A few seconds later, there was another buzz at the door, then another, this time somehow sadder, and then the buzzer fell quiet. The silence stretched for a few seconds, then past a minute, then past three minutes. The door would not ring again. Arlyana wormed herself under Moko’s arm and began to breathe in shudders. Not knowing what to say, Moko said nothing, which was exactly right.
The Heritage Wall was an hour by train from Arlyana’s quarters. They stepped out of the station into a low chamber, a mere twenty metres tall, but so long and straight that it seemed to be a continuation of the train tunnel that had brought them.
The southern wall of the chamber was a milled plane that followed a subtly saddled polynomial function. The curve of the wall had a strangely emotive property: it could reach into people and make them pause in awe. Along the wall, following the relief lines of the function, were dots of blood where people had pricked a finger and pressed it to the rock.
“My family has a patch here,” said Moko. He led Arlyana into the cavern, past robotic curators that cleaned the cavern and sharpened the edges of etchings that had eroded, and showed her the cluster of blood spots from his ancestors.
“These stop about thirty years ago,” she said, reading the dates etched under each blood print.
Moko shrugged. “Most of my family joined the Brethren of Light. I’m the only one left on Musca.”
“You have no family here?”
“My closest relative, both genetically and spatially, is my brother. He’s on a Brethren mission ship halfway to B right now. He’s about fifty light-hours away.”
“You don’t seem very Brethren to me,” said Arlyana with a touch of amusement in her voice.
“Well,” said Moko, “my brother is very Brotherly. However, in spite of being a brother to my brother, I am not Brotherly at all.”
Arlyana shook her head. “Was that supposed to make sense?”
“If you spend enough time around Brethren, yes. Now show me your family plot.”
Arlyana led him to her family’s cluster of blood prints. It was a large display that went back twelve generations. Moko was impressed.
“Do you think I should put my mark in your family’s area?” he asked. “They don’t even know I exist.”
“Do you always worry so much about etiquette?” Arlyana asked. “You do understand that being balloted gives you a certain degree of latitude?”
“It feels presumptuous to me.”
Arlyana scoffed at him. “Since I’m not planning to put my own mark here, it’s a moot point.”
Moko waited for an explanation but Arlyana did not seem disposed to provide one. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll find our own place, miles from anyone else.”
“Wait a moment,” said Moko. Arlyana tried to draw him into moving on, but Moko refused. He was living with one Arlyana mystery already; he was not going let her keep spinning away from him. He examined the blood spots carefully, reading the names, dates, and relationships etched into the rock beneath them.
“I think I’ve got it. Here,” he said, pointing to a spattered blotch of crimson on the wall. “This is your sister’s blood. Her name is Uldi. And underneath that is a girl’s name, Caris, but no blood. The space has been set aside for a girl who has not been born yet. Your niece-to-be.” He studied Arlyana’s face; she was giving nothing away. He continued, “It makes you feel bad. You know it shouldn’t. But you can’t help it. She is about to be born and you’ve been balloted.”
“Yes, you’ve got it. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m resentful,” said Arlyana.
“I didn’t say resentful,” said Moko.
“I did,” she replied, then pulled him away by the arm.
They walked along the Heritage Wall until they found an area that was almost devoid of blood marks. Arlyana called over one of the curators, a thin robotic agent that introduced itself and asked what they would like etched beside their blood marks. They decided their names and a small bridge between them would be enough.
The curator robot pricked Moko’s skin. Blood budded on the tip of his thumb. Moko pressed it to the rock face and the curator etched his name and the date around it. Arlyana offered her hand to the curator. She pressed her blood to the wall next to Moko’s and watched as the curator finished etching.
As they rode the train back, Arlyana fell asleep on Moko’s shoulder. Now that he had time to think, he could see that Arlyana had been too quick to agree with his guess, and had been far too blithe about it. It bothered him that Arlyana had spun some more mist about herself. For someone who wanted to share terminal intimacies, she seemed paradoxically reluctant to let him understand her.
He ran through the names and dates in his mind, trying to reconstruct from memory Arlyana’s family tree and the sequence of events. Something was amiss with the story he had intuited.
Moko brushed Arlyana’s hair with his hand while she slept and wondered why she kept so many things to herself.
Moko said, “This looks terrible.”
“Should I care how it looks?”
“People will say I only wanted you for the time you gave me.”
“I want this more than I care what people think,” said Arlyana.
So they went to the registry and signed away the difference in their ballots. Moko gained time and Arlyana lost time, but they would both live long enough for Moko to learn to climb.
They started with training walls, then worked their way up to boulders, then spouts, and finally to sheer walls. She taught him about ropes and anchors and how to belay, and over the following weeks he built up his strength and endurance.
Signing at the registry had another, quite unexpected, effect: Moko, who had more or less disappeared from his life, became traceable. Consequently, Arlyana was woken early one morning by a message marked maximum urgency.
She opened the message. A man with a shaved scalp and a slightly pinched mouth appeared on screen; he wore a Brethren tunic.
“My dear lady,” said the man. “I apologize for sending a recorded message, but I am fifty light-hours away and cannot engage in responsive conversation. My name is Tarroux, and as you have may have guessed I am Moko’s brother. I found you through the registry, and I apologize for intruding on you, but I have been trying to reach Moko with an extremely urgent message. It is imperative that he view the attachment as soon as possible. Before I finish, please allow me thank you. When you signed your time over to Moko, you may have given him just enough to save himself from the ballot. I can’t tell you how much this means.” There the message ended.
Arlyana shook Moko awake and dragged his grogginess out of bed.
“You have to see this,” she said. Once the message finished, she touched the attachment and went to leave the room.
“Stay,” said Moko.
“But it’s private!”
“Stay!”
So they watched together as Tarroux, brother to Moko, spoke again.
“Moko,” he said, “there is a place for you on the last Brethren mission ship. You know this will be the last ship to leave Musca. The sun is becoming too wild even for missionaries.
“I know we’ve been through this before, but I am hoping that the approaching ballot date will have changed how you feel about joining the Brethren.
“Please, brother, I love you and it breaks my heart knowing how easily you could be saved.”
There was a stark jump-cut in the video stream. Tarroux had come back to the message and added a coda. The quality of the light had changed, the background was darker, and Tarroux looked as if he was being eaten from inside.
“Brother, I know I’ve asked you many times before and you’ve refused many times before, but please, please join the Brethren. I… I have never said this before, but I beg you to join the mission. Even if you don’t believe, just say that you do. That’s all you have to do. Just say you believe. I know, I know. It may be a lie. But with time spent among us, maybe you will come to see our truth. Even if you don’t change, even if you never accept the Tenets, I will still have my brother.”
At the end of the message, Arlyana turned off the screen.
