by Ian Whates
The Dragons in the Peach Garden was silent for a while. “By those standards we’ve been too late for ten years, child.”
“I guess so,” Thuy said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the mindship said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” Thuy said, but she didn’t. She kept telling herself that, when she woke up in the grip of shadowy nightmares; when she remembered hanging in the void of space, bathed in the merciless light of the stars – hearing Chi’s heavy breathing and knowing it was too late – that even if her thrusters came online now she would never reach her sister in time...
It wasn’t her fault. She had to keep thinking that; or she’d fall, and ancestors only knew how far she’d fall.
THUY FOUND SIXTH Aunt at one of the stalls in the Scavenge Market, sipping lotus tea – by the smell that wafted up to her, the expensive, delicate kind grown only in the light of the Black Tiger star. An uneaten plate of cakes lay at her right hand.
“Sit down, child,” Sixth Aunt said, with a graceful move of her sleeves. “Have a cake. They’re not the best, but Madam Second makes a very good pandanus and durian filling.”
“There’s no time for that,” Thuy protested. On her newsfeed, the Galactic delegation was being welcomed by the President of the Forest of Brushes; something flashed at the bottom of the image, a schedule that involved visiting the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Central orbital, and then the orbitals of the most powerful families in the Scattered Pearls Belt. The Apricot Blossom Ho, the orbital where they were, was second on the list.
“Pfah,” Sixth Aunt said. “There’s always time. The Galactics will put their hands on the pulse of power, and try to see where it flows from. That’s what they did, after all, when they first took us over as a colony. It’ll take time.”
Thuy shook her head. “My younger sister is here.” But the habit of obedience won out; she picked a cake and bit into it – letting the rich tang spread in her mouth, a heavy burst of flavours on her palate.
“Of course she’s here. Where else would she be?” Sixth Aunt was a small, plump woman with uncanny eyes – they were brown like most Rong, but in some types of light they shone green, as sharp and as deep as imperial jade.
“In Central,” Thuy said, more sharply than she’d meant. Sixth Aunt had that effect on people.
This close to the edge of the Scavenge Market, it was quiet. The only people in Thuy’s field of vision were a group of elderly men and women sitting at a table: ex-workers from the Galactic factories, their bone-atrophied arms flexed like lengths of tubing, their eyes covered with a bluish film sprouting hairs as fine as insect feelers; their faces prematurely aged, skin sagging like molten plastic on their cheeks and chins. They were all too common on the orbitals: the last remnant of those who’d handled Peters’ Blue in colonial times, in places where the safety of the workers had been an afterthought to the lure of easy money – an unsettling sight, with the Galactics negotiating for the re-establishment of factories in the Scattered Pearls Belt.
Sixth Aunt, oblivious to her surroundings, sipped her tea, as daintily as if she’d been in her own quarters – her eyes closed in something approaching bliss. “Ah. One should always take the time for proper tea.”
“Younger aunt...” Thuy started; and stopped, for any word she could have added would have been disrespectful.
Sixth Aunt laid her cup back on the table, as carefully as she’d have put down a winning hand of mat chuoc. “Finish your cake, child, and we’ll go see a friend.”
As they walked through the Scavenge Market, Thuy felt as though she were ten years back – as though she were one of the kids in the market, proudly showing vendors what they’d salvaged from the floating mass of debris in the Belt – kids borrowing the shuttles of their families’ mindships, playing soldiers and immortals in the vast jumble of leftover junk from the Galactic War – picking up shiny things, bringing them back, never considering what might happen to them; as if the debris zone were just another playground.
“Takes you back,” Sixth Aunt said – of course she could always tell what Thuy was thinking. In Mother’s absence she’d practically raised her and Chi.
Three kids ran past Thuy, laughing. She caught a glimpse of what they were carrying – cracked, warped devices that hummed with threatening noises, and the blackened remnants of smart-mine swarms – one wrong word, one wrong gesture and they would not only expel paralysing gas but cause their swarm-mates to do the same.
She opened her mouth; but Sixth Aunt forestalled her, shaking her head.
