But Thomas Aiken Is Dead - Part I (8 page)

I see.

The Breacher:

She is mildly surprised, but not as much as would be expected.

The Interlokutor:

You were expecting something like this?

Atia:

Even if I was, how could I have had any part in it? I didn’t follow the infant to Blue and Indigo Tier. We had no contact after she left.

The Interlokutor:

Even so, there is a strong likelihood that you guided her thinking in some way, made the concept appealing to her.

Atia:

Have you been listening to a Gnesha-damned thing I’ve said? I'm as ningen as a denizen can be. I have taken a designation, a gender, a physical eksist mode. I don’t share my self sense directly with any other denizen. Occasionally I eat and drink and fornicate in the traditional ningen style. Why, if I’m that – to use your word, eccentric, would I dream of goading a child into creating the mergerment?

The Interlokutor:

We are unsure, hence the question.

Atia:

This is absurd.

The Breacher:

She is still not entirely being truthful.

Atia:

About what? You incompetency at even
basic reasoning?

The Interlokutor:

We don’t doubt that you are surprised. The Breacher is only concerned that you are not
as surprised
as you perhaps should be.

Atia:

This is a total invasion of my selfsense autonomy, as I must have said a hundred times now.

The Interlokutor:

Did you suspect your infant might do something like this?

Atia:

No.

The Breacher:

Yet again you are lying.

Atia:

Gnesha’s teeth
, perhaps, I don’t know. She was abnormal, a freak. Obsessed with novel modes of eksist. Everything I loved ningenity for, she hated. Language was inconceivable to her. She wanted direct selfsense fusion with every denizen she met. Physical form was inconceivable too. She wanted to be a pure concept or something equally as macabre. But yes. Fine. I suspected she might do something radical, go looking for new modes of eksist. But I never envisioned her starting a crisis, never envisioned her creating the mergerment.

The Interlokutor:

Nevertheless.

Atia:

Why do you suspect her of initiating it?

The Interlokutor:

The archives show that she had been obsessively researching the early Cadence pioneers. They too dreamed of direct selfsense fusion. She also began to correspond with a number of Cadence philosophers on the subject.

Atia:

Oh,
philosophers.
Why, that does sound threatening.

The Interlokutor:

Most Cadence renegades begin in the thought forums and end with the exactment of their schemes. We monitor the thought forums closely for that reason.

Atia:

Even if she
did
initiate the merge there’s no way she could have known it would spiral so violently out of control.

The Interlokutor:

Perhaps not. Nevertheless, she is almost certainly its mother. If this is so then the answer to its destruction may lie in uncovering certain personal weaknesses of hers.

Atia:

Why? If she has joined the mergerment, she will be long gone, fused with the other selfsenses. There must be well over a million now in there. That is how the mergerment works, isn’t it?

The Interlokutor:

Not necessarily. Distinctness may still be preserved. If we could antagonise it somehow with her fears or phobias, we may stand in a favourable stead. I will be frank. At present, we are totally powerless. We have tried setting up partitions all across the Cadence but the mergerment simply passes through them and continues its onslaught.

Atia:

I’m sure there are protocols for this. The original pioneer council will have left behind safeguards or something.

The Interlokutor:

The cadential founders set up the habitat so that no one individual could influence its structure. If the council still eksisted, yes, they could intervene. But they disbanded so as not to guide events in any way and to leave the Cadence to itself.

Atia:

We’re fucked by virtue of our autonomy. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?

The Interlokutor:

Crassly put, but yes. The mergerment recently consumed the partition artisan and all of his contained expertise. It now has the ability to eradicate any blockade whatsoever, including that between itself and Blue Tier.

Atia:

How much time is left?

The Interlokutor:

Unknown, hence why we are now turning this investigation temporarily away from Aiken’s writings and towards your infant.

Atia:

There really isn’t much I can help you with on that subject. She was as much as mystery to me as she is to you.

The Breacher:

This is unlikely.

Atia:

I don’t think you understand just
how
anomalous she was.

The Interlokutor:

Information has recently come to light regarding this matter. From Orange Tier’s archives we gained intimate knowledge of the infant’s birth. You told us that the artisan took selfsense material from yourself and one other, correct?

Atia:

I did.

The Interlokutor:

Are you aware from where the other material originated?

Atia:

I never asked.

The Interlokutor:

Tsliadin. We are sure of it.

Atia:

What?

The Interlokutor:

This is not speculative. We have the records to prove it.

Atia:

To begin with, where would the artisan get an image of Tsliadin’s selfsense?

The Interlokutor:

Despite Cadence decree they have been available on Yellow Tier for some time.

Atia:

And why would the artisan have any interest in doing something like that? To spite me?

The Interlokutor:

It is highly likely the artisan held allegiances with one of the many insidious Tsliadin resurrectionist groups and saw this as a rare opportunity to capitalise on an otherwise unsuspecting mother such as yourself.

Atia:

This is nonsense.

The Interlokutor:

I assure you it is anything but.

Atia:

The infant,
my
infant, is a half-incarnation of Tsliadin Tierkiller?

The Interlokutor:

That is the fact of the matter.

The Breacher:

She is genuinely surprised.

Atia:

Of course I’m
surprised
, you senseless idiot. This is madness. She was anomalous, not evil.

The Interlokutor:

There is a considerable swathe of evidence suggesting the same of Tsliadin.

Atia:

He was a monster.

The Interlokutor:

I’m surprised at your lack of historiks on the matter. He may have been anti-ningen but he certainly didn’t intend any harm against the Cadence. He was merely a passionate cohesionist. We managed to ascertain a few fragments of his selfsense from the moment of his execution. His thoughts were of the future of the Cadence and its preservation. Not the beast you were expecting?

Atia:

If he was anything short of pure evil, why obliterate an entire tier like that?

The Interlokutor:

An experiment gone awry. Tsliadin passionately believed that in forcing the tier’s selfsenses together, a kind of conscious unity would come about, much in the style of the mergerment now. Instead, the tier collapsed. He was not to know this and it was certainly not his intention to have that effect.

Atia:

He still sounds like a monster.

The Interlokutor:

Monster or not, your infant was partly driven by his intentions. His is, as the ningens would have had it, the father of your daughter.

Atia:

If I ever find the artisan I’ll terminate him where he stands.

The Interlokutor:

There are far more pressing issues facing us than revenge. Did you and your infant ever talk of cohesion and its consequences?

Atia:

Once. She was very excited about the idea. I think she believed it was a natural process.

The Interlokutor:

How so?

Atia:

A notion stolen from one of the philosophers in the thought forums. All life tends towards cohesion, apparently. The denizens of the Cadence will eventually cohere into a single super-organism of sorts. She believed it was inevitable.

The Interlokutor:

And you disagreed?

Atia: