“You were there?” Mihran stared at the image in front of him. Of course she was there. She was his city, she was everywhere, and that had always been a good thing, a source of comfort. Until this moment.
“How could I not be there?” replied Aleph bitterly. “He was speaking of altering my primary centers of consciousness. How could I not pay attention to that?”
Bitterness. Aleph, hurt, bitter, and frightened. How? How could this be? Mihran felt his knees buckle and he groped for the padded wooden bench, sitting down heavily. The city was a source of strength and advice. She held the wisdom of his ancestors. He had consulted with her at length every time there was a difficult decision to be made. They had talked for hours while he read over the reports for how Pandora might create a cure that would satisfy the Called and the Authority. The Eden Project was as much Aleph’s work as it was the work of the family.
He suddenly became very aware of the sounds of voices around him. A thousand voices, all talking and laughing and going about their lives, supposedly all connected tightly to each other and their city, but not one of them knew what was happening in this tiny grove in their midst.
Mihran rested his head in his hand. “Oh, Aleph, is this really the end of us? What have we done?”
“I don’t believe you have done anything.” For the first time since the conversation had begun, Mihran heard the familiar, soft comfort in Aleph’s voice.
He lifted his head. “Then who has?”
Aleph’s image had created a chair for her to sit in so her eyes were level with his. “Do you really believe Dionte has made some error in judgment? She has been conducting some unusual experiments with her own Conscience.”
No. It cannot be. Dionte is family, said his Conscience, repeating what Mihran had already told himself.
Aleph rested her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands in front of her. “Have you seen her complete records?”
Mihran shook his head. “I have not looked. That is the province of her chief Guardian.”
“And if you ask him what Dionte has been doing, he will say all is well.” Bitterness again, as wrong as anything Mihran had ever seen. As wrong as Basante’s death had been.
Basante. Mihran gripped the edge of the bench, remembering the young man lying so still in the infirmary bed, his eyes closed, death already making his face slack. He’d thought then he knew what the ancestors felt when they saw the Delta Complex shattered and exposed. Nothing could make this right. Nothing like it must ever be allowed to happen again.
I do not want to talk about this anymore. I do not want to think about this anymore. I want… But guilt and the scent of old metal caught him up. He was father to his branch. He had to continue.
“Why are you so sure what the chief Guardian will say?” Mihran made himself ask.
“Because I asked him and that is what he told me.”
A spasm of anger shook Mihran’s hands before his Conscience was able to soothe him. How many other conversations about the health of his city had happened and not been reported to him? “Why don’t you believe him?”
“Because Dionte was in charge of his most recent download and adjustment.” Aleph looked steadily at him, scrutinizing him, Mihran realized, waiting for his reply.
But Mihran’s mouth had gone dry and he could not speak. “You will not trust Dionte’s work even on her family?”
“No.”
The family must be trusted. The city must be trusted. The world had functioned on these two principles for a thousand years. He could not choose between them. The idea was absurd. “Why not? How can she harm her own family?”
“For the same reasons Tam could choose to protect the Trusts over his family.”
Ah, yes. That was in the recordings Hagin played for him. The stunted Conscience. Twice in one family? Was there a genetic fault? Some variation that prevented filament growth? But it would have been reported. “Her records—”
“Are lies!” Aleph stood up abruptly, knocking the chair over. “I have been lied to, you have been lied to.” She swept out both arms. “There are liars in every city and have been since the Consciences were first introduced. My fellows are confirming it in the convocation even now.”
“No.” Mihran laced his fingers tightly together, searching for something, anything, to hold on to. “This cannot be true.”
“It is. We know it; we feel it. And we do not know what to do. We are supposed to help you, to comfort you and be your companions, to help you explore and protect Pandora and its people, but how can we fulfill our purpose when we cannot trust you?”