The woman started, and her aura roiled with the agitation of water—but when she made to move, one of the guards hit her in the back with the butt of his weapon, sending her sprawling to the ground.
"I see,” Gao said. He might as well have been talking about the weather. “It has been a long time, Your Excellency."
The woman, Shinxie saw, was weeping; and her son held himself rigid. Both auras were shot through with metal—the element of anguish.
The soldiers moved into position, stretching the prisoners flat on the ground. Two of them hefted bamboo canes, looking thoughtfully at the bodies before them.
Shinxie had seen many such scenes, when she was a court official; it was common to be beaten. But, nevertheless, she couldn't help the shudder that ran through her.
"You will read him,” the Prince said to Shinxie. His face was a mask, his own aura dominated by fire—but, when she brushed him on her way to Gao Tieguai, she felt the other element: metal, anguish, and disgust. He was doing his duty, and not caring much for it.
Gao Tieguai extended his hand to her; she'd expected a little shrug, a little sign that he was also finding this distasteful, but there was nothing. “Gao,” she said, but found all words had gone.
"Begin,” the Prince said.
The canes rose, fell. The first blow tore the clothes from collar to hem; the second drew beads of blood; and each subsequent one widened the wounds even further. Shinxie could see the bodies arch against the pain—could feel the anguish and pain of metal in the auras, roiling stronger and stronger—could hear the woman's quiet sobs, slowly rising into raw screams—could see the son's body, shuddering every time the blows came. And still it didn't stop—blood was flowing over the beaten earth of the courtyard, watering the earth, and neither of them could hide their suffering any more, neither of them could bear it any more....
Her hand tightened around Gao's, strongly enough to crush the fingers of a mere man.
"Again,” the Prince said, his voice flat.
The soldiers nodded—and it went on, the even rise and fall of the canes, the little snap as the thin bamboo bent to strike the skin, the blows coming one after the other, the sheer repetition of it all....
And, throughout, Gao's aura never wavered, never tilted out of balance—all five elements, no anguish, no anger, no pain. Nothing. The canes rose and fell and the blood splashed, and once there was a crunch like bones breaking, and the son finally cried out, his leg sticking out at an awkward angle from his hip, his flesh glistening in the morning sun, and the canes rose and fell and there was only blood and pain and a smell like charnel-houses, and still Gao said nothing, moved nothing, felt nothing.
At last, at long last, it stopped, and Shinxie drew in a shuddering breath, half-expecting the Prince to raise his hand again. But he didn't. He merely looked at her holding Gao's hand, as if she had the answers to everything.
The woman, lying in the stickiness of her own blood, tried to pull herself upward, fell back with a cry. She was whispering something, over and over; and it was a while before Shinxie realized that it was Gao's personal name, only used by his intimates.
Gao looked at the woman, uninterested; his aura did not waver.
Shinxie shook her head at the Prince, willing this farce to be over.
"I see,” the Prince said. He looked at the two pitiful, broken bodies below him. “I humbly apologize, in the name of the Tianshu Emperor, for this ill-treatment. The imperial alchemists here will see about your wounds. Come, Yue."
She followed, Gao's hand still in hers—cool, reassuring, unwavering.
As they walked out of the courtyard, the woman cried out, “Husband!” Her voice was a sob.
Gao turned, bowing to her—dragging Shinxie with him. “Guilin,” he said, speaking her personal name.
"Lisai,” the woman whispered. “Please..."
Gao shook his head, very gently. “It was a long time ago, Guilin. I am deeply sorry. You'll recover, and have a long, prosperous life.” He glanced at the Sixth Prince, and added, “They'll make sure you lack for nothing."
But his aura was undisturbed, his second-skin cool under Shinxie's touch. He meant none of it.
* * * *
Later, the Prince came to her office, looking small and wan. “I'll be going back to the capital, Yue. I'll report that there's nothing to see here, nothing to threaten the Flowering Empire. My work is done."
