OPERATRIX TRIUMPHANS
Susan R. Matthews
Much has been forgotten. Little is understood. On the colony world of Eightend, all that is not crucial to the survival of the cartels has been cast aside. Necessity is the rule of law. But for the sword dancer Yusaravan, the lost knowledge of the ancients may be the only thing separating her people from annihilation....
Yarbgardonry, Opterics, Delep Wartor. Ommastro, Obroniast, Eschapintor.
The chant had nothing directly to do with Yusaravan’s presence in the transport cage that connected the huge underground cisterns beneath Sidarfels Station to the surface. Untold centuries those water-caves had survived, a natural reservoir of pure sweet water collected over an unknown span of time from the Sidarfels River—the largest in all of planet Eightend’s largest continent—when it was in spate.
The chant was almost as old as the people of Eightend’s presence here, though it was important now for reasons other than its listing of arcane sciences. Nobody cared about things that had no practical application. The ancient, almost incomprehensible, apparently irrelevant knowledge was buried in libraries in formats that few people knew how to read. There were too few teachers, for a start. The world of Eightend had never enjoyed a great material prosperity. No resources could be spared from practical applications to fund antiquarian studies until food crop productivity improved.
“Been down here before, Yusaravan?” Eversand asked, beside her. The transport cage creaked and shuddered, and made Yusaravan nervous. Eversand clearly knew that. Eversand was always watching for points of weakness of which she could take advantage. Yusaravan didn’t think Eversand was a spiteful or malicious person; but Eversand was one of the most competitive people Yusaravan had ever met.
Yusaravan didn’t like competitive people, and anyone surnamed Beach Dunes—like Eversand Beach Dunes—was almost always a member of one of the other cartels, all four of them, that governed their world. Each of them competing with the others for advantage. Eversand clearly knew that Exercitus, Beach Dunes’s patron, had its best chance yet of taking Sidarfels away from the Granary Cartel into which Yusaravan had been born.
Eversand wasn’t offensive about it, but she clearly felt that the transfer was as good as done. Yusaravan reluctantly agreed. “No, it’s my first time.”
Yusaravan was here in the lift going down to the cisterns because newly promoted fencing team captains went to the head of the roster. Eversand was here because she was the captain of Sidarfels’ entire fencing program, recognized as formidable and dominant in the worldwide rankings. She probably expected to stay on at Sidarfels Station, in an expanded management role—with a juicy increase in salary. Yusaravan stated the obvious. “I think you know that, Eversand.”
Eversand called Yusaravan by her personal name, rather than more formally by her family—Ringwall, upstream from the Sidarfels River in the mountains. Yusaravan was junior to Eversand. By rights Yusaravan should call Eversand “Beach Dunes,” it was more polite, it was a daily affirmation of Eversand’s rank; and because of all of those things Yusaravan had just violated protocol. For the first and last time.
“I’ll never forget my first trip down,” Eversand said, musingly. “The lift feels like it’s going to shake right apart, doesn’t it? Hasn’t, though, fortunately. Yet.”
That was either a bit of kindly reassurance or a subtle reminder of how long Eversand had had unlimited rights of access, because of how long she’d been the best fencer of one of the best teams. It could also easily have been both. Yusaravan didn’t think she cared either way.
As the transport cage descended—how far below the surface were they, now?—the lights that illuminated the black rock shore, that traced the long pier across the water to the tally-pole, brightened to full gleaming globes of brilliant blue.
Svarteshavpurnam, Delboblurry. Pariemitics, Chaldroncury.
The shore was stunningly beautiful, the rocks glittering in answering shades of blue as the lights brightened, their increasingly intense shining seeming to spread out like ripples in an otherwise still pool of bioluminescence. Yusaravan couldn’t help but wonder what purpose bioluminescence served life that never saw the light of day, here in these dark silent caverns. There’d been studies of Sidarfels’ cisterns, once, but nothing new for many, many years. Generations. Maybe millennia.
“Yes, it’s magical down here, isn’t it?” Eversand said, though Yusaravan hadn’t spoken. Eversand had to drop her voice; the official guests were talking, dignitaries from each cartel come to complete the formalities of transferring Sidarfels out of Granary resources and into Exercitus.
Yusaravan had paid little attention to the details. They were simple enough; most of the people would stay in place, but they’d become an instant underclass, enjoying less income, fewer consumer goods, lower wages. They’d find themselves guest workers on their own land, places where Sidarfels’ people had worked with the river for the common good of all—including the river itself—for as long as there had been here people here, on Eightend. It was depressing.
