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“You should go to Re’s festival,” Aloy said, breathing hard against the steep grade of the mountain trail. The cart beside her creaked, heavy with food and flowers.
Birds and bugs chittered. Above them, the base’s flock of tame Sunwings soared and waggled their wings in the clear, blue sky. Sunny and high summer, GAIA’s miraculous blue sky was an annoyance, sweat sticking under her arms. Anyone else might have taken it for granted, but she knew better.
Sylens, trudging on the other side of the charger pulling the cart, knew better. He always said so much with his choices not to speak, but Aloy had grown accustomed to it. Living with him and Beta — with people in and out visiting, but mostly them — had given her a fine ear for the difference between refusal (stubborn) and refusal (pique).
This was the latter.
Logistics had been astonishingly easy, too. Most people in the base were used to traveling alone. Zo had Utaru connections, and Aloy had plenty of shards. They took turns bringing supplies to the base, and more often than not it was Aloy or Sylens separately. Zo staying at the base for a few days before the festival meant an excuse for them to go together. Aloy could just barely see Sylens’ head above the charger’s neck.
“You should go,” Aloy said again. “Get out some. It’s midsummer, and you’ve hardly left the base. Bring us some flowers. The ones Zo piled all over the eastern hall wilted.”
“I’m busy.”
“You’re tired.” Just look at his eyes.
His sigh mixed with the sound of the charger’s stomping feet as they walked.
“Try to relax,” Aloy said. “We’ve bought ourselves a lot of time. You know what relaxing is, don’t you?”
“I think I’ve read about it.”
“That’s a joke. You’re joking with me.”
“And what trouble will you be getting into while I celebrate the summer?”
“Putting all these supplies away. Showing Beta if there are any foods she’s never eaten in there.” Am I inflicting him on Zo? She won’t take crap. And this might be good for him.
“I … will ask Zo,” Sylens said.
“Good.”
As guest of honor, Re was the center of the festivities. As a machine that walked where it willed, the Utaru had to build the bower around her.
Zo hummed while she worked. Palettes spread out around her offered ochre, yellow, violet. Some people had already left handprints on Re’s softly swaying sides. A child must have stretched as tall as they could to put a small, bright blue print on the black curve of Re’s front left leg. A member of the Chorus might have chosen the politically neutral (if ostentatiously so) highly visible place at the point near the hinge of Re’s jaw, the paint cracked in the middle of the large handprint.
The path the land-god would take later would lead Re out of the carefully tended, interlocking fields and over a bridge, then up a slight rise and away across the rolling ground on the long journey to the Cauldron. Between the field and the bridge, Plainsong’s merchants and people from around Utaru territory had set up shop, sitting or standing on braided-grass rugs surrounded by their flowers or pots or cloth for sale. The area was large enough not to feel crowded, the chatter a pleasant background murmur punctuated by the shrieks of the kids and the occasional song.
The land-god basked in the attention with the cool ambivalence of her entire model line. Humming as she painted, Zo found herself in a worshipful flow state, her memories of the land-god festivals past layering every handprint, every shaped piece of metal with its own particular meaning. None of the meanings were named, none written down. Still, she felt her own face lift toward the sun in a bask of her own, the familiar hymns still moving her even as she knew there was proof the land-gods were just one part of the world GAIA — not a god herself — had made.
Pausing in her work, Zo watched Sylens approach through the doorway of the bower woven for the occasion. Nerves chimed only dimly, covered by the soothing hum and the land-god’s presence. She’d call him a strange man, if she was being polite. If not … of all of the Utaru structures scattered throughout the region, some had been abandoned in the fighting. Sylens had stoked fighting. Other buildings had never been meant to be temporary at all. They could return to the earth easily enough, either way.
(Which would her child see? Would they have a world or a barren waste? Would the thing that had destroyed the world once — unchecked technology, unchecked greed — destroy it again?)
Proof otherwise was right here, now, with Re standing in the almost-torpor that came before a land-god entered the cave. This would be the first such journey since Aloy had followed Fa into the Cauldron. It had to work.
