The Starlit Wood

by Dominik Parisien

  Teacher moves, joins Slicer around the pile of stillborn remoras. >Architect. Use of this?<

  No scraps of metal left unused, of course—they scavenge their own dead, make use of anything and everything to build. Once, Da Trang would have found it disquieting; but now all he feels is weariness, and impatience that they’re keeping him from his algorithms. “I don’t need them anymore. They’re . . . flawed. Take them.”

  >Architect. Thank you.< He’d have thought they didn’t know gratitude, but perhaps they do. Perhaps they’ve learnt, being so close to humans. Or perhaps they’re merely doing so to appease him—and would it really make a difference if that was the case? So many things human are fake and inconstant—like favors. >We will return. Much to ponder.<

  “Wait,” Da Trang calls, as the remoras move away from his discarded scraps, from the blurred, indistinct remnants of his failures. “Tell me—”

  >Architect?<

  “I need to know. Was it my fault?” Did he ignore Pearl—was there some harbinger of the things to come—were the odd times the remora fell silent, with its prow pointed toward the sun, a sign of what it secretly yearned for?

  Could he . . . could he have stopped it, had he known?

  Silence. Then Teacher’s answer, slow and hesitant. >We built. We made, from metal and electronics to the spark of life. We didn’t determine, Architect. It went where it willed. We do not know.<

  No answer then, but why had he thought it would be so easy?

  On the morning of the day he was to be raised to councillor, Da Trang got up early, with an unexpected queasiness in his stomach—fear of what would happen, of Mother and her dire warnings about Empresses’ fickle favorites being right?—no, that wasn’t it.

  Pearl was gone. He reached out, scratching the callus on his neck, in the place where it usually rested—scanning the room and finding nothing, not even a trace of its presence. “Pearl? Pearl?”

  Nothing under the sheets, nothing in the nooks and crannies of the vast room—he turned off everything, every layer of the Purple Forbidden City’s communal network, and still he couldn’t see Pearl.

  Impossible. It wasn’t human; it didn’t have any desires of its own except to serve Da Trang, to serve the whims of the Empress and her endless curiosity about anything from stellar phenomena to the messages passed between remoras and bots, to the state of the technologies that underpinned the communal network—to be shown off to scientists and alchemists and engineers, its perceptions and insights dissected and analyzed for anything of use to the Empire. It couldn’t just go wandering off. It—

  Da Trang threw open the doors of his room, startling one of the servants who’d been carrying a tray with a cup of tea—almost absentmindedly, he reached out and straightened the tray before moving on. “Pearl? Pearl?”

  Courtiers, startled out of their impassivity, turned their heads to follow him as he ran into courtyard after courtyard, finding nothing but the usual bustle of the court, the tight knots of people discussing politics or poetry or both—an endless sea of officials with jade-colored sashes barely paying attention to him—and still no Pearl, no trace of it or word on his coms.

  It was only two bi-hours until the ceremony; and what would he say to the Empress, if Pearl wasn’t there—if he couldn’t perform any of the feats of use to her, and that distinguished him from the mass of upstart courtiers?

  “Pearl?”

  He found the remora, finally, in the quarters of the Master of Rites and Ceremonies. The Master was deep in discussion with her students, pointing to something on an interface Da Trang couldn’t see. Pearl was in the small room at the end, where they had gathered the necessary supplies for the ceremony.

  “Pearl?”

  It stood, watching the clothes on the mannequin in the center of the room: the five-panel robe made from the finest brocade with the insignia of the sparrow on the chest—not an official rank attained through merit and examinations, but one reserved for special cases, for emperors’ and empresses’ fickle favors. On the shoulder was a rest for Pearl, with a small model of the remora.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Pearl didn’t move, or acknowledge him in any way. It was . . . that same particular intent stillness it had had, back at the time of the first star wildfire. Waiting—what for? “Is something going to happen? Pearl?”

  >Architect.< The words were hesitant—letter after letter slowly materializing in his field of vision. And still Pearl didn’t move, didn’t head to Da Trang’s shoulder, to fill the empty space he couldn’t get used to. >Need. Time.<

  “What for? The ceremony is in two bi-hours—”

  Pearl shifted; and he realized then that it had been standing in a shaft of sunlight, its prow turned toward the heavens. >Not meant for this.<

  “You were built for this,” Da Trang said. Why the strange mood—fear or nervousness? But remoras couldn’t feel any of that, surely?

