Current location:	Saint Paul, MN
Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	U2 - If God Will Send His Angels

Short Story: Heart of Glass
Khayyim umm Kalim Abdurrashid. The name wasn’t exactly present in most households, wasn’t used to terrorize children into pulling up the covers or fearing the dark. Just another list of names to be placed next to slaughterers, butchers, conquerers of the world. In certain crowds, though, the name was an abomination, a disgusting sound, the height of bad taste. And, for the families of her victims, Abdurrashid was a name cursed to the ends of the Earth.

Which was probably why she left it.

But the carousels, which now numbered in the thousands, many of them populated ecospheres with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, some of them simply art installations, and others home to the noncoporeal quantum thinking machines, were not too far from Earth for the curses to at least echo there. And certainly not far enough for unwelcome visitors.

Carousels weren’t supposed to have weapons, according to some of the older conventions on weapons in space, but the rule was barely heeded, even by the most peace-loving civilian carousels. When the ship deployed its reflective and ablative shielding, Namires felt the relief of being right flood past him.

If no weapons had activated, if the carousel had instead let them come in and dock quietly, he would have been worried. It would have made him wonder if the carousel was dead, or if there were some nefarious, impassable defenses on the inside of the carousel. It wasn’t large—a simple cube with the normal docking points, sensor clusters and weapons blisters—but weapons these days could be the size of a fingernail and still be lethal.

The ship vibrated as a stream of projectiles got caught in the thick, glutinous ablative armor over the hull. Sensors showed a trail of the stuff behind him, some of it sublimating into gas as laser yields cut through. The reflective shielding undernearth would protect the ship, but he had heard stories of lasers hitting the one small fine crack in reflective armor, and cooking the occupants inside like an oven.

Finally the ship deployed docking clamps and righted itself perpendicularly over the hull. Retracting the clamps, it came to rest against the hull and began deploying various drilling tools and nanomachines to cut through the protective armor of the hull. Doing so without a breach in hull pressure was considered child’s play, some of the earliest tools humans had learned in space warfare.

So Namires and al-Gilira chatted.

“Do the outside plans seem to match what they gave us?” Namires said, playing with a long scratch along the index finger of his armored glove.

“I think so. Within normal margins. I think that there was a new cluster added to one side, the opposite side we’re on. It looked like it might be some sort of nanofactory, not sure.”

“Could just be a new room.”

Namires thought darkly that it could be a nursery. Would he kill Abdurrashid’s family and children? “Maybe. We’ll have to see once we get inside. You still think the defenses are going to be all weird and shit?” Yes, he would kill them.

Al-Gilira didn’t turn to look at him, and indicator of acceptable that Namires had been correct about the external defenses of the carousel. “If I were her, I think it’d be a brilliant idea to copy myself into a computer and fill the entire carousel with nerve gas. Visitors dock, breach the hull, inhale some V-45. Reorganize our organic matter into some weird sculpture.”

“The defenses were standard. I don’t know how much funding she had, or if she still has friends in the Emirate, but I doubt they’d want to be caught giving her cash.”

The Prophet’s Grand Emirate of the Saudi Arabia, Persia, and Egypt was the bankrupt, defunct superpower that had filled the power vacuum of the Middle East in the late 21st century. When the oil had run out, and the tourism idea had failed, the desert had reclaimed almost everything up to the sea. The few urban centers that remained became bloated with immigrants and refugees. Saudi Arabia had conquered the weakened city-states on the Persian Gulf and then had allied with Egypt and Iran to form the Grand Emirate, a theocracy directly opposing the West and its continued worldwide dominance. But religious ferver had abated quickly in the early 2300’s, when nanotechnology transformed the desert into fertile farmland, and desalination became easier than boiling water. Investment was still slow in the old Emirate, though—the West was very slow to forget old enmities.

“I don’t know what they were thinking, sending us in here. We’re pros and all, but this bitch has got something tricky going on. You don’t piss off the smartest people in the world and then go float up around them in orbit without some wild card.” Al-Gilira looked at him now.

He wasn’t scared—at least, he didn’t show it—but he was worried. That slight crease of the brow, the extra turn of the frown. Namires was worried too, but he was sure it would be sentries, laser traps, maybe some form of biological or chemical warfare. But their suits could defeat all but the most complicated weapon systems, and provide protection to a great degree even to them.

“We’re going to fuck her up. We’ll get the video and the DNA and leave her body or statis or primary core a smoking ruin. I’m here for the money, man, but because you’ve got some blood grudge against her, you’re giving her some power over you.”

