Meru, page 44
Vaha settled into the berth and tried to distract zirself with the news. Zie watched the recordings of Pushkara’s and Kaliyu’s exiles, zir heart breaking at the sight. Their wings were bound to their backs, and tubes of bhojya were inserted into their mouths and sealed. Maintenance pilots would replenish their bladders as needed. Other pilots wrapped their two bodies with insulation, for warmth and to block their vents so they didn’t accidentally alter their orbits. Those same pilots then tethered themselves to tow Pushkara and Kaliyu away. Vaha viewed the raw camera footage from the Primary Nivid until their shapes dwindled and disappeared.
The most vivid memory from zir childhood was watching zir maker fade into the black the same way. At least zie knew when zie would see Kaliyu again. Zie had entertained a spark of hope that Veera would hear about zir work at Meru and zir Nivid deposit, that zir maker would take some pride in Vaha at last and return from wherever zie had gone.
But Veera had sent no message. Zie made no appearance at heliopause. Vaha shouldn’t have expected it—had told zirself to put the idea out of zir mind. Veera had gone into the unknown, flying through unexplored space. Until zir maker arrived at a star, which could take centuries, zie would not reality transit back to a populated system. Veera wouldn’t hear about Vaha’s accomplishments until zie returned to a place with a padhran, a network, and a news spool. And even then, zie would have to actively search for Vaha’s name. They might never see each other again.
The pain of that thought no longer shone with the intensity it had in zir youth. Vaha had a new family now, one that loved zir in spite of zir faults. Zie gazed at the station’s hull. The person responsible for zir success was in there, not some vast empty place, and she would not abandon zir.
Jayanthi’s mother held her so tight for so long that the nascent being in her womb pushed uncomfortably against her ribs.
“Let me have a turn,” Vidhar said with a laugh. He disengaged Kundhina’s arms gently and pulled Jayanthi into a briefer but equally firm embrace.
“Look at you!” Kundhina exclaimed as they floated in their private room.
“Tell us everything,” her father said.
But first she had to say goodbye to Mina. Her friend was departing for the surface right away.
“Your child will be sixteen years old by the time I see you again,” Mina lamented, taking their turn embracing Jayanthi.
“You could run away with us and live in Chedi.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Mina had found their own calling, and after the high-profile Voice of Compassion work on Jayanthi’s case, half of Earth wanted to engage their services.
“Maybe I can come visit you when Chedi’s in the system,” they said. “Now that the amendment has passed, I can legally travel.”
“That would be wonderful.”
After Mina left, Jayanthi settled in to recount her many adventures to her parents. They listened for an hour, then made her rest. After the tension of the events at the Primary, Jayanthi’s body had entered a permanent state of fatigue. It warred with her desire to maximize the time with her parents. They had cooked all of Jayanthi’s favorite foods and brought the dishes up to the station. After weeks of nothing but bhojya and rehydrated packets, each morsel tasted like divine nectar. She couldn’t do the meals justice, though, not with her uterine occupant taking up so much of her abdomen. Everyone worried about the baby coming too soon, but as far as Jayanthi was concerned, she couldn’t come soon enough—after they reached Chedi.
“You must transmit a full recording of the birth,” Vidhar instructed. “And remember to have blood ready for transfusion.”
“I will—don’t worry. Vaha and Chedi and Sunanda will take good care of me.”
“Sunanda?” her mother asked.
Jayanthi showed them the ring and told them about her friend and Raya, baby Hui and the elderly Guhaka.
“So you won’t be alone out there,” Kundhina said. “I’m so glad! I had this dreadful vision of the three of you rattling around in that enormous space.”
By the end of Jayanthi’s stay, her parents knew every detail of the past eleven months—except for one. The station wasn’t private enough for her to tell them about Vaha’s part in their child’s DNA. One day, perhaps when we return to Earth, we can reveal the truth to the world.
Her parents watched as she entered the transfer tube, just as they had for her previous departure. They couldn’t cry, but Jayanthi had known them for her entire life. She could see the sadness on their faces as clearly as the golden glow from their phores. She put on a brave, cheerful expression for them. It wasn’t entirely false. Her spirits rose with every meter as she approached Vaha. Unlike her first departure, this time she had no fear entering zir mouth. This time, when she drifted into her chamber, she knew exactly where to place her hands to feel Vaha’s warmth, to ensure that zie felt hers in return.
“Are you ready?” zir voice said through the room’s speakers.
“Not really,” she admitted. “But it’s time for us to leave.”
Through the clear pane in Vaha’s belly, she watched the figures of her parents dwindle into specks. Then she whispered a silent farewell to the planet she’d called home. See you in seventeen years.
Jayanthi rested in her cot, her body in a deeper state of exhaustion than she’d ever known. Vaha sat beside her, holding her right hand. To her left, one of Chedi’s mobile extensions pumped her body full of well-formed blood cultured from her own cells. Its quiet hum lulled her. Behind Vaha, Sunanda stood near a table carved from wood, their body blocking the view of their actions, but Jayanthi could guess by the thready cries what must be going on. Her arms itched to hold her newborn, but she had to let others do the work of cleaning, weighing, and checking the baby’s health.
