The Scorpion Rules (7 page)

They had, though, once. One needed to remember that. Air conditioners and other thoughtlessly and broadly used technologies had ruined the world. After the War Storms, in the great pause of the Pax Talis, the modern world had made different choices. (
Tell you what,
said the Utterances,
why don't you all have a little think on what you've done to our planet and
make some different choices
.
) So we chose. Yes to magnetically launched suborbitals and retroviruses that could rewrite a faulty gene. No to petroleum-driven personal transportation and chemical fertilizers. Yes to transcranial magnetic psychotherapy. No to robotic labor—except in an extreme case like the Precepture, where stakes are high and humans cannot be trusted. Yes to cargo zeppelins. No to imported food. Yes to horses. No to air conditioners.

Well. We might cool the odd palace.

The Precepture, whatever else it is, is no palace. And so it was hot. The matins bell rang and my cohort gathered in the refectory. The younger classes watched us. Everyone knew we'd been denied water. Everyone knew why. We ate cold things for breakfast—plums, goat cheese, yesterday's flatbread—and tried to avoid sniping at one another. My peers were high-strung, braced against the idea that we might be punished further. Elián was nowhere in sight.

It got hotter. The dog-day cicadas began to whirr. The wind that had pushed against the Precepture all night died down, leaving the sky still and yellow with dust. In the classroom we threw open the windows and swatted at the horseflies that quickly found us. Brother Delta tried to lead us through the history of natural resources as a root cause for war—but we couldn't keep it up. By midmorning Han was drowsing accidentally, Atta was drowsing openly, and Gregori was drowsing covertly—his open eyes were entirely black with dilating shutters, but behind those shutters, no one was home. Even the keenest among us (me, and in a different way, Da-Xia) were willing to sit and let Brother Delta drone on.

Drone he did. I had once seen a hospital monitor that looked like Brother Delta—a hexapod base, upright mainstem, topped with a screen. If you'd added some arms, such a monitor could have doubled for Brother Delta—and could probably have given better lectures. His voice was a soporific whirr as he ticked through the history. He droned about how the land wars of the early twentieth century had shifted to oil wars and then water wars. He droned about what came next. About how rapidly rising sea levels, shifting weather patterns, and the collapse of petroleum-dependent agriculture had led to famine, disease, and displacement, to huge populations on the move.

These in turn had led to the War Storms—dozens of intensely fought regional wars that had crashed across the world in waves, engulfing first one set of countries and then another, and then circling back. War, plague, hunger. The global population fell by half. Then two thirds. Then three quarters.

Once upon a time,
said the Utterances,
the humans were killing each other so fast that total extinction was looking possible, and it was my job to stop them.

The UN's best AI, a Class Two named Talis, had been charged with finding ways to predict—and, where possible, prevent or end—the conflicts that were rapidly tearing up the planet.

That Talis's strategy would be to put himself in charge was not something his human colleagues had foreseen. But that was exactly what he had done, neatly taking control of the networked weapons systems, most notably the ones in orbit.

Right!
he is said to have said.
Everybody, out of the pool!

Then he started blowing up cities until everyone was stunned enough to scramble out and stand, dripping.

It was Talis who had invented the Preceptures and the other rituals and rules of war, and Talis who enforced those rules with a ruthlessness no human could match. There were other AIs in the UN, of course, and the human Swan Riders in their employ. But Talis was the name we dropped our voices to mention, Talis was—

But at that point, the door opened.

It was the Abbot, and with him, Elián. We stood and bowed.

“Ah, Children,” the Abbot said. “My Children. Sit down, sit down, take your places. I won't take much of your time. I know it's a busy season.”

We sat. Our teacher had rolled backward a few paces and stood against the window as quietly as if he'd gone into standby.

The Abbot was of the same build as Brother Delta, but they could not have been more different. Like Talis himself, the Abbot was said to be a Class Two, which meant he had once been human. There had been many, once, but the transition from human to AI was said to be fraught, and only a few survived. Beyond his classification, we knew nothing of the Abbot's history, though—a shepherd, perhaps? The way he chivvied Elián into the middle of the room suggested a shepherd with a stick. The pair of them stood side by side in the center of the half circle made by our desks. The Abbot paused, his facescreen tipped downward, contemplating.

“My Children,” he said. On the screen the icon of his lips thinned, as if he had a painful confession to make. “Children, I have come to apologize to you. I heard how your work was disrupted yesterday.” He raised his head and looked at us. When no one commented, he looked us over. His eyes settled on Thandi. “Did I hear correctly, then, Thandi?” The eye icons widened expectantly. “Was young Mr. Palnik disruptive?”

Thandi swallowed. “Somewhat so, Father.”

Elián darkened. He had the look of someone betrayed. Which was not fair. What could Thandi have done, lied to the Abbot? Saying “somewhat” was already pushing the truth. If the Abbot contradicted her, she'd suffer.

“Somewhat, somewhat,” he said, nodding. “And of course your cohort's standing is
somewhat
damaged.” He made a noise like a tongue against the teeth, though he had neither. “I do feel responsible. It was my judgement that Elián was ready to join you. It seems that perhaps I was mistaken.” The Abbot shifted from side to side like a man with arthritis. “Mr. Palnik,” he said, “I hardly know what to do with you.”

Elián's eyes flashed; he drew a hard breath as if to speak in fury. But then he froze. Under his shirt something was moving.

I looked closer: just there, where the samue top crossed itself at his breastbone, something was poking out. A metal wire or . . . It was a mechanical leg. It took me a moment to make sense of it. A nursery spider—the tiny proctors that were the caretakers and pets and playthings of the very youngest children. There was one over Elián's heart. Something else moved in one sleeve, and a third thing above one knee.