“And look.” Eversand pointed, her voice just loud enough to escape calling attention to itself the way a whisper would. “There’s the column. You can see the problem from here.”
The marker that had kept Granary firmly in possession of Sidarfels, the marker whose silent report had doomed them to be bereft of Sidarfels now, was a tall column of polished black rock rising from the waters to ascend into black obscurity above. The cave-lights caught against the incised bands of inlaid gold and made the awful evidence impossible to ignore.
Yusaravan could hear Sidarfels’ senior administrator briefing the cartels’ representatives, a part of the ritual. The cartels’ reps were sure to have studied this before, it was so simple and so damning. It had saved Sidarfels for Granary, before. Now it was taking Sidarfels away, to the ruination of them all—including, as before, the river itself.
“Yes,” Administrator Jaxon, Sidarfels’ senior officer, was saying. “All in the records, as I think you’ll find. We’d been maintaining a decent balance well enough until quite recently, but there’s been increasing difficulties with illegal diversion.”
Eversand, sublimely confident by the looks of things in the support of the cartel to which she belonged, gave not the slightest hint of a reaction. Eversand knew who it was that had been stealing from the Sidarfels watershed. Everybody did, though Sidarfels had been unable to prove it. It was all history now anyway. Who cared?
Yusaravan did. Every family in Sidarfels did. And more than that, how could it be their fault that the rains had failed, the snowpack had shrunk, that the glaciers were melting away more and more quickly every year? Had it ever happened before? Yet whether people cared was not material.
“So there’s the place we like to be. It’s called the reliable surplus marker,” Station Administrator Jaxon said, pointing. The gold band that encircled the index pillar seemed fully a quarter of the way from the water to the darkness above. “We started falling from there almost two hundred years ago. Five years of drought did it to us, that time. You can read the rest as well as I can.”
And Jaxon was too depressed to want to go on, Yusaravan knew, although Jaxon was still the professional administrator who’d fought to preserve Sidarfels’ autonomy as few others could have done.
That was what they’d said to the more than five hundred people who made Sidarfels Station their home. Jaxon had done her best, which was better than most, but when everything Jaxon had tried had failed Jaxon had—reluctantly—accepted the inevitable, as they’d all been forced to do.
“Your records show the level below the mark at the last Great Reckoning, Administrator Jaxon? Sixty-four years ago?” That was the Neverice Cartel’s representative, but she spoke for Exercitus by proxy. Cat’s-paw. “And, furthermore, that the cistern depletion may even be speeding up. I don’t think the facts are in question.”
Neverice’s representative spoke respectfully and truthfully. It didn’t help, in Yusaravan’s opinion. Not really. Administrator Jaxon lifted her hands with flattened palms off the old tubular passenger railings, then set them back down with so subtle an and still you really should reconsider or I don’t want to discuss it gesture that Yusaravan wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it.
“It is what it is, after all, Neverice,” Jaxon said. Svarteshavpurnam, Delboblurry. Pariemitics, Chaldroncury. “The standards must be consistently and equitably applied. That’s all there is to it. The Board of Cartels has been generous. No complaints. But we’re consistently down, and falling faster all the time. It’ll take years to make up, even if the weather recovers. Longer, if it doesn’t. We need fresh eyes with new solutions.”
After a moment—during which Neverice made what was clear to Yusaravan was a show of struggling with herself, with the facts—Neverice nodded, her face turned down and away from Granary Cartel’s representative. “We’ve seen enough, I think,” Neverice’s representative said. “Thank you, Administrator Jaxon. Yes. Let’s go.”
Granary Cartel had its own representative here, and she nodded her head as well, with obvious reluctance. It was the end of the world for Sidarfels. Nobody was expected to like it; even Exercitus stood solemn and silent, projecting sympathetic regret. Totally false, Yusaravan was sure. If Granary had been Exercitus, who was to say whether Granary wouldn’t secretly exult, to have so rich a resource as Sidarfels come into their purview?
Worldwinds Cartel’s representative chose to gaze into the darkness beyond the column—Worldwinds and Exercitus had never worked well together. Finally Ocean Cartel said, “Yes,” and the ceremonial transfer was as good as done. There was a standard format for the details and the dates; it was already drawn up, waiting only to be countersigned to become official as accomplished fact.
“Thank you, Granary, for your tireless stewardship.” It was up to Exercitus’ representative to take the lead voice, now, as the acknowledged manager-in-fact of the Sidarfels watershed. “We hope to learn from your knowledge, and your experience. Nobody could have done better. This isn’t your fault.”
That it wasn’t Granary’s fault wouldn’t save Sidarfels now.
