CHAPTER 26 — Nawa-no-ukiyo

Chaos began with six words, Lady Neku could remember that much. It was a simple enough statement…little to suggest her life was about to change irrevocably. Your mother is looking for you.

The voice came from an alcove, where a marble statue glared at the floor of a corridor few even knew existed. The corridor was wider than it was tall, windowless and lit with flickering globes set into a low ceiling.

Lady Neku sneezed—dust had that effect on her.

A simple maintenance duct under a hydroponic farm, before title inflation hit High Strange and the farm became the Stroll Gardens and the duct acquired statues, the metal tube ran the entire length of a bigger spur, from one side of the ring all the way through to the other. Doors sealed the duct where it left the spire, clumsy welds holding them in place, though these looked newer than the seamless joins found on most doors leading off the maintenance tunnels.

She’d been five when she first found the corridor, maybe six, when her hair was still faded silver and her eyes strange enough to make her brothers look away. She gained entrance by kicking the back off a cupboard and stepping into a circular room. The room had three other doors, two of them leading to other cupboards and the third to this corridor.

It was, she felt, an impressive find…although it would have been more impressive if she hadn’t kicked the backs off a dozen other cupboards first. And it wasn’t just cupboards, there was that panelling in her mother’s study and a huge portrait of the first Duke of High Strange. Lady Neku had been certain the painting hid a secret door.

Lady Neku had spent much of her sixth year trying to discover if the lights in her corridor were always on or if they lit as she entered. She also wondered why the dust remained, when spider bots automatically ingested dust everywhere else.

It was months before she realised High Strange put the dust there especially for her. The access tunnel was sealed at both ends. She was the only person, so far as she knew, to know it existed. No way could that much dust settle in the days between her visits.

“Your mother is looking for you,” said a second statue. “As are your brothers.”

The figure was naked, wore winged sandals, and had his hair twisted into a marble top knot. He was the latest addition to the corridor’s collection and looked exactly like Nico.

“My brothers?” That did surprise Lady Neku. Most weeks she could be forgiven for believing her brothers had forgotten she even existed.

“Your brothers,” insisted the statue. “And your mother.”

Lady Neku sighed.

Miss a couple of meals, skip a week’s worth of lessons, cut your throat, and everyone wanted a bit of your hide. Lady Neku ran through the things she might have done wrong. On balance, she’d have to say she’d been pretty good. Maybe it was her most recent trip to the schloss? But…I mean, she thought, they couldn’t possibly know about that.

Of course not.

Scuffing dust, Lady Neku slid her way to the middle of the corridor and finished with a quick twirl that left her dizzy and slightly breathless in front of a double helix of steps. The spiral came out behind a tapestry in the audience chamber above. Up close one could see that the tapestry of a girl with a unicorn was stitched, but from a distance the picture looked like a painting.

It was very old.

Millions of years had been mentioned. Right back to the far side of the Great White, when there was only one inhabited planet and this was it. Of course, millions was relative. Like most things to do with time, it all depended on how fast you were going, who was doing the counting, and where they stood.

On that basis, her great-great-great-great-grandfather had been nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, three hundred and twenty when he died, which was ridiculous, because everyone knew he’d died young.

History only made sense if one discounted the jump. Always assuming one could define jump in a way that actually made sense. It seemed to Lady Neku that the originators had undertaken the temporal equivalent of dumping waste. Small wonder her world now came with its own exclusion zone.

In a galaxy rich with life no one came calling and the last people to be shifted forward were the families themselves; falling into a world where the future had arrived before them.

It was a cheap trick, that was what her mother said.

“Where are my brothers?” Lady Neku demanded.

A simple answer would have been enough. Instead she got a visual of her mother’s study, with its amber-panelled walls, old carpets, and stained glass windows. Lady Katchatka sat in a gilded chair beneath a huge mirror, her greying hair brushed back from a ravaged face. There were wooden stools set out for the boys, but they still sat at her feet. Lady Katchatka was stroking Petro’s hair as she might stroke a cat, absent-mindedly and only half aware.

“Who was the last to see her?”

That was Nico, the youngest. A good three years older than his sister, he looked younger, his face still round with childhood and his dark hair worn so it flopped elegantly into one eye. “Well?” he demanded, brushing imaginary dust from a black velvet sleeve.

Petro and Antonio shrugged as one.

“You know what she’s like,” said Petro. “I’m not even sure this is a good idea.”

The fingers stroking his hair stopped their caress.

“I can see its good points,” he said quickly. “I’m just worried about what will happen if the plan goes wrong.”

“It won’t,” said Lady Katchatka. “All she has to do is shut up and smile. How hard can that be?”

“For Neku…?” said Antonio, only to drop into silence the moment he realised her question was rhetorical.

“What interests me,” Nico said, “is what you’re going to tell her. I mean, this is Neku. When did she last do anything expected of her? As far as she’s concerned, we might as well not exist.”

I wish, thought Lady Neku. “Do they know I’m watching?” she asked, not bothering to vocalise her question. “No…What I mean is…Oh fuck, you know what I mean.”

“They don’t know you’re watching,” said High Strange. “Besides,” it said, “you’re not, I am.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Once upon a time,” said High Strange, “humans believed the earth was flat.” Before Lady Neku could protest that she already knew this, High Strange dipped the lights around Lady Neku, then re-lit them. She was meant to listen, Lady Neku realised.

“They believed the earth was flat because it looked flat.”

“Well, obviously,” began Lady Neku, then stopped. “Sorry,” she said, when she realised she’d interrupted anyway.

“No,” said the voice. “Go on. What shape is the earth?”

“Round,” said Lady Neku.

“How do you know?”

“Because I can see it from most of the windows.” She stopped, wondering why the voice laughed.

“People see only what they expect to see,” it said. “To you, the planet is round, because that’s how it looks. You need to ask yourself how it looks to people who live under its surface.” Lady Neku thought about that. “Flat,” she said finally. She wasn’t convinced by this answer, but it seemed to be the answer expected. “Although they know it’s round…”

“How?”

“Because we tell them.”

“You tell them lots of things. Since the bulk of what you say is lies, why should they know which fragments are true? You say they are here for their own good. You say you exist to protect them. How simple do you think these people are?”

“Very,” said Lady Neku.

High Strange sighed. “You should go,” it said. “You know how your Lady Mother hates to be kept waiting.”

“Okay,” said Lady Neku, then hesitated. “What does believing the earth is flat have to do with my mother?”

“Think about it,” said the voice. “And tidy yourself up before you go in.”