Grail

15 learn to praise the imperfect world

“Dorcas,” Samael spat, as Tristen and Mallory righted the overturned table. Tristen jumped and glared, a fist of presumptuous worry clenching around his heart, but the Angel continued. “If not she, then one of her creatures.”

Tristen could not fault him. She was the obvious suspect, she and her Go-Back clansmen. But he bridled at the accusation, and wondered how much of that was a father’s loyalty.

More immediately, there were practical considerations. And, most immediately, political ones. Fortunately, Tristen could address both of those simultaneously.

“Nova,” he said, “can we have an external replay of any monitoring of our guest’s shuttle?”

“First Mate,” she said. An instant later, a three-dimensional representation of the shallow-space lighter and the bay surrounding it resolved before them, so solid you might expect to be able to rap on it. Mallory’s library was bereft of holotanks; this was Nova in her own person, adapting the fogs and colonies that made up her corporeal form to represent the destruction of the shuttle.

“Commencing animation,” Nova said.

For a moment, there was only the silence and the stillness of space. The shuttle was a silver disc without visible means of producing thrust; Tristen suspected its drive worked by gravitational manipulation. It hung lightly in a webwork cradle extruded from the world’s long arms, apparently quiescent until a small shudder shivered the recorded image. A moment later, the shell of the vessel jumped, crazed, and came apart in an expanding dandelion clock of debris, an inertial streamer smearing forward more than back, because the world was still decelerating as she came up to the system’s habitable zone. Now the view shook hard—not the ripple of before, but a sharp, teeth-clenching rattle—and when it stabilized the cloud of debris was overrunning the observers.

A younger Tristen would have waited impassively as simulated shrapnel whizzed past and through him, but he was old enough now to allow himself an honest wince. But when the debris collapsed back on the point of origin rather than blowing clear or settling against the bulk of the world, he was startled enough that he felt his face smooth. Give nothing away.

The lessons of childhood clung hard.

“Two explosions,” Tristen said, raising his chin to meet the Captain’s eyes over the heads of their visitors. “A small one, and then the one that destroyed the shuttle.”

“A … mine?” asked the alien diplomat, with a weighty pause as if he had to search for the word in long-archived memories.

The alien Captain, Amanda, folded her arms. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “Did you see the way the debris imploded?”

Tristen, for one, was still watching. The majority of the wreckage settled again into a lumpy near sphere, shifting against itself as if vibrations through the frame of the world sieved it down. Relative acceleration meant the debris cloud was gliding out in advance of the Jacob’s Ladder, trailing rent cables from the docking cradle that reached after it like hungry tentacles. “I’ve seen something like it before,” he said. “When I was young.”

Perceval stood calmly, frowning, concentration deepening all the creases of her countenance. “The Breaking,” she said, in the tones of one who already knows the answer to her question.

“It’s a typical pattern when a gravity drive explodes due to mechanical failure or sabotage.”

Tristen thought Captain Amanda spoke with fair calm and pragmatism, for somebody who was now—temporarily—stranded on an alien spaceship. The jewel embedded in her forehead flashed through the faceplate of her armor.

Nova said, “It is my estimation that if I had not been able to use colonies to absorb and attenuate the shock wave, that explosion was powerful enough to have rendered the world inoperable.”

“Somebody tried to kill us all,” Tristen said.

Amanda continued, “I can’t be sure of anything until I have the opportunity to take a forensics team through the wreckage, but given the evidence of a smaller shock wave preceding the main explosion, I would lean toward the explanation that an explosive device was concealed in the Quercus’s quantum engine core, where it would not be evident to crew inspection while she was under way, and that it was triggered by remote. Not a proximity sensor, or it would have gone off before Danilaw and I were able to disembark.” She wet dry lips with a Mean’s pink tongue. “You know what? It’s stupid of me to waste my resources now. May I unseal, Captain Conn?”

“The offer stands,” Perceval said. In the command space they shared, Tristen was aware of her effortless ownership of the crisis. As Captain—a mature and integrated Captain—her awareness of the world was as preconscious and prescient as her undermind’s awareness of her physical body. The ship was the Captain, and the Captain the ship. And yet, if he had not been in there with her, he would never have realized her attention was mostly directed away from the alien diplomats.

