Mother Death

3

The immigrants took up unassuming, generally unhappy lives.

Their fortune had been exhausted. They could barely afford an apartment less than a tenth the size of their starship’s small cabins, and the parents spent their days trying to ignore the new world. In their district, the crowding and noise were relentless. Millions lived next door, and everyone was tailored in a different way, with different physiologies and languages and customs. On the Earth, even basic goods were depressingly expensive. Work was easy to find, but menial. Over time, finances were sure to grow tighter. Looking at one another, the parents asked: Why did we think we could live here?

For them, the Earth was a prison.

On their worst days, they could barely speak or even leave their bed, forcing their son to patiently watch over them, voicing encouragement and sometimes taking charge of the family’s day-to-day responsibilities.

It was a standard procedure to shadow every refugee with paranoid AIs. For many reasons, including the recommendation of the immigration officer, their family was given extra attention. Yet nothing incriminating was observed, and after six months, all but one of the AIs were given new, more lucrative assignments.

It was the boy who offered their names to the Family lottery, which was perfectly normal. Most of the citizens routinely did it every day, competing for the chance to tour the abandoned estates. The chances of winning were minimal. Even impossible. Only a few dozen slots opened each day, and most were filled through bribes and political favors. But on his twenty-third attempt, the impossible happened:

Three slots were granted to the immigrants.

Alarms sounded in a thousand high offices. Quantumware and various officials were interrogated at length. A brigade of AIs as well as human officers began to follow the winners, studying their composition, and to the best of ability, their thoughts. Then as a final precaution, an adult Nuyen dressed up like an unmodified youngster, and he took the role of the smiling, charming tour guide.

“Hello,” the Nuyen began, examining his audience with many senses. “It is a lovely morning, isn’t it?”

Happy souls agreed. Yes, it was delightful.

The rest of the Earth existed in a perpetual summer—a consequence of so many machines and warm bodies. But on the Families’ estates, climate obeyed the angle of the sun. Summer was a few months of intense growth sandwiched between the cold dead winters. Seasons meant wealth and waste, but their guide mentioned neither. Focusing every sense on the mysterious boy, he asked himself, Are you Ord?

Nothing tasted unusual, much less remarkable.

Their guide introduced himself, saying simply, “I am Xo.”

The boy didn’t blink, and his heart didn’t quicken, and no portion of his visible mind showed surprised or more than usual curiosity.

If anything, it was the Nuyen who was anxious. For as long as Xo could remember, this was his job. He was a scent hound testing the wind. This was a common situation: What if the lottery system had been manipulated, giving him access to the estates? At first glance, it seemed like a ludicrous possibility. Someone with Alice’s powers wouldn’t bother with this kind of subterfuge. But Xo grew up with Ord, and he knew him, and he could almost believe that the boy would find this route to his home alluring—camouflaging himself inside the Families’ own contrived game.

“Xo,” he repeated, using a thousand channels reserved for the Families. Then in the next nanoseconds, he told anyone with the proper ears, “It’s me, yes. Your dear friend. Welcome home, Ord.”

There was no response.

But the boy raised his tail, then both of his hands. “Sir,” he said with a soft respect. “Will we visit your home too, sir?”

Xo shook his head, saying, “We won’t have enough time today. I’m sorry.”

The boy looked saddened.

“Why would you want to see my house?” Xo inquired.

A quick, guileless voice said, “The Nuyens are my favorite Family, sir.”

“Are we?”

“One of your brothers helped my world during our stupid wars.” Emotions played across his face. “I’ve always wanted to step inside your house, sir!”

When Xo last saw Ord, he was standing at the mansion’s door, holding a crude atomic weapon in both hands. Its detonator had been rendered useless, but Ord didn’t care. He was driving it into the stone walkway, threatening to keep pounding and pounding until simple random motions caused the uranium to detonate.

In a sense, nothing in Xo’s life had changed since that moment.

He was still a worried, immature boy cowering behind the door, watching out for his bomb-wielding friend.

