“Nope.” I grin. “Carthage is the best thing that hasn’t happened to us yet.”
Her helmet is tucked under one arm, and she looks down at it like it will answer her.
The Delegate Meeting happens every decade. It wasn’t mandated by Carthage; Wren Tetra-Yemenni began it as a way for delegates to have a base of reference, and to meet; no one has even seen the new Neptunian Elect since they picked her two years back, and they have to introduce Dorado 216.
We’re not allowed to hear what they talk about—it’s none of our business, it’s government stuff—but we hang around in the hallways just to watch them filing in, the humanoids and the Xpelhis puttering past in their cases. The Centauri AI has a hologram that looks like a stick insect with wings, and it blinks in and out as the signal from his ship gets spotty. I cover my smile, though—that computer sees everything.
On the way in, Dorado 216 leans over to Octa. “You won’t say anything, will you? It would be war.”
“No,” she says, “I won’t say anything.”
“It’s just in case,” he goes on, like she didn’t already give him an answer. “There’s no plan to use them. We’re not like that—it’s not like that. You never know what Carthage’s plans are, is all.” Then, more quietly, “I trusted you.”
“215 trusted me,” she says. “You want someone to trust you, try the next Yemenni.”
“Watch it,” he says. A warning.
After a second she frowns at him. “How can you want war, after all this effort?”
He makes a suspicious face before he turns and walks into the reception room with the rest of them.
Octa stands in the hall for a second before she follows him, shoulders back and head high. Yemmenis know their duties.
After the Delegate Meeting, Octa takes a trip to the Centauri AI. She’s back in a few hours. She didn’t tell anyone why she was going, just looks sad to have come back.
(Sometimes I think Octa’s mind is more like a computer than any of them, even more than Alpha. I wonder if I made her that way by accident, wishing better for them, wishing for more.)
In the mess, the pilots grumble that it was a waste of shuttle fuel.
“That program shows up anywhere they need it to,” one of them says. “Why did we have to drive her around like she’s one of the queens on Sextan? They should expire these copies before they go crazy, man.”
“Maybe she was trying to give us break from your ugly face,” I say, and there’s a little standoff at the table between the pilots and the techs until one of the language ops guys smoothes things over.
I stay angry for a long time. The pilots don’t know what they’re talking about.
Yemennis do nothing by mistake.
Alpha was the most skilled diplomat on the planet.
They don’t say so in the documentary; they talk about how kind she is and how smart she is and how she looks like a mix of everyone, and if you just listened to what they were saying you’d think she hardly deserved to go. There were a lot of people in line; astronauts and prime ministers and bishops all clamoring for the privilege.
And she got herself picked—she got picked above every one of them; she was the most skilled diplomat who ever lived. She could work out anything, I bet.
There’s an engineer down five levels who looks good to me, is smart enough, and we get married. We have two kids. (Someone will have to watch over the Yemennis when I’m gone, someone with my grandfathers’ talents for calibrating a needle; we’ve been six generations at Wren Yemmeni’s side.)
We celebrate four hundred years of peace. All the delegates put a message together, to be played in every ship, for the civilians. For some of them, it’s the first they’ve heard of the other languages. Everyone on the ship, twelve thousand strong, watches raptly from the big hangar and the gymnasium level, from the tech room and the bridge.
They go one by one, and I recognize our reception room as the camera pans from one face to another. They talk about peace, about their home planets, about how much they look forward to all of us knowing the message, when Carthage comes.
Wren Octa-Yemenni goes last.
“I hope that, as we today are wiser today than we were, so tomorrow we will be wiser than we are,” she says. Dorado 216 looks like he wants to slap her.
She says, “I hope that when our time comes to meet Carthage, we may say that we have fulfilled the letter and spirit of its great message, and we stand ready for a bright new age.”
Everyone in the tech room roars applause (Yemennis know how to talk to a crowd). Just before the video shuts off, it shows all the delegates side by side; Octa is looking out the window, towards something none of us can see.
One night, a year before she’s due to be expired, I find Octa in the development room. She’s watching the tube where Ennea is gestating. Ennea’s almost grown, and it looks like Octa’s staring at her own reflection.
“Four hundred years without a war,” she says. “All of us at a truce, talking and learning. Waiting for Carthage.”
“Carthage will come,” I promise, glancing at Ennea’s pH readout.
“I hope we don’t see it,” she says, frowns into the glass. “I hope, when it comes, all of us are long dead, and better ones have taken their places. Some people twist on themselves if you give them any time at all.”
Deka and Hendeka are in tubes behind us, smaller and reserved, eyes closed; they’re not ready. We won’t even need them until I’m dead. Though it shouldn’t matter, I care less for them than I do for Ennea, less than I do for Octa, who’s watching me.
Octa, who seems to think none of them are worthy of Carthage at all. She’s been losing faith for years.
None of these copies are like Alpha. They all do their duty, but she believed.
At the fifty-year mark, Octa comes in to be expired.
She hands over the recording device, and the government guys disappear to their level to put together the memory flux for Ennea, who will wake up tonight and need to know.
“You shouldn’t keep doing this,” she tells me as we help her onto the table and adjust the IV.
There are no restraints. The Yemennis don’t balk at what they have to do; duty is in their bones. But Octa looks sad, even sadder than when she found out that the one before her had loved someone who was already dead.
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s the best way—one session of information, and she’s ready to face Carthage.”
“But she won’t remember something if I don’t record it? She won’t know?”
Octa’s always been a little edgy—I try to sound reassuring. “No, she won’t feel a thing. Forget Dorado. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Octa looks like she’s going to cry. “What if there’s something she needs to know?”
“I’ll get you a recorder,” I say, and start to hold up my hand for the sound tech, but she shakes her head and grabs my sleeve.
I drop my arm, surprised. No one else has even noticed; they’re already starting the machines to wake up the next one, and Octa and I might as well be alone in the room.
After a second she frowns, drops my hand, makes fists at her sides like she’s holding back.
The IV drips steadily, and around us everyone is laughing and talking, excited. They seem miles away.
Octa hasn’t stopped watching me; her eyes are bright, her mouth drawn.
“Have you seen the message?”
She must know I haven’t. I shake my head; I hold my breath, wondering if she’s going to tell me. I’ve dreamed about it my whole life, wondering what Alpha knew that made her cry with joy, four hundred years ago.