N. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

Ykka seems remarkably calm as she turns back to face you. “Going to need your help,” she says softly. “If they’re using sledgehammers, then that’s good; they don’t have any roggas. But collapsing the tunnels will only hold them for a short time, if they’re really determined to come down here. And I don’t much like the idea of being trapped. Will you help me build an escape tunnel?”

You draw back a little, stunned. Collapsing the tunnels? But of course it is the only strategy that makes sense. Castrima cannot fight off an army that outnumbers them, out-weapons them, and out-allies them in stone eaters and Guardians. “What are we supposed to do, flee?”

Ykka shrugs. You understand now why she looks so tired—not just dealing with the comm almost turning on its roggas, but fear for the future. “It’s a contingency. I’ve had people carrying critical stores into side caverns for days now. We can’t carry it all, of course, or even most of it. But if we leave and go hide somewhere—we’ve got a place, before you ask, storage cavern a few miles away—then even if the Rennies break in, they’ll find a comm that’s dark and worthless and that will suffocate them if they stay too long. They’ll take what they can and go, and maybe we can come back when they’re done.”

And this is why she’s the headwoman: While you’ve been caught up in your own dramas, Ykka’s been doing all this. Still… “If they have even one rogga with them, the geode will function. It’ll be theirs. We’ll be commless.”

“Yeah. As a contingency plan, it blows, you’re right.” Ykka sighs. “Which is why I want to try Tonkee’s plan.”

Hjarka looks furious. “I rusting told you I don’t want to be a headwoman, Yeek.”

Ykka rolls her eyes. “You’d rather be commless? Suck it up.”

You turn from her to Tonkee and back, feeling completely lost.

Tonkee sighs in frustration, but forces herself to explain. “Controlled orogeny,” she says. “Sustained bursts of slow cooling at the surface, in a ring around the area but closing inward, centered on the comm. This will excite the boilbugs into a swarm state. The other Innovators have been studying their behavior for weeks.” She flicks her fingers a little, perhaps unconsciously dismissing that sort of research as lesser. “It should work. But it has to be done fast, by someone who has the necessary precision and endurance. The bugs just dig in and go into hibernation otherwise.”

Suddenly you understand. It’s monstrous. It could also save Castrima. And yet—you look at Ykka. Ykka shrugs, but you think you read tension in her shoulders.

You have never understood how Ykka does the things she does with orogeny. She’s a feral. In theory she’s capable of doing anything you can; a dedicated self-teacher could conceivably master the basics and then refine them from there. Most self-taught roggas just… don’t. But you’ve sessed Ykka when she’s working, and it’s obvious that in the Fulcrum she’d be ringed, though only two or three rings. She can shift a boulder, not a pebble.

And yet. She can somehow lure every rogga in a hundred-mile radius to Castrima. And yet, there’s whatever she did to Cutter. And yet there is a solidity to her, a stability and implication of strength even though you’ve seen nothing to explain it, which makes you doubt your Fulcrum-ish assessment of her. A two- or three-ringer doesn’t sess like that.

And yet. Orogeny is orogeny; sessapinae are sessapinae. Flesh has limits.

“That army fills both Castrima-over and the forest basin,” you say. “You’ll pass out before you can ice half of a circle that big.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely!”

Ykka rolls her eyes. “I know what I’m rusting doing because I’ve done it before. There’s a way I know. You sort of—” She falters. You decide, if you manage to live through this, that the roggas of Castrima should start trying to come up with words for the things they do. Ykka sighs in frustration herself, as if hearing your thought. “Maybe this is a Fulcrum thing? When you run with another rogga, keep everybody at the same pace, train yourself to the capabilities of the least but use the endurance of the greatest…?”

You blink… and then a chill passes through you. “Earthfires and rustbuckets. You know how to—” Alabaster did it to you twice, long ago, once to seal a hot spot and once to save himself from poisoning. “Parallel scale?”

“Is that what you call it? Anyway, when you form a whole group working in parallel, in a… a mesh, I could do it with Cutter and Temell before… Anyway, I can do that now. Use the other roggas. Even the kids can help.” She sighs. You’ve guessed already. “Thing is, the person who holds the others together…” The yoke, you think, remembering a long-ago angry conversation with Alabaster. “That’s the one that burns out first. Has to, to take on the… the friction of it. Or everybody in the mesh will just cancel each other out. Nothing happens.”

Burns out. Dies . “Ykka.” You’re a hundred times more skilled, more precise, than her. You can use the obelisks.

She shakes her head, bemused. “You ever, uh, ‘meshed’ with anyone before? I told you, it takes practice. And you’ve got another job to do.” Her gaze is intent. “I hear your friend finally kicked off, in the infirmary. He teach you what you needed to know, before?”

You look away, bitterness in your mouth, because the proof of your mastery of individual obelisks is the fact that you killed him with one. But you’re no closer to understanding how to open the Gate. You don’t know how to use many obelisks together.

First a network, then the Gate. Don’t rust it up, Essun.

Oh, Earth. Oh, you amazing ass , you think. It’s self-directed as well as a thought thrown toward Alabaster.

“Teach me how to build a… mesh, with you,” you blurt at Ykka. “A network. Let’s call it a network.”

She frowns at you. “I just told you—”

“That’s what he wanted me to do! Flaking, fucking rust.” You turn and start pacing, simultaneously excited and horrified and furious. Everyone’s staring at you. “Not networking orogeny, networking—” All those times he made you study the threads of magic in his body, in your own body, getting a feel for how they connect and flow. “And of course he couldn’t just rusting tell me, why would he ever do anything that sensible?”

“Essun.” Tonkee’s eying you sidelong, a worried look on her face. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

You laugh at her, even though you didn’t think you’d be able to laugh ever again after what you did to ’Baster. “Alabaster,” you say. “The man in the infirmary. My friend. He was a ten-ring orogene. He’s also the man who broke the continent, up north.”

Lots of murmurs at this. Tlino the baker says, “A Fulcrum rogga? He was from the Fulcrum and he did this?”

You ignore him. “He had reasons.” Vengeance, and the chance to make a world that Coru could have lived in, even if Coru was no longer alive. Do they need to know about the Moon? No, there’s no time, and it would just confuse everyone as much as the whole mess confuses you. “I didn’t understand how he did it until now. ‘First a network, then the Gate.’ I need to learn how to do what you’re about to do, Ykka. You can’t die till you teach me.”

Something shakes the ambient. It’s small, relative to the power of a shake, and localized. You and Ykka and any other roggas on Flat Top immediately turn and look up, orienting on it. An explosion. Someone’s set off small shaped charges and brought down one of the tunnels that leads out of Castrima. A few moments later there are shouts from Scenic Overlook. You squint in that direction and see a party of Strongbacks—the ones who were guarding the main tunnel into the comm when you went up to speak with Danel and the Rennanis people—trotting to a halt, breathless and anxious-looking… and dusty. They blew the tunnel as they fled.