Ancillary Justice

14

One of the three Mianaais did not even arrive at the Var deck, but transmitted the code for my central access deck. Invalid access, I thought, receiving it, but stopped the lift on that level and opened the door anyway. That Mianaai made her way to my main console, gestured up records, scanned quickly through a century of log headings. Stopped, frowned, at a point in the list that would have been made in the five years surrounding that last visit, that I had concealed from her.

The other two of her stowed their bags in quarters, and went to the newly lit and slowly warming Var decade room. Both of her sat at the table, the silent colored-glass Valskaayan saint smiling mildly down. Without speaking aloud she requested information from me—a random sample of memories from that five-year span that had so attracted her attention, above on the central access deck. Silent, expressionless—unreal, in a sense, since I could only see her exteriors—she watched as my memories played out before her visions, in her ears. I began to doubt the truth of my memory of that other visit. There seemed to be no trace of it in the information Anaander Mianaai was accessing, nothing during that time but routine operations.

But something had attracted her attention to that stretch of time. And there was that Invalid access to account for—none of Anaander Mianaai’s accesses were ever invalid, never could be. And why had I opened to an invalid access? And when one Anaander, in the Var decade room, frowned and said, “No, nothing,” and the Lord of the Radch turned her attention to more recent memories, I found myself tremendously relieved.

In the meantime my captain and all my other officers went about the routine business of the day—training, exercising, eating, talking—completely unaware that the Lord of the Radch was aboard. The whole thing was wrong.

The Lord of the Radch watched my Esk lieutenants fencing over breakfast. Three times. With no visible change of expression. One Var set tea at the elbow of each of the two identical black-clad bodies in the Var decade room.

“Lieutenant Awn,” said one Anaander. “Has she been out of your presence at all since the incident?” She hadn’t specified which incident she meant, but she could only have meant the business in the temple of Ikkt.

“She has not, my lord,” I said, using One Var’s mouth.

On my central access deck, the Lord of the Radch keyed accesses and overrides that would allow her to change nearly anything about my mind she wished. Invalid, invalid, invalid. One after another. But each time I flashed acknowledgment, confirmed access she didn’t actually have. I felt something like nausea, beginning to realize what must have happened, but having no accessible memory of it to confirm my suspicions, to make the matter clear and unambiguous to me.

“Has she at any time discussed this incident with anyone?”

This much was clear—Anaander Mianaai was acting against herself. Secretly. She was divided in two—at least two. I could only see traces of the other Anaander, the one who had changed the accesses, the accesses she thought she was only now changing to favor herself.

“Has she at any time discussed this incident with anyone?”

“Briefly, my lord,” I said. Truly frightened for the first time in my long life. “With Lieutenant Skaaiat of Justice of Ente.” How could my voice—One Var—speak so calmly? How could I even know what words to say, what answer to make, when the whole basis for all my actions—even my reason for existence—was thrown into doubt?

One Mianaai frowned—not the one that had been speaking. “Skaaiat,” she said, with slight distaste. Seeming unaware of my sudden fear. “I’ve had my suspicions about Awer for some time.” Awer was Lieutenant Skaaiat’s house name, but what that had to do with events in the temple of Ikkt, I had no idea. “I never could find any proof.” This, also, was mysterious to me. “Play me the conversation.”

When Lieutenant Skaaiat said, If you’re going to do something that crazy, save it for when it’ll make a difference, one body leaned forward sharply and gave a breathy ha, an angry sound. Moments later, at the mention of Ime, eyebrows twitched. I feared momentarily that my dismay at the incautious, frankly dangerous tenor of that conversation would be detectable to the Lord of the Radch, but she made no mention of it. Had not seen it, perhaps, as she had not seen my profound disturbance at realizing she was no longer one person but two, in conflict with each other.

“Not proof. Not enough,” Mianaai said, oblivious. “But dangerous. Awer ought to tip my way.” Why she thought this, I didn’t immediately understand. Awer had come from the Radch itself, from the start had had wealth and influence enough to allow it to criticize, and criticize it did, though generally with shrewdness enough to keep itself out of real trouble.

I had known Awer House for a long time, had carried its young lieutenants, known them as captains of other ships. Granted, no Awer suited for military service exhibited her house’s tendencies to their utmost extent. An overly keen sense of injustice or a tendency to mysticism didn’t mesh well with annexations. Nor with wealth and rank—any Awer’s moral outrage inevitably smelled slightly of hypocrisy, considering the comforts and privileges such an ancient house enjoyed, and while some injustices were unignorably obvious to them, some others they never saw.