Zo braced a foot on Re’s knee. “Gently, now. I just need to get …” Zo boosted herself up so she could dot Re’s frill with handprints.
And Sylens? He’d been a bogeyman. Regalla had wanted to rebel, but Sylens had stoked the fire. Don’t trust him. That seemed to be the core message. Yet here he was, living in Aloy’s base and linked into her network. Attending Re’s festival, because, as far as Zo knew, he’d grown tired of being inside but didn’t really know how to do anything else.
So he shadowed Zo, aloof and glowing. People sometimes needed prosthetics, sure — a toe here, a nose there, the consequences of living. The blue wires on Sylens’ skin, though, evoked the smell of blood and the kind of ritual that took a person away from the earth, not brought it closer.
Zo let herself down to the ground as Sylens entered the bower. Certainly, it wasn’t because of the trouble he’d caused that she went around to Re’s tail and put her bulk between Zo and him. No, she simply hadn’t done these metal plates yet.
Sylens folded his arms in front of Re, and stared her down as if she were wild.
“She won’t hurt you,” Zo said, splitting her attention between spacing the handprints and wondering exactly how rude Sylens was going to be to Re.
“I know,” Sylens said. “They follow entirely different commands based on the season. Machines have clocks built in.”
“Do you want to help paint?” Zo stood up just in time to catch a full view of his disgust, as if she’d asked him to eat rotten meat. “Not an artist, then. It washes off. Mostly.”
To Sylens’ credit, he did reach out to touch the tip of Re’s nose, gently. Her blue light washed him in glow the same as the stitches in his skin. So, he wasn’t totally heartless. Without weapons, it was unlikely he would lure Re like a hunter setting out bait. Still, Zo’s more war-shocked mind, the fog she had come back from the Carja border with, still half-expected him to draw a weapon. He probably couldn’t kill Re here, but could hurt her enough for the ceremony to be ruined.
“This is a religious ritual, isn’t it?” Sylens asked. “Would I not be upsetting your Chorus?” He sounded like he might enjoy that.
“Trust me, I wouldn’t mind that,” Zo said. Washed her hands again, her skin feeling dry from the repeated washing, and did not place her palms in more paint. “Anyone from the community is welcome to add their handprint. I get pride of place this year because someone usually does. Because everyone knows I helped Aloy and she helped make the Tenakth peace, and the Chorus would be fools not to acknowledge that. But anyone could help.”
“But you believe they’re gods?” Sylens reached farther up to touch one of Re’s long horns. Her head nodded gently, unperturbed.
“They don’t mind whether you believe or not, and they still plant our seeds,” Zo said.
“Even though you know how GAIA works? Even though you’ve seen the Cauldrons? Aloy told me you had gone with her inside one.”
“And Varl. Aloy and Varl. But, yes, I still believe.” And she wasn’t keen on defending that belief, not when Sylens had knocked her all the way out of a flow state with a reminder of Varl. She’d had to have conversations about beliefs and mountains with Varl, too, but he’d been worth the difficult task of being nice about it. He’d had his own beliefs to work out, his own wounds to heal.
If Sylens had any, he held them close. Zo went on the offensive before he could reply.
“Honestly, why are you here?” Zo needed some blue paint, but still hesitated to get it.
“Aloy asked me.”
“And you two … ” Strange united front, that one, although maybe they were both half made of the unknowable songs from the stars. “… thought it was a good idea?”
“It’s a way to get the lay of the land,” Sylens said. “If I am to be at the base for some time, we need a rapport with the towns, with traders.”
“Still, people are tense here. Tenakth to the west, Carja to the east … this festival has a lot riding on it. We need to show people that peace can last. Even if Nemesis is a problem for some other tomorrow.” Zo met his eyes, then made the easy switch to the Focus at his temple instead. Secrets linked everyone at Aloy’s base in one way or another, even if they had little else in common.
His sigh was tired and final. He didn’t want to talk about Nemesis. Instead, he turned away. “I’ll get the reins.”
Zo paused on her way to dip her hands in the blue paint. “The what?”
