Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

PART SIXSMALL BATTLES IN THE GREAT WAR

The genius of the Carryx is that we brought the peculiar and often idiosyncratic brilliance of a thousand different species into a central system of control. We conquered asymmetric space by harnessing the birth shrieks of the Temperantiae of Au. We built machines of loyalty by harvesting the poem-patterns of Janantie moss gardens. We built world-palaces designed by the Phylarchs of Astrdeim, communication networks woven from the bodies of the Void Dragons that eat the foam at the edge of black holes, battleships strengthened by the living shells that choked the oceans of Sinyas and Vau.

What would these have been without our guidance? Glories, but lost glories. Feral glories. The Carryx are the bones and nerve fibers of the unconscious universe. We are the scaffold and mind that shapes the nature and extent of its deterministic will.

Humans are structureless. They live in conflict with themselves and each other. Their great genius is rationalization: lying into mirrors until they bully and seduce themselves into things they would never otherwise do. They are creatures of self-delusion, regret, and desire. That is their way, and for a time we harnessed it as we did everything.

For a time.

—From the final statement of Ekur-Tkalal, keeper-librarian of the human moiety of the Carryx

Thirty-Two

Though Dafyd had lost consciousness a few times during the night, it would be a stretch to say he’d slept. The knowledge of the task that was coming with morning was like a constant angry buzz that kept him awake. The others were in the main room, babbling about Tonner’s new insight. Functional enantiomers, analogous regulatory sites, the structural bottlenecks of carbohydrate variety. All the same conversation that they’d had back at Irvian. It felt like a dream that meant something. Like an omen.

Else the spy sat with him most of the time. She left before he rose to make himself a breakfast of protein paste and salt tabs that he was too tense to eat. He didn’t know where she’d gone, but it didn’t matter. Nothing changed the burden of the day.

Now, standing in the librarian’s office with his hands behind his back, fingers wrapping wrist to keep them both from shaking, he felt lightheaded. The physical details of the room stood out like he was seeing them for the first time. The subtle pattern on the floor where the dust gathered along the lines of some magnetic field. The dark ring on the librarian’s pale foreleg, like an old scar. The smell of musk and salt, imperceptible until fear and guilt and the stress of standing at the hinge of history rubbed his senses raw.

He wanted to vomit. He wanted to lie down someplace dark and warm and sleep forever. He wanted to be someone else, someplace else.

You’re saving lives, he told himself. This is your fight. This is how you save the ones who can be saved.

When he imagined the words in Else’s voice, they carried more weight.

He laid out the whole conspiracy, but as soon as he had reached the part about building biological weapons to harm the Carryx themselves, the librarian’s demeanor had changed. The legs on its abdomen had gone still. The fighting arms of its thorax shifted forward a few degrees. Even with the time he’d spent learning about the librarian and its habits and gestures, all he could tell now was that it was listening, and his words were having some effect.

“And the one who asked you to carry this message?” it asked through its translator.

“Jellit. His name is Jellit. He and I knew each other before. His sibling is part of my team, and so he’d spent time with us. He trusted me, and he knew I had been working more closely with you than the others have.”

The librarian trilled, cooed. The voice box said, “Yes, yes. I know the one you mean.”

And what will you think when he comes here and denies all of this? Dafyd thought. He was fairly certain that the Carryx would be able to torture the information from him, or if not from him from one of the other names Dafyd could give them. But if the librarian doubted him, he could be punished as well. And Dafyd knew about Else and the spy.

The moment was a hinge. It could swing either way.

The librarian was still for longer than he liked. Dafyd made himself remain still as well. If he didn’t know what the Carryx was thinking, what it was likely to do, the best hope he had was to mirror it, only calmer.

