Page 25 of The Enduring Universe
“Does it need to be repaired?” Eskayra spoke.
All of them turned to the doorway where Eskayra stood, leaning against the frame, her arms crossed over her chest. Ahilya had forgotten that her friend had followed her, but Eskayra gave her a small smile and walked over to stand next to her.
Ahilya expected Basav to tell Eskayra to get out, or to demand toknow what she was doing here—she was no part of the council—but he knew her power and popularity.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
“The Moment,” Eskayra repeated pointedly. “Does it need to be repaired at all? It is only an architect’s reality. It has always been invisible and inaccessible to us complete beings. Why must we waste time repairing it?”
“The Moment is our most sacred place,” Basav said coldly. “Without it, we cannot traject. We cannot do anything at all. With it gone, architects have no purpose.”
“Yes, thearchitects.”Eskayra sneered. “But there are more of us than there are you, andwehave purpose. We can help you redefine who you are.”
“We know many architects follow you, but—”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing here?” Eskayra demanded of the room at large, turning away from Basav. “The cities we are trying to build, the future we are hoping to have—I thought we all agreed that, unlike flying ashrams, we were finally going to make something that was not dependent on trajection. That trajection was weak and dying and unsustainable. Believe me, it gives me no pleasure in defendinghim, but that man in his Garden has done us a favor. He has taken away the temptation to keep using this power. Or has everything just been lip service for you people?”
The chamber erupted into cries and snarls. Ahilya’s head began to pound. She needed to eat. She could not take another altercation.
“What Iravan-ve has done is an abomination—” Basav said, rising out of his chair, tears still glittering in his eyes.
“The Moment was sacrosanct,” Weira said.
“—you would not understand, a non-architect—”
“—a place to see consciousness—”
But Eskayra remained unperturbed and contemptuous. Watching her, Ahilya felt a kinship. Her friend’s words and attitude were not far from what she herself would have said, once upon a time.
“The power was already dying,” Eskayra said, interrupting the cacophony. “But now our sungineers can actually try to invent something new. You cannot see it now, because you have lost something precious, but this is an opportunity. Is that not right, Kiana?”
The once-Senior Sungineer of Nakshar blinked, her mouth thinning. “That puts a lot of pressure on the sungineers, Eskayra. We are struggling, especially after everything that has happened in the last few days.”
“Yes, but now with Irshar finally safe—”
“Irshar is not safe,” Basav began.
“Ahilya said the cosmic creatures have been removed from Irshar’s architecture,” Eskayra countered. “It will no longer morph arbitrarily. Wasn’t that the whole reason we were looking to make cities? But we no longer have that threat to Irshar, tohumanity. We need to recover, certainly, and this grotesquerie is a reminder of what we have endured, but our city doesn’t need to be pretty. It needs to be functional, and we can stay here for years, for decades, while our sungineering evolves and finds a way, before we need to make new cities. My team will no longer have to work with the pressure of survival breathing down their necks. And Ahilya will not have to fight the Virohi to make them stay within the city.”
“Do you think yourself so unaffected?” Basav sneered. “I cannot speak for your builders butcomplete beingsin the ashram have fared no better than architects after this calamity. Many have experienced debilitating migraines, others have difficulty breathing, and still others have such trouble with their vision that they cannot see their hand in front of their faces. It is all the result of the Momentbreaking, and the infirmary is full, with no real help available because everyone suffers to some degree. The only reason we here have escaped it is because of our training through the years to manage disaster.” He gestured with a head toward where Kiana sat. “Ask her how she feels. It is her store of medicines that keeps her functioning now.”
Eskayra glanced at Kiana, but then her eyes flashed to Ahilya, as if looking for a way to dispute Basav. Both of them could remember the journey back to the ashram, and how non-architects had fared.
Ahilya stayed silent. Perhaps in a different time, before Oam’s death, before her councillorship in Nakshar, she could have supported Eskayra. But she had seen the similarity of different identities too closely. Her allegiance, such as it was, no longer encompassed only non-architects.This is why we could never have been together, she thought.We are too similar.Iravan, with his architect sensibilities had been an opposite, completing Ahilya in ways Esk couldn’t.
Eskayra’s face registered mild disappointment. “These effects on non-architects are sure to dissipate,” she muttered. “Even if the Moment’s destruction affected them, Kiana—andI—are proof that we will recover. Distribute the medicines, and after recovery, the rest of us complete beings will build something anew for all of us.”
“And what happens when the medicines run out?” Basav replied scornfully. “We have been dependent on trajection for more than a thousand years. Landing in the jungle has not changed that. How will we make medicines if we cannot traject the few seeds we have left from the crash? Where will we get food? We have terrible injuries among us, which we cannot heal without trajection. We will starve before the year is over, if we aren’t all wiped out by disease. Without the Moment, we have no technology, and while I applaud your dream for the sungineers, they have not been able toinvent an alternative to trajection when we had all our resources and were flying in the skies. Now when we have nothing?” He shook his head, and his gaze took them all in. “We are dead people walking. These two have doomed us.”
Another silence greeted his words, this one heavier. Eskayra opened her mouth to argue, then closed it, frowning. Kiana stirred, and one of the other sungineers made to speak, but Ahilya noticed Kiana’s imperceptible shake of the head.
Eskayra was speaking thoughts she herself had thought once upon a time, the very thing she still thought in her heart of hearts, but to hear from Basav how impossible the dream had been…
“So, once again, our only solution is to change his mind?” Eskayra said, making a disgusted sound in her throat. “We make ourselves hostage to his whims again? Haven’t we learned anything? We’ve sent emissaries to the Garden, and invited him to treat with us. We asked for his sungineers. What has any of that achieved? He told us he will refuse to help us build anything as long as we harbor the Virohi, and whether in the vriksh or in the architecture, the Virohi are still here among us. He is not going to help us—if he were going to, he would be here already. He is probably out there celebrating the Moment shattering.”
Was he?Ahilya thought. His shock still rippled in her. Whatever else he had meant to do, Iravan had not wanted to destroy the Moment. But Eskayra was not wrong, and Basav was nodding too.
“You should have let Iravan-ve destroy them,” he said, his eyes flat on Ahilya. “You have been trying to save that man, but there is nothing left of him to save. He has long since died and now you have doomed us all with your desperate desire to retrieve your husband.”
