The Stars Are Legion(26)

We aren’t heading to Bhavaja but to some contested world, one the Bhavajas stole from Anat just a few turns before, best I can gather from Anka’s signs with her twin. I like that better than the idea of riding right into enemy territory.

Anat rides at the head of the group. Great plumes of spent yellow fuel curl behind her. We pass the Katazyrna worlds, which I find that I can name: Ashorok, Musmala, Titanil, the names unwinding in my mind like a litany. As we pass Titanil, the great engine of the sun unshutters at the center of the Legion, sending a shaft of light directly into my vision.

When my vision clears, I see Anat speeding toward a new world, a great red throbbing thing with a milky atmosphere. My memory offers no name for this world, so all I know is that we and the Bhavajas both want it, and in exchange for Jayd, we get it. After seeing the cancerous rot on the outside of Katazyrna, I can see why this world must be valuable. The crimson skin of it is entirely intact, and I suspect the atmosphere, though thin, may be breathable.

We line up behind Anat and wait for the outer defenses to go down. When they do, we speed toward a ripple in the world’s skin that puckers open as we advance. I see smaller tentacles on this world’s surface, and they wave out at us and guide the vehicles inside. Perhaps I should consider them comforting fingers, but I can’t help but think we’re being pulled into the maw of some great, dangerous creature.

Inside, this world is much different from Katazyrna. We dismount inside a narrow hangar lined in pulsing orange growths all along the ceiling. Passages snake out all around us; I can’t begin to think which way we should go. When the skin of the world seals behind us, Anat dismounts from her vehicle and leads us down a passage at our left. As we walk, something happens to the air around us. It’s as if the skin of the passage itself normalizes the pressure as we pass through it, though I’m not sure how this is possible without having the passages properly sealed up the way they are on Katazyrna.

The passage opens up into a broad room lined in glowing statues made of a white calcified substance. It’s only on peering at the faces of them that I determine they are made of bone. Human, presumably, as I’ve seen nothing else here. The statues are fixed in the walls as if they are trying to crawl out of them. The faces are somewhat off, not quite human, to my eye. Some of the figures have tails. Their large eyes are wide; mouths open in horror. I consider what event this room is trying to commemorate. A great war? People escaping a dying world?

I’m so intent on the statues, I don’t notice Rasida’s security team come out to meet us until Anka prods me from behind. I step after Anat, still frowning at the statues.

We slide through an umbilicus to a level below, and here we find the residents of the world. The ceilings here stretch up and up—I can hardly believe the umbilicus took us so far down—and there are shops and apartments carved into the walls, all lit by the glowing orbs on the ceiling, which I see now are a type of fungus.

There are people here of all types—many look like Katazyrnas, many like Bhavajas, and still more appear to be from other worlds, unless this place simply breeds many different types of people in a way I have yet to see on Katazyrna. The worlds of the Legion cannot all be like Katazyrna. What if the rules are different in every place? That leaves me feeling vertiginous. There’s an entire system of worlds, each potentially with different rules, that I cannot remember. How awful to lose your knowledge of your world, but to lose knowledge of the universe? The loss overwhelms me.

The joining of Jayd and Rasida is held in a monumental temple at the center of this level of the world. We walk up steps that go on and on, all carved into the flesh of the world. Inside the temple, Anat finally releases the catch on her suit, and it falls off and is absorbed by the world. The rest of us do the same, and now I can hear and smell the world as well as see it. Sound is muffled, no doubt absorbed by the porous walls. The smell is sharp, acidic, but the air tastes richer than it does on Katazyrna. I find myself taking shallower breaths.

The joining itself takes place some time later, after we have all assembled and eaten from long tables surrounding a great dais. I have been looking for Jayd throughout the meal, but she and Rasida are still absent. A chorus of women perform from a balcony above, their voices high and warbling. I have no idea what they are singing about because I can’t understand the language.

When a fat woman with a bloom of dark hair gets up on the dais and begins speaking, I can’t understand her, either. I lean over and ask Aiju, “What’s this language?”

“Tiltre,” she says. “High Tiltre. They speak Low Tiltre on the level below.” She pats my hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just formal stuff.”

“Why are we here if none of it matters?” I say.

Anat glares at me. She’s sitting at the head of the table, and I hoped she wasn’t paying attention. I should have known better. She leans toward me. “It all matters,” she says. “We have worked to free these worlds from the Bhavajas since my mother’s day. We are seen as liberators.”

In looking around at the wary gazes all the people here have been giving our table, I doubt that. Anat and Rasida are not so different.

I recognize Rasida’s mother and other assorted relatives at a table opposite ours on the other side of the dais. The Bhavaja security team stands between the two tables, ostensibly watching all the locals as well as us, but it’s clear which of us they think are more dangerous.