Al-Gilira bridled. “She obliterated entires lines of my family. The millions of people she killed compares nothing to the billions of descendants she prevented from existing. She —”

Namires put on his helmet. The ship had successfully breached the hull and was maintaining the seal—it merely needed the command to kick the hull away and Namires and al-Gilira would be free to enter the carousel. “Stow it. She’s no witch. Just a lady who killed some folks who happened to be rich, who had some good ideas about the world. We’re going to be their executioner today, and walk away with some good money. That’s all there is.”

Al-Gilira placed the helmet over his head, and Namires had no chance to see whether he was grimacing, or furious, or just that shade of slightly-worried when he said, “We shall kill her.”


The suit provided Namires with a real-time, unimpeded view of the exterior of his suit. Nano-sized cameras were placed all over the skin of the suit, next to the plates of mirroring armor and gel-excretion points, or the weapons blisters and various other nodes. The suit itself was a deadly weapon, armed with rockets, lasers, projectiles and ten carbon monofilament whips. But, he had strapped his diamond katana to his back, and carried two plasma rifles at his waist, collapsed into their deactivated mode. A packet of grenades was wound around his right bicep and finally, the flat packet of antimatter along his left leg, to destroy the carousel if need be…or self-destruct the suit tech.

Namires and al-Gilira stood in the breach bay, which had room for at least 50 occupants in suits. The hull stood before them, the ship having unfolded around it, holding the weakened hull in place. The atmospheres between the ship and the carousel had not mingled, the seal still perfect.

“Kick it in, ship.” Namires said, and saw the final assemblages against the hull of carousel detach, then whip back and smack the hull. It went flying into the carousel, which was pitch black. Instantly the sensors in his suit felt the pressure drop, the atmosphere blow out. “There’s no air in there, it was depressurized.”

“Damn it.” Al-Gilira said. “I didn’t scan for a hull breach. Think someone else has got here, or it was intentional?”

“I dunno. Let’s go find out.” He launched a little light-mine straight into the breach, and saw it come and land on the opposite side of what looked to be a hallway, running parallel to the hull. He walked forward and entered the carousel, noticing that the hallway was actually an entirely interior space to the carousel—there seemed to be a double hull, the larger cube of the outer carousel cradling the inner. He steeled his inner ear against the reaction it would have at changing the vertical and climbed into the carousel.

There were only structural supports and some apertures that looked to be heat exchangers and standard life support structures. His suit began digesting information regarding this empty area, extending feelers of laser, radar, and radiation.

“Some organic content out here. Probably from when this place was built. I’ve never heard of a double-hulled carousel before, though.”

“Any idea where the entrance to the inner part is?” It was dark in here, with no indication in any direction of a door or a path systems of any kind.

Namires flipped over to a foam sprayer, a fast-catalysing material that would seal an area in seconds with a layer of concrete-like material. “No, but I’m not interested in waltzing around.”

With a small wall of foamcrete sprayed around them, he grabbed his plasma rifles and activated them, seeing aiming cursors, range information, and ammunition information pop up immediately. “Radar says there’s only a thin layer of hull sheeting and then nothing behind. We make an entrance, here.”


The explosion tore a gaping hole in the inner hull, and the vibration shook through the station. Molten metal splashed across their suits, bright red orbs in the microgravity.

“They know we’re here anyway.” Namires said, wondering if al-Gilira would see his shrug.

The hole they had blasted was into another large chamber, white and brightly lit. Climbing into the space, they saw that they were inside a zero-g hallway, designed to accommodate maximum usage of the walls and internal space: pipes lined the interior, next to storage spaces and electrical conduits, crammed next to heating, cooling, and lighting elements. His suit registered standard space air—high mix of oxygen, low nitrogen, no trace elements.

“I think I know where we are. The plans they gave us show we’re in the main service tunnel along this axis of the cube. There should be access to the main suite of rooms past a turn either left or right. Take your pick.”

Namires moved, his suit automatically re-sizing itself to the new space.

After about 100 yards the tunnel abruptly turned right, presumably along the face of the inner cube hull. Following that for some 50 yards led them to a point where radar finally detected a “door”—though it didn’t appear tha way outwardly. The wall was just as crammed with conduits, layers, and piping as any other surface, but Namires’ sensors told him otherwise.

