Grail - Elizabeth Bear [136]
It satisfied him.
And then, like a small voice calling up from the bottom of a well, he remembered something else.
Chelsea.
“This is for my sister, bitch,” he whispered. And when he kissed Ariane-Dust on the eyelids, he pulled her and what was left of Dust, root and stock, out of Chelsea’s body. Through the eyeholes.
And then he fed the guts to Nova, satisfied and smiling.
* * *
“Shit,” Perceval said, out loud, even though Danilaw and Amanda would hear her. “Patch me through to her, would you?”
Nova’s doubt eddied about her, but though she could not avoid Perceval knowing, the Angel chose not to speak it.
“Tristen is there,” Nova said, leaving unexpressed the implications. If he could bring himself to do it, he could end the threat once and for all.
“Patch me through,” Perceval said again. “That is an order.”
Nova argued no more. A moment later, and Perceval felt Nova’s awareness of the room in which Tristen had fought. He now crouched over Chelsea’s still form, as if guarding it from Dorcas. Dorcas sat against the tent wall, arms folded as if casually, but Perceval could see the decompiler she wore like couture. And if her eyes were closed, it was because she was dreaming Perceval’s family out of existence.
“Avatar,” Perceval said, and Nova put her image before the Go-Back leader.
Dorcas opened her eyes. She looked infinitely weary, the furrows of her forehead so dark they could have been drawn in the same ink she wore like a dress.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I think I can finish this before you stop me.”
“A compromise,” Perceval said. “Don’t kill the world, Dorcas. Just wait a moment and hear me out. I know you don’t crave all that blood for its own sake. Only to protect Grail—Fortune—right? To keep us from corrupting it. That’s your goal?”
Dorcas let her head fall back. “Talk fast, Captain.”
“We don’t have to stay here,” Perceval said.
“So it’s better to rip off the resources for repair and suffer through another thousand years creeping through the belly of the Enemy until we find another world to poison?”
“No,” Perceval said. “It’s better to convert every life-form on the ship into something that can survive on nothing but clean, sunlight energy. Everything. Every soul—woman and worm, man and mallow. Turn us into Angels, Dorcas, and let us live.”
“You’d have me make the same sick choice you made when we were broken. You’d have me force a transformation on all of them?”
Perceval took a breath, pulled all her hope and passion together, and tried to put them in her voice. Dorcas was not a killer, never had been. She’d let Tristen earn his life when another would have killed him.
All Perceval could hope was that she did not really want to ruin the world.
She said, “It is better to evolve than die.”
Dorcas turned to face her fully, mouth hanging open. “How like a Conn.”
“How like a reactionary,” Perceval answered softly, “to destroy what you can amend.”
Dorcas paused. “You have me there,” she whispered. She lifted her arms as if her hands were unbelievably heavy, and flung them wide.
Danilaw heard the scraping as Cynric dragged herself across the floor, and went to help her to her knees. But as he crouched beside her, she looked past him, an expression on her ancient face as full of wonderment and awe as any child witnessing a sunrise.
And there was Amanda, her mouth hanging open, her skin gilded by some source of light that should not exist, and if it did, should not glow that sunlight golden.
Almost reluctantly, Danilaw turned.
Perceval stood like a goddess in an aura of bright light, and golden prismed jewels hung weightless all around her. They caught the light, reflected and refracted it, passed it from lens to lens to make a webwork around her, all of bright and brighter. Swarms of them hovered in a geometric pattern, caging her in lasers.
Danilaw raised a hand to shield himself from the brilliance. His other found Amanda’s.
“What’s that?”
“The library,” Cynric said. “It’s come down to her. Jordan sent it down to her.”
“I don’t understand,” said Amanda.
“Everything we know,