Days blur and slide against one another; Da Trang’s world shrinks to the screen hovering in front of him, the lines of code slowly turning into something else—from mere instructions and algorithms to semiautonomous tasks—and then transfigured, in that strange alchemy where a programmed drone becomes a remora, when coded behaviors and responses learnt by rote turn into something else: something wild and unpredictable, as pure and as incandescent as a newborn wind.
Movement, behind him—a blur of robes and faces, and a familiar voice calling his name, like red-hot irons against the nape of his neck: “Councillor Da Trang.”
Da Trang turns—fighting the urge to look at the screen again, at its scrolling lines that whisper he’ll fix it if he can write just a few more words, just a few more instructions. “Your Highness.” Forces his body into a bow that takes him, sliding, to the floor, on muscles that feel like they’ve turned to jelly—words surface, from the morass of memory, every one of them tasting like some strange foreign delicacy on his tongue, like something the meaning of which has long since turned to meaningless ashes. “May you reign ten thousand years.”
A hand, helping him up: for a moment, horrified, he thinks it’s the Empress, but it’s just one of the younger courtiers, her face shocked under its coat of ceruse. “He hasn’t slept at all, has he? For days. Councillor—”
There’s a crowd of them, come into the hangar where he works, on the outskirts of the capital: the Empress and six courtiers, and bodyguards, and attendants. One of the courtiers is staring all around him—seeing walls flecked with rust, maintenance bots that move only slowly: the dingy part of the city, the unused places—the spaces where he can work in peace. There is no furniture, just the screen, and the pile of remoras—the failed ones—stacked against one of the walls. There’s room for more, plenty more.
The Empress raises a hand, and the courtier falls silent. “I’m concerned for you, councillor.”
“I—” He ought to be awed, or afraid, or concerned, too—wondering what she will do, what she can do to him—but he doesn’t even have words left. “I have to do this, Your Highness.”
The Empress says nothing for a while. She’s a small, unremarkable woman—looking at her, he sees the lines of deep worry etched under her eyes, and the shape of her skull beneath the taut skin of the face. Pearl, were it still here, were it still perching on his shoulder, would have told him—about heartbeats, about body temperature and the moods of the human mind, all he would have needed to read her, to convince her with a few well-placed words, a few devastating smiles. “Pearl is gone, councillor,” she says, her voice firm, stating a fact or a decree. “Your remora was destroyed in the heart of the sun.”
No, not destroyed. Merely hiding—like a frightened child, not knowing where to find refuge. All he has to do is find the right words, the right algorithms . . . “Your Highness,” he says.
“I could stop it,” the Empress said. “Have you bodily dragged from this room and melt every piece of metal here into scrap.” Her hand makes a wide gesture, encompassing the quivering remoras stacked against the walls; the one he’s working on, with bits and pieces of wires trailing from it, jerking from time to time, like a heart remembering it has to beat on.
No. “You can’t,” he starts, but he’s not gone far enough to forget who she is. Empress of the Dai Viet Empire, mistress of all her gaze and her mindships survey, protector of the named planets, raised and shaped to rule since her birth. “You—” and then he falls silent.
The Empress watches him for a while but says nothing. Is that pity in her face? Surely not. One does not rise high in the Imperial Court on pity or compassion. “I won’t,” she says at last, and there is the same weariness in her voice, the same hint of mortality within. “You would just find another way to waste away, wouldn’t you?”
He’s not wasting away. He’s . . . working. Designing. On the verge of finding Pearl. He wants to tell her this, but she’s no longer listening—if she ever was.
“Build your remoras, councillor.” The Empress remains standing for a while, watching him. “Chase your dreams. After all—” And her face settles, for a while, into bleak amusement. “Not many of us can genuinely say we are ready to die for those.”
And then she’s gone; and he turns back to the screen, and lets it swallow him again, into endless days and endless nights lit only by the glare of the nearby star—the sun where Pearl vanished with only its cryptic good-bye.