Administrator Danilaw stared at Captain Amanda, but nodded. “We won’t make it back to Fortune on suit reserve.” He touched both hands to the sides of his helmet, and after a few manipulations lifted it off. Captain Amanda followed, though Tristen watched her throat work under the smooth pink-brown skin before her nostrils flared on the first indrawn breath.

However unsettled she was, neither she nor the Fisher King let it affect their demeanor. Two slow drags of air and she spoke again, her voice shaking only slightly. “The obvious conclusion is that the Quercus was sabotaged while I was dirtside, picking up Danilaw.”

“We’ll see that you get home,” Perceval said. “After all, we’re headed that way.”

Captain Amanda’s eyebrow arched at the joke. “I guess you are.”

“You’ll want to contact your people; you may use our arrays to do so.”

“We have q-sets,” Danilaw said. “Without the relay on the Quercus, we may need a power boost, but we can manage to call home.”

Captain Amanda set her helmet down on the table and leaned her hands on either side of it. “How heavy are your casualties? How may Danilaw and I assist in your salvage operations?”

“Correlating,” Nova said out of the air. Tristen made a point of not noticing when the Fisher King and his companion reacted with startlement. “Please carry on.”

Tristen could have wished that she’d given a number—preferably a small one—but he understood. Her sensors and proprioception had been damaged in the explosion, and Tristen knew from eavesdropping her feed that—under Perceval’s guidance—she was already engaging search and repair parties, conducting survivor interviews, bringing in medical details. Organizing her immune response, like any organism in the face of attack. He gave her a part of his attention and felt Perceval doing the same.

“It’s deeply problematic that one of our people would resort to terrorism,” Danilaw said. “It’s not that rightminding removes the capability for violence, you understand. But it addresses the irrational evolutionary triggers—territorialism, dominance—that result in a great deal of fighting.”

“Rightminding,” Tristen said, fastening on the unfamiliar word. It sounded somewhat ominous.

“Humans,” Danilaw said, “evolved to collaborate—but also to compete. For resources, status, reproductive success.”

Mallory said, “Competition is essential to evolutionary development.”

“Ah,” Danilaw said. “But after a certain point, evolution is no longer essential to existence.”

It was a peculiar sensation, Tristen thought, to hear a sentence, to understand each word in it, and yet to have the abiding conviction that one had entirely missed the sense. He wasn’t alone: beside him, Perceval—who, like Tristen, had half her attention on Nova’s disaster-remediation efforts—cleared her throat uncomfortably.

And Samael said, “That is a heresy.”

“By your standards,” Danilaw said, “I have no doubt. And by ours, most of the foundations of your society are untenable abominations. Which is going to make things interesting if we have to share a planet.” He glanced at Amanda, who in continuing to strip off her primitive armor had revealed an off-white jumpsuit of some fiber Tristen did not recognize. When she was out of it, her suit softened, compacting neatly to a small bundle attached to an oversized set of oxygen tanks—further evidence of the fragility of these Means, and their requirements for a rich atmosphere. She retrieved some sort of instrument package from the helmet and slipped it over her head, to dangle on a lanyard.

“Please explain what you mean by rightminding,” Tristen said.

“These days, whenever possible, we do it through genetic surgery,” Danilaw said. “But in an adult, it’s a combination of microsurgery, chiefly to the temporal lobe, and therapeutic normalization of the neurochemistry. We use this process to mitigate some of the atavistic, self-destructive impulses of the human psyche—blind faith, sophipathology, tribalism—so that rational thought can prevail.”

He hesitated. Perceval made a noise of encouragement. It sounded to Tristen as if what Danilaw was describing was evolution. Or evolutionism, anyway, so he wasn’t sure where the touchiness lay.

But Danilaw looked at Captain Amanda, and she nodded. “One of my roles is historian,” she said. “I’m here in part because of my interest in C22. And my esteemed colleague is worried about causing you offense because we are unused to dealing with, uh—with natural-minded individuals such as yourselves. And because resistance to the mandated administration of early forms of this process is one of the reasons why your ancestors left Earth.”

