Chapter 5

It was often difficult to remember they were on an airship, if not for the occasional hum and subtle shift in the floor. There wasn’t much in the way of exploration. A steward brought Maro to a bunk in a cabin the size of a pantry. Sangoku had loaded data from the crash onto his slate, and he sat for a few hours poring over details and reports. He couldn’t make sense of any of it. It was as if the physics of the Thır’s repulsors simply broke. For the rest of the day Maro was attached to his slate. After scanning tables and reports and briefings until his eyes went numb he opened the news. Perhaps on purpose, he had checked out of modern society at Toshu, hearing only talk from around the group and looking at the occasional report.

There was practically nothing new. Celebrity heroes here and there, renewed initiatives to settle city-dwellers rurally, deep philosophical discussions on the virtues of Equalistic society and the social principles governing the World State Council, and so on. Maro had no feeling against those people; there were always those who would make some cause their entire life for a cycle before moving on.

He took a break only for dinner before returning to his makeshift studies. It was not twenty minutes after he’d returned that there was a knock at the door. Sikimi leaned in the doorway with her arms crossed, hair still pinned tight.

“Come. You’ll want to see this.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see. Or are you more interested in scrolling?”

At that Maro chuckled and walked with Sikimi. The viewing deck ran along the edge of the hull, a long curved gallery with benches around cactus-trees. Off-duty crew stood near the reinforced windows in twos and threes, quiet in awe. There was a fluffy blanket of clouds well below them, and out in the distance was the setting sun splattering pink across the clear blue. They had caught the sunset at the point when the rose-cotton became lavender. Above the clouds there was nothing to obscure this impressive view.

“Breathtaking,” Maro remarked. “Though… it wears off when you’ve seen it from the ground for twelve turns—”

“Oh, stop it,” laughed Sikimi. She eyed him for a second. “You should be grateful!”

“I suppose I should. Gave me time to think about—”

“Major Lunsi? Sorry.” Idiku had drifted over holding a set of playing cards. He was coming from a table where Kumi sat and he held a clear yet mildly awkward purpose. “Captain Kumi says you’ve actually seen a field destabilize before. Like, on a large scale. If you don’t mind me asking, what’s it like?”

“Well– Do you mean what it looks like or…”

“I’ve seen it on a small scale, but Captain Kumi said you were a direct witness in an operation.”

His mind flashed briefly back to Te‘qaye. “It’s a visual that’s very difficult to describe, Captain. And it’s loud,” he sighed. “Until it isn’t.”

Idiku’s face fell a little and he slunk back to the table. When he was out of earshot Sikimi said, “You don’t have to discuss it with him. Or me.”

“Noted.” Maro turned to watch the sun’s last hurrah of the day. “What have you been doing? Before this?”

Sikimi sat on a bench and stretched her arms out again. She had a habit of that. “Mostly field work. ISA has been a little antsy over the turns.”

“Fondest memory?”

She giggled. Pleasantly. “There was an old man. Up north, in one of the grain provinces. He kept bees.”

“Bees?”

“Yeah! Hundreds of hives! He labelled them in this tiny cramped handwriting. He told me once he could tell them apart by sound.” She tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling lights, the way someone does when they are watching something that is not in the room. “I was there three weeks. He made me tea every morning, and it was awful, but I never had the heart to say so.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know what I was expecting. He was a kind man. Very content in his work.” She picked at a thread on the cuff of her coat. “Some of it was gentle, which surprised me. I’d always assumed it would all be loud.” She smiled, and it stayed on her face a beat longer than it should have. “He asked if I’d come back for the harvest. I said yes.”

He had been in the Service long enough to know what the ISA meant by counter-intelligence, and what kind of lid it kept on things. He didn’t ask how it ended.

“That’s a good memory,” he conceded.

She swung her legs, stood, and brushed her coat. “Your turn. Give me something specific.”

