“Did you know that drowning is a terrible way to die? You can’t hold your breath until you pass out; your body will force you to inhale eventually. So you breathe in water knowing it will kill you, but it takes a minute or two for you to lose consciousness. Chemical burns are bad too; they linger on the body, and no amount of medicine can make it easier to look in a mirror.”
“I don’t support any of that, and I’m sure the little boy you destroyed had no idea it was happening at all.”
“Of course you support it. This is a terraformed moon, and you’re living on it without any regard to the people who made it habitable.”
“But why children?” He was shouting now.
“Yes, Vegar. Why children? Is it because they’re easier to augment? Is it because they fit into smaller spaces? Is it because a child’s mind is as malleable as her body is?”
“I’m just a monk. I haven’t hurt anyone.”
“You’re a…” She paused, chose a word from his argument with Sigurd, “… murderer. At least I have the grace to get my hands dirty.”
“You’ve butchered entire worlds full of people!”
“Who refuse to tell the truth when they know it and refuse to listen when they hear it. Who are living on the bones of other people who died to put them there. Who will never have to run out of oxygen or water or food or wonder what kind of abomination they’ll turn into if the augmentation fails. Who’ve never had to sell one daughter’s mind to pay for another daughter’s medicine. And I will keep on killing them, every one of them, every man, woman and child of them until you stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Akhila heard the guards cock their weapons and realized she was standing on the table. Her body glowed a faint blue in the darkness. She shuddered once and slumped into a seated position again. “Oh, Vegar.” She began to rock back and forth, her arms wrapped around her belly. “Help me.”
But the guards were already escorting him out.
Some time later, the door opened again and Sigurd entered the cellar alone. He was wearing the same expression he had worn on the hillside and carrying one of the weapons he had brought there. He strode over to her as the door closed behind him and shoved it under her chin. She didn’t move to stop him.
“Do not speak to the boy again,” he growled, “or I will melt your nanobody slowly, over a period of hours, while you beg me for your life.”
“Father Sigurd, where have you seen a radical augment before, and what did it do to you?” She ignored the gun.
He picked her up by the throat and threw her against the dirt wall of the cellar. Gravel and soil crumbled around her. Again, she didn’t struggle but rose to her feet in a single, fluid motion as he crammed his fingers into her mouth and gripped her jaw.
“You are not allowed to call me ‘Father.’ I’ll kill you for that, too. I should kill you for that now.” He wasn’t shouting anymore, but his body was shaking, and his breath hissed in and out over his teeth.
Akhila remained calm. She had come to this moon seeking death and was not afraid to meet it. Her mouth peeled back from his fingers and rematerialized beside them. “For whatever it was, and for whoever did it, I am profoundly sorry. I invite you to do to me whatever you believe is just in order to avenge your loss.”
Sigurd’s eyes misted then, and he looked away from her. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. “It wasn’t a ‘who’, and neither are you.” His barrel chest heaved. “Leave the boy alone,” he repeated, leaning on the door and stumbling out into the afternoon sunshine.
Akhila sat in darkness for the next day, a slender nanofilament extending outward from her body, through the micro-cracks at the base of the cellar door and up into the grass. It didn’t collect much sun, but if she was still, it was enough. At the end of that time, she had sufficient power to stretch the nanofilament farther, make it longer, and escape the cellar altogether without attracting the attention of the guards.
She spent the rest of the afternoon draped over the metal roof of the monastery like frost on a window, glinting in the early winter sun. After planet rise, when all was quiet, she slid down from the roof and went walking in the arboretum.
Vegar stood at the edge of a sand sculpture of the Yin and Yang. His hands and shoes were gritty; his chest and arms ached. He had been there all evening with a rake, combing the sand into place when he heard the crunch of snow underfoot and spun around, startled.
Akhila reached forward and covered his lips with a flat-handed seal to keep him silent. “I didn’t mean what I said before.”
She withdrew her hand, and Vegar considered her for a moment. “You really aren’t here to kill us, are you?”
“I’ve made a choice, and I intend to see it through.”
“Even though you can’t stay here?”
“I don’t think I ever believed I could.”
“The military will be cruel. You probably won’t live long.”
“I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
Vegar turned back toward the sand sculpture and sat down. “Nobody deserves cruelty, not even someone like you.”
Akhila sat beside him. “So I’m a person, then?”
“I think so. I don’t want to think so, but I do.”
“That will carry me a long way.”
Vegar examined her body. Her breasts were round and dark, there were thatches of fine hair in her armpits and her skin looked real on close inspection. He reached out a hesitant hand and touched her arm. It was warm. “How long has it been since you were Organic?”
“Bharati was never my mother, and Dhiren was never my father. They were deep sea miners who sold the right to copy their little girl’s mind. It doesn’t hurt to have your mind copied; you just go to sleep, and they wire you up and take an imprint. Only their Akhila went home with them, and I stayed in the machine.”
Horrific, he thought. She must have been terrified. Then he remembered something she had told him. “Did your sister get her medicine?”
Akhila nodded. “For the rest of her life. Or at least that’s what my parents were promised. It was a long time ago.”
Vegar gathered his robe around his body and buried his hands in it for warmth while Akhila brought the tips of her fingers together. Sparks flew between them, and a fine dust began to accumulate on her legs. He watched her for a while. There was a faint smell of hot metal, and he had the sudden urge to hold his hands up to hers the way he had held them up to the fire shrine. After a moment he asked, “What are you doing?”
“My nanoparticles are self-policing. When some of them malfunction, I use others to destroy them.” The flame faltered and died. “Vegar, I didn’t just decide to come here. I was sent, like you said, to blight the hospital and surrounding community.”
He stiffened. “But you haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Why not?”
“I recently found my granddaughter and made a carrier of her before I realized who she was. Gorgeous girl, about five years old. Her father must have been fair-skinned because her hair was blond, and her eyes were green, but her skin was like… was like her mother’s. Of course, she wasn’t my granddaughter, but she might have been.” Akhila grew still, and her body began to shine blue in the darkness. “So you see, there isn’t anything you or anyone else could do to me that I don’t deserve, and I had to land somewhere.”
They sat together in silence for a while. Akhila closed her eyes and tilted her head while the barren branches above her creaked in the breeze. Vegar watched his sand sculpture soften.
“Are you familiar with the Tao?” he asked a few moments later.
“I know the data.”
“Humph.” Vegar’s lips lifted in a half-smile. “This isn’t a good representation of it.” He pointed at the sculpture. “The one on my back is better. Here, I’ll show you.” He shrugged off his robe and unbuttoned his shirt but sucked in a breath as he tried to pull it from his shoulders.