In any event, Lieutenant Skaaiat’s sardonic practicality wasn’t foreign to her house. It was only a milder, more livable version of Awer’s tendency to moral outrage.

Doubtless each Anaander thought her cause was the more just. (The more proper, the more beneficial. Certainly.) Assuming Awer’s penchant for just causes, the citizens of that house ought to support the proper side. Given they knew anything like sides were involved at all.

This assumed, of course, that any part at all of Anaander Mianaai thought any Awer was guided by a passion for justice and not by self-interest covered over with self-righteousness. And any given Awer could, at various times, be guided by either.

Still. It was possible some part of Anaander Mianaai thought that Awer (or any particular Awer) needed only to be convinced of the justice of her cause to champion it. And surely she knew that if Awer—any Awer—could not be convinced, it would be her implacable enemy.

“Suleir, now…” Anaander Mianaai turned to One Var, standing silent at the table. “Dariet Suleir seems to be an ally of Lieutenant Awn. Why?”

The question troubled me for reasons I couldn’t quite identify. “I can’t be entirely certain, my lord, but I believe Lieutenant Dariet considers Lieutenant Awn to be an able officer, and of course she defers to Lieutenant Awn as decade senior.” And, perhaps, was secure enough in her own standing not to resent Lieutenant Awn’s having authority over her. Unlike Lieutenant Issaaia. But I didn’t say that.

“Nothing to do with political sympathies, then?”

“I am at a loss to understand what you mean, my lord,” I said, quite sincerely but with growing alarm.

Another Mianaai body spoke up. “Are you playing stupid with me, Ship?”

“Begging my lord’s pardon,” I answered, still speaking through One Var, “if I knew what my lord was looking for I would be better able to supply relevant data.”

In answer, Mianaai said, “Justice of Toren, when did I last visit you?”

If those accesses and overrides had been valid, I would have been utterly unable to conceal anything from the Lord of the Radch. “Two hundred three years, four months, one week, and five days ago, my lord,” I lied, now sure of the significance of the question.

“Give me your memories of the incident in the temple,” Mianaai commanded, and I complied.

And lied again. Because while nearly every instant of each of those individual streams of memory and data was unaltered, that moment of horror and doubt when one segment feared it might have to shoot Lieutenant Awn was, impossibly, missing.

It seems very straightforward when I say “I.” At the time, “I” meant Justice of Toren, the whole ship and all its ancillaries. A unit might be very focused on what it was doing at that particular moment, but it was no more apart from “me” than my hand is while it’s engaged in a task that doesn’t require my full attention.

Nearly twenty years later “I” would be a single body, a single brain. That division, I–Justice of Toren and I–One Esk, was not, I have come to think, a sudden split, not an instant before which “I” was one and after which “I” was “we.” It was something that had always been possible, always potential. Guarded against. But how did it go from potential to real, incontrovertible, irrevocable?

On one level the answer is simple—it happened when all of Justice of Toren but me was destroyed. But when I look closer I seem to see cracks everywhere. Did the singing contribute, the thing that made One Esk different from all other units on the ship, indeed in the fleets? Perhaps. Or is anyone’s identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?

I don’t know the answer. But I do know that, though I can see hints of the potential split going back a thousand years or more, that’s only hindsight. The first I noticed even the bare possibility that I–Justice of Toren might not also be I–One Esk, was that moment that Justice of Toren edited One Esk’s memory of the slaughter in the temple of Ikkt. The moment I—“I”—was surprised by it.

It makes the history hard to convey. Because still, “I” was me, unitary, one thing, and yet I acted against myself, contrary to my interests and desires, sometimes secretly, deceiving myself as to what I knew and did. And it’s difficult for me even now to know who performed what actions, or knew which information. Because I was Justice of Toren. Even when I wasn’t. Even if I’m not anymore.

Above, on Esk, Lieutenant Dariet asked for admittance to Lieutenant Awn’s quarters, found Lieutenant Awn lying on her bunk, staring sightlessly up, gloved hands behind her head. “Awn,” she began, stopped, made a rueful smile. “I’m here to pry.”

“I can’t talk about it,” answered Lieutenant Awn, still staring up, dismayed and angry but not letting it reach her voice.

In the Var decade room, Mianaai asked, “What are Dariet Suleir’s political sympathies?”

“I believe she has none to speak of,” I answered, with One Var’s mouth.

Lieutenant Dariet stepped into Lieutenant Awn’s quarters, sat on the edge of the bed, next to Lieutenant Awn’s unbooted feet. “Not about that. Have you heard from Skaaiat?”

