The Sixth Nik

As a Niffakog, I had but one duty in life: Execute my assigned Chore before my brain swelled against my skull and killed me. Most Niffakog died at age eleven. Thus I, and the fifty-four Niffakoq before me, had been trained to make the most of the years from age nine to eleven, when we were at maximum efficacy.

The story takes place (we are never told but I guess) two hundred years in the future on an Earth that has discovered at the very least space-travel and technologies such that it can have off world colonies and has survived over-population, disease and other ecological disasters. The story itself slams together three great science-fictional devices.

The first device is the Niffakoq, a dalai-llama-like super-intelligent, super-empathic, super-rational ambassador from the Nuna Naavoq “tribe” who live in GrØnland (Greenland) as, more or less, eskimos. A niffakoq is created by surgical intervention shortly after birth when six “nik” coins are implanted under the child’s skull. The word “tribe” is in quotes because we learn that children are sent by highly motivated parents to earn membership in the “tribe/cult” by birth tourism(?). Our main character Sisilla as the 55th Niffakoq expects to die in a short timeframe, hopefully after succeeding at her “Chore” to be decapitated and then her Niks can be used by her successor.

Sisilla’s chore takes her in to outer space and eventually on to the second plot-device, the “plasmagraphic” starship, called “The Sickness”, that is printed from biomatter and controlled largely by an AI. The ship doesn’t have metal, plastic, ceramic surfaces: the walls are tissues, doorways are not hatches or, like on star trek" sliding portals, they are flaps and sphincters. There is no food “replicator”: food is secreted, excreted, moved by peristalsis; the ship’s escape pod is grown like a little embryo. In short, the interior of the ships are almost entirely biological and creepy, squishy, grotesque, they are monuments to body horror.

The third plot device is harder to pick out, but arbitrarily, I will say it is the disease that motivated the colony which is Sisilla’s destination. Said disease is ‘Wolosis’ which causes crazy ingrown hairs such that victims corpses are completely congested with hair like overstuffed dolls (have we mentioned that this story has a great deal of body-horror?). The settlers come from a specific county in Mississippi affected by the incurable disease; but the planet “JHB 9573963” has a metallic composition that generates rust-like particulates in its atmosphere and “the Rust” seems like it may have a property to control or cure Wolosis. The settlers are given the choice, “Instead of patients”, one UN+ rep said, “be pioneers”. As far as Sisilla knows, based on 100 years of history, the colonists have survived and thrived to the point where they seem to want independence from Earth. In fact, Sisilla’s chore is to act as a diplomat and, somehow diffuse, the seemingly incipient rebellion/war of independence on Gemelo (the system containing JHB 9573963).

Anywho, Sisilla makes it to Gemelo and things happen: I’d be spoiling things to tell you anymore. No I do not think Kraus stuck the landing in this story, but I think this book was exciting to read for the many well established, well described, interesting plot devices, that is to say, ideas, that are still floating around in my brain. I only picked three devices for this review note, there are dozens of ideas in this book. I am not sure this story deserves a sequel, but the universe that Kraus built for this story is a horrific joy to experience and I think I would enjoy dipping into it again.