On a Red Station, Drifting
Page 3
It was obvious that the station was falling inwards, taking in more refugees than it could afford to, or perhaps redistributing food in an inefficient manner. Not surprising, given Quyen’s inexperience. She did a creditable job, but when it came down to it, she was the lesser partner in a marriage, and had not been trained to handle anything as large as Prosper Station.
Not that Linh had been, of course. But at least she could help. At least she could offer something valuable in exchange for the risks Quyen was taking in sheltering her, something more than anyone with a smidgeon education could have done.
At last, she found herself in front of a simple grey façade, with rows of elegant characters flashing yellow on a white background, both in Xuyan and in the Viet language. They read: Hall of Network Access.
She paused. She’d thought she was following nothing but her inclination, taking crossroads at random, following the sounds and smells that appealed to her most. But she was magistrate, with the mem-implants of six ancestors in her mind. One of those, Fourth Ancestor Canh, had lived on the station a hundred years ago, and he would know the layout. Had she accessed her mem-implants without realising, letting half-remembered knowledge guide her here?
Did she want so badly to know what had happened, back on the Twenty-Third Planet?
Of course she did. Of course she owed Giap and her other lieutenants; Ho and her poetry club, and the hundred people she had run away from like a coward.
She should have stayed. Demons strike her! She should have stayed.
Without being aware that she did so, she pulled the bead curtain apart, and entered a dark room, lit only by flame-lamps. The man sitting behind the counter looked oddly familiar, the way everyone on the station did, with their lines distorted by generations of interbreeding. He nodded at her, pointing towards a free terminal.
Linh sat and composed herself in the silence. The terminal was a single holo-projector, offering her a map of options arranged in the shape of a planet system—a fitting touch on a space station.
As usual, the atmosphere was quiet, everyone immersed in their own private worlds. Linh slipped on her headphones. She suspected she didn’t need them, and that the station’s Mind would be ensuring the sound from her unit remained contained around her, within the four low walls that made up her cubicle. But still, it never hurt to be prudent.
There was a message, sent as private mail to her personal account. It came from someone styled “Humble Servant of the Green Wood”. Puzzled, Linh opened it. And saw Giap.
Her heart stopped; then did an odd lurch within her chest, draining her of blood. She could do nothing but stare at him. He was pale and dishevelled. His hair, which he’d always worn in a top-knot, was hacked quite short, and he looked as though he’d aged ten years in days—his skin wrinkled, his hair white, giving him the air of a truly old man, rather than the youthful, fatherly figure she remembered.
“Magistrate. I trust you are doing well. By now, you will have learnt of what befell the planet.” He looked away from the recording device with a grimace. “Your tribunal is in shambles. I apologise, but all that we could save were a handful of people. There were many deaths. Civilians mainly, caught in the first attack, when the war-kites swooped down and bombarded the district.”
His gaze was distant, his fists clenched. Linh ached to be able to speak to him, to support him with her stern, unmoving face, reassuring him that he was doing the right thing, just as he had reassured her when her faith in the Empire’s justice system faltered.
But he wasn’t there, couldn’t see her; and even the message was days old now, carried through on one of the ships that had recently docked at Prosper.
“The forces of Lord Soi hold the cities,” Giap said. “I have taken the liberty of taking citizens with me into the wilderness, away from their influence. You were right, magistrate.” Giap’s face did not waver. “We have faith this will be proved.”
He meant he was fighting them with whatever means he could: militia, guerrilla. He was waiting for reinforcement from the Empire, for the Emperor to send soldiers to reclaim the conquered provinces.
It would never happen. The thought was a fist of ice, tightening around her heart. This was what she’d railed against in her memorial to the Dragon Throne, the same one that had sent her into exile: the cowardice of the ministers, who kept urging the Emperor to safeguard the heart of the nation, to retreat from the armies of the rebel lords, again and again, evacuating his own people ahead of the enemy.