“Pretty cheap camo. You’d think she could do better, like afford some acoustic dampening or something. Al-Galira placed the hand of his suit against the surface…and then it jerked back with unnatural speed. “Wait —”

The hand he had placed against the wall was withering away, a sudden cloud of dust springing into the air of the station—nanomachines were rabidly attacking the matter of his suit, and the suit’s own limited nanotech wasn’t able to compete. The machines were beginning to burrow past the armor, reproducing like mad. Namires’ own sensors had linked into al-Galira’s suit and were monitoring its losing progress.

“Namires—do something!”

Namires reached for what he had been taught to reach for—his katana.

“I mean plug your suit into this and use your nanotech to—”

But he was already positioning the katana over his head.


Al-Galiri was on the floor, his heavy breathing coming through the suit. He was trying to calm down, run himself through his trained regimen of stress relief—calming himself so he wouldn’t pass out. The suit was doing its best to keep him from suffocating himself—primarily by keeping the damaged forearm of the suit out of his view and filtering his atmosphere.

Namires kicked the severed hand down the hall. “Damn nanos. Be glad you were wearing a suit. I’ve seen these things devour even bone in a matter of seconds.”

“You could’ve warned me.”

“You mean I could’ve waited till it got up to your shoulder? Calm down man, we need to cipher this door.”

Namires was examing the door. The camouflage of the standard hallway had been disippated somewhat by the amount of nanotechnology it had pushed onto al-Gilira’s suit: there were strange tears in the fake conduit, points where the piping seemed translucent. The only way to break through enemy nanomachinery was either to use plasma at temperatures that would incinerate the bacteria-sized machines, use other nanomachinery that subsumed their matter faster, or use high-powered magnets to blast through their miniature systems and deactivate them.

Namires yearned to whip out the plasma cannons again but knew that they were neither hot enough nor effective enough in such a confined space. Instead he began to augment the suit’s magnetic system, the shielding placed at intervals in the suit to protect him from enemy nanomachinery. “I’m going to need to link into your suit, if I want to kill most of them.”

Al-Galira nodded and slowly stood up, and Namires felt an illusion of him swaying where he stood, though the suit was stock-still. “Charging, about 30% there.” When the status his 100%, there was a brief crackle in his suit’s speakers and then, suddenly, the wall gooped away, detaching from the wall. As it fell, the constituent, micro-machines that had helt it together turned into dusty slurry. Clumps moved about in strange shapes, trying to reasses their original programming before breaking apart.

Waving his hands through the dust, Namires focused his attention on what had been behind the vicious camouflage: a flat grey wall and a circular oculus at the center. Shining a light on it, he saw a small inscription over what seemed to be a small sensor cluster.

ONLY THOSE WHO STAND RIGHTEOUS
WITH ALLAH AND HIS SERVANT
MAY PASS WITHIN

Namires looked over at al-Galira, still panting in his suit. “What do you think that means? I think it means I need to blast through this thing.”

But al-Galira shook his head and looked at the door. He started speaking in Arabic, his suit stutteringly translating it: “She was righteous in the destruction of the heathen.” He looked over at Namires. “It’s better than a DNA test or a password. You simply need to say that what she did, murdering thousands, was correct.”

The oculus didn’t change status and the inscription didn’t change, but suddenly a circular seam appeared about the wall and opened back into a room.


The room was almost funereal in its stillness. There wasn’t even the sound of ventilation. The lighting had been dimmed, to bring focus on where the light was brightest: shining down on a low table, or altar, at the end of the room. A black cloth was draped over it, shrounding the form of a human body. For the first time Namires began to truly doubt if he would get the cash his benefactors had promised him.

“What do you think? Think she’s dead?” but al-Galiri didn’t respond, only began to cross to the altar at the other end of the table.

Namires hesitated. “We could just blast whatever that is from here. Grab the DNA sample and hightail it back planetside.”

“She’s alive.” Al-Galira called. “It’s a burqa.”

Namires approached the altar with its black cloth, absorbing the light of the spotlights shining down on it. Looking more closely at it, he saw a small gap over the bulge of the head at one end, revealing the bridge of a nose and two valleys were eyes rested. But there was something wrong with them—maybe a trick of the light—but the person seemed incredibly pale, almost translucent…

The eyes opened, already looking in their direction. Namires swore and was glad the suit didn’t show his jumpiness.

“Well, get it over with.”

Al-Galira spoke first. “Are you Khayyim umm Kalim Abdur—”

“Of course I am. Here to extract vengeance? Is it librarians or children or nature this time?”

