Page 17 of The Enduring Universe
Around Ahilya, the members of the expedition were silent, in shock themselves perhaps, or in grim, defeated acceptance. Oam flashed behind Ahilya’s eyes. Between her brows, Iravan’s face was forbidding. He was still flying through the forest, the form of another Ecstatic next to him. They would arrive in Irshar any moment. Tears choked her throat.
She raised her eyes to Chaiyya. She did not have to speak—Chaiyya understood.
“Listen to me,” Chaiyya said quietly. “If Iravan is going to attack the cosmic creatures, then we need to allow this to happen. It is the only way for the ashram to endure.”
Eskayra bent down as well, capturing Ahilya’s chin between her fingers. “She’s right. I know it is not what you want, but if it saves all of us, would it be so bad if he kills the cosmic creatures?”
A part of Ahilya knew what they were saying was true. That Iravan was right, thattheywere. That anything she said now to the contrary would simply show her corruption.
Another part of her remembered the Virohi reflecting her image.
Her gaze fixed on the Senior Architect. “I can try to put them back into the architecture,” she whispered. “Is it not worth the attempt?”
Chaiyya did not even bother to reply. After all her talk of choosing life, faced with such a horrible choice, what else did Ahilya expect of the Senior Architect? This had always been a war for survival. It was what Iravan had done in letting go of Oam. What the architects had done in erasing non-architects. Ahilya turned to Eskayra, whose gaze grew gentle.
“I’m sorry,” Eskayra said. “I agree with Chaiyya. We do not have the time.”
Ahilya waved a limp hand. “The storm has not yet come to the jungle. Look around you—everything is still. We don’t know what Iravan’s assault will do the planet. Experimenting with consciousness has ripped our skies apart before, and to attempt to destroy creatures of such massive consciousness could tear the planet fully.” Her voice grew beseeching. “Please. I don’t think weneedthe everdust to put the Virohi back into Irshar. Not when I can communicate with them directly.”
Eskayra frowned and exchanged a glance with Chaiyya. Consideration grew on Chaiyya’s face—Ahilya’s point about experimentation on consciousness could not be denied. Chaiyya had seen it with Airav only too clearly. But Ahilya’s motivation in saying this now? All of them knew that she defended the Virohi. That her fight with Iravan was because she refused to hand over the cosmic creatures to him. Ahilya could see the calculation on Chaiyya’s face. Could Ahilya be trusted to act in humanity’s best interests? Between saving the Virohi from Iravan, and saving humanity from the Virohi, what would she choose? Ahilya herself could not say. To her, one was the other, but the rest of them would not see it that way, and Ahilya knew that time was running out.
The architects around them watched the three women silently. Ahilya took in their tense shoulders, their pinched mouths, the sheerothernessof their faces. They obeyed Eskayra, and they considered Chaiyya one of theirs, but where did that obedience come from? The architects all hated the Virohi. There were no more secrets regarding an architect’s origins. Each of these trajecting architects had experienced the mutilation of their very beings when the Virohi had seared through them, turning their trajection against the people they had sworn to protect. There was no room for self-forgiveness.
But this guilt. Its performance. Its exploitation. Look where it had brought them. Look at theamendsIravan wished to make. Coldness spread through Ahilya’s bones.
“Chaiyya, please,” she whispered in a last desperate attempt. “You helped me build Irshar. If you help me keep my mind now, we could do it again. We could work together.”
It was the wrong thing to say. An expression of great hostility flew across Chaiyya’s face, as if in reminding her she had once helped to inter the cosmic creatures, Ahilya had implied Chaiyya’s culpability in Ahilya’s own failure.
She raised her hands, wanting to take it back, wanting to explain herself, that she did not mean to manipulate Chaiyya. That she only meant to speak from her heart. But screams echoed from sungineering devices again, and Chaiyya blinked, as if recalling she had family back in the ashram; children and a wife she loved.
“I’m sorry,” Chaiyya said. “If it is between your method or his, I choose his. He is more practiced. He has sungineers aiding him. He knows and understands the Virohi.”
Eskayra nodded. “I see how the Virohi affect you. Whatever you do now, they cannot be trusted. They are inherently evil.”
Are they?Ahilya thought in anguish.
It’s what Iravan said too, and he had been one of them, once. Yet now when Ahilya saw them she saw her own shape, her own shame. The cosmic creatures reflected both of them. Her erasure and his loneliness. Her desperation and his guilt. Her future and his past.We do not even know them. Just as we do not know ourselves. How can we call them evil?She wanted to say those words out loud, but it was not the way to convince Chaiyya. She would just be pushing her away further.
Ahilya clutched her stomach, feeling sick. “And Iravan?” she asked softly. “He is the one fighting them. What if he dies?”
“We are all dead anyway,” Chaiyya said, her voice flat. “The storm will spread from Irshar to the jungle. If he dies to save us, it will be no different from when he was a Senior Architect.”
Ahilya stared at her. Chaiyya had already sacrificed Iravan once in choosing to imprison him in the deathcage after his trial during the Conclave. He had once been her friend, but so many bonds had been destroyed now.
“If we are lucky, the Virohi and that man will end each other,” Eskayra said. “We could be rid of two threats. If we win this, wesurvive.”
But that thinking, Ahilya thought.That has always been the problem, hasn’t it?
Behind her eyes, Iravan’s image spiked as he dove from the sky. His rage, his satisfaction, his grief pounded at her. His mouth moved in instruction. She could almost hear it, the command to Dhruv to power the battery that had brought her to Iravan once. The one Dhruv had made to save Nakshar, which had destroyed all the flying ashrams.
Panic grew in her, and she closed her eyes, rapidly examining and discarding possibilities. She had asked Chaiyya for permission to intervene because she did not want to act alone anymore; she had no faith in her ability to do so. Was she to obey, and watch this happen now? Do nothing? She had no more energy to argue with the others, and the thought of making another colossal mistake terrified her, but she could not allow herself to believe that she had failed so spectacularly. That she had led these cosmic creatures to extinction and killed all of them with what she had done. If she chose not to act now, death was the only thing to await them.
Behind her eyes, Iravan’s face grew relieved. The others murmured to themselves as another rumble echoed in the jungle.
Frantic, Ahilya closed her eyes and re-entered the Etherium.
8