Sylens, she had known about as soon as Erend let him into the base, was legendarily smarter-than-thou. She was almost sure someone she knew would pay her for the unguarded, confused look he turned on her now. They looked at each other. Paint started to dry and crack on her palms.
He cleared his throat. “Where do you keep the reins? The blankets?”
“Blankets? For what?”
“The machine.” His tone was arch, but not angry. Arch was normal.
“Ah, we don’t do that. We paint them. Then we let them go on as they please. No fabrics.”
“Then I needn’t stay here.”
Zo patted high up on Re’s back, feeling a smile pull at her cheeks. She had the feeling she’d just pulled on a root that went deep, or at least traveled a long way sideways. His facade had cracked. Good to know if she ever planned to try to convince him to stand with her against the Chorus.
“Did you have peaceful machines around you much in the east?” She asked.
“No.” He looked at the door. Held himself icy enough that he didn’t look like he was about to bolt, but his posture had become brittle.
“It sounds like you wanted to keep them safe,” Zo prodded gently. “We place handprints on them to remind us of our connections. Reins and blankets … you’re insulating them.” She patted a few more handprints onto Re’s back legs, letting them dry in the fresh air. The sacred cave had smelled so foul, and the water stood so stagnant.
“A provincial belief,” Sylens said, and met her eyes. “The machines did not feel the cold. The people it reassured were superstitious, and cold themselves.”
Was he insulting her? Or digging at himself? She’d resolved a conversation with Varl about how his own newborn atheism did not translate to Zo. That had ended well, until it all had ended so badly. She trusted she could be tactful.
“The Tenakth also believe the Utaru are simple,” Zo said. “They think our knowledge of the earth, of the agriculture that feeds them, is unskilled.”
“The Tenakth were also wrong,” Sylens said with conviction. “You’ve proven yourselves. Your satellite city is defensible.”
Re raised her head, swept her horns, and shivered from nose to tail. Sylens stepped aside minutely as she swung her tail. Zo hesitated to put her hand on the land-god’s leg to avoid touching the new handprints. Land-gods didn’t react directly to people: they were classified as ‘oblivious’ for a reason. Still, everyone had some eerie story of them reacting to something going on around them. One might step between arguing farmers or lower her head for a child to touch her nose. One would almost always stop, if a person stood in her way.
It was nice to see someone else express the flurry of emotion Zo was holding in, though.
She said, “Aloy told half the base we had to tolerate you.”
“And all of us would have rather seen Regalla dead.” Sylens gave another tired sigh.
“What’s with the reins, though? Do you want to saddle a Sunwing, too?”
“I don’t see why this is relevant.” Now he really did edge toward the sunlight.
“Okay,” Zo said. “Hear me out. The Chorus doesn’t like me. They let me help Re because everyone knows I was involved with something up on the mountains, but most don’t even know what it is. They know I had something to do with clearing the blight, but only with Aloy along. That means I don’t have much more leverage than when I set off for the Carja battlefields alone. I want backers. I thought, maybe, getting to know you a little better would help with that. But, I can see now that isn’t easy.”
“You see nothing.”
“Wow. Okay. Aloy didn’t say you had to stay with me.”
He turned to go.
“Don’t get into trouble,” she said, instantly regretting it. He wouldn’t stand to be treated like a child. Certainly wasn’t a child. “Re will be out soon. Stay by her route, look at the traders. There might even be a tinker.”
He waved as he left, although it wasn’t really hardly a wave. He simply lifted a hand, curt and with little effort, which was how Zo saw from the way he held it that he had already bought a flower from the festival, a lily the color of Aloy’s hair.
It hadn’t been just a door, this time.
No, Sylens couldn’t stop thinking about it. One choice, one sudden fissure in certainty piled like bedrock, and now the door forever shut to him was the hatch on a space shuttle on an island he kept deciding not to fly back to.
Oh, it was an honest decision. He hadn’t truly expected Aloy to say no. She’d followed him into so many dangerous places before. Why not this one? But she had people she cared about now, in a different way than she had cared about Meridian’s saviors.
There hadn’t been lot of physical affection, among the initiates of the Blue Light. No doctrine forbade it, no scripture dictated how and for how long a person could hold another person. It just wasn’t done.
