4

James was ill. It was the stink of roasted meat, he surmised. Sam called the doctor and spent the afternoon updating earnings projections. It took an hour, like the Maestro had said, but she spent an extra two napping at her desk. The box in the corner stared at her. She wondered what it would be like to sleep inside it. The leather cushioning seemed softer than clouds.

More letters arrived in the afternoon. One velvety package contained detailed instructions on the dying of hair and three tubes of questionable goo. Sam left that outside James’s office. There was a stack of job applications, thicker than usual; she took one out at random and left the others in the bottom drawer, where about five hundred had piled up.

The Maestro re-emerged at dusk, face ashen, eyes bloodshot. Sam made porridge thickened with ginger and beetroot, and he gulped down three bowls. They sat in the lounge room for a while going over the numbers. James had memorized five years’ worth of projected cashflow. He was mildly surprised when Sam’s figures returned higher.

“We’re rich,” he declared.

“You are rich,” Sam corrected. “There were thirty-two applications today.”

James glanced at the one Sam had picked out, then folded it into a crane. Paper made from fungal fibre could not suffer being tortured, and the crane disintegrated within seconds. “So, ask,” he said, “you have questions on your face.”

“What did she say?”

“That I have five years – she didn’t know why. Still gave me pills,” he rolled his eyes.

“I really want to ask –”

“There will be a vote at the plenum,” he began tearing up Sam’s notes into little squares and piling them up by size. “Thirty candidates for audition. You have already been pre-selected. Pending no major incidents, you will be going to the Place Above in December.”

Sam began to say that this was not what she was going to ask, but it would not be, strictly speaking, true.

“I wish I could give you more detail but I don’t remember a thing.” James flicked the little tower of paper, and it toppled in a lazy drift. “I went into a room and came out with the Green. I think there was a…a city. Like a mirage. And lots of people walking around in...nice clothes, I think.” He shrugged. “It’s like trying to remember a dream. Irrelevant and futile.”

“Will I pass?”

James looked at her. The Green glittered in the grey like a thousand tiny stars. It was as if the man was going blind and his vision was being commandeered by some otherworldly creature.

“You are prepared.” He clicked his fingers, and Lucia stepped up beside him and offered her arm. He frowned at the mark on her face. “Let’s talk in the lab.”

The basement laboratory resembled the workspace of a demented dentist. Thousand of reagents stacked the shelves, the drawers, the countertop, overspilling onto boxes, the floor, the foot of the stairs. Cylinders of formaldehyde, each as tall as Sam, crowded one corner. Surgical tools – sawed scissors and stitching needles the thickness of a hair, boxes of autoroutines, rolls of injector tubes – sat in another. The infusion pump was half-filled, the purple liquid inside kept at a constant boil and attached to the operating chair by capillary tubes.

Human remains dangled from the ceiling. Ligaments, muscle groups, organs – all preserved samples – were suspended in separated layers that if folded together would form an abomination.

A row of plague masks hung at the entrance along with a faded warning sign regaling the rules of safety. The carbon filters inside those beaks have not been replaced for months, but visitors were rare, and those who came rarely partook in the breathing of fumes.

Lucia sat down in the chair and strapped down her own legs. James pulled over a stool and an armful of folding struts dangling with tools and lights. His plague mask was silver and gold, the beak artfully folded in a spiral to avoid prodding his one and only patient.

Sam stood close by, ready with cleaning alcohol and a yellowish preservative paste that the alks charged three thousand seeds per box. The red mark on Lucia’s face glared in the ascetic light.

“Your assessment?” the Maestro asked.

“Cosmetic damage. Subdermal effusion. Self-regulation must be clogged,” said Sam.

“Trivial.” James held out a scalpel and found his hand shaking uncontrollably.

“Maybe I should –”

“No,” he snapped, then shut his eyes for a moment. “Yes, it’s trivial.”

Lucia turned toward her as she sat down. Her blindfolds today were yellow and teal, thin and almost translucent. Sam could see Lucia’s eyes moving underneath. It was as if –

“She’s watching me,” said Sam.

