On a Red Station, Drifting

by Aliette de Bodard

  Everything seemed fine. The Honoured Ancestress was speaking and acting as She always did. But she still remembered what had happened in Zhang’s shop; and the earlier lapse, when the Honoured Ancestress had failed to notice Huu Hieu’s drunken swagger through the corridors.

  Something was wrong. Minds didn’t behave that way. They weren’t meant to grow old, to change. They weren’t meant to fade. But it couldn’t be sabotage, no matter how much Quyen might have wished for it. The Honoured Ancestress had inviolable chambers, inaccessible to anyone save a Master of Grand Design Harmony, the makers of Minds, who were all in other orbital habitats, or in the capital on the First Planet.

  Something was wrong, and she could think of nothing to do to fix it. She’d sent engineers into the corridors, looking over the system, and they had only confirmed the decline that Quyen had witnessed. But they could offer no cause.

  “You’re keeping a watch on the school,” she said to Xuan Rua. It wasn’t a question.

  Quyen’s brother-in-law Bao reached for one of the cups and cradled it in his large hands like a trapped bird. “We’re all helping with that,” he said. “Xuan Rua and I.”

  “And your youngest daughter.” Quyen ignored Xuan Rua’s wince. Xuan Kiem was only two years younger than Xuan Rua, but she’d always been the darling of her father, and it had spoiled her, narrowing her focus until she could only think of her destiny. It would do her good to be involved in family affairs, but Quyen had no illusion on how painful the whole process would be. “I’ll talk to her, if you won’t.”

  Xuan Rua shook his head. “She did help.”

  Pitifully little, if Quyen was any judge. But she let it slide. Her niece was the least of her worries now. Truth to tell, she would dearly have loved to let Huu Hieu be the least of her worries, let him sink in his own filth. But, even if he were not family, there was the matter of the implants...

  “He’s involved,” Bao said. “He has to be.”

  “The teacher of the Abode of Brush Saplings?” Xuan Rua sat down, her eyes wandering away from her cup, her whole body tense. “Surely...”

  “Teachers in this kind of school are badly paid.” Bao’s voice was quiet, serene; a fact dispensed by Immortals.

  “I set the allowances,” Quyen said. “I wouldn’t want to think they’re unfair.”

  “It’s not about fairness,” Bao said. “It’s about greed. And I’m not criticising your allowances. You recognise that not everyone is equal, and that there has to be a hierarchy, to remind each and every one of us of our place and duty.”

  Quyen wondered how much of that was aimed at Huu Hieu.

  “What I don’t understand is why sell them,” Quyen said, slowly. Zhang had sent her the recordings of the mah-jong games, and it had been abundantly clear that, although Huu Hieu was losing, it wasn’t a lot of money. With his allowance, he could clearly have paid it all, and still have plenty of money to spare. The sale of the implants had been deliberate, calculated to bring in a large amount of cash.

  “He needed money,” she added, “but not that much. And it’s a dangerous gamble.” The Honoured Ancestress monitored all transactions on Prosper Station, except those done within an individual’s private home. It was possible to sell the implants, but one would have to be very, very careful, and never generate any anomalies that the Mind could correlate with other facts. To be sure, the price of the implants would be worth the risk. But still...

  “My younger brother likes to have his treasures.” Bao’s voice was a lash.

  “I don’t think Father is that way.” Xuan Rua looked ill at ease. Bao was her uncle, and commanded her respect. But Huu Hieu, as her flesh-and-blood father, always took precedence. “And Aunt Quyen is right. His allowance is large enough to compensate for a thousand such gambling sessions.”

  “Mmm,” Quyen said. So it was either staggeringly huge gambling debts—but it hadn’t looked that way on the recordings—or it was something else entirely.

  She stared at her cup for a while. The liquid was clear and fragrant, but it seemed to shake with the rhythm of the station. Gradually an oily sheen spread over the cup, and a familiar pressure pervaded the room as the walls buckled and groaned. She relaxed, feeling the familiar, comforting presence fill her to bursting.

  “Child,” the Honoured Ancestress said.

  “There is no news of Du Khach’s implant.” Quyen felt her face flush red. “The three mem-implants seem to be gone from the system. But we’ll get them back. I made you a promise, and I’ll keep it.”

