The Worth of the Gift

I feel ill when I take the lock of hair from Edana. I try not to show it. I want to refuse it. I feel the urge to throw it down in the dirt. But if I refuse it, I'd offend her, and I'm beginning to suspect that there are few things more dangerous than offended Gogajin. To remind me that I am desirable? Why would I want to be reminded of that?

I stuff the gift into my pack and mumble a faint thanks in Zipsum.

Oh yeah. I speak Zipsum now. It's very strange. It came very naturally to me, this squeaking Karian language. From what I've heard of Gogajin, I am sure that if I studied it, it would come just as easily, just as naturally. Was I designed with a talent for languages in mind? If so, why wasn't I trained in this before now?

Maybe it doesn't matter.

I am glad to be leaving. I see the bloody smear in the quarry that marks the place where Kufu devoured the mad Biomade sniper, and I stop short. Mokuzai has discovered something in the grass.

"May I?" I ask.

He holds the object out to me. It is a strange device, oddly shaped, but clearly Cheldrun. I don't recognize it, but Eris's blood still covers it. Moses opens the end of it, and shows that there at the heart of it, surrounded by circuitry, is a tiny shard of White Rock.

"White Rock," I murmur. Mokuzai looks disgusted.
It always comes back to White Rock. Everything.

Based on the design, I'd guess it was probably meant to be... inside the body. Eris had this?

White Rock. It touched her life just as it has shaped mine. I was born from the White Rock. If Inase Spark is my father, then the White Rock, whatever it is, is my mother. I am stained with its power. Maybe that's what the Kyo-TeeShee mean by 'goddess.' Maybe it's someone who was made with White Rock.

I frown.

Moses wasn't made with White Rock. Neither was Kiyoshi. Mokuzai was touched by White Rock, but I don't think High Dive or Una had ever encountered it before we all met. Maybe being made with White Rock is just one of the ways you can qualify for the state which the Kyo-TeeShee think of as 'godhood,' whatever that is.

I clean the device as best I can, wrap it in cloth, and slide it into an empty dagger-sheath on the pant leg of my leathers.

---------------

Two days later, after we have made camp for the night, I walk a short ways into the wild woods, the strange device in one hand, the lock of Gogajin hair in the other. I look at each in turn. Gogajin hair. Cheldrun device. Remembrances. I didn't know Eris the mad sniper, but it doesn't seem right for her to die like that out in the jungle with none to remember her except for the Jevumm that ate her. I wonder what she was like. Did she have any friends like mine? Were there people who thought she was desirable? ... Probably.

Who cares? She's just some crazy sniper that Kufu ate.

A memory comes back to me suddenly. There was an old Cheldrun holo-vid that Sever and Stitch snuck into the compound, once. It was the first time I had ever seen anything from the outside world. It's a story about comrades. Two soldiers, Biomade both of them, fighting at the front against the Gogajin. At the end, one of the two is dying, and she turns to her comrade and hands him a small locket. Within is a picture of her in happier times. She'd always said that she kept it to remember the better times, and to know that they'd get better again some day. But this time, this time she said, "Take this in remembrance of me."

He did.

Two possible remembrances. Two paths in the forest. One the last material witness to a dead Cheldrun sniper, the other a part of a Gogajin who gave unwanted attention. It's not a difficult choice.

In the end, it's the lock of hair that I discard like the piece of trash that it is, and the Cheldrun device that I re-wrap in cloth and carefully put back into the empty knife-sheath.

Edana didn't take something important into account when she handed out her gifts. Something that should have crossed her mind, but didn't.

I don't want to remember being desired.

3 comments:

Douglas Underhill said...

Nice. Rei is so messed up.

Aric Clark said...

Indeed, choosing the bloody device of horrible destruction from an unknown psychopath who tried to kill the person she most values over the innocuous hair of a donkey who hit on her is a backwards choice.

Paul Wise said...

Well, there are two things to consider here. The first is that not every step is a step forward.

The second is that Rei viewed the lock of hair as essentially meaningless at best and as a reminder of unwanted attention at worst.

On the other hand, the DisLocator is a physical reminder not only of Eris the crazy sniper who tried to kill Moses, but also of Whiterock (which Rei sees as a link to Inase Spark), and of everything Rei was before she chose not to follow orders when she was sent out to kill Moses herself.


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