'Where you owed no one askance?'
She nodded briskly. 'Had enough of that at home.'
'You're from Runswi or ...'
'Vanirel, north of the mite Thule.'
Are the Rykashan lands always in cold places?' I shook my head, realizing that I could have phrased it another way. 'Or maybe it's because the Rykashan lands are in cold places that the older folk are in the warmer lands?'
You're not a mite, Tyndel.' Fersonne looked at me. 'Not sure you ever were. You look at things different-like. Bet some of them knew it, too.'
'I'm not a Rykashan.'
You are. You don't want to admit it.'
Why did I have such trouble admitting what was so clearly a fact? I didn't even want to call it 'truth.' Was that because if I acknowledged such a truth I had to give up my past? But my past was mine, no matter what I became. I had to accept that. 'Do you want to stay here any longer, or is it the idea of a better place?'
'A better place. I want to see the stars without looking through a faceplate. I want to run again, and not in a station treadmill that smells oily and sweaty.' After another sip of the tea, she studied me again. 'Why do you stay here?'
'Do I have a choice?'
'You could leave on the next needle ship if you agreed to train as a Web jockey.'
'You think so?'
'Gerbriik's as much as said that. Rykashans are stubborn, too, Tyndel. No one's going to beg you to be a Web jockey.'
'I didn't ask to be a Rykashan. Or a Web jockey.'
'Why don't you do it because you want to - not because you're opposing them?'
'I don't know. Maybe because I don't want to.'
'What good does it do to keep refusing? If you want to change things, Tyndel, you have to do something!
'Why? Anything I do benefits them.'
'Anything any of us do that's good is good for someone. Do you hate everyone so bad that you won't do something good?'
That was the sort of question Foerga would have asked. Or Cerrelle. I didn't answer.
'Do you still think of me as one of "them"?'
'No. You know that.'
'A lot of folks are just like me, Tyndel.' A soft smile went with the words. 'Most of us aren't Gerbriiks or Web jockeys or planoformers.'
'I understand.'
'You don't act like you do.'
'You're hard to lie to, you know.' A muttered laugh went with my words.
'You have trouble lying to yourself. I didn't have anything to do with that.'
But she did. I swallowed silently at what I had refused to see. Foerga, Cerrelle, and now Fersonne. Fersonne wasn't brilliant, but she was honest, and I'd always needed honesty - and never wanted to acknowledge that need. By pressing me to be honest, Cerrelle had angered me, and it hadn't been her fault. Neither Foerga nor Fersonne had pressed me ... and that said what? I wasn't sure.
'Are you going to stay?' I finally asked. 'For the extra half year?'
'I'd never have to come back.' Fersonne looked down at the table. 'I could go to Actean, even.' She didn't look at me. 'I'll probably tell Gerbriik I'll take his bonus. It's at least doing something.' The brown eyes met mine, and she smiled ... faintly.
'You don't have to ...'
'I know. It's for me, Tyndel.'
Her smile bothered me, despite the denial, long after she'd gone back onto her shift and I to my cube, where I climbed into my sleeping net alone ... wondering. Anything good benefits someone ... do you hate everyone so bad...?
39
Illumination cannot be communicated.
After my work shifts, before I slept, I continued to try to read something. I'd located an antiquarian text in the station library base, one that hadn't been accessed in decades from what the records showed. The title had intrigued me - The
Nanite Perspective - as had the opening sentences framed in the reading screen clipped to my sleeping net.
... once worlds have changed, those who live in the new world fail to understand the perspective of those lost in the old ...
I certainly empathized with that, for I still felt lost in the old even while being forced to live in the new, and half hoped that the words of the forgotten author might help - somehow.
... all the changes in the world were as nothing compared to the Nanotech Revolution ... While some few saw the seeds of destruction, early obstructions to implementing the technology were seen as final barriers beyond which few peered ... Greatest of the bars to widespread implementation of nanite technologies was the early difficulty in developing a usable scanner technology. After the Heylstron scanner was developed ... escalating economic dislocation corroded the very fabric of society ... economic disintegration was rapidly followed by military applications of nanite technologies in an effort to halt the restructuring of cultures and societies ...
That made sense. Even in Dorcha, the sealords had first claim on the taxes of the state and resources necessary to maintain the fleets. The Dzin masters came last, for all that they taught the coming generations and the next set of sealords.
Despite the banality of the opening, I kept reading, my eyes fixed on the screen in the darkness of my cube.
... first recorded deployment of nanite disassemblers occurred in 505 A.S. with the attempted reconstitution of the Mogul Hegemony... casualties on both sides reached eighty percent...
I winced at that, long ago as it had been. No wonder the masters of Dzin and Toze and the Dhurr genchiefs opposed the demonic weapons. After swallowing and paging ahead, I settled into a section on the arts, except that it didn't quite stay on the arts.
... the impact of nanite replicators effectively destroyed the economic use of fine art as a means of storing wealth, since a nanite-scanned and reproduced replica is indistinguishable from the original by any nondestructive test...
Art as a way of storing wealth? Not to be used and enjoyed, the way Foerga's crystal was? Or my mother's paintings? The ancients had actually done that?
... values of previously precious metals and gems also declined precipitously, especially those of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires ...
I closed my eyes for a moment, images crossing my mind, figures in stained silks and satins, or ancient fabrics once rare, wearing gold chains, their faces gaunt, their eyes sunken, their limbs shriveled from hunger.
Dorcha and the rest of the mite world still relied on the economics of the so-called natural world - prices of goods determined not just by their composition but by their scarcity, a scarcity repealed in Rykashan society. A nanotech culture changed all that in more than the most obvious ways. Almost any substance could be duplicated through electroessence and nanites, except the most rare of elements, and such were not a good basis of a currency or an economic system.
I rubbed my forehead, wishing I could chase away the images.
So what was the basis of the Rykashan economy? Skill and applied dedication. The power requirements for a food replicator were far less than those for organically grown materials, and if the replicators were programmed correctly there was no difference in terms of nourishment. The replicated food also had less chance of contamination. So what happened to the trufflers and eelers, the gardeners? Anyone could duplicate credit notes perfectly, undetectably. What happened to currency? Nanotechnology had been demonstrated to produce horrific casualties in battles. What happened to war? Those without nanotechnology are destroyed or contained. Those with it develop a system without war or perish. What kind of system?