It whistled again, the fluting bass carrying through the room. The translation didn’t come. Whatever the librarian had been calling for, it wasn’t meant for human ears. It only took a few seconds for it to be answered. A Rak-hund slithered into the room behind him, its bone-knife feet hushing against the floor. A shiver went up Dafyd’s spine. I won’t tell them about the spy. Even if they hurt me, I won’t tell them that. He tried to believe it.

But the librarian only sang to the Rak-hund, and the Rak-hund’s reply, if there was one, wasn’t in a register human senses could detect. The beast turned with the same undulating shiver and sped out of the room. Dafyd’s relief felt almost like nausea.

“He will come to us. I will explain that his safety is unimportant. He will be made to understand.”

“Yes,” Dafyd said. “Thank you.”

The librarian shifted its weight, its dark eyes clicked from one position to another like it was watching half a dozen things at once, and Dafyd couldn’t see any of them. It shifted its abdomen, folding in its legs, and tilted forward. He couldn’t help but think of it as leaning in to whisper.

“The task you were given. You say that has gone well?” The reedy, calm voice seemed eager.

“Um. Yes. Tonner thinks he’s found a way to make the berries a reliable food source for the other animal.”

The librarian let out a series of sharp ticks and its thin, pale feeding arms plucked at each other like it was grooming itself. Or fidgeting. It was the most recognizably insectile thing Dafyd had seen the Carryx do.

“Tell me what you know of this,” it said.

He tried to remember what he’d heard Tonner saying, what Campar and Rickar and Jessyn had said in return. As he stumbled over the half-understood ideas and concepts, his mind was racing ahead. He’d put his faith in Else and the spy that she’d made common cause with. He’d put his life in her hands because she was Else and the story she’d told him had seemed plausible in the moment. Now that it was too late, his certainty eroded.

What had he really seen? A few dark motes moving under her skin. It was strange, but so many things were. Why couldn’t it have been a plot by some other rival species? Why couldn’t it have been some experiment of her own that had gone bad? What did he actually know?

That if he’d done nothing, they would all have died. Not just the people here in the prison, but everyone back on Anjiin too. He did know that, regardless of anything else. Panic could wash at the back of his mind, convinced that Jellit would come in and deny everything. A calmer, darker part of his mind knew that at worst, it would mean his death coming just a little sooner. At best, a longshot chance at a kind of vengeance. There were worse things to die for.

He couldn’t imagine what Else would say to Jellit that would change his mind. She’d asked Dafyd for his trust, and he’d given it. Once he’d jumped off the cliff, it was too late to try going back…

“Could this work with other organisms?”

He’d been talking. He wasn’t sure what he’d said.

“It’s possible,” he answered, reaching back to his time in research and the careful phrases his aunt had mocked as empty, meaningless, careful. “With more time and resources, we might be able to generalize strategies. My guess is it would take more research and a deeper field of data. But yes. It’s based on the same body of work that reconciled the two trees of life on Anjiin. And it seems to have worked again here.”

“How tragic,” it said.

“Tragic?”

“To have come so close and not see the end. But at least it progresses.”

Not to see the end of what? Dafyd thought, but before he said it, a Rak-hund appeared in the doorway. It undulated and ticked its way into the room. Jellit followed it.

Even if he hadn’t known the context, Dafyd would have seen that something was wrong with the man. His skin had a grayish cast and his eyes were bloodshot. He held his arms stiffly at his sides, not swinging at the shoulder or elbow at all. His steps were careful and unsteady in a way that reminded Dafyd of animals suffering the last stages of brain disease. More disturbing than any of that was his expression.

In the thousands of times Dafyd had imagined this moment, he’d prepared himself for cold rage or blank denial. He’d pictured Jessyn’s brother lunging for him, trying to kill him for his betrayal, or else breaking down in tears of despair. The blankness was unexpected. Jellit’s gaze moved over the room, only pausing for a moment on Dafyd, and then without any sense of recognition. His first thought was that Else had poisoned him. Slipped enough narcotic into his food that he’d lost himself, in hopes that he would agree to any question that was put to him.