The great tower of Sidarfels Station would continue to rest where it had landed, at the end—at last—of the Great Migration. Much more recently than that Granary had held Sidarfels for two hundred years, learning how to manage the gifts of rain and meltwater throughout Sidarfels’ watershed communities, Lifespring, Wellershoal, Kazeraye, Grand Delta. In all of that time the mountains had yielded a rich harvest of winter ice, snowmelt, glaciation—but not anymore.
Exercitus’ thefts were not the root cause of the problem. There just wasn’t enough water coming down from the clouds and the treasure houses of the glacial ice. Who knew whether the water would come back in time to save the rich harvest of grain and fruit and all the good things that grew in Sidarfels’ fertile soil?
The fact remained that it would be sixty-four years to the next Grand Reckoning. That was more than enough time for Exercitus to plunder Sidarfels, depriving Granary of a resource that was key to its prosperity.
With Exercitus Cartel in charge of the distribution of Sidarfels’ water—at an increased price—the people of the watershed would have next to nothing left to sell but labor. And that at a bargain price, because they were by no means the only convention, reach, commons being pushed inexorably to the outskirts of rich and privileged and powerful polities.
It was unjust, it was unfair, it was just business. That was Exercitus. “Yes, thank you, Jaxon,” Exercitus’ representative said. “Let’s go.”
Yusaravan was as ready as any of them to return to the surface, glad as she was to have had the chance to see the unforgiving evidence for herself. Now she needed to get back to work on her fencing demonstration. The closing ceremonies for this review-and-decision procedure featured fencing demonstrations mounted by Sidarfels’ famous program—probably the only thing, Yusaravan thought bitterly, that Exercitus would continue to nourish, as a prestige item.
Creatigenis, Peaternians. Lignihistria, Ackusicheros.
The cadence of her “free-form,” the original performance she was to present as a final validation of her recent promotion within the program, was expected to put people irresistibly in mind of a commonly recognizable piece of music.
For her practice runs Yusaravan used out-of-the-way places such the greenbelt along the riverside on the station’s expansive grounds and unused maintenance corridors, to work on her performance; because cheating for advantage, lying, stealing, and plagiarism were things as unchanging as the station-towers.
If a rival—Exercitus, for instance—could get an advance hint of what musical reference Yusaravan would be using, they could unpick the knots of the melody to harvest a great deal of information about the timing, the length, even what standard fencing sequences she was likely to bring into play. And then use their own free-form to invoke the same strain as if it had been their original idea all the time.
The tradition of fencing with its special sword, one that ended with a squared-off and unsharpened crown rather than coming to a point, had slowly developed over time. In contrast, peoples’ interest and investment in some of the courses of study that they’d carried with them in the Great Migration had steadily deteriorated.
Over the years people lost interest in knowledge not of active use, since educational resources cost money and apparently obsolete technologies could always, it was argued, be recovered from obscure records as it was needed. Later.
Exactly what had powered the towers as spacecraft was no longer completely comprehended, but they weren’t going anywhere, were they? The details on how the pioneers who’d come to Eightend had controlled those rockets had similarly faded into obscurity. Only a few persistent phrases remained, preserved in speculative literature. Plasma-core rocket. Asteroid-harvested water. Passenger-protective shielding. Colony ship.
Hotiseellery Joybuoyrady Zhobeproneas.
Even as fencing societies flourished in the open, however, secret societies sought the ancient learning for diversion as well as advantage, and Sidarfels had had members of the Thikologia society—water tables, aquifers, rivers, rain—above all others. Yusaravan hadn’t gone Thikologian. Yusaravan had gone Operatrix, instead, because that was where some promising solutions to the last great unsolved puzzles were aggressively pursued.
The secret societies had been pursuing arcane inquiries for years, each answer leading to more questions after questions after questions. How did one start a tower into the sky? What had become of the structural elements that had surely been in place when the towers were brought down—stabilizer elements, external fuel tanks? Mass cargo containment? How could an object of such size, mass, and dimension have been brought down to the surface in an upright orientation at all?
Where had fuel been stored, or was it still hidden away within the towers somewhere like a still-compressed cloud of poisonous death; how did one interact with an immense engine more than two thousand years old?
Yusaravan had memorized each long-sleeping receptor in the fabric of the tower’s uppermost reaches, the superstructure, where once long ago—so the ancient lore claimed—there’d been a beautiful, bright command center to monitor all systems as the immense structure settled, so slowly, so carefully, to earth and came to rest there.
