And I will remember how I, too, dismissed every possible warning of what was to come.)
Gallat takes me back into the cradle room, where I am bidden to climb into my wire chair. My limbs are strapped down, which I’ve never understood because when I’m in the amethyst, I barely notice my body, let alone move it. The sef has made my lips tingle in a way that suggests a stimulant was added. I didn’t need it.
I reach for the others, and find them granite-steady with resolve. Yes.
Images appear on the viewing wall before me, displaying the blue sphere of the Earth, each of the other five tuners’ cradles, and a shot of Corepoint with the onyx hovering ready above it. The other tuners look back at me from their images. Gallat comes over and makes a show of checking the contact points of the wire chair, which are meant to send measurements to the Biomagestric division. “You’re to hold the onyx, today, Houwha.”
From another building of Zero Site, I feel Gaewha’s small twitch of surprise. We’re very attuned to one another today. I say, “Kelenli holds the onyx.”
“Not anymore.” Gallat keeps his head down as he speaks, unnecessarily reaching over to check my straps, and I remember him reaching the same way to pull Kelenli back to him, in the garden. Ah, I understand, now. All this while he has been afraid to lose her … to us. Afraid to make her just another tool in the eyes of his superiors. Will they let him keep her, after Geoarcanity? Or does he fear that she, too, will be thrown into the briar patch? He must. Why else make such a significant change to our configuration on the most important day in human history?
As if to confirm my guess, he says, “Biomagestry says you now show more than sufficient compatibility to hold the connection for the required length of time.”
He’s watching me, hoping I won’t protest. I realize suddenly that I can do so. With so much scrutiny on Gallat’s every decision today, important people will notice if I insist that the new configuration is a bad idea. I can, simply by raising my voice, take Kelenli from Gallat. I can destroy him, as he destroyed Tetlewha.
But that’s a foolish, pointless thought, because how can I exercise my power over him without hurting her? I’m going to hurt her enough as it is, when we turn the Plutonic Engine back on itself. She should survive the initial convulsion of magic; even if she’s in contact with any of the devices that flux, she has more than enough skill to shunt the feedback away. Then in the aftermath, she’ll be just another survivor, made equal in suffering. No one will know what she really is—or her child, if it ends up like her. Like us. We will have set her free … to struggle for survival along with everyone else. But that is better than the illusion of safety in a gilded cage, is it not?
Better than you could ever have given her, I think at Gallat.
“All right,” I say. He relaxes minutely.
Gallat leaves my chamber and goes back into the observation room with the other conductors. I am alone. I am never alone; the others are with me. The signal comes that we should begin, as the moment seems to hold its breath. We are ready.
First the network.
Attuned as we are, it is easy, pleasurable, to modulate our silverflows and cancel out resistance. Remwha plays yoke, but he hardly needs to goad any of us to resonate higher or lower or to pull at the same pace; we are aligned. We all want this.
Above us, yet easily within our range, the Earth seems to hum, too. Almost like a thing alive. We have been to Corepoint and back, in our early training; we have traveled through the mantle and seen the massive flows of magic that churn naturally up from the iron-nickel core of the planet. To tap that bottomless font will be the greatest feat of human accomplishment, ever. Once, that thought would have made me proud. Now I share this with the others and a shiverstone micaflake glimmer of bitter amusement ripples through all of us. They have never believed us human, but we will prove by our actions today that we are more than tools. Even if we aren’t human, we are people. They will never be able to deny us this again.
Enough frivolity.
First the network, then the fragments of the Engine must be assembled. We reach for the amethyst because it is nearest on the globe. Though we are a world away from it, we know that it utters a low held note, its storage matrix glowing and brimful with energy as we dive, up, into its torrential flow. Already it has stopped suckling the last dregs from the briar patch at its roots, becoming a closed system in itself; now it feels almost alive. As we coax it from quiescence into resonant activity, it begins to pulse, and then finally to shimmer in patterns that emulate life, like the firing of neurotransmitters or the contractions of peristalsis. Is it alive? I wonder this for the first time, a question triggered by Kelenli’s lessons. It is a thing of high-state matter, but it coexists simultaneously with a thing of high-state magic made in its image—and taken from the bodies of people who once laughed and raged and sang. Is there anything left of their will in the amethyst?
If so … would the Niess approve of what we, their caricature children, mean to do?
I can spare no more time for such thoughts. The decision has been made.
So we expand this macro-level start-up sequence throughout the network. We sess without sessapinae. We feel the change. We know it in our bones—because we are part of this engine, components of humanity’s greatest marvel. On Earth, at the heart of every node of Syl Anagist, klaxons echo across the city and warning pylons blaze red warnings that can be seen from far away as one by one, the fragments begin to thrum and shimmer and detach from their sockets. My breath quickens when I, resonant within each, feel the first peeling-away of crystal from rougher stone, the drag as we alight and begin pulsing with the state-change of magic and then begin to rise—
(There is a stutter here, quick and barely noticeable in the heady moment, though glaring through the lens of memory. Some of the fragments hurt us, just a little, when they detach from their sockets. We feel the scrape of metal that should not be there, the scratch of needles against our crystalline skin. We smell a whiff of rust. It’s quick pain and quickly forgotten, as with any needle. Only later will we remember, and lament.)
—rise, and hum, and turn. I inhale deeply as the sockets and their surrounding cityscapes fall away below us. Syl Anagist shunts over to backup power systems; those should hold until Geoarcanity. But they are irrelevant, these mundane concerns. I flow, fly, fall up into rushing light that is purple or indigo or mauve or gold, the spinel and the topaz and the garnet and the sapphire—so many, so bright! So alive with building power.