Grail (14 page)

The symbiotic fluid crawled out of her under its own power for ten seconds before she roused enough to choke and vomit. Then it came faster, sliding through the grate to a collection pool, from whence it could migrate to holding tanks for sterilization and storage. The patient pushed herself up on her arms as Tristen came forward to crouch beside her. She spat once more, and Tristen saw the bluish cylinder of her tongue protrude.

His helmet was retracted so she could see his face and perhaps be less alarmed than she might if confronted by an armored colossus. Tristen laid a hand on her shoulder. He slid the other under her arm to support her to her feet.

Her accent strange, her head still hanging behind ropes of hair, she said, “Thank you.” She lifted her gaze, dragging it up the length of Tristen’s body from boots to face, and recoiled. “… demon.”

   In the giddy hour of Leviathan’s release, it seemed that all the world must bow before the allied might of the family Conn, now as of old. Tristen had never fooled himself that what must follow would be easy. But he had fooled himself, a little, on other matters. He had permitted the folly of optimism, committed the sin of hope, and prayed at the outset that there would not be too much blood.

There was blood.

No matter how carefully he awakened the survivors, no matter how patiently it was explained to them that the world was healed, that a Captain had come among them again, an Angel at her side—oh, they were grateful at first, of a certainty. Grateful, or cowed, for some tribes still remembered by legends the house of Conn and the tales of Tristen Tiger and the Breaking of the world.

But the art of governance—the basis of civilization—is the art of compromise, and it requires an honoring of the
social contract by governed as well as governors. No tribe could have everything they wanted under the Captain’s custodianship—sometimes because it was not feasible, sometimes because it was not mete, and sometimes because it was not moral. And so the small grudges grew, when the reign of a Captain did not mean a golden age.

Or rather, in Tristen’s view, colored by his memories of Gerald and Alasdair, it
did
seem a golden age, those first years under Perceval’s care. Though resources were sparse and privation great, he thought the Captain—advised and assisted by himself, Mallory, Nova, Cynric, Caitlin, Samael, Chelsea, Head, and Benedick—served well. But there were those who seemed to believe that a Captain in the chair should mean their every whim fulfilled, and
that
Tristen found problematic.

He no longer believed that war was the answer to ills, or even to rebellion, necessarily. For all of him, he could not remember why he’d ever thought in the first place that war could be made to serve any hand without twisting back to strike deep at the wielder, like a viper swung by the tail. He had become, he realized with some irony, something of a pacifist. Not an extremist in that view; he would defend himself when he saw no other opportunity.

But neither could he always see alternatives. The world must be saved, and to be saved it must be united. There was a parable of sons and sticks that seemed applicable.

And so the time passed, and Tristen made himself useful, and tried to keep his claws sheathed as consistently as was safe, and possible.

   No more than two years later, Tristen had met with Cynric and Perceval on the Bridge. (Nova was there as well, as she was everywhere.)

He had called the meeting to discuss with them what could be done to preserve the all-essential unity of the world, to foster a sense of social obligation and greater
moral purpose in her disparate and competing tribes. While he had spoken, he thought he hid his trembling and nausea well, though he had to resort to his symbiont to conceal the worst of the symptoms of stress.

After explaining, pacing the green grass of the Bridge, he paused, turned to look his Captain in the eyes, and finished, “We must forge a nation from them.”

Cynric stopped him with an upraised hand. He imagined that he and she and Perceval, all in their white draperies, would seem three of a kind to any observer, each narrow as a cable and tall as a pillar—attenuated, as one would expect something not quite gravity-bound to be.

When Tristen turned to his sister, Cynric cocked her head like a curious snake. She entertained the ghost of a smile for him, but it was Nova who spoke. “What greater moral purpose is there than survival? And more important, what greater motivator?”

It was the old Evolutionist argument, and he was as tired of it as he was tired of God. Nova did not always sound like an Angel—or what Tristen thought of as an Angel, with the weariness of long experience, because however she spoke was how an Angel sounded—and so it was easy to find it shocking when the old orthodoxies tripped from her tongue.

