The Human Experience

Three-Quarter P, day 14, 3413.

When I was about seventeen, I watched from the window of my secluded apartments in the Keep as imperial soldiers marshaled Orcadis’s entire research team into waiting barges docked at Port Crimson. I realize now that one of them must have been Chirurgeon Padon, head of his research division – the woman I’m meeting today for my surgery. I remember asking why they were being sent away. Orcadis said they’d been compromised. They no longer shared his vision. They were dangerous to the empire.

Belred was horrible company. Del couldn’t imagine being stuck a whole P-turn on the road with him. The man only spoke when spoken to, and even then he stuck to formalities straight from the Helms’ manual of bullshit.

A true Helm. That was probably why he annoyed the hell out of her. Sometimes she tried to piss him off just to make the time pass, but he never let himself goaded. Figured. In light of Hector’s tantrums, which he’d endured without the blink of an eye, her halfhearted rebellions were just plain sad.

The trip was lonely. A quarter P and Hector still hadn’t made contact. So what, he’d been put off by her confession? You’ve killed someone? Sorry, you’re not pure enough for serial killer me. Yeah, right.

But she didn’t want to sink into those bitter thoughts again. Pining over someone’s attention was...demeaning. Hector was with the Infected now. He had to be as careful around them as she was around Belred. After all, it wasn’t as though she’d tried to call him, either. There was no telling how the Infected would react to communication with the outside world. It had to be prohibited – Del had never heard of an Infected person ringing up family or friends while on the Exodus.

No, when you started the Exodus, you were dead to the world.

She sighed, gazing out at the pastures spread to the horizon on the left side of the carriage. Sheep meandered through the grass, straying to the fence near the side of the road. On the right, oxen lugged ploughs through empty fields, their efforts carrying the mineral-rich scent of freshly turned earth on the wind.

Belred pulled over near a farmhouse with green paint flecking off its side-panels. He swung himself off the diver’s bench and opened her door for her, ever so politely extending his hand. Del took it, puzzling out the tidbits of stray energy he couldn’t censor. “Bathroom stop again?”

“We won’t be reaching the next town for two days. This may be the last sanitary stop for a while,” he said. But as he helped her from the carriage, she thought she detected a slight ripple in the energy around him. Ah, having his thoughts interpreted gets to him. Finally.

She slid her hand in the crook of his arm, letting him take some of her weight as she limped toward the farmhouse. The medics had told her to keep weight off the afflicted leg, but Del couldn’t stand the thought of Belred carrying her around like some puppet. He’d stopped insisting after a while. About the same time he’d stopped pitying her. It wasn’t like she’d wanted to be so mean, but if there hadn’t been another way to get rid of his pity, what could she do?

Her legs still felt leaden as she dragged them to the threshold. The venom had done quite a bit of nerve damage, and occasionally her muscles still jerked or clamped or knotted with pain. The dressing around her ankle was dry, though. Thank the stars, the puncture wound hadn’t oozed for over a week.

The farmer’s wife opened the door when Belred knocked. Belred embarked on a polite ‘may-we-use-your-facilities’ speech quite uselessly, in Del’s opinion, because the moment the woman’s eyes found his sterling silver coronet, he was ‘Your Lordship’ and Del was ‘Milady.’

Belred let her go first, as always. Del locked herself in the tiny outhouse behind the barn and began the routine she always went through when she had a moment’s privacy.

She took out her phone and dialled Jesreal’s number.

But the routine changed when, on the third ring, Jesreal actually picked up. Del’s stomach flipped. She fumbled to keep hold of her phone when a venom-induced twitch began in the fingers of her left hand.

Chirurgeon Padon was hardly recognizable as the trim, majestic woman Del had known. Her sleek chocolate hair was pulled back into a plait, loose strands framing her face and her overgrown bangs hanging like dog-ears to her chin. Something like motor oil stained her cheek, and her intelligent green eyes, clear like stained glass, were shadowed with concern.

“Good of you to pick up, Chirurgeon,” Del said coldly. She’d thought she’d be relieved to finally contact Jesreal, but stupidly the anger was there, too. Del knew she had no right to ask anything of the mentor who’d trained her in mentalism, shown her how to escape from the Keep, secured her employment at the Rathian asylum. But still. She’d botched Hector’s brain implant and then dropped off the face of the earth for three T-turns.

“Neria – er, Delia, – if you knew the pressure I was under, you might not be so angry with me,” Jesreal said, sounding so wretched Del felt a pang of guilt. “I haven’t been out-of-the-loop with Mr. Savage’s case. I know what Orcadis did to him, and I know he’s accompanying the Infected to Akkút. As it is, I have one of my people travelling with him. This insider is instructed to do whatever it takes to keep him from leading Orcadis to the Exodus’s destination.”

Del’s mouth fell open. “How does that help? You’re actually thwarting him? He’ll never get that remote if Orcadis doesn’t find out what he wants to know!”

“Sweet mother of suns, tell me you weren’t planning to compromise tens of thousands of Infected humans so one man could stop moaning over his sister’s death?”

“You know?” Del stuttered, cold needles prickling the back of her neck. “About...about Varali?”

Jesreal rubbed the motor grease from her cheek. “My insider says Lykus’s Voice took Varali’s identity.” She leaned closer to the screen and lowered her voice. “Look, Delia, the Liberator can’t let Orcadis or Lykus ruin our plans. The Exodus must continue, the arrangement must go through on the eve of Alignment.”

“Our plans?” Del swallowed heavily. “You’re a Radiant Thinker, then? How long have you been Infected? Stars, you’re on the Exodus right now, aren’t you?”

