The Stars Are Legion(41)

After many periods of sleeping and waking, I’m able to get around the hovel five or six times on my own, using the long femur of some great creature as a cane.

Some days, I still do not want to get up, but Das Muni prods me until I do. One day, I don’t want to get up at all, but Das Muni leans over me, arms crossed, and I stare at the basket behind her and remember seeing her eat out of it. This is not someone I want to spend the rest of my days with.

So I get up, and I move slowly, painfully, to the stink hole outside the hovel and relieve myself like a civilized creature. When I try to get back in, Das Muni tells me the food is already set up—down a long, threading path between the heaps of refuse. I hate her and admire her at the same time. If our positions were reversed, I would have left this whining, grumbling hulk of flesh that is myself to die on some heap. I’d feed her to my friend Meatmoth and be done with it. Wouldn’t I?

“What do you have to live for out here?” I ask her.

“There is always something to live for,” Das Muni says. “The gods have a plan for each of us. They give us signs.”

“Signs? And what sign have they given you here in this horrible place?”

“They did not see fit to kill you,” Das Muni says. “Nor me. That’s a very great sign in this place.”

I’m able to mark the time now by the swinging lights and the blooming bioluminescent flora. Best I can tell, they work on cycles, in time with the rotation of the ship. Fifteen hours, roughly, of blue, broken light. Fifteen hours of complete darkness, during which the fauna give off their singular glow. I have long since stopped noticing the stink of the place, which unsettles me. I don’t want this life to become normal.

Because I don’t like the swinging, erratic light, I wait until the blooming of the flora to go out. I step over Das Muni’s slumbering form. I get perhaps a dozen steps from the hovel before I notice Das Muni following me. She still makes my skin crawl with the memory of the sharp-toothed tadpole heads in the basket. What kind of purpose do creatures like that serve? Why do the people of every world fear her enough to throw her down here?

I creep into the green-glowing refuse, walking and walking, still leaning heavily on my bone cane. I gaze at the blackness above me. I can see no ceiling. But I know that above us are layers upon layers of the world. I only need to figure out how to get into them.

I call back at Das Muni, who hides behind a pile when I turn. Does she really think I don’t see her?

“Have you ever mapped out this place?” I say. “Have you ever seen its edges?”

Das Muni scuttles toward me, spine bent, ducking her head left, right, like a puppet on a string. When she is close enough, she says, low, “It has no edges. It has no walls. It is a vast circle.”

A circle, just like the rest of the world, but one with no gates, no doors, no corridors? A vast sphere.

“There must be a way up,” I say. “How are things recycled by the world? What comes down has to go up again, in some form.”

Das Muni points to the ground. “The world absorbs it. Absorbs the shit that Meatmoth and the rest put out. That’s what we learned from the mothers. Did you not learn this?”

I avoid the question. “There must be a way out,” I say. “The top can’t be so far away. The ship is vast, yes, but it has limits. If we can get in, we can get out.”

“Stay here,” Das Muni says. She rests her clawed hand on my forearm.

“My sister,” I say, and saying it aloud breaks something in me, some terrible fog that has stolen my will and my strength all through this long recovery. “My sister is in danger. I need to save her, and I can’t do it from here,” I say. “It might be too late. She might be dead. But if she’s dead, then I want revenge on the people that did this. On the Bhavajas.” I stare long at the darkness above us. How to tackle it? I need Das Muni’s help, however much she disturbs me.

“Listen,” I say. “If you help me take this world from the Bhavajas, you will have an honored place topside. You can have your own space. Food whenever you want it. You can live upworld. I can do that if we win.”

“You will need an army to take the world,” Das Muni says.

“I will,” I say. “You’ll be the first among them. Will you do it?”

“We won’t survive,” Das Muni says.

She is probably right about that. I lean into her, biting back my revulsion. I put my hand on Das Muni’s sagging, filthy shoulder. “There is a difference between living and surviving. I want to live, Das Muni. Do you?”

Das Muni quakes at my touch. “I will live,” Das Muni says.

I pull my hand away. “Then we must set out on a great journey together.”

“I am yours,” Das Muni says, and something in her tone makes me hesitate, as if I stand on a great precipice. Why is she so devoted to me? Is she truly so starved for human company that she will travel with me? I decide to accept her answer, for however long it lasts, and for whatever reason.

“We are bound, then,” I say, “until we reach the surface.”

“There is no surface,” Das Muni says, and for one cold moment, I wonder if Jayd and my sisters were the fever dream and this is my true reality. I shake it off.

“We’ll get there,” I say.

“I will go with you,” Das Muni says, “but you will be disappointed.”