  “Of course, child. I have faith in you.”

  And Quyen wouldn’t disappoint Her. The Honoured Ancestress was hardly capricious, never complaining, and seldom asking for things for Herself. Honouring Her request was the very least Quyen could do to repay her. “The whole family is working on it, Honoured Ancestress.”

  There was a pause, while the pressure in the room seemed to grow even greater. The cup Bao held in his hand seemed to shift, alternating between a metallic sheen and complete transparency. The metal under Quyen shifted and yielded, like quicksand.

  “I can provide some help, child. The implants are still within the station. I can feel that much, but I cannot tell where they are.”

  “Can you tell if they’re in use?” Quyen asked.

  “They’re not,” the Honoured Ancestress said. “Or I could find them much more easily. Child, you know I do not monitor everything on Prosper Station.”

  No, not lately. There was a cold stirring in Quyen’s belly. She had limits, and Quyen was genuinely frightened. The Honoured Ancestress was Prosper Station, and she could not afford to falter, or to grow weak.

  “You don’t have to,” she said, more gruffly than she’d intended. “You asked me something, and I’ll get it for you. That’s all there is to it.”

  The Honoured Ancestress was silent. Then she spoke in a completely different tone of voice—no longer the wise grandmother’s, but a child’s, filled with wonder as they watched a kite rise on air-currents for the first time. “Someone is coming.”

  “Someone?” Quyen rose but before she could let the trance seize her, the Honoured Ancestress was with her, carrying away from the room and the three cups of tea, receding in her mind’s eye like the three eyes of some Hindustani god.

  She stood in the darkness of space, with only the cold, unblinking light of the stars and the vast, reassuring presence of Prosper Station at her back. A point that seemed like yet another star shifted, and became the prow of a ship headed towards them. It was sleek and smooth, as deadly as the swords of old. Instead of being the standard utilitarian grey metal, it had embossed dragons twining on its hull. The heads of the great beasts met at the prow, and the tails faded away at the back of the ship, so that the dragons seemed to extend themselves into the blackness of space.

  Everything about it, from the flowing lines to the five-clawed dragons, screamed official.

  Beside Quyen, the Honoured Ancestress spoke, slow and leisurely, and perhaps a little afraid. “The Carp that Leapt Over the Stream.”

  “It’s a state ship,” Quyen said. “From the capital.”

  “From the capital, yes,” the Honoured Ancestress said. “But it’s private. Registered to Pham Quoc Oanh, a civil official of the Third Rank.”

  The name meant nothing to her. “Then I don’t see...”

  Another wrench, and over the stars appeared lines, slowly converging to form the shape of a family tree, tracing a slow ascent from Quyen to the Honoured Ancestress Herself; and then sideways and down, until they’d connected Quyen to Lady Oanh.

  Quyen let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “She’s...”

  “Grand Master of Design Harmony, like her mother and grandmother and great-great-grandmother before her. A shaper of metal and of synthetics; a dreamer of buildings and of wind and water.”

  A hole was opening in Quyen’s belly. “She made Prosper Station.”

  “Her ancestor,” the Honoured Ancestress correct
ed, but it made no difference. Quyen’s ancestor had borne the Honoured Ancestress in her belly; but this Lady Oanh’s ancestor had made every nook and cranny of Prosper Station, shaping the flow of the five elements over the station until the Honoured Ancestress could slip into its structure as easily as into tailored robes.

  She made...Quyen stopped. She thought of the chambers of the Honoured Ancestress, the place where Her physical body rested, which would open to no one but a Grand Master of Grand Design Harmony. “Has she given any motive for her presence?”

  “She says it is a courtesy visit.”

  The hollow in Quyen’s stomach closed, replaced by a cold sense of purpose, as unsettling as a naked blade. “A courtesy visit?” Three days out in deep spaces from the nearest planet?

  The Honoured Ancestress was silent for a while, communing with the vast array of sensors around Prosper Station. “The ship’s Mind says that they had business with Felicity Station.”

