She brushed her fingers across the back of his hand. The sound of her skin against his was like a soft wind in the desert.

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Please stay.”

The swarm is at war with itself. The dead girl is repulsed, angry, cutting in her judgment. Everything about this is gross. Everything. It’s a status fuck. Finding the man with the most pull in the group and diving into his lap. It’s disgusting. Else, or what remains of Else, doesn’t speak, but its hurt and defensiveness is a tightness at the jaw, a hardness in the lips. The swarm feels her reaching for the echo of the dead girl, searching for some intimacy to hit back at, but there is very little of Ameer left. Dafyd stretches beside its body, another vulnerable man, but with a very different meaning.

It has loosened the reins on its stolen flesh, let the cascade of nerve impulses and chemical signals flow where they would have gone without its presence. It was aware intellectually of the ways that physical pleasure reinforces the cues associated with it. A name, a scent, an identity. Now it is watching those associations form in itself in real time. It is feeling what sex can do to a human brain, what longing and need and the slaking of desire can do.

The dead girl isn’t wrong. The process is undignified. Else, seeing herself through the other one’s perspective, is humiliated. When she tells herself it wasn’t her, it was the swarm, no one believes her. There are too many memories of other times, other moments when she lost interest in one mate and favored another whose fortunes were on the rise. It is something she has tried not to know about herself. She is ashamed, and the swarm feels her shame with indulgence. It is such a small sin, such an inconsequential flaw in the grand scheme of things. Even as the other one recoils, the swarm finds itself considering Else Yannin with kindness, consolation, something even a little akin to love.

You said something before, it says.

Dafyd Alkhor takes a deep breath, and its head rises with his ribs. Yeah?

About soldier Carryx. You said there were more of them?

There were.

How many, do you think?

I don’t know. Dozens, but this place is so big. There could be thousands and I wouldn’t know it. Or maybe there weren’t really any more than usual, and I just stumbled past a troop movement.

Maybe, it says, but it knows that isn’t true. Even with only its passive senses, it has found traces. Hints. A few extra parts per billion of a particular scent molecule. A deepening of the prison building’s subliminal hum. There have been more Carryx ships dropping down through the veil of drones that locks the planet’s sky. The great hive is stirring. Changes are coming, and changes mean only one thing to the Carryx and the swarm. The war. The war is coming. The Carryx are preparing another wave of attacks, and it alone of all the opposing forces knows.

Its mission tugs at it like a hunger it can’t feed. The sexual satiety helps, but even now the restlessness is growing again. It has to find the way to pass on all it has learned, all it is learning. It has to find a way off the planet, out from under the Carryx world-palace to someplace with gaps in the security. This moment of improbable calm, these people in the little bubble of time and space and safety that they’ve made with each other despite the death and violence around them, is beautiful because it cannot last. It’s beautiful because even with all they’ve seen and experienced, they don’t know how lucky they have been. Or how badly things can go.

This is for you, Else thinks. You blame me, but this sex is for you. You wanted it. I control nothing now. I am a fading observer in my own body. Why do you want this? The swarm has no answer for this query. It is a very human thing, to want without knowing why. The swarm considers.

Then it shifts, pressing its skin against its lover, reveling in the small, sensual pleasure. Taking comfort while comfort can still be had.