Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

urging her into the cable. Reluctantly,
following the We-ku, she began to climb down.
    She felt a great sideways wash. The whole of this immense cable
was vibrating back and forth, as if it had been plucked by a vast
finger.
    She looked up at the circle of light that framed the Old Man’s
face. She was confused, frightened. ’I will bring you food.’
    He laughed bitterly. ’Just remember me. Here.’ And he thrust his
hand down into hers. Then he slammed shut the hatch.
    When she opened her hand, she saw it contained the scrimshawed
bones.
    The cable whiplashed, and the lights failed, and they fell into
darkness, screaming.
     
    Hama stood in the holding cell, facing Ca-si. The walls were
creaking. He heard screaming, running footsteps.
    With its anchoring cable severed, the Post was beginning to sink
away from its design altitude, deeper into the roiling murk of the
hot Jupiter’s atmosphere. Long before it reached the glimmering,
enigmatic, metallic-hydrogen core, it would implode.
    Ca-si’s mouth worked, as if he was gulping for air. He said to
Hama, ’Take me to the Shuttles.’
    ’There are no Shuttles.’
    Ca-si yelled, ’Why are you here? What do you want?’
    Hama laid one silvered hand against the boy’s face. ’I love you,’
he said. ’Don’t you see that? It’s my job to love you.’ But his
silvered flesh could not detect the boy’s warmth, and Ca-si flinched
from his touch, the burned scent of vacuum exposure.
    ’… I know what you want.’
    Ca-si gasped. Hama turned.
    La-ba stood in the doorway. She was dirty, bloodied. She was
carrying a lump of shattered partition wall. Fragmentary animated
images, of glorious scenes from humanity’s past, played over it
fitfully.
    Hama said, ’You.’
    She flicked a fingernail against the silver carapace of his arm.
’You hate being like this. You want to be like us. That’s why you
tried to death us.’
    And she lifted the lump of partition rubble and slammed it into
his chest. Briny water gushed down Hama’s belly, spilling tiny silver
fish that struggled and died.
    Hama fell back, bending over himself. His systems screamed
messages of alarm and pain at him - and, worse, he could feel that he
had lost his link with the vaster pool of Commissaries beyond. ’What
have you done? Oh, what have you done?’
    ’Now you are like us,’ said La-ba simply.
    The light flickered and darkened. Glancing out of the cell, Hama
saw that the great Birthing Vat was drifting away from its position
at the geometric centre of the Post. Soon it would impact the floor
in a gruesome moist collision.
    ’I should have gone with Arles,’ he moaned. ’I don’t know why I
delayed.’
    La-ba stood over Hama and grabbed his arm. With a grunting effort,
the two drones hauled him to his feet.
    La-ba said, ’Why do you death us?’
    ’It is the war. Only the war.’
    ’Why do we fight the war?’
    In desperation Hama said rapidly, ’We have fought the Xeelee for
ten thousand years. We’ve forgotten why we started. We can see no
end. We fight because we must. We don’t know what else to do. We
can’t stop, any more than you can stop breathing. Do you see?’
    ’Take us,’ said La-ba.
    ’Take you? Take you where? Can you even imagine another
place?’
    Perhaps she couldn’t. But in La-ba’s set face there was ruthless
determination, a will to survive that burned away the fog of his own
weak thinking.
    The Doctrines are right, he thought. Mortality brings strength. A
brief life burns brightly. He felt ashamed of himself. He tried to
stand straight, ignoring the clamouring pain from his smashed
stomach.
    The girl said, ’It is un-Doctrine. But I have deathed your fish.
Nobody will know.’
    He forced a laugh. ’Is that why you killed the Squeem?… You are
naïve.’
    She clutched his arm harder, as if trying to bend his metallic
flesh. ’Take us to Earth.’
    ’Do you know what Earth is like?’
    Ca-si said, ’It is a place where you live on the outside, not the
inside. It is a place where water falls from the sky, not rock.’
    ’How will you live?’
    La-ba said, ’The We-ku helped the Old Man live. Others will help
us live.’
    Perhaps it was true, Hama thought. Perhaps if these two survived
on some civilised world - a world where other citizens could see what
was being done in the name of the war - they might form a focus for
resistance. No, not resistance: doubt.
    And doubt might destroy them all.
    He must abandon these creatures to their deaths.