“They’re spent. Harmless.”
And they both knew it was a lie; that she didn’t know, that she couldn’t know how damaged they were. They both knew how dangerous it could be, to be out there in the Belt debris, in what had once been the front line of the independence war against the Galactics. But the kids were gone, rushing ahead to sell their new toys; or to play in the nooks and crannies of the orbital. Thuy bit her lip, fighting an urge to run after them; but what would she have done? There were dozens of kids in the Scavenge Market, all of them carrying things that could be equally dangerous.
The market was quieter than usual; its customary ebullience gone. It hung almost... silenced, watching the screens; watching the Galactics. They’d been gone for forty years, longer than the lifetime of half the people of the orbital, but old habits die hard.
There’d be protests, of course; demonstrations against the return of their former masters – but the Imperial Court had planned for that. Security had trebled at all keypoints, and the Galactics would be moving in their very own bubble of quiet, deserted space. They would meet the leaders of the Scattered Pearls Belt; smile and discuss what they wanted, as if nothing had ever happened, as if the war was but distant, harmless memories.
No security, however, would ever protect them against Chi.
Sixth Aunt led Thuy to one of the smaller stalls at the back of the Scavenge Market; so small, in fact, that it seemed to be selling almost nothing but a few holo-displays. Then Thuy’s eyes caught the holo-displays – and saw that the stall was empty, not because it sold small trinkets, but because its products were too large to be lined up on shelves.
The owner was a middle-aged woman with a few hints of white at her temples. She smiled at Sixth Aunt. “Your friend, yes?”
“My niece,” Sixth Aunt said, nodding. “Child, this is Madam Anh.”
“And she’d be the one looking for a ship?” Madam Anh nodded.
Thuy looked at the holos.
“Mostly parts,” The Dragons in the Peach Garden said, unexpectedly speaking up on her comms-link. “This is a helicoidal thruster, and this is a multi-input reconstructional antenna... And, oh, I wouldn’t mind one of these...”
“We don’t have the money,” Thuy subvocalised. “Besides, it’s all Galactic tech –”
“No sense in closing oneself to new things, I’ve always said.”
Thuy tore herself from the conversation to find Madam Anh deep in talk with Sixth Aunt. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, elder sister – you’ll understand that my customers expect confidentiality...”
“Pfah.” Sixth Aunt’s lips pursed, in that all-too-familiar gesture. “What harm does it do to know who purchased what ship parts? We’re no longer under the Galactics, and maintaining mindships is no longer frowned upon – there’s no need to hoard your knowledge from us.”
The Imperial Court probably kept a watch on ship parts, but in a desultory fashion: part of the Scattered Pearls Belt’s attraction was the freedom to trade, and traders who got controlled too often moved to places without such restrictions.
Madam Anh grimaced. “With some customers, it’s clear that they need... a little less attention in their direction.”
“Of course,” Sixth Aunt said “But I’m not interested in who they are.” The lie slipped, smoothly, easily from her lips. “I just think they might have something else we need, based on what they bought here.”
&n
bsp; “She’s my sister,” Thuy said, ignoring the sharp look Sixth Aunt threw her. “We need to make sure that she’s fine.”
“What if I told you she was?” Madam Anh asked. Even though Thuy kept her eyes lowered as a sign of respect, she could feel the weight of Madam Anh’s gaze. “Would you truly go away then?”
Thuy took a deep breath – and then, before Sixth Aunt could stop her for impertinence to an elder, she said, “If I believed you told the truth, yes.”
A sharp inhalation of breath from Madam Anh – a moment which hung suspended like a knife – and Sixth Aunt, starting to say, “I apologise –”
Madam Anh made a small, sharp noise – a bark of amused laughter. “The young always challenge authority, do they not?”
“I’m sorry,” Thuy said, feeling the heat of the blush spread to her cheeks. “She’s my younger sister, and I’m the one responsible for her care.”
“That is the role of parents,” Madam Anh said, though her voice was a little less sharp.
