The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [88]
The exemplar hoped she would not talk again.
Odd devices regurgitated by either Kingu or Aspu attended the pair, connected to their arms by the exemplar himself, based on instructions from the sisters, bless them. These devices (he had been told) fed the ill women water, directly into their bodies. Salty water. The exemplar had pushed thin needles under their skin.
“She’s dying, isn’t she?”
The woman had spoken.
“Sleep,” said the exemplar.
“My friends are dead.”
“You should sleep.” He did not want to hear details. He did not want to be further involved.
“The furlough,” said the woman, staring at nothing, “was reward for six months of god-awful work. Have you ever been isolated? For six months? You go nuts. Even though there were three of us. We didn’t really see each other until we got into the car that morning. We may well have been worlds apart before that. We had each felt something building inside: anxiety, restlessness. Tension. We needed enhancements to sleep, enhancements to stay awake, enhancements to focus. So when furlough time came, we piled into the car with camping equipment and headed out to find a place where we could just get high and decompress and let off steam.
“Instead, we found the mother.” She licked her lips and seemed, for an instant, as if she might be falling asleep—
But, alas, no.
“It was Tanya’s idea to go inside. She’s the one that went up, to get the message out, flying above the clouds.” The woman had curled further in on herself. “She’s the first one who died. She was adamant about going up. She fought us to go.”
The exemplar wanted to lay his hands on the woman but dared not. He wanted to cover her mouth. He wanted his quiet life back. “Please,” he said. “You should be silent. Sleep.”
“I struggle with your language.” The woman took a shuddering breath. “My algorhythms are muddied. It’s the clouds. These fucking clouds. They block everything.” She looked at him: he looked away, quickly, but not quick enough. “Do you know what a mother really is? The long spacer? Governed by the cortex of a young girl. Connected by a seegee, between them and the software. They didn’t make many. Inhumane fuckers. Problems all the time, and they went crazy. For what? We thought we had found a dumped one. Because they ended up dumping them all. But this mother was just crippled, in perihelion, over your planet. There had been sabotage, but the spacer herself was still, well, alive. The seegee was intact but disconnected. I think poor Tanya touched it, and orchestrations began. Manipulations. They stew in psychoactive drugs—that’s why Tanya wanted it. They’re worth a fortune. Priceless, in any market.”
Beyond the hut, gentle winds rustled through the trees. The children watched quietly; he waved at them to leave, go play.
“A girl was sacrificed for each spacer. Do you understand? Her uterus farmed out. They put a brain in that ship.”
“You should rest.”
“You’re an exemplar, aren’t you?”
This surprised him. He nodded once, cautiously. “The sisters, bless them, call me this. I was chosen, seven years ago.”
“You have a piece inside you. They control you. They are the mother’s rogue brood.”
“No,” said the exemplar. “They are the sisters, most benevolent. And we bless them.”
Crouching away from the dim lantern light, which fell tentatively into the alley mouth, with the stricken hemo woman standing over him, Nahid said, “He is seraphim, from outside, from the skies.”
“He’s dying . . .”
The device that Nahid had taken earlier, hidden in the folds of his clothes, whispered and shuddered and howled, but the woman could not hear it. Beyond the alleyway, Nowy Solum seemed exceedingly dark, as if night had surged into every conceivable cranny and might never leave. The intermittent lanterns on street corners had tried to open