‘They must be punished.’
Arles looked at him carefully. ‘We do not punish, Hama. We only correct.’
‘How? A programme of indoctrination, a rebuilding—’ Arles shook his head. ‘It has gone too far for that. Even arguments of utility cannot outweigh the gross Doctrinal drift here. There are many other Observation Posts. We will allow these flawed drones to die.’
There was a wash of agreement from the Commissaries all over the Galaxy, all of them loosely bound to their thinking, all of them concurring in Arles’s decision.
Hama found he was appalled. ‘They have done their duty here for five thousand years, and now you would destroy them so casually, for the sake of a little deviance?’
Arles gripped Hama’s arms and turned him so they faced each other. Hama glimpsed cold power in his eyes; Arles Thrun was already five centuries old. ‘Look around, Hama. Look at the Galaxy, the vast stage, deep in space and time, on which we fight. Our foe is unimaginably ancient, with unimaginable powers. And what are we but half-evolved apes from the plains of some dusty, lost planet? Perhaps we are not smart enough to fight this war. And yet we fight even so.
‘And to keep us united in our purpose, this vast host of us scattered over more galaxies than either of us could count, we have the Doctrines, our creed of mortality. Let me tell you something. The Doctrines are not perfect. They may not even enable us to win the war, no matter how long we fight. But they have brought us this far, and they are all we have.’
‘And so we must destroy these drones, not for the sake of the war—’
‘But for the sake of the Doctrines. Yes. Now, at last, you begin to understand.’
Arles released him, and they drifted apart.
La-ba stayed with the Old Man.
She woke. She lay in silence. It was strange not to wake under a sky crowded with people. She could feel her baby inside her, kicking as if it was eager to get to the Birthing Vat.
The floor shuddered.
The Old Man ran to her. He dragged her to her feet. ‘It begins,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘They are cutting the cable. You must go back.’ He took her to the hatch that led to the hollow cable.
A We-ku was there, inside the cable, his fat face split by a grin, his stick-out ears wide.
She raised her foot and kicked the We-ku in the forehead. He clattered to the floor, howling.
The Old Man pulled her back. ‘What did you do?’
‘He is a We-ku.’
‘Look.’ The Old Man pointed.
The We-ku was clambering to his feet and rubbing his head. He had been carrying a bag full of ration packs. Now the packs were littered over the floor, some of them split.
The Old Man said, ‘Never mind the food. Take her back.’ And he pushed at La-ba again, urging her into the cable. Reluctantly, following the We-ku, she began to climb down.
She felt a great sideways wash. The whole of this immense cable was vibrating back and forth, as if it had been plucked by a vast finger.
She looked up at the circle of light that framed the Old Man’s face. She was confused, frightened. ‘I will bring you food.’
He laughed bitterly. ‘Just remember me. Here.’ And he thrust his hand down into hers. Then he slammed shut the hatch.
When she opened her hand, she saw it contained the scrimshawed bones.
The cable whiplashed, and the lights failed, and they fell into darkness, screaming.
Hama stood in the holding cell, facing Ca-si. The walls were creaking. He heard screaming, running footsteps.
With its anchoring cable severed, the Post was beginning to sink away from its design altitude, deeper into the roiling murk of the hot Jupiter’s atmosphere. Long before it reached the glimmering, enigmatic, metallic-hydrogen core, it would implode.
Ca-si’s mouth worked, as if he was gulping for air. He said to Hama, ‘Take me to the Shuttles.’
‘There are no Shuttles.’
Ca-si yelled, ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’
Hama laid one silvered hand against the boy’s face. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see that? It’s my job to love you.’ But his silvered flesh could not detect the boy’s warmth, and Ca-si flinched from his touch, the burned scent of vacuum exposure.
‘…I know what you want.’
Ca-si gasped. Hama turned.
La-ba stood in the doorway. She was dirty, bloodied. She was carrying a lump of shattered partition wall. Fragmentary animated images, of glorious scenes from humanity’s past, played over it fitfully.
Hama said, ‘You.’
She flicked a fingernail against the silver carapace of his arm. ‘You hate being like this. You want to be like us. That’s why you tried to death us.’
And she lifted the lump of partition rubble and slammed it into his chest. Briny water gushed down Hama’s belly, spilling tiny silver fish that struggled and died.
Hama fell back, bending over himself. His systems screamed messages of alarm and pain at him – and, worse, he could feel that he had lost his link with the vaster pool of Commissaries beyond. ‘What have you done? Oh, what have you done?’
‘Now you are like us,’ said La-ba simply.
The light flickered and darkened. Glancing out of the cell, Hama saw that the great Birthing Vat was drifting away from its position at the geometric centre of the Post. Soon it would impact the floor in a gruesome moist collision.
‘I should have gone with Arles,’ he moaned. ‘I don’t know why I delayed.’
La-ba stood over Hama and grabbed his arm. With a grunting effort, the two drones hauled him to his feet.
La-ba said, ‘Why do you death us?’
‘It is the war. Only the war.’
‘Why do we fight the war?’
In desperation Hama said rapidly, ‘We have fought the Xeelee for ten thousand years. We’ve forgotten why we started. We can see no end. We fight because we must. We don’t know what else to do. We can’t stop, any more than you can stop breathing. Do you see?’
‘Take us,’ said La-ba.
‘Take you? Take you where? Can you even imagine another place?’
Perhaps she couldn’t. But in La-ba’s set face there was ruthless determination, a will to survive that burned away the fog of his own weak thinking.
The Doctrines are right, he thought. Mortality brings strength. A brief life burns brightly. He felt ashamed of himself. He tried to stand straight, ignoring the clamouring pain from his smashed stomach.
The girl said, ‘It is un-Doctrine. But I have deathed your fish. Nobody will know.’
He forced a laugh. ‘Is that why you killed the Squeem? … You are naïve.’
She clutched his arm harder, as if trying to bend his metallic flesh. ‘Take us to Earth.’
‘Do you know what Earth is like?’
Ca-si said, ‘It is a place where you live on the outside, not the inside. It is a place where water falls from the sky, not rock.’
‘How will you live?’
La-ba said, ‘The We-ku helped the Old Man live. Others will help us live.’
Perhaps it was true, Hama thought. Perhaps if these two survived on some civilised world – a world where other citizens could see what was being done in the name of the war – they might form a focus for resistance. No, not resistance: doubt.
And doubt might destroy them all.