The Stars Are Legion(68)

Arankadash pats one of the big animals on the head. It slobbers and works its mouth, revealing a long purple tongue. “They are quite nice,” she says. “Just don’t be mean to them.”

We all settle into the sledge. Arankadash secures an inflated purse of light at the front. I’m not sure what’s inside of it, but if I had to guess, they’d put whatever filled the pustules above into an inflated stomach or other sort of organ. Putting our gear in the middle, me and Casamir and Das Muni can sit on benches inside, knees pressed to our luggage. Arankadash takes a seat at the front on a broad seat of bone and hollers at the deercats. The sledge lurches forward. I grab hold of my pack, fearful we’re all going to fall out, but after a couple of jerks, the sledge trundles off across the plain.

After the endless slogging through the levels of the world, the jerking, rattling, uneven ride over the terrain is oddly soothing. I end up sleeping for a good part of the journey. Das Muni curls up next to me, and she is so warm that I don’t even crave a blanket.

It’s not until I wake to the sound of retching that I realize I’ve been so focused on getting to the next place that I haven’t stopped to care about Das Muni’s increasing temperature.

When I wake, we’re stopped at the side of a bone-and-flesh edifice that looks human-made. Blue lights blink on and off across the whole of a long-abandoned settlement.

Das Muni is standing a little away from the sledge, vomiting, while the deercats snort and slather.

Casamir is looking for something in her luggage and Arankadash remains seated, her expression bored.

I climb out of the sledge and go to Das Muni. “Are you all right?” I ask.

She wipes her mouth. “I’m pregnant again, I think,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. “How does it . . . How do you know?”

“It’s the right time,” she says.

“Come on now,” Arankadash says, “I’m halfway through my pregnancy and you don’t see me whining about it.”

“I thought there weren’t any child-bearers in your settlement,” I say.

“Didn’t say I was pregnant with a child,” Arankadash says. “Most people don’t give birth to children. We give birth to things the world needs.” She gestured expansively to the ruins around us. “The world always needs bits and pieces of itself to be reborn. That’s why we’re here.”

“I’ve seen what Das Muni gives birth to,” I say. “I don’t think that’s necessary for any world.”

“You can’t pretend to understand the will of the Lord,” Casamir says. She finds what she is looking for in her pack and munches on it.

I help Das Muni back into the sledge.

“So, you all just . . . get pregnant?”

“Predictable as breathing,” Casamir says. “But more dangerous, of course. It can still kill you.”

“What do you . . . give birth to?” It’s another question I’ve been afraid to ask. But it’s time to start reconciling myself with the answers.

“Mine is an amsharasa,” Arankadash says.

“But . . . what is that?”

“A necessary piece of the greater whole,” she says.

“And mine doesn’t happen often,” Casamir says, “which I think is pretty lucky. Maybe once every six cycles. So, it’s only happened twice. The seers all say they’re necessary things, yes, but we don’t always keep them.”

“Blasphemer,” Arankadash says.

“Engineer,” Casamir says. “It’s not logical to keep something you have no use for. Sometimes we just put it into vats, make protein cakes out of it.”

“That sounds . . . awful,” I say.

Casamir shrugs. “It’s life, is all.”

We continue. The sledge gets stuck occasionally in the pitted road, and once, we have to unload and lift the whole thing up over a rotten hunk of the ceiling that has fallen across the path. I lift Casamir’s torch and try to see the where it’s fallen from, but far above us is only darkness.

“There used to be lights along here,” Arankadash says. “But it’s become unstable since I was a child. It gets worse and worse. We worry sometimes that the rot will reach our home. Maybe not this generation but the next.”

“Can it be stopped?” I ask.

She shrugs. “We have too much invested in our settlement. It’s the strongest in the region. When this rot comes up there . . . I don’t know. We try to study it, but what’s there to study? The world is old. Perhaps it has a limited lifespan, the way we do. Perhaps we are coming to the end of it.”

“But there are . . . thousands of people here,” I say. “Where will you all go?”

“Perish with the world,” Arankadash says. “Me, you, everyone.”

“That’s a long way off,” Casamir says. “There’s nothing like this on my level.”

“There will be,” Arankadash says. “We didn’t think it was real either when traders told us stories. But after a time, the traders stopped coming, and the rot spread.”

I think of Anat’s great war being raged all across the Outer Rim of the Legion, and I wonder how much she knows about how rotten the world is. Is that why she wants the Mokshi? Is it a younger world? But if what everyone has told me is true about how we are bound to the worlds we’re born on, then moving her people to the Mokshi won’t solve anything. Will it? Or is it more complicated than that?