"I see,” Shinxie said. She still heard the sounds of the canes rising and falling—still smelt the sharp, animal tang of blood in the morning—and felt Gao's aura, utterly unperturbed. A dandelion, going where the wind blew; a cloud, a storm. There was nothing more to him; not anymore—and she was the one who had shaped him, who had made hundreds like him.
The Prince's face was pale, and even his formal makeup couldn't quite disguise it. “I shouldn't have done it, should I?” he asked.
Something twisted within her. “You had to protect the Empire,” she said. “You had to make sure."
The Prince's hands clenched, slightly. “The alchemists will repair the skin, and mend the broken bones. It will be as if it had never happened. I'll make sure they're compensated—that they're pardoned, with enough money to establish themselves. It will be as if it had never happened.” His tone was that of one who didn't believe in what he said; and for the first time since she'd known him, his voice shook and broke.
Shinxie fought the crushing feeling that threatened to overwhelm her chest. “Go home,” she said, gently. “You have wives and children. You have no reason to cling to any of this."
"Yue—” the Prince said, and stopped. “If I were to—” He stopped again, as if words would no longer come to him. “Come back with me,” he said. “Please."
He had never asked. He had never begged. In all the days of their liaisons, even in the days since he'd come back into her life....
Oh, Your Excellency....
If he told you, tomorrow, that you could come back as his concubine, what would you do?
She hadn't been able to answer Gao, then. But now, in the quiet of her office, there was only one thing she could say, one answer that would make sense. “My place is here. My work is here. I am sorry. Go home. Forget about this place.” Forget about me.
The Prince's face contracted, very slightly. Shinxie reached out, feeling nothing but a shadow of her old desire—stroked his hand, gently. “May you live long, and attain all five blessings, Your Excellency."
And, in that instant—looking at this small, hunched man who was no less broken than the prisoners he'd chosen to beat—she knew.
* * * *
Gao was waiting for her in the Hall of Cultivating the Body and Mind—standing in the center, amid the students deep in their meditations. He bowed to her when she arrived.
It was the hour after dusk; the drum had been beaten, signaling the end of this day's teaching. The teachers had gone back to their rooms; the alchemists to their laboratories. The procession that accompanied the Sixth Prince was making its slow way down the mountain, taking with it Gao's wife and son in palanquins—pale and shrunken, their bodies repaired by the alchemists’ painstaking work.
"I know how you came back,” Shinxie said.
Gao's face turned toward her, the eye-facets gleaming with the first star. He said nothing.
"Balance,” Shinxie whispered. “You can't open a singularity unless you care about nothing—but that's not how it works, is it?” That wasn't how ... She took a deep, trembling breath, feeling the icy air go down, all the way into her lungs. Finally she said. “If you loved everything on this earth—the mountains and the valleys, the storms and the sunlight—the Emperor, the merchants and the laborers, the alchemists and the workers...” If nothing truly stood out, if everything was in balance...
Gao said, finally, “Then, if you've listened to what I told you, you'd know that wouldn't be love anymore."
No, not in the sense of desire or lust—it wouldn't set people apart, wouldn't tear away at th
e fabric of the world....
He did not move—and she was half-relieved, half-disappointed. Would he not even attempt to silence her?
"You needn't have come back here,” she whispered, and then something came loose within her, some pent-up anger or frustration. “You needn't come back here and go through this pretense—there was no need—” Not for the Sixth Prince, not for the canes, not for the memory of blood clogging up her nostrils, the nausea that threatened to overwhelm her every time she paused....
"This is White Horse,” Gao said, gravely. “A refuge for the Flowering Empire's dreamers; the only place where they can thrive. If you cannot grasp what this is about, then who will?” He tilted his head—and, with a growing, convulsive shiver, she remembered the conversation they'd had in the Hall, the students in meditation, his words about love and equality, nesting at the back of their minds like coiled snakes....
New teachings. He had come back because of the students, because of what he thought he could give them. Because he meant to change them.
"You—” she whispered.
"There is so much blindness in this world,” Gao said, and for the first time, she heard kindness in his voice. It did nothing to quell the tremors that ran up her arms. “So much misery to extinguish."
