The Human Experience

Ten-Quarter P, day 9, 3411

If hatred turned to love as often as love turns to hatred, I think I’d be a popular man.

Jesreal Padon was by no stretch of the imagination a beauty. Del could see how she may have been beautiful once. Long ago. Maybe in her twenties. Now she was fifty and haggard. Her hair was still mostly chestnut brown, her figure still trim, but she looked tired. Bags hung underneath her eyes and she wore loose-fitting man’s clothes. She wasn’t the dark-haired beauty Del had seen in Orcadis’s memories. Sure, all the objective details were there – the algae-green eyes, the prominent bone structure and glossy hair – but the overall package was somewhat...lacking.

By the Quintet, she had known Jesreal since she was fourteen turns old. Orcadis had introduced them the very week Neria had arrived at the Keep. She’d been Jesreal’s apprentice mentalist for three turns, until Orcadis exiled her and her team for reasons he’d never shared. So why had Del seen Miss Perfect in those memories instead of the woman she knew: an oblivious scientist who prioritized her work over her looks?

Stupid, Delia. Memories aren’t objective. Orcadis loved her, so of course he idealized her. You experienced the memories from his point of view. She never looked like the woman you saw. That was how Orcadis saw her.

“So...why are you staring at me, Delia?”

Del blinked, tearing her eyes from the chirurgeon. When Orcadis had gone into her memories, had he seen himself a golden Akkútian prince? Oh, fuck me, she cursed herself, feeling sick. “Sorry. I was just wondering. What was it like being married to...him?”

Jesreal stared through the windshield, her hands relaxed on the console even though her smile was tight. They were high above the ground now – higher than Del cared to guess, the clouds below a uniformly rippled sheet. Pale light flooded the cabin, caught by the silver shards in the rock chunks they’d hacked off the Basin’s walls. Most of the rocks had fit into two wheelbarrows. The rest lay in boulders on the cockpit floor, their threaded silver winking like an embedded web of dewy spider-silk, refracting light in rainbow strips against the walls.

“Stressful,” Jesreal said. Yeah, no kidding. Every tense muscle in her body spoke of stress. “I mean, at first it worked well. Mixing work and family life never bothered us. I was the brains behind our operation, Orcadis was the face. Oh, he was intelligent – a brilliant scientist, mind you – but above that he was a leader. Orcadis had the charisma I’d always lacked. He paved the way for our research. A few turns in Vangarde and he had both princes fighting over him, for Delmira’s sake!”

A sliver of resentment crossed her face, but it quickly passed for her usual resigned fatigue. In that fraction of a second she looked so much like Kaed that Del again wondered at her own ignorance.

“I was never envious,” Jesreal continued. “Public attention wasn’t for me. It was understood between us that he’d reap the fame and love for our research. He used to tell me,” a glint lit her eyes and she looked a little prettier for a moment, “that all the love he got from the public paled in comparison to what he felt for me. But...anyways. Everything shattered when Serasta got Infected.”

Del glanced at Serasta, lightly dozing in his wheelchair. Sensing her gaze, he tried to peel his eyes open, probably not wanting to look weak.

“Orcadis and Serasta were inseparable. They were around each other so much it didn’t surprise me to learn Serasta’s Voice knew things only Orcadis and I knew. Loose strings of his thoughts had been absorbed by Serasta’s Voice. All of Orcadis’s fears about our thought-energy detector being responsible for the Voices were transferred to Serasta. He discovered our mistake. He threatened to expose us if we didn’t destroy the detector and send all the Helms into isolation. I agreed. Orcadis didn’t.

“He was in denial. He couldn’t accept what we’d done. Instead he convinced himself Serasta had gone mad like the Infected so often do. Thoughts really do have power, don’t they? Almost like he believed he could change reality if he only thought hard enough. Well, after that he started monitoring thoughts, suppressing anything and everything that could be used against him. He couldn’t risk more Voices being born with his knowledge. That changed him. He’d always been obsessive-compulsive, but the thought suppression made it spiral out of control. Sometimes at night, Orcadis would toss and turn in bed for hours, getting up every few moments to tap things and perform little rituals. It drove me insane. When I asked why he did it, he said the rituals alleviated his anxiety, held the spawning thoughts at bay.”

Del had always assumed his wife’s exile had escalated his compulsive behaviour. He had become spacey near the end of her stay at the Iron Keep, too. Sometimes she’d had to call his name several times before he would look at her and, with seemingly great effort, bring himself back into this world. A rumour had spread that the Iron Fist had a slight hearing defect...

“Is that why he exiled you?” Del asked. “Because you agreed with the Star-King?”