  But, then, Pearl wasn’t just any remora. We can build better, Teacher had said. Better, or merely more unstable? “Come,” Da Trang said.

  Pearl hovered to the shoulder of the mannequin—nudging the small model they’d made of it, which looked nothing like a remora: bedecked with silk and scraps of translucent cotton. >Not meant for this.< Its prow rose again, toward the sun. >Space. The song of stars. The heartbeat of the universe.<

  “We’ll be going into space,” Da Trang said. “Often enough. I promise.” It scared him now—the Imperial Court wasn’t a place to hear the song of the stars or the rhythm of the universe or whatever else it was going on about. “Come.”

  >Not the same.< Pearl made a small whirring noise.

  “They built you to help me,” Da Trang said. And, without Pearl, he was nothing—just another dull-witted poor boy, the Empress’s favor soon forgotten. “Pearl. Come on.” He fought an urge to bodily drag it from the room, like a disobedient child, but it would have been unkind. “Remember Teacher and Slicer and the other remoras? They said they’d built you for me. For the examinations. For understanding.”

  Come on, come on, come on—if Pearl left him, he didn’t know what he’d do, what he’d become, what he could make of the shambles that would be his life—

  >Understanding.< Pearl’s prow dipped again, toward the mannequin. >Building better.< Again, the same slowness to the words, as if it were considering; and then, to Da Trang’s relief, it flew back to him, and the familiar weight settled on his shoulder—the familiar ice-cold feeling of needles biting into his shoulder, the sense of reality becoming unbearably sharp, unbearably clear, everything labeled and parceled and analyzed, from the Master of Rites and Ceremonies’ minute frown to the student fighting off sleep in the first row—from the cut and origin of the silk to the fluctuating intensity of the sunlight in the room.

  >Can help.< But as Da Trang turned away, he felt Pearl’s weight on his shoulder—felt the remora looking upward at the sun—the pull of the motors, barely suppressed; and he knew that he hadn’t managed to quell Pearl’s yearnings.

  He doesn’t sleep—only so many hours in a day, and there are ways to enjoy them all. Not for long, of course, not with the drugs he’s pumped himself full of; but what does he care for more time? He needs Pearl back, so badly it’s like a vise, squeezing his ribs into bloodied shards. Without Pearl, he’s nothing: an ex-favorite of the Empress, fallen from her regard—an overambitious boy from the outer edges of the Empire, overreaching and tumbling over the waterfalls instead of soaring, dragonlike, in the wake of imperial favor. But it’s Pearl that the Empress was truly interested in—its tidbits on stellar phenomena, on technologies, on ships and what made them work—what Pearl called the understanding of the universe, with an earnestness that didn’t seem to belong in a remora: everything that they put into always moving, never stopping, it put into intent stillness, in that posture on his shoulder where its eyes, if it’d had any, would have bored holes into steel or diamond.

  It’s still there, in the heart of the sun. Waiting.
For him, or for something else; but if Pearl is there, that means he can find it. That means . . . He doesn’t know what he will do when he finds Pearl, how he’ll beg or plead or drag it from the sun—but he’ll find a way.

  It was a routine journey, a shuttle ride between the First Planet and the White Clouds orbital; and the Empress, of course, insisted her new Councillor come with her, to show her the wonders of space.

  Da Trang came, because he had no choice—in spite of deep unease—because Pearl had been restless and distant, because he’d tossed and turned at night, trying to think of what he could do and thinking of nothing.

  Halfway through the trip, the Empress called for him.

  She was in her cabin, surrounded by her courtiers— they were all sitting on silk cushions and sipping tea from a cup as cracked as eggshells. In front of her was a hologram of space as seen from the prow of the ship. As Da Trang entered, the view blurred and shifted, and became the outside of the orbital—except that the stars were dimmer than they ought to have been.

  “Councillor,” the Empress said. “I thought you would enjoy seeing these.”

