If she survived that long.
2. A Slow Cruelty
She had no idea how much time had elapsed when she came round. The memories of her conversation with Ondo seemed years distance, but it might only have been a few hours, a few days. The tugging pain in her chest was gone, a warmth filling her whole body. Chemically induced, no doubt. She licked her cracked lips, tried to flex the distant reaches of her body: her fingers and her toes. Dimly, they answered. The reconstructed half of her felt different, somehow; her left hand responded immediately when she galloped her fingers, but it also felt like an … emulation of how it should feel. Still, the integration of Ondo's additions had advanced apace. How long had she been out?
As if he could read her thoughts, Ondo spoke from his customary position of the chair beside her. “It's ten days since our last conversation. I needed to keep you in a coma while your natural and artificial neural networks intertwined, but the process is sufficiently advanced now. You should be able to breathe normally, and you will start to gain fine motor control of your new limbs. You should know that in normal use your left arm and leg will behave just as your right ones do, but you must learn to control them. Both are capable of far greater feats of strength and speed: so much so that you could shatter what remains of your natural skeleton if you aren't careful.”
She twisted her creaking neck to find him. “I told you to stop. I told you to let me go.”
“I know. And truly, if that is what you wish, I will respect it. But I also know the way we think about things can change. A different perspective, a little time, and what once seemed intolerable is suddenly small, a minor annoyance. Forgive me, but there are things I would like you to see before you decide you've had enough.”
She had the impression it was a prepared speech, something he'd run through again and again as he watched over her. “Right. This is where you show me a mirror to persuade me I'm not the ruined freak I think I am.”
She saw that wasn't it from the brief look of puzzlement on his face. Maybe the idea hadn't occurred to him. She didn't really know anything about this man. She knew the name, of course. Ondo the heretic, the outlaw, pursued for years across the galaxy by Concordance, always evading capture aboard his ship known simply as the Refuge. She barely understood why he was even with her, what connection there was between them, how it was that Ondo Lagan had been a friend of her father.
“We can do that,” he said, “if it would help.”
She considered. Not, not yet, she wasn't ready for that. Her body was mostly reconstructed, although her artificial skin hadn't been implanted yet, her left half still gleaming black substrate. She wasn't ready yet to see what he'd done with her face.
“What is it you want me to see?”
“I'd like you to come up to one of the observation domes. You haven't left this room since the day you arrived, and now I think it's time. This chair will carry you anywhere you wish to go on the Refuge, until your limbs and body are strong enough to bear you.”
“I'll walk, thanks.”
He stood to manoeuvre the hovering chair so that it was beside her bed. “You're not ready for that. Let me help you.”
“I said, I'll walk!” Her anger flared into life from nowhere. The room lurched around her as she sat upright. She ignored it and forced herself to stand.
Her left leg buckled beneath her immediately, a useless column of flesh that could never support her weight. She flopped to the smooth floor, bashing her forehead before she could persuade her left hand to move and protect her.
She lay there for a moment, cursing Ondo, cursing everything. “What have you done to me? These new limbs don't work. My body doesn't work.”
He knelt to offer her a hand. “You will get stronger. Your tissues are still combining, learning to work together. It will take months, but you will be better, I promise you.”
After a moment, she took his hand and allowed herself to be hauled up and deposited in the chair. Her fury had already burned itself out. She hated to be so weak. She didn't even have the energy to remain angry.
When her breathing had calmed, she looked up at the man standing over her.
“Why did they do it?” she rasped. “Why did they build their shroud and blot out our sun? Why this atrocity? Why such a slow cruelty?”
Her nightmares had been full of the scenes she'd witnessed as the light faded from her planet and it fell into savagery. They could have destroyed intelligent life on Maes Far in a few moments, but they'd chosen to draw out the agony. Loss overwhelmed her, and she felt tears brimming in her right eye. The right, but not the left. The vision of her artificial eye remained unclouded.
Ondo took his time to respond, a troubled expression crossing his features. He sat on the bed so that their heads were on the same level. “There has long been a catastrophist tradition within Concordance, these days led by Secundus Godel. Maes Far may be down to her.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
He seemed content to sit and talk to her at length. He probably didn't get the chance very often. “It's the 'end of days' approach to religious conversion. From what little I know of the founding sect, they believed that the soul flies through a sacred wormhole when a
