Surface Detail

“Well, ours certainly does. And that’s all it does. Can’t speak for the Afterlives of aliens. But I’ll tell you this: a lot of the current fuss about them is founded on a basic misunderstanding. What’s annoying is that people who don’t want them to exist can’t accept that they actually don’t exist. Meanwhile they’re wrecking the whole point of pretending that they do. If people just shut up and stopped complaining about things that don’t happen in the first place then there wouldn’t be any problem. Life would go on, people would behave themselves and nobody would really get hurt.” The old male shook himself, seemingly disgusted. “I mean, what do they want? To make the Hells real so that people can be suitably frightened of them?”

“So where are all the people who ought to be in other Afterlives, in Heavens? Because they are not there.”

Errun snorted. “In limbo.” He slapped at something on his flank, inspected what he found there. An imaginary insect, Filhyn suspected. “Stored, but not functioning, not in any sense living.” He seemed to hesitate, then rolled closer to her again. “May I speak in confidence, Filhyn?”

“I assumed all that’s being said here is in confidence, Representative.”

“Of course, of course, but I mean in particular confidence; something that you would not even share with your closest aides or a partner. Something strictly between you and me.”

“Yes,” she said. “Very well. Go ahead,”

He rolled closer still. “Some of those who disappear, who it might appear go into this so-called Hell,” he said quietly, “are simply deleted.” He looked at her, quite serious. She looked back. “They are not even held in limbo,” he told her. “They simply cease to be; their soulkeeper thing is wiped clean and the information, their soul, is not transferred anywhere. That’s the truth, Filhyn. It’s not something that’s supposed to happen, but it does. Now,” he said, tapping her on one front knee, “you most emphatically did not hear that from me, do you understand?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Good. That really is something we don’t want people knowing. Don’t you see?” he asked her. “All that matters is that people believe they are still living in some sense, and suffering. But, frankly, why waste the computer space on the bastards? Excuse my language.”

Filhyn smiled. “Is it not always better to tell the truth though, Representative?”

Errun looked at her, shook his head. “The truth? No matter what? For good or ill? Are you mad? I do hope you’re having a joke with me here, young lady.” He held his nostrils with the finger stubs of one trunk and submerged himself completely in the mud, resurfacing moments later and snorting powerfully before wiping the mud from his eyes. “Don’t pretend you are so naive, Filhyn. The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channelled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.” He glared at her. “You are having a joke with me, aren’t you?”

I might as well be, she thought. She wondered if she would finally be a real politician when she agreed with what Errun was saying.

“Otherwise we are both wasting our time here, Representative.”

One of us certainly is, she thought. She looked up, saw Kemracht signalling her from some distance away. “Not at all, Representative,” she told the old male as she rose on all fours. “This has been most instructive. However, if you’ll excuse me, I must go. Will you shower with me?”

The old male looked at her for some moments. “Thank you, no. I’ll stay here a little longer.” He kept looking at her. “Don’t rock the barge, Filhyn,” he told her. “And don’t believe everything that everybody tells you. That’s no way to the truth; just confusion and muddle.”

“I assure you I don’t,” she told him. She performed a modestly shallow curtsy with her front legs. “I’ll see you for the afternoon session, Representative.”

He was one of the only two survivors of his squad, and their total force now numbered six. The rest had fallen to the up-swarming mass of guards. His marines had the better weaponry and were easily a match for the opposition, one against one, but there had been many more of the guards than there had seemed at first, and even when he and his men had poured through their entangling mass of bodies and weaponry they had encountered nets of barbs, nets of poisons and nets of convulsing electricity. Piercing, cutting those took more time, and, held up there, enfolded in the sickly green light flooding up from below, they’d been attacked from above by the remnants of the guards they had forced their way through. More marines had fallen, or dissolved, or jerked and spasmed, spiralling upwards.