Page 23 of The Surviving Sky
“All right. Let’s begin. Oam, you know what todo—”
“Sketches, yes,” he said. “I can do more, Ahilya. Let me take the readings.”
“No, we can’t depend on Dhruv’sinstruments—oursketches and observations are all we can rely on until he invents something more enduring. And Iravan, I need to reach the tracker. Traject me up, please.” She stepped forward to follow the yaksha and found herself on her knees, the breath knocked out of her.
In the moments she had paused, white grass had snaked up her thighs. She lay on the forest floor, half-crouched, half-sprawled, the grass growing over her arms and legs, holding her down. Oam was on all fours too. The apprentice’s gaze went past Ahilya, behind her. He swore.
Ahilya moved her neck painfully against the hold on her limbs. Iravan stood exactly where he had been. He stared beyond her, tall, handsomeand—Ahilyanoted—utterlyuseless. His dark skin no longer radiated the blue-green light of trajection.
“Iravan,” she snapped. “Are you trying to kill us?”
He grunted as though in sudden understanding. Without taking his eyes off the yaksha, he began to jog toward them. “I don’t trust it.”
“What?”
Next to her, Oam slashed awkwardly at the white grass with his machete. “Unbelievable. Is he trying to hijack this mission again?”
“I don’t trust it,” Iravan repeated. He stopped moving, the white grass trapping him as well. “Every living thing has consciousness that can be detected, even if it can’t be trajected. But I’m testing it, and I don’t detect consciousness in this creature.”
Ahilya blinked. This was new information. “Are you sure?”
Iravan nodded, and a moment later, his skin lit up with trajection. The grass stopped curling at Ahilya’s waist; it tightened, squeezing the breath from her. An icy chill went through her; Oam gasped. Then the grass snapped and dissolved into dust. Oam shook himself, arose, and followed the yaksha.
“No consciousness,” Iravan said, catching up to Ahilya as she arose to her feet too, brushing white flakes off. “What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know. I justassumed…I mean, how is it alive if it doesn’t have consciousness?”
“Precisely. Consciousness exists on a spectrum of life activity. Dead beings and non living objects are the only things to have no consciousness. But this creature is clearly neither. No one else mentioned it?”
“Well,no…Their role was just to traject the plants here for our path, and I think they had enough to do with managing the jungle.” Ahilya eyed Iravan. “How can you tell?”
“It’s a quality of trajection. When architects traject, they see states of consciousness existing as stars in the Moment.”
“Yes, I know. But I thought the Moment showed only plants.”
“The Moment can show humans and other animals, too. But architects aren’t taught to see any other consciousnesses except plants. It’s dangerous to dwell in the Moment with beings more complex than plants, so we deliberately teach architects to blind their second vision lest they accidentally traject a complex being. Trajecting a complex beingcan—”
“Damage an architect’s mind irrevocably. Yes, I know.” Ahilya considered this. “But you canseeanimals and humans in the Moment? Even if you can’t traject them?”
“Ican,” Iravan said. “If I try. I’m a Senior Architect. It’s my job to enforce the limits of trajection, and I can’t enforce what I don’t understand. But even I rarely allow myself to expand my vision enough to see complex beings in the Moment.”
“And you don’t see the yaksha?”
Iravan licked his lips, his eyes still on the creature. “That’s impossible, you know. It means that the yaksha doesn’t exist. That it isn’t alive.”
“Maybe you’re missing it. Making amis—”
“I’m not making a mistake.”
Ahilya frowned. The creature had stopped moving, its tusks entangled in rapidly curling vines. It trumpeted softly, shaking its gigantic head side to side. She glanced back at Iravan, wondering if she should ask him to elaborate. It would change her entire study. But he didn’t meet her gaze. This close, she heard his rapid breathing. Sweat beaded his brow.
It took her a second to understand. He was scared. The realization took her aback.
All Junior Architects who had ever accompanied her in the jungle had shown nervousness when they’d encountered a yaksha. Some reacted with stunned silence, others with incessant swearing or nervous laughter. Ahilya had learned to ignore their reactions, but this was Iravan. He was always so self-possessed. Besides, he was Nakshar’s expert on consciousness; it was how he’d gained his council seat in the first place. For him to sense no consciousness in thiscreature…what could it mean?
“I don’t like it,” he said again.
“Iravan, it’s harmless. I’ve worked with it before, remember?”
