Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014 (4 page)

The low ensouled had some leisure with which to imitate the princes and courtiers. They did not have the opera house in which to put on the sagas, but they performed for each other in the hollows between mounds. They did not have libraries, but they retold legends and parables, refining their manners, so that someday, if the chance came, they might mingle successfully with the princes and their courtiers.

Although he mostly tended workers, Diviya was also physician to clerks and petty functionaries who could not get higher-status physicians. It was always difficult for a cold skate, living at the temperature of the surrounding regolith, to carry a hot soul. Even the ceramics of boron carbide sintered and fired in the kilns of the queen creaked with distortions of temperature. In the worst cases, carapaces could even crack.

Diviya's hive patients possessed souls, and jockeyed for patronage. They guarded their own opportunities and blocked skates like Diviya from the princes. This, from what Diviya understood, suited the princes, who received gifts constantly from these petty clerks.

They were all taught to sacrifice, and for a while the idea of sacrifice could be romantic and ennobling. Freshly kilned skates were reared on the parables of the good worker, and especially the sacrifices of Narah the courtier. Narah had led away some of the shaghāl and the saga spoke lovingly of his last moments. It felt heroic, its romance layered by generations of retelling.

Yet it ran deeper than sacrifice. The males of the hive carried the same hereditary clays from the queen. The contributions of the few grand princes who had survived the migration accounted for limited variation in the hive. Diviya was brother to the princes, the tax farmers, the landlords, and the workers.

But privilege and status did not creep into a hive. Inequity stormed in, like hive drones breaking up a protest. The queen produced new souls with the radioisotopes sifted out of the regolith. Those who received souls no longer depended on capacitors to work and move through the night. The spiritual wealth became the power to see the radioisotopes of other souls or find more in the regolith. Most importantly, radioactive souls turned frozen gases into hot thrust.

Diviya met with Abhisri in the camps of the low ensouled outside the hive. Abhisri had bribed a courtier for a meeting with Prince Lasiya. Diviya was nervous. He had never met a prince. He doubted his ability to persuade. He had channeled debate among like-minded skates, but this was his own idea now and a high audience. It had been easy to speak in the dark to workers, deep in the slums. This was the hive, vast and monumental.

"This is bad," whispered his soul. "Once you speak with this prince, we are marked, you and I. The accountants will look in their records to see what soul you have and they will put marks there against both of us."

Diviya and Abhisri approached a side entrance guarded by two big drones. Prince Lasiya's secretary emerged from behind the drones. The brightness of his soul was stabbing. The lines of his ceramic shell were sleek and clean. The leading edges bore the emblems of his patron. Abhisri pulled a lump of distilled and refrozen breath from his gullet. Possessing it was a crime. So much breath ought to have been destined for the princes and princesses. The secretary took the bribe without otherwise moving. It vanished into his gullet. The hive drones studiously ignored the transaction.

"I am listening," the secretary said.

"We were told we would be speaking with Prince Lasiya," Diviya said.

"The prince is not available."

"My words are for him alone," Diviya said.

The hot circle of radiation from the secretary's soul shone full on Diviya. A submissive reverence stole over Diviya's soul. A fearful thought crept into Diviya's mind. Might the souls have some secret language, mediated perhaps by particle decay? It was an eerie, paranoid thought, and yet, something of substance passed between these souls and Diviya imagined his whole life being reported.

"I will bring any message to Prince Lasiya."

Diviya and Abhisri backed away and spoke in low tones, in the rough dialect of the workers.

"He won't bring the message anywhere," Abhisri said.

"We have no other choice."

"Do what he says!" Diviya's soul whispered. "There is danger here."

"A prince would have listened on his own authority," Abhisri said. "This courtier will report what we say in the worst light if you tell him your offer."

"The workers held back a riot so we could make this offer. We must try." Diviya turned to the courtier. "Tell Prince Lasiya that there may be a way for the workers and the princes to come to an understanding to increase farm yields."

"Go on."

"This is a message for Prince Lasiya."

"Something as important as farm yields should not be toyed with. Where are your loyalties, Doctor?"

"My loyalties are with the hive."

