NationStates Jolt Archive

"I have good news and bad news for you, Arkhora."

"Bad news first, Yseult. You know that."

The geneticist paused. "This news is ... worse than usual, Arkhora. You ... may wish to sit down."

Rene frowned - this was Yseult keiMorahn, famously the most iron-hearted, ruthless proponent of the State in the Ascendancy. Her fumbling attempts at some kind of politeness, her hesitation - It must be very bad, she thought; and simultaneously - How bad can it be?

"Just tell me, Yseult."

KeiMorahn stiffened. "You asked, Arkhora. You're dying."

"I ... see. Do continue."

"We'd always assumed that the anti-gerontological treatments rendered someone essentially amortal. It turns out that's ... not the case. We've been able to prop things up until now, but now - now - it becomes apparent that that's all we were doing. Cell repair is failing."

Rene paused, stilling her emotions through krisyakeris discipline. This was unexpected, to say the least. But later; later would be soon enough to work this out, when she had enough information to do so.

"How long have I got?"

Yseult's hands twisted together. "I honestly can't say. Decades, at least. We knew the rejuvenant treatment didn't confer immortality ... and now we know it doesn't do amortality either. Essentially it appears the aging process has restarted."

"So I'm going to grow old. I'm nearly ninety, Yseult. How hard can it be?"

"You are an eighty-six-year-old in a body that could be anywhere from twenty to thirty. I'd recommend you talk to Schaden tsaKell about that."

Rene winced. TsaKell had been diplomat, spymaster, Arkhreif of Security - but had always refused the rejuv treatments for the sake of his own personal philosophy. He'd died five years ago, and retired only five before that.

"There are things we can do -"

"I'm not afraid to die, Yseult. I never intended to live forever."

"I know. The Arkhora is never afraid, never gives up." Damned woman - was that sarcasm, or some twisted product of her mind? "Even after the keilansirava malfunction you didn't just join the expatriates, you had to go looking for survivors beneath Tsarai -"

"Wait. Wait. How did you find out about that?"

Yseult was oddly taken aback by her vehemence; this was the secret she'd always intended to take to her grave, unknown to all but the Arkhreifi and a handful of the Kymnari Studies Subcorps, and Yseult knew? Where was the leak?

"The keilansirava? It was very easy to figure out. Only the keilansirava could have caused the "Obsidian Event". It was mounted on the station, because how else would the station have been destroyed in the Event? I always thought it was an open secret among the pre-Eventers. I figured you were going to announce it when you'd caught the bastards who did it."

"It is not an open secret, Yseult. And I am never going to announce it because I did it."

"You did it. Four hundred and fifty million people. How can you rule with that? God Above, how can you sleep with that?" Yseult's voice shook, her hands disappeared beneath her desk. The slight movements of her arms told Rene that she was going for a gun as easily as if she'd said it aloud. It was the first time she'd heard Yseult mention any deity.

"Very poorly, at first. It's an awful thing, but I find that one gets used to it."

Why had she said that, of all things? Even Yseult, in her normal state of callous equipoise, would not have been so blunt. Her arms said she'd extracted the gun from whatever draw it was hidden in.

"It was the worst mistake I've ever made," she continued, "Taking that thing from the Kymnari. Ainra kal Ruki I was an idiot - here, let's test this dangerously antique doomsday weapon over the Mother Country! - and God Above, you think I don't regret it?"

Yseult's arm holding the gun stilled. "No. Wait. Did you or didn't you order it fired at the Commonwealth?"

"What? God Above no - you think I did it on purpose?"

"Somebody did."

"What? It was an accident! A stupid, foolish, goddamn tragic genocidal accident!"

Beneath the desk, Yseult's hand moved back to the draw.

"Arkhora Rene Seingult I, I can safely diagnose that taking the keilansirava from the Kymnari was only the second most stupid you have ever been. You know orbital mechanics - the station was in geosynchronous orbit, and for that matter the research labs were in zero-gee - they were hardly pointing downwards. To hit the Mother Country someone had to quite precisely aim the thing - chances were you should have lost the station to your foolishness, but the nation? The center of the blast was fifty kilometers west of Tsarai. That was malice, not stupidity! And your stupidity meant that whoever did it has gone unpunished these last sixty years."

"Those accursed smurfs! If Ai-tan Uisea were still alive I'd wring her Brightly Shining neck -"

"You're being stupid again, Arkhora. It can't have been a Conclave faction opposed to the Union - the Event hit Kiija just as hard as Tsarai. It killed almost all the Kymnari - and only most of the Tsarainese. All the Border Provinces survived, for that matter!"

"Then who ..."

"I had assumed that Security was at least working on it." Yseult was back to her normal acerbic self.

