The Scorpion Rules (35 page)

The knife swung a little, as if in that unseen field. “What did you do to her?”

“Upgrade,” said Talis, snapping the
p
. “The standard package.”

“I should kill you just for that.” Elián made a noise like a laugh or a sob. “Can you even die?”

“Sure.” Talis gave a loose shrug. “Stab me in the throat and watch me bleed out on the floor. And don't look for me to go winging back to base, either. There's no bandwidth for that. I'll just be,
poof
. ” He made a firework with his fingers. “It's a death, near enough. On the other hand, I'm only a copy. The master version of me can get along just fine without incorporating all of these squishy little memories.”

“And what of you?” I said. “This you.” It seemed important—and not just because this was the copy with whom (with which?) I had a treaty.

“Who knows?” In Talis's strange Cherenkov blue eyes, I could see my own future. “Maybe there's something after death, even for monsters.”

“I hope so,” said Elián fiercely. “In the name of God I hope so.” He lowered the knife. I let him think he was saving me as he wrapped an arm around me and I took him from the room.

T
hat night—my last night—we burned the body of Wilma Armenteros.

The Abbot had asked Elián what he wanted done, had even taken him (and Xie and me, unwilling to let Elián face it alone) past the induction spire, over the ridge top, to the graves.

All my years in the Precepture, all the deaths, and I had never wondered about the graves.

They were a little way out onto the prairie, away from the scattered boulders of the ridge. This year's graves were still distinct, jagged with bare earth, the first plants—lamb's-quarters, the tiny questing vines of bindweed (that some call wild morning glory) filtering into the hard places, opening their white flowers. Sidney Carlow would be under one of those mounds. And somewhere Vitor. And Bihn, who had tamed the birds. She'd hardly be a bump.

Last year's graves were distinct by vegetation: blue flax, sweet clover, coming in before the grasses. Older graves had settled back toward grass and were dimpled inward. They were not dots—not individual graves—but lines. They made a faint pattern of indentations, like the traces of waves. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.

“No,” gasped Elián. His voice was flat with horror. “No.”

The Abbot was leaning heavily on my arm. I could feel the vibrations set up by his diaphragms as he moved the air to make himself nod gently. “She was not my Child. And, on reflection, Elián, neither were you. I should not have disposition of her body. No more than I should have had of your life.”

“Oh.” Elián was wobbling, perhaps under the vastness of that apology. “Oh. Okay.”

“It is your choice, Elián,” the Abbot said. “What would you like to do?”

Elián did not, could not, answer. Silence filled with the sound of the grass.

“We could burn her,” said Xie, in her gentlest voice. “It is what they do for heroes.”

Elián nodded with a jerk, and wrapped his arms around his body as if something inside had shattered.

Atta found us when we came back down the hill, the three of us fearful and stumbling. He opened his big arms wide, and Da-Xia went to him—but it was Elián he gathered in.

Elián is tall, but Atta is huge and muscular, big as a bull. He wrapped Elián up in a hug like a father wraps a child. When he let go, Elián was no longer shaking. Atta held him at arm's length.

“We need to burn the body,” said Xie softly.

“I—” said Atta. His long-frozen voice broke, and he choked and swallowed. “Elián. You have no priest here.”

“Rabbi,” said Elián, staring at him. “I mean, she isn't, wasn't, but I am . . .” He shrugged at the enormity of it all—his complicated family, his loss, his horror. “No. I have no priest here.”

“Let me.” Atta's voice cracked again. “Help you.”

Elián, being Elián, laughed once—but it was high, almost hysterical. “Are you like Xie, then? Are you a god?”

“Prophet,” said Atta. His voice was smoothing out, becoming as big as he was, as deep. “A prince in the line of the Prophet. That's how it is, among my people.”

“Okay,” said Elián.

“Burning is not what your people would do,” said Atta. “And it is not what my people would do. But we can make it holy.”

“Well, you're talking,” said Elián. “So that's one miracle already.”

“Listen to me, Elián,” said Atta. His voice had become like a brass singing bowl. “We can make this holy.”

“Yeah?” said Elián, all harshness and challenge. And then, from nowhere, tears sprang into his eyes. Not rage, not horror, but grief. And he breathed out: “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” said Da-Xia, like a blessing.

“I've never burned a body,” said Elián, softly. “What do we do?”

The root of holiness, it turns out, is to do things deliberately. We wrapped the body of Wilma Armenteros in a shroud made out of ragged cheesecloth, and we laid it on a stretcher made out of shattered pumpkin trellis. But it still seemed holy. Han and Thandi, Atta and Xie, Elián and me. We carried the stretcher to the apple press, and put it in the place of the bottom stone.

As my friends worked into the evening, I found myself looking at them, wondering, watching. Da-Xia and Thandi, who I thought loved nothing better than to needle each other, were sitting knee to knee, braiding sage and scented grasses into a smudge. Han, who I thought knew nothing of the world, stood slim and small and self-contained, yet made larger by his loss.

And Atta, who I thought was silent, was singing.

He leaned over the body, his white clothing aglow, his skin aglow like old brass. Like old brass it was pure rubbed gold on the inside of his wrists and on his palms. When he turned his hands upward to draw down a blessing, he seemed to be holding the setting sun.