“We come in the name of the Kerguelen Librarian’s Colony, to avenge –”

But she rolled her eyes. “Vengeance doesn’t really go far with me and prepared speeches even less so.”

“You butchered thousands. You destroyed some of the most important artifacts of human history. And you destroyed them without effect, without any useful purpose. Only to gain more fools to your cause, more meat. It’s disgusting. You are an abomination in Allah’s eyes, a witch to be burned!”

Namires watched quietly. He had never seen al-Galira in this state, and had never asked if the man was undertaking this assassination for purely mercenary purposes or for reason of his own vengeance. But Namires noticed that when Abdurrashid spoke, the mouth did not move. The eyes kept flicking back to him, though, perhaps trying to read through the impenetrable helmet visors.

“Some 35,000 people, in one merciful instant. I imagine they all boiled away in a flash of heat and light. My artwork is imposed on the crust of the earth, in the waters, in the trace elements I blasted into the atmosphere. You think I am cruel, no?”

Al-Galira started to say something, but Namires spoke over him. “Our understanding of cruelty is not done by comparison. Regardless of your crimes, we’ve come here to end you, whether or not this is justice or vengeance.”

The eyes moved back to him. “Less impulsive than him, yes, a bit more mature. I don’t understand why you didn’t just destroy the entire carousel—the penalties would’ve been severe, yes, but hardly justifying the possible losses of working through my fortress.” She looked at al-Galira’s severed arm. “Allah takes, and Allah gives…”

There was no movement in the suit but Namires could almost feel the anger emanating from al-Galira. Abdurrashid continued: “But I suppose you need a DNA sample, something to bring back to your employers or government. I am curious if I’ll make the planetside news—I don’t have many fans on my side of the aisle these days, but I’m still all the rage. Maybe I will, yes?”

“What’s so important about you making the news? You’ve been locked up here for how many years? I doubt you’ll get an entry on a back obituary site.”

“Oh, but there are plenty of people who would be interested in my death. Your methods, for example; and also for the perverse pleasure of it. Mercenaries hired by pacifist scientists murder the very woman that annihilated their experimental colony, built to accumulate the knowledge of Shaitan himself. I deserve nothing less than a martyr’s death, something spectacular.”

Namires suddenly began to worry. Why the talking? Why no further defenses? Was she stalling or perhaps toying with them?

Al-Galira found his chance to talk. “You think these humans were the servants of Shaitan. But there were devout believers there, other Muslim who were trying to save our dying culture rather than use it to inflame the ignorant and the poor. You convinced our people to bring themselves to the slaughter.”

Laughter, high and musical; the eyes never left al-Galira’s helmet. “You think that I’m some evil villain, and you some avenging angel. We’ll see who gets covered in blood at the end of this episode.” Again, that feeling of wrongness for Namires. “If you were truly a devout Muslim then you would agree with me. If you were a devout anything, you’d agree with me. Humans are dying, turning into some form of nano-machined, techno-dreamed monster. Time was when wars were fought for principle, not for entertainment. When weapons couldn’t wipe out entire landmasses.”

“You talk as though you feel your hand was forced?” Namires said.

“Yes, it was. If I hadn’t risen to fight the immortal heathens someone else would have. Perhaps someone less effective, less willing to fight the hard fight, the good fight. I may have lost, but I sent my people out in flames of glory.”

“To the victor go the spoils. I don’t think history will record you that way.”

“I don’t care about history, I care about Allah. I care about His judgement. You are espanol, no? I hear it in your voice. Do you believe in the Catholic god?”

“No, I do not.”

“Ahh, but you do.” The eyes sparkled with mirth, almost like she was talking to a nephew or grandson. “You do. Your family did when you were growing up, doubtless, praying to your icons and idols and statues of the blessed Mary, the inviolate whore. Of all the worlds prostitutes she has certainly collected the most, and never once lost her chastity!” Laughter again.

Namires was unmoved. “I truly do not believe in God, Allah or Mary. My beliefs are, perhaps, insubstantial to both yours, especially in contrast to your actions. But that won’t prevent me from killing you.”

The eyes flashed. “Do not blaspheme. But, nonetheless, you are correct—it will not prevent you from killing me.”

Namires suddenly understood. There was something else here, some other defense that made her play her cards so loosely, insult al-Galira so freely. He moved forward, grabbed the burqa, and yanked it off the altar. The light was suddenly thrown about the room in dazzling shards, reflecting off the walls with bright rainbow colors. The suit compensated after that first moment of shining brilliance.