She had urged the Emperor to call up armies, to unite the Empire once again under his rule...
She had known, even then, that the memorial would not be heeded. She had written it because it was her moral duty, as First Ancestor Thanh Thuy had pointed out; and because, if Heaven smiled down on her, it would be part of a flood of similar memorials from other scholars; enough to have the Emperor reconsider his position. But the chances of that happening? Minuscule, as insignificant as a single man to a star or a black hole.
Giap should have known that, too. He should have. He was smarter than this, more world-wise and cynical than this. He couldn’t pin his hopes on a rescue that wouldn’t come. Linh cut the message, and switched on her own camera to record a reply.
“Listen,” she said. “There is no help coming, Giap. You have to come back into the city. Trickle back, pretend you fled the invasion and are now returning home.” As she had, too. And what did that make her? “Lord Soi won’t harm civilians. He wouldn’t dare, or the entire province would rise against him. You have to stop this foolishness. The Empire has forsaken you. There is no help coming. Do you understand me? This is an order.”
An order from a magistrate who had run away, who had let Giap talk her into abandoning her own people. He’d talked about hiding until it all blew over, that the Emperor would soon forget her if he couldn’t arrest her. And she’d listened. Ancestors take him! She’d let him push her into a ship, and into another and before she knew it war had come, and she was on the other end of the galaxy with no ship to bring her back, powerless to do anything but watch.
She’d run away. She was father-and-mother of her people, and she’d run away like a coward, leaving them in this extremity. Leaving Giap in danger. “You have to stop,” she whispered, and had to fight to prevent her voice from breaking. “Or they’ll kill you.”
She ended the message then, wondered if she should leave the last few moments of it intact. Giap wouldn’t appreciate her breaking down, would take her to task for showing more than detached concern for underlings.
But, she thought savagely, it was all true, and she couldn’t change it. Couldn’t do anything but pray to the Buddha and her ancestors—the dead ones, not the simulacrums in the mem-implants—that her message would arrive, that he would listen to it.
Demons take her! She should never have left her province, never have come to Prosper. Now she was stuck, and it would cost her a fortune she didn’t have to leave.
Annoyed in spite of herself, she rose and made for the exit. The man at the counter nodded at her. He’d already taken the amount of the connection from her account, though she felt no desire to drop into the trance and check that he hadn’t overcharged her.
“Cousin?” a voice asked.
Linh looked up, not entirely sure who to expect. The voice was male and couldn’t be Quyen.
It was Cousin Huu Hieu, the father of her pupils, whom she saw but distantly when he came in to see his daughters study. He looked as clean-cut as usual, though the aura of desperation that always surrounded him hadn’t gone away. It looked worse, if anything, and tinged with the stale smell of guilt. If she’d been in her tribunal, she’d have arrested him.
But she wasn’t in her tribunal anymore. She was merely Cousin Linh, a menial teacher, a stranger even though she was among family. “I didn’t know you sought wisdom from abroad,” she said, half-mocking. A twisted quotation, the beginnings of a literary game she’d played countless times during her studies.
Linh smiled. “It has been said that foreigners who do not follow the way of the Former Emperors will sway the masses; that they should be courteously welcomed, given one interview, one banquet...”
“... and escorted back under guard to where they came from.” Huu Hieu’s voice was quiet, almost wondering. Behind him, the environment deepened. She felt him drag her into the trance, and opened herself up.
Like his daughters a few hours ago, he’d used the network to design an environment. Unlike them, he was in supreme control. A country of rolling hills, impossibly wide, opened up under the brilliant blue of the Heavens: a colour Linh hadn’t seen in so many months that it was almost blinding. There was the gurgle of a river, the soft noise of geese flying overhead, and a faint sound in the background, whispered over and over, that Linh finally identified as a poem. It was a lament for separated friends, watching the moon rise over different planets.
“It’s beautiful,” Linh whispered.