Jesreal gave a faint snort. “Orcadis never exiled me. Turn me loose on the world with that deadly knowledge? You’ve got to be kidding. It was I who ran away and went into hiding.

“After the assassination attempt ‘Serasta’ no longer spoke of getting rid of the Helms. He became a recluse, refusing to see anybody except Orcadis during and after his convalescence. I was stupid enough to believe it was because he’d been disfigured, because the explosion that left him half witless, like people said. I even accused Orcadis of wiping his memories. Now I realize how obvious it was that that man wasn’t Serasta. With the knowledge he had about the Helms, Serasta would never have let Orcadis near him with that memory-modification machine of his. He’d never have barricaded himself within the palace walls hoarding technology while the epidemic claimed his people.”

Del frowned. “But you’d lived with the knowledge that you and Orcadis had created the Voices for turns, then. Since well before I arrived at the Keep. What made you leave so suddenly?”

“I...I kept hoping Orcadis would eventually see reason,” she admitted, looking deflated. “That’s why I stayed next to him for turns and turns, even as he and Enver cut down the Infected’s leaders one by one. Not only that – I needed the king’s funding, I needed my laboratory. But I did my own research all those turns.

“One night Orcadis broke down. He tried to convince me that we had to wipe each other’s memories of what the Voices are. I pretended to agree – I saw in his eyes that he’d get my memories wiped one way or another. So I figured I’d wipe his first, keep mine, and speak to the Star-King about sending the Helms into isolation as we’d agreed so long ago. Of course, my thoughts betrayed my intentions. He got angry. We fought. Orcadis accidentally let it slip that he had planned Serasta’s assassination alongside Enver. I was terrified, and I ran. Orcadis didn’t come after me; he went and got Kaed to make sure I wouldn’t take him. I always intended to come back, but...I knew if I ever returned he’d dispose of me as easily as he’d tried to dispose of Serasta. And I was the only person besides Orcadis who knew the truth – I couldn’t afford that. So I disappeared, founded the Radiant Thinkers, and appealed to the Akkh for a refugee status. I’d met the Akkh once before, when my team and I came to Akkút to offer Orcadis a position with Vangarde. He agreed to shelter me from Vangarde and give me all the funding I need, so long as I found a way to stop the epidemic. Orcadis told everyone he’d exiled me. I suppose he didn’t want to explain why I, the wife of the most beloved man on the planet, would run away.”

Jesreal, Lykus, me, Kaed...Orcadis sure has had experience with people running from him. Yet he won’t learn from it. The man just won’t learn. Del squirmed in her seat. “I’m...sorry you had to leave your son.” Maybe if you’d raised him he wouldn’t have turned out to be such a lunatic.

“So am I, Delia. So am I. If I hadn’t been a coward, Kaed wouldn’t have gotten Infected.”

“You couldn’t have stopped that, Jesreal.”

“Couldn’t I?” She turned to Del with rage behind her eyes. “Everyone knows the Voices have trouble getting through physical barriers. It’s why lockdowns happen during Swarms, why Vangarde implemented the quarantine. They’re energy, after all. Sound is muffled through walls, isn’t it? Light doesn’t penetrate brick. It’s basically the same idea with the Voices. My son is a Helm, he produces loose thought strings that can adopt a life of their own, and here Orcadis goes and traps his head inside an iron helmet for a T-turn. All his angry thoughts fermented in there until there were enough to constitute a Voice. How could Orcadis have overlooked that? How? If only I’d known...”

Jesreal bit her lip hard, letting the sentence trail away. With a seemingly great effort she turned her attention back to the ship’s navigation system. Her troubled eyes looked right through the screen, on which a blinking red dot showed the location of Enver’s ship.

Suddenly it made sense why Vangarde, quarantine and all, had the highest percentage of Infected people. Fort Neoma wasn’t just Vangarde’s capital – it was the Voices’ capital. Every thread of thought-energy came from the Iron Keep. Helms were strong-minded, they could resist the Voices’ attacks for the most part. So their thought-residue drifted through the rest of Vangarde, and then the very perpetrators went and hunted down those unfortunate souls whom they’d gotten Infected. Gods be damned, was it ever ironic.

Del remembered why the Inaulti people had been safe from the Voices; the Voices naturally kept low to the ground. She supposed it must have been the same with the Keep. Its high elevation – all the way on level five – must have kept Voices from lingering around it. Fort Neoma’s lower levels, unfortunately, didn’t have the same advantage.

“So what happens if we can’t fix the engines?” Jesreal said. “Any ideas?”

Del swallowed. “I’m working on it.”