"Would your soul say the same?" the secretary asked. The shine of his soul was a beam, like the Voice of the Hero itself, focused through the smooth lens of his eye, in through Diviya's eye. Diviya felt hot.

"Of course," Diviya said.

"If your loyalties are correct, then speak of increasing farm yields, Doctor."

Diviya hesitated. "The workers dig hard, but the regolith is poor. Additional incentives could make them eager to work even harder."

"Any worker who is not working as hard as he can is guilty of a crime," the secretary said.

"The treatment of the workers makes them less effective," Diviya said. "Beatings make them resentful. I have seen skates broken and killed by tax farmers. Broken skates produce nothing."

"Slack workers must be forced to do their duty. Examples inspire others."

Diviya's quick words were difficult to contain. He had urged restraint on workers on so many occasions, so that they could bring forward something of substance. Only the thought that he was representing many workers held his anger back.

"There is a better way to inspire workers," Diviya said.

"Odd that centuries of experience did not find it, yet a country doctor has," the secretary said.

Diviya controlled his fear. Abhisri edged backward.

"Workers move regolith, find the volatiles and radioisotopes, yet know they will never migrate. If a few workers could receive souls, the additional radioisotopes found would soon repay the gift."

"Souls for the workers?" the secretary scoffed. "The apportionment of souls is a sober process. There are not enough volatiles now for the court. If breath were further thinned, instead of a quarter of the migration outrunning the shaghāl and the Maw, no one would."

"More skates on migration will draw away more shaghāl from the princesses," Diviya said, "especially if they are slower."

"You consign them to die? Do they know this?"

"They are already dead. We all are. When the migration flees, every worker will sit waiting with the empty hive for the shaghāl to come."

"You are naïve, doctor," the secretary said. "Every additional migrating skate takes breath from the princesses and princes. The sagas are filled with cautionary tales of migrants falling into the Maw, or even the Hero, when they lack breath. Your reckless ideas would jeopardize the whole migration."

"Not if we could find more volatiles," Diviya said.

"Ah," the secretary said, and Diviya felt as if he'd stepped into a trap. "Let us explore your thoughts on farming. How much more could workers do?"

"That would be based on how much incentive was offered."

"Treason," the secretary said, with the tone of someone commenting on the procession of the stars. "Do you know the punishment for treason? For withholding breath or radioisotopes?"

"I know it," Diviya said. He was cold beneath that hot stare.

"Then let us pick a strategy to get those additional volatiles."

"Incentives?" Diviya asked.

"I do not trust incentives. Even among the princes, not every skate can be trusted.

Fear and disincentives are the most consistently effective methods."

The flashes of radiation from near the black hole resolved into searing weaves of curtained light. Oranges. Reds. Whites. Sharp rays leapt from infalling gas, heating Diviya's soul, even though they were still days away. And the Maw was loud. It endlessly consumed the breath of the world. The infalling volatiles crackled with electrical panic. Loud, frightening snaps.

The enormity of what they approached dwarfed even Diviya's imagination. The rain of hot particles traced a line around the Maw, outlining a monster large enough to swallow even the Hero.

Weeks of careful work by Diviya and Ugra had pulled four more princes from the school. Soon, the princess would be unguided. Her soul carried other liturgies, secrets of growing a hive and waves and waves of little skates, but not navigational liturgies. Diviya had caught up to the trailing edge of the school. Ugra was close.

The Maw's own kin, the shaghāl, followed and Diviya imagined their enthusiasm as they neared the hive of their master. They shadowed the princes and courtiers, creeping closer and closer hour by hour. Diviya retracted his sail and exhaled the faintest of breaths to rotate slowly. His insides went cold.

He'd never seen a shaghāl. Three of them followed, one closely. He'd pieced his imaginings from the liturgies and sagas. Reality outstripped his nightmares. The shaghāl were big, reflecting light from hard ceramic and metal. Their bodies, triangular and flattened like a skate's, had long steel fingers for sharp grasping. It was as if a school of grand princes had been transformed by the Maw itself into engines of appetite.