Aloy and Beta had looked so warm.
Yes, they were his closest bet to APOLLO (on Earth), but that hadn’t been why he’d stayed.
Now, he fought against that honest decision more moments than not. He could fly back, right now. Except that standing in the way were Zo and a land-god and two or twelve Utaru children, holding flowers. The curved structure built for the festival arched over the land-god. People thronged the fields and the road that lead to the Cauldron, but the mix of forest and meadow just to the north of Plainsong was wide enough they didn’t press.
Sylens had overlooked Utaru architecture before. Walking around Plainsong in person was different. There was a squishiness to the construction: straw floors, dirt, the rich smell of compost, the top-heavy look of the cities on the dishes. This community had almost literally grown out of the old world, and now kids navigated the festival crowds like solid ground was a thrill.
A place built on metal and music could certainly be a testament to GAIA’s greatness, although not in the way the Utaru thought.
Here he was in a city made out of the ears that listened to the stars, and surrounded by shrieking, muddy children and people looking at him, people who maybe, terribly and wonderfully, knew who he was.
Except most of them were looking at the plowhorn or each other, really. Sylens squeezed the stem of the flower as he watched Re process out into the sun. Musicians followed it, drums and flutes and strings, and occasionally he caught a glimpse of Zo in that crowd. If the songs were organized in any way, Sylens could not find the pattern. People seemed to simply sing often, the tune spreading from group to group if it proved familiar and catchy enough.
Don’t think about how quiet it would be on the Odyssey.
Don’t think about how self-sufficiency is a Banuk value.
Don’t think about how no one’s officiating this, no one standing apart from the others.
The Utaru had the Chorus, though, and got foul about it like some Banuk did about the Conclave, if Fane’s expression was any indication.
He and Zo and Re were all out on the path now, people parting for the land-god with reverence but also a loud camaraderie. Sylens stood back as Re reached a dip in the trail and stopped, its head bowing. People waited attentively, expecting it to do something. By the time Zo started looking around, scanning the horizon for answers as if Re’s hesitance was connected to the war, Sylens acknowledged something was wrong. Re stood immobile, the riotous colors of the handprints unable to disguise its listlessness.
“Not again,” Zo muttered. “Not again.”
She walked toward Sylens with her hands making shapes in the air, trying to scan with an unfamiliar Focus and the eyes of the community on her. Sylens pulled up the information faster.
Re’s network connection blinked red. It had lost touch with the nearest Tallneck before reconnecting to the Cauldron’s own network.
Zo and Sylens met each other’s eyes. He pushed through the crowd, sent her a cursory share request she denied. Smart, but inconvenient. Aloy had probably told her to do that.
People were murmuring around them, but Sylens had always found it easy to ignore a crowd. Zo hadn’t, judging by the glances she kept flicking at Fane and then around, looking for other members of the Chorus.
“The Cauldron signal must have dropped for a second,” Sylens muttered. “Just wait for it and then reconnect it.”
“I don’t have that kind of access to her.”
Aloy did, and Sylens knew how to replicate that. “Show me your display.”
To her credit, Zo’s face smoothed out, impassive now that she had made a decision. She shared her Focus overlay and allowed him to enter one of the limited set of permissions that made up the brute-force cascade of an Alpha override.
While he was doing so, Zo addressed the crowd. “Nothing to worry about. She’s taking her time. The return to the sacred cave will go smoothly this time … “ And that look back at Sylens, which would have been funny in its uncertainty if he hadn’t been sure she was right.
And she needed to be right. The Chorus would be useful allies going forward if Aloy ever wanted to mobilize the Utaru en masse. What they wanted had never been easy for Sylens to manipulate — they weren’t as interested in profit, tech, or bloodshed as his first choices. They were still possible allies, though.
(Allies like Beta in Aloy’s arms, not like the Eclipse camps … right?)
(If he’d just gone to the Odyssey, he wouldn’t have to decide any of this.)
He gestured Zo to the display. “Can you take it from here?”
She scanned it. “Yeah. I, I think so.”
