IGMS Issue 50 (17 page)

My concentration burst under the barrage of questions from my mate row, especially from Hygeria and Ryke.

"Have you joined yourself with another row?" Ryke asked, in shock and disgust. "Are you then part of two, like a pupa seeking to mate indiscriminately with all of its fellows?"

Hygeria joined him. "And how have you hidden this for so long, even in the close communion of the thought world, even to your direct mates?"

My mate row began to turn against me. "Shame," they clamored. "Shame upon shame. First the shame of joining our row to others without permission, then the shame of the dirigible. Let the fires of the sun consume you, as your fires consumed our great achievement."

"You are right in saying I joined the row of the Sun Carvers," I said, "but I was free of them before binding myself to you."

"Free?" many asked. "How could you be free of your mate row?"

"Because," I said, "that mate row is now extinct. Their art, so astounding, is gone."

"Extinct?" The horrified unbelief of such a concept reverberated through all who listened.

"Hear, mates of my mates: The shame is not mine. See now the day my rage was born."

In this memory I was no longer clumsy, and no longer mateless. My carapace was dusty as I lay upon a scaffold, legs in the air, carefully scooping out sand within the lines my master had inscribed. As I scooped, I stopped periodically to harden the supporting areas with my saliva. The sun shone faintly through the thin sand in the places that I had scraped.

Only the master carvers were allowed to poke completely through to the sun beyond. One day I hoped to be one.

I focused on my work intensely. This carving would depict the most recent advances in science: the paste that protected the body from the sun's beating, the great drills made by the metal forges, and the invisible pulses of sound that detected worms at a distance so that they might be hunted. This carving would be a thing of beauty and glory, and I would be part of it.

Frenzied taps echoed through the gallery. "Come all. We stand as a row before the Emperor."

I scuttled down the scaffolding as quickly as I could, and when I came to stand with my mates, I found the three members of the Emperor there together with a great line of military crowded behind.

The Trifold Emperor waited patiently for all the Sun Carvers to arrive, then greeted us, all three of the Emperor's members tapping in unison. "Long has your row labored in obscurity," the Emperor said. "But now I offer you a fresh task: to extend the colony outward. Great will be your pride for this. Even more, to help you in your duty, I will give you twenty mateless from my very seed."

The old fellow who had greeted me when I first stumbled into the gallery hobbled forth. He was the leader of our row, the Grandmaster Carver.

"Oh great one and mighty," the Grandmaster Carver said, "We are bound to our place here as surely as you are bound to your role of leadership. We are artisans, not tunnelers."

The Trifold Emperor gestured to the ceiling. "Are not those tunnels you have made to the outside? Have not you hollowed out this place in all its height and depth? And furthermore, are you not beholden to my leadership as you have just said? I say you shall go to the edges of our colony to expand it."

"What shall be done, then, of the gallery?" asked the Grandmaster Carver.

"That too will further the colony," said the Emperor. "Progress has need of its space. It will become a great workshop. Wondrous things will be built here, things that will reach the very ceiling of the sky above and plumb the emptiness below the earth."

My mate row was still. I clacked tentatively with my mandibles. "What of our carvings?" I asked. It was not loud enough for the Emperor to hear, but those around me heard and began clacking their mandibles too. Soon, all of us were asking the question. The Grandmaster even had the audacity to tap the question with his ailing forelegs in open defiance.

"What need have we of them?" asked the Emperor. "Their crudeness will make way for the great inventions of our coming age."

"No," someone tapped angrily, and my entire mate row began pounding on the ground.

The Grandmaster quieted everyone. "Come and see the gallery," he said to the Trifold Emperor. "Once you have walked it, you will comprehend its value. We have immortalized your reign, oh Emperor, and the science you love as well."

"Are you the Emperor, then, to advise us on our actions?" said the Emperor.

"Far be it from me," said the Grandmaster. "But does not even the worm open and close its mouth when it sees the hunter?"

"We will not walk with you," said the Emperor.

"This is fair and wise, oh great one. But why do you seek this damp and crumbling hole? Why not leave us this sad place as our home, and let us dig for you something far better on the edge of the colony, something befitting your splendor."

The Trifold Emperor paused, its three members, perhaps, speaking to each other in the thought world. What must it be like, I wondered, to simultaneously be in the world of thought and the world of the body as the Emperor was? "I wish this could be," the Emperor finally said, "but the new workshop must be central to the forges, fabrician labs, and the gasworks. A workshop on the edge of the colony would not be acceptable. I do, however, grant you my blessing to recreate your carvings as you wish in your new place."

The Grandmaster drew himself up weakly. "These carvings have been made over generations," he said. "We cannot reproduce them."