The guests were ushered through several of the abandoned estates, each one held in trust by the Nuyens. Lunch was a modest feast served inside the Sanchex pyramid. Xo explained that once everyone had their fill, the tour would culminate with a studious, scornful walk through the Chamberlains’ mansion. “We’re climbing a ladder of guilt,” he remarked, pretending that the cliche was profound. “Sanchexes did the most dangerous assignments in the Core. Which was why they were the second Family to be disbanded wholesale… two moments after the Chamberlains were ordered to surrender their wealth, and their selves…”

The Sanchexes once served humanity as warriors. But when the Great Peace was established, every enemy vanquished, they turned themselves into marvelous, almost fearless engineers. Manipulating mayhem, they used to tame old suns and build new ones. They learned how to rob energy from pulsars and black holes, enriching themselves along the way. More than any other Family, the Sanchexes poured their wealth and reputation into the Core, making it habitable. And after all that good work, a few Sanchexes helped destroy everything, which made all of them guilty. Beyond redemption.

“Even still,” Xo spouted, “they weren’t the guiltiest of the guilty.”

The refugee boy sat between his parents, eating because it was polite to eat, but his attention fixed firmly on the Nuyen.

“The worst ones were the Chamberlains. Naturally.” Even if Ord was somewhere close, he wouldn’t react to that simple taunt. But there was a script to follow, and other Nuyens were judging Xo’s technique. “The Chamberlains weren’t natural fighters,” he added. “No, they were worse than that. They were intellectuals, colder than the emptiest space and without a single heart to their name.”

The boy nodded soberly, apparently believing the propaganda.

Using private channels, Xo offered more elaborate arguments—highly reasoned and much-practiced monologues that were supposed to create doubt in a young Chamberlain. That was the routine. Almost certainly, Ord wasn’t here. But then again, Ord could be anywhere. Everywhere. He could have arrived last night, undetected, and by chance, Xo was delivering the opening salvos of his well-planned assault.

The boy lifted his tail and hands again, and after saying, “Sir,” with the proper respect, he asked, “What can you tell me about this wonderful room, sir?”

More than a kilometer long, with a towering triangular ceiling fashioned from polished basalt, this was once a sacred place for the Sanchexes. But after laying empty for so long, it felt sad, cold despite the warm air, and forgotten.

Xo waited for a half-moment, letting his audience look about.

Then the boy answered his own question. “It was their dining hall, wasn’t it? This was where the Sanchexes held their ceremonial feasts.”

“Yes. That’s what it was.”

The blue-black eyes smiled. Turning to his mother, the boy said, “When they finished eating—meat or cold plasmas or whatever—they would clear away the furniture and hold contests. They would fight each other, mostly.”

The woman swished her tail nervously. “How do you know that, dear?”

“It’s in the histories,” he replied. “I read it somewhere.”

Xo accessed every word that the boy had read since immigrating, then consumed the entire library salvaged from the starship. Buried in that mass of information was a single article that mentioned that historic curiosity.

Faintly disgusted, the mother looked at the Nuyen and asked, “Is that true?”

But again, the boy answered first. “Grown-ups took the shape of giant animals, real or not, and they would stand at opposite ends of the room, then run at each other.” He pointed calmly at an odd little doorway, now sealed. “That’s where the blood was drained away. Fighters would weigh their fluids afterward, and the winner was whomever lost the least of himself, or herself.”

Outwardly calm, Xo kept monitoring the boy.

With an impressed voice, he told everyone, “It’s basically all true.”

The boy gave a little nod, happy with himself.

Those last details weren’t included in the article. But the boy could have overheard someone talking. Unlikely as it sounded, that was a much more reasonable explanation than having Ord himself sitting at the table, baiting him with this slender clue.

An impressed hush had fallen over the group. Every diamond knife and shield—Sanchex utensils authentic to their pyramid embossing— was laid neatly on the remains of their lunches. Keeping to the topic, Xo confessed, “This may have been the most aggressive Family. By temperament and by training, the people who were born in this house were capable of the most astonishing violence.”

The boy was staring through him, his face suddenly flat. Empty.

“If the Core hadn’t exploded,” Xo continued, “there still might have come a day when we would have disarmed and disarmored the Sanchexes. For everyone’s safety, including their own.”

Most of the guests nodded amiably.

It was another who took offense. Swimming the length of the room, unseen, she came as a sudden chill of the air and a vague electric sensation slithering beneath Xo’s false skin. Only he could hear her whispering into his deepest, most private ears.

“Fuck you,” said the familiar voice, followed by a long, dry laugh.

Xo was afraid. But more than that, he was amused, thinking how the Sanchexes weren’t like Chamberlains: They rose reliably to every little taunt.

“Hello, Ravleen,” he said with his own laughing whisper.

“Fuck you,” she repeated. Then as she pulled away, retreating into the depths of the pyramid, she said, “Get your assholes out of here! I want to be alone!”