By the time Rachel returned, her trunk was half-empty— and almost all her ready-made clothing had escaped.
“You come with me,” Sister Seventh told Burya. ”See situation. Explain why is bad, and understand.“ Wind whispered through the open window, carrying grey clouds across the city, as Novy Petrograd burned in an inferno of forbidden technology. Houses crumbled and grew anew, extrusions pushing up like mushrooms from the strange soil of men’s dreams. Trees of silver rose from the goldsmith’s district, their harsh, planar surfaces tracking the cumulus-shrouded sun. The hairless alien wobbled forward onto the balcony and pointed her tusks at the fairground on the other side of town: “This is not the Festival’s doing!”
Helplessly, Burya followed her out onto the rooftop above the Duke’s ballroom. A cloacal smell plugged his nostrils, the distant olfactory echo of the corpses swinging from the lampposts in the courtyard.
Politovsky had disappeared, but his men had not gone quietly, and the mutinous troops, frenzied and outraged, had committed atrocities against the officers and their families. The ensuing reprisals had been harsh but necessary—
Javelins of light streaked across the cloudscape overhead. Seconds later, the rumble of their passage split the cold evening air. Thunder rattled and echoed from the remaining windows of the town.
“Festival does not understand humans,” Sister Seventh commented calmly. “Motivation of fleshbody intelligences bereft of real-time awareness not simulatable. Festival therefore assumes altruist aesthetic. I ask: Is this a work of art?”
Burya Rubenstein stared at the city bleakly. “No.” The admission came hard. “We hoped for better. But the people need leadership and a strong hand; without it they run riot—” Sister Seventh made a strange snuffling noise. Presently he realized that she was laughing at him.
“Riot! Freedom! End of constraint! Silly humans. Silly not-organized humans, not smell own place among people, need to sniff piss in corner of burrow, kill instead. Make military music. Much marching and killing by numbers. Is comedy, no?”
“We will control it ourselves,” Burya insisted trenchantly. “This chaos, this is not our destiny. We stand on the threshold of Utopia! The people, once educated, will behave rationally. Ignorance, filth, and a dozen generations of repression are what you see here — this is the outcome of a failed experiment, not human destiny!”
“Then why you not a sculptor, cut new flesh from old?” Sister Seventh approached him. Her snuffling cabbage breath reminded him of a pet guinea pig his parents had bought him when he was six. (When he was seven there had been a famine, and into the cook pot she went.) “Why not you build new minds for your people?”
“We’ll fix it,” Burya emphasized. Three more emerald-colored diamonds shot overhead: they zipped in helices around one another, then turned and swerved out across the river like sentient shooting stars.
When in doubt, change the subject: “How did your people get here?”
“We Critics. Festival has many mindspaces spare. Brought us along, like the Fringe and other lurkers in dark. Festival must travel and learn. We travel and change. Find what is broken and Criticize, help broken things fix selves. Achieve harmonious dark and warm-fed hiveness.” Something tall and shadowy slid across the courtyard behind Burya. He turned, hurriedly, to see two many-jointed legs, chicken-footed, capped by a thatch of wild darkness. The legs knelt, lowering the body until an opening hung opposite the balcony, as dark and uninviting as a skull’s hollow nasal cavity.
“Come, ride with me.” Sister of Stratagems the Seventh stood behind Burya, between him and his office.
It was not an offer but an instruction. “Will learn you much!”
“I–I—” Burya stopped protesting. He raised a hand to his throat, found the leather thong he wore around it, and yanked on the end of it. “Guards!”
Sister Seventh rolled forward, as ponderous and irresistible as an earthquake; she swept him backward into the walking hut, making that odd snuffling noise again. A furious hissing and quacking broke out behind her, followed by erratic gunfire as the first of the guard geese shot their way through the study door. Rubenstein landed on the floor with two hundred kilos of mole rat on top of him, holding him down; the floor lurched then rose like an elevator, dropped, and accelerated in a passable imitation of the fairground ride at a winter festival. He choked, trying to breathe, but before he could suffocate Sister Seventh picked herself up and sat back on what appeared to be a nest of dried twigs. She grinned at him horribly, baring her tusks, then pulled out a large root vegetable and began to gnaw on it.
“Where are you taking me? I demand to be put down—”
“Plotsk,” said the Critic. “To learn how to understand. Want a carrot?” They came for Martin as he lay sleeping. The door of his cabin burst open and two burly ratings entered; the light came on. ”What’s up?“ Martin asked fuzzily.
“On your feet.” A petty officer stood in the entrance.
“What—”
“On your feet.” The quilt was pulled back briskly; Martin found himself dragged halfway out of bed before he had quite finished blinking at the brightness. “At the double!”
“What’s going on?”
“Shut up,” said one of the ratings, and backhanded him casually across the face. Martin fell back on the bed, and the other rating grabbed his left arm and slipped a manacle over his wrist. While he was trying to reach his mouth — sore and hot, painful but not badly damaged — they snagged his other wrist.
‘To the brig. At the double!“ They frog-marched Martin out the door, naked and in handcuffs, and hurried him down to the level below the engineering spaces and drive kernel. Everything passed in a painful blur of light; Martin spat and saw a streak of blood dribble across the floor.
A door opened. They pushed him through and he fell over, then the door clanged shut.
Shock finally cut in. He slumped, rolled to his side, and dry-heaved on the floor. From start to finish, the assault had taken less than two minutes.
He was still lying on the floor when the door opened again. A pair of boots entered his field of vision.
Muffled: “Get this mess cleared up.” Louder: “You — on your feet.” Martin rolled over, to see Security Lieutenant Sauer staring down at him. The junior officer from the Curator’s Office stood behind him, along with a couple of enlisted men. Martin began to sit up.
“Out,” Sauer told the guards. They left. “On your feet,” he repeated.
Martin sat up and pushed himself upright against one wall.
“You are in big trouble,” said the Lieutenant. “No, don’t say anything. You’re in trouble. You can dig yourself in deeper or you can cooperate. I want you to think about it for a while.” He held up a slim black wafer. “We know what this is. Now you can tell us all about it, who gave it to you, or you can let us draw our own conclusions. This isn’t a civil court or an investigation by the audit bureau; this is, in case you hadn’t worked it out, a military-intelligence matter. How you decide to deal with us affects how we will deal with you. Understood?”
Martin blinked. “I’ve never seen it before,” he insisted, pulse racing.
Sauer looked disgusted. “Don’t be obtuse. It was in your gadget. Naval regulations specify that it’s an offense to bring unauthorized communications devices aboard a warship. So what was it doing there?
You forgot to take it out? Whom does it belong to, anyway?” Martin wavered. “The shipyard told me to carry it,” he said. “When I came aboard I didn’t realize I’d be on board for more than a shift at a time. Or that it was a problem.”