“Attention! Attention all passengers! I am the Honourable Paq Ditra, Duke of Baol, cousin of Star-King Serasta and fourth in line to the Vangardian throne. I have been chosen to represent you, the Vangardian nobility, in this time of turmoil. We have been deceived! The Helms and their so-called ‘Holy Diviner,’ that false prophet Orcadis Durant, have lied to us all.”

Hector strode the corridors at a hot pace, his jaw working. Where was the blasted public address room? He had to find that imbecile duke before things escalated any further. Rabid with fear as they all were, it’d be easy for the nobility to rally behind an angry leader, seeking stability by taking their frustrations out on a scapegoat.

And they wouldn’t have to look very far for their scapegoat. Everything was Orcadis’s fault, after all. But in the midst of this chaos, they needed to work together. A Helm-versus-nobility war was the last thing anybody needed.

“You have been told an accident with the engines caused the explosion in the west wing. This is a lie! We have been sabotaged by the Greathelm’s very son. Commander Rigrole discovered young Durant’s note himself. He has intentionally trapped us here with the Voices, though I do not know how or why. Who has told us any of this? Our Star-King cowers in his apartments, our Greathelm lies to us, and the Voices say he is responsible for their creation.”

Damned commander. Hector rounded a bend, trying to calm himself so he wouldn’t bash Ditra and Rigrole’s heads together when he found them. The hallways were mostly empty. People had barricaded themselves in their rooms like they were on guard for a never-ending Swarm. The kitchens had already been raided, everyone having hoarded whatever they could so they wouldn’t have to open their doors and risk letting the Voices into their rooms.

“My friends, I say enough! The Iron Helms made this mess, and the Iron Helms should clean it up. We cannot lock ourselves in our rooms and await our deaths. Orcadis Durant must be made to answer to us. If it’s him the Voices want, I say they can have him!”

Hector halted, seeing two forms in Vangardian olive-and-black uniforms slumped on the floor down an off-branching corridor. Found you, warmongers. He swerved onto the corridor, stepped over the fallen soldiers, and kicked open the door.

A collective yell went up as the door crashed against the wall and the three renegades huddled over the microphone turned to stare at him. All were lavishly dressed, sporting woollen coats and leather gloves against the cold.

Two of the nobles whipped out jewel-studded dirks and took defensive stances in front of the young nobleman in the middle. Hector smirked his derision. What were those, ceremonial possessions? They’d probably been mounted on walls for decades.

He advanced, ducking the first pair of slashes and bull-heading into one noble, flipping the man over his back. The second danced around like he was fencing, jabbing quickly with the dirk and then pulling out of Hector’s range. Hector cocked an eyebrow. He feinted left, intercepting the noble when he predictably moved to the right, and smacked the blade from his hand.

The man turned white, stiffening like he was out of ideas. Hector grabbed him by his coat lapels, slapped him for good measure, and tossed him out into the corridor.

That left the young man at the microphone. He looked barely out of his teens, an expression of defiance and pompous courage on his face.

“You think you’re a hero, Paq?” Hector asked him softly. He stooped to retrieve the fallen blade.

Paq Ditra fumbled in his coat and drew out a pistol, cocking back the hammer before turning it on Hector. “Well, well, Durant has sent his guard dog as usual, I see. You can tell your master to face me himself!”

Hector pushed back a twinge of irritation. “If I were you, I’d think twice about creating fear and disorder on the ship.”

“This is ridiculous! Do you know how much my family paid to get on this bloody ship? Now my mother is Infected and we’re stranded in space hiding from the Voices like rats in our holes! Somebody needs to pay for this–!”

In a flash Hector threw the dagger. The young nobleman yelped as the spinning blade knocked his pistol from his hand. He nursed bleeding fingers to his chest, gaping like he couldn’t believe someone would dare assault him. Hector grasped him by the scruff of his neck and steered him out, throwing him down the hall after his friend. The third man was still groaning on the floor.

“Next time I’ll nail you to the wall for the Voices to find,” Hector said, and swivelled on his heel back the way he’d come.

It wasn’t safe anymore. At least most aristocrats were cowards – they probably wouldn’t brave the Voices – but Hector saw contained rage and hurt behind the eyes of the Helms he passed in the halls. They loved Orcadis. Every one of them had been plucked from the streets by the man’s own hands, taken from lives of exile in societies that shunned them and given a family.

But that love would only make their sense of betrayal run deeper.

How long before the Helms went Del on Orcadis? Crazed with anger to the point of obsession? Poor bastards. They hadn’t just been lied to: their entire world had been shaken to its foundation, their beliefs turned on their heads.