If there was fuel, if it was poisoned and came to escape, Sidarfels would be of no use to anybody and no cartel would interfere with it ever again. If there was no fuel, Sidarfels Station might still hold other priceless treasure. To get at it, they had to ask the machine, so they had to use its language, and it wasn’t listening to them. To get its attention they had to shake it awake.
And to do that they had to synthesize every scrap of information they could find on how to rouse a rocket that had come to land once in its life, never again, and gone to sleep forever after that.
No one had ever done that, because what would happen if they did? No one knew. But the tower of Sidarfels, like all of the rockets of all the other such stations on Eightend, had once come from some unimaginable distance and safely to ground. That meant power beyond imagining.
The lift rose through echoing chambers, through tubelike columns of dead air that seemed to go on forever, past the long-sleeping bands of stone and sediment and silt compressed into stone with its knowledge silent and unsought until it came up into Sidarfels’ maintenance tunnels with its familiar architecture and reassuring lights once more. Yusaravan was home; not really here for very much longer, but she would always know Sidarfels better than even Eversand, and that would have to do.
Eversand Beach Dunes’s people from the Exercitus Cartel were so sure they would take Sidarfels that they were all but measuring the floor plans of the tower for reallocation of lodging. Not so unreasonable an action to take, perhaps, if a little premature; but it did encourage a daughter of Sidarfels to get away from Sidarfels Center while she could, and dance her fencing routine in the open air.
Yusaravan knew that the Exercitus Cartel might cut down the quick-springing Trevalyn tremblers for their silver-and-black bark. That would be a permanent loss: the tremblers were slowly dying back all along the banks of the Sidarfels River, new growth sparser and sparser year by year. Still the trees would live forever, in memory if not in fact.
“Ink galls setting up well,” Yusaravan’s friend Flander said, pointing. Her friend and her controller; the woman responsible for teaching her the Forbidden Sequence. “There’ll be a good harvest. Plenty of ink for sale. So long as we can get to it before those Exercitus people push in.”
Yes, there were oak galls, or near enough. No actual oaks grew in Sidarfels, not the ones from the ancient taxonomies. But when a tree looked like an oak, leafed out like an oak, smelled like an oak in the cold autumn rain, a person might as well call it an oak. The first settlers here on Eightend had done just that.
So. Oak galls, to which Flander was pointing. These particular oak galls were tiny receptor chips, distributed throughout the edges and outliers of the clearing, one among the 184 in total. The number of target sensors in the dome of Sidarfels’ tower. Simulations, for Yusaravan to practice with.
Fencing meant shining a beam of light on a receptor embedded in the inner surface of the dome. To do that a fencer had to work in sequence to progress through a program that was only handed to the reviewers as the piece started. From there a fencer would describe an emotional state, or a poem or a song, by invoking a pattern that people would recognize in telltales from the receptors.
The bout was won when a fencer got through her entire program without making a single mistake in the disclosed map. It was more and more of a challenge as the program increased in complexity, because there were 184 sensors, each could be used more than once, and if a fencer hit one of them out of the disclosed order she had to go back to the beginning of her routine and start again.
“You are an arrogant piece of leaf-mold,” Yusaravan hissed suddenly, her voice as full of venom as she could make it. She shoved Flander, hard, and nearly overset her; but—as all of Sidarfels Station would know—Flander was not a person to accept provocation.
Recovering her balance Flander came up from a beautifully dynamic crouch with her fencing sword in hand. They had to keep a degree of distance from each other. Otherwise Exercitus—and others—could easily guess there was an unspoken reason for two people with so many differences between to share an unstated common interest. Secret societies didn’t stay secret without a good-faith effort.
Yusaravan wasn’t meant to like Flander, and words spoken low-voiced could be made to present hostility, so that Yusaravan could keep the conversation going.
“Say that again and mean it,” Flander snarled. “How dare you. You second-tier pretender. I outrank you, Yusaravan, and I’ll have you on your knees or I’ll report you to the team captain, then that’ll be the end of that, won’t it?”
“Are you quite sure they’re all the correct positions, please, Flander?” Yusaravan sneered, covering her hopeful question with a poisonous overlay of contempt by way of camouflage. All of them camouflaged, all concealed, including those of the Forbidden Sequence. That was the set no one was supposed to know about, the set that could be taught but never written down, never documented. “I can come out tomorrow?”
The fencing swords were of an ancient pattern, something like the old pictures of executioners’ swords that were missing the final third of their blade. Flander struck Yusaravan across the face with hers, drawing blood down the sharpened blade from Yusaravan’s forehead at the slant the length of Yusaravan’s cheek. Yusaravan yelped, her shout evolving from genuine pain and surprise into apparent fury as she reacted to Flander’s assault.
