Notes
To remind my readers: The phrases in italics are taken from the words spoken on the Miranda recording.
Liann Juin, according to online sources, is a central planet. I thought it would make sense to have the Academy at least near the Core, and I can't find anything more specific about the location.
There are four Shakespeare quotes/references in this chapter. You may recognize some of them, keep your eyes open.
Beta'd by KrisEleven. Many thanks!
Chapter 6—Thirty Million Pearls
A moon off the planet Liann Juin, February of the year 2517
"You are quite sure these parameters you've set up will isolate the neural stripping to the amygdale, Dr. Warder? If you are not confident, it would be better to wait. We will not have a chance like this again."
Dr. Mathias was poised on one side of the glowing imager that was at present constructing a three-dimensional model of a human brain. During the past several minutes, his eyes had moved repeatedly between it and the flat screen showing inner slices of the same organ, but now all his attention was on Katsumi's face.
Katsumi pushed a strand of dark curly hair behind her ear and met his eyes without flinching. "If you are still concerned about the failure of your previous surgeries—"
"Failure is a strong word. You would have precious little data to work with, had we not 'failed' so many times."
Katsumi waved a hand. "You need not be indignant on your own account, Dr. Mathias. The errors can be laid squarely at the feet of those who formerly held my position." She placed a finger on the imager, and the outer layers lifted off smoothly, leaving the inner area and the brain stem exposed. "They were content with secondhand information, rather than psychoanalyzing their subjects themselves. This image I've constructed is of course imperfect—I would be surprised if there were enough scientists in the universe to perfectly analyze River Tam's brain—but I have discovered the key elements that will be relevant to you during your surgery."
Dr. Mathias examined the inner brain closely. "I will not lie, it is quite impressive. But I must say I am surprised you did not work from a model of a normal brain, and make adjustments from that base."
"We must not make the assumption that it is the obvious differences that matter when it comes to River." Katsumi paused, then added fondly, "And to lose her would be tragic. She's such a wonderful girl."
Dr. Mathias nodded. "Of course. But we can't become attached, you know that. When River completes her training, Parliament will be eager to put her to use."
"I'm quite aware of that," Katsumi replied, turning back to the base of the screen. "But it might perhaps have helped if your former colleagues had been more 'attached' to your previous subjects."
"Which means what?"
"Only that the subjects might still be here if they had."
Dr. Mathias shook his head. "No one is more pained by those deaths than I. As I told you when you came to work here, the doctors responsible were properly reprimanded."
Katsumi gave a faint half-smile. "At the time, I was unsure if you were reassuring me or warning me what would happen if I were to fail."
"There will be no failure this time. If I cannot prove to Parliament that we are progressing...it could be the end of all this good work."
"Then we must succeed," Katsumi agreed. "The government forgets at times that science as well as laws created civilization. I suppose that I still must stay in the dark about the true purpose for the neural stripping?"
"You would suppose correctly." Dr. Mathias fixed his eyes on the construct of the brain, gleaming gently in the light from the imager. "Secrecy is vital. I am not suggesting you are not to be trusted, of course. But one never knows what, or who, may disrupt all our plans."
OoOoO
The assistant surgeon rapped on the doorframe. "Dr. Katsumi Warder? May I come in?"
"Of course." Katsumi waved him to a seat. "The last I saw you was a week ago, when you and Dr. Mathias were prepping for the River Tam surgery."
"That's right. Dr. Mathias said you'd expressed concern, since you've been doing psychoanalysis with her. He thought you might want to know that the surgery was an unadulterated success. She isn't awake yet, but that's to be expected."
"Splendid." Katsumi let out a breath. "He is to be congratulated. And so are you and the other assistants."
"I understand you had no small part in it yourself."
"For the good of us all. Did he say when my analysis sessions with River would be resuming?"
"Ah, that's the other thing he wanted me to tell you. They won't be."
Katsumi frowned. "What do you mean, they won't be?"
The assistant shifted in his chair. "Your psychoanalysis sessions with River Tam won't be resuming."
