Page 8 of The Enduring Universe
But then the shivering had started, followed by incessant vomiting. Once Ahilya had fainted in the middle of the persuasion, and Irshar had wobbled, buildings crashing, people trapped and injured and dead, all while she lay unconscious. It was sheer luck that the Virohi did not escape then. Nearly twenty people had been buried in the wreckage.
The council agreed Ahilya’s loss of control was unacceptable, and all of them imagined it was the stress finally manifesting in her. But the diagnoses didn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary—nothing that other non-architects were not experiencing. Then Chaiyya began using methods usually reserved for architects. They’d realized then how Ahilya had become more like an architect with her awareness of her Etherium. In treating with the cosmic creatures so intimately, in offering them her consciousness as meat and fodder, Ahilya had gone too deep. She had given unknowingly, and they had taken, and taken, and taken.
The medical devices began to whirr and beep. The two nurses moved away, monitoring Ahilya’s progress on their beads. Chaiyya stepped in their place, kneeling in front of Ahilya. She withdrew a slim retinoscope and shone it into Ahilya’s right eye. Ahilya remembered how she herself had used such an implement on the elephant-yaksha on another expedition.
“Did you practice?” the Senior Architect asked, peering into the lens then switching it to the other eye.
“Unsuccessfully,” Ahilya muttered.
Chaiyya drew back, returning the lens back into her pouch. “These practices have worked on the most recalcitrant of architects, but you have to believe in them working.Thatis key.”
“I don’t doubt them.”
“Then what? You doubt yourself? Us?” Ahilya stilled at that and Chaiyya’s face drew into a frown, and the woman sighed. “You don’t believe that you can count on us,” she said flatly.
“I do,” Ahilya replied automatically, but she could hear the lie in her voice.
Once, Chaiyya had thanked her, said that she’d saved everyone’s lives—but that was before they’d understood the full extent of what Ahilya had done. When the architecture started shifting again, becoming more and more unstable, Chaiyya and the rest of Irshar’s council had begun to fear Ahilya.
They began to treat her differently after that. Part hate, part fear, part abject pity—the people who were her friends became her hostages and her tormentors. They were walking a tightrope—keeping her sane enough to commune with the Virohi, yet knowing that each communication only corrupted her further. Even their speech to her was more careful than ever, as though anything they said would push her over the edge. How could one count on people like that?
“Have you considered that this was never meant for me?” Ahilya mumbled. “These powers, these experiences, they were always the province of the architects.”
“It doesn’t matter if you are a non-architect,” Chaiyya said, but a tone of distress entered her voice. “These practices are foolproof. They are meant to anchor you into yourself. The architects would once use them in order to enter the Moment, but my adaptations consider that you are a complete being. You have to trust that.”
Ahilya’s mouth twisted. Surely Chaiyya did not really believe herown words? How could one be a complete being, and split at the same time? Either Ahilya was becoming like the architects—lost to herself beyond her imagining—or she was a complete being, her consciousness unmolested. She could not be both at the same time, and after her encounters with the Virohi, she knew which one she veered toward.I have become what I’ve always hated and desired, she thought.An architect, a tyrant, a monster.In her mind, the Virohi whispered for her to join them again.
“I trust that you’re trying to help me,” she said, but she left her true feelings unsaid—that none of this would make a difference, not in the way Chaiyya expected.
Intentions aside, the architect’s knowledge was theoretical. Chaiyya had never entered the Etherium. She had not spoken with the Virohi. She did not know the danger, the lure, the sheerpowerof the cosmic creatures to obliterate any defense Ahilya built against them. Chaiyya could not comprehend what Ahilya contested with each time she went to persuade the Virohi. These exercises would never work for her. What architect had seen the mind of the Virohi? Even Iravan had not; he had only jumped to conclusions about the creatures, driven by his hate for them. Ahilya couldn’t help her streak of resentment—for Chaiyya, Iravan, for the rest of Irshar, and mostly for herself, knowing she had no right to feel this way, not when she received a perverse delight in speaking to the Virohi, not when she had brought them all to this destiny.
She gestured at the builders and the other members of the expedition. “Do you think this place will work?” she asked, changing the subject.
From her expression, Ahilya knew Chaiyya was not about to let her deflect that easily, but before she could say anything, Eskayra spoke.
“It is holding for now,” Eskayra said.
She marched over from where she was standing and pointed at the image on her solarnote. Diagrams glittered there, of low-lying buildings shaped like nests, and shelters imitating rocks. Roofs used the existing canopy of the jungle, and vines were tied to weight-supporting pillars. There was something almost architect-like about it, and indeed the architects on Eskayra’s team had their heads bent together as they trajected precious seeds to form the foundations of the structures on the solarnote tablet.
Yet this construction was different too. Grubby hands, mud beneath nails, faces streaked with dirt… Architects once used sophisticated methods, but this was earthier, laborious, morealive. Eskayra was using her own style here, one that equated non-architect methods with trajection. Already the beginnings of an outpost were visible in the construction.
Chaiyya made an approving sound, but Ahilya watched Eskayra silently. Long ago when they had courted in Nakshar, Eskayra had been resentful of the architects because her talent in building had been considered useless. It was why she had left for another ashram on the same travel route which had brought Iravan to Nakshar.
Their faces wove in and out of Ahilya’s head, Iravan and Eskayra shifting one into another. Eskayra was streaked with mud, brushing her hair back with an impatient gesture and smearing her cheek with more dirt. Iravan’s tattoos glittered in Ahilya’s mind, his pristine architect uniform from the past, and his suave, careless handsomeness. Ahilya nearly opened her Etherium again to watch him, needing him to reassure her that she’d made the best choice in marrying him. She forced herself to notice the details of what Eskayra had done instead, the way she used fire to melt glass and supplement the construction, the way non-architects carried axes and machetes, tools that architects had never used. Sweat drippeddown the builders’ skin—so different to a time when architects had trajected whole ashrams from the cool comfort of an Architects’ Disc. She had to take comfort from this change. Believe that humanity was building something better.
“Maybe the Virohi led us right, after all,” Ahilya said softly.
“Maybe,” Esk said, though she sounded skeptical. “All this could still break apart, though. Last time, the second we started building the constructions began to misbehave, and the jungle started to attack us. If Airav is right, and the jungle has retained a memory of destruction, then all our attempts here are doomed, and—No,” Eskayra called out to a builder. “Not like that!”
She marched over to correct them, leaving Ahilya. Eskayra had disdained a councilor’s position in Irshar—and never fought for one in her airborne ashram—but she was a natural leader. How would Ahilya’s life have been different if Eskayra had never left? Ahilya had never harbored the same strength of passion for Eskayra as she had for Iravan. For better or worse, she had found her reflection in him, but would time and proximity with Eskayra have changed a lukewarm feeling of fondness into deep love? , the Virohi sang, and Iravan shone in her mind, callously brilliant. A stab of pain went through her, at the unknown possibilities of lost chances.
“Your blood pressure is rising very quickly,” Meena said from her devices.
Chaiyya frowned. “What is it? What are you thinking of?”
“The Virohi,” she said. “They called again. I need to confront them now. There is no more waiting.”
“Then let’s practice,” Chaiyya said.