"And you'd change us?” she whispered. “To fit your rules? What gave you the right—?"
She swung her hand, clumsily, toward him; he caught it in his own, imprisoning the fingers in an unbreakable hold.
"Shinxie,” he whispered, and in his voice was an echo of the Prince's need, of his aching tenderness. “The Tianshu Emperor shapes us to his needs. Do you think it's a better rule?"
The Imperial edict, sending her into her exile; White Horse, the gateway to a voyage of no return; the casual arrogance of the Sixth Prince, the faith that the Empire should be safeguarded, at all costs. “I don't know what your rule would be,” she said.
"You know how I came back,” Gao said. His aura washed over her, unchanging—all five elements, entwined into perfect balance; fire and wood, earth and water and metal generating each other, destroying each other, supporting each other in their endless cycle. “That's all I can offer you."
"I could call him back,” Shinxie said. “The Prince. Tell him what happened, tell him what you did."
Gao said nothing. “If that is your wish, I will not gainsay it."
"You wouldn't?” She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. “You let your wife and son be beaten rather than reveal anything, and you wouldn't stop me?"
"My wife and son were never in real danger,” Gao said. “Many things are wrong in the Flowering Empire, but the death of two innocents is not yet condoned. But to stop you would require violence,” Gao said. “Perhaps even killing you."
Shinxie laughed. She couldn't help herself—the sounds racked her, bitter sobs with nothing of joy. “You—"
He was still watching her, his head bent at an angle, like a curious bird; and suddenly she realized that everything he had ever said or done had led to this point—that every one of his acts had aimed to let her know, to put her in the position when she knew exactly what he felt—as if he still needed some kind of judgment passed on him, some reassurance that he was right.
No, that was not it.
He had come here, in White Horse, for a change that would start among the Flowering Empire's dreamers—among her students. A change she would witness; for she was Abbess of White Horse.
Of course he would want her to understand.
"Celestials take you,” she whispered.
Gao's lips thinned into a smile. “You'll find that's impossible."
"I could stop you,” Shinxie said—but she thought of the Prince's haunted face, and knew she couldn't. “But it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair."
Gao inclined his head, and said nothing. His aura washed over her, with the regularity of waves on a calm morning—something she could cling to, even now.
"The others,” she said. “On Penlai Station. Will they come back?"
"Who knows? I can't speak for them."
Gao made a slow, sweeping gesture with his hands; and the air started to sparkle around him. Slowly, the singularity came into being, blurring the edges of his being—layer after layer of his body slowly erasing itself from reality. “Goodbye, Yue Shinxie. I trust we will meet again."
After he was gone, she stood for a while, the silence of the Hall washing over her—the familiar sounds of nightingales singing, the crisp, biting air of the night on her fingers, the lights reflected in the facets of her students’ eyes.
She wondered how he would fare, out in the Flowering Empire—what else he would do.
Whatever the case, things would never be the same.
She wanted to laugh, or to weep, but even that seemed to be beyond her. Instead, she felt a slow, inexpressible feeling rise up in her: a desperate wish for the world to thrive, no matter what happened; for the Emperor, the merchants and the laborers, the alchemists and the workers to live and prosper and understand what was right—Gao's love for everything, strong enough to crush the bones of her chest.
And, standing shivering in the courtyard, she finally understood the gift he had left her.
The path to transcendence had shifted, away from the dry detachment of Penlai Station and the emptiness of Heaven: it now lay in the shadow of his footsteps, in the singularity that compassion had opened—wide and clear and ready to be followed.
Copyright © 2010 Aliette de Bodard
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Poetry: SUBATOMIC REDEMPTION by Michael Meyerhofer
* * * *
* * * *
I, too, was bored senseless
when my high school biology teacher
described in neat chalk-rings
the orbits of electrons
around the nucleus, clean
fields of addition and subtraction,
which all of us could sense
had nothing to do
with the real world. Years passed.
More doubt, more body hair,
more black holes and botched affairs.