The librarian moved forward, and Jellit’s attention, such as it was, shifted to the Carryx. His hands trembled violently once, then went still. Dafyd’s heart tapped against his chest. He didn’t know what would happen if Jellit lied and said there was no conspiracy. He didn’t know what would happen if he told the truth and said that he was committed to the plan. A partisan, and not the ally to the Carryx that Dafyd had made him out to be.

For a moment, Dafyd saw Jessyn the way she’d been the day that Irinna died: bloodied and empty-eyed. Drowning in an ocean that none of them could see. Finding her brother had carried her up from that almost more than her medication had. He didn’t want to be the one who kicked her back down into darkness.

I opened a door for you, he thought, willing Jellit to understand him. You can live. But you have to step through it. Please.

“You know this one?” the librarian said, gesturing a pale claw toward Dafyd.

“Yes,” Jellit said without turning to look at him. “His name is Dafyd. He’s an assistant to my sister’s workgroup.”

“Did you offer him a message to bring to me?”

Jellit was silent. His mouth opened, gaping like a fish hauled out of the sea, closed again. Blood darkened his face and throat like he was being strangled. If the Carryx recognized the struggle, it didn’t comment.

“I… did.”

Dafyd sank into himself, his joints loosening with relief. Tears were streaming down Jellit’s cheeks, but his voice only grew stronger.

“The near-field workgroup that I’m part of is involved in a wide conspiracy that is planning direct and violent action against the Carryx. The local leader is Urrys Ostencour, but there are two others working at his level. One of them is Ferre Luminan who is with the energy physics group. I don’t know the other one. We have weapons and two strike teams of twenty people.”

“You will give me all the details you know,” the librarian said.

“Yes,” Jellit said. “I will.”

Dafyd let his chin fall to his chest as Jellit spoke. Names he didn’t know, plans he hadn’t heard of. Whenever Jellit reached the edge of his knowledge, he said as much and gave the name of someone who would be likely to know better than he did. The extent of the resistance was much wider than Dafyd had guessed, and Jellit exposed it carefully, thoughtfully, and completely. When he was done, the librarian stood silent for a long moment.

It sank down, its legs folding under it, then lifted its two thin feeding arms like it was about to pluck some invisible fruit from the empty air. Its trill was higher than Dafyd had heard before, almost in the range of human speech. Or human song. When the voice came from its translator, he imagined it sounded rueful, but that might only have been his imagination.

“You would have failed, not only in our intentions but in your own. Instead, you have found success beyond your understanding. You are too small to see the pathos, and I am too impure to escape it. What is, is.”

Jellit swallowed. His hands were fists at his side. “I apologize for my part in this. I beg you to let me live and serve the Carryx.”

“If you are strong, you will serve in your life. If not, you will serve in your death. All serve.” The librarian rose. “You will both remain here. If you have physical distresses, speak.”

The librarian whistled and chirped to the Rak-hund. The snake-thing undulated, shifting into a living barrier that separated Dafyd and Jellit from the exit. It wasn’t clear if that was to keep them from leaving to raise an alarm, or to protect them from whatever “physical distresses” they might have. The librarian summoned an array of shapes made from light, floating in the air, shifted them in ways that seemed meaningful to it, then erased them and left the room.

Jellit stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the place where the librarian had been. His tears had dried, though there were tracks of salt on his cheeks and his eyes were even more bloodshot than when he’d come in. The walls creaked, and in the distance something made a wide, angry buzzing, like a hornet’s nest that had just been kicked.

Dafyd sat, crossing his legs under him. It didn’t occur to him until he’d done it how it echoed the librarian. Jellit’s breath was ragged. He seemed as likely to explode into violence as to collapse in tears. Dafyd waited, the silence pressing him to speak. He didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to be said. The consequences of what he’d just done—what they’d both just done—were out of their hands now. The bullet fired, and nothing would call it back into the gun.