“Good.” He stepped back, cut off his own access to her Focus with what he hoped she saw as reassuring finality. Really hadn’t left anything behind. “Show them you are the one fixing this.”
She did. She made a show of it, sweeping gestures she neither obscured nor explained. People were still antsy and worried, though. And Sylens had one trick he hadn’t used in a long time. Being here reminded him of it, though. He’d slipped up, talking to Zo about the way the Banuk covered their machines in blankets and reins, because … it had been a very long time since he’d been to an event like this.
Maybe, the last time, he had been a child. There had been tame machines, before the Derangement. All of the hopefuls, the people waiting for their turn to run the shaman’s path and have the wires threaded through their skins, would sing to them at festivals where hunters in blue-dyed leather kept a few. Machines couldn’t be farmed, wouldn’t stay inside even the most well-made fence. But some would stick around, for their own reasons (for quirks of the world-making plan). Shamans would trace their paths and predict their numbers and be right, often, and Sylens had wanted to know why and how they were right. He had been so optimistic, then. He had thought he could get something without stealing it.
It would keep eyes off Zo, here, to sing.
Just buying her time.
So Sylens looked at the eyeless face of the machine and tried to make the notes the way the Utaru did, resonant and easy to harmonize, although he had to use Banuk notation. Hadn’t had any time to learn the Utaru’s. He knew, though, that some machines knew certain frequencies, for known and unknown mechanical and digital reasons. Re knew the song it had been programmed with, but it might know some of this one, too, foreign as it was.
People started to hum along, tentatively. He didn’t want to look at them. This was far, far too public, and not his job any more, and —
Re tipped her head up. Sylens sang louder, moving into a simple Banuk exercise he had no doubt he knew. He’d sang it alone, over the decades, when he happened to find himself in a place with good acoustics and no audience. The Utaru didn’t know it, still followed tentatively, but they were used to communal singing, didn't care whether they were good at it, know it had something to do with the machines, and liked a good hook. All four came together.
Sylens kept his mind on the children’s hymn. They were bitter memories, the ones of being a child and learning this song, but it was bitterness entirely separate from the fact that he had left the place he had learned it in chaos. He hated the Cut’s bloody memories, hated Ban-Ur’s ignorant secrets. Liked their songs, still.
Zo got Re connected back to the Cauldron. She waved her display closed with a triumphant flourish.
Just theatrical enough, Sylens thought, admiring, as he looked away from the brightening light at the front of Re’s head. The machine was functional. Zo just needed to wait for the blip in the air to pass.
It passed. The crowd cheered, somehow sounding almost melodious in that, too, and Zo walked with her head high and one elegant hand just brushing Re’s paint-dotted jaw as the plowhorn lurched back into its heavy motion. Sylens couldn’t see Fane over the body of the machine, but trusted the Chorus would remember this. Maybe they wouldn’t know how unexpected the problem had been, but they would remember that she had solved it.
The procession kept going. Re lead them all down the path, Sylens and Fane and Zo all mixed in the press of important people behind the machine. He didn’t get a chance to talk to Zo again until Re stopped on a rise, another one of the Utaru’s graceful woven structures creating a bowed gate around it.
Machine noise blared from Re. Sylens hadn’t heard the land-gods sing before, and the discordance was surprising. The machine noise bellowed, indistinguishable as to whether it was a recording from GAIA or something produced within the machinery of Re’s body itself. Crunchy, low notes shook the air and the Utaru’s higher, humming response followed.
This time, Zo found Sylens. Shouted in his ear over the cacophony of noise. “She’ll stay here and sing a while. They used to do this.” Her voice was light, happy. “I missed seeing them so much. It’ll take a while for me to get used to it. Every season I’ll wonder if that one won’t go. And how did you know how to sing to her?”
“The old world had a saying. A stopped clock is right twice a day.”
“What’s that mean?”
Sylens shook his head. No need to explain anything, especially because she didn’t even know she was asking about stories older than even Aloy knew. If he’d been talking to her over the Focus, he’d have dropped the call.
Except he wasn’t, so there was no escaping until after the procession. Mercifully, they kept walking.
