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Ch 5. pt III
“He’s in negotiations to start the clean up.” She sounds bored and Uh’ wonders how there is a coup on, it seems business as usual.
The admin looks Uh’ over. “Almost old enough to be dead. Not sure he’s going to want him, but have a seat anyway. I’ll let him know you’re here,” Sherin says nodding to the small collection of unpolished stone stools nearby.
Techy points and demands, “Sit.”
Uh’ does, happily, as the receptionist picks up a communication receiver. After a moment she says, “he’s here,” as if meant for Uh’ to hear, and leaking with all the scorn a slave who wasn’t partners with the greatest Upu to have ever lived deserves. Looking out the floor-to-ceiling window at a city that he thought would be on fire. Their Soya was dead. But he can see into a nearby braided stream of ductwork and through the hundreds of levels of transparisteel windows, thousands of Upu are doing the things that make up life on Grotto. These are the poor inhabitants of Capitol City. The supposed have-nots, but watching them go about their glimpse he sees more living and loving than he ever did in the richer communities. Communities so filled with fear of losing what they have that they sit numb, waiting, holding on to their riches by any means necessary. He wishes he were closer so he sees these families more clear. From this vantage point, they are just hundreds of moving colorful blotches, but they are life and they move in happy patterns.
He wonders when the last time he saw so much life.
Since before Nahtdo.
That dankness in his memory is cleaned a little by this sight of life.
Techy and the receptionist talk. Several finger jabs are directed at Uh’. The receptionist looks at him like she has never seen anything more repulsive. Uh’ is used to basking in the sense of awe that Soya’s presence tended to manifest and glares back in only the way a watery-eyed benign old man can.
Bored.
The black door on the other side of the reception desk pops open, revealing a middle-aged black-furred Upu with a bulbous belly and tiny silk draped wings. He wears the semi-transparent white plastic overalls, professionals who tend to get their hands dirty wear to protect the fashion choices underneath. It's an upper management habit. This Upu has on a pink shirt and bright green shorts underneath his overalls. He looks ridiculous, like after work he is going to join a group of children and do whatever it is children do. Uh’ notes the wave of his fur and quality of his clothing and immediately assumes this Upu is far wealthier than his job would suggest he should be. Maybe his mate, but doubtful as he summons Techy, for the delivery of the beckoner.
“Techy, on your way out, leave her alone.”
Techy bows his head, “yes, Brasso.”
The receptionist sighs in audible relief as Techy turns from her to do as asked.
When passed the beckoner, Brasso demands, “Wait outside, I can handle one ancient Upu on my own.” With beckoner in hand, he turns back into his office.
Uh’ notices the beckoner and hurries to the proper distance in time hoping to avoid the shock. He passes a sneering Techy, who says, “see ya later Natht,” but fails to get into step behind Brasso in time to avoid any discomfort and enters the office rubbing his arm.
He looks to Techy for a reaction and sees the gray-haired Upu beside himself with laughter. It stings. Is this life now? Has he been reduced to comic fodder?
The door clicks shut behind him and once ensconced in his office, the warden holds out his hand, the beckoner sitting accessible in his palm like he were handing it over and smiles though the gesture holds little warmth and the glint of sharp bicuspid, the blood teeth, makes Uh’ hackle.
Brasso turns as if getting the reaction he wants and settles behind his desk, a giant slab of red marble, so dark it almost could be black. Behind him are famous art reproductions that Uh’s finds repellant. He wishes tasteless Upu would stop buying garbage like these images, because they take away from real pursuits. Math and numbers and the unseen side of the universe.
Uh’ believes as Soya did, art was wasteful. Art stole from reality and returned only fantasy. There are no personal effects like family images and the desk is free of clutter with only a compstation occupying its surface. In a steel brazier, a crackling gas fire burns a bed of rocks to an orange glow.
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Feeling a sense of superiority he looks down at Brasso and finds the admin staring back.
His warden seems impressed. Why wouldn’t he be? Uh’ is famous in his own right and not just as the famous Soya’s consort, so Uh’ stares back with unimpressed eyes. How could Brasso compare, Uh’s has seen whole civilizations wiped from existence. All this corrupt bureaucrat can do is offer an old Upu pain and suffering.
“Get your eyes off me,” Brasso whispers softly as if to a child.
Uh’ complies, finding a spot on the floor but a strong pulse shoots up his arm anyway as the warden plays with the button on the beckoner to find a setting to help motivate.
Uh’ takes the pain which ends soon enough after beginning.
