Who Killed Him on the Bridge
Session: 2025-06-11
The page opens in his own voice: I killed him! One stroke, as clean as any the journal records, and the foe's feet were gone from under him. The journal does not name which of the bridge's dead it was. The fight that had put Som on the deck again and again ended there.
Who killed him on the bridge, and took him at the feet.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 90
Strike where the weight rests.
Take the footing, and the rest falls.
— the Forms, Form 9
In 117 he wrote his own name as another man's. Here he writes I, and marks it. This one he claimed.
Then the count, as always. A suit of estex, its shell reinforced to turn blows aside, a reflector set against workings. An aurora arc pistol and an aurora shock caster, both made to hold a great charge. A swoop hammer. An access data slate. The journal does not say who carried what away.
Who counted the dead man's arms, and the slate among them.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 91
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 picked up the slate, and wrote that he felt he had access to the ship. Below it: Electro encephlon ship, complete. An electrocephalon, then, or a ship that is one. The journal does not explain what was complete.
Who took up the slate, and felt the ship answer.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 92
Take up what the fallen carried to command.
Hold it, and feel what answers.
(Zigu, from his journal.)
— the Forms, Form 46, later additions
Three words: Destroyed the degenerator. The vessel set in its stone, the one that was to be driven into a sun, is gone. The journal does not say how, or by whose hand.
Who was there when the degenerator was destroyed.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 93
A star may die of its own weight, or of another's hand.
— the Cycle, IV.3
Som Zigu statue. Beside it: drow warriors incinerated by Som. The journal does not say where the statue stands, or whether the burning drow are in the stone or were in the world.
Who wrote his whole name beside a statue.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 94
What is made of a fire is not the fire.
— the Cycle, V.4
It is the only page where he writes Zigu, the name our recital keeps. A likeness in stone is not the man. I have been reading the man.
A pirate vessel, and drinks clinking. Hugh keeps on pirating. The journal says no more of the ship, or whose it was.
Who heard glasses ring on the pirates' ship.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 95
Small fires, kept close, keep each other lit.
— the Cycle, I.14
An observation room, and two words beside it: Astral Extractions. There Grek's necro grafts were taken out. Grek looks like the Android he was. On the same line, ED-018, a drone no bigger than a thumb. The journal does not say whose.
Who saw the dead grafts taken from Grek, and Grek as he was made.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 96
What a thing was made to be, it may be called back to.
— the Cycle, IV.10
In 120 I read that verse as a curse laid on Grek. It cuts both ways. He was called back again, to himself.
A door, and behind it a cramped apartment on Absalom Station, where the light neither rises nor sets. Pneumatic wheels. A protein shake made with beer. After the bridge and the dead, the journal comes to rest in a small room.
Who came through a narrow door into the long twilight of Absalom.
— the Long Names, Zigu, 97
From the ash of one star, the iron of the next.
— the Cycle, V.1
The last lines: Necrovight, electrocephalon key, it is. A necrovite, a key, and a sentence that stops. The journal does not say what it is.
Where the record ends, stand.
Do not step into what you cannot see.
— the Cycle, I.5
Nothing that was balanced ends. It changes hands.
— the Cycle, V.3
In 88 I asked why the page stopped at the Devourer. It stops here too, mid-sentence. A page stops when the hand is needed elsewhere.