Hector found Orcadis in his greenhouse. Or what remained of it. Most plants had been singed to crisps in the fire, leaving charred wooden skeletons baking in the headlamps’ artificial light. A fine coating of ash covered the room, and black flakes still drifted in the air.

Orcadis was bending over a pot with a watering can. As Hector approached he saw the plant’s drooping black leaves. Its stalk had been propped against a stick, but it still caved in on itself.

“It’s dead,” Hector said, failing to keep the frustration from his voice. Here he was, trying to keep order on the ship, cleaning up Orcadis’s messes, and the man was tending to plants instead of the people he’d doomed.

Orcadis brushed his thumb over a leaf, smudging the ash off to reveal its metallic silvery-purple colour. He smiled weakly, gazing at it with more love than he’d probably ever shown a human being.

Hector struggled not to roll his eyes. “Didn’t you hear the announcement? I’m taking you to the Star-King’s apartments before this whole ship turns on you. As much as I’d like to see you gutted by your own people, we need you to fix the ship. And if you could figure out a solution for the Voices, that’d be nice, too.”

“I spent all day in the engine room with the technicians. The situation is...complicated. There isn’t enough time, Hector. The Voices are growing in number. It’s a matter of days until they infect us all.”

“Then you’d better fix the ship before ‘a matter of days.’” He took the Greathelm’s shoulder, and Orcadis let himself be led from the greenhouse.

“I’ve been thinking,” Orcadis said. “With such a high concentration of Voices, the Infected will be going catatonic in no time. You will be the last conscious person left on this ship. It’s time I return you to Lykus.”

“No!”

Orcadis studied him with furrowed brows. “I thought you’d be thrilled. You’ve honestly left me speechless. Hasn’t this been all you’ve ever wanted?”

“I’ve changed.”

“But how will you avoid the pain whenever you think of Varali?”

“I won’t,” Hector said. “I won’t run from pain anymore. I won’t be a coward. How do regular people like you deal with pain?”

Orcadis frowned. “I spent days erasing Vara from my memories, of course. At least the strongest memories of her.”

Ah. The Iron Fist of the Helms didn’t exactly count as a ‘regular person.’ “So you ran, too.” He snorted. “Some pain desensitization training, huh?”

“Indeed.” They halted outside of Serasta’s apartments and Orcadis turned a tired, mirthless smile on Hector. “I am quite the hypocrite, son. The universe has a twisted sense of humour. Who’d have thought I’d one day be taking lessons on how to be human from you?”

The door to the royal apartments swung inward, and there was the snake-face, its mesh of scars twisting at the sight of Hector and Orcadis.

“Amarith curth you, Orry! Where have you been? Did you hear that young pricth thpeech? He called me a coward! Thend thomeone to bring me back hith head!”

Orcadis massaged his temples, eyes closed. He didn’t respond.

“Ith it true? Wath it that fucked-up kid of yourth? Did he do thith? Damn it, Orcadith, I want antherth!”

Yelling grew audible down the hall. King Serasta wriggled behind his door, only his lidless eye peeking around it. In the next few moments a group of brown-robed figures charged around the bend. Solmay was at the front, struggling to hold the mob back. When she realized she couldn’t, she leapt in front of Orcadis and threw out her arms, twin slashing knives glinting in her fists.

“I t-tried to restrain them, Greathelm,” she panted.

One of the mobsters stepped forward. He held a young woman cradled in his arms, and tears flowed freely down his cheeks. The man held the woman out for Orcadis to see. “Greathelm, it’s too much! Your people are dying! What do you have to say about this? She and hundreds more like her are already catatonic! You’ve led us into a deathtrap and haven’t given any explanations.”

The Helms flanking him grumbled their assent. They all glared at Orcadis with the ferocious pain of children who’d just learned they were adopted.

“I...” Orcadis swayed slightly on his feet, looking dazed, “deserve this.”

The rage on his disciples’ faces deepened. One man made a quick move for the Iron Fist and Solmay swiped at him, making him jump back, palm pressed to his bloody cheek.

Orcadis put a hand on Solmay’s shoulder. “Stand down, my dear. You too, Hector – no need to stand in front of me like a bodyguard. Now, I can reverse the catatonic trance, but if I do so, new Voices will infect you and your friends. We must first find a way to get rid of the Voices.”

Everyone still looked livid, but then a ripple moved through the crowd and the assembled Helms parted for one of the king’s soldiers.

“Your Grace, Greathelm Durant, there’s a ship outside trying to make contact. They’re demanding to be reeled in. They say they’re here to help. What are your orders?”

Orcadis didn’t wait for Serasta to answer. “Things can hardly get worse. Reel them in.”