“Yeah, because I’m watching you,” said James. “Be careful.”

Sam had watched the Maestro perform the procedure a dozen times. Lucia could heal minor bruises and incisions on her own (by some miracle of alchemy that Sam did not and could not be bothered to fully understand), but the non-hardened extremities – face, armpits, groin – were susceptible to malfunction. She only needed to evacuate the congealed infusion and the bruise should heal on its own.

Lucia did not react as the diamond blade bit into her cheek. Her skin parted like real flesh, but there was no blood, only a trickle of purple. Exposed, the bruise had the hue of an oil puddle. Under the Maestro’s much-too-watchful eye, Sam gently scraped away the coagulated infusion and applied the balm in its place. As soon as the pressure was alleviated she could see the veins underneath plump up, sucking in the residual fluid through some capillary action that she only faintly comprehended.

Lucia was a marvel, she knew that much. Anything less than the diamond blade and the skin would not break. Any damage less than direct trauma shattering her reinforced skeleton, her self-regulation could mend. These bruises were accidents, flaws in an otherwise flawless specimen. Made her seem human, in a way.

The incision required no stitching, only a brief pinch with T’Lia’s catalyst applied along the cut. A rosy hue remained on the spot, almost lifelike. Sam dabbed it with a proprietary sealant from the Guild of Preservation. Lucia’s face twitched, her lips folding into a lopsided smile.

“Good. Well done,” said James.

“On the Floor of Nine, I –”

“I remember. You told me you saw her speak.”

“I still don’t think it’s –”

“Observe how Lucia mimics inflections in my emotional state,” he said, and Lucia nodded. “The tether between us is so strong that there is considerable subliminal bleeding of my consciousness into her autoroutines. No behaviour of hers is truly autonomous.” James began undoing a strap while Lucia undid another. “Once I too thought there could be some miracle, the preservation of cognitive remnants beyond Rathnayake’s Limit, but I ran tests, and I was seeing things that were not there, and I will not be duped into hope again.”

Sam knew he wanted to say more. The first time he told the story, she had listened out of obligation; now, inexplicably, the Maestro’s reminiscing gave her a sense of tranquillity, the inverse of their malevolent work. She could not explain why exactly, only that it made him seem –

“I thought I would at peace, that I would let her go,” said James, holding Lucia’s hand. Lucia held his. “But Rathnayake’s Limit is asymptotic. If I counteracted the decline in cognizance by amplifying the Green, she shall always remember me. It was going to work. One hundred and thirty million secondary tethers I would need to gather in my lifetime to maintain baseline. By year seven, I would need two million lives. And here we are.”

“There are not –”

“- not one hundred and thirty million people in the Pile. It was impossible from the start.” His voice trembled. “When I found out I was going to die, I was happy. The rest of my life can be spent maintaining her memory of me, and we shall leave together. But it’s gone. She is gone. I began too late.”

“Maestro –”

“One minute and thirteen seconds. I delayed the primary tether by one minute and thirteen seconds because I was in a… by the time I went to her, the density was not there. I missed the threshold by three-millionth of a tether. Lucia, she’s not…she’s hollow, because I was in a meeting, talking money.” The Maestro shook as if gripped by pain, but Lucia’s grip was steady and immovable. “I have failed the one remaining purpose of my life because I was pretentious and vain. And now I despise them all, the clowns on high tables. All I see are reflections of me.”

“Maestro –”

“Had I only…had I just…stopped being a…a head of dreams, she would still remember me, and when I eat she would remind me to eat slow and take my time, there was no hurry, she was here, not going anywhere, and I would not lose her to a steamed turnip. I could take my time.” He laughed, and wept. “I thought I was at peace, but I’m not. Don’t you remind me of who she was. Don’t you ever say to me that she is still here. She is gone, forever, and it is my fault, and you will not rectify that with conjecture.”

“No, Maestro.”

“Please, leave me be.”

Sam closed the door behind her. The Maestro remained in the lab for the night; she knew because she heard him through the door, at two, at four, at five, speaking in a voice so gentle it belonged as if to a stranger.