Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

Three

The medrey’s laboratories had an eerie emptiness. Dafyd walked through flowing hallways and galleries and meeting spaces that during the year were busy with scholars and artisan-fabricators and on-site representatives of the colloquies. They were almost abandoned now. A pair of men in hard, plasticized coveralls were repainting one of the walls. A harried man sped by on some past-due errand. A sparrow that had found its way inside fluttered down the empty air of the halls, looking for scraps of food or a way out. A scholar-associate who Dafyd recognized from the architectural chitin project sat alone on a bench with her sandwich and an inward expression. And in a little impromptu circle of three couches and one chair outside the closed commissary, a council of war.

Tonner and Else shared a couch, sitting together but not together, the space between them an equilibrium of intimacy and professionalism. Campar was sprawled on a couch of his own. Large, dark, and scruffy, he looked amused and sleepy in equal measure, like a children’s cartoon of a bear. Beside him, sitting primly on the one chair, craggy head covered with salt-and-pepper stubble, Nöl. Dafyd looked around for the others, but there was no sign of them. As he took his place on the empty couch, Nöl nodded to him.

“Are we all?” Dafyd asked.

“Jessyn’s on her way,” Tonner said. The smiling, confident version of him from the Scholar’s Common was gone. His eyes were dark as a storm and his jaw was tight. Anyone who’d spent the last year watching the weather of Tonner’s internal life would know that the best thing now was to be quiet and wait.

“Synnia is at home,” Nöl said. “She wasn’t feeling well. I don’t know about Rickar or Irinna.”

When Tonner spoke, the words were icy and careful. “I thought we wouldn’t bother them with this just yet.”

Dafyd felt a little shiver go down his back.

Campar made a soft, impatient sound and lolled his head to the side. “The tension is unbearable. What exactly is it that we’re not talking about?”

“Jessyn will be here soon,” Tonner said. Else shifted her attention to Dafyd, her eyes meeting his for a moment and then clicking away, like they were hiding a secret. But sadly the only secret they shared was the one Tonner was about to tell everyone else too.

The first sign of Jessyn was her brother’s voice, enthusiastic and loud. A moment later, they rounded the corner. Jessyn was short, round bodied, and severe. Jellit was lanky and colt-awkward with a grin that matched his voice. Other than that, they were almost the same person: gold-brown skin, black hair and eyes. They both had moles on their right cheeks, like it was a little flourish that the gods of genetics and development had chosen to use for a signature. They moved their hands the same way, shrugged with the same left-then-right. Dafyd liked Jessyn, and so by extension he liked her brother. They were like two halves of the same organism.

Something had Jellit excited. He was gesturing, wide handed, as they drew closer. “As extrasolar activity goes, it’s as strange as anything anyone’s seen. There’s one dataset that made it look superluminal, but no one thinks that’s anything but a glitch.”

He turned to greet them, and his face fell.

“We were just walking together,” Jessyn said, sitting on the couch at Dafyd’s side.

“Is this a team meeting?” Jellit said, and then before anyone could answer, “I’m just going to go get some tea, then. I’ll see you back at home.”

“See you there,” Jessyn said, to her brother’s already retreating back. Her sigh was almost imperceptible, and certainly not conscious. She turned to Tonner. “I’m sorry to be late.”

“Superluminal?” Campar asked, lifting one shaggy eyebrow.

“Jellit has a perverse fondness for obviously bad data,” Jessyn said. “He thinks it’s funny because it makes the research colloquy uncomfortable.”

Campar chuckled. “I find your brother’s air of charming perversity intriguing. He’s still single, isn’t he?”

“No dating my brother,” Jessyn said. It was a running joke between them.

“Thank you all for coming during the break. I’m sorry to interrupt what should be some well-earned relaxation,” Tonner said, ending the banter.

They all turned toward him like he was a lecturer and they were his audience. Else’s face was calm and impassive and focused on Tonner as though she didn’t already know what he was about to say. She did, though. Dafyd would have bet money on it. “We have a problem. Someone has asked the funding colloquy to reassign our work.”

Jessyn paled. Campar sat forward, the playfulness and good humor that usually marked him gone like it had never been there. Only Nöl didn’t change his expression or posture, just giving a little nod like he’d been expecting the universe to disappoint him somehow. He was, however, the first to gather himself enough to speak. “Do we know the reason for it? Are we being punished for something?”

