Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Law, Lucas K.

  “Bright, enthusiastic, inquisitive boy,” she read. It was obvious that she was reading from the text, not making up the words. “Energetic and requires a lot of attention and compassion. He’s had a rough history, but he’s sweet and capable of loving. A family without any other children would do well.”

  “Stop.”

  “They write these posts like they’re advertising for pet swaps.”

  “I said stop it.”

  I climbed off the bed, flicked the cigret into the trash, and grabbed my clothes. “I was legitimately adopted. I don’t know what the hell you’re looking at.”

  “Adopted by the Dragon Empress?”

  No. And we both knew it.

  I didn’t reply. Once I got my boots on, I grabbed my gun off the table and left her in the den.

  All of my worlds were colliding.

  Mabel found me at the bar, four drinks deep. Soochan was there, drunk and high too. “Heeey Mama,” he kept saying. Several of my other brothers from the Empress danced haphazardly to the music funneling in the centre of the floor.

  “Paris,” Mabel said, glancing at Soochan.

  “Heeey Mama. Heeey Parchisi, she want your comm code?”

  We ignored him. I wondered what either of them would do if they knew my real origin.

  What should I be doing?

  Everywhere I went now, I thought of my brother. Swapping drugs for cred or weapons, it was Cairo. Drinking myself into a stupor, it was Cairo. Fucking a woman, it was Cairo.

  The ankh on my chest that I saw every day. What had possessed me to wear that reminder? My body was now a walking séance ritual, begging the ghosts to follow. To answer back, letter by letter, yes or no. I invited them now to shake my seating and short-circuit my tech. To stand behind me in the dark when I wandered the corners of the ship.

  My brother was a ghost. The kind who made marks on the living.

  “Please,” Mabel said. “We need to talk.”

  How many kids were outside the system, like me? How many had been put into the system only to be torn out like a splinter? Children that couldn’t be handled so they were hijacked. Especially refugee kids, Mabel said. Good ships with good intentions found themselves over their heads and no longer wanted to deal with the kids.

  It wasn’t a bad life, I heard myself telling her, the two of us in a corner booth while the music kept winding up and falling down and everyone around us moved like mannequins of broken robotics.

  “Do you remember when you were taken?” she asked.

  Do you remember? That question refused to pick another path. It hunted me everywhere.

  “What’re you going to do,” I said. “Put me back? That ship has flown—literally.”

  “I could find out if you have any family—”

  “I don’t.” It came out of my mouth like every answer I’d given to anyone who asked. No family but the Dragon. No ship but the Dragon. No place but the Dragons. Deep space was our home. Mabel took it as stated and I carried on. “The captain of the Chateaumargot had checked. Or the case worker that I had—whoever. Social Services. I don’t even remember the name of the first station they’d put me at. They purged the records anyway.”

  Mabel frowned. “The station?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  I gave her a flat stare then let her track my gaze to Soochan, still sitting at the bar mouthing off to the air.

  “We’re not pirates but we’re not saints.”

  What if, I thought. What if I gave this journalist my real world name?

  Soochan suddenly appeared at my shoulder, leaning over the table. “Leh we go, Parchisi.”

  “Be there in a second.” I pushed his hand away as it coursed through my hair. Big brother, except he wasn’t. He wandered off to hook up with our other brothers, now headed off the dance floor.

  I had this information locked inside my chest. If I let it out, what other explosion would it cause? Would that birth yet another world, one that I couldn’t predict or control? Another situation I couldn’t defend myself against?

  No one could know.

  To Mabel: “Can you do me a favour?”

  Her eyebrows arched.

  “Whatever you need for your story, I’ll tell you. As a source. No names, on your word.”

  She nodded. “Anonymous. I promise.”

  “Because you know what I’ll do if you break our deal.”

  She’d seen the gun. More importantly she’d seen the ink on my body and read the affiliation well enough.

  “What’s your question?” she said.

  “Find out Macedon’s next port of call.” I did, in the end, slip her my comm code. “And let me know ASAP.”

  Somehow she came through. The message on my system said simply: Austro Station. And gave a date.

  It wasn’t difficult to go to Austro Station, despite what we did for a living. Austro was a main hub even for us, with its rampant underdeck activity and illicit commerce. I didn’t have to mention a thing to Madame Leung, beyond the usual conversation about scoring big there. We bought and sold drugs at Austro for the rich elite in the higher modules because exploitation was the true ecosystem of the galaxy.

  The Dragon Empress docked at the station a day after Macedon. To the galaxy outside, we were basic trade merchants in harmless cargo like transsteel and mechanical goods. It was a different story for the boys Madame Leung sent off in other directions on deck. I was one of that crew.

  Now I had to conjure my brother’s face—in the delicate balance of stalking the dock where the carriers were moored, not going too close, but hovering outside the broad doors to catch every person that flowed back and forth. Casing the airlock directly was impossible in such a restricted area. Instead, I disappeared from my Dragon brothers in the hopes of seeing another. Hiding myself behind garish kiosks and aromatic food stalls. I felt like a pervert, but maybe that was fitting. A perverse turn in my life. As if the universe agreed, it made me wait and gave me ample opportunity to get the fuck out of there.