The leading shaghāl thrust powerfully, leaping forward to hug Ugra in great fingers. It stuck a tube into Ugra's mouth and sucked away his breath. Ugra's fingers waved wildly, scratching at the carapace of his captor, until the shaghāl cracked Ugra open around the mouth, exposing the soul. Diviya did not see the rest. The shaghāl held Ugra and thrust outward, onto an orbit to carry it far around the black hole and back to the archipelago of asteroids where new hives would be founded.

And then Diviya was alone. There was no more revolution. There was only he, a princess, a prince, and a pair of pursuing shaghāl. Between Diviya and the prince, Diviya would always be second. The prince's soul was larger, hotter, making his thrust more powerful than anything Diviya could make. The shaghāl would reach Diviya first.

Then Diviya too fell into shadow.

"He too who is caught serves the hive," his soul whispered. That was the role the princes had for him. And the priesthood of souls. The poor brother must die for the rich brother to live.

He too who is caught serves the hive.

Diviya thrust.

"No!" his soul said. Diviya blasted precious volatiles behind him, emerging from the shadow of the shaghāl and even accelerating closer to the lead prince, the one closest to the princess.

"Monster!" the prince said. "I saw you waste your breath on yourself!"

Diviya rode his exhalation, coming close to the prince. Both souls protested, shrieking, warning the prince with panicked static, but the prince did not understand. Diviya clamped onto him, undersurface to undersurface where his fingers could reach the prince's mouth. Belatedly, the prince scored Diviya's carapace with sharp fingers.

The prince's violence almost shook Diviya away. Diviya dug into the prince's mouth, for the hot radioactive soul. Recriminations were loud in Diviya's head, difficult to block out.

The prince's soul was enormous. He had taken the best radioisotopes. And many ices to be sure, enough to become the next Grand Prince, if Diviya had not caught up to him.

Diviya had learned from Dwani. He would rather end the next generation than let this prince recreate the colony they had left.

Diviya's fingers scrabbled at the fine bands holding the prince's soul. The souls screamed. Diviya's with memory. The prince's with terror. Princely fingers broke off some of Diviya's. Diviya snapped one of the bands, then another, then another. The prince's soul drifted free. The four of them shared a moment of disembodied terror. They screamed. And the prince went perfectly still.

Diviya held the screaming soul, its radioactive shine lighting the tireless night, as he pushed away the stunned prince. Diviya slipped the soul into his gullet, unfurled his radio sail and drifted clear.

The prince wobbled and drifted. What were his thoughts now as justice was given to him? Did he blame Diviya, blind to his own role? Perhaps this was not even justice. They approached the Maw, where death became victorious over life, darkness over light.

They raced so quickly that the red stars stippling the darkness had brightened to blue. Only Diviya, the princess, and the shaghāl following them remained and they lived a quiescent fugue. Time became meaningless and long. The great sail of the shaghāl was furled. The Hero was so far, his Voice so quiet, that sails were decorations of brighter lives while they entered the mythic land of the dead.

Before them, the Maw cloaked itself in vast fields of hot clouds, but the breath of a thousand migrations was a poor shroud for the monstrosity of the Maw's hunger. Light burned from beneath the clouds as warning. Speeding blues, falling greens, and throbbing reds each marked some particle falling into the Maw.

Diviya's spiritual terror, for all that he had set aside the sermons and sagas, was visceral. He trembled. The souls within him, his own and the stolen one, quaked. His soul's whispers had become hypnotic and he wanted to surrender. To believe.

He was falling, accelerating. The Maw had noticed him and it summoned him. It was dangerous to be seen by the Maw, yet only here could the migration be completed. Here, any differences in speed would be multiplied. The princess was still ahead of him. No one had been showing her the way. Diviya's soul, between bouts of confession and recriminations, recited coordinates he would not follow. Diviya thrust forward, using up more of his precious volatiles, until he was beside her.

She was a sleek, flat skate, larger than he, but built more toughly. Her soul was incoherent with fear, but she was brave. Within her she carried flat matrices of clay, stacked one upon the other, containing the hereditary secrets for the next generation encoded in the atomic gaps in the lattice of the clay crystals themselves. These leaves, paired with the ones he carried, would create the next generation.