Thuy waited for Sixth Aunt to speak up, but she didn’t. It fell to her, then; because she’d spoken up and pulled the conversation towards her as inexorably as a star pulled its comets. “Mother and Father are dead.”
“You’re too young for them to have died in the war.” Madam Anh’s voice was flat.
Thuy shook her head. “It was afterwards. Fifteen years ago. Their ship was going from Central to the Eastern Sea Tran orbital, right next to here. It must have collided with some debris on the way back.” She’d said it so many times now that the words came out on automatic, without any emotion; a mere fact of life that couldn’t be budged or changed no matter how hard she beseeched her ancestors at night.
Madam Anh was silent, then. It wasn’t as if this was an uncommon story; there was enough debris in the Scattered Pearls Belt to last over several lifetimes, ten thousand booby traps and ambush tools the Galactics had dropped as though there were no tomorrow. Most of the Independence Forces’ weapons were inactive or easily avoided by now; after all, they hadn’t wanted to lay waste to their own country. The Galactics, though, had been in their colonies, and hadn’t much cared by the end whether they destroyed the entire Belt if it meant winning the war.
“So, yes, tell me she’s fine and I’ll go home,” Thuy said, forging on even though the little voice at the back of her head told her she’d better remain silent, better let her words sink in. But she couldn’t. There was no time. “But I doubt she is.”
“Your sister was here,” Madam Anh said at last. “Looks much like you – if you’d not eaten or slept for days on end. Bought a couple parts.” She waved a gnarled hand; and one of the screens changed, rotating a handful of parts Thuy couldn’t identify. “Those ones.”
Thuy heard The Dragons in the Peach Garden stir on the comms-link, giving her the technical details on each part and the possible uses in language so dense she could hardly process it.
“That doesn’t help,” she subvocalised. And then, aloud to Madam Anh, “Did she say – anything?”
Madam Anh spread her hands. “No.”
“But she was not well,” Thuy insisted.
Madam Anh sighed. “If she’d been my daughter, I would have sent her home and fed her caramel pork and crab fritters until she got some fat on those bones.” Before Thuy could speak up, she gestured, and the holo-screens shifted, to display a point blinking amidst the stars.
“That’s where she asked me to deliver the parts,” Madam Anh said. “Take a good look and memorise it, because I won’t show it to you twice.”
“Got it,” The Dragons in the Peach Garden said.
The screen went black again. “May your ancestors send you good fortune to find her,” Madam Anh said. “She needs guidance, that one.”
You have no idea how much.
Thuy bowed to Madam Anh, and followed Sixth Aunt out of the market. Sixth Aunt’s lips were pursed; she couldn’t tell how much was disapproval, or scepticism. “You think she’ll be gone,” Thuy said.
“Of course. I didn’t raise fools,” Sixth Aunt said.
A noise tore through the din of the Scavenge Market – an explosion, soon swallowed again by the hubbub around them. What had –? Thuy couldn’t see very clearly, but there was a crowd clustered around one of the stalls. A handful of medic-drones swerved past them, intent on getting to the wounded.
Text scrolled at the bottom of her field of vision, on the newsfeed for the market: explosion near the Street of Calligraphers. Minor wounds: three victims. Major wounds: none. Precautions: none. Expect minor jams around stall 17573. It wouldn’t be more than a blip on people’s feeds; an everyday occurrence in the Scavenge Market. People knew, after all, what risk they were taking by tinkering with Galactic debris. Everyone knew. Everyone had always known.
If only it were just explosions. If only it was just flesh wounds, easily closed, easily cured – limbs, easily regrown, shards and projectiles, easily extracted, though even that thought was trivialising other people’s hurt.
But, of course, Galactic weapons had gone beyond that a long time ago; and Thuy and Chi and Sixth Aunt knew all about that, too.
“WELL, WE’RE HERE,” The Dragons in the Peach Garden said. “No one will be too surprised if I detect a distinct absence of spaceships.”