Huu Hieu hadn’t moved. He now wore the long, flowing robes of a scholar. They kept shimmering in and out of focus, a deliberate effect. He didn’t seem to believe in his worth as a scholar. “It’s nothing. Nothing that you wouldn’t be able to do twice over, if you knew Prosper’s systems.”
“No,” Linh said, knowing that, even if she got used to Prosper’s trance, even if she understood enough of the Honoured Ancestress’s inner workings, she would never be able to manipulate the environment that finely. She knew she would never be able to match the sheer fragile beauty of this, like a budding rose before the frost.
“I know only small things,” she said. “Tricks to impress the common folks. Nothing like this.”
Huu Hieu shook his head, clearly unconvinced. Behind him, the sun was sinking below the horizon, bathing the hills in reddish lights. The geese were still there, a faint cry like the memory of sorrow.
Linh hunted for another subject of conversation, and settled on the obvious. “I was surprised to see you in the Hall of Network Access. I didn’t think anyone in the family was interested in what lay outside the station.”
Huu Hieu’s hands clenched and his clothes reverted to the ones he wore in real-time. “For many people, Prosper is all there is under the Heavens.”
She gave him the obvious answer as the moon rose, bathing the scene in a soft white light, and the stars lit up in the sky like a myriad hairpin wounds. “But not for you?”
“I...I wasn’t born here.” He looked uneasy and didn’t elaborate.
“You’re trapped here,” Linh said, a feeling she knew all too well.
“Trapped, yes. I...My wife will come home soon, that’s what they all say. I just have to wait and she’ll be back. We’ll be a family again.” He laughed, bitterly. “For some, it’s the only bearable thought.”
She wondered for whom. Clearly not for him. He had the air of a caged bird, one who had just discovered that the bars were of steel, and that the door would only open on the day of the slaughter.
Huu Hieu said, “I read the news, you know. More and more planets are falling. They’re winning.”
“The rebels?” Linh shrugged. “They’re badly overstretched.” They’d hold the planets they’d conquered, but soon wouldn’t attack any more, not if they wanted to keep what they had. On the other hand...how bold would they get, if they knew the Emperor wasn’t coming to get back what was lawfully his?
“The warring lords. You’ve read the histories. The Trinh and Nguyen ravaging Dai Viet, tearing it apart.”
“While the puppet Emperor watched, powerless?” She raised an eyebrow. “We’re stronger than that, I should think.”
But still not strong enough to hold the Twenty-Third Planet. Still not strong enough to be with her people, to be by Giap’s side, and advise him before he threw away his life.
Around them, the hills were...not quite right. Linh watched the grass rippling in moonlight for a while, and saw that though the blades bent in the wind, there were patches of blackness: holes and cracks in the simulation, too small to come from Huu Hieu. If he’d lost control, it would have been more spectacular than this. “Something is wrong,” she said.
“I know.” Huu Hieu grimaced. “They’ve been showing up everywhere in designed environments lately. I think the Honoured Ancestress is stretched to breaking point with so many people on the station. Maintaining personal settings for so many people is getting to Her.”
Linh knew nothing of how Minds worked, either on ships or on stations. And it made little sense. Most refugees didn’t get privileges that would allow them to design environments. She had them, but only because she was family and it was necessary for her work, her menial drudge dreamed up by Quyen. “If you say so,” she said.
“If it bothers you...” Huu Hieu shrugged, and waved his hands. The simulation fell away to be replaced by the space in front of the Hall of Network Access. “Better? Let’s walk home.”
Linh merely followed him through the corridors. They were all but deserted now. The people gone back to their shifts, and the shop-fronts were closed. It looked like a different world.
Huu Hieu said, at last, his face set, “I’m not a fool. I’ve seen the news. I’ve read what they won’t tell us. What the Honoured Ancestress knows, what Quyen knows. My wife’s ship went into a war zone to oversee the evacuation of a planet, and never came back.”
“That doesn’t mean...” Linh started, but he cut her off.