Tonner glanced at Else, passing the focus of attention to her. Dafyd wondered whether they had rehearsed this, or if they were just well-enough attuned to each other that it came without thought. “As far as we can tell,” she said, “the argument is that our work is too important to keep in only one place and with only a single team. The primary scholars would be loaned to other medrey and collegia to start up parallel programs, with one of the junior researchers left here to shepherd the work that’s already in progress.”

Campar’s laugh was loud and bitter. Too loud, maybe. Dafyd looked around, but the only one nearby was the girl with the sandwich, and she wasn’t looking toward them.

“A junior scholar taking over and kicking the high and mighty into the cold?” Campar said. “Someone’s stabbed us in the back, but I’ll swear to any god you’d like that it ain’t me.”

“There is no question this begins with someone in our inner circle,” Tonner said, “but we have reason to think the plan was submitted by someone connected to Dyan Academy.”

“What reason?” Nöl asked. “If you don’t mind.”

Else gestured toward Dafyd, and the group’s attention turned to him.

“I met a man at the Scholar’s Common,” Dafyd said. “Llaren Morse. He’s in near-field astronomical visualization, but he knew something was coming. He was gloating. And he was from Dyan. So then I caught one of the senior administrators a little by surprise, and she made a little too much effort in not saying anything about it.”

“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t prove a connection to Dyan Academy. Not really,” Nöl said. “This Morse could have known through other paths. Jellit works near-field also, yes? Jessyn here could have formulated the plan and let it slip to her brother.”

Jessyn made an angry snort.

Nöl patted the air placatingly. “Not saying it’s you. Hell, I could have made the plan myself. I know people at Dyan.”

“Yes, it’s only our best-guess hypothesis,” Tonner said. “We will confirm or eliminate. And I managed to find out who was slated for the three spin-off labs. Me, Else, and Jessyn. So no, I don’t think it was her. Campar already has a placement in Burson that he’s been delaying to help us finish first phase, so I see no reason to think it’s him.”

Nöl pursed his lips in disapproval, but didn’t object further.

“Irinna?” Campar said. “She did her first term at Dyan. But I wouldn’t like to think…”

“It isn’t her,” Jessyn said. “She wouldn’t do that. And this is her first team. We’re all junior researchers, but she’s barely more than an assistant.” She flickered with embarrassment as soon as she’d said it, her gaze darting toward Dafyd and then Nöl, then away again.

“Rickar’s father is a landgraf near Dyan,” Else said. “The academy gets a tenth of its buildings from him. It’s not conclusive, but… he seems most likely.”

“I’d hate to jump to conclusions,” Campar said. “I think it’s only professional that we find him and beat the truth out of him, yes?”

Jessyn said, “Are we certain that opening new projects is a bad idea?” The group stuttered into quiet, and she opened her hands. “It’s a power grab. I understand that. It’s bad for us. Each of us. All of us individually, at least in the short term. But what if it’s good for the project? Four coordinating labs? That could be huge. I mean, don’t we want to steer research at other places? Inspire other projects? What does winning look like if it doesn’t look like this?”

“The team scattered to the winds is a strange look for victory,” Nöl said with a gentle bitterness.

Pretending to enjoy the sandwich its host is eating, the swarm jitters and presses, its myriad dancing senses focused on the little group. The flesh that it occupies once belonged to a woman named Ameer Kindred, who is both dead and not dead now. The swarm is aware of the food in the host’s mouth. Aware that Ameer once enjoyed the taste. It frees up some of its control over the woman’s face, so that her pleasure can change her features appropriately. The swarm, who is both Ameer Kindred and not Ameer Kindred, understands a bit more of what it means to enjoy food, and files this information away for later use.

The instruction set that defines the swarm’s mission is far too complex to represent as simple rules, but if it could be, then rule number one would be remain hidden. Anything that allows it to mimic human interactions with their environment is vital to its success.

Focusing its attention on the targets, the swarm thrusts a million tiny needles like antennae through the host’s skin, and these new nodes quiver with hunger to see/hear/taste them.

Two members of the group it already knows from the announcements. Tonner Freis, the leader and figurehead. The highest-status researcher in the world at this singular, critical moment. And the other, at his side. Else Yannin, who has the second-highest status in the group. The swarm shifts its awareness to pheromones, opening new channels on Ameer Kindred’s skin to drink in the subtlest human scents. Fear. Anger. Anxiety. Lust. Sorrow. So many chemical signals pouring off the little knot of bodies. Ameer knows what those emotions mean, her memory is full of those feelings and the causes of them. And so the swarm knows those things too, and the matrices of data that represent its understanding of the target group’s social dynamic are enriched by this knowledge. The swarm feels something Ameer would identify as satisfaction at this increasingly sophisticated flow of information.