“And the other,” Danilaw said, “was because decades of irrational human competition had driven the homeworld into a state of ecological catastrophe, such that it could no longer support large human populations.”

“We were not supposed to survive,” Perceval said.

“We know,” Danilaw said. “The Kleptocratic government—and what they did to your ancestors—was the final weight that really spun public opinion in favor of rightminding everyone. At first it was used to treat incurable ideologues and criminals. Then we moved on to sophipaths and Kleptocrats. The arcane priests of destructive religious systems such as Capitalism and—forgive me—Evolutionism came next. This was around the time your people moved on. Eventually, the rightminded population exceeded the unrightminded, and the procedure was made mandatory. Those were the last extensive wars Earth fought. Since then, they’ve managed through negotiation and compromise.”

“It’s not so shocking,” Tristen said, thinking of the modifications he’d made to his own mind, memories, and emotional landscape over the years. “The romanticization of a natural human state as somehow superior to a managed one is—your word, I am not certain I’m using it properly?”

“Sophipathology?” Danilaw asked.

“Thought-sickness,” Mallory supplied. Tristen smiled over his shoulder at the necromancer, and was rewarded by a flash of angelic grin through dark coiled hair.

Tristen rubbed his hands together. “So the implication of what you are telling us is that whoever sabotaged your vessel did so in a spirit of complete rationality?”

“Yes,” Amanda said. “And in the spirit of the public good.”

“That is useful information.” Perceval inclined her head like a queen, leaving Tristen to wonder what the squat, earthbound alien couple made of her. “Please, I must address the crisis now; Samael will see you are made comfortable. Now that the autonomous response is complete, there will be decisions that require my full attention.”

Amanda looked at Danilaw, seeking support, Tristen imagined, for whatever she would say next. His nod must have offered it, because when she turned back she spoke directly—and passionately—to Perceval.

“Captain,” she said. “I understand that you have exceptionally good reasons not to trust us currently. But I beg of you—you must have wounded, and I feel a grave responsibility for their pain. As a Legate and ship’s Captain, I have some medical training. Will you allow Danilaw and me to help in your recovery efforts?”

“Wounded?” Perceval thought for a moment. “We have facilities for them. But if you would care to observe, you are welcome to join us. I would recommend you allow us to provide you with armor before entering the damaged zone.”

“That would be welcome,” Danilaw said.

The Captain nodded. “All right then. Mallory, Tristen? You’re also with me.”

The pressure suits provided for Danilaw and Amanda were not at all what Danilaw was used to. But having observed Tristen’s “armor” in action, Danilaw was confident that it was a superior technology—as long as it wasn’t prone to catastrophic, untelegraphed failures.

Instructing him and Amanda in its use, Mallory seemed confident that they could handle it. “Even young children have no problem adapting to armor. The armor will take care of you. All you have to do is trust it.”

Danilaw wiggled his fingers in the gauntlets, trying to accustom himself to the feel of the sticky-cool colloidal lining, and eyed the necromancer dubiously. “Trust it?”

“Danilaw,” Mallory said, “this is armor. Armor, this is Danilaw. He is in your charge.”

“I am pleased to be of service, Danilaw.” The armor spoke through pinhole speakers in the neck aperture. Based on Amanda’s jump, she was hearing something similar, which told him the voice response was directional. “Are you familiar with my operation?”

“No,” Danilaw said, finding his voice. He was grateful for his rightminding. He could feel his body’s adrenaline response, the atavistic desire to panic, but he was aware of it as a chemical response, and he controlled it. “I’ve never seen anything like you before.”

“Shall I place myself in training mode?” the armor asked.

“Affirmative,” Danilaw said.

“Normally phrased commands will suffice.” Was that his own embarrassment causing him to imagine a comforting tone in its speech? Or a touch of hesitancy?

“Thank you,” Danilaw said, concealing his stress and irritation that they were not yet moving to relieve the inevitable wounded. He did not know the disaster protocols on the Jacob’s Ladder. Captain Perceval’s apparent air of leisureliness might mean only that the situation was under control, and she was too much of a professional to act in haste. But Danilaw’s adrenaline response urged at him nonetheless. Do something, and do it now.