He told her about Tipéko, the sandwiches he ordered him to eat, card games that ran past lights-out with Rodgio and the guys, and the monotonous yet nevertheless brotherly bonds he’d formed. Sikimi liked to play a game of peppering him with questions interjected at the most inopportune times: what did the farm smell like, did he miss the Core, who won the card games.

“Rodgio never won. He just said he did.”

“And you?”

“Never kept score.”

It was small, but sat strangely in his mouth afterward. He walked her to the corridor and said goodnight, and she thanked him for the memories as if she were taking them somewhere.

He lay on the bunk with the lamp off. The ceiling was close enough to touch, and he did, flat-handed, for no reason. Through the wall the ship hummed on. That brief expenditure lifting the beam was enough to exhaust him, but he was surprised at how naturally it had come. He had felt something he couldn’t name.

Man hates it here until the last day. Tipéko had said it laughing. Maro went looking for the hate now, turning over each moment of bonding with each realization that he did not belong there. That whatever was there at Toshu wasn’t for him. For twelve turns he had been nobody in particular, and he had been restless. In a few hours his trials would be over.

So why was he still thinking of the farm?

Cold bled through the glass in the viewing deck. The clouds had dissipated and the land beneath had risen into mountains. To Maro’s left was Rirkuzun, a gray patchwork of shrub and rock and old snow on its shoulders. Spilling down the eastern slope into a broad valley was Dafrada. The seat of the World Union. Quite familiar to Maro, but he wondered if it had changed or if it had really been that long. A sea of skyscrapers intertwined by train rails twisting everywhere, interrupted by the occasional terrace and park. Nothing was old in this city, and nothing existed by chance. Thirty-two million people had the unique privilege of living in one of the most optimized cities in the world.

At the center of the grid was a broad dark monolith of a tower that resembled a sculpture of a pruned tree trunk. It tapered in stages to a crown that scattered sunbeams across the city. The Citadel of the People.

West of it, the airport. It was less a field than a set of dinner plates: Vast discs of stone rested on a forest of pylons hundreds of meters above the valley floor. Airships patiently hovered above its rim, lifted in a spiral and spilling out above the city. Even from here he could pick out the pattern laid into its surface, the pillar of leaves against the mountains, with a mosaic of color fanning out from it.

“Seems like it was yesterday I was on the train here from Tosuken.”

Maro jumped. “Good morning. You had the same idea.”

“So I did,” she dismissed. “I really hated those classes.”

“What, the finishing-school ones? Or the one about—”

“O-chem. Funny how that works, seeing how…” She waved at nothing in particular. Maro could tell what she was trying to say. The ISA dealt in many matters beyond counter-intelligence.

“Over there’s the theater house.” Maro pointed to a squat black slab of a building nestled between smaller buildings flanked by lawn. Below them, the airport’s mosaic widened until its individual fields of color became visible. The deck shivered once as the docking clamps took the ship. Conversation along the windows stopped. For a moment everyone stood listening to the metal settle around them.

“Time to go.” Sangoku had already grabbed Kumi and Idiku, and they were once again navigating the airship in purposeful strides. They reached a hanger full of people spilling out onto the terrazzo. Dafrada’s dry mountain air was thin and sharp in his throat. The landing plate stretched out beneath the pale sky, flecked with greens, reds, and golds that formed the Union’s pillar of leaves.

At the far end was a row of plain, single-story rooms. They looked almost like white-paneled shipping containers with windows. Each had benches visible inside. Maro followed the others into one. With a pleasant bell, they began to sink. The city rose up around them, flashing through criss-crosses of metal.

“We’re taking a train,” Kumi explained. “So fortunately we won’t have to sit here for too long.”

Maro looked through the window as the pylons slid upward past them. Nothing in Dafrada existed by chance. Even its welcome required being sifted and sent precisely where one belonged. The elevator slowed with another pleasant chime, doors opening onto a concourse which, on a sunnier day, might have seen some lovely sunrays streaming through tubed windows.

