Sarah Zettel: Reclamation

You can’t want that again! the Mind cried.

Aria didn’t. She felt a shame as dark and deep as any that had ever forced her to her knees.

… the others are trying to tell you that your genetics are the final determinant of your existence…I find it hard to believe that somebody so carefully constructed has no idea of their function…they told us as long as we kept the Words and the bloodlines true…

No, please, begged the Mind. Do not do this to us. Let us work. Let us have life again! She saw Eric and Heart wading through the rubble inside the dome. Show him! We can show him!

And she saw Eric again. Heart stood a nervous watch while Eric knelt in front of the hatchway and laid his hands on top of it. She felt his power gift reach out across her skin, and the hatchway opened.

“No.”

She watched Jay raise the gun. “I won’t kill you, but by the blood of my ancestors, I will hurt you until you beg me to stop, Aunorante Sangh!”

Instantly, the memory of Basq making the same threat flashed through her to the Mind. It seemed to be all they knew how to do in the end. She couldn’t be bought, or rearranged, or done without. She could be hurt. Whoever had made her, the Nameless Powers, or Jay’s Ancestors, whoever or whatever they had been, had left themselves that final option.

Aria’s body gripped the stone. “You see?” she said. “You see what service brings us?” Eric must have heard her voice. He dropped to the floor and ran toward the lighted well, leaving Heart dangling from the rope ladder. “In the end the masters will decide to dispose of us, of me, of Eric, of Teacher Heart. They already took away a whole city.” She focused her sight on the crater that had been Narroways.

NO!

The room began to bleed. Blue-grey viscous liquid seeped out of the floor and down the walls. Jay started and looked down. The thick stuff welled up over the tips of his boots and, defying gravity, ran in rivulets up his legs. He screamed and tried to run, but he toppled over, landing heavily against her surface. She felt her skin, the room’s floor, her skin, sizzle. A wave of gel rose up and enveloped him, pressing him into the floor. She felt him writhe, and then fall still. She felt him melt slowly away like ice against her skin.

Eric sprinted down the hallway. Heart followed more slowly, with his hands held flat at his sides, a Teacher’s first defensive posture.

“Eric!” shouted Aria. “Stop!”

Eric froze. With her distant eyes, Aria watched the gel pull itself back down into the floor, into herself.

There was nothing left behind.

“What did you do?” Aria asked the Mind softly.

I have maintenance functions that I can operate without a Hand. I used one of those. The voice was miserable, tiny and lost. What will we do now?

“Aria?” called Eric down the corridor.

“In here!” Slowly, she drew back, bringing her whole self back to her body.

No! cried the Mind. Don’t go!

“I’ll be back, I swear. Tell me how I can bring a Hand with me.”

And she knew, had always known, would always know.

She lifted her hand away from the stone and staggered from the weight of the sudden, appalling loneliness.

“What is this place?”

Eric’s voice startled her, because she couldn’t see him. She turned carefully around, holding herself up by sheer force of will. Her knees seemed to have turned to rubber, and her eyes did not want to focus.

“I think,” she said, with difficulty, “it’s where the Servant brought my ancestress.”

Heart pushed his way into the room beside Eric, only to stop and stare at what he saw. His gaze moved around the chamber in short, sharp jerks until it finally rested on Aria. “Where is Jay?”

“I don’t know,” she said. I don’t really want to know.

“Are you all right?” Eric moved to her side and laid a cool hand on her cheek.

“Mostly.” She lifted his hand away. “I’ve found out what the Vitae’s Ancestors left behind, though, and I think we can use it to fight them back again.” She raised her eyes to his. “It’ll take both of us, though. It needs a Hand and an Eye.”

Eric’s breath caught in his throat. “What is it?”

“I don’t think I can explain.” She gestured toward the control banks. “It’s a kind of computer, or an AI. It calls itself the Mind, and it needs us to move, and to see. It’s…I don’t know what it is.”

Eric licked his lips and eyed the stones. “What do I have to do?”

Aria fished one of her remaining namestones from her pouch and set it into the empty socket next to the first one. She took the third stone in her left hand. “Lay your hand on

RECLAMATION 437

this stone and that one.” She held it out. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

Eric gave a soft chuckle. “You say this like it’s a new thing, Aria.”

“Hand on the Seablade!” Heart waved his hand at the room and all its strangeness. “Have you lost your mind? What is this? You wanted to get the Notouch, you’ve got her, let’s leave here!”

Eric shook his head. “And you claim to know the apocrypha. Didn’t the Servant and the Notouch walk into the earth? And didn’t they speak to the Realm?”

Heart folded his arms. “This is no time to debate philosophy…”

“I agree,” said Eric wearily. “So be quiet and watch our backs.”

He laid his hand on the stone she held and Aria felt its warmth flow straight into her. Together, they pressed their palms against the namestones in the bank.

The Mind opened for them. No shock. No reaching. No readjustment. Easy as breathing. Pure. Whole. Alive. Free.

No fear. No consequence. No limit. No barrier. No binding. No stopping. No time, distance, exhaustion, or end.

Freedom.

The Vitae called themselves the Nameless Powers! Aria crowed and she knew Eric heard her. He was with her, of her, around her, like thought and breath and light. That title belongs to us!

Shall we teach them that? His thought came back to her. All the delight he felt, she savored and returned. It doubled and came back, and came back again. Delight. Fury. Power. Freedom.

Revenge.

Oh, yes!

No, said the Mind, but there was no force to the plea, just a minor tug of the conscience. Don’t make me do this. Not again.

But the heat of the task and the joy of their freedom ran through them. It spread out into the Mind.

The blood of the World began to quicken.

“CONTRACTOR!”

Kelat tore his gaze away from the monitors on the artifact’s holding tank. Behind him, the Bio-tech Beholden had moved back from the bulge in the wall they had designated tank 4B. Although it had no seams or joints, a space had opened in the bulge and a shadow crawled out into the light.

It was a crablike thing, all legs and shell and no visible eyes. It made Kelat think of cleaning drones. Its body glistened with some gelatin-like substance, giving it a steely sheen. It skittered over the edge of the tank and the Beholden crowded away from it. Kelat took a step forward. It smelled like fresh soil and blood. It scuttled between the equipment racks and the holding tank without pausing. Kelat counted ten double-jointed legs protruding from the ocher shell as it passed him.