He isn’t building a single remora but a host of them, enough that they can go into the sun; enough to comb through layer after layer of molten matter, like crabs comb through sand—until they finally find Pearl.
None of them comes back, or sends anything back; but then, it doesn’t matter. He can build more. He must build more—one after another and another, until there is no place in the sun they haven’t touched.
The first Da Trang knew of the banquet was footsteps, at the door of the hangar—Mother, Pearl’s trance said, analyzing the heavy tread, the vibrations of the breathing through the hangar’s metal walls. Worried, too; and he didn’t know why.
“Child,” Mother said. She was followed by Cam, and their sister Hien, and a host of aunts and uncles and cousins. “Come with me.” Even without Pearl, he could see her fear and worry, like a vise around his heart.
“Mother?” Da Trang rose, dismissing the poetry he’d been reading—with Pearl by his side, it was easier to see where it all hung together; to learn, slowly and painstakingly, to enjoy it as an official would; teasing apart layers of meaning one by one, as though eating a three-color dessert.
Mother’s face was white, bloodless; and the blood had left her hands and toes, too. “The Empress wants to see the person who cooked the Three Blessings.”
Three Blessings: eggs arranged around a hen for happiness and children; deer haunches with pine nuts for longevity; and carp with fishmint leaves cut in the shape of turtle leaves, for prosperity and success as an official. “You did,” Da Trang said mildly. But inwardly, his heart was racing. This was . . . opportunity: the final leap over the falls that would send them flying as dragons, or tumbling down to earth as piecemeal, broken bodies.
“And you want me to come.”
Mother made a small, stabbing gesture—one that couldn’t disguise her worry. It was . . . unsettling to see her that way; hunched and vulnerable and mortally afraid. But Da Trang pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Now wasn’t the time. “You were the one who told me what to cook.” Her eyes rested on Pearl; moved away. She disapproved; but then she didn’t understand what Pearl could do. “And . . .” She mouthed silent words, but Pearl heard them, all the same.
I need you.
Da Trang shook his head. He couldn’t—but he had to. He couldn’t afford to let this pass him by. Gently, slowly, he reached for Pearl—felt the remora shudder against his touch, the vibrations of the motors intensifying—if it were human, it would be arching against his touch, trying to move away—he didn’t know why Pearl should do this now, when it was perfectly happy snuggling against him, but who could tell what went through a remora’s thought processes?
“It’s all right,” he whispered, and pressed the struggling remora closer to him—just a little farther, enough for his mind to float, free of fear—free of everything except that strange exhilaration like a prelude of larger things to come.
The banquet room was huge—the largest room in the central orbital—filled with officials in five-panel dresses, merchants in brocade dresses, and, here and there, a few saffron-dressed monks and nuns, oases of calm in the din. Pearl was labeling everyone and everything—the merchants’ heart rate and body temperature; the quality of the silk they were wearing; the names of the vast array of dishes on the table and how long each would have taken to prepare. And, beyond the walls of the orbital—beyond the ghostly people and the mass of information that threatened to overwhelm him, there was the vast expanse of space, and remoras weaving back and forth between the asteroi
ds and the Belt, between the sun and the Belt—dancing, as if on a rhythm only they could hear.
At the end of the banquet room was the Empress—Da Trang barely caught a glimpse of her, large and terrible, before he prostrated himself to the ground along with Mother.
“Rise,” the Empress said. Her voice was low, and not unkind. “I’m told you’re the one who cooked the Three Blessings.”
“I did,” Mother said. She grimaced, then added, “It was Da Trang who knew what to do.”
The Empress’s gaze turned to him; he fought the urge to abase himself again, for fear he would say something untoward. “Really,” she said. “You’re no scholar.” If he hadn’t been drunk on Pearl’s trance, he would have been angry at her dismissal of him.
“No, but I hope to be.” Mother’s hands tightening; her shame at having such a forward son; such unsuitable ambitions displayed like a naked blade.