He raised his eyes, straightening his spine. Around him, the others seemed garbed and ready. Danilaw was grateful that he still had his q-set; like Amanda’s, it was modular. Now he wore it under this “armor” as he had worn it under the pressure suit, and it gave him a direct link to Amanda.

Probably not a secure one, given the armor’s sensitivity to voice commands. But a way to speak with her, at least. Amanda’s Free Legate status meant she could transmit anything she experienced as it happened, and Danilaw hoped she was doing so. Back on Fortune, Jesse and Gain should be going over the data already.

If Danilaw had thought Samael was giving them a grand tour (or a bit of a runaround) on the way in, the trip back disabused him. It was easier in the alien armor—it did some of the work of walking for him—and they traveled fast now. But the scenery was the same—although, as they moved through it, Danilaw was unsurprised to find it increasingly ravaged.

The scenery also stopped more abruptly than it had before.

They passed into the final air lock, still some ways from where the docking cradle had been, and Tristen turned and said, “Seal up now.”

All five sets of armor answered his command, helms scrolling shut in unison. Danilaw expected a pressure change, but there came no sense of a difference in atmosphere.

“Sealed,” his suit responded, as Danilaw found himself staring through the gold-tinted mask of Tristen’s armor. Tristen nodded—the armor telegraphed the motion—and turned back. When the First Mate cycled the air lock, Danilaw felt his heart squeezing in short rhythm as if it were lodged in the base of his throat. He gasped once, careful not to hyperventilate, and felt the thundering ease.

What he saw beyond the hatchway was exactly what he had anticipated. From the expressions behind the faceplates of the evolved and yet atavistic humans surrounding him, he imagined they were experiencing a more complicated emotional journey, but his own response was first the terrible sorrow and acceptance, and second the cataloging of what must be done to alleviate the situation.

The delicate docking cradle that had so gently webbed in the Quercus was reduced to writhing shards. The limbs that had surrounded it had been deformed by the force of the blast. The debris of the research scull itself was secured within a sort of silvery cargo net. Danilaw could not immediately identify its manufacture. As he watched, it writhed and grew, and spread itself across another few meters of scrap.

The damage was just as the animation had led him to believe, but other elements of the scene seemed wrong.

Danilaw expected salvage equipment, men and women in these shells of strange pressure armor—hardened by its own molecular bonds rather than by programmable fields—working feverishly. He expected medical teams and docbots—and what he saw was a strange absence of most of these things.

Before his eyes, the damage was unknitting itself, the world remade as if someone were running the animation of the explosion in reverse. It was the sort of effect one expected to see in an entertainment, and it stopped him cold where he hung.

He drifted silently for a moment, then opened his mouth and said, “Mallory? Who is effecting those repairs?”

“The Angel,” Mallory said, as if it were a perfectly everyday sort of sentence. “She says there are six crew members mind-dead, a few dozen crew and organisms injured, and the ladder tree was destroyed beyond salvage.”

“Oh,” Perceval said. “That is a pity.”

Mind-dead? Danilaw wondered. But it seemed like an inopportune time to ask.

“Can we clone her?” Tristen asked.

“There should be salvageable cellular material,” Mallory said. “If any of it has an intact nucleus, we can replace the ladder tree. It won’t bring back her experiences, but we have a recent backup. But … it will take centuries for her to grow so large and knowledgeable again.”

“We don’t have centuries,” Perceval said. Danilaw had the distinct sense that quietly, contained within herself, she was grieving.

“Not if Danilaw lets us land,” Mallory said. “But then that begs the question—what would we have done with her when we got to Grail, anyway? What will we do with all our biodiversity?”

“Grail?” Danilaw asked, to cover his flinch. It was an excellent question.

“Your world,” Perceval said, floating before that enormous emptiness. “What do you call it?”

“Fortune,” Danilaw said. “And the sister world is Favor.”

Perceval turned to him and extended an armored hand. “Thank you, Administrator,” she said. “There is little else we can accomplish here. Will you and the Captain join us for dinner?”