Al-Galira reflexively brought his hand up to shield his suit, muttering “La'anatullah...”

Abdurrashid was completely clear. Namires could see right through her.


“What have you done to yourself?” Namires asked in part-wonder, part-horror.

“I would ask that you return the burqa to me. It is impious that you should look on my unclothed body.” The eyes rolled in their crystal sockets to look at Namires, still clutching the long black cloth. But Namires dropped it; he could see the fine red lines of optic nerves arching back into a red mass of brain matter.

Namires thought, her face is most frightening. Look at it. Her eyes were the only moving parts, the glass face having no mouth, or holes for nose, no eyebrows. A sort of texturing covered the crown and side of her head, approximating a hairline. Thin, distorted tubules moved both blood and other liquids from her brain and

Namires was horrified at the image before him. Almost the words Madre de Dios escaped him—he stopped himself and started running whatever form of passive scanning he could. Why would anyone want to turn themselves into—

A sigh played, clearly coming from some speakers either in the altar or walls. “You possess no weapon that could harm me. You’re welcome to gouge my eyes out, but trust me, they can be regrown fairly quickly. I could even afford to buy some of the synthetic optical sensors they have these days…I’m the exact sort of clientele they are looking for.”

She continued: “You think that me sitting in this carousel was an escape. It was a respite. I needed the technologies that the immortals had to continue my work, to truly become a servant of Allah, his avatar on this Earth. Just as Allah made the indestructible precious gems, the diamonds—”

Diamond!? Namires was shocked. Her skin, her entire outer body, was made of pure diamond. Linked together in cunning folds and flaps, buckles and connectors, her skin was truly impervious to all the weapons they had brought with. They could conceivably destroy the entire carousel and she would be free to float in space, to fall to Earth. Did she even need to breathe?!

“—so too has he made me this way. Allah works in ways beyond your comprehension, heathen. You are welcome to destroy my carousel. My work here is done.”

And the monstrosity sat up, and raised a hidden gun at al-Galira.


Namires rounded the corner out of the room, hearing al-Galira’s bulky, dead weight thump against the walls and floor behind him. Whatever she had done to him, it had ripped through his suit and gone straight through the wall behind him. Diamond projectiles, too? Namires felt along his back for the katana. A diamond katana against diamond skin. Could it truly work?

Abdurrashid’s voice boomed throughout the carousel now. “I could have killed you first, you know, but I figured that the heretic’s death outweighed the murder of a simple heathen. I do work through comparison, you see.” Namires grabbed the two plasma rifles at his waist and watched them extend and unfold into their combat-readiness state. They would have no effet on her body, but he could blind her…she herself had suggested it.

“Do you want to live? I can pay you more than your current employer. You’re heart’s not in this. Do you maybe even feel a slight agreement with me?”

“Talk’s cheap.” Namires said, pushing against the wall behind him and floating up alongside the door. He levelled his guns to point into the room—

—but Abdurrashid had closed the distance to the door already, had maybe even been peeking at him around the edge of the door. One hand slapped a rifle out of the way, the other punched the center of his chest. He went flying along the hall, smacking the far wall. The suit quickly reoriented him, hydrazine spraying against the ceiling and floor. He leveled the guns at her and fired.

For a second, he saw that outside the light, she was simply clear, not shining. Various small machines, plastic or some translucent metal, filled her innards. No lungs, no liver, not intestine. But, through a sense of irony or shock, she had placed small, shapely crystalline breasts on her chestplate. When the plasma struck her, it wreathed about her midriff and her arms.

She looked at her own glass hands, flowing with sparks. “I feel nothing. Much as I did when I was alive, fool.” She raised her other hand, a gun with a wide-open ending. Some sort of flechette weapon, he thought, and then she fired.

But the trick may have worked once, before the suit had witnessed the work of the gun. He immediately felt a powerful whirr in his suit, a vibration as the ablative gel packs squeezed out as much protection as it could. Damage information was still coming from al-Galira’s suit, and even though Namires felt a thump and lost his breath as the suit tried to compensate, his suit registered no loss of integrity, no serious damage.