In time, truth wormed its way
into the apple of any brain.
Truth—electrons bounce and jangle
at the speed of light,
so erratic, so unhinged that
sometimes, literally,
they disappear from the universe,
fly off to god knows where
then return like nothing happened,
blushing like party guests
back from making out in the bathroom.
We should have known better
than to fear being laid
beneath the business end of a shovel.
Wherever we are going,
we have gone there before
and broke free using nothing more
than the paltry speed of stars.
—Michael Meyerhofer
Copyright © 2010 Michael Meyerhofer
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Novella: THE ICE LINE by Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter's new novel, Ark, a sequel to Flood, will be out from Ace later this year. The author is currently working on his “Northland” alternate-prehistory series of novels, which has locations close to where he lives, in north England—as does “Ice Line,” where, he tells us, “Admiral Collingwood is a local hero!"
* * * *
Author's Note: This story takes place some eighty-five years after the events of “The Ice War” (Asimov's, September 2008), and is similarly loosely related to my 1993 novel Anti-Ice. In our timeline Admiral Collingwood did fight beside Nelson at Trafalgar, and Robert Fulton's Nautilus was built and trialed, though never used in war.
* * * *
Prologue
I discovered the attached manuscript on January 1st 1806, a dismal New Year, when with my father's staff I was sifting through the charred wreckage of the Ulgham manufactory. It was scribbled on odd bits of p
aper that themselves tell something of the author's extraordinary story—a torn blueprint of the old Nautilus submersible machine, a warship's victualling sheet still reeking of gunpowder, even a memorandum in my own hand, all rolled up and stuffed into a spent Congreve rocket shell, presumably in the very last moments before the Tom Paine rose for its momentous journey to the Phoebean nest and the ice line. Though I did not immediately recognize his hand, it was immediately clear to me who was the author.
The whole world now knows the biographies of two of the heroes of the Tom Paine—Miss Caroline Herschel, and my own father Rear Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood—but the third member of that famous crew, Ben Hobbes, has received less attention. His own account shows how he had to overcome, not merely lethal peril, but the flaws of his own heart. And in this mortal realm none of us faces a greater challenge.
I herewith present Ben Hobbes—his journal. The first entry is dated Thursday, December 12th, 1805.
—ANNE COLLINGWOOD, Morpeth, June 22nd, 1809.
* * * *
I
The drummers sounded battle stations, and it was a noise fit to chill the blood.
It was a bleak sky that hung over the Indomitable, and the other square-riggers and gun-boats of the French and Spanish navies that crowded to defend Napoleon's National Flotilla as it toiled across the Channel, on its way to give England her worst night since the comet-fall of 1720. It was already late afternoon, so long had it taken the Flotilla to form up out of Boulogne, and I mused that the elements were showing little sympathy for the hundred and seventy thousand troops throwing up their guts in the invasion barges.
And, peering out from the foredeck, I saw the British ships bearing down. There are few things in the world so elegant as a fighting three-master seen head on as she leans into the wind, her canvas full set. But some of those ships were already showing the sparking of guns, and you could hear a distant pop, pop. The Royal Navy had taken a licking at Trafalgar, and one-arm Nelson was swimming with the fishes, but the English weren't defeated yet.
All around me the Indomitable prepared for war. You must not believe glamorous accounts of a tar's life. That French warship, already battered and patched from previous scraps, was crowded with men, you went shoulder to shoulder with your fellows on the working decks, and now all of them were running around and hauling on ropes and clambering high in the rigging. The shot racks were opened, the powder hatches made fast, the cutlasses and pistols handed out, and huge canvases soaked in seawater were draped in the deck spaces as firebreaks. The most ominous preparation was the swabbing of the decks and the scattering of sand, so that men would not slip on their mates’ blood. The cabin lads penned the ducks and geese in their coops, and dragged the goats and pigs to the side and dropped them in the surging water between the ships, the first casualties of the day. And the wives and whores cowered in the corners.
Asimov's SF, February 2010 Page 13