The warden stands and approaches. The tingle dissipates as he grows closer, interesting to want the person hurting you to be close, but it was a perk of the power of the tech. The buzz worsens as Brasso circles him just out of arm's length. “So you are Shup Uh’ Yee, property of the Great Elder Soya Yee?”
“Yes,” he answers through gritted teeth. Noting the warden’s accent for the first time.
Uh’ wonders why he is in Majt. Everyone considered the South City, where he is obviously from, paradise. It is in a perfect spot, between Grotto’s uninhabitable atmosphere and a small pocket dry and warm with perfection. It is the only open air city and built into the side of the tallest mountain on the planet. The vistas are stunning to behold. Uh’ has been many times, being Soya was from there, but the politics of science drove her from her family home and into the Capitol. The politics of science became the politics of budget and funding and staying relevant. They worked in tandem with the space program for decades. She was the face of his math. South City was so prestigious they were forced to hold a lottery every pass that allowed five families to move there. The spots are worth millions, and almost never does a family refuse the opportunity to go. Paradise. Before space travel, the traditional way to get there was through a tunnel system. Once the most dangerous tunnel section on Grotto. Dense with animal life, some of the species grow as big as buildings and never stop eating. But those that leave South City seek more than paradise. They seek success. And success is what Majt promised, but not sitting behind a desk as a mid-level manager at Ye University, administration to a collection complex, garbage man to higher learning, This is not what Uh’ would consider success.
The warden holds up a finger and wags it back and forth, as if not appreciating the thought, “A decision has been made regarding your future. I have good news. You’re dead too.”
“Uh’ wishes this were true and not merely a threat to make him cower. If true he would not be able to honor Soya’s last wishes. Dead. He finds the thought beautifully poetic. She wished him free after her life ended, it was written in her will. No more could a slave hope for.” He speaks his words with a formal accent and stops bowing his head in submission. All his words were true. Soya did intend him to be free. He’d never be able to vote, but if the remnants of Soya’s fortune was as vast as Shuhp imagined, then he could have bought all the votes he would ever needed to make utopia happen. He doubts his imagination is accurate though. He has never had a good sense of what currency did and did not do. And Soya is one of the richest Upu alive, if not the richest. Soya did buy votes all the time, but at the end of her political career, her opinions were so valued that the expense of winning an election or a council vote against her became too great.
Brasso stares at him, mouth open as if he had expected something else as a reaction from his new slave, “I see.”
Uh’ then remembers the algorithm eating at all the data he fed it, could his hypothesis be correct? Then that cursed spark to keep going. Could his equation eventually reach a level that comparing it and the real thoughts and feelings of the historical thing called Soya, would yield no difference- can he bring back Soya Yee. Uh’ needs an answer to this quandary like he needs to keep breathing and looks to Brasso prepared to make him happy for as long as it takes to finish what he started.
“Well,” Brasso begins. He has the voice of a smoker. Deep, like his lungs are two burnt hollow crisps in his chest.
You were a piece of machinery in Soya’s hands, her brain, I would expect nothing less.”
“I am nothing without Soya.”
“No, Soya Yee, was the greatest Upu to ever live. And now you will make me her replacement in perpetuity.” Brasso’s finger twitches on the beckoner’s button, “Still the good slave?”
“No longer.”
Brasso frowns, then shakes his head as if deciding he won’t bother fighting against reality, “You are to be warded here. We will do much together. Maybe even more than you did with Soya.”
“Together?” Uh’ risks a quick glance at Brasso, but his finger on the beckoner is even quicker to react to the sarcasm, and still smarting from the new shock, he finds another spot on the floor.
“Your skill is math, thinking, making something new out of nothing, what do you think I could want with that?”
Then it dawns on him, the warden doesn't know what Uh’ true potential is, and assumes math only means, “money.”
“Correct. You are going to make me and my family rich beyond measure.”
“You will use Soya’s legacy in such a way? She was great. You cannot make her nothing.”
“With no kin to argue otherwise, You don’t exist any longer Shuhp Yee, do you agree?” Brasso’s voice is soft like pieces of fabric touching.
He can say such things to Uh’ because he is dead already. That’s the worst thing that could happen? He lost Soya then the algorithm unwinds again in his mind. But did he? Uh’ looks up and sees the warden has the beckoner pointed at him and decides to play his part a bit longer, “yes, master.”
“I don’t imagine you have much longer to live in either case, but in your remaining moments, consider me your partner, not just your master. We are in this together Shuhp Yee. And your task now until you die? Making your partner rich.” Then Brasso mashes a finger down on the beckoner and Uh’ prepares for pain, which comes in agonizing wave after wave until, eventually, he is left in peaceful blackness.