Two of the group arrive, smelling very nearly the same—a male and female pair. Genetically related, the swarm calculates. Brother and sister, Ameer thinks, and the swarm adds this information to the data.

The swarm shifts to focus on hearing, Ameer Kindred’s skin tightening like a drumskin underneath the myriad protruding metal hairs to make her flesh into a girl-shaped ear, and the male of the sibling pair’s voice is now like a shout. As extrasolar activity goes, it’s as strange as anything anyone’s seen, he says. There’s one dataset that made it look superluminal. The swarm is not capable of feeling fear, but it does now feel a heightened sense of pressure. It knows there is very little time left. The male sibling walks away. He isn’t a part of this workgroup. The swarm disregards him, shifting its study, finding the new and necessary skin that will allow it to continue its mission.

They speak and it listens to them speak, but its senses are rich and strange. It finds patterns in their heartbeats that they themselves cannot know. It maps the connections of one to another like water finding a way to seep through stone. It understands in ways that may be useful to it. Or may not. What is not useful will be abandoned. Forgotten. Annihilated.

Ameer Kindred senses the swarm’s intention. She knows her time as the host is coming to an end. And though she has screamed her hatred of the swarm’s invasion of her body and thoughts every second of every day since it took over, Ameer also understands that the swarm will not leave her alive when it moves on. The thought of her own impending death is like an ocean of sorrow.

This sadness is not currently useful to the swarm, so it files it away and then ignores it.

Are we certain that opening new projects is a bad idea, the remaining half of the sibling pair says, and the swarm watches, and it waits.

It cannot afford to wait much longer.

“The team scattered to the winds is a strange look for victory,” Nöl said with a gentle bitterness.

Jessyn shrugged—an almost microscopic gesture—but she didn’t look away. Tonner stood. If Dafyd had been under his gaze, he’d have shrunk back, but Jessyn didn’t.

“If you want your own lab, I’m sure you can get one,” he said. “This is not the way I intend to lose mine.”

“Damn right,” Campar said. “I intend to be lured away with promises of wealth and power, as tradition demands.”

But Tonner’s focus was entirely on Jessyn. Dafyd watched the two implacabilities face each other like a blowtorch on stone. Else said Tonner’s name, but it might have been from a different room. The silence between the two scholars stretched long past comfort, and the stone cracked before the flame died out. Jessyn looked away. “I see your point,” she said.

Dafyd exhaled.

Tonner, scowling now, got up and started pacing through the little space like the confrontation had left him restless. Campar caught Dafyd’s gaze and mouthed Daddy’s angry.

“We have a window of opportunity,” Tonner said. “If we find which of the team is behind this, there may be leverage we can bring to bear. Even if they withdraw the plan, there may be some enthusiasm for it in the colloquy. You can help with that, Dafyd.”

“I will do what I can,” he said, not promising anything. He could already imagine the conversation with his aunt, and how delicate a job it would be.

“Else and Campar can look into Irinna, just to be sure it isn’t her. Jessyn and Nöl will see about our friend Rickar.”

“Why us?” Nöl asked. “Not that I disagree, you know. Just—”

“Jessyn can use the connection with Jellit to sound out Llaren Morse,” Dafyd said. “They’re both near-field. End-of-year makes it easy to reach out.”

Tonner nodded approval. “I will be coordinating with all of you and making loud arguments in some very powerful ears about the critical need to keep the team together.”

“Well, fuck,” Campar said, then shrugged his thick shoulders. “Palace intrigue isn’t how I was hoping to spend my break. But skulking in shadows and interrogating spies won’t be boring, I suppose.”

“Sorry,” Dafyd said, though he wasn’t quite sure why he was the one apologizing.

Else’s initial smile was brief and weary, but when she turned to Dafyd, it grew warmer. One dimple in her left cheek, two in her right. “This is hard, but I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been to find out when it was already decided and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.”

“Just here for the team,” Dafyd said. Else leaned forward, squeezed his wrist. Dafyd felt himself responding to the touch and didn’t try to prolong it, even though a simple, animal part of him wanted nothing more. He noticed that the girl with the sandwich was gone.

“Now,” Tonner said. “Let’s plan out how to make the approaches. I don’t want to leave any of this to chance. Not with the stakes this high.”

Nöl cleared his throat and lifted a finger. Tonner’s frown deepened, but when he spoke, there was no anger in his voice. “You have something?”

“Yes,” the old scholar-associate said. “Have we ruled out asking them?”