Redemption Ark

She had surrounded herself with small white rectangles, many dozens of them, each of which was marked with a particular set of symbols. Skade saw reds and blacks and yellows. The rectangles were something she had encountered before, but she could not remember where. They were arrayed in excessively neat arcs and spokes, radiating out from Felka. Felka was moving them from place to place, as if exploring the permutations of some immense abstract structure.

Skade bent down, picking up one of the rectangles. It was a piece of glossy white card or plastic, printed on one side only. The other side was perfectly blank.

I recognise these. It’s a game they play in Chasm City. There are fifty-two cards in a set, thirteen cards for each symbol, just as there are thirteen hours on a Yellowstone clock face.

Skade put the card back where she had found it. Felka continued rearranging the cards for some minutes. Skade waited, listening to the slick sound that the cards made as they passed across each other.

‘Its origins are a bit older than that,’ Felka said.

But I’m right, aren’t I? They do play this there.

‘There are many games, Skade. This is just one of them.’

Where did you find the cards?

‘I had the ship make them. I remembered the numbers.’

And the patterns? Skade selected another card, this one marked with a bearded figure. This man looks like Clavain.

‘It’s just a King,‘ Felka said dismissively. I remembered the patterns as well.’

Skade examined another: a long-necked, regal-looking woman dressed in something that resembled ceremonial armour. She could almost be me.

‘She’s the Queen.’

Why, Felka? What precisely is the point of this? Skade stood again and gestured at the configuration of cards. The number of permutations must be finite. Your only opponent is blind chance. I don’t see the attraction.

‘You probably wouldn’t.’

Again Skade heard the slick rasp of card on card. What is the objective, Felka?

‘To maintain order.’

Skade barked out a short laugh. Then there is no end-state?

This isn’t a problem in computation, Skade. The means is the end. The game has no halting state other than failure.‘ Felka bit her tongue, like a child working on some particularly tortuous piece of colouring-in. In a flurry of movement she moved six cards, dramatically altering the larger pattern in a way Skade would have sworn was not possible a moment earlier.

Skade nodded, understanding. This is the Great Wall of Mars, isn’t it?

Felka looked up, but said nothing before resuming her work.

Skade knew that she was right: that the game she saw Felka playing here, if indeed it could be called a game, was only a surrogate for the Wall itself. The Wall had been destroyed four hundred years earlier, and yet it had played such a vital part in Felka’s childhood that she regressed towards her memories of it at the slightest sign of external stress.

Skade felt anger. She knelt down again and destroyed the pattern of cards. Felka froze, her hand hovering above the space where a card had been. She looked at Skade, incomprehension on her face.

As was sometimes the case with Felka, she framed her question as a flat, uninflected statement. ‘Why.’

Listen to me, Felka. You must not do this. You are one of us now. You cannot retreat back into your childhood just because Clavain isn’t here any more.

Pathetically, Felka tried to regather the cards. But Skade reached out and grabbed her hand.

No. Stop this, Felka. You cannot regress. I won’t allow it. Skade tilted Felka’s head towards her own. This is about more than just Clavain, Felka. I know that he means something to you. But the Mother Nest means more. Clavain was always an outsider. But you are one of us, to the marrow. We need you, Felka. As you are now, not as you were.