The Stars Are Legion(102)

I gaze around me at the ships of the Legion. Were they seeing someone coming for them? A ship? A vehicle? And then I see it—there’s a great wall of doors behind me. Most are open and empty. I count nearly a hundred of them, all stacked up on top of one another, up and up. Here on the bottom level, there are just four left. These doors are how I escape the Mokshi each time. They propel me up and out, clear of the Mokshi’s gravity. I close my eyes. I remember the feel of bursting free, but that’s all. My past selves were all looking at their escape. Even knowing what they knew about what lay outside the Mokshi, they knew they could not stay here. They had to stick to the plan and remake the world, or everything we had done up until this point was for nothing.

The image bursts apart.

“Who am I, Jayd?” I say softly. “What did you do to me?”

“We did this together,” Jayd says.

And maybe that is true. Maybe we became everything we hate together.

Another image pops up. Another swearing, angry version of me. Still no scar, though. This one has longer hair, and she’s carrying a spear like Arankadash’s. Her speech is much the same as the one before. Angry and bitter and cursing Jayd.

“What did we become?” I ask Jayd.

“I don’t know,” she says. She moans and lies back. The world is coming.

A misty green version of me wafts up from the sphere again. Her hair is shorn short. She looks very weary. This version of me says, “I waited four cycles this time. Got my memory back. Realized what I’d done to try to keep this ship going. We’re all slaves to these worlds, these . . . beings that have overtaken our vessels. No one can escape unless they rewrite the very pattern of the world. I’ve done that, but I don’t have the catalyst. Twelve generations, and no world-birther on Mokshi. But the Bhavajas have one. The bloody Bhavajas. I’ll go back, but if you’re watching this and you don’t have the arm and the world, just kill yourself. Just end it. It’s too much.”

The recording fades.

“I fell in love with you,” Jayd says. “You don’t have to believe that. But you and I worked together to find a way to rebuild this ship and kill Anat and get the world without a hopeless war. You’ve rewritten the code for the Mokshi so it can leave the Legion. But you need . . . you need a world to rebuild this one, to reinvigorate it. Renew it. You needed Rasida. I brought you that. I did that. For you, and for the Legion.”

I bend toward her. “You have a world inside of you?”

“Rasida’s.” She reaches her hand out to me. “We did this together, Zan. Please.”

“Das Muni,” I say.

She grimaces. “I’m sorry. I thought all the people from the Mokshi were dead. She was a prisoner, and she was going to betray you to Anat. She recognized you. I recycled her. I was afraid—”

“You were afraid she would tell me who I was.”

“She didn’t have the whole story. I did that without knowing what was at stake.”

I kneel beside her and touch her belly. I feel the pulsing of the world. She grabs my hand. Above me, I can hear another recording starting. How many times have I recorded myself here? My gaze follows the long lines of doors. At least as many as there are doors, I suspect. I’ve used that way out many, many times. Not hundreds as Maibe would have me believe, but surely dozens.

“I threw away a child,” I say. I can’t let that go. I want her to say out loud what we did. What we chose.

Jayd weeps openly now. She leans hard against the console. Grips my hand. “I needed your womb,” she says. “I told you, you weren’t strong enough to do what needed to be done. I couldn’t just give you over to the Bhavajas. Besides, they would expect a trap if we gave them some unknown woman. They would do far worse things to you because you weren’t a Katazyrna. You were no one. You would have had no protection. But Rasida loved me. Lord of War, she always loved me.”

“But I was already pregnant,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “We had to choose. One or the other. A child with no future, or the future of the Legion.”

So I threw away my child. Into the darkness of the Mokshi’s recycling pit. I threw away my child to save the whole world. I think of Arankadash and her sorrow. I wonder if I felt sorrow or just relief that we had finally found a way to save the Mokshi.

I sit beside Jayd and gaze out at the worlds of the Legion. I know the worlds are dying. I know we are the only hope we have for their salvation, while also being the harbingers of their destruction.

Jayd has asked me to trust her one more time.

She grits her teeth and bears down. “You can leave me,” she says. “Just leave me. When I have it . . . it will eat this whole world. Remake it. It will replicate all those patterns you programmed into it. Just . . . you need to trigger it. With the arm.”

I stand up and go to the console again, searching my memory for a way to trigger this change. My gaze is drawn, again, to the clear and purple liquids.

I listen to the recording above me, a weary woman, my own voice, saying, “Who do you become when you lose your memory? I don’t know. Some of it comes back, yes. But not all of it. I took the little vial, like something from a wizard, and I ate all the horror. Not just of what I’d done but of what I planned to do. I’ve waited here four turns now, puttering around this dying place. And why? Because I’m afraid to start over. I’m afraid to go back. I should have used an army. I should never have saved Jayd.”