109- what you believe about yourself it´s what only matters

I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o' that kayak. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.

Duophysite saw my eyes was open an' pointed me Big Isle, purple in the sou'eastly blue, an' Mauna Kea hidin' its head like a shy bride.

Yay, my Hole World an' hole life was shrinked 'nuff to fit in the O o' my finger'n'thumb.

Zachry my old pa was a wyrd buggah, I won't naysay it now he's died. Oh, most o' Pa's yarnin's was jus' musey duck fartin' an' in his loonsome old age he even b'liefed Meronym the Prescient was his presh b'loved Sonmi, yay, he 'sisted it, he said he knowed it all by birthmarks an' comets'n'all.

Do I b'lief his yarn 'bout the Kona an' his fleein' from Big I? Most yarnin's got a bit o' true, some yarnin's got some true, an' a few yarnin's got a lot o' true. The stuff 'bout Meronym the Prescient was mostly true, I reck'n. See, after Pa died my sis'n'me sivvied his gear, an' I finded his sil- v'ry egg what he named orison in his yarns. Like Pa yarned, if you warm

the egg in your hands, a beautsome ghost-girl appears in the air an' speaks in an Old-Un tongue what no un alive und'stands nor never will, nay. It ain't Smart you can use 'cos it don't kill Kona pirates nor fill empty guts, but some dusks my kin'n'bros'll wake up the ghost-girl jus' to watch her hov'rin'n'shimm'rin'. She's beautsome, and she 'mazes the littl' uns an' her murmin's babbybie our babbits.

Sit down a beat or two. Hold out your hands. Look.

Alessio Wizard393

Then who was Hae-Joo Im, if he was not xactly who he said he was?

I surprised myself by answering that question: Union. Hae-Joo said, "That honor is mine to bear, yes."

Xi-Li, the student, was xtremely agitated.

Hae-Joo told me I could trust him or be dead in a matter of minutes. I nodded assent: I would trust him.

But he had already lied to you about his ID – why believe him this ti- me? How did you know for sure he wasn't abducting you?

I did not know: I was not sure. My decision was based on character. I could only hope time would prove it well founded. We abandoned the an- cient Cavendish to his fate and fled to our own: down corridors, thru fire doors, avoiding lites and people where possible. Hae-Joo carried me down flites of stairs: we could not wait for me to navigate them unaided.

In a subbasement Mr. Chang waited in a plain ford. There was no time for greetings. The vehicle screamed into life and accelerated thru tunnels and empty ford parks. Mr. Chang glanced at his sony, reporting that the slipway still appeared to be accessible. Hae-Joo ordered him to proceed there, then got a flickknife from his pouch and sliced off the tip of his left index, gouged, and xtracted a tiny metallic egg. He threw it out of the win- dow and ordered me to discard my Soulring similarly. Xi-Li also xtracted his Soul.

Unionmen really cut out their own eternal Souls? I always thought it was an urban myth …

How else can a resistance movement elude Unanimity? They would risk detection whenever they passed a traffic lite otherwise. The ford rounded a ramp when a blizzard of phosphate fire shot in the windows; glass filled the air, metal panels groaned; the ford scraped along walls, jarring to an abrupt stop.

From my crouch I heard coltfire.

The ford wailed and sped into motion. A body thumped off the vehicle.

A human wailing, of unendurable pain, rose from the front seat: Hae-Joo held a handcolt against Xi-Li's head and fired.

What? His own man? Why?

Unanimity dumdums combine kalodoxalyn and stimulin. Kalodoxalyn is a poison that fries the victim in agony, so his screams give his position away; stimulin prevents him from losing consciousness. Xi-Li slumped over into a fetal position. Hae-Joo Im the cheerful postgrad I had known was gone, so thoroly that I wondered now if he had ever really been there. Rain and wind blew in. Mr. Chang drove at hi speed down a garbage alley barely wider than the ford, ripping out drainpipes. He slowed as he joined the campus perimeter road. Ahead were red-and-blue flashes at the campus gates. A hovering aero thrashed the trees, sweeping the traffic with a searchlite; loudspeakers gave incoherent orders to who knew whom. Mr. Chang warned us to brace, killed the engine, and swerved off the road. The ford bucked; its roof whacked my head; somehow Hae-Joo wedged me un- der him. The ford gathered speed, weight, and weightlessness. The final drop shook free an earlier memory of blackness, inertia, gravity, of being trapped in another ford. Where was it? Who was it?

Bamboo splintered, metal tore, my ribs slammed the floor.

Silence, finally. The ford was dead. Next, I heard insect songs, rain on leaves, followed by urgent whispers drawing near. I was crushed under Hae-Joo; he stirred, groaning. I was bruised but unbroken. Needlelite hurt my eyes. An outside voice hissed, "Commander Im?"

Mr. Chang responded first: "Get this door open."

Hands lifted us out. Xi-Li's body was left where it lay. I glimpsed a suc- cession of anxious faces, resolute faces, faces that rarely slept: a company of Unionmen. I was carried into a concrete shack and lowered down a manhole. "Don't worry," Hae-Joo told me, "I'm right here." My hands gripped rusty rungs; my knees scraped along a short tunnel. More arms lifted me into a mechanic's shop, then lowered me into a smart two-seater xec ford. I heard more orders issued, then Hae-Joo swung in and started the engine. Mr. Chang had disappeared once again. Ahead, garage doors

jerked open. Next, I remember gentle rain, suburb back-lanes, then a jammed thruway. The fords around us held lonely commuters, couples on dates, small families, some placid, some rowdy. When Hae-Joo spoke, fi- nally, his voice was cold. "If a dumdum ever scratches me, euthanaze me as quickly as I did Xi-Li." I had no response. "You must have a hundred questions, Sonmi. I beg your patience a little longer – if we are captured now, believe me, the less you know the better. We have a busy nite ahead of us. First, we're paying a visit to Huamdonggil." Do you know that zone of the conurb, Archivist?