People everywhere. Streams of them, coming and going in every direction. No one in a particular hurry; Dafrada had far too much practice moving people for that. Travelers spilling from banks of elevators and train-tubes into broad lanes divided by the floor’s color. High overhead, a departure board churning out different blocks of Salikira and other scripts in the six world languages. Maro had forgotten the scale of it, or perhaps what it felt to be part of it.

Sangoku led them away from the main current before they could be drawn in and took them to an upper deck behind closed doors. There was no inspection line, just a force-field recessed inside a round tube. Maro mistook it for tinted glass until the others strolled through it.

“Don’t act like you’ve never flown before, Maro Lunsi.”

“Since when did they darken? I thought you weren’t supposed to see them.”

“Since the office cut the budget,” Sikimi said flippantly.

The corridor sloped gently downward. By the time they reached the platform, the noise of the airport had become a dull vibration in the walls. There was a train waiting for them. It was only a few cars long, black along the lower body and silver above. It had narrow windows interrupting an etched gold pattern of pala.

“See? It’s like you never left,” said Sangoku.

Maro forced a sarcastic snort and noted the five leaves subtly etched on the train door. The interior was quieter than the airship. Seats facing each other across low tables, upholstered in a rather effortful leather and mesh covering the windows inside. The doors shut rather abruptly and there was a faint ringing for a moment as Maro felt the floor lifting a little. Then the train gracefully and smoothly shot forward with a smooth pull at his feet.

For about three seconds concrete walls flashed round them before the tunnel opened abruptly and they were in the air. Despite the depth they had sank from in the elevators they were still quite high above the city, a web of monorails streaking parallel to the mountains. The city was still a sight to behold. It was not hard to imagine tens of millions of people living here. Apartments rising higher than the train rails held terraces and balconies crowded with plants. Markets occupied the shaded streets below filled with pedestrians. More trams off to the side to ferry people about at ground level. On one rooftop, children were chasing one another around a garden while an old woman sat beneath a trellis and ignored them. Half a minute later the whole scene vanished behind the mirrored side of an office tower.

Trees, too. That, he remembered. The founders had planted Dafrada obsessively in every corner and avenue that would have them. Gardens on the rooftops, vines spilling from the sides of bridges, and wedges of green space or park fitted into the most unlikely nooks. And the mountains loomed over it all.

“You miss it?” Idiku asked.

“No.”

That was quick.

“I missed parts of it,” he backtracked.

“That means yes.”

“It’s like you said,” he gestured at Sangoku. “So much green, I practically never left.”

The train banked gently around a tower, giving them a sudden view down one of the great avenues toward the Citadel. The surrounding towers seemed to lean back from it. It was designed with a clearing in the middle of the city. Its “bark,” which had appeared rough from the sky, had many smooth panes dotted with windows.

The rail began descending. The train was moving quite fast, and Maro felt the drop in his stomach immediately. He realized how abnormally quiet it was. He could only faintly hear the car slicing through wind. Buildings were rushing past in blurs. Then came darkness again, and a big rushing as they eased into a stop. Sangoku stood before it had fully stopped.

“Here we are.”

The doors opened onto a platform that was nothing like the airport’s. A long strip of pale stone and a single attendant in Service dress who saluted without speaking. Sangoku and the others returned it halfway. They took a long escalator and the platform shrank to a bright slot beneath them. Then a corridor lined with the same white ribbing as the airship, which led to a lift Maro would have called an elevator if it hadn’t also moved sideways for a time, sliding through the tower’s innards with a faint clunk at each junction. Through corridors and checkpoints where he tried to keep his sense of direction and gave up around the ninth hallway with no difference but the painted lines with arrows pointing out which area was left or right.

They took another lift and stepped out into what looked like a completely different building. Black, lacquered floors so smooth he could see the mellow warm lamps almost perfectly reflected. Carved cedar framed the doorways. Nothing like the clinical fixtures below. It was like entering an aristocrat’s house, with the five leaves standing as a herald.

Maro had spent much of his old life in this section of the citadel. He was here whenever there was a mission to be done, when he’d done well, and when he had to explain himself. The Security Service was quite proud, and had the temperament never to be outdone when it came to expressing Slemic culture.

