Beloved (lore): Difference between revisions
→I am thirty-five. It is later the same night of my homecoming.
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==I am thirty-five. It is later the same night of my homecoming.== | ==I am thirty-five. It is later the same night of my homecoming.== | ||
Moli Imoli says my father has just finished his fifth tub of pulque and unbuttoned his Imperial raiment. In the days of the Praetorate, public intoxication carried the death penalty. | |||
Now my father dances among the miniature fleets, overturning two-meter models of doomsday weapons the Legions wish to build. He plays invisible drums with his hands, stomps his feet, and does the horns with his mouth. "BA BUHHH BUHHH," he roars, "BAAA BUHHH BUHHHH, come on, come on, damn you, will you not join in? Make a wonderful noise! BAAAA BUHHH BUHHHHHH! Stomp with me!" | |||
"Your Imperial Majesty," Moli Imoli says, laughing brightly, looking furtively between my father and the icy Evocate-General, "Umun'arath has requested that we take a quiet moment to honor those soldiers far from the homeworld." | |||
"Well, damn you, Umun," my father says, cheerfully. "I know what you're about. You want to drag your dour dolorous diligence into my house of joy. You want us to remember it's you who makes it all happen. Your legions and your fleets. The Praetorate may be gone, but the Cabal is still a fighting empire, grim with the knowledge that all who came before us were swept away by the dark flood. And everyone who's not fighting on your front is a scavenger. Dead weight. Is that right?" | |||
"Your Imperial Majesty," the Evocate-General says, neutrally, "I thought only of tradition," | |||
"Oh, tradition, is it? Praetorate tradition? Like your blood etching and your Provings? Damn tradition! Tradition is how the old force the young to reenact their miseries!" | |||
My father picks up a gigantic forked warship and looks through its central aperture at Umun'arath. "Damn you, can't you feel anything? Can't you live, Umun? I see how you prey on my daughter, you know" | |||
He snaps his jaws shut so suddenly there is a little thunder. | |||
"Your daughter seems to me a fine pilot," Umun'arath says. | |||
"Oh, she seems fine to you, does she?" My father's face bulges through the sun-devouring maw of the wooden prototype. The actual warship will dampen gravity with a lambda-smoothing effect, so that its target star cannot hold itself together against the blast of its own heart. "She meets with your approval? Then why, Umun, do you haunt her? Why do you steal her from me and send her away to die in some crushing chasm of a gas giant, shattered by Sindû missiles, compressed by the depths, by the deep where the worms lurk! Isn't that what you say, Umun? In the heart of every gas giant, there is an abomination waiting to hatch? So why have you convinced my own daughter, my own flesh—" | |||
Everyone is absolutely silent. Absolutely still. | |||
"—to go play in the grave-womb of the worms? Instead of being happy here, on the homeworld, in Torobatl, where she could share my joy?" | |||
I should not speak. But I do. "Father, I had a duty to the people to serve—" | |||
"Duty! Duty!" He hurls the model like an accusation. Moli Imoli ducks; Shayotet moves as if he will leap on it and cover it with his body, like a bomb. "What you had was a voice whispering in your ear! A poison in your tea, a pox in your blanket, the lie that EVERYTHING IS GIVEN VALUE BY ITS SUFFERING AND ITS STRIFE!" | |||
Everyone cowers before his shout. Except Umun, and me. I am shocked to find that I do not fear my father. I have listened to him cast off my own siblings. I have known him to murder beasts I loved too well. But I am not afraid of him. | |||
"THIS IS WHAT MATTERS!" he roars at Umun. "NOT YOUR DIRE LEGIONS AND THEIR GRINDING PROGRESS! YOU ONLY EXIST TO ALLOW THIS! THIS PARTY! THIS IS THE POINT! | |||
Even the drums have stopped. | |||
"CAN'T ANY OF YOU HAVE ANY FUN?" he bellows. I have heard quieter alarms in the simulator, when I fell into the dark hydrogen depths. | |||
"CAN’T ANY OF YOU LIVE? AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO'S NOT UTTERLY DERANGED? THE ONLY REASON WE DON'T ALL KILL OURSELVES IS THAT WE FEEL GOOD! THE ONLY REASON WE DO ANYTHING, ANYTHING AT ALL, EVEN BREATHING, IS THAT IT FEELS NICE! THAT'S THE ONLY WAY THE UNIVERSE HAS EVER FOUND TO MAKE EXISTENCE TOLERABLE! THE ONLY REASON TO EXIST IS THAT FICKLE LITTLE QUIVER OF REWARD THE BRAIN GIVES US FOR EATING, OR DRINKING, OR DANCING, OR WORKING, OR FREEING OUR PEOPLE FROM THE BEDAMNED PRAETORATE, OR LOVING OUR DAUGHTER! THAT'S ALL THAT'S WORTHWHILE IN LIFE! STIMULATION OF THE THREE PRIMARY VAGUS NERVES! AND IF OUR WHOLE PSYCHE WEREN'T BUILT ON THE NEED FOR THAT REWARD, WHAT WOULD WE BE? HIVE? VEX? NOTHING CABAL, I TELL YOU! NOTHING CABAL!" | |||
He flings his arms out to embrace us all. "WHAT'S THE POINT IF WE CAN'T HAVE FUN? WHAT OTHER POINT COULD THERE BE?" | |||
He stares straight at me. He says, as if for my ears alone, "I would have had a thousand more young, if only I could have made you happy." | |||
==I am centuries old.== | ==I am centuries old.== | ||