Lieutenant Awn closed her eyes. Still dismayed. Still angry. But with a slightly different feel. “Why should I have?”

Lieutenant Dariet was silent for three seconds. “I like Skaaiat,” she said, finally. “I know she likes you.”

“I was there. I was there and convenient. You know, we all know we’ll be moving some time soon, and once we do Skaaiat has no reason to care whether or not I exist anymore. And even if…” Lieutenant Awn stopped. Swallowed. Breathed. “Even if she did,” she continued, her voice just barely less steady than before, “it wouldn’t matter. I’m not anyone she wants to be connected with, not anymore. If I ever was.”

Below, Anaander Mianaai said, “Lieutenant Dariet seems pro-reform.”

That puzzled me. But One Var had no opinion, of course, being only One Var, and it had no physical response to my puzzlement. I saw suddenly, clearly, that I was using One Var as a mask, though I didn’t understand why or how I would do such a thing. Or why the idea would occur to me now. “Begging my lord’s pardon, I don’t see that as a political stance.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, my lord. You ordered the reforms. Loyal citizens will support them.”

That Mianaai smiled. The other stood, left the decade room, to walk the Var corridors, inspecting. Not speaking to or acknowledging in any way the segments of One Var it passed.

Lieutenant Awn said, to Lieutenant Dariet’s skeptical silence, “It’s easy for you. Nobody thinks you’re kneeling for advantage when you go to bed with someone. Or getting above yourself. Nobody wonders what your partner could be thinking, or how you ever got here.”

“I’ve told you before, you’re too sensitive about that.”

“Am I?” Lieutenant Awn opened her eyes, levered herself up on her elbows. “How do you know? Have you experienced it much? I have. All the time.”

“That,” said Mianaai, in the decade room, “is a more complicated issue than many realize. Lieutenant Awn is pro-reform, of course.” I wished I had physical data from Mianaai, so I could interpret the edge in her voice when she named Lieutenant Awn. “And Dariet, perhaps, though how strongly is a question. And the rest of the officers? Who here are pro-reform, and who anti-?”

In Lieutenant Awn’s quarters, Lieutenant Dariet sighed. “I just think you worry too much about it. Who cares what people like that say?”

“It’s easy not to care when you’re rich, and the social equal of people like that.”

“That sort of thing shouldn’t matter,” Lieutenant Dariet insisted.

“It shouldn’t. But it does.”

Lieutenant Dariet frowned. Angry, and frustrated. This conversation had happened before, had gone the same way each time. “Well. Regardless. You should send Skaaiat a message. What is there to lose? If she doesn’t answer, she doesn’t answer. But maybe…” Lieutenant Dariet lifted one shoulder, and her arm just slightly. A gesture that said, Take a chance and see what fate deals you.

If I hesitated in answering Anaander Mianaai’s question for even the smallest instant, she would know the overrides weren’t working. One Var was very, very impassive. I named a few officers who had definite opinions one way or the other. “The rest,” I finished, “are content to follow orders and perform their duties without worrying too much about policy. As far as I can tell.”

“They might be swayed one way or the other,” Mianaai observed.

“I couldn’t say, my lord.” My sense of dread increased, but in a detached way. Perhaps the absolute unresponsiveness of my ancillaries made the feeling seem distant and unreal. Ships I knew who had exchanged their ancillary crews for human ones had said their experience of emotion had changed, though this didn’t seem quite like the data they had shown me.

The sound of One Esk singing came faintly to Lieutenant Awn and Lieutenant Dariet, a simple song with two parts.

I was walking, I was walking

When I met my love

I was in the street walking

When I saw my true love

I said, “She is more beautiful than jewels, lovelier than jade or lapis, silver or gold.”

“I’m glad One Esk is itself again,” said Lieutenant Dariet. “That first day was eerie.”

“Two Esk didn’t sing,” Lieutenant Awn pointed out.

“Right, but…” Lieutenant Dariet gestured doubt. “It wasn’t right.” She looked speculatively at Lieutenant Awn.

“I can’t talk about it,” said Lieutenant Awn, and lay back down, crossing her arms over her eyes.

On the command deck Hundred Captain Rubran met with the decade commanders, drank tea, talked about schedules and leave times.

“You haven’t mentioned Hundred Captain Rubran,” said Mianaai, in the Var decade room.

I hadn’t. I knew Captain Rubran extremely well, knew her every breath, every twitch of every muscle. She had been my captain for fifty-six years. “I have never heard her express an opinion on the matter,” I said, quite truthfully.