Thuy sighed, massaging her temples. “It was the best information we had. Are you sure –? A mindship would have many ways to conceal itself –”
“Yes,” The Dragons in the Peach Garden said, patiently, as if to a small child. “But not this thoroughly.”
They were in the middle of the debris field. The various objects lit up on the ship’s sensor: mine swarms, acid traps, enhanced-gravity bombs, and the odd, twisted objects that couldn’t be properly labelled by the ship’s systems. Those were the best finds for kids; the chance of finding something new.
Thuy remembered a time, ten years ago, when the biggest debris of the swarm had lit up on their shuttle’s scanner; the way Chi’s eyes had lit up from the inside, the begging and pleading that they needed to go check the thing out, that it would be an experience to boast about to their cousins, that they might even bring something back, something pretty enough to outrank the holo-projector that Cousin Hieu had salvaged from the ruin of a Galactic shuttle. She’d always been curious; and Thuy had never been able to refuse her anything.
“She was here,” Thuy said, aloud.
“Quite obviously. Equally obviously, she’s not here anymore.” Sixth Aunt was sitting at the table, staring at a map of the square quadrant. Underneath, in transparency, the table showed the Galactic delegation exiting the Hall of Supreme Harmony. They were smiling, their teeth as white and as sharp as those of tigers on the prowl. No doubt they’d got what they wanted – perhaps even the military bases they’d been angling for, the ‘buffer zone’ between the Scattered Pearls Belt and the much larger Dai Viet Empire. “You remember colonial times,” she said to The Dragons in the Peach Garden.
The ship sniffed. “When they thought it fitting to send mindships on extended delivery runs throughout the galaxy – treating us no better than beasts of burden, and caring little as to whether we saw our families again at New Year’s Eve? Yes, of course.” She didn’t sound pleased.
“Everyone in the family ended up working for them,” Sixth Aunt said, thoughtfully – and, to Thuy, “You weren’t born, of course. But their soldiers drove customers away from the restaurant with their rowdiness and arrogance, and paid like misers. Your grandfather had no choice but to take work at the barracks – and not be paid much more than an errand boy.”
“Is this really the time?” Thuy asked. She knew about the Galactics – about the slow, orchestrated ruin of their family – but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they couldn’t afford another war with them; and that was what would happen if Chi had her way.
Sixth Aunt stared at the table and its image of the Galactic delegation – her face as unreadable as Chi’s had been. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Who knows wh
at the future might hold?”
“It’s the past I have no interest in conjuring up again,” The Dragons in the Peach Garden said, stiffly.
Thuy tuned them both out. She stared at the wall – at the projected images of space, with the stars and debris helpfully labelled by The Dragons in the Peach Garden’s sensors. She thought of Chi – of her sister, alone in the room of her rebuilt mindship, making her plans with the same ruthless clarity she’d applied to everything since the accident.
“Can you show me the projected path of the Galactics’ shuttle?” she asked the ship.
The view zoomed out; a thin line of green threaded its way through the debris – a zigzag course through some of the less cluttered areas. “My best guess,” The Dragons in the Peach Garden said.
“That’s assuming they’ll take the obvious path,” Sixth Aunt said, her eyes still on the map.
“Security reasons?” Thuy asked. “They’ll assume there isn’t a ship that can touch them; and ordinarily they’d be right.” She stared at the map again, willing the truth to emerge from the jumble of debris – but the only truth that would come was the same Chi already knew; that nothing was fair or equitable in life.
“What would you do if you were Chi?” Sixth Aunt asked.
Thuy shook her head. “I can’t tell what she would do. Not anymore.”
Sixth Aunt said nothing. Chi had stayed a while, after the accident. At first, she’d tried to act normal; to pay her respects every morning to her other elders, to bring fruit fresh from the orchard to Sixth Aunt, to pretend that everything was fine. But the change that had come over her – the magnitude of what had happened to her while she’d hung alone in the carcass of the ship with her spacesuit’s thrusters disabled – was like a wound in the family’s everyday life, like a swarm-mine ejecting shards long after it had detonated, like smart bullets still worming their way through a body years and years after the impact.