  Pearl snuggled closer to Da Trang—needles extended, the blissful cold spreading outward from the pinpricks, the trance rising—extending to the outside, narrowing until he could see the bots maneuvering nano-thin filaments, unfolding a large, dark shape like a spread cloth behind the orbital.

  Void-nets. Da Trang had sat in nightlong sessions with the Ministry of War’s engineers, describing to them what Pearl saw—what Pearl thought—how the remora could even analyze the dust of stars, the infinitesimal amounts of matter carried by the wind in the void of space—and how, in turn, those could be trapped.

  He hadn’t thought—

  “Your Highness,” Da Trang said, struggling to remember how to bow. “I had no idea this was such a momentous occasion.”

  “The Ministry of War has been testing prototypes for a while—but it is the first time a void-net is deployed in the vicinity of a Numbered Planet, to be sure.” The Empress was almost . . . thoughtful. “All to your credit, and Pearl’s.”

  Another nudge, but he had no need to see heartbeats or temperature to catch the anger of the courtiers. As if they’d ever be capable of matching him . . .

  “Tell us,” the Empress said. “What will we find in your nets?”

  A brief moment of panic, as nothing happened—as Pearl didn’t move, the thought that it was going to be today, of all days, when the remora failed him—and then a stab so deep under his collarbone it was almost painful—and the view shifting, becoming dotted with hundreds of pinpoints of colored lights, each labeled with a name and concentration. “Suffocating metal 5.3 percent,” he whispered. “Frozen water 3 percent. Gray adamantine crystals 9.18 percent . . .” On and on, a litany of elements, labeled and weighed: everything the Empire would decant to fuel its machines and stations and planets, names and images and every use they could be put to, a flood of information that carried him along—such a terrible, breathless sense of being the center, of knowing everything that would come to pass . . .

  He came to with a start, finding Pearl all but inert against him, softly vibrating on his shoulder. The Empress was looking at him and smiling—her face and body relaxed, her heartbeat slow and steady. “A good take. The Ministry of War should be satisfied, I should think.” She watched the screens with mild curiosity. “Tell me what you see.”

  “Colors,” Da Trang said. Even with Pearl quiescent, he could make them out—slowly accreting, the net bulging slightly outward as it filled—the bots straining under the pressure. “A dance of lights—”

  He never got to finish the sentence.

  On his shoulder, Pearl surged—gone before Da Trang’s flailing arms could stop it, tearing through the cabin—and then, with scarcely a pause, through the walls of the ship as if they were nothing more than paper; alarms blaring, the Empress and him thrown to the ground as the cabin sealed itself—but Pearl was already gone. Fumbling, Da Trang managed to call up a view from ships around the orbital—a slow zoom on Pearl, weaving and racing toward the stars, erratic and drunken, stopping for a bare moment, and then plunging toward the heart of the sun.

  >Architect. Farewell. Must be better. Must show them.<

  And then there was nothing—just emptiness on his shoulder like a hole in his own heart, and the memory of those words—and he could not tell if they were angry or sad or simply a statement of fact.

  Nothing.

  Days blur and slide against one another; his world shrinks to the screen hovering in front of him, the lines of code slowly turning into something else. He can barely read them now; he’s merely inputting things from rote—his hands freeze, at odd intervals; and his vision goes entirely black, with whole chunks of time disappearing—everything oddly disjointed.

  Except for his remoras.

  They’re sleek and beautiful and heartbreaking now, moving with the grace of officials and fighter-monks—one by one, pulling themselves from the floor, like dancers getting up and stretching limb after limb—still for a heartbeat, their prows turned toward him, and then gone toward the sun, a blur of speed he cannot follow anymore—as darkness grows and encroaches on his field of vision.

  He must build more.

  Remoras come and go: Teacher, Slicer, and all the others, taking from the pile of scraps, making small noises as they see a piece of metal or a connector; slowly, determinedly taking apart his earlier efforts—the tearing sound of sheets of metal stretched past the breaking point; the snapping of cables wrenched out of their sockets; the crackling sound of ion thrusters taken apart—his failures, transfigured into life—patched onto other remoras, other makings; going on and on and on, past Da Trang’s pitiful, bounded existence—going on, among the stars.

  “Tell me,” he says, aloud.