“I’m in charge of that,” Flander hissed. “Now listen. Some of Exercitus’ people have been up in the dome, cleaning out the sensors. There’s no hint why but take careful note, be alert. Come on, Yusaravan, make it look good, I think Eversand is spying on us.”
Not spying, no, how could Eversand be spying on them? There was nothing to see, just teammates working off a little aggression under the stress of their important role to play in closing ceremonies. And yet Eversand was bright, and clever, and genuinely the best fencer on Sidarfels Station. It didn’t do to underestimate her.
That meant Yusaravan’s practice would have to be curtailed, that Yusaravan didn’t dare risk a fully integrated rehearsal of her solo presentation. No chance flash of any reflected sunlight from the highly polished channel of Yusaravan’s fencing sword could be allowed to catch Eversand’s eye and start her thinking about anything but footwork.
Flander struck Yusaravan again, across her face, with the back of her gloved hand. Yusaravan wiped her mouth, glaring after Flander with resentment. Turning her back with transparent scorn, Yusaravan started to dance her practice sets.
Boddifrieze. Bellosculics Calchotriatrix.
Eversand seemed to lose interest, turning away to skirt the oak-tree clearing. Problem narrowly averted, Yusaravan told herself, and focused on seeing the map of the Forbidden Sequence in her mind as she danced her free-form presentation.
And now here they were: Yusaravan; Geoffin, who was Yusaravan’s backup in case of accidents; and the dignitaries who represented all five cartels—including Sidarfels’ parent, Granary—sitting in the reviewing box beneath the open latticework floor of the dome above, where they could get a good view.
Yusaravan could feel Eversand’s eyes on the back of her neck; taking her measure, perhaps, evaluating what progress Yusaravan might have made in her fencing since she’d been promoted to third form. Let Eversand do her best to set me off balance, Yusaravan told herself, sensing the building excitement within her, the joy of battle.
It was all over for Sidarfels as she knew it. She might be offered a place on the fencing team, maybe an increase in salary as an additional inducement to stay on; but she wasn’t sure she could stomach it. Just this one final act as a Sidarfels team fencer, one last official performance, and she was done with it, done with it all.
The drummers struck the cadence, come to the line. Yusaravan stepped up to her mark. This was a demonstration fencing bout, not a formal contest, so the rules were a little relaxed.
Yusaravan bowed to the observers. Allenghin did the same, taking the second bow out of deference to Yusaravan’s superior rank amongst the fencers in Sidarfels’ fencing club. At a nod from Administrator Jaxon the drummers struck the next cadence. Yusaravan and Allenghin entered the fencing ground.
The early spring light came streaming through the dome’s viewports, flooding the exercise floor with gold-tinted illumination and casting faint shadows of the open-grid ceiling above across the floor. The viewports had been cut into the fabric of the tower only just after the towers had arrived at Eightend. The technology—both of cutting through the tower’s skin, and the manufacture of clear viewports harder by far than silicon glass—was long since lost, or hibernating.
The be on your guard chimes rang; they were off, Yusaravan and Allenghin, two fencers demonstrating floor-exercise figures as carefully choreographed as any courting passage. Dancing with each other, bright sword ringing against bright sword to reach two separate sensors at once, working up to an invocation of their chosen tune for the observers to recognize and applaud.
Yarbgardonry, Opterics, Delep Wartor. Ommastro, Obroniast, Eschapintor.
The program had been marked out with hidden sensors in the flooring, carefully noted on the steps-dance map displayed for the dignitaries in front of their reviewing box. The cheerful little bell that marked each successful contact according to the plan was so familiar to Yusaravan—as to all of Sidarfels’ fencers—that she hardly even heard it anymore.
Allenghin got her marks perfectly, nine, ten, eleven. Then she paused in place, well balanced on one foot, waiting for Yusaravan’s answering move. That was eleven down; 173 to go, once Yusaravan had paired up three steps’ reaction to her partner. Beautiful, Yusaravan thought. She’d be sure to tell Allenghin so. Moving her foot to match Allenghin’s nine, Yusaravan shifted her weight to the next position, careful to show no hesitation in the passage.
There was no confirmation tone.
Yusaravan had missed the target.
Her eyes on Allenghin—following every minute shift of expression, to demonstrate her attention to what Allenghin was going to do next—Yusaravan still almost missed the tiny narrowing of Allenghin’s eyes, quickly recovered, quickly concealed. No information there, Yusaravan realized, frustrated.
What had happened? She’d clearly let her touch-point drop good and proper, a significant error. A significant humiliation for a fencer of her rank, and against one junior to her as well. How could she have made such an error?