"You must have misunderstood. Dr. Mathias knows as well as anyone that extensive neural stripping requires concentrated therapy afterwards."
"Oh, he knows that," the assistant said hurriedly. "It's just that you won't be doing the therapy."
"Oh, really? And who will?"
"I didn't ask. He hasn't been in a good mood lately."
"And that's why he neglected to tell me himself that he would be reassigning the sessions?" Katsumi snapped, and then what the assistant had said caught up with her. "Wait a moment. You said the surgery was an unadulterated success. Why is Dr. Mathias not in a good mood? He should be over the moon."
The assistant looked thoroughly miserable. "Don't blame me. I'm just the messenger."
Katsumi composed herself. "True. I will speak to Dr. Mathias myself, when an opportunity presents itself."
"That's probably for the best," the assistant agreed, obviously relieved.
OoOoO
River Tam, undisputed genius and intuitive phenomenon, lay on the operating chair in a drug-induced haze, trying to remember how one stopped a hurricane. There was a storm in her head, whirling and roaring and tearing, nerves, synapses, too much, too fast.
They were known on Earth-That-Was as typhoons and tropical cyclones. The most destructive of storms.
It was gone, entirely gone. They cut it out. Her mind like a window with no glass, a porthole in a submersible, a breach in a spaceship hull, letting the nothing in until it crunched the vessel. The images blasted into her center and left her shaking. The breach of a needle in the soft place inside an elbow, a man sobbing uncontrollably and scraping bloody trails across his cheeks with his nails, a woman wrapped in plastic being slid into a disposal, her face crushed to a pulp and beyond recognition, a jar crammed full of human eyes.
They have a core, an eye, where air pressure is low. Around the eye, winds can rotate at nearly two hundred miles per hour.
If only her head would slow down for a moment, she could find that ordered space that was before all she had known, as straight and smooth as well-oiled file cabinets. She could herd the monsters back into their cupboards, but what was the use? She would still know they were there. They would reach out with their claws and shred the curtains she put up to make herself forget, silk like her mother's dresses, silk like Simon's vests, silk like the veil of the Companion the assistant surgeon had visited last night, all oil and sliding limbs and shrieks.
They develop around the equator of a planet with sufficient oceans. Massive storms, they can be over three hundred miles across.
And then she felt the black, outside the planet's protective cushion of atmosphere, and it was unspeakable relief to fall into it, not a thought, not an image, for miles upon miles. Like a rip in her round world, the mouth of some god ready to swallow her, and she begged inwardly to be swallowed, that the stars would eat her—blue giants, white dwarves, red supergiants—reach up and gulp her down, and stop all the pain, the pain she never had been properly able to feel. She saw the planet, hovering like an egg yolk in its shell.
The top clouds are made of ice, the lower ones, droplets of water. The storms are huge circular bands of cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds.
But the images crashed down again, and they weren't hers, the memories weren't hers, they couldn't be. Not some bat out of hell from her own psyche, not some trauma long since forgotten. These shapes—spiders? hands? flowers?—she had no point of reference for these, they couldn't be quantified, they didn't fit into the proper spectrum, they were blue and they were red, and there was a high-pitched hum and a creak like a rocking chair, and suddenly that image was gone and she could hear words with the images.
Though hurricanes soon die out over land, they devastate coastlines. They have been known to kill more than a million people in densely packed urban areas.
"Pens in one cup, styluses in another keep them separated and death will not come." "Blood clogging up my mouth and I was still alive when they shut the lid on me." "We're doing such fine work." "Heart going, heart going for one more second before the lightning kicks, in the gleaming wreath that jerks my pulse away." "Numbers and numbers and numbers and I was wrong how could I have been so wrong." "No one touches me and no one writes to me and I don't know why I had to go away."
River screamed.
OoOoO
Katsumi switched off the viewer.
They lied to me. I trusted them, and I was wrong. How could I have been so wrong?
She didn't know. All she knew was, Geming and Sumner had been right all along, and, somehow, she had to fix this.