He did not wince. But he said nothing.

“Well, Elián?” the Abbot prompted.

And then, suddenly, Da-Xia spoke up. “Good Father . . . this cohort—we are quite stable.”

The Abbot turned to her, smiling. “Indeed, Da-Xia. I've long thought so.”

“So perhaps, Father,” she said, “we could absorb some small disruption?”

The Abbot steepled his fingers. Ceramic ticked off aluminum. “An interesting thought. Are you advising me to let Elián join you?”

“If it's not too forward of me, Father.”

“Forwardness is indeed your weakness, my dear.” The Abbot hummed thoughtfully. “But you have a generous heart.” He looked up and addressed us generally. “What do you think, Children? Could you be a stabilizing influence on our newest, hmmm, inductee?”

The eyes of the cohort turned to me.

Well. It was gratifying to be acknowledged as leader, but I was not sure what to do. It would cost Xie if I contradicted her. And yet, to tie the entire cohort's fate to this half-savage boy? We'd already lost the water. That would only be the beginning. It was on my tongue to say,
No
.

But then the spider over Elián's heart moved. He caught my eye. I had once thought him a slave because I'd seen him in chains. But if he was a slave now, he was a slave at auction. His eyes were both asking and defying.

“We can but try, Father,” I said.

“My dear Greta. That's all anyone can ask.” The Abbot hummed to himself thoughtfully, then decided. “Sit, Elián.”

So Elián sat, beside me, at Sidney's desk.

There were little beads of sweat in the soft down of his hairline. He was shivering. The Abbot smiled. “Yesterday was perhaps too harsh an introduction for you, my son. It was my mistake and I apologize for it. We will try again, and strive for more order.”

The Abbot's manner was judicial. “So,” he said. “I think you introduced a topic yesterday, Mr. Palnik.”

Elián paled a fraction. Peeking out from under his collar, a spider leg moved against his throat. “. . . I, uh, don't remember that.”

“Hmmm.” The Abbot looked puzzled, his fingers ticking together. “The Third Servile War? You wanted to discuss it?”

The spider shifted under Elián's shirt. He was sitting absolutely still. “I'm sure you're right, Abbot, but—” On the word “but” Elián jerked, provoked by nothing I could see. He shivered and gathered his breath. We all held ours, waiting for him to finish his sentence. “I—I—” he stuttered, and his next words tumbled out too fast. “Honestly, I don't remember, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Hmmm.” The Abbot's facescreen creaked on its swivel joint as he turned. “Greta, I think you're probably our best Romanist. Perhaps you would favor us with a précis of the Third Servile War. Help Mr. Palnik orient himself.”

“The Third—” I began.

“Stand up,” the Abbot said.

It felt like a rebuke, a threat. I stood with my stomach twisting, taking inventory. What had I done, yesterday, with Elián in the potatoes, with Xie in our room? Was there anything for which I could be rebuked?

“Um . . . ,” I said. Which was not worthy of me. I steadied myself and tried to remember that I
was
(no “probably” about it) the cohort's best Romanist. “That is, Father . . . The Third Servile War was the last of three unsuccessful slave revolts during the Roman republic period, and took place between 73 and 71 BCE. We have major accounts from Plutarch, Appian, and Florus, and of course Julius Caesar's
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
.”

“And the war is chiefly famous for . . . ,” the Abbot prompted.

“For the involvement of the slave general Spartacus, good Father. Though perhaps the effect on the careers of legionary generals Pompey and Crassus is of broader historical significance.”

“Well, of course,” said the Abbot, with a dove-chuckle of a laugh. “They won.”

“Of course.” My throat felt dry.

The Abbot turned. Usually he is carefully human in his movements, slow and puttering. But he turned sharply just then, every inch a machine, a hinged blade. “Now, Mr. Palnik. You wanted to discuss Spartacus? Perhaps you can tell us what happened to him?”

“He—”

“Stand,” clicked the Abbot.

Elián stood.

“What happened to Spartacus?”

“He . . .” Elián looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “He was crucified. By the roadside.”

“Greta?”

There was nothing for it but to contradict Elián: he was wrong, and the Abbot would surely know it, and expect better of me. “His fate is not known, Father. The discipline of the slave army broke, and they were entirely routed, and all but six thousand were killed on the battlefield. Spartacus himself was presumably among them.”

“So this crucifixion business?”

“The six thousand captured were crucified, Father. They lined the Appian Way from Rome to the coast.”

“Ah,” said the Abbot, and smiled.

I was standing, and Elián was standing. I felt as if we were connected by a cord. I could almost feel it closing around my throat. The spiders moved under Elián's shirt. No one said anything.

The Abbot looked at us each, one by one by one.

He did not order. But everyone stood.

“Good,” said the Abbot. “Good.” I thought for a moment— I do not know what I thought. I thought something radical was about to happen.

But the Abbot only nodded. “I've taken enough of your time, Children—be about your day. I will count on you to show our newest colleague the ropes, as it were.” He spread a hand. As if he'd conjured them, bells began to ring.

And so Elián joined us properly.

Outside he took three stumbling, running steps into the sunlight, then stopped. He tilted up his face and took a deep breath. Sidney told me once that domestic turkeys can drown while watching the rain. In that moment I believed it. We all stared at Elián while he stood there with his gullet tipped open. If it had been raining, he would have been doomed.

After a moment he swallowed and looked over at me. “Well, that was great, Greta. Thanks a lot. Now I know who to cheat off when we get a test.”

Spiders pulsed under his clothing. I saw the muscles jump in his arm where the electricity hit, saw the flash of widening in his eyes and mouth. It was gone almost instantly. I wasn't sure the others saw.