The Empress watched him for a while. Her face, whitened with ceruse, was impassive. Beyond her, beyond the courtiers and the fawning administrators, the remoras were slowing down, forming up in a ring that faced toward the same direction—neither the sun nor the Belt, but something he couldn’t identify. Waiting, he thought, or Pearl thought, and he couldn’t tell what for.
“Master Khong Tu, whose words all guide us, had nothing to say on ambition, if it was in the service of the state or of one’s ancestors,” the Empress said at last. She was . . . not angry. Amused, Pearl told him, tracking the minute quirking of the lips, the lines forming at the corner of her eyes. “You are very forward, but manners can be taught, in time.” Her gaze stopped at his shoulder, watching Pearl. “What is that?”
“Pearl,” Da Trang said slowly.
One of the courtiers moved closer to the Empress—sending her something via private network, no doubt. The Empress nodded. “The Belt has such delightful customs. A remora?”
To her, as to everyone in the room, remoras were low-level artificial intelligences, smaller fishes to the bulk and heft of the mindships who traveled between the stars—like trained animals, not worth more than a moment’s consideration. “Yes, Your Highness,” Da Trang said. On his shoulder, Pearl hesitated; for a moment he thought it was going to detach itself and flee; but then it huddled closer to him—the trance heightened again, and now he could barely see the Empress or the orbital, just the remoras, spreading in a circle. “Pearl helps me.”
“Does it?” The Empress’s voice was amused again. “What wisdom does it hold, child? Lines of code? Instructions on how to mine asteroids? That’s not what you need to rise in the Imperial Court.”
They were out there—waiting—not still, because remoras couldn’t hold still, but moving so slowly they might as well be—silent, not talking or communicating with one another, gathered in that perfect circle, and Pearl was feeling their sense of anticipation too, like a coiled spring or a tiger waiting to leap; and it was within him, too, like a flower blossoming in a too-tight chest, pushing his ribs and heart outward, its maddened, confused beating resonating like gunshots in the room.
“Watch,” he whispered. “Outside the Belt. It’s coming.”
The Empress threw him an odd glance—amusement mingled with pity.
“Watch,” he repeated, and something in his stance, in his voice, must have caught her, for she whispered something to her courtier and stood.
Outside, in the void of space, in the freezing cold between orbitals, the remoras waited—and, in the center of their circle, a star caught fire.
It happened suddenly—one moment a pinpoint of light, the next a blaze—and then the next a blaring of alarms aboard the station—the entire room seeming to lurch and change, all the bright lights turned off, the ambient sound drowned by the alarms and the screaming, the food tumbling from the tables, and people clinging to one another as the station lurched again—a merchant lost her footing in a spill of rice wine and fell, her brocade dress spread around her.
On Da Trang’s shoulder, Pearl surged—as if it was going outside, as if it was going to join the other remoras watching the star ignite—but then it fell back against Da Trang; and he felt something slide into him: needles with another liquid, which burnt like fire along his spine. At the next lurch of the station, his feet remained steady, his body straight, as if standing at attention, and his muscles steadfastly refusing to answer him—even his vocal cords feeling frozen and stiff. >Don’t move.<
Da Trang couldn’t have moved, even if he’d wished to, even if he wasn’t standing apart, observing it all at a remove, high on Pearl’s trance and struggling to make sense of it all—no fear, no panic, merely a distant curiosity. A star-wildfire; light waves that were destabilizing the station, frying electronics that had never been meant for such intensity—Pearl’s readouts assured him the shielding held, and that radiation levels within the room remained nonlethal for humans, poor but welcome reassurance in the wake of the disaster.
In front of him, the Empress hadn’t moved either; with each lurch of the station, she merely sidestepped, keeping her balance as if it were nothing. Of course she would have augments that would go far beyond her subjects’, the best her Grand Masters and alchemists could design.
Abruptly, the station stopped lurching, and the lights slowly came back on—though they were white and blinding, nothing like the quiet and refined atmosphere of the banquet; and instead of the ambient sound there was only the low crackle of static. The Empress gazed at him levelly, and then went on, as if their conversation had been merely stopped by someone else’s rude interruptions, “In all of the Dai Viet Empire, there is no one who can predict a star wildfire. We can determine when the conditions for the ignition are met, of course, but the scale of such predictions is millennia, if not millions of years. And yet you knew.”