  Felicity was their nearest neighbour. After that, it was another four days out to an inhabited planet, one so small that it hadn’t yet got a rank in the state classification. Quyen could have asked what Lady Oanh had wanted from Felicity, but it was likely a private matter, if she was on her own ship and not on an imperial craft.

  She supposed that, if Lady Oanh had come this far, she might as well detour, and see what her ancestor had made. But still...

  “A courtesy visit,” she said, aloud, though she didn’t need to.

  “A banquet,” the Honoured Ancestress said. “A private interview. Gifts. That would be...appropriate.” There was still the same disturbing awe in Her tone.

  “You want to see her,” Quyen said.

  The Honoured Ancestress did not speak for a while. “I’m not like you, child. I wasn’t haphazardly cobbled together in a womb from the alliance of am and duong. I was made from beginning to end. Designed. And she is a descendant of my maker. A goddess….” Her voice trailed off. She sounded...human. Disturbingly so. Human. Mortal. Finite. All that Prosper could not be.

  She....

  Quyen thought of their visitor. Lady Oanh. Grand Master of Design Harmony. Maker of space stations, aligner of Minds and hardware. And, what she made, she could diagnose, she could repair.

  A favour for a favour...

  “A banquet,” Quyen repeated. “A proper welcome. Yes, let’s give her that. Something large enough for her to look kindly upon us.”

  Book 2: Lady Oanh

  If Linh’s arrival had thrown ripples into the family’s complacency, Lady Oanh’s arrival unleashed a storm. Hordes of attendants passed through the courtyards, carrying everything from baskets of live fowl to bottles of wine—some so dusty they must have dated back to the Exodus, back when there was still a single home planet, and a Dai Viet by the shores of a sea.

  In the confusion everyone forgot Linh. Xuan Kiem and Xuan Rua were “recruited”, which meant closeted with Cousin Quyen and the rest of the elder generation, planning the spirits knew what. If it was only for a formal dinner menu, Linh could have thought of a few dozen appropriate offerings, depending on Lady Oanh’s rank and the actual purpose of her visit. But of course no one thought to ask her. Typical.

  Not that she wanted to see Quyen or hear her name, after what had happened in the heartroom. The gall of the woman, dismissing her like some lice-ridden beggar...

  In the meantime, she busied herself at the Hall of Network Access, desperately checking her message box. No news from Giap. No news from anyone. She might as well be dead to the world.

  She saw Lady Oanh from a distance, bowing down with the rest of the family. She followed her to the heartroom, where she had her interview with the Honoured Ancestress. But other than that, Linh had no wish to interfere with Lady Oanh and retreated into her own quarters, using up her allowance to download vids of Xuyan operas. It was regressive stuff, with only men and gender-changed men allowed on stage. Thankfully, she was able to find some more modern operas, which mimicked the flight of ships in space with localised Mind-interference; creating environments in which the dancers could fly, and adopt positions that would have been impossible in a planetary environment.

  On the second day after Lady Oanh’s arrival, Linh was using her console to draw a picture of mountains lost in a sea of white clouds, when she suddenly became aware that someone was watching her—a prickling at the nape of her neck, like an intimation of danger.

  She raised her eyes, expecting Quyen or possibly Bao, with more moralising about her inappropriate relationship with Huu Hieu and her “regrettable” lack of willingness to become part of the station’s life, to bow and scrape the floor before Quyen like everyone else.

  But it wasn’t Quyen. Instead, she saw a group of attendants in family livery, framing a short, plump woman in an ao dai tunic and trousers. For a moment, Linh couldn’t place her, and then she felt the aura of effortless authority radiating from the woman.

  Lady Oanh. Third Rank. Linh’s practised eye followed the cut of the ao dai, the peacock badge of rank sewn over the heart. Three steps away from the Emperor himself. Every one of the ancestors within her screamed for her to abase herself and she did, kneeling and then bringing her head to touch the ground, feeling the coolness of the station’s tiles on her brow.

  “We’re not in court, child.” Lady Oanh’s voice was low, with a slight provincial accent. (Second or Third planet, perhaps, though Linh couldn’t place the exact location.) “You may rise. There is no need for such formalities. Not between countrymen.”