She could see the expressions on the faces of the dignitaries in the observers’ box, little flickers of commiseration, some scornful. These were closing ceremonies. The piece was designed to give Allenghin space to show her progress, and Yusaravan was supposed to help Allenghin along. Allenghin had recovered the beat. Good job, Allenghin. Yusaravan was grateful.
But it didn’t stop there.
When an error howsoever obvious had been made, the fencer’s job was to note the fault against herself and then continue without pause as though no mistake had been made. It demonstrated that the fencer was solidly in her program, clearly focused on the correct sequence; that she was truly aware of what she was doing, though she’d had a slip.
Yusaravan put the jarring misstep to the back of her mind for later analysis. Though she’d erred in her mind-map of where the next touch-point was, the correct hit was almost always short and left-oblique by one floor-tile’s thickness. She corrected her step with a double toe-tap to indicate that she recognized her error, which meant she was momentarily distracted but not lost.
Then there was nothing to do but go on. Any point reduction in the technical evaluation would be assessed against Yusaravan, not Allenghin—and not Sidarfels, though Yusaravan’s error wouldn’t reflect well on the fencing program as a whole. She would complete the demonstration, ensure that Allenghin’s standing in the team would rise rather than fall. Yusaravan knew that she’d have more than enough time to meditate on how she had made such a beginner’s error—later.
She finished her supporting phrase, thankful that she made no further errors. It had been a momentary lapse, and no more. Allenghin challenged her, standard procedure, the structure of the exhibition bout so often repeated at every step of a fencer’s progression up through the ratings that a person was heartily sick of it within months of their first entry.
By then it was something that any fencer could do in her sleep. Could do with her eyes closed. Yusaravan’s body knew the program, perfect in placement, flawless in transition from stance to stance—
But Yusaravan tripped.
Her foot caught against some minute bit of the resin used to give new shoes their traction. It should not have been there, but that didn’t matter now. The sabotage was too cunningly done, and Yusaravan tripped over her own two feet, a raw beginner’s error, a fatal mistake. An immediate disqualification, categorically denying Allenghin’s chance to demonstrate her abilities in front of the highest-ranking dignitaries of every cartel in Eightend. All attention was focused on Yusaravan.
Yusaravan hadn’t just ruined her own reputation. She’d damaged Allenghin’s demonstration so badly that it would take Allenghin two years to claw her way back to her current standing, if not more. Allenghin didn’t look at Yusaravan, even as closely as she had to pass to leave the fencing floor. Yusaravan couldn’t blame her.
Yusaravan stood in the middle of the dueling floor, confused and perplexed, until one of the team coaches put an arm around her, took her hand, kindly escorted her away from all of the people there who wouldn’t meet her eyes, their expressions confused and angry and disgusted.
Tripping. Actually stumbling, in front of senior cartel representatives, especially in front of the representative from Exercitus, which was to become Sidarfels’ new manager and guardian, master over all. What had happened to her? What?
The team coach found her a place on a high bench at the side of the room. Yusaravan could see everything, from one side of the fencing ground to the other. There was Eversand, right enough, suited up, calm, collected, walking with self-respecting dignity into the center of the floor.
Yusaravan could hear murmurs around her. The dignitaries in their viewing box put their heads together, smiling a little; she could almost hear the words, Now we’ll see something you’ll really like. She wanted to sink into the cool metal walls of the tower structure and disappear.
She would not disappear. She was Yusaravan of Ringwall, and she belonged to Sidarfels. She would own her errors, though she didn’t understand how they had happened, and she would hold her head erect and look people in the eye until they turned their faces away. She wasn’t going to let it end like this.
When a fencer left the floor the first thing she was expected to do was to set her gear in order. Yusaravan still held her sword, gripping the hilt so tightly that she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to set it down for hours yet to come. She wiped its broad blade, squared at the tip, sharpened along the edges. A few passes of her polish-cloth and the shine came up along the length of the sword.
She could have run her program without the sun; all the artificial lights remaining in the tower were shining, for events such as this. Even though she had nothing left—her final error had been an absolute disqualification, a twelve-day suspension—she couldn’t help but note the sun’s position, regardless. It was still short of the vernal equinox, four hours and some minutes after sunrise. She’d meditated long and deeply on the effects of the sun’s rays coming through the upper windows of the tower dome. She knew just where it shone.
At the same time, she couldn’t take her eyes off Eversand.
First passes, stations one through five of the 184-item sequence that would—at least hypothetically—activate the sensor grid in the dome’s ceiling. Perfect. Beautiful. No errors.
