“Okay, Pew, let me ask you something…” He stayed sullen in his chair. I went on. “You’ve been looking into genocides. Okay. But have you looked into apocalypses as well?”
“Yeah,” he said, grudgingly.
“All of them?”
“Some.”
“Were they all genocides?
“…Yeah. Some of them.”
“But not all?” He looked confused. “You should look closely at all of them. Even the ones that are obviously natural disasters.”
“Why?”
“I think you’ll find, in every case — even when it’s obvious it was a natural disaster — there’s somebody saying it was deliberate. There’s usually at least a dozen theories for every apocalypse. But most of the time it is just an accident, no matter what people think. Or what they want to believe.”
That troubled him. “But what if it’s true anyway?”
“It might be. It might not be. It takes a lot of investigating to find out. I bet if you look closely, most of the people who are making these accusations haven’t done much of that. But don’t take my word for it. Look for yourself and make your own mind up.”
He frowned, the certainty of his anger dwindling.
“I know you’re angry, and you’re right to be angry. Because in your case it really was a genocide, and we really do have evidence for what happened. It was a monstrous crime, and one that will not be forgotten. The Soo are interversal pariahs because of what they did. They’ll be denied the full benefits of IU membership, and they’ll have to live with their climate breaking down because we’re not going to help them colonise another world. No one trusts them. I don’t know if anyone ever will.”
He looked up at me.
“Do you really think it would make anything better to kill them all?”
He stared grimly at the floor.
“Pew, we’ll do everything we can to support you. On the other hand, we need to keep everyone else safe. We will send you to the Psychiatric Centre if we have to.”
He looked miserable, caught between two impulses.
“What would you prefer to do?” I asked.
He swallowed again, and came to a very reluctant decision.
“I’ll do the therapy,” he said.
“Thank you,” I replied.
4. Asha
Pew didn’t make a lot of progress with the exposure therapy, but then I didn’t really expect him to, not at first. Just getting him to sit there while I found ways to calm his mind was hard enough work. Helping him deal with his PTSD was going to take months, maybe years, and I found myself thinking more and more that I should get out now, get to the colony world, get away from the group, the centre, Hub, everything. Mykl said they were having trouble finding someone else to take the group — hardly surprising, under the circumstances. There were few people with my experience who weren’t already out at a therapy centre, prepping for refugees, or halfway up the Lift, getting ready to triage the first flood of survivors.
The days rolled on, and we were promised a date for the move again and again. The news showed the first few people from Ardëe emerging at Agvarterheer Port, mostly coming off the Lift to be rushed straight to medical facilities where their burns could be treated. The first place we’d evacuated had been a hospital in one of the highest arcologies, where the UV had been particularly vicious.
I had to make a visit to Hub Metro to inspect the new facility for the group: a small building in the outskirts that carried no markings, was not listed on public directories, and could not be found unless you had permission. No vehicle would take you there, and if you stumbled across it, the doors would not open, nor would any staff emerge to see who you were. It was one of those places the Diplomatic Service kept aside for secret negotiations where the parties could not admit they were even talking to each other. There was provision for overnight stays, and this was being turned into something the group could use for a while, until a more permanent home could be found. Progress was slow on the conversion, but they promised me no more than another week.
The evacuation was being felt in every quarter of the city: wreckage still heaped up from the attack was cleared away and prefab buildings were dropped into place in public spaces, while residents of the more permanent structures were shuffled into as few buildings as possible, so the ones that remained could be turned into refugee centres for those who were less afflicted by physical and mental trauma. But all of them would have issues. Those that did not would be sent straight to a colony world; there simply wasn’t room on Hub for anyone who didn’t desperately need our help. So Hub Metro would once again be filled with troubled refugees, as it was during every evacuation.
I visited my own apartment for the first time in weeks to supervise a couple of robots as they packed up my belongings and shifted them into storage, to make a little more room if it was needed, and so I could leave once and for all if I decided to do so.
5. Elsbet
While I was in Hub Metro, I rolled as many duties into my visit as I could. Liss had her meeting with the Quillian diplomat, which had been put off half a dozen times, and which I’d only been able to arrange as a face to face meeting between the diplomat’s other engagements; elsewhere in the city, I had to pay a visit to Katie in hospital. Or rather, I visited Sergeant-Designate Elsbet Carmon, late of Attack Squadron Alpha Six of the Vesta 4 Holy Brigade, for it was she who had emerged once the new body had woken.
I found her sitting up in bed and working on a co-ordination testing programme with one of the neurologists, stabbing away at a pad with a finger.
“Yes. I’ve got a finger. It works.”
“That’s right,” said the neurologist, “we just need to test how the fine motor skills are coming along…”
“They’re fine,” she said, and stabbed at some more buttons.
The neurologist smiled, patiently. “You need to look at the pad for this to work…”
She looked round, saw me standing at the door, and broke into a smile. She jumped off the bed and ran to hug me, knocking me back half a metre.
“Thank you! Thank you!”
“Okay… nice to see you too…”
She pulled her head back from my shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, looking straight into my eyes.
I smiled as best I could, then looked past her to the neurologist, who was also smiling, though rather wearily.
She let me go and twirled. “This is amazing… I’ve never felt this good!”
“They tell me your old body had a lot of toxins in it. So now you don’t,” I said.
“And look!” She turned her head to show a scalp covered only by close-cropped hair. “No sockets!”
“I’m sure you can have an implant later—”
“I don’t want one. I don’t want anything in me!”
“Okay. You might have to wear contact lenses if you want to understand people. Not everyone speaks Interversal.”
“Hah! They can fucking learn!”
“Well. You seem very happy.”
“Yeah. If it wasn’t for these fuckers.” She jabbed a disrespectful thumb in the direction of the neurologist.