“This place always reminds me of our Samaiki.”

Maro had never seen the main house of any his‘e but his own.

“In what way?” He asked.

Sikimi grimaced. “Well, you’d know if you’d let the Pasana adopt—”

“I had my reasons!”

“No race wars on duty.”

“Sorry, sir.” Sikimi reflexively bowed her head. “No, I mean, the color scheme.”

“As if the architect were of a certain his‘e,” Kumi started before drawing Sangoku’s reprimand.

A man was waiting at the end of the hall with his hands folded behind him. He was small and gaunt, wearing a long, sharply tailored coat of muted blue, its high, narrow collar rising close around his neck. The front was smooth and unbroken, fastened by a concealed seam that ran from his throat to his waist. His hair was a few white wisps. Maro could make out hints of a grin aimed at Sangoku, who bowed with an arm at his waist.

“Director Takxa, sir.”

“Commander,” the Director replied, with a firmer voice than his body. “You’ve brought them all.”

He shuffled closer and surveyed the group, his eyes narrowing to slits.

“You chose your core team well, Kiran.” His eyes continued to idly run over them, stopping at Maro. “So, you survived the crucible, Major Lunsi.”

“Yes, sir.” It was the only correct thing to say and Maro said it correctly.

“And Miss Amapim!” Takxa clasped both her hands in his, which looked like handling a bundle of twigs. “A finer political officer cannot be found.”

“You’re too kind, Director.”

“Not many say that these days.” He chuckled, a sound like leaves scraping against each other. Sikimi smiled the way she had on the airship, a beat too long.

Takxa was old when Maro had lived not more than a quarter-cycle, and he was old now. The man was nearly seventy life-cycles, nearly six thousand turns, give or take, yet Takxa still held himself as high as he could. The running joke in the working groups was that he was a Kangu who had neglected to expire out of stubbornness.

“This way,” the director turned. “We are on a schedule, as it were.”

They passed through a pair of tall doors into a theater. This one had tiered seating in dark wood, a stage with a simple lectern, and a ceiling that disappeared into shadow. It was dim. Only a few of the lamps along the aisles were lit.

Sangoku was on one knee before Maro had finished taking in the room. Maro’s body dropped quickly, and the floor was hard under him. He heard the others behind him, then a pause that stretched.

“Idiku,” Kumi hissed. “Idiku.”

There was a scramble, a creak of wood, and a thud. Maro glanced up and saw there were already two people between the front row and the stage. The first was a woman: broad-shouldered, thick through the arms, leaning over the man beside her, adjusting the fold of his collar with two fingers.

The man was in traditional Qenza dress, layered and high-necked in dark red and gold, the sleeves covering his wrists to the knuckle. Scars snaked up his face, pale pinched lines that ran along the jaw and up one temple and vanished into his hair. When he turned his head, it was slowly, as if avoiding pain.

“Forgive us, Palaren. We were not told—”

“Oh, please,” said the Palaren, softly. “Up. Up, all of you. I’ll never be used to that.”

Nobody got up until Sangoku did.

The woman had a hand upon the Palaren’s back as he stepped closer. His scars twisted as he gave a warm smile.

“I was told this room would be empty for twenty minutes. I was making myself presentable.” He glanced down at his sleeve, and the woman beside him smoothed it again. “Ressa Maknu believes I’m a boy who loses his buttons.”

She laid a palm flat between his shoulder blades for a moment, and Maro saw him lean back into it so slightly that he might have imagined it. He caught Maro’s eye for a beat. His looked like round stones, and they turned a rather mild and tired gaze ambiguous.

“I won’t keep you. Director. Commander.” He took Maknu’s arm with a strained sigh and trod out the side door, unhurried.

“Idiku,” Sangoku chided. “Culture is no excuse.”

“Is he always—” Idiku began.

“Don’t,” said Kumi.