The chirurgeon grimaced like Del had made it out to be worse than it was. “Something like that. If the others knew I was talking to an outsider, they’d lose faith in me. I’ve been hired to build something. A spacecraft. I can’t give details, but know this: if there was another way to stop the spreading of the Voices, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

“Jesreal, please! Whatever the Voices are telling you, don’t listen. They’re...twisted! Come back to Vangarde. You don’t have to do this.”

She dropped her eyes. “The Voices are victims, too. I will set them free. Tell Orcadis, if you ever see him again. Tell him I’ll clean up his mess one way or another.”

The thought-energy detector was brought to Orcadis’s quarters, as he’d requested. “Thank you, Salacia,” he said, and wheeled the metal box through the door.

“Is there anything wrong with the detector, Greathelm?” she asked.

“The contraption is old, my dear. Some parts call for replacement. All standard, don’t fret.” He gave her a conciliatory smile, and to divert her attention added, “My, how that haircut suits you, Salacia.”

She dropped into a curtsey, smiling coyly beneath her lashes as she straightened. “You noticed, Greathelm. You always notice.”

“When it comes to you, of course I do.” He tapped her cheek lightly and bade her goodbye, waiting for the hems of her robes to flutter around the corner before bolting his chamber door.

Bah! He noticed. Of course he noticed. Only minutes previously he’d consulted her file. The spies who’d updated it didn’t let any detail slip past them – not even haircuts.

What did they expect? One thousand Helms and they all wanted individualized attention? Frankly, Orcadis was tired of pretending to care. Listening to their bellyaching, playing the understanding father, being empathetic instead of judgemental.

It hadn’t always been this way. He’d cared, once. He’d identified with every lost soul to walk through his doors. But who identified with him? Nobody lent a comforting shoulder to Greathelm Durant. Greathelm Durant’s life was perfect.

Except that his stars-forsaken wife had crushed him and poisoned their only child against him!

No. No anger. If you were unhappy, you changed your circumstances. He’d done it before. A life as an Akkútian plough-boy had been handed him, and he’d said no.

Orcadis pivoted the painting concealing his secret passage and looked into the camera, waiting for his iris to be scanned. Making them feel special is how I keep their love, he reminded himself as the clicks of gears sounded and the stone ground aside. Stars know I need their love, if I’m going to ask them to kill thousands.

Because the Infected had to be done away with, after all. Nobody would object. As far as the public knew, the pestilence was killing loved ones and prophesying apocalypse. Fear would rally them behind Orcadis when he announced he knew their destination, and planned to bomb it.

Gods knew why the wicked things blamed him for their state, why they listened to Jesreal’s unfounded accusations. People believed them, though. If Serasta, one close enough to be called brother, had turned against him at a parasitic whisper, what would the rest of the world do? Hang him up by his ankles and flay him alive? Serasta’s Voice had called Orcadis the cause of the future apocalypse. With time, others would, too. Perhaps they already were.

Orcadis struggled to roll the machine through the opening with one hand while keeping the painting angled away with the other. He kicked it down the corridor harder than necessary.

And Jesreal. Jesreal, too. She’d been the first to turn against him. My Voice won’t change me, she’d assured. I won’t let it. I’ll drive it out. I’d die before I let it turn me against you.

“Traitorous bitch!” His spitting insult bounced around the narrow corridor. He coughed to cover up the evidence. Funny, he hadn’t even been thinking that. It had just...slipped out.

Sometimes he cursed her in his sleep. That was worse. He’d stopped justifying himself to those who overheard – not many things rhymed with ‘bitch’ and ‘slut,’ after all. He’d enforced a midnight curfew.

The low-ceilinged chamber spread before him. Orcadis pushed the thought-energy detector alongside the table where Serasta lay. He opened its titanium doors. A helm-like headdress dangled from its ceiling on an array of wires. Normally Iron Helm candidates stepped inside and pulled the metal cap down over their heads, but that wouldn’t do now.

Orcadis had already extended the wires; all there remained to do was yank the helm down as far as it would go and fit it over Serasta’s brow. He did it without thinking, without even looking at the marble-carved features of his former king. After all the electrodes and suction cups were in place, peppering Serasta’s forehead, Orcadis moved to the energy compartment at the machine’s rear.

The dials read half-full: still enough radiation left in the stone for at least another half P. But as always he quadruple checked. Opening the little door in the back, he surveyed the fist-sized stone nestled in the energy compartment. Still glowing, streaks running through it like silver lightning.

Everything was in order. Orcadis thrust down the lever that would begin the process, passing the radiation from the stone into Serasta’s brain.

The king lay perfectly still, even as the metal cap thrummed and vibrated with energy, pumping it into his head. A pale azure glow spread from the cap, brightened, and finally faded. All was silent.

It seemed a lifetime that Orcadis stood there, hardly daring to breathe. Serasta still looked comatose. There was no way of knowing if it had worked. Even if it had, surely it’d take time for his dormant brain to start generating thoughts again, and even more to piece them into a coherent consciousness. Would it even be the same man? That part was crucial. If Serasta’s personality or memories were wiped, this entire experiment was a failure.

Your only true friend is an experiment now?

Orcadis blinked until the thought’s echo dissipated. This is for Kaed, he reminded himself. Everything I do is for Kaed.

The Exodus held no peril for Kaed, if the machine that let his Helms interpret thought energy could also reverse the Voice-induced trance.

It held peril for Orcadis, though. For the Helms. If Serasta woke, he would only have to be killed. The story for Enver? His brother’s body had given out. Something along those lines, anyways.

Only a father’s madness could drive Orcadis to do such a thing, but there was no other way, nobody else less dangerous to use as a test subject. He would simply have to put himself and his Helms at risk for a method of resuscitating Kaed should he get Infected.

Resuscitating them all, he amended. This could save them all.