The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(12)

“I know where we need to go, Schaffa,” Nassun says.

He eyes her for a moment, his gaze flicking to Steel and back. “Do you, now?”

“Yes. It’s a really long way, though.” She bites her lip. “Will you go with me?”

He inclines his head, his smile wide and warm. “Anywhere, my little one.”

Nassun lets out a long breath of relief, smiling up at him tentatively. Then she deliberately turns her back on Found Moon and its corpses, and walks down the hill without ever once looking back.

***

2729 Imperial: Witnesses in the comm of Amand (Dibba Quartent, western Nomidlats) report an unregistered rogga female opening up a gas pocket near the town. Unclear what gas was; killed in seconds, purpling of tongue, suffocation rather than toxicity? Both? Another rogga female reportedly stopped the first one’s effort, somehow, and shunted the gas back into the vent before sealing it. Amand citizens shot both as soon as possible to prevent further incidents. Gas pocket assessed by Fulcrum as substantial – enough to have killed most people and livestock in western half of Nomidlats, with follow-up topsoil contamination. Initiating female age seventeen, reacting to reported molester of younger sister. Quelling female age seven, sister of first.

— Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars

Syl Anagist: Five

“Houwha,” says a voice behind me.

(Me? Me.)

I turn from the stinging window and the garden of winking flowers. A woman stands with Gaewha and one of the conductors, and I do not know her. To the eyes, she is one of them – skin a soft allover brown, eyes gray, hair black-brown and curling in ropes, tall. There are hints of other in the breadth of her face – or perhaps, viewing this memory now through the lens of millennia, I see what I want to see. What she looks like is irrelevant. To my sessapinae, her kinship to us is as obvious as Gaewha’s puffy white hair. She exerts a pressure upon the ambient that is a churning, impossibly heavy, irresistible force. This makes her as much one of us as if she’d been decanted from the same biomagestric mix.

(You look like her. No. I want you to look like her. That is unfair, even if it’s true; you are like her, but in other ways than mere appearance. My apologies for reducing you in such a way.)

The conductor speaks as her kind do, in thin vibrations that only ripple the air and barely stir the ground. Words. I know this conductor’s name-word, Pheylen, and I know too that she is one of the nicer ones, but this knowledge is still and indistinct, like so much about them. For a very long time I could not tell the difference between one of their kind and another. They all look different, but they have the same non-presence within the ambient. I still have to remind myself that hair textures and eye shapes and unique body odors each have as much meaning to them as the perturbations of tectonic plates have to me.

I must be respectful of their difference. We are the deficient ones, after all, stripped of much that would’ve made us human. This was necessary and I do not mind what I am. I like being useful. But many things would be easier if I could understand our creators better.

So I stare at the new woman, the us-woman, and try to pay attention while the conductor introduces her. Introduction is a ritual that consists of explaining the sounds of names and the relationships of the… families? Professions? Honestly, I don’t know. I stand where I am supposed to and say the things I should. The conductor tells the new woman that I am Houwha and that Gaewha is Gaewha, which are the name-words they use for us. The new woman, the conductor says, is Kelenli. That’s wrong, too. Her name is actually deep stab, breach of clay sweetburst, soft silicate underlayer, reverberation, but I will try to remember “Kelenli” when I use words to speak.

The conductor seems pleased that I say “How do you do” when I’m supposed to. I’m glad; introduction is very difficult, but I’ve worked hard to become good at it. After this she starts speaking to Kelenli. When it becomes clear that the conductor has nothing more to say to me, I move behind Gaewha and begin plaiting some of her thick, poufy mane of hair. The conductors seem to like it when we do this, though I don’t really know why. One of them said that it was “cute” to see us taking care of one another, just like people. I’m not sure what cute means.

Meanwhile, I listen.

“Just doesn’t make sense,” Pheylen is saying, with a sigh. “I mean, the numbers don’t lie, but…”

“If you’d like to register an objection,” begins Kelenli. Her words fascinate me in a way that words never have before. Unlike the conductor, her voice has weight and texture, strata-deep and layered. She sends the words into the ground while she speaks, as a kind of subvocalization. It makes them feel more real. Pheylen, who doesn’t seem to notice how much deeper Kelenli’s words are – or maybe she just doesn’t care – makes an uncomfortable face in reaction to what she’s said. Kelenli repeats, “If you’d like to, I can ask Gallat to take me off the roster.”

“And listen to his shouting? Evil Death, he’d never stop. Such a savage temper he has.” Pheylen smiles. It’s not an amused smile. “It must be hard for him, wanting the project to succeed, but also wanting you kept – well. I’m fine with you on standby-only, but then I haven’t seen the simulation data.”

“I have.” Kelenli’s tone is grave. “The delay-failure risk was small, but significant.”