Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

She gripped Tej’s hand. Fear made all her senses too sharp.

It was okay to be scared, right? As long as she did her duty. Her chest ached over the scar where the surgeons had put the capsule in. It had been over a month ago now, after the election but before Han’s induction into office. In that time, the ache felt like it had become a part of her.

She and Tej walked together down the long archways of the Capital, the metal and stone gleaming into the sky around them. One tall dark man, one small pale girl, and no one could have said who was grasping whose hand more tightly.

When they reached the Tower, the new president did not keep them waiting. A series of smartly dressed staff showed them in with no delay, not even a question as to who they might be. Even if their robes had not marked them out, their faces were already known here.

Otto Han rose from behind his desk to greet them in a stiff but polite bow. Tej bowed equally stiffly in return.

He’s so much bigger in person, Nyma thought numbly. And he was hard. Like if you touched him, your hand would break.

“Elder Rokaya,” he said to Tej, in something that passed for a greeting. “And this must be my carrier.”

“Yes, sir,” said Nyma. “My name is—”

“I don’t want to know your name.” He turned back to Tej. “You Order priests are animals. This is barbaric.”

“Her name is Nyma,” Tej said quietly, but his thoughts were not so calm. Seres are what is barbaric. Whether to engage in such barbarism is your choice, not ours. The president could say, right now, that he would not use the weapons that defied all humanity and could spell the end of every life on their world. He could proclaim that Nyma would be safe and that the position would be as ceremonial as it had been in the past.

He was the one who refused.

“I’ve been briefed,” Han said. “And I said to my generals, it’s hundreds of years later, surely we have a better way of doing this. But you people have embedded yourselves right in the roots of our laws, haven’t you?”

“We think it’s the best way, sir.” It wasn’t Tej who had spoken, but Nyma, forcing the words around the dryness in her mouth. You must talk to the president. You must be a part of their mind, their life. Her tutors’ words were a drumbeat in her head.

Han wrested his attention around to her, and Nyma quailed.

“Of course you do,” he said. He turned back to Tej. “You people teach her to say this, and then if I need the codes for the weapons that could protect us all, you put them inside a child and tell me I have to slaughter her. You’re despicable.”

Tej had to force his expression to stillness. “Sir.”

“Do you know what the Baron Islands are doing to our people in the southern territories right now ? Do you know what they’ve promised to do to the people of Koivu and Mikata? Koivu has sere missiles themselves. If the Islanders get a hold of that technology… trust me, they won’t force their leaders to kill little girls in order to use them. Even if they did, those leaders wouldn’t hesitate.”

Tej could have argued every one of those points for hours. He could have pointed out balances of power and morality, or expounded on the Order’s core belief, that no one should be able to push a button from the sanctuary of an office and kill so many faceless children far away if they could not see the justification to execute the one in front of them.

Without such a burden, how would any president fully understand what he did when he asked to use such weapons?

“I’m told she’s to be a bodyman to me,” Han said. “I’m told I can’t say no.”

“That’s correct, sir,” Tej answered. The carrier had to be always physically nearby in case she was, Peace forbid, needed. That part was for the president. But if she could also form an emotional closeness, it might save not only her life but the lives of millions, and that was the mission of the Order.

“All right, Elder, you’re dismissed. Nyma, was it?” He towered over her.

“Yes, sir.”

“I hope you know. I don’t want this.”

Nyma didn’t know how to reply. Did she want this, just because she had chosen it? Did the Order want it, because they believed it was necessary? Did anybody want it?

Another verse from the same Myssoutoi poem swirled through her head.

Nyma sat in the corner of the president’s Tower office, biting the end of her stylus. It was a bad habit of hers, one her teachers had tried hard to break her of but had always failed. She wore Tower livery now, her thin hair braided neatly like the ushers and servants, but everyone still knew—she saw it in the way they walked in arcs around her, or whispered while not looking her way.

“What are you thinking about so hard over there?”

Nyma jumped. Try as she had to engage him, Otto Han had barely spoken to her if he could avoid it. He thanked her when she brought him files or drinks or carried his things, but he’d certainly never asked her a question.

“I’m trying to think of a rhyme, sir,” she answered honestly.

“A rhyme? Whatever for?”

“I like poetry.” She closed her pad and turned so she could face where he sat at the wide presidential desk. “I know it doesn’t always have to rhyme. But I’m not a good enough poetess yet to do the unrhyming ones.”

“Poetess, eh? All right, let’s hear one.”

A warm flush crept up Nyma’s neck. Her Order tutors had encouraged her interest—it was always good for carriers to be full people, they said, children with personalities who would be missed if they were gone, and besides that, the hope was that even those chosen would always have an adult life to grow into. But Nyma had never recited one of her poems aloud before.

Most of the ones she’d written lately were bleak. Just yesterday she’d composed a verse titled “Next Year?” with the lines, Peach petals drift down / Cheerful pink snow / And I clasp them to me / As the last I may know.

The president was still far too intimidating to share that one with. What if he shouted at her? Worse, what if he brushed it off, or laughed, when he was the one who held the answer to the question in his hands?

“Here’s one I wrote when we were visiting the farming country a few weeks ago,” she said, after rapidly deciding what might be harmless to recite. Pretty farms were safe, right? She took a breath and plunged in before nerves could steal her tongue.

She managed to get through all five stanzas, but trailed off as she got to the end. Otto Han was smiling. She hadn’t known he could smile.

“You made that up all by yourself?” he said, when she had stopped.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’ll be.” He rose and came over to stand next to her, staring out the Tower windows to the shiny quilt of the Capital below. “I love our people, Nyma. Can you understand that?”

“I think so, sir.” Nyma loved their people too. She’d been taught their nation’s history since before she could walk. “I think I love all people. But one thing I love most about us is how important other countries’ people are to us too.”

“Ah. Your Order.” He rested a brief, rough hand on her shoulder. “I still don’t agree. But I’d be more than glad for you to grow up to argue with me about it.”

“Sir?”

His mouth quirked. “I shouldn’t say, but—you deserve to know. The war’s going well. It’s all going well. We got news today that—mmm, let’s just say I don’t think I’m going to have to make any decisions nobody should have to make.”