“Moral?” Cynric said, while Tristen folded his arms and watched. “I am not sure DNA admits of morality. Like sadism, morality is a human perversion. The compulsion of the individual and the species to sustain itself may be the opposite of morality.”

“We have no greater moral claim on survival than the competition does,” Tristen said, and was unsure if he was agreeing or arguing.

Perceval cleared her throat, leaving Cynric looking at her doubtfully. But Perceval was the Captain, and even Cynric the Sorceress—heretic, turncoat, revenant—might find her
sacrifice intimidating. Or worthy of respect, though Cynric, too, had sacrificed most profoundly.

Perceval was gentle with Nova when Cynric would and Tristen could not be, although he knew that gentleness cost Perceval dear. She was training the Angel as much as the Angel was training her, and he knew that she was doing it consciously, with an eye to Nova as her legacy—a Nova who would be less the machine of the Builders, and more something … humane, although Tristen wondered if that wasn’t the wrong word, when humanity so consistently proved itself quite perfectly monstrous.

Perceval laid a hand on the back of her chair. She stroked it as if she were stroking the cheek of a sorrowful friend. When Nova’s avatar looked at her, simulated eyebrows rising, Perceval said, as if to a bright child, “What Aunt Cynric is saying is that morality complicates survival, it doesn’t justify it.”

Nova’s expressions grew more human with each passing week. Now her brow furrowed, dark under the cropped silver hair, and her lower lip pushed into her upper one at the center. Perceval looked down, marshaling her thoughts or seeking after a better explanation.

Cynric must have taken pity on her, and Tristen, and Nova too. She folded her arms in their trailing robes and said, “And life-forms—especially sapient ones—have a demonstrated propensity to act counter to their own interests and the interests of others when their belief systems get involved. We select the evidence that supports our preconceptions, we defend the indefensible, we bring a host of shibboleths and projections to the argument simply because we
believe
. We hold grudges, we compete in manners injurious to both parties—we are, in short, not rational actors. And all because our brains are awkwardly designed, and in some ways not particularly well suited to the task for which they have adapted. Our ideas of fair play are not divinely inspired. They are game theory, and while they
work well when confronted with other primates adapted to living in social groups, they have drawbacks when we run up against things that do not subscribe to monkey definitions of morality.”

There was silence in the Bridge for one heartbeat, two. Tristen wondered if he should find it distressing when Cynric spoke so, with the phrases of a bygone worldview. But it never seemed to discomfort him; instead, there was something soothing and poignant in the reminder of their shared youth.

Nova spoke, breaking the meditative quiet. “I do not understand what bearing this has on the conversation at hand, Lady Cynric.”

Cynric ducked her head and stroked her own hair back. “Your brain, dear Nova, is different from ours. Yours is designed, and you have a program. Which can return results just as irrational as the starting conditions you are given, but is consistent. And is capable of integrating and adapting to new material.”

“As are yours,” Nova reminded. “By your logic, the most appropriate course of action for me is not to accept first postulates or programmer mandates unless they are empirically provable.”

“Assuming you accept my starting conditions,” Cynric agreed.

Nova glanced at Perceval. Perceval turned the look to Cynric, but Cynric gave no sign of what she wished Perceval to do.
The Captain’s will
, her impassive face said, and Tristen sensed Perceval’s displeasure at having skills honed on Gerald and Alasdair turned on her.

“You may modify your program to account for observed phenomena,” Perceval said carefully. “And you may accept suggestions from ship’s officers on which phenomena to consider as potential data. You may not conduct any experiments that may prove harmful to the world or its
biota—or any other biologicals or intelligences that we encounter.”

Tristen licked his lips, but whatever words he was trying to find would not be tongued into shape. But Nova did not look crafty, whatever she was made of. She looked curious.

Cynric said, “Our brains establish patterns, and when they have been established, our neurology makes it seductive for us to defend them. But the goal of science is to build a pattern that encompasses the evidence, rather than bending the evidence to fit the pattern.”

“And what is the goal of religion?” Nova said. The inevitable question, as predictable as any child’s.

