Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,134

away all that I value, Sancia, all, to ensure no one ever has to go through what you or I have ever again.”

She looked down at her wrists, at the scars there, where they’d bound her up before they’d lashed her. she asked.

She bowed her head, nodded, and stood. “Fine then. Let’s go.”

She marched down the hillside to the drainage tunnel, then into the crypt, with Gregor behind her. They all went silent as she walked in.

She stood in the crypt before a sarcophagus, her heart hammering like mad, not moving.

asked Clef.

She swallowed.

She reached up, grabbed the string around her neck, ripped Clef off, and placed him on the sarcophagus. “This is Clef,” she said aloud. “He’s my friend. He’s been helping me. Maybe now he can help you.”

Everyone stared at her.

Orso slowly stepped forward, mouth open. “Well, bend me over and scrum me blue,” he whispered. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.”

III

THE MOUNTAIN

Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world.

What goes forgotten, though, is that those who partake in this system undergo a similar transformation: people begin as comrades and fellow citizens, then become labor resources and assets, and then, as their utility shifts or degrades, transmute into liabilities, and thus must be appropriately managed.

This is a fact of nature just as much as the currents of the winds and the seas. The flow of force and matter is a system, with laws and maturation patterns. We should harbor no guilt for complying with those laws—even if they sometimes require a little inhumanity.

—TRIBUNO CANDIANO, LETTER TO THE COMPANY CANDIANO CHIEF OFFICER’S ASSEMBLY

26

“You’ve…you’ve lied to me!” Orso shouted. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time!”

“Well, yeah,” said Sancia. “I heard you telling Gregor to dump my unconscious body in a ditch. That doesn’t exactly inspire trust.”

“That’s not the point!” snapped Orso. “You’ve put everything at risk by lying to us!”

“I don’t recall your ass sneaking onto a foundry,” said Sancia, “or getting up to hop in an underwater coffin. Seems this risk hasn’t been distributed fairly.”

Clef asked.

So she did. And he was right: every fact that she’d been taking as a regular part of her life for the past few days sent Orso and Berenice careening off the walls in shock.

“He can sense scrived devices?” Orso said, boggled. “He can see what they are, what they do, at a distance?”

“And he can change them?” said Berenice. “He can change scrivings?”

“Not change,” said Sancia. “Just…make them reinterpret their instructions. Somewhat.”

“How is that any different from change!” cried Orso.

“I’m still hung up on this thing being a ‘he,’ ” said Gregor. “It…it is a key, yes? The key says it’s a him? Is that right?”

“Can we not bother with the dumb shit, please?” said Sancia.

She kept answering questions as best she could, but this proved difficult since she was essentially acting as a go-between in a conversation among six people. She kept asking everyone to slow down, slow down, and everyone kept saying, “Who was that answer for?” or “What? What’s that about, again?”

sighed Clef.

Sancia looked around. Orso was still screaming questions at her, and it seemed like she’d missed two or three of them in just the past few seconds.