Three days earlier, they’d left Vaha’s true body tucked against Chedi’s exterior. The megaconstruct had prepared for their arrival by running bhojya and water lines to a spot near a protruding exterior wall. It wouldn’t provide as much shelter as a berth, but they hoped it would be enough to shield Vaha’s true body from space debris while exposing zir wings to light.
“At least I’m only unconscious, not in stasis or hibernation,” Vaha’s incarn had said. “I’ll transfer my attention whenever it’s nighttime here and make sure I’m all right.”
Jayanthi’s center of mass had been thrown off by the gigantic being growing inside her, and she had needed Vaha’s help navigating their way through open space to Chedi’s entrance. She had wondered then how she could possibly expel something so large, and now she knew: with great effort.
Sunanda had assisted Chedi’s ambulatory constructs while Vaha watched. Jayanthi had felt an intense sense of accomplishment when they showed her the wailing mess of an infant, still attached to her body by an umbilical cord. It made the whole ordeal worthwhile.
“She’s more beautiful than either of you,” Sunanda pronounced with a grin. “What are you going to name her?”
Vaha looked at Jayanthi with a stricken expression. “We’ve had so many other things on our minds that we never talked about it.”
Sunanda laughed. “You have plenty of time. She won’t care for a good long while. Isn’t that right, my little love?”
They moved away from the table with a cloth-wrapped bundle in their arms.
“Here she is, all clean and sleepy as a dove.” Sunanda placed the infant into Vaha’s arms and turned to Jayanthi. “You have one more hour left on your blood exchange, but your bodym shows good vitals. You did so well. I’m proud of you.” They planted a kiss on Jayanthi’s forehead. “I’ll leave you three alone now. Call me if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” Jayanthi whispered.
One more hour until she could hold their baby. She stroked the dark, downy curls with her free hand.
“Look at how tiny she is,” Vaha said. “And so helpless, not at all like a newborn alloy.”
Above them, the artificial sunlight had begun to fade, and fireflies blinked in the shadows of their grove.
“I thought of a name,” Jayanthi said.
“Oh?”
“How about Akshaya? It means—”
“Eternal,” Vaha finished. “I remember.” Zie gazed down into zir arms. “Is that who you are? Will your name endure forever on the lips of our people? Akshaya.” Zie looked up and smiled at Jayanthi. “I like it.”
Jayanthi closed her eyes. Her lids had grown too heavy to stay open. She contemplated the irony of someone like her—someone who had worshipped alloy culture and wanted so desperately to live among them, someone who was the antithesis of what people like Bantri stood for—to have given birth to a baby. And yet, she hadn’t surrendered to her assigned life as a human, either. Akshaya represented a new future and a new frontier, one that embodied the union of alloy and human. In this child, Jayanthi and Vaha had entrusted the fate of Meru and of themselves. One day, as with humankind, she would grow into an adult and find her own dreams.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I started the first draft of this novel in the summer of 2020 as an escape from the stress and isolation of the COVID pandemic and shelter-in-place lifestyle. Spending time in a world far removed from the problems of the present was exactly what my brain needed. A couple of weeks after I finished the manuscript, despite my best precautions, I fell sick with COVID. A few months after that, I developed long COVID with symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis. By the time I was working on edits for the book, I had much stronger empathy for Jayanthi’s physical situation. I always put a piece of myself in my stories—this one turned out to be much bigger than anticipated!
Meru started as a kernel of an idea inspired by a story within the Mahabharata, and it grew from there into an epic space opera. Many people helped me along the way—foremost, my agent, Cameron McClure, who didn’t blink when I said I was taking a story that was millennia old and setting it a millennium into the future, and Adrienne Procaccini, for loving it enough to give it a home. I also owe a tremendous thanks to Navah Wolfe, who edited the manuscript from a rough cut to a high polish. Thanks to Stacy Abrams and Kellie Osborne for copyedits; Mike Heath, who brought the book to life with the beautiful and cinematic cover; and the rest of the team at 47North for their efforts in delivering this novel to the world.
A huge wave of gratitude goes to Ashley Hall, the sickle cell warrior who gave me critical feedback and encouragement. Thanks also to Anatoly Belilovsky and Kenneth Roy for technical advice, and to Marshall Robin, J.B. Manipal, Owen Landgren, Kathryn Eberle, David Kammerzelt, Sloane Leong, Daniel Whiteson, and Benjamin C. Kinney for their insightful critiques.
In closing, I have to give my love and gratitude to my family, Ryan and Maya, and my parents, Anusha and Shaker, for their support of both my writing and my health. I couldn’t have completed this journey without them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2022 David Perry Photography
S.B. Divya is a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author whose work includes Machinehood, Runtime, and the short-story collection Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and Other Possible Situations. Her stories have been published in various magazines, such as Analog and Uncanny; on Tor.com; and in several anthologies, including Seasons Between Us and Rebuilding Tomorrow. She holds degrees in computational neuroscience and signal processing, and she worked for twenty years as an electrical engineer before becoming an author. A lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma, she enjoys subverting expectations and breaking stereotypes whenever she can. For more information visit www.sbdivya.com.
S.B. Divya, Meru
