Who Carried the Bone Key
Session: 2024-10-02
The record takes up aboard the Empire of Bones, with an attack on a nihili. The room it held he called the suffocation room, and beside it, in brackets, the torture room. The journal does not say how the fight went, only that it was fought.
Who fought the nihili in the room without air.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 67
What dies without breath does not forget the want of it.
— the Cycle, IV.4
Skipping the scavenger room. Three words, and the crew went past a door. The journal does not say what was behind it, or why they did not look.
Who passed the scavengers' door, and did not open it.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 68
What holds does not hurry.
— the Cycle, III.4
Form 12 says to look into every room. He left one unlooked. That seems out of character. Perhaps what lay ahead weighed more.
Then what was taken: a pistol of fine make, three doses of spray flesh, two healing syringes, an auto-pistol he called merciless and venomous. And two lines with questions: 3 vials for the gun? Some type of gun?
Look to what the fallen carried.
A thing that steadies the dying is worth the carrying.
Know what they eat, and whether you can eat it.
(Zigu, from his journal.)
— the Forms, Form 33, later additions
He did not know what he carried, and wrote it down anyway, question marks and all.
The next page holds no words. Only a picture, which the record keeps and does not explain.
Light carries what it carries. It does not promise to be read.
— the Cycle, I.10
More was taken: a serum of enhancement, a grappler with a hundred feet of adamantine cable, an advanced medkit, four healing serums. A pouch of nine plasma sapphires, each valued at fifteen hundred credits. Ten photon crystals, which he noted made a strike burn harder.
Who weighed nine sapphires, and wrote down their worth.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 69
What is counted is kept.
— the Cycle, I.12
In 16 I asked why he kept the numbers. Aboard a ship of the dead he counted sapphires. I no longer think the counting was idle.
A great room of the dead, all of them hooked up to computers. Something he called cyber-control managed them. They were the ship's interfaces, for many of its systems. Behind them, the science officer, joined to the dead and using them to steer the ship. The journal does not say who or what the officer was.
Who found the dead wired to the ship, and the officer behind them.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 70
A dark star is still a mass, and other things are held by it.
— the Cycle, IV.8
Grek and Hugh set themselves to break into the dead, to take the ship's systems from them. Som wrote that the dead made the way in easier. The journal does not say whether the two succeeded.
Where the many are joined to one, go in through the many.
What steers through the dead may be reached through the dead.
(Zigu, from his journal.)
— the Forms, Form 42, later additions
Found the bone finger. Then: So we have the 3rd key. Then: Som has a bone key. The journal does not say where the first two keys were found, or what the three would open.
Who carried the bone key, the third.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 71
What gathers mass must carry it.
— the Cycle, III.3
Som has a bone key. He wrote his own name, as of another man. Why?
They entered the secure room. Every screen in it showed the crew, as he wrote, doing heroic stuff. The journal does not say whose screens they were, or which deeds.
Who saw his own deeds on the screens of the dead.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 72
What is opened shows what it was made of.
— the Cycle, I.6
His deeds, shown back to him by the dead. He gave them two words. That seems out of character for a name in the recital, and then it does not.
A tall, lean figure stood facing away from them, in a jacket of military cut. Pale. Undead, of a rare kind, and very, very old. A slight shimmer in front of him, Som wrote: a shield. The journal does not say whose.
Who faced the pale stranger's back, and the shimmer before him.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 73
The oldest light comes from what is already dead.
— the Cycle, IV.9
The stranger called Grek marine captain 132, and Grek began to scream. Part of his face melted. His eyes bubbled and smoked. His tongue turned black. A blade of bone came out of his arm. Som set each down on its own line.
Who heard Grek named marine captain, one hundred and thirty-two.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 74
What a thing was made to be, it may be called back to.
— the Cycle, IV.10
He wrote his crewmate's unmaking line by line, as he wrote sapphires. That seems out of character. It was not. He set down what he saw.
The last words: Command Malaki! Two pictures follow, unexplained. The journal does not say who gave the command, whether Malaki is a name, or what came after. It stops there.
Where the record ends, stand.
Do not step into what you cannot see.
— the Cycle, I.5
Malaki: a name, or an order? I cannot tell who spoke it, or to whom.