“Of course it does. Spirits, we can be such children sometimes.” He rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully, his hands tracing the contour of something she couldn’t place. “She’s dead, and there’s nothing to hold me here.”
“Your children.”
“My children are adults.” He laughed again, a queer sound, without amusement. “Ancestors, one of them is even helping Quyen run Prosper Station.”
“You can’t abandon them...” She paused then. Fourth Ancestor Canh was in her mind, reminding her that it was children who had duties to their parents, and not the reverse. “I apologise. It’s not for me to tell you what to do.”
He bowed a fraction, younger to elder, though by family standards she was younger than him, the child from a younger branch. “One should always dispense advice and wisdom.”
It might have been sincere and unsubtle, but it was, in fact, deeply ironic. Quyen had been wrong to call him a blundering fool. “One should always follow one’s own advice,” Linh said, with a quick quirk of her lips.
She saw him smile at that and, for a bare moment, he was like a carefree child, much younger than even the youngest of his children. But then his face darkened again, looking at the red characters which marked the entrance of the inner circle.
Trapped. She wondered how she’d feel if she knew that Prosper Station was the entire bounds of her universe, that no ship would come to bear her away, that she had no place to return to...
“If you’re ever...” She shook her head, unsure of how to phrase the sentence. “I might not design environments as beautiful as yours, but I do have books. Poetry and annals, and vids of historical events. If you ever want to discuss them...”
First Ancestor Thanh Thuy tried to object that it was hardly proper, that Linh would have been the greater partner in a marriage. He would remain the lesser one as long as his wife’s body weren’t found. Their meeting alone was as good as adultery.
She knew that, all of it. But it was a risk she was willing to bear for the sake of a little compassion.
Huu Hieu went white, as if she’d slapped him. Linh was mentally composing a suitable apology when he spoke again: “That’s...very kind of you. I’ll keep it in mind.”
And with that he walked away, fast, not looking at her, his whole body rigid with an emotion she couldn’t name.
“You shouldn’t, you kno
w,” a voice said.
Linh almost jumped to the ceiling. She looked up to see Cousin Bao, Huu Hieu’s absent-minded brother-in-law.
“How did you know we were here?” she asked, not bothering to signal respect.
Cousin Bao shrugged. “The Honoured Ancestress knows, doesn’t she. She tracks everyone on Prosper, and lets Quyen know about significant events. It’s for their own good,” Bao said.
For their own good. Like Quyen set tasks for Linh’s own good. “And you live with this?” she said.
Bao shrugged. But of course he knew no other law. He’d been raised on another station, and could envision no existence that wasn’t shackled to a Mind.
“You might follow Quyen’s orders,” Linh said, defiantly. “But I do what I want.”
Bao said nothing for a while. At length, his face carefully neutral, he said, “Allow your elder cousin to offer you some advice, for what it’s worth. Prosper Station is...different.”
Meaning there were rules, and she wasn’t the one enforcing them; no longer a magistrate in her tribunal. Meaning they could do anything to her: give her a job that was an insult, track her even in her free time, dictate who she could see and not see.
“Different,” Linh said, struggling to keep her voice even. “Hell brought into the Heavens.”
“Nothing keeps you here,” Bao said.
Nothing. Poverty, which meant she couldn’t afford passage on a merchant ship. Fear: that she would come back, and truly take the measure of her tribunal’s devastation.
“But, if you do stay...” Bao shrugged. “Better not spend too much time with Huu Hieu.”
“He’s family, too,” Linh said. She found Bao’s serenity uncanny. Where Huu Hieu was a ship waiting to dash into deep space, he was as fixed as the stars, his face impassive, his gaze the distant one of a man who expected nothing more from the world. He spoke little, and didn’t express much either. He might have a been a recluse monk already—save, of course, that he was still waiting for his wife to come back, just like Huu Hieu. “There is nothing wrong with my being with him.”