When Jellit finally moved, he turned and walked to the wall. He leaned his back against the dark surface, then let himself slide down. The tunic rode up as he slid, bunching at his armpits and exposing his belly and ribs. The intimacy of seeing his skin struck Dafyd as subtly obscene. Jellit began to shake, the movement small at first, then larger, more violent. Sobbing or laughing or both.

“Oh my God,” he said, and his voice sounded strange. Higher, and almost unfamiliar. “Everything about this is so unethical.”

“I’m sorry,” Dafyd said. “I know it isn’t worth much, but I’m sorry about everything.”

Jellit’s smile didn’t look like the man he’d spoken to back in his rooms. The rage was gone. He seemed only exhausted or wistful. He held out his hand, and Dafyd, uncertain, took it. His skin was hot to the touch and dry.

“We did what we had to do, that’s all,” Jellit said. “You were very brave. I know how hard this was for you, but it was the right thing. In the years that come after this, you’re going to wonder if it was. When you do, remember this moment. Right here. Remember me telling you it was the right thing.”

Dafyd’s throat thickened. The fear was gone, or at least the occasion for fear. The relief felt like sorrow. Like horror. He wished Else was with him, or that he was wherever she was. Someplace that they could talk, that she could hold him and be held by him. Someplace that they could make all this violence and terror seem balanced by something kind.

Jellit made a hushing sound and squeezed Dafyd’s knuckles gently, bringing him back to the moment. Dafyd took a long, shuddering breath and nodded his thanks before letting go of Jellit’s hand.

“She told you? She explained it?”

Jellit shot an arch look at the Rak-hund. It didn’t have a voice box around its neck, but Dafyd didn’t know if it needed one. Or if all things in the librarian’s office were listened to, or by whom. Jellit lifted an eyebrow.

“She gave me a deeper understanding of the situation,” he said. Then a moment later, “She did what she had to do.”

“She’s an amazing woman.”

“Don’t… don’t idealize her, Dafyd. No one falls in love with the right person. We all just follow the paths we’re on and do the best we can.”

“I know. I hear what you’re saying. But she was with me on the transit. Me and Jessyn and Synnia and Campar. We all went through that together. And… you understand. It makes a bond. I don’t know how I would have survived without her. Not just her. Them. All of them. I had to go through with this. It was the only chance I have to save them. Even if it’s only some of them.”

Jellit was quiet. He rubbed a palm across his cheeks, wiping away the tracks and tearstains. “Would you have done it without her… argument?” He meant the spy.

“I don’t know. Maybe. If I hadn’t done it—”

“I know, I know. We can’t be domesticated and everybody dies.” He looked down. “You still feel like you’re collaborating with them, though. Don’t you.”

“Yeah. You too?”

“Me too,” Jellit said. A flash of something passed over him. Rage, grief, madness. It was gone as soon as it came. “I think I’m about to lose a lot of people who matter to me.”

“Not your sister, though. And she’s not going to lose you. Not again.”

“True enough. For now.”

A rumbling came like the padding of hundreds of bare feet, then it faded away just as quickly. Something inhuman shrieked and was cut off. Dafyd pulled himself over to sit at Jellit’s side. He hadn’t thought the man would come around, even if Else told him about the spy. He was more than glad. He was grateful. He’d feared death—his own and the others’—but not far after that, he’d been afraid of being hated. If Jellit could see that he’d done what he had to—if he could forgive him—it couldn’t be too hard for the others.

The others that were left.

Jellit leaned against Dafyd’s shoulder, exhausted. He smelled odd. Like a skillet left too long on a stovetop. Overheated metal. Dafyd had worked in a lab early in his career where they’d concentrated hemoglobin in a crucible. It had smelled the same. “What do you think is going on out there?”

“Nothing good,” Jellit said.

They waited for the librarian to return. Or the others to find them. They waited to know the consequences of what they’d done, and they waited a very long time.