Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

She
felt a scrabbling at her neck. Fingers probed at the joint between
her helmet and the rest of the suit. If the suit was breached she
would death at once.
    She did not resist.
    She felt the fingers pull away from her neck.
    With brisk roughness she was flipped on her back. Her assailant
sat on her legs, heavy in his hardsuit. Rock rain pattered on his
shoulders, red-gleaming pebbles that stuck for a second before
dropping away, cooling to grey.
    It was, of course, Ca-si.
    ’You un-hunted me,’ he said, and his words crackled in her ears.
’And now you un-resist me.’ She felt his hands on her shoulders, and
she remembered how his skin had touched hers, but there was no
feeling through the hardsuits. He said, ’You crime if you un-death
me. You crime if you let me death you.’
    ’It is true.’ So it was. According to the Doctrines that shaped
their lives, it was the duty of the strong to destroy the weak.
    Ca-si sat back. ’I will death you.’ But he ran his gloved hands
over her body, over her breasts, to her belly.
    And he found the bulge there, exposed by the contoured
hardsuit.
    His eyes widened.
    ’Now you know,’ she screamed at him.
    His face twisted behind the thick plate. ’I must death you even if
you have babied.’
    ’Yes! Death me! Get it over!’
    ’… No. There is another way.’
    There was a hand on Ca-si’s shoulder. He twisted, startled.
    Another stood over them, occluding the raging rock clouds. This
other was wearing an ancient, scuffed hardsuit. Through a scratched
and starred faceplate, La-ba made out one eye, one dark socket, a
mesh of wrinkles.
    It was the Old Man: the monster of whom infants whispered to each
other even before they had left the Birthing Vat.
    Ca-si fell away. He was screaming and screaming, terrified. La-ba
lay there, stunned, unable to speak.
    The Old Man reached down and hauled La-ba to her feet. ’Come.’ He
pulled her towards the cable which connected the Post to space.
    There was a door in the cable.
     
    Hama kept Ca-si in custody.
    The boy paced back and forth in the small cell Hama had created
for him, his muscles sliding beneath his skin. He would mutter
sometimes, agitated, clearly troubled by whatever had become of his
lost love.
    But when Ca-si inspected the Commissary’s silvered epidermis and
the fish that swam in his chest, a different look dawned on his
fleshy, soft face. It was a look of awe, incomprehension, and - admit
it, Hama! - disgust.
    He knew Arles disapproved of his obsession with this boy. ’The
result of your assignment of them to the Cull was satisfactory, ’ he
had said. ’Two went out; one came back. What does it matter?’
    But Hama pointed to evidences of flaws - the lack of trophies from
the body being the most obvious. ’All these disgusting drones take
trophies from their kills. There’s something wrong here.’
    ’There is more than one way of manifesting weakness, Hama. If the
other let herself die it is better she is deleted from the gene pool
anyhow.’
    ’That is not according to the strict Doctrines.’
    Arles had sighed, and passed a glimmering hand over the silver
planes of his cheek. ’But even our longevity is a violation of the
Doctrines - if a necessary one. Druz is seventeen thousand years
dead, Hama. His Doctrines have become - mature. You will learn.’
    But Hama had not been satisfied.
    Hama faced the boy. He forced his silvered face into a smile. ’You
have been isolated here a long time.’
    ’A hundred births,’ the boy said sullenly.
    That was about right: a thousand years since the last Commission
visit, a hundred of these drones’ brief generations. ’Yes. A hundred
births. And, in enough time, languages change. Did you know that?
After just a few thousand years of separation two identical languages
will diverge so much that they would share no common features except
basic grammatical constructs - like the way a language indicates
possession, or uses more subtle features like ergativity,
which…’
    The boy was just staring at him, dull, not even resentful.
    Hama felt foolish, and then angry to be made to feel that way. He
said sternly, ’To rectify language drift is part of our duty. The
Commission for Historical Truth, I mean. We will reteach you
Standard. Just as we will leave you the Memory, with the story of
mankind since you were last visited, and we will take away your story
to tell it to others. We bind up mankind on all our scattered
islands. Just as it is your duty -