Ondo was still looking at the swirl of their galaxy. “Concordance control almost all of it, their Cathedral ships in orbit around every technologically-advanced planet. Somewhere in that central mass lives Omn, if they are to be believed. The God Star; the Light at the Heart of the Galaxy, attended and served by Primo Carious and Secundus Godel and the rest of the Augurs. Of course, it is a place no one can go, a being no one may approach. No one can go anywhere without the Cathedral ships and the Void Walkers intervening to stop them. They cannot allow truth to trouble their mystique. You grasp the scale of what they are, now? How they dominate and belittle us?”
She didn't need his patronising words. He thought she was ignorant of galactic affairs, brought up on her backwater world, but that wasn't how it was. “I've always known what they are; I was raised to understand exactly that. What can you do in the face of such power? The galaxy is beautiful, but the sight of it changes nothing. Concordance are all-powerful and I'm a broken cripple despite all your efforts. You thought showing me this would somehow change my mind? Fill me with some zeal to fight back? I'm fucking exhausted just coming up here, and I'm in a chair that does all the moving for me. My bones hurt.”
He held up his hands as if to fend off her fury. “I wanted you to see this because it's a glorious sight, that's all. I often come up here myself to think; I find it gives me a welcome sense of perspective. I'm sorry if my words offended you.”
He wasn't being intentionally condescending. He wasn't used to talking to people.
“Forget it,” she said.
After a moment, Ondo continued. “We barely know each other, but I knew your father and I see some of him in you. You're still so ill and weak and you've been through a terrible ordeal. You've lost everything you knew and loved, and you've barely survived. It's natural you feel beaten down, defeated. I understand that, truly. But I wanted you also to know that after the sunset comes always the sunrise. One day you will be stronger, and you will be yourself again. Changed, yes, but you. Maybe you won't want to join me in my struggle – I'm not asking that – but I believe that, eventually, you will be glad you survived. That there will be good days.”
“You're saying you won't give me the release I asked for?”
He turned to consider her, frowns wrinkling his face. “I've done everything I can to save you, mend your body, keep you alive. But if you die on the operating table once more, I will let you go if that is truly what you want.”
Was it what she wanted? The thought of release was tempting. All her loss and physical agony would be over. And yet, and yet. That small voice inside her did want to fight Concordance, however ridiculous that notion was. Perhaps it didn't matter that you couldn't possibly win; perhaps there was sense and reason in simply trying. The swirl of the galaxy hung before her, promising countless worlds she could visit, marvels and wonders she could explore. Ondo had given her that possibility. She'd assumed she'd spend the rest of her life on Maes Far but now there was all that waiting for her.
The galaxy, and the Concordance ships that would pursue her relentlessly.
“It's hopeless,” she said. “They're so powerful and you're old and weak and powerless. What can you do?”
He looked amused rather than offended. “There are days when I despair, it is true. Days when continuing to fight seems ridiculous. But I pull myself together and tell myself the darkest hour is before the dawn, and other such platitudes, and I carry on with it, because what else is there? The physicist in me wonders whether Concordance rule is something like a chaotic system: superficially stable, but prone to violent transformations with relatively little input.”
“They don't seem very vulnerable to me.”
Ondo nodded his head in agreement. “The question is, how much is that a façade and how much the reality? I think we can agree, at least, that Omn and his church are not all-powerful, or else we wouldn't be here having this conversation. Godel's brand of madness is one thing, but I genuinely think there's a secret, a reason for everything that's happened. Or at least, something that makes sense of it. I see hope in that.”
“You sound delusional to me.”
“I like to think of it as optimistic.”
She asked her next question quietly. “And how many more operations do I have to go through? If that's what I want to do.”
“At most, four or five. Your skeletal structure, your musculature and your nervous systems are complete, as is your blood circulation. Your lymphatic system, your endocrine glands and your digestive tract are nearing a normal operational profile. Your reproductive organs are fully functional. There are some brain fleck enhancements that still need to be made and then, of course, there is your skin: once I have grown sufficient amount of dermis from your cells, I'll have to graft it across your left half. That will be raw for a time, and sore, but the worst of it is over, I promise you.”
“And what right did you have to do any of it? What right did you have to shape me as you saw fit? Maybe I wanted to stay as I was. Broken.”
He nodded, conceding it was a fair question. “I remade you in your own image, as much as I could. I strove for symmetry in the reconstruction of your body, and where that didn't help, I aimed as far as possible for some sort of body form norm. I'm aware that is a cultural construction as much as anything. You may have preferred some radically different biology. I may