And yet Yusaravan—watching from the sidelines—realized that there should have been errors. Eversand’s steps were correct in sequence, but her feet were in the wrong places. Too short, or too far. Not by much, nothing to call itself to the attention of people whose familiarity with the sensors in the dome above and those in the flooring below piece was merely casual; but if the coaches were watching they’d be a little confused, as Yusaravan was.
Eversand’s steps were off track. Incorrect target points. Yusaravan had years of practice visualizing the fencing floor of Sidarfels’ tower; she could see it in her dreams. She could tell, and she was certain. There was no way in which the points Eversand was hitting with her foot were the genuine touch-points. The grid had been altered. The sensors had been moved. It was rigged.
That wouldn’t be so much of a problem; but Yusaravan recognized the steps, the phrase. Eversand was dancing her free-form, and the routine she was presenting was far more complex and sophisticated than anything Yusaravan could have created. It was a tease, a provocation, a challenge. The Forbidden Sequence.
And Eversand wasn’t hesitating. Wasn’t breaking the phrase by stepping into another pattern, which would have halted the sequence. This is crazy, Yusaravan told herself. Eversand couldn’t mean to run the entire sequence.
There were no records, no verifiable historical information, but as a matter of common and consistent understanding to complete the Forbidden Sequence was to initiate the catastrophic destruction of the tower and everyone in it. Eversand knew that. Nobody at Eversand’s level of skill and mastery could not know that. There was something Yusaravan wasn’t seeing, not grasping. Something was even more wrong with her—Yusaravan guessed—than her failure in the fencing match. What Eversand seemed to be doing was unthinkable.
Whether Eversand had seen Yusaravan watching her or not, Eversand’s very next steps carried her into safe territory. Deep within the 184 base sequentials, and the danger zone left behind. Where was Eversand? Running from point 113 to 134.
Yusaravan frowned. Something was still wrong. Eversand had made a confident transition from 126 to 127, but she stepped to the same contact point as the one that Yusaravan had meant to hit when she’d made her first error. And yet the chime sounded clear and true; there was no alarm. The control sequence in the dome did not flag the touch.
Yusaravan stared in horror, masked just in time before the fencing coach who’d escorted her away from the fencing floor shot a swift glance at her face. The coach had seen it too. The same contact point, the same discrepancy, and yet the confirmation tone marked the touch as true. Yusaravan had caught the key to Eversand’s program, now, an old folk song of vengeance and betrayal. She knew where Eversand would go next, and Eversand committed no errors.
The contact had been compromised. The sequence had been rerouted. Eversand had returned to the Forbidden Sequence.
Yusaravan had never taken Eversand for a fanatic, but if Eversand was going to dance the Forbidden Sequence—if Eversand meant to destroy the tower of Sidarfels and everybody in it—then Eversand was insane. To be willing to sacrifice herself to win some obscure point of advantage for Exercitus, Eversand had to be. Nobody had survived any of those unexplained explosions, the earlier incidents at the other stations. Had it been done the same way?
First contact in the Forbidden Sequence: it started out innocently enough, just a few points of light at a few ceiling sensors. But after five, after eight in sequence, a faint answering—warning—light started to glow point by point, and Yusaravan had to do something.
Taking up her fencing sword, Yusaravan started for the dueling floor. She could do this. She’d spent months memorizing the dome map until she could almost complete the routine with her eyes closed. All she needed to do was interrupt Eversand’s Forbidden Sequence, force an error in the sequence somehow, delay the progression for long enough, and it would all stop. Theoretically. Then Eversand would have to restart the sequence from the beginning.
The coach had seen that there was something wrong; somebody would step in, help her, take charge. But first Yusaravan had to stop this. She didn’t have time to explain.
Eversand only barely glanced her way, moving inexorably to the next point in the sequence. That was 129. This was going too fast for Yusaravan. How was she to find a reset? The contacts had been compromised. The grid had been sabotaged. She didn’t know where the crucial points of contact were. Eversand looked at Yusaravan over her shoulder, sneering; no pretense of politeness left; raw, naked triumph, nothing else. No hatred. No contempt. Only the certainty that she’d won. There were no hints in Eversand’s face that she considered the loss of her own life as anything of importance in the pursuit of some greater goal; or even remembered that critical detail.
What could Yusaravan do, how could she do it, where could she find the key to saving Sidarfels? There had to be a way, some hint, some critical detail, some secret knowledge....
Secret.
Secret societies. When they’d been in their advanced education years at school together, Eversand had joined Thikologia—water, weather systems, monsoons, wind events, ice, water currents. But Yusaravan had pledged to Operatrix.