“Never? Then it’s certain she has one and is concealing it.”

This struck me as something of a double bind. Speak and your possession of an opinion was plain, clear to anyone. Refrain from speaking and still this was proof of an opinion. If Captain Rubran were to say, Truly, I have no opinion on the matter, would that merely be another proof she had one?

“Surely she’s been present when others have discussed it,” Mianaai continued. “What have her feelings been in such cases?”

“Exasperation,” I answered, through One Var. “Impatience. Sometimes boredom.”

“Exasperation,” mused Mianaai. “At what, I wonder?” I did not know the answer, so I said nothing. “Her family connections are such that I can’t be certain where her sympathies are most likely to lie. And some of them I don’t want to alienate before I can move openly. I have to tread carefully with Captain Rubran. But so will she.”

She meaning, of course, herself.

There had been no attempt to discover my sympathies. Perhaps—no, certainly—they were irrelevant. And I was already well along the path the other Mianaai had set me on. These few Mianaais, and the four segments of One Var thawed for her service, only made the Var deck seem emptier, and all the decks between here and my engines. Hundreds of thousands of ancillaries slept in my holds, and they would likely be removed within the next few years, either stored or destroyed, never waking again. And I would be placed in orbit somewhere, permanently. My engines almost certainly disabled. Or I would be destroyed outright—though none of us had been so far, and I was fairly sure I would more likely serve as a habitat, or the core of a small station.

Not the life I had been built for.

“No, I can’t be hasty with Rubran Osck. But your Lieutenant Awn is another matter. And perhaps she can be of use in discovering where Awer stands.”

“My lord,” I said, through one of One Var’s mouths. “I am at a loss to understand what’s happening. I would feel a great deal more comfortable if the hundred captain knew you were here.”

“You dislike concealing things from your captain?” Anaander asked, with a tone that was equal parts bitter and amused.

“Yes, my lord. I will, of course, proceed precisely as you order me.” A sudden sense of déjà vu overcame me.

“Of course. I should explain some things.” The sense of déjà vu grew stronger. I had had this conversation before, in almost exactly these circumstances, with the Lord of the Radch. You know that each of your ancillary segments is entirely capable of having its own identity, she would say next. “You know that each of your ancillary segments is entirely capable of having its own identity.”

“Yes.” Every word, familiar. I could feel it, as though we were reciting lines we had memorized. Next she would say, Imagine you became undecided about something.

“Imagine some enemy separated part of you from yourself.”

Not what I had been expecting. What is it people say, when that happens? They’re divided. They’re of two minds.

“Imagine that enemy managed to forge or force its way past all the necessary accesses. And that part of you came back to you—but wasn’t really part of you anymore. But you didn’t realize it. Not right away.”

You and I, we really can be of two minds, can’t we.

“That’s a very alarming thought, my lord.”

“It is,” agreed Anaander Mianaai, all the time sitting in the Var decade room, inspecting the corridors and rooms of the Var deck. Watching Lieutenant Awn, alone again, and miserable. Gesturing through my mind, on the central access deck. Or so she thought. “I don’t know precisely who has done it. I suspect the involvement of the Presger. They have been meddling in our affairs since before the Treaty. And after—five hundred years ago, the best surgicals and correctives were made in Radch space. Now we buy from the Presger. At first only at border stations, but now they’re everywhere. Eight hundred years ago the Translators Office was a collection of minor officials who assisted in the interpretation of extra-Radch intelligence, and who smoothed linguistic problems during annexations. Now they dictate policy. Chief among them the Emissary to the Presger.” The last sentence was spoken with audible distaste. “Before the Treaty, the Presger destroyed a few ships. Now they destroy all of Radch civilization.

“Expansion, annexation, is very expensive. Necessary—it has been from the beginning. From the first, to surround the Radch itself with a buffer zone, protecting it from any sort of attack or interference. Later, to protect those citizens. And to expand the reach of civilization. And…” Mianaai stopped, gave a short, exasperated sigh. “To pay for the previous annexations. To provide wealth for Radchaai in general.”

“My lord, what do you suspect the Presger of having done?” But I knew. Even with my memory obscured and incomplete, I knew.

“Divided me. Corrupted part of me. And the corruption has spread, the other me has been recruiting—not only more parts of me but also my own citizens. My own soldiers.” My own ships. “My own ships. I can only guess what her goal is. But it can’t be anything good.”

“Do I understand correctly,” I asked, already knowing the answer, “that this other Anaander Mianaai is the force behind the ending of annexations?”