I’ll stay, just in case.
The Odyssey might have heard a Banuk song, if these people didn’t.
Nature almost glowed around him, and all he could think about was how he had turned his back on the vacuum of space. Regret was not a familiar emotion. Emotion was not familiar, although now he had an echo in his head of all of these people saying it should be. Don’t you think it means something, that we both have songs? Zo would ask. You turned your back on the thing you wanted most, Aloy would remind him, as if that was supposed to accomplish anything —
Sylens broke away from the procession. Pushed through the crowd, tired of it. The Utaru gates were getting more complex, lanterns and braided basket weave in fantastical shapes hanging from them. A stream ran along the west side. They were getting closer to the Cauldron now, some people holding back, whether out of piety or sore feet or both he did not know.
And Zo followed him. Mossy ground near the stream gave softly under his feet as he tried to simply make distance between them.
She was determined, though. Caught him at a jog, not worried about her dignity. The green grass lay lush between the trees here, striped with afternoon shadows. Blue sky, white clouds — and that invisible, ever-present ship up there, looking down with such complexity on such a simple ritual.
“Why are you leaving?" Zo called. "You impressed people, today.”
“I have no interest in being impressive.” Still, Sylens stopped. No one in the crowd would bother to strain to hear them from here. They were all watching Re, a chant starting up.
“Yet clearly you know how it works. You let me take the victory in front of Fane.”
“I didn’t need it.”
“But you could have had it. Why can you sing to Re?”
“Machines are like animals. They go along their prearranged paths, by instinct. No spark of life. Some notes are part of those instincts. I’ve killed plowhorns the way you would kill any other machine.”
Zo gave a rough laugh. “So have I. The land-gods aren't like other plowhorns. But we sing to something, don’t we? I think you do, too.”
“I did what I came here to do,” Sylens said.
“And what was that, really? To get one flower for Aloy, when I bet she asked for decorations for the whole base? Are you here just to look down on us?”
He met her eyes. Did look down at her, slightly. “I saw, I helped. That is enough. This place … I didn’t have to be here. There would be no mud on the Odyssey. No bugs, no screaming children.”
“So, that’s it. You regret coming back. I didn’t think of you as fastidious.”
“Not most days.”
Zo rubbed at her forehead. “Why do I even care? Oh, it’s because something about you makes me think about a person on their deathbed.”
Re was almost out of sight, just the top of its spine visible as it progressed alone into the Cauldron entrance. The Utaru song skirled along behind it. The Cauldron door would open up just fine. Aloy had already checked that part.
What Zo had said was bizarre enough to get his attention. “A deathbed? Why?”
“I am a gravesinger. Sometimes families want to talk about the dying person, or they want to … confess something, or sum up their life like it’s a song. You’re not advised to talk much. Your presence, as a grave singer, is ritual reassurance. Unless you actually know the person well, it isn’t the same as comforting a friend. And to speak to someone living like that is … they’re liable to tell you things you don’t have time to handle. Besides, it’s gauche. Needy. I never thought of you as needy. But ever since you sang, I get that feeling.”
Sylens stared at her. Here was every trouble with the base, all rolled into one. “This is a waste of both our times. Go back to your festival.”
“The more I talk to you, the more I wonder where you came from. But you’re obviously not very used to parties.” She turned away, her hands on her belly as if to reassure her unborn child. “Thanks for giving me a win in front of Fane.”
Sylens walked. No need to tell her his ulterior motives, although, this time, they weren’t difficult to guess. Goodwill with the Utaru would even line right up with Aloy’s plans.
He glanced back just to see Zo’s back disappear into the crowd, her hands hidden in front of her. If she’d expected him to say something, she didn’t even look back.
You remind me of the grave.
All of earth would, if they didn’t sort this Nemesis problem out.
But metaphor was Aloy’s way, one step from getting sentimental. Sylens didn’t tend to connecting concepts that were so far removed. Either the next land-god would go on time with its season, or not. Next time, he would come for the festival, or he would not.
(In any case, he would be here, not up there … )
The sun shone on the grass. Sylens tipped the flower, a little, in acknowledgement to Re.