  Of course I didn’t.

  I wanted to see him. I recognized his walk before anything else. In all the years, that detail hadn’t changed. He was taller, and he tried to hide beneath a hoodie and civilian clothes, passing through the concourse toward the carrier docks. But I knew those shoulders and the gait of someone who knew where he was going. He didn’t cover up out of fear, but from stealth.

  I moved with him, slipping along the edges of the crowd between his path and mine. It took me a minute to notice the child.

  A little boy. Maybe four or five, but who could tell? They held hands. The boy carried a stuffed bear wearing soft armour, its furry ears dragging on the deck.

  I was that age once. Cairo held my hand like that.

  It’s me, I wanted to shout. As if those two words could make up for a decade or more as some humans reckoned time.

  Come back.

  It happened all at once; the little boy said something and Cairo leaned down to pick him up in his arms, barely breaking stride. Smaller arms went around broad shoulders. The bear dropped to the deck in their wake and Cairo kept walking, oblivious.

  I saw the boy open his mouth to protest and then I was there. The crowd was no longer a wall. I hadn’t made the conscious decision, but I found myself holding the stuffed toy, reaching to touch Cairo’s arm.

  He turned before I could tap him, sensing proximity maybe. Or his son’s distress. The little boy twisted in his arms to keep his own eyes on the toy, reaching toward it. Toward me.

  “He dropped this,” I heard myself say.

  My brother wasn’t the only one covered up. My hood was pulled low, long sleeves covered all of my ink. Maybe he saw my mouth move but that was it. I stared somewhere at his chest and below. At the blue boots his son wore, dangling at his side.

  The bear left my outstretched hands, plucked to safety.

  “What do you say, Ryan?” A deep voice. But I knew that accent.

  Meridian. Like mi
ne. What it had been three worlds ago.

  “Thank you,” a small voice said.

  “Welcome.”

  “Thank you,” my brother said.

  I just nodded.

  They turned to go. He wasn’t going to waste time on a stranger.

  I looked up as they moved further into the concourse crowd, still headed toward the carriers. Cairo didn’t turn around, but his son was looking over his shoulder, holding the armoured bear in his arms.

  The boy had blue eyes. Not like mine. Not like his father’s. Big, searching blue eyes that stared at me as if he knew. Ryan, Cairo had said. My nephew.

  I didn’t follow them. They walked away and I stayed where I was, the ghost they left behind.

  Now all I do is remember.

  My fourth world is the clearest. Sun bright and comet swift, all I can do is chase it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to enter in again. Like it’s a room left open for me. Like a voice offering a greeting, something as simple as hello. Maybe next time I’ll look up and stare him straight in the eyes, dark eyes like mine, with just enough tilt at the corners to speak of our common ancestry. His son’s gaze was a start, but it was only the edge of the solar system. There’s more.

  Soochan found me sitting on the deck outside of the carrier docks. He twitched, all nervous.

  “Them Marines gonna sweep you away from their stoop, you can’t stay here. Come back to the Empress.”

  He didn’t ask why I was sitting there. Maybe he thought I was high.

  I’m waiting for them to come back, I wanted to say. But of course I didn’t. It wasn’t the truth anyway. What would I say in that moment if they had?

  I’m your brother, take me with you? Take my DNA and test it against yours. Check how far back we’re connected. Tell me where you’ve been all this time, when time slipped so easily between the stars. What war are you fighting? Will you fight mine for a while?

  Save me just this once.

  Come back, my brother. Come back, Cairo. You’re tattooed on my skin, beneath my heart, inside my blood. I tried to forget you, but nothing worked.

  I want you to hear me say our family name. I’ll only say it to you. No one else would understand what it means.

  You were my first world.

  Joseon Fringe

  Pamela Q. Fernandes

  “Jeonha, welcome. You are early today!”

  He acknowledged the woman genuflecting before him. Despite her work, she had this seductive lilt to her voice. King Sejong smiled, adjusting his richly embroidered red robe before leaving his balmaksin shoes outside. Several lanterns brightened the moonless night. She served him hwachae in a brass mug, the refreshing fruit juice sweet on his tongue.

  “I cannot seem to figure out how to draft the consonants,” he told the woman, who in her dark hanbok could rival any one of his consorts. “We were successful in testing the cannon, as per your instructions, but I need more time with the mirror to find out more about the language.”

  The woman with her braided hair drawn to the front of her waist demurred.

  “Jeonha, that is not how the mirror works. I have told you before, the time it remains open always stays the same.”

  He sighed. “Yes, but time is passing quickly. My older brother, Yangnyeong, is out to kill me, and I am not sure I may last another season. Not to mention that all these rumours about us spreading like fire.”

  “Jeonha, if this arrangement is uncomfortable for you, then I can move elsewhere.”

  He swallowed the rest of the fruity concoction.

  “But we cannot. You yourself said so, that this mirror works in very few places. You wasted nine moons trying to find this one.” He paused and smoothed his dark goatee, feeling the burden of Joseon weighing on him. He feared he was running out of time. Yangnyeong had been plotting his revenge. “Maybe I was never meant to become king. Maybe Joseon will do fine if Yangnyeong, its rightful heir took my place.”