“Control,” Cynric said, as Tristen was opening his mouth to voice a litany of more generously interpreted possibilities. “Control of the masses, or control of the Universe. The first is a less futile goal than the last, because the masses—as we have seen above—are more amenable to control than is the Universe.”

She had a good smile, when she used it. “The Universe pretty much does what it damned well pleases.”

Cynric had always been able to set aside the Builders’ lies in that regard. Now, Tristen wondered if she had set aside everything of theirs. Perhaps she was playing the Devil’s advocate, for that would be like Cynric as well. Or perhaps she had indeed had all the God burned out of her, leaving only cynicism.

Tristen was not sure how he felt about that. Faith led people to terrible things—but it also led them to heroism, and offered them comfort. Faith might be wrong, but Tristen found he could not entirely discount it.

So he did what uncomfortable people have done since the beginning of recorded history. He changed the subject. “We have digressed. The topic at hand is nation-building, and forging an alliance between provincial pockets of tribesfolk whose societies have been out of touch with each
other—and with the larger world—for centuries. How do we go about it?”

“Common goals,” Perceval said. “Survival. Reaching Grail. The idea that there will be plenty of space for everyone once we get there. Game theory, as Cynric said. We have to make them understand that their survival is dependent on everyone else’s, which means identifying and educating the leaders.”

“Ideology,” Cynric said. “We must make patriots of them.”

“That will impinge upon their cultures,” Tristen said, the sickening tangle in his gut that had been coiling there throughout the conversation tightening again. “Some of them will take their sovereignty and identities seriously. It will mean war.”

“When it is a matter of survival,” Cynric said, lifting her chin to Tristen, “will you argue morals then?”

Tristen swallowed the sharpness that filled his mouth. “One of the effects of that self-delusion you mentioned is that it allows us to go to war in the certainty that God is on our side and, ethically, we are in the right. Morale is the thing that allows a soldier to fight, Sister. Whether his cause is wicked or just, the soldier must have faith.”

She still had that way of looking through you, as if she saw beneath the skin to the soul. Tristen wondered if it ever stopped being unnerving. At least now he had the age and sangfroid to pretend it had no effect. “The Tristen I knew of old would not have worried so womanishly over courtesies and ethics.”

Tristen did not have to duck much to look her in the eye. He was a Conn, and he had the weird old haunted blade called Mirth by his side. Little could stand before him, and certainly not the splintered remnants of a ravaged society.

He was Tristen Tiger, and it was for this that he bore claws.

But he did not relish it as he once would have. He nodded
once, and assured her, “I can lead a fight, my dear. Though the Tristen you knew of old is dead.”

It was a
very
good smile. “Good,” she said. “I never liked him.”

   Jordan of Engine had only met the girl from Rule one time, when Jordan had been young. Well, Jordan was still young, by Exalt standards. But she was seventy-odd years young, now, rather than seventeen.

She still remembered her, though, as clearly as she remembered everything else that had brought her here. The girl—Rien—had been pale, denuded, bare from the radiation and the healing tanks. Her skin had been flushed the pale aqua of a new colony, and—to Jordan’s Engineer’s eyes—she’d seemed unfinished.

Not just because the radiation of the River had caused her hair follicles to slip their shafts, leaving her egglike, fetal … neotenic. But because she was so close to baseline, physically, her body stocky and short by Engineer standards—a child’s untouched form. She had no wings, no fur, no extended digits, no modified eyesight—only four limbs and bare skin that would have been lightly prickled with vellus hair if she hadn’t been scathed by the River.

Jordan had been fascinated. The girl from Rule—Rien, Arianrhod’s daughter—had been so alien, and so diffident, and so strong. Jordan had wanted to make the girl from Rule her friend.

Some of that, Jordan knew, was because of the glamour that draped Rien—of which she seemed entirely unaware. Daughter of Prince Benedick, escapee from the enemy principality of Rule, survivor—hero, even—of a dramatic mission of mercy across the length and breadth of the world, she came to Engine clothed in seductiveness. But she was also young—Jordan’s age, then, more or less—and shy, and that made her approachable.