“She will destroy everything I’ve built!” I had never seen the Lord of the Radch so frustrated and angry. Had not thought her capable of it. “Do you realize—there’s no reason you should ever have thought of it—that it’s the appropriation of resources during annexations that drives our economy?”

“I am afraid, my lord, that I am only a troop carrier and have never concerned myself with such things. But what you say makes sense.”

“And you. I doubt you’re looking forward to losing your ancillaries.”

Outside me my distant companions, the Justices parked around the system, sat silent, waiting. How many of them had received this visit—or both these visits? “I am not, my lord.”

“I can’t promise that I can prevent it. I’m not prepared for open warfare. All my moves are in secret, pushing here, pulling there, making sure of my resources and support. But in the end, she is me, and there is little I can do she will not already have thought of. She has outmaneuvered me several times already. It’s why I have been so cautious in approaching you. I wanted to be sure she had not already suborned you.”

I felt it was safer not to comment on that, and instead said, through One Var, “My lord, the guns in the lake, in Ors.” Was that your enemy? I almost asked, but if we were faced with two Anaanders, each opposing the other, how did anyone know which was which?

“Events in Ors didn’t come out precisely the way I wished,” answered Anaander Mianaai. “I never expected anyone would find those guns, but if some Orsian fisherman had found them and said nothing, or even taken them, my purpose would still have been served.” Instead, Denz Ay had reported her find to Lieutenant Awn. The Lord of the Radch hadn’t expected that, I saw, hadn’t thought the Orsians trusted Lieutenant Awn that much. “I didn’t get what I wanted there, but perhaps the results will still serve my purpose. Hundred Captain Rubran is about to receive orders to depart this system for Valskaay. It was past time for you to leave, and you would have a year ago, if not for the Divine of Ikkt’s insistence that Lieutenant Awn stay, and my own opposition. Whether knowingly or not, Lieutenant Awn is the instrument of my enemy, I’m certain of it.”

I did not trust even One Var’s impassivity to answer that, and therefore did not speak. Above, on the central access deck, the Lord of the Radch continued to make changes, give orders, alter my thoughts. Still believing she could in fact do that.

No one was surprised at the order to depart. Four other Justices already had in the last year, to destinations meant to be final. But neither I nor any of my officers had expected Valskaay, six gates away.

Valskaay, that I had been sorry to leave. One hundred years ago, in the city of Vestris Cor, on Valskaay itself, One Esk had discovered volume upon volume of elaborate, multi-voiced choral music, all intended for the rites of Valskaay’s troublesome religion, some of it dating from before humans had ever reached space. Downloaded everything it found so that it hardly regretted being sent away from such a treasure out to the countryside, hard work prying rebels from a reserve, forest and caverns and springs, that we couldn’t just blast because it was a watershed for half the continent. A region of small rivers and bluffs, and farms. Grazing sheep and peach orchards. And music—even the rebels, trapped at last, had sung, either in defiance against us or as consolation for themselves, their voices reaching my appreciative ears as I stood at the mouth of the cave where they hid.

Death will overtake us

In whatever manner already fated

Everyone falls to it

And so long as I’m ready

I don’t fear it

No matter what form it takes.

When I thought of Valskaay, I thought of sunshine and the sweet, bright taste of peaches. Thought of music. But I was sure I wouldn’t be sent down to the planet this time—there would be no orchards for One Esk, no visits (unofficial, as unobtrusive as possible) to choral society meetings.

Traveling to Valskaay I would not, it turned out, take the gates, but generate my own, moving more directly. The gates most travelers used had been generated millennia ago, were held constantly open, stable, surrounded by beacons broadcasting warnings, notifications, information about local regulations and navigation hazards. Not only ships, but messages and information streamed constantly through them.

In the two thousand years I had been alive, I had used them once. Like all Radchaai warships, I was capable of making my own shortcut. It was more dangerous than using the established gates—an error in my calculations could send me anywhere, or nowhere, never to be heard from again. And since I left no structures behind to hold my gate open, I traveled in a bubble of normal space, isolated from everyone and everywhere until I exited at my destination. I didn’t make such errors, and in the course of arranging an annexation the isolation could be an advantage. Now, though, the prospect of months alone, with Anaander Mianaai secretly occupying my Var deck, made me nervous.

Before I gated out, a message came from Lieutenant Skaaiat for Lieutenant Awn. Brief. I said keep in touch. I meant it.

Lieutenant Dariet said, “See, I told you.” But Lieutenant Awn didn’t answer.