She’d asked them if they would prefer a formal dinner and a full presentation to the senior crew, but Administrator Danilaw and Captain Amanda had argued gently for a little more privacy. “The flower of diplomacy likes a well-composted bed,” Danilaw had said, and Perceval had stared at him for a full three seconds before realizing that he was being intentionally ridiculous. The Mean has a sense of humor. It did, in fact, endear him to her—just a little.

And so she fed them on the Bridge, at a table Nova built for the occasion—not too large, oval in shape, the glossy flat surface growing up from the grassy deck on twisted legs as if it had always been rooted there. The food was kept plain, though Head exercised all hir considerable ingenuity on making it also delicious. Sie always said it was more a test of the cook’s art and discrimination to make the simple great, anyway.

Perceval had wondered if her dinner guests would find the food strange, and as truth would have it, they seemed to. Not so strange, however, that they failed to apply themselves to the dishes with concentration.

She got a sense that their culture focused a kind of ritual attentiveness on food. They ate in small bites, carefully timed, and both of them inspected each mouthful before consuming it. Perceval hoped it wasn’t out of fear of toxicity. She’d had Nova analyze their metabolites—it wasn’t invasive, so she didn’t feel she needed to ask permissions—and it appeared that, within detectable tolerances, they could eat what she ate.

Could eat. Whether they habitually did eat it seemed questionable, given the scientific rigor with which they investigated their dinners. Perceval expected questions, but they did not quiz their hosts, just inspected, chewed, considered, and swallowed. Tristen and Mallory supported the conversation, the necromancer especially putting forth efforts to be sparkling, but Perceval could sense the awkwardness hovering between the two groups of diners.

And it was hard indeed to find common ground for conversation when gossip about common acquaintances and family business were off the table. Perceval had never realized before how much of what went on at the average meeting was devoted to navigating the complex relationships that linked Conn and Engine.

Mallory managed a fair trade in humorous anecdotes about long-dead Conns and Engineers, leaving enticing pauses in the narrative, but Perceval could not help but notice that Danilaw and Amanda seemed completely at a loss as to how to handle them. Finally, she set her utensils down, folded her hands in front of her mouth, and said, “I wouldn’t force conversation on you, but this feels awkward to me. Is there some manner in which the hospitality could be improved?”

Her alien guests did a lot of talking to each other with their eyes. They shared a glance now, lingering enough that she wondered if they were telepaths or had some sort of implant that allowed silent communication. Amanda finally looked back at Perceval and said, “It’s another of those cultural differences. We’re socialized from a young age to believe that eating is serious business, requiring attention and gratitude. Cookery is the performance of an art, and like any ephemera, it should be savored. Also, there is the matter of honoring the former existence of the food, and acknowledging the lives that go to feed us.”

Tristen frowned, but it seemed like the study of concentration rather than one of disagreement. “You honor the sacrifice?”

“That,” Amanda said, “would imply complicity on the part of the lunch. And in general, I suspect anything we eat would prefer to continue existing as something other than a source of fuel. No; we merely try to recognize our impact, so we may manage it.”

“Oh.” Mallory chased the rubbery coil of a steamed snail around the plate before cornering it in a small puddle of herbed oil. With fork tines poised before painted lips, the necromancer said, “We are insufficiently reverent of the dead.”

The aliens did that eye thing again. This time, Danilaw nodded and spoke. “After a fashion, though I might have left out the value judgment. We are attempting to engage with you without discrimination.”

“Or relativism,” Tristen said. “And we very much appreciate your consideration of the long centuries our people have been separated, and the time it will take to negotiate those alienations.”

“Not to mention,” Amanda said, “the time it will take even to identify them.”

Perceval let her fork lie alongside the plate, unwilling to risk disturbing the delicate balance of actual communication taking place. She leaned forward, minding her manners and keeping her elbows by her sides—it would have made her mother proud, she thought, with a pang—and started to say something that would continue the diplomacy that had somehow, organically, commenced.

Only Nova spoke in her head, soft and definite. “Cynric is about to enter the Bridge.”