Page 79 of The Surviving Sky
Iravan looked at Bharavi. She gazed back, unblinkingly, and he thought of her and Tariya, and their boys Kush and Arth. He thought of his parents in Yeikshar and how he looked so much like one of his fathers.
And Ahilya burst into his head, ahead of all of them; her smile and her beauty; trembling as he trajected in the solar lab, walking away from him after landing, holding him in relief after their escape from the jungle.Don’t you love her anymore?Bharavi asked; and all the rage and confusion and turbulent devotion Iravan felt for Ahilya coursed through him like fire in his veins. If he failed, he would never see her again, nothim.
“Remember,” Laksiya said. “You are not to traject. That is immediate grounds for excision. Are you ready?”
Iravan nodded, his heart hammering in his chest. Trajecting now would show a terrible lack of control, disregarding all three conditions. He gripped his courage, but cold sweat bathed his skin and his teeth chattered lightly against his will.
“I need a verbal response, Iravan.”
“Yes,” he croaked.
“You may enter the Moment.”
Iravan obeyed, and his vision split into two.
The effect was immediate.
The confrontation with pure, uncontaminated veristem smashed into him with the force of a dozen walls. Iravan staggered and fell to his knees with a grunt. Airav and Chaiyya exchanged a glance. Bharavi looked furious.
Iravan took a deep shaky breath. He pushed himself off the floor to stand upright again.
In the pocket Moment, infinite gigantic stars loomed in every direction. Uncontaminated veristem stars had no viewable states of their own; they were cultivated to reflect infinite interpretations of the same situation. The stars blinked golden and opaque.
Laksiya began to speak. Iravan tightened his jaw, and a view opened into his own memories.
26
IRAVAN
Did you break the limits of trajection?” Laksiya called out.
In the pocket Moment, the golden stars glittered and shifted, like windows opening. Iravan glimpsed himself on every side.
In one star, he chased the mysterious Resonance after the landing. In another, he trajected three vortexes out of the jungle during the earthrage. He was on his knees, screaming and screaming, as his Two Visions merged. He was in the library, fighting the spiralweed.
Iravan drifted as a dust mote, examining his own actions.
And a window opened up to show him what he had been dreading.
He saw himself, a force outside of the Moment, reveling in his own power as he let go of Oam.
No, he thought, recoiling.Not that. I don’t want to remember that.
In answer, the stars glimmered.
Around him every one of them opened a window to reveal his action in the vortex. Iravan zipped through the pocket Moment in alarm, but in every one of the stars, he saw a different interpretation of the incident.
He was formidable, drenched in power, uncaring of the boy’s life. He was mad, gloating in his skill, and these tiny consciousnesses were no match for his own. He was a monster, flaying all of existence; the world existed for his entertainment, and he was a cruel god.
Iravan stared into Bharavi’s eyes, and his breath came out in short, heavy pants.
“No,” he said aloud, his voice hoarse, knowing it to be a lie. “No, I didn’t break the limits of trajection.”
In the veristem garden, the velvety black teardrop leaves began to unfurl. White buds emerged on the walls, floor, and ceiling. The five councilors stood in the humiliating white chamber, Iravan’s blatant lie unfolding in front of them. Overwhelming shame filled Iravan. The pain of it was almost unbearable, like he was standing naked in a storm, whipped from every direction. He closed his eyes in a long blink and swallowed.
“A lie,” Laksiya confirmed. “He broke the limits of trajection. Condition failed.”
Bharavi’s brown eyes reflected his own disgrace. She didn’t blink. She didn’t move. The white buds around them closed, preparing for the next question, and Iravan was submerged within the glinting darkness of unbloomed veristem again.