You made tools of us,
Da-Xia had told Talis. But it wasn't true. These were no one's tools.

No one's.

Something prickled at the back of my neck. I turned, and there was Talis.

We'd saved the crushing stone for the apple press—behold the horrible practicality of the Precepture—and Talis was sitting on it. He was leaning back against the wall, with elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, like a thoughtful child himself. He saw my glance and raised his eyebrows to meet it. I wondered how close he could come to reading my mind, and for once I hoped it was close.
No one's tools, Talis.
I turned away.

Under the body we built a pyre of sagebrush and creosote bush, and apple wood from the orchard. Thandi leaned forward and set the end of the braid of grass and sage smoldering. Elián took it and moved the smoking thing up and down the white-wrapped body.

The sun went down behind the induction spire. The spire lit like a streak of silver. Then, as the light sank, a streak of black. It was as thin as a line of ink dividing past and future.

The smudge rope burned down.

Atta kindled a torch and handed it to Elián.

He stood there holding it out, silent.

With the infrared that Talis had added to my vision, I could see the blood heat of strong emotion creeping up Elián's neck, outlining his mouth where words would not come. “Awww, damn it,” he whispered, and set the torch to the pyre.

The fire crackled and spat, caught and rose. I felt the heat on my face; strong and then stronger. Even Elián had to step back. There rose a smell I do not care to comment on. Time passed. The darkness thickened and rose up from the earth. It wasn't until much later, when the sparks were spiraling up into a pure dark sky, that Elián spoke again, this time in a language I didn't know. Soft words, hardly a breath, and not to me. They went up with the sparks.

And rising in me, for the first time, came knowledge that I hadn't learned, hadn't earned. Something implanted, something from the datastore. It was not like a memory, which rises into view like a whale from the sea. It was not like an understanding, which pulls pieces together to make a new picture, like stars resolving into a constellation. It was a click, a mechanical thing, as if my brain had new slots carved into it, ready to have knowledge dropped into them. My brain ticked. My teeth hurt. And I knew this, suddenly. Elián was saying the kaddish.

May God's great name be blessed forever . . .

I had been
programmed
with the kaddish. I could have said it with him, Hebrew and all. But I didn't. I was still at least that human.

I did not want to lose my human-ness; I did not want to change. But I was tumbling toward it already. And I
could
do it. I could save us.

Blessed and glorified, honored and extolled, adored and acclaimed . . .

Let there be peace for us and life for us . . .

We all waited with Elián. The pyre consumed both the body and itself. The press itself was the last thing to catch. The iron-hard oak of the footing beams blackened and cracked with heat, and the cracks began to glow. Little flames fitted themselves like spider legs around the pegs of the cogwheels. Smoke ribboned up the grooves of the great wooden screws. The central fire roared. I caught a glimpse of bones, glowing white. My throat grew as stiff as a flute, watching this, and I could hear the notes of my breathing.

And meanwhile Elián staggered through the kaddish over and over, whispering praise for that which is beyond all praise.

Help me,
I thought, to whatever might have bent close to hear those words.
I can do this. I cannot do this. Help me do this.

Time passed. The bone glow went out. Wilma's white wrappings were long gone. She was black, an ember among the embers, the shell of a shape.

Finally one of the beams gave a
scranch
then a
crack
, and fell sideways into the pyre. Then the whole press groaned and gave way. Embers and spent coals shot outward. The fire, which had been dying down, sprang up again for a moment. When the moment was gone, the body of Wilma Armenteros was gone too.

The fire sank to coals. I could feel the night pass in the spin of the Earth. Hours, and hours. Dawn sidled near; the sky lightened over the loop of the river. And finally, finally, Elián turned. I took his hand, and Xie took mine, and Atta and Thandi and Han put their arms around each other, and we went toward the Precepture together. The building had a dark solidity against the luminous sky.

And deep in the shadows, Talis was still sitting. He was wrapped in his duster, almost unseen against the dewy stones. He had sat there, unnoticed, watching, all night. I was exhausted, and thought he must be too: I knew he
could
sleep, and guessed that he needed to, as much as any bodied thing did. That he hadn't—the whole business had the look of a vigil.

Peace for us and life for us . . .

Let He who makes peace in the heavens . . .

Talis smiled up at me, soft-eyed. In the infrared overlay, I could see the deep chill on him. “Don't forget,” he said. “Cut your hair.”

My hair.

Back in our cell, I asked Da-Xia to cut it. I explained why—Lu-Lien, who'd wiggled, the bolts against the skull. Xie's face grew very still. “Greta.”

“Maybe it will kill me,” I said. I took her hand. “But . . . maybe it will not.” It was perhaps time to learn to hope. I'd taken the scissors, small and sharp, from the Abbot's bookbinding kit. I held them out. “I can't do this— Xie, I can't do this without you.”

Help me,
I thought again.
Please help me.

Xie took refuge in deadpan. “There are those who believe that Talis was a hairdresser in his first life.”

That was so wildly unlikely that it almost cracked the moment. But I held to it. “Da-Xia. That's not what I mean.”