Then the main doors opened, and the Service came in. Dozens, then more: analysts with slates, officers in dark uniforms, a pair of stewards pulling carts of tea. Somebody found the controls, and the ceiling lights rose to full brightness so quickly Maro flinched. The theater was much more lively, loud and warm and smelling of paper and sweat. Takxa went to a chair in the front row, took a cup, and appeared to fall asleep.

“Stage. All of you.”

There was nothing new he could glean from the briefing. That bothered him. Sangoku had stood at the lectern without notes while maps and faces filled the wall behind him. The Thır. Three other incidents quietly reclassified since spring, at a power station, a rail junction, and a hundred and fifty kilometers from Ainsanga Aeropolis. A map of the west, dotted with red marks where instruments had recorded readings that made no sense. A joint force under the World Political and Legal Commission, drawn from the Service and the Security Forces. Four subgroups, each with an ISA officer. Two on the ground, one on data. The fourth appeared only as a line at the bottom of the slide. Their mandate was to find whoever was using harmonic weapons. The second, expressed more gently, was not to frighten the public while they did it.

Then Sangoku introduced them as the “core team.” He named them one by one. Maro had been staring at a red mark in the west, thinking nothing at all, when Sangoku said his name. He felt the whole theater turn toward him. He kept his face still and nodded, though he could feel his face drain.

The moment it was over, he walked off the stage. Sikimi was beside him before he reached the aisle. Sangoku followed behind them. The corridor air was cool against his prickling face.

“I didn’t sign up for anything.” The words came too fast. “You just came and grabbed me. I wasn’t— in front of the—”

“Maro.”

“I haven’t agreed to a single thing.”

“Walk with me,” Sangoku said.

A stair, a lift, another stair, and a door he would have taken for a service exit. Beyond it was sky. He hadn’t known there were gardens above the Security Service floors. It must have been hundreds of stories up. A broad terrace rimmed with glass, with trees scattered about, dwarfed but old, their trunks twisted by decades of training. Runty pala with fruits of white and gold. A small fish pond with a bridge over it. Moss on the stones. In the distance was the city, and beyond it Rirkuzun.

“Every province sent a tree,” Sikimi said quietly beside him. “When the Citadel was finished. Something about the world sharing a root.”

“Always with the symbolism.”

Sangoku stopped at the edge of the pond. The sun was behind him, and the lines in his face looked deep. Definitely not amused now.

“You’re a free citizen, Maro Lunsi. I won’t put a hand on you. You can go right back to Toshu this afternoon.”

“Not much of a choice.”

“It is. I said it is.” He turned to look at the city. “But if I were you, I would think. Hard. About your station.” His upper lip trembled.

“He’s right,” Sikimi said.

Maro looked at her. Her arms were at her sides and there was little friendly in her face. She held it very still. For an instant he saw someone he’d never met. Just a lady with a ring pinned beneath her five leaves.

“You bloom where you’re planted. Think about where you’d be without this.”

The wind moved the leaves of the old trees. A bird landed on the bridge rail, then flew off. Sikimi blinked and her face returned.

“I’m tired. It’s a good offer, Maro.”

So was he. The day had been too long, and it was only afternoon.

“I’m a little irritated with you. If I haven’t made that clear.” Sangoku was craning his neck at the clouds above. “But if you feel differently…”

Sikimi rested her hand on Maro’s shoulder. “You should take the day to think on it.”

“Quite,” agreed Sangoku. He gestured around himself. “Maybe you need a familiar environment.”

Maro couldn’t help but scoff. They left him alone there. He turned their words over once and set them down, the way he had set down the sandwich on the first day he’d been told to eat. There was no bustle of Dafrada up here. But somewhere out there a freighter had fallen from the sky, and people were deciding what to do about it here. He could be one of them. He thought of the beam rising in his hand and how nobody else had moved. He thought of the farm, and the shape of a card game he’d never finish. He wanted it. That was the plain, ugly fact. He wanted it so much it frightened him, and the part of him that whined why me had gone quiet somewhere over the clouds.