He dropped the plasma rifles and then leveled both of his hands at Abdurrashid, two small gatling guns popping out of his forearms. They would devastate unarmored infantry, and could potentially keep another suit busy, but woudn’t cause any significant damage to diamond. Abdurrashid, not being held down by anything other than her crystal feet, cast aside her weapon and steadied herself, the eyes roving for something to grasp. If she could get only get within arm’s reach of him…

Namires fired, a stream of bullets arcing out and instantly striking Abdurrashid. Light flared and smoke filled the hallway—she as thrown back down the hall, striking the far end. Namires continued to fire, activating a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher and firing a small ordinance at her. The rocket streaked down the hall and struck her right on the belly, the smoke and explosion blowing a hole through the back end, into the outer hull. Namires jumped and flew down the corridor, still firing the gatling guns.

He landed on the outer hull, his suit illuminating a small patch around him, his gatlings glowing cherry red. Debris and dust, a small fire and random gas filled the outer hull now. Small holes peeked through the outer hull where small shards of matter from his weapons had streaked out.

And then Abdurrashid was on his back, no longer translucent but scarred black. He heard some strange echoes in the thin air, her speakers no longer functioning in the outer hull—and then his suit started to protest, hearing a thunk of metal and then feeling increased pressure the left side of his head. His readouts began to flicker. She was crushing his helmet. The katana was still along his back, but he wasn’t sure it would work.

The suit began to filter out her voice, muffled in the thin atmosphere: “If you destroy this carousel, you put in danger the lives of millions in orbit, and some planetside. The debris and dust generated by the destruction of this place will cause untold suffering. You do this for money, not for faith or hope or tradition. You are a fool. I will take your hea—”

Namires thought it would be suicide but detonated the packet of grendares on his arm. The suit immediately shut down, two frames reaching his visual center before it died: a wave of light, and then static, then nothing. His right arm immediately went numb, and he felt himself slowly spinning. Then a thump. He froze.

The suit kicked back on, and it ran through his immediate diagnostic setup. His right arm had been blown away, telemetry reading it was about 500 yards away, then it blipped off his sensor range. The entire right side of the suit was severely damaged, and his right leg only moved with exertion. He looked over to Abdurrashid.

She was embedded in the inner hull, her legs having punctured the metal to about her mid-hip. She was trying to reach down, grab her legs to pull them out, but she was too stiff—she looked up at Namires. Her eyes were gone. They must have been purely ornamental, like the tear tattoos the Familia had on their faces. But she could still see him.

He undid the diamond katana from his back, instead of raising it above his head, angled it from a low point, turning on the last of his power to hydraulics and metamuscles. He aimed right underneath the breastplace, hoping to pin the sword straight through her artificial heart.

Her head cocked. The suit began to translate from the muffled sound again. “You know, I was paid to kill the librarians. I’m a mercenary too. My fee comes in minutes, in the afterlife, when Allah meets me, my husband at his side. And you will be paid, in a short while as well, I suspect. How long will it last you? Will it make you immortal? Will it permit you to escape Allah in the end, or Shaitain? Or to forget the death of humanity?”

Namires knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him, wouldn’t know his last words to her. “It’ll help me forget the death of al-Galira.”


Another name, in the long list of butchers butchered, by either paid killers or their freed slaves. Khayyim umm Kalim Abdurrashid’s death faced the same problems her birth on the world stage suffered—she made headlines, but who paid attention to headlines anyway? Namires wasn’t mentioned, nor was al-Galira. His employers paid well.

Namires sat on a beach in the Pacific, sipping a drink with real tequila, the name al-Galira rolling on his tongue next to the liquor. It was hard to say what he felt—maybe angry at al-Galira’s impulsiveness, or horror at the way Abdurrashid had simply stopped moving, turning instantly into a diamond statue, or perhaps indignation at how dirty the operation had become. His flexed and moved his right hand, knowing that those moments of shock and pain when the suit had come off felt more alien than the new arm his employers had grown him.

Was Kerguelen avenged? Was al-Galira avenged? Was justice done upon Abdurrashid? Did that make him some instrument of justice, of peacekeeping, of hope for the masses?

He remembered the inscription on the door to Abdurrashid’s chamber, how one needed to express the meaning of agreeing with her holocaust to enter. How al-Galira said it was more extracting, more paining, than any password or code. Al-Galira had spoken the password, and Namires had killed the abomination. Al-Galira had died, and Namires lost his right arm. Sometimes surviving, Namires thought coolly, means bringing their losses with you. Or maybe it means sealing them, finishing them off?

He looked up, in broad daylight, at the glittering lines of the carousels, shining in low orbit. The wind whispered and the sea sighed, but the carousels seemed to be the emitters of the silence in between, looking down on the blue marble with godlike inquiry. The money probably wouldn’t last long enough to continue this line of inquiry without answer.