4

James was ill. It was the stink of roasted meat, he surmised. Sam called the doctor and spent the afternoon updating earnings projections. It took an hour, like the Maestro had said, but she spent an extra two napping at her desk. The box in the corner stared at her. She wondered what it would be like to sleep in it. The leather cushioning seemed softer than clouds.

More letters arrived in the afternoon. One velvety package contained detailed instructions on the dying of hair and three tubes of questionable goo. Sam left that outside James’s office. There was a stack of job applications, thicker than usual; she took one out at random and left the others in the bottom drawer, where about five hundred had piled up.

The Maestro re-emerged at dusk, face ashen, eyes bloodshot. Sam made porridge thickened with ginger and beetroot, and he gulped down three bowls. They sat in the lounge room for a while going over the numbers. James had memorized five years’ worth of projected cashflows. He was mildly surprised when Sam’s figures returned higher.

“We’re rich,” he declared.

“You are rich,” Sam corrected. “There were thirty-two applications today.”

James glanced at the one Sam had picked out, then folded it into a crane. Paper made from fungal fibre could not suffer being tortured, and the crane disintegrated within seconds. “So, ask,” he said, “you have questions on your face.”

“What did she say?”

“That I have five years – she didn’t know why. Still gave me pills,” he rolled his eyes.

“I really want to ask –”

“There will be a vote at the plenum,” he began tearing up Sam’s notes into little squares and piling them up by size. “Thirty candidates for audition. You have already been pre-selected. Pending no surprises, you will be going to the Place Above in December.”

Sam began to say that this was not what she was going to ask, but it would not be, strictly speaking, true.

“I wish I could give you more detail but I don’t remember a thing.” James flicked the little tower of paper and it toppled over in a flurry. “I went into a room and came out with the Green. I think there was a…a city. Like a mirage. And lots of people walking around in... strange clothes, I think.” He shrugged. “It’s like trying to remember a dream. Irrelevant and futile.”

“Will I pass?”

James looked at her. The Green glittered in the grey like a thousand tiny stars. It was as if the man was going blind and some otherworldly creature has commandeered his sight. “I don’t really care, to tell you the truth.” He clicked his fingers, and Lucia stepped up and offered her arm. He frowned at the mark on her face. “Let’s talk in the lab.”

The basement laboratory resembled the workplace of a demented dentist. Thousand of reagents stacked the shelves, the drawers, the countertop, overspilling onto boxes, the floor, the foot of the stairs. Cylinders of formaldehyde, each as tall as Sam, crowded one corner. Surgical tools – sawed scissors and stitching needles the thickness of a hair, boxes of autoroutines, rolls of injector tubes – sat in another. The infusion pump was half-filled, the purple liquid inside kept at a constant boil and attached to the operating chair by capillary tubes.

Human remains dangled from the ceiling. Ligaments, muscle groups, organs – perfectly preserved – were suspended in separated layers that when folded together would form an abomination.

A row of plague masks hung at the entrance with faded warning signs regaling the rules of safety. The filters inside those beaks have not been replaced for months.

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Lucia sat down in the chair and strapped down her own legs. James pulled over a stool and an armful of folding struts dangling with tools and lights. His plague mask was silver and gold, the beak artfully folded in a spiral to avoid prodding his one and only patient.

Sam stood close by, ready with cleaning alcohol and a yellowish preservative paste that the alks charged three thousand seeds per box. The red mark on Lucia’s face glared in the ascetic light.

“Your assessment?” the Maestro asked.

“Cosmetic damage. Subdermal effusion. Evacuate fluid to catalyse auto-heal,” said Sam.

“Trivial.” James held out a scalpel and found his hand shaking uncontrollably.

“Maybe I should –”

“No,” he snapped, then shut his eyes for a moment. “Yes, it’s trivial.”

Lucia turned toward her as she sat down. Her blindfolds today were yellow and teal, thin and almost translucent. Sam could see her eyes moving underneath. It was as if –

“She’s watching me,” said Sam.

“Yeah, because I’m watching you,” said James. “Be careful.”

Lucia did not react as the diamond blade bit into her cheek. Her skin parted like real flesh, but there was no blood, only a trickle of purple. Exposed, the bruise had the hue of an oil puddle. Under the Maestro’s much-too-watchful eye, Sam gently scraped away the coagulated infusion and applied the balm in its place. As soon as the pressure was alleviated she could see the veins underneath plump up, sucking in the residual fluid through some capillary action that she only faintly comprehended.

Lucia was a marvel, she knew that much. Anything softer than a diamond blade and the skin would not break. Any damage less than direct trauma shattering her reinforced skeleton, her auto-heal could mend. These bruises were accidents, flaws in an otherwise flawless specimen. Made her seem human, in a way.

The incision required no stitching, only a brief pinch with T’Lia’s catalyst applied along the cut. A rosy hue remained on the spot, almost lifelike. Sam dabbed it with a proprietary sealant from the Guild of Preservation. Lucia’s face twitched, her lips folding into a lopsided smile.

“Good. Well done,” said James.

“On the Floor of Nine, I –”

“I remember. You told me she spoke.”

“I still don’t think it’s –”

“Observe how Lucia mimics inflections in my emotional state,” he said, and Lucia nodded. “The tether between us is so strong that there is considerable subliminal bleeding of my consciousness into her autoroutines. As a result, no behaviour of hers is truly autonomous.” James began undoing a strap while Lucia undid another. “Once I too thought there could be some miracle, the preservation of cognitive remnants beyond Rathnayake’s Limit, but I ran tests, and I was seeing things that were not there, like I was tricking myself.”

Sam knew he wanted to say more. The first time James told the story, she had listened out of obligation; now, it felt almost like a ritual, to listen to the same thing, over and over, to no end.

“I thought I would at peace, that I would let her go,” said James, holding Lucia’s hand. Lucia held his. “But the Limit is asymptotic. If I counteract the cognizance decline by amplifying the Green, she will always remember me. It was going to work. One hundred and thirty million secondary tethers I would need to gather in my lifetime to maintain baseline. By year seven, I would need two million lives. And here we are.”

“There are not –”

“- not enough people in the whole Pile. It was impossible from the start.” His voice trembled. “When I found out I was going to die, I was happy. The rest of my life can be spent maintaining her memory of me, and we shall leave together.”

“Maestro –”

“You’ve heard it all before, haven’t you? I must have monologued a hundred times by now. I delayed the tether by one minute thirteen seconds because I was in a meeting, blah blah, I missed the density threshold. She is hollow, blah blah, because I was talking money with clowns on high tables.” The Maestro shook, but Lucia’s grip was steady and immovable. “The usual.”

“I wasn’t –”

“Lords Above, those steamed turnips,” he laughed, and wept. “She kept making them. They were terrible, like hot slime. She was a terrible cook. Eating with her was horrible. We just sat down and argued. Imagine, two necromancers, washing the dishes. What was the point of amblers then? But no, we had to be domestic, because that’s what we were. Domestic. How horrible. I hate it. I can’t stand bickering over the price of butter. That’s not what my life was supposed to be. She made it so…mundane. Like we could just die of old age together, having achieved nothing, and it would be the best thing ever. How horrible.”

“Yes,” said Sam. “Horrible.”

The Maestro waved dismissively. “Leave me be.”

Sam closed the door behind her. The Maestro remained in the lab for the night; she knew because she heard him through the door, at two, at four, at five, speaking in a voice so gentle it belonged as if to a stranger.