  King Sejong paused again, thinking about the passing of time. He was only twenty-three but he felt old, having aged quickly over the last two years of his reign. “It is said you can look at the state of the cats by a family’s waste and tell if the family is well fed. I roam the streets disguised in the night and all I see are skinny cats, their bones visible under their flesh. We need advancements in agriculture, irrigation, astronomy, and ironworks.”

  “Jeonha, it is time,” she said, interrupting his sudden melancholy.

  He forced a smile to acknowledge her interruption. He followed her through a labyrinth of rooms that lead to an underground cellar, then another maze which she navigated through quickly without stopping or hesitating, never letting him memorize the route. He had come here several times, yet he would never be able to find it without her. Finally, he could hear the rush of a waterfall and knew they were close. The door opened to a room that overlooked the cataract. Here she placed her strange contraptions, made of metal and some thin stringy threads. The room was cluttered, every corner with wood or iron objects, knickknacks, and instruments of various kinds littered throughout. He never paid much attention because it was ultimately the mirror for which he came.

  He could not see the waterfall, the blackness of night blanked everything, but he could hear it. The rush of the water as it came thundering down, drowning all other sound. And in the flicker of a small lamp, they stood poised in front of the mirror. It was suspended on two iron rods. After adjusting a few switches, she turned it on.

  Sejong watched the scene unfold. “What is this?” He frowned. “Where is Sejong? And why are these people wearing such funny clothes? I want to see the other Sejong draft the consonants.”

  She smiled, “Jeonha, didn’t I explain, that there are many alternate universes and many versions of us. This is another one of them. There, the people have given up the hanboks and wear far less than we’re accustomed to.”

  Sejong edged closer to the mirror as he watched the men sport no hats and no robes, but short hair and shiny shoes unlike the balmakshin he wore. The women had funny hair arrangements and bared their legs, and their clothes revealed their exact shape. But something caught his eye, the boards of the shops. They were all linear.

  “Is that Hangul?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper, awed by what he saw. He did not wait for her to answer. He pulled out his quill and wrote on the parchment, drawing out a few of the letters before the mirror went still and the image faded away. For a few moments, all he could hear was the waterfall and the sound of their own breaths. His was fast.

  “It is too soon,” he said, growling. “I need more time.”

  His fingers were taut on his sheet, the ink on it still wet.

  “Jeonha, what is it that plagues you so much? Why would any king worry so much about creating a language?”

  He slumped as he looked out the window, keeping his gaze on the starless night.

  “In Joseon, the Buddhist monks want us to follow their script, while the poor remain poor. They all hate me. The yangban are the only ones who can read and write and yet the only thing they know is the Ming’s system of words. The poor are fed up with ceaseless servitude. Why can’t we make something for our own people so that the illiterate and the poor maybe be able to read and write as well? How long will my people suffer? A wise man can acquaint himself with Hangul before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn it in the space of ten days. That is what I want Hangul to be. I need help and if they know a woman is associated with this, I might have to execute myself. There are already rumours about who Jang Yeong Sil is. How did he make the cannon? Where did he test it?”

  He waited for her reaction because he would like to know himself. Where did she test the weapon? How did she make it, if she never got out of this damn house? Who was she? Where did she come from? Did she have ulterior motives?

  “Jeonha, can I make a suggestion?”

  He smiled, this time a happy one.

  “Jang Young Sil,” he said, “whenever you say that, I know you have something ext
raordinary in your mind. The great Confucius says that ordinary is easy, but extraordinary differentiates you from the crowd.”

  Young Sil bowed reverently. “You are very kind, Jeonha. If you are worried on account of me then I suggest you open a new school of scholars, where people from all social classes may be able to write an exam and participate. You can share with them your desire to create Hangul.”

  “They are too talkative. Before long, word will get out that someone is helping me. That Jang Young Sil is in hiding.”

  “You can tell them it is a secret mission, that their reports will be unnamed and their findings secret. After all, the work will be credited to the Hall of Worthies.”

  “Hall of Worthies?”

  “The school’s name.”

  He thought about it; she was right. It did sound like a good plan, but how could he explain visiting her repeatedly, especially this late at night without causing rumour. Sejong held up the candle and scanned the room, finally focusing on a small rectangular object sitting on the table. A painting on the wall of a cat and a butterfly, the signature of the painter illegible to him. Were they in colour? Or was the candle flicker playing tricks on him? He had never seen something so spectacular in all of Joseon. “Fine, I will see you in two weeks; till then, take care,” Sejong said, turning to the door.

  Before he left for Gyeongbokgung, she reminded him one of Confucius’s quote, “It does not matter how far you go as long as you don’t stop.”

  He sat in his palanquin, and on reaching home, he dismissed his servants and reproduced everything he saw on those boards on his parchment. Every shape, every stroke. He had already made a chart from his previous visits; his entire bed chamber was plastered with parchment filled with letters of different shapes. Some parchments were blank. Those were the ones he needed. But he didn’t worry. After what he saw today, he knew the alphabet would be ready someday by someone. He just wanted that someone to be him.