  Countrymen? Linh rose, careful to avoid meeting Lady Oanh’s gaze. It would have been disrespectful, as well as close to suicide. Lady Oanh was no retired official and she only had to say the word for Linh to be arrested.

  She heard an amused laugh. “You don’t believe me. But I can assure you, I wasn’t always this grand.” Her accent had changed, taking on the lilting tones that Linh knew all too well: the accent of Tan Phuoc, which Linh didn’t hear outside of family visits.

  “You’re...”

  “From the city of Tan Hoa.” Lady Oanh sounded amused.

  “First child of Fisherman Ma.”

  It seemed to invite an answer and Linh said, “I’m the first child of Moral Mentor Thi Sac, from Phu Mi.”

  “Indeed. I was your father’s friend.”

  Linh sucked in a deep, burning breath. Not only was Lady Oanh of the Third Rank, she also ranked close to Linh’s own parents, and thus Linh should give her the same respect.

  “You honour me by your visit,” Linh said. First Ancestor Thanh Thuy was rising in her mind, reminding her of etiquette, suggesting quotes from the Classics that Linh could use to impress Lady Oanh. “Just as you honour this space station.”

  Lady Oanh laughed: a short, dainty sound which seemed to punch through the air. “Child, I’ve told you already. No need. Would you believe I’m here for a restful visit?”

  Linh did not answer.

  “Look at me,” Lady Oanh said.

  Linh wasn’t meant to. First Ancestor Thanh Thuy was hesitating in her mind, but Linh already knew the correct behaviour. If a superior wanted to be treated as an equal, you humoured them, no matter how much this might go against the teachings of Master Kong.

  She looked up. The guards had fanned away, leaving her and Lady Oanh in a growing circle of silence. The wind, an affection of the station’s Mind, lifted dust and paper leaves from the floor, and the sounds around them seemed oddly muted.

  Lady Oanh’s face was utterly unremarkable—not that of the princesses of legends, hardly enough to lead entire planets into ruin. But it had the expression of people used to authority, an expression Linh knew all too well, the mirror of her own ancestors’ expressions, of Linh’s own face. Though lately all she’d seen in the mirror was the lined, haunted face of a powerless exile.

  “I’m told,” Lady Oanh said, “that you come to us from the Twenty-Third Planet.”

  How much did she know of Giap, of the memorial? Not enough, surely. News went fas
t, but if she’d been travelling for the past month? “It was my first posting.”

  “As district magistrate, I suppose.” Lady Oanh’s mouth quirked up in the barest hint of a smile. “It’s always... enlightening. My own first posting was the Thirty-First planet, much more remote and...provincial than the Twenty-Third.”

  The Thirty-First Planet, Fifth Ancestor Hoang said, a whisper in Linh’s mind. One of the first casualties of the war. The two rebel factions battled over its ownership, and tore it to pieces.

  Linh hesitated. What was the proper phrasing to offer regrets, something that wouldn’t be too familiar or too distant? First Ancestor Thanh Thuy, for once, seemed at a loss, and before she could suggest something that would inevitably be too formal, Linh said, “This is presumption on my part, but I offer my humble condolences.”

  Lady Oanh nodded, making no commentary. “It was but a posting, child, and it was long ago. The Twenty-Third Planet’s loss no doubt hurts you more.”

  The loss, yes. But more than that, the fact that she hadn’t been there. That she’d run away in fear for her own life, and deserted them. That she couldn’t speak to Giap or stop him from taking the war to the rebel armies. “I had people I loved as much as family there.”

  Lady Oanh nodded. “And here you are, a refugee among strangers.”

  “Family,” Linh said.

  Her smile might have been ironic. It was hard to tell with her weather-beaten face. “The ties of blood are strong, but the strongest ones are between mother and daughter, not between distant cousins.”

  “Those ties are what we make of them,” Linh said. “Are not friends and sworn brothers as important as blood-brothers? A true friend will know your heart, and hear the roar of running waters and the distant wind over the mountains in the song of your zither, without any need for you to speak aloud.”

  “You must, however, do something for your friends,” Lady Oanh said, shaking her head. Perhaps she was amused at the literary reference? “Collect their body and bring it home at your own expense; die on the same hour, same day and same year; all that shows that you value them above all else.”