OoOoO
River dreams.
It's all fine; all fun and games and jokes. Humor is a social construct. A man walks into a bar and puts a needle between her eyes. A woman walks into a bar and puts an ax in her hand. A Reaver walks into a bar and rapes and eats and kills.
Simon tried to tell jokes to girls, but he always said the punch line too early. Simon, slowly dropping everything, leaving it behind for her, for her, the shilling in the plum pudding that breaks your teeth anyway. Will he drop the pretty dolls he makes, drop the beauty too?
"River's quite fascinating, I think you'll find." Dr. Mathias—angel-maker he calls himself, quietly where no one hears. In the crannies of his brain. Not aloud, not to the key members of Parliament he's brought to observe her. "We've done a great deal of work with her—"
And then it came.
Dollhouses. All very safe. Toothpick fences, cardboard shingles, potholders for rugs. Dolls waiting for someone to play with them, all hunched over. So many dolls, a thousand, a million, thirty million—
It isn't what we thought.
Too many dolls. Simon gave his dolls away to the people who cried. This little child was selfish. Kept them all. The dolls would never stand up, would never walk again. Dolls with rotten skin, teeth sprawling out of their mouths, skulls you could see—
Not dolls. Thirty million not-dolls—
What were we fighting for, what were we fighting for, what were we fighting for, what were we fighting for, courting death, marrying death, sex in the dark with death, waking up beside death, once you've been there you never leave—
There's been no war here, no terraforming event.
It was their brave new world, their darling child, the one who would grow up to be Christ and save the world from sin. Their darling child, now an empty cradle. When the child cried, they picked it up and strangled it. They didn't sing a lullaby first. They could at least have sung a lullaby first. Hush little baby, don't say a word, Mama's going to buy you a mockingbird. If that mockingbird should fly, Mama's going to buy you a Firefly. If that ship has got no crew, Mama's going to buy you the Hands of Blue. No, that was wrong, it couldn't be quantified—
The environment is stable.
Simon, hurry. We must isolate the biological basis for empathy. Is others' pain our pain? Is others' grief our grief? Some mirrors would rather crack than show a face not their own. Simon, please hurry. You are a window. You see your face in the glass, but you see a world beyond you too.
Better to be whole than broken, they say. Broken ships leave you stranded and you run out of air. Broken IVs cut off the blood, the life-giving salty blood. Broken coms cut you off from the ones you love. Broken fires won't burn. Broken knives can't cut. Broken guns won't fire. To be broken is a mercy—
It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression.
They promised her she could dance. They did not lie. They let her dance. But they ripped it out. Now she can't tell the difference between dancing and war. Pirouette, arabesque, waltz, cabriole, grand plié, pas de deux, they could be anything, could mean anything, just six more words for death.
Well, it works.
Ballet dancers, swing dancers, tap dancers. Tapping shoes, tap, tap. Each tap makes her think of a gun cocking. Each tick of the clock, each snap of a finger, each clink of a glass on a table. Tap, tap, tap. The gun goes off.
They stopped fighting. And then...
"Another day. Well, any work is good work." "It's your first job, honey, I'm so proud of you." "Boss is going crazy on me, I don't know why I don't strangle him." "I've been waiting for this promotion for so long." "Can't get fired again, have to put Kelly through school." "Get out of bed this instant, young man, and put your suit on, you have an interview!" "I'd call in sick today, but there's those files..." "I'd quit, but they need me." "Eight hour day? Ha! That's a joke."
They stopped.
"Isn't worth it anymore." "I'm so tired." "He's crazy...I guess..." "Why did I think that promotion was so important?" "Why should I care if he fires me?" "You got hired where?" "Think I will call in sick." "They don't really need me." "Eight...seven...six..."
Stopped going to work. And then...
"I've been thinking about what you said—and I want kids too!" "Let me kiss you." "Let me touch you." "I saw you flirting with my wife!" "We met in the line to get new ident cards; you never know." "What do you mean, we just aren't working?" "When you say we should get dinner, do you mean—?" "If you don't shape up, I'll kick you out of this house before you can sneeze." "We have to go to the hospital, my labor is starting!" "Please, I need you now!"