"Then make new ones," said the Emperor.

"No!" pounded my row in anger. The Emperor's military rows behind him tensed and readied their sharpened legs.

The Grandmaster hobbled up to the Emperor, his aged, battered body shriveled and weak. We quieted once again, and his faint taps carried utter scorn. "These carvings are older than your reign. You have no right to destroy them."

Everyone grew still in surprise at the old one's words. To speak so boldly against the Emperor!

And the Emperor again paused, communing within its three members without movement or sound. Then, without a single tap or scrape of response, the leftmost member reached out a lacquered claw, huge and strong, and snapped off the Grandmaster's head.

My mate row had no time to reflect. The military gathered behind the Emperor surged forward ferociously, stabbing, cutting, tearing. Some of my row tried to fight back, but their legs were trained in shaping sand, not battle. They had no chance.

I was near the back of those gathered, and this was my only salvation. Those around me saw the slaughter. Rather than fight or run, they piled atop me in a great heap.

"Dig down, young one," they said to me. "Escape. Tell all what has happened here. Tell all of the Emperor's shame."

I didn't know what else to do. And so I dug, the death screeches of my beloved row following me. As I fled, the image of the Grandmaster's head tumbling off played over and over in my mind.

My mind was so fixed on the violence I had left that I tunneled mindlessly, first digging, then falling into open corridors, then running along them for a time until I dug down again. The trauma demanded I stop and recede into the world of thought, but if I did I knew the Emperor would find me and snap off my head just like the Grandmaster's.

I forced myself to keep going until I reached a collapsed tunnel. There, exhausted and scared, I burrowed in as far as I could, loose sand closing off the path behind me. I don't know how far I went, but eventually the horror of what I had seen overtook me and I fell into hibernation without even forming a cocoon around myself for protection.

It was not until a great time later that I emerged, and when I did I found the injustice of the Emperor was deeper even than what I had witnessed.

Half the gallery had been utterly destroyed to form a broad clearing open to the sky, a pyramid built in the middle of it. The other half of the gallery looked out onto the clearing, but the carvings on its ceiling and walls had been plastered over with the hardened clay used for support columns.

In the shade of this overhang rested a bulging air sac swarming with workers.

There was no trace of what had been there before. The beautiful scenes of light were no more.

The most infuriating part was that they had replaced it with ugliness, this blocky structure without nuance, this odious plaster, this bulging sac of air. It was worse than the murder of my entire mate row.

They'd murdered the past itself.

The only remnant of what was lost was me. Mine was the only memory they had not managed to kill.

As I looked upon the desecration of my former home, I vowed to share that memory with as many of the colony as I could.

"And so you joined us," Ryke said. "You joined the fabricians, that you might work on the dirigible and insert in it a fatal flaw."

"Yes," I said, receding from my memory.

"And in doing so you destroyed something beautiful," said Hygeria. "Is that what you wish us to lift you up for? Destroying beauty for the sake of other beauty lost? How is your crime any different than the one you wish us to be outraged about?"

Her vehemence took me aback. Could Hygeria truly not see? How was that possible? "The Emperor killed an entire mate row," I said. "They destroyed something that can never be gotten back, the entire legacy of our colony!"

"He is the Emperor," said Hygeria. "The right is his."

"Nobody has this right," said Ryke.

Their argument flared bright in the thought world, and I widened my vision to see the same argument warring throughout the entire colony. I watched the arguments rage like fire.

Then three bright lights asserted themselves over the starry sky of the thought world. The Trifold Emperor. The lights were directed at me.

"Judgement is declared," said the Emperor. "This one shall be given to the sun in the sight of all."

For a moment dissent shone. Perhaps half the colony was with me.

But then the Emperor forced an image into all of our minds at once, an image of lacquered claws snapping off the head of an old carver.

The lights of dissent dimmed, then died completely.

The spot chosen for my execution was the top of the pyramid. There I was bound to await the coming of the sun and to die in its heat. A great gathering surrounded the pyramid in the moonlight, the scorched taste from the dirigible fire still hanging in the air.

The Emperor announced my punishment and no one made the slightest sound to decry it. I was alone.

Then one small tap echoed over the quiet gathering. "No right, no right, no right," repeated the tap.

I recognized the cadence of it, too, the slight stutter on the word "no."

It was my right-mate, Ryke.

His tapping continued, and for a moment I entertained the hope that others would join in, an upswelling of brave support that would topple the power of the Trifold Emperor and usher in an age of beauty and justice.

But it did not happen.

Ryke's lonely tapping garnered no followers.

Then his tapping halted, and he was brought up the pyramid to be bound at my side.

The Emperor dismissed all those gathered, and the clearing that used to be the gallery emptied solemnly.