Da Trang shook his head. Pearl had withdrawn; he could still see the remoras outside, now utterly still, though Pearl’s readouts assured him they were not broken—merely oddly, unnaturally still. Merely . . . content. Who knew that remoras basked in wildfire? “Pearl knew,” he said. “You asked how it helped me. That’s how.”
The Empress watched him for a while; watched Pearl nestled on his shoulder, the remora’s prow wedged in the hollow where his collarbone met his neck. “I see. I think,” she said, slowly, softly, “it would be best for you to take your things and come back with us, child.”
And like that—just like that, with two simple sentences, and a polite piece of advice that might as well be a command—Da Trang started his rise at the Imperial Court.
Da Trang is watching his latest remora, a sleek, small thing with a bent thruster—even as he does, he sees it move, and the thruster flows back into place; and the remora dips its prow, a movement that might as well be a nod, and is gone through the open doorway, following the path of the previous ones—pulling itself upward into the sky, straight toward the sun. Toward silence.
>Architect. We are here.< Da Trang’s head jerks up. The words are blinking, in a corner of his field of vision, insistent, and the remora saying this is close by too. It’s not one of the ones he made, but it’s one he’s seen before, a vision from his past when he was still repairing remoras and studying for the imperial examinations—before Pearl, before the Empress. Pitted metal and those broken thrusters at the back, and the wide gash on the right side that he’s never managed to patch; the nub on the prow and the broken-off wing, clumsily repaired with only a basic welder bot. . . .
“Teacher,” he whispers, addressing the remora by the name he gave it, all those years ago. “I’m sorry.”
Remoras don’t have feelings, don’t have human emotions. They lie somewhere halfway between ships and bots, outside the careful order of numbered planets; cobbled together from scraps, looking as though they’re going to burst apart at any moment.
Behind Teacher is Slicer, and Tumbler, and all the rest of the remoras: the ones who were with him at the very beginning, the ones who made and gave him Pearl.
Teacher’s image wave
rs in and out of focus, and Da Trang fights the urge to turn away, to go back to his code, because he owes Teacher that much. Because Pearl was given to him for safekeeping, and he has lost it.
“I’m sorry,” Da Trang says again, though he doesn’t even know if Teacher can understand him.
>New things are more easily broken,< Teacher says. Something very like a shrug, and the remora weaving closer to him. >Don’t concern yourself, Architect.<
“Are you—are you building another?” Da Trang knows the answer even before he asks.
>Like Pearl? No.< Teacher is silent for a while. >It was flawed, Architect. Too . . . much vested into a single vessel. We will ponder how to build otherwise.<
Da Trang cannot wait. Cannot stand to be there, with the emptiness on his shoulder, where Pearl used to rest; to gaze at the remoras and the hangar and have nothing about them, no information about their makeup or their speed; all the things Pearl so easily, effortlessly provided him. If he closes his eyes, he can feel again the cold shock of needles sliding into his neck, and the sharpening of the world before the trance kicked in, and everything seemed glazed in light.
Slicer weaves its way to the first pile of remoras in the corner of the hangar: the flawed ones, the ones that wouldn’t lift off, that wouldn’t come to life, or that started only to crash and burn. It circles them, once, twice, as if fascinated—it never judges, never says anything, but Da Trang can imagine, all too well, what it sees: hubris and failure, time and time again. He’s no Grand Master of Design Harmony, no Master of Wind and Water: he can repair a few remoras, but his makings are few, and pitiful, and graceless, nothing like Pearl.
“I have to try,” Da Trang whispers. “I have to get it back.”
>It was flawed,< Teacher says. >Will not come back.<
They know too, more than the Empress does, that it will take more than a sun’s warmth to destroy a remora. That Pearl is still there. That he can still reach it, talk to it—make it come back.
The Starlit Wood Page 28