They stopped.
"Kids just aren't worth the trouble." "I'm not up to it tonight." "Your skin is so cold." "Fine, flirt. I don't care." "Did you say something?" "It's okay, if it doesn't work it doesn't work." "Sex is exhausting now." "Live here, live anywhere, it's all the same to me." "Stillborn, does it matter?" "Alright, I'm done, now can we sleep?"
Stopped breeding. And then...
"Hey, I'm really looking forward to seeing you!" "Listen to me, young woman!" "I just want to make sure you know how much you mean to me." "Grandmother, can you tell us a story?" "Wave me and we'll have a chat." "Your Honor, I would like to speak in defense of my client on this point." "It was beautiful, I'll tell you all about it." "Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, step right up to hear the band!" "Would it help you to talk about it?"
They stopped.
Silence.
Stopped talking. And then...
Apples. Chicken on Sundays. Potatoes from the garden. Packaged protein—green. Cheese, from the outdoor market. Strawberries. Rice. Carrots. Packaged protein—brown. Waffles with syrup. Corn. Beef on holidays. Pickles, homemade. Packaged protein—red. Fresh bread. Fresh milk. Cheap cocoa-mix chocolate. Oranges from off-world. Sweet and sour soup. Eggs. Water.
They stopped.
Apples rotting. Chickens running wild. Potatoes sprouting. Protein packs unopened. Cheese getting spots. Strawberries unpicked. Rice fields flooded. Carrots never dug. Corn turning black. Pickles still in brine. Bread with green mold. Milk turning sour. Cocoa mix never bought. Oranges never ordered. Soup grown cold. Eggs gone rotten. Water contaminated.
Stopped eating.
Remember the pretty girl excited for her new ballet slippers, remember the old man who did his duty for the state all his life, remember the dog that ran and barked at strangers, remember the mother who carried her baby on her back, remember the soldiers who wrote their sweethearts every day, remember the man who was trying to quit the bottle, remember the woman who judged a thousand cases, each one fairly—
About ten percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the PAX
Rage. Everyone balances it on their head, their own small cup of acid. It falls off and it stings and it bites, but it's just a cup, a little cup. But you carry a gallon of rage, far, far too much. It will burn you and burn you and burn you until you die. You do not want to kill, so you turn your knife on yourself. But if you do not die at once, you will turn your knives on others.
Aggressor response increased
Why should you bear this alone? Why should everyone else not suffer as much as you do, with your acid rage eating your bones? Put them through the circles of fire and ice, all the pain you can think of with your mad mind. Always leave one living, one not allowed to look away, who will pass the rage on.
Beyond madness
Scientists must begin with hypotheses. Ideas skip through the mind, in again, out again, and you have to grip with feet and claws to make one real. She knows how many ideas get dropped between sleeping and wake now, she counted all the ones from the patients in her vicinity last night. One thousand three hundred and sixty-four. Approximately. Must allow for error.
Must allow for error. Error costs lives. Lives that we rip and fight and bleed and feed and nourish, gone in a moment. Even one pearl is precious to the poor, but the rich can waste a million of them without cost. Thirty million pearls.
We meant it for the best—to make people safer
"What's wrong with her?"
"I thought she was better today!"
"Get me a soother—"
"No!" River wailed. "No, don't make me sleep, I don't want to sleep—for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause—"
Dr. Mathias caught her arms. "River, calm down. You're fine, you're—"
"Aye, but to die and go we know not where—to bathe in fiery floods, or to reside in thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice, to be imprisoned in the viewless winds, and blown with restless violence round about the pendent world—"
"River, be quiet!"
River thrashed. "No! Let all our trumpets speak! Give them breath, those clamorous harbingers of blood and death!"
"Here's the soother—"
As the needle plunged into her arm, one last word leaped into River's mind.
Miranda.