“Elián—” I said, and Elián looked wildly round at me.
“The world needs its monsters,” said Talis. “It needs its gods. And it needs a certain number of passionate sheep farmers who are neither. Don’t do this, Elián Palnik. It will destroy you.” He cocked his head, Rachel’s glasses glinting, his eyes a pale and thoughtful blue. “In all sincerity, child: I’m not worth it.”
“Greta.” Elián threw a fast glance over his shoulder. “I didn’t know you were—” The knife was away from Talis’s throat now, though only an inch or two. “Are you all right?”
Well, I was wearing a bedsheet and watching a murder. “Oddly enough, I can feel the magnetic field of the Earth.”
The knife swung a little, as if in that unseen field. “What did you do to her?”
“Upgrade,” said Talis, snapping the p. “The standard package.”
“I should kill you just for that.” Elián made a noise like a laugh or a sob. “Can you even die?”
“Sure.” Talis gave a loose shrug. “Stab me in the throat and watch me bleed out on the floor. And don’t look for me to go winging back to base, either. There’s no bandwidth for that. I’ll just be, poof.?” He made a firework with his fingers. “It’s a death, near enough. On the other hand, I’m only a copy. The master version of me can get along just fine without incorporating all of these squishy little memories.”
“And what of you?” I said. “This you.” It seemed important—and not just because this was the copy with whom (with which?) I had a treaty.
“Who knows?” In Talis’s strange Cherenkov blue eyes, I could see my own future. “Maybe there’s something after death, even for monsters.”
“I hope so,” said Elián fiercely. “In the name of God I hope so.” He lowered the knife. I let him think he was saving me as he wrapped an arm around me and I took him from the room.
27
ONE
That night—my last night—we burned the body of Wilma Armenteros.
The Abbot had asked Elián what he wanted done, had even taken him (and Xie and me, unwilling to let Elián face it alone) past the induction spire, over the ridge top, to the graves.
All my years in the Precepture, all the deaths, and I had never wondered about the graves.
They were a little way out onto the prairie, away from the scattered boulders of the ridge. This year’s graves were still distinct, jagged with bare earth, the first plants—lamb’s-quarters, the tiny questing vines of bindweed (that some call wild morning glory) filtering into the hard places, opening their white flowers. Sidney Carlow would be under one of those mounds. And somewhere Vitor. And Bihn, who had tamed the birds. She’d hardly be a bump.
Last year’s graves were distinct by vegetation: blue flax, sweet clover, coming in before the grasses. Older graves had settled back toward grass and were dimpled inward. They were not dots—not individual graves—but lines. They made a faint pattern of indentations, like the traces of waves. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
“No,” gasped Elián. His voice was flat with horror. “No.”
The Abbot was leaning heavily on my arm. I could feel the vibrations set up by his diaphragms as he moved the air to make himself nod gently. “She was not my Child. And, on reflection, Elián, neither were you. I should not have disposition of her body. No more than I should have had of your life.”
“Oh.” Elián was wobbling, perhaps under the vastness of that apology. “Oh. Okay.”
“It is your choice, Elián,” the Abbot said. “What would you like to do?”
Elián did not, could not, answer. Silence filled with the sound of the grass.
“We could burn her,” said Xie, in her gentlest voice. “It is what they do for heroes.”
Elián nodded with a jerk, and wrapped his arms around his body as if something inside had shattered.
Atta found us when we came back down the hill, the three of us fearful and stumbling. He opened his big arms wide, and Da-Xia went to him—but it was Elián he gathered in.
Elián is tall, but Atta is huge and muscular, big as a bull. He wrapped Elián up in a hug like a father wraps a child. When he let go, Elián was no longer shaking. Atta held him at arm’s length.
“We need to burn the body,” said Xie softly.
“I—” said Atta. His long-frozen voice broke, and he choked and swallowed. “Elián. You have no priest here.”
“Rabbi,” said Elián, staring at him. “I mean, she isn’t, wasn’t, but I am . . .” He shrugged at the enormity of it all—his complicated family, his loss, his horror. “No. I have no priest here.”
“Let me.” Atta’s voice cracked again. “Help you.”
Elián, being Elián, laughed once—but it was high, almost hysterical. “Are you like Xie, then? Are you a god?”
“Prophet,” said Atta. His voice was smoothing out, becoming as big as he was, as deep. “A prince in the line of the Prophet. That’s how it is, among my people.”