"Believe me, they will be now. God Above, they're supposed to spot things like this!" Rene groaned, rubbed her neck. "Can we go back to the part where I'm dying again? It seems less of a headache."

Yseult keiMorahn steepled her fingers. "Now, as I was saying - there are several things we can try -"

"And I told you I don't intend to live forever, Yseult. It's, well, selfish, for one thing."

The fingers twisted together; keiMorahn frowned. "Arkhora - the Ascendancy needs you. It is not selfish to live for that! Who could replace you? Don't say tsaKinai."

"Whatever our personal differences now, Kasene tsaKinai is a good Arkhreifane of the Interior. And I will point out what having an immortal, omnipotent queen has done for Menelmacar."

"She's good, Arkhora, not great. And the Ascendancy is not Menelmacar!"

"I'm sure Menelmacar was quite the paragon of social development, Yseult ... thirty thousand years ago. Time does not stand still, for them or for us. And are you sure your dislike of Kasene isn't personal?"

Yseult glared; Rene had hit a nerve, as she'd known she must. "She lacks steel, Arkhora, and hides behind the law instead. Someone else has to make the hard decisions. That's why she doesn't like me - or you - when we have only ever done what had to be done!"

"Is it so bad, to have a ruler with compassion?"

"You have compassion, Arkhora. Hers is untempered by the necessary pragmatism. Didn't she advise you to seek a compromise with Karazhian's Protectorate?"

That was ancient history to everyone but the rejuvenated; Kireltan Karazhian was sixty years dead, a victim of Rene's consolidation of power beneath the Wastes.

"To be fair, we wouldn't have been able to take Nova Reio in a frontal assault. She was right about that. If I hadn't had an ace up my sleeve ..."

Yseult had been that ace; at age twelve she'd assassinated the Protector-Pretender. It hadn't been entirely based on the good of the State; Karazhian had been unfit to live, let alone rule.

"It doesn't bear thinking about. We cannot have another Karazhian on the Iron Throne - which is why, as I was saying, you cannot die on us!"

Offices of the Markhreif, Sun River City, Raven Mountains, Continent #3 "Raven", Northern Hemisphere, Geri II, Fenris System

Late-afternoon sunlight slanted in through the windows of the Markhreif's office, glinting golden on the wheels of disassembled automata. Serrachen Inkharent's office resembled a collision between an antiques store and a clockmaker's; everywhere were intricate, broken machineries, old ceramics, bits and pieces from Xanadu or the Kymnari worlds or Taiga IV. Like the magpie that was Geri II's totem, Serrachen was a collector of trinkets.

To Karzel Marakht, however, it was a collection of broken things; his own office was tidy. Freki IV as a whole did not ascribe to the cultural scruffiness, the "creativity" of Geri II. He leaned forward, regarding Inkharent over steepled fingers.

"Please clarify - is it the person you're opposed to, or the policy?"

"Definitely the policy," Serrachen replied hurriedly. "No-one - nobody reasonable, at least - can disapprove of the Arkhora's governance. But Sound Governance was created for a specific set of circumstances, a specific nation-state which we have left behind, and attempting to apply it to the Ascendancy as a whole is only slowing our development. You should know that - how much of our industry is still concentrated in the Ktaiya-Aten?"

"So it's not the policy at all ... you want to do away with the entire system."

"I do not think that I said that, Karzel. Sound Governance has been wholly responsible for our successes - but we could be more successful if only we were not ruled so remotely. Geri II is not Freki IV is not Adranthe is not the Mother Country, and I will say that the Mother Country is not the location from which our industry should be directed. The Arkhora, for all her merits, is still running things as if it were fifty years in the past, and we were all huddled beneath the Wastes. It's beginning to collapse, and she's the wrong generation to see it."

"There's a saying among the Anglisikhi, you know - "If it is not broken, do not fix it". You're not going to win over Sahel Ai with that argument, you know."

Serrachen made a face. "Do you think I tried? Harkhanyé would support Rene Seingult if she told him to jump off the Grand Escarpment. No, Sahel Ai isn't going to change no matter who's in charge; they're second generation, after all. Change is Bad! You and I, though, Fenris as a whole - we grew up seeing the hopes and dreams of the Ascendancy move outsystem. This is where the heart is now."

"And you have the support of whom, out here in the "heart"? Obviously not Harkhanyé ..."

"KeiVerrant on Adranthe, of course, Szarekken on Geri III, and arTaelkh on Tenebris."

"You got arTaelkh? I didn't think that the Old Man would toe any line but Command's."

"He's smart, though - arTaelkh knows where the future is."

"I'm not sure whether it is more dangerous to know you or to be you, Serrachen."

"I'm not so dangerous as you think, Karzel."

"That's not what I meant."