  >Architect. What should I tell you?< One of them—Slicer, Teacher, he’s not sure he can tell them apart anymore; save for his own remoras, everything seems small and blurred, diminished into insignificance. Everything seems dimmer and smaller, and even his own ambitions feel shriveled, far away, belonging to someone else, a stranger with whom he shares only memories.

  “Pearl wanted to be better than you. It said so, before it left. Tell me what it means.”

  Silence, for a while. Then letters, steadily marching through his darkening field of vision. >Everything strives. It couldn’t be better than us, Architect. It is—<

  “Flawed. I know.”

  >Then you understand.<

  “No, I don’t. That’s not what I want. I want to—I need to—” He stops then, thinks of remoras, of scarce resources that have to be endlessly recycled, of that hunger to rebuild themselves, to build others, that yearning that led to Pearl’s making.

  And he sees it then. “It doesn’t matter. Thank you, Slicer.” He stifles a bitter laugh. Everything strives.

  >I am Teacher.<

  Its words are almost gentle, but Da Trang no longer cares. He stares ahead, at the screen, at the blurred words upon it, the life’s blood he fed into his remoras, making them slowly, painstakingly, and sending them one by one into the heart of the sun. He thinks of the remoras’ hopes for the future, and of things that parents pass on to their children, and makers to their creations. He knows now that Pearl, in the end, is like Teacher, like Slicer, no better or no different, moved by the same urges and hungers. He thinks of the fires of the sun, the greatest forge in the system; and of Pearl, struggling to understand how things worked, from the smallest components of matter to mindships and humans—he’d thought it was curiosity, but now he sees what drove it. What still drives it.

  If you know how things work, you can make them.

  Darkness, ahead and behind him, slowly descending upon the screen—the remoras dancing before him, scavenging their own to survive, to make others.

  Yearnings. Hunger. The urge to build its own makings, just as it was once built.

  Must be better.

  Must build bette
r.

  And as he slides into shadows—as his nerveless fingers leave the keyboard, his body folding itself, hunched over as if felled by sleep—he thinks of the other remoras, taking their own apart—thinks of the ones he made, the ones he sent into the heart of the sun; and he sees, with agonizing clarity, what he gave Pearl.

  Not tools to drag it back or to contact it, but offerings—metal and silicon chips and code, things to be taken apart and grafted, to be scavenged for anything salvageable—the base from which a remora can be forged.

  As his eyes close—just for a moment, just for a heartbeat, he sees Pearl—not the remora he remembers, the sleek making of Teacher and Slicer, but something else—something changed, reshaped by the heat of the sun, thickened by accreted metal scooped from the heart of a star, something slick and raw and incandescent, looming over him like a heavenly messenger, the weight of its presence distorting the air.

  Darkness, ahead and behind him—rising to fill the entire world; and everything he was, his lines of code, his remoras, scattering and fragmenting—into the fires of the sun, to become Pearl’s own makings, reforged and reborn, and with no care for human toil or dreams or their petty ambitions.

  There is no bringing Pearl back. There is no need to.

  And as his eyes close for the last time, he smiles, bitterly—because it is not what he longed for, but it is only fair.

  >Farewell, Architect.<

  And Pearl’s voice, booming, becomes his entire world, his beginning and his ending—and the last thing he hears before he is borne away, into the void between the stars.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Aliette de Bodard: I don’t remember where I first heard the tale of Dã Tràng and the Pearl, but it’s been rattling around my head for a while. I was always struck by its final few lines: after the loss of the pearl, Dã Tràng exhausts himself looking for it, dies, and is reincarnated as a small sand-digger crab (which bears his name in Vietnamese). I’ve always had a weakness for metamorphosis tales, and this was a particularly dramatic one! I wanted to retell it as a space opera, because it’s what I usually do: a lot of my science fiction has roots both in fairy tales and in science. It seemed pretty natural to me that the equivalent of animals in a fairy tale would be low-level AIs: the remoras, who have formed a parallel society on the edge of the human one; and that Pearl would be not a thing but a living being—a special remora made by a class of beings who kept remaking and modifying themselves as necessity dictated (there’s more than a hint of the golem in Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay in Pearl). Once I had that nailed into place, the story pretty much wrote itself. (Okay, no. There was blood, sweat, and tears, but that’s business as usual!)