She’d loved it. She’d eagerly clutched every scrap of information, knowledge, instruction she’d been able to find. Dual paths of transmission. Interference; signals that could bend around corners. Diffusion. The behavior of light, waveforms, particle streams. Optics.
Yusaravan knew the placement of the sensors in the dome. She knew the pattern of the open-work grid that lay between the ceiling of the central atrium containing the fencing floor and the fabric of the great dome itself. She knew more than that. She knew that it was springtime, that it was two thirds of the master clock from the tenth hour after sunrise. She didn’t need to know where the sensors Eversand was activating were, passionately as she wished she did. All she needed to do was intercept the flash from Eversand’s fencing sword with one of her own, split the beam, scatter the light.
All I need to do, Yusaravan said to herself, scornfully. Right. She measured the angle of Eversand’s sword, its horizontal channel catching the bright white lights that shone down on the dueling-floor. The reflected beam of light from Eversand’s sword just missed reflecting back from one of the elements of the open grid above, but that was all right with Yusaravan, it gave her a moment to steady her resolve and gather her pretended confidence.
Eversand tried again. She had to try again, because she still hadn’t made contact with the correct sensor, the ray of brilliant light from her sword blocked yet again by a beam in the open-grid flooring above. Yusaravan’s invasion had disrupted Eversand’s concentration, clearly, and won Yusaravan precious extra moments to calculate.
Once again Eversand lined up her target, adjusted her grip on her sword, moved it into position to catch a beam of the dome’s artificial lights in its central channel.
Yusaravan had no time to adjust her own sword, but she knew things Eversand didn’t. She knew the sun of Sidarfels throughout the year, its position in the sky, the refraction of its light through the uniquely composed fabric of the dome’s windows. She didn’t try to hit Eversand’s beam. She tagged the spark on Eversand’s sword where it came to life, and if one ray of the starburst of scattered light Yusaravan achieved reached the target sensor—whichever one it was—as it splintered, it clearly had insufficient energy to get the sensor’s attention.
There were other sensor points nearer to the scatter-point than the Forbidden Sequence sensor Eversand was trying to activate. Yusaravan knew that by the lights in the dome that Eversand had apparently activated thus far: lights that faded quickly to silent sleeping non-reactivity. That meant that the dome’s sensor net had registered an activation beam out of place within the Forbidden Sequence’s progression steps.
Eversand was angry now. Yusaravan was glad to see it; that meant Eversand would be that much easier to keep off balance. Eversand raised her sword again, but Yusaravan could see Eversand glance toward the uppermost reaches of the dome, as if looking for a reference point, looking to restart the Forbidden Sequence by going back to the beginning.
Yusaravan didn’t want to give Eversand any chances, any chance at all. She directed her beam of sunlight into Eversand’s face. Eversand recoiled, reflexively, raising her sword hand to shield her eyes, turning her face away too immediately and dramatically for her reaction to have been calculated to deceive.
Yusaravan had Eversand on the run, and Sidarfels’ on-site police had caught up. Station security people surrounded Eversand, locking her arms behind her back with arm-and-wrist restraints. The finish on the restraints was a matte black finish, light diffracted, not reflected. No chance of a last-minute deployment, and no danger if there was.
Yusaravan collapsed to her knees on the fencing floor, suddenly exhausted; but why not? Was it every day that she faced her death, faced the deaths of everybody at Sidarfels Station, and averted it within the space of a mere bushel of breaths?
In the dignitaries’ viewing box, Administrator Jaxon had stood. Bowing her head, she spoke, loudly enough for everybody to hear. “Representatives one and all,” she said. “Let’s adjourn, please. Private meeting room. I think we should talk.”
And Sidarfels stays with Granary Cartel, Yusaravan thought. If Exercitus had been wittingly involved in a deep plot to gain paramount power by destroying infrastructure, Exercitus would be paying the price for generations yet to come. Yusaravan wasn’t sure that was the case: the representative from Exercitus looked sick. It wasn’t Yusaravan’s concern. She didn’t have to worry about it.
Centuries, millennia, of knowledge gradually laid aside, outprioritized always. Yarbgardonry, Operatrix, Delep Wartor. Ommastro, Obroniast, Eschapintor. Ommastro, Obroniast, Eschapintor; Boddifrieze, Calchotriatrix. Zhobeproneas.
Operatrix, Operatrix, Operatrix.
The value of the old learning had been demonstrated, here, convincingly. Powerfully. Now Yusaravan would make it her life’s work to see that Operatrix would be honored at Sidarfels Station forever, and forever, and forever after that, a threshold into the future that would be ready to reclaim its sciences at last.