by Paula Guran
He’d thanked Ngoc Ha, and told her he’d think on it. “Don’t tell my daughter,” she’d said. For some reason, this had shocked him into silence—only after she’d gone had he realized that it was one of the only times she’d referred to the ship in those affectionate tones.
According to Ngoc Ha, Grand Master Bach Cuc was dead; which he wouldn’t admit. It would mean a setback in the search for Bright Princess Ngoc Minh, at a time when they could not afford setbacks. He needed to be sure, before he told anyone of this—Heaven, he wasn’t even sure Ngoc Ha was entirely innocent in this. She’d hated her sister: that much was clear from her own words.
Focus. He needed to do his duty to the empress and the empire, and flights of fancy were unhelpful.
The Scattered Pearls Belt was governed by a council of elders, and a local magistrate who, like many of the low-echelon officials, looked stressed and perpetually harried. Yes, he knew of Quoc Quang, had always known he would be in trouble one day—it was the drugs, and the drink; he’d never been the same since his wife’s disappearance. Yes, he’d come back recently from a voyage into the heart of the empire, and of course he would be happy to help the honored General Who Read the Book of Heaven in any way required.
The magistrate’s obsequiousness, and the missing attempt to defend Quoc Quang, made Suu Nuoc feel faintly ill; but he tried not to let it show on his face. “Bring him to us,” he said, more brusquely than he’d meant to, and was perversely glad to see the man flinch.
He watched as the magistrate intercepted a pale-looking clerk, and mentally tallied the time it was going to take to find Quoc Quang with their overstretched resources. Too much. “On second thought, cancel that order. Take us to him. It will be faster.”
“He has a daughter, hasn’t he?” Ngoc Ha asked, as the magistrate’s clerks escorted them to another shuttle.
“Diem Huong,” the magistrate said—with a frown. Clearly, he was about to add the daughter’s behavior to a list of perceived sins against the empire, too. Coward, and a malicious one at that.
Suu Nuoc wouldn’t stand for that. “Are you going to tell us about the daughter’s failures, too?” he asked, conversationally.
The magistrate blanched—and Ngoc Ha winced. “No, of course not,” he said—Suu Nuoc heard him swallow, once, twice, as his face went the color of ceruse. “It’s just that . . . Diem Huong has always been odd.”
“Odd?”
“Obsessed,” one of the clerks said, a little more gently than the magistrate. “Her mother was on the Citadel. She vanished when Diem Huong was six, and Diem Huong never quite recovered from it.” Her eyes were grave, thoughtful. “If I may—”
“Go on,” Suu Nuoc said, though he wasn’t fooled. The delivery was gentler, and meant more kindly, but it was the same, nevertheless.
Heaven, how he missed the battlefield, sometimes. Soldiers and bots wouldn’t prevaricate, and whatever backstabbing might occur was short and clean.
“People break, sometimes,” the clerk said. “Diem Huong . . . does her job, correctly. Helps her orbital with the hydroponics system. No one’s ever had a complaint against her. But it’s an open secret she and Lam, and a couple of other youngsters, were obsessed with the Citadel.”
“Lam? Tran Thi Long Lam?” The Turtle’s Golden Claw asked.
The clerk, startled, looked at the small avatar of the ship—hadn’t even noticed it floating by her side. “Yes,” she said. “A graduate of the College of Brushes—”
Suu Nuoc tuned her out as she started to list Lam’s qualifications. The orbital was proud of Lam, as they hadn’t been of either Quoc Quang or his daughter—because Lam was the local girl who had succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dream; granted, she’d had to return home, but everyone understood the necessity of caring for a sick father. Lam was cool-headed and competent and probably managed an important segment of her orbital—a position beneath her, but which she’d taken on without complaining on returning home. He’d seen it a thousand times already, and it was of no interest.
What mattered was Grand Master Bach Cuc, and Bright Princess Ngoc Minh.
He let the clerk drone on as their shuttle moved from the central orbital to the Silver Abalone orbital—focusing again on the messages Lam had sent Grand Master Bach Cuc. Warnings, using a language too obscure for him to make them out. Was Ngoc Ha right? He didn’t know. He knew that she was right in her assessment of Bach Cuc: that the Grand Master was proud of her achievements, and hungry for recognition. A young person like Lam, daring to question her . . . No, she wouldn’t have listened to her. It was a wonder she’d received Quoc Quang at all, but perhaps she had not dared to refuse someone introduced by Ngoc Ha herself.
It galled him to even entertain the thought, because one did not speak ill of the disappeared or the dead, but he had not cared much for Bac Cuc.
Quoc Quang’s compartment turned out to be a small and cozy one—the kitchen showed traces of use so heavy the cleaning bots hadn’t quite managed to make them disappear, and a faint smell of sesame oil and fish sauce clung to everything.
It also did not contain Quoc Quang, or his wayward daughter. The aged aunt who lived with them—quailing in the face of the Embroidered Guard—said he had gone out.
“Running away?” The Turtle’s Golden Claw asked.
Suu Nuoc shook his head. Getting drunk, more likely. “Scour the teahouses,” he said. “Can someone access the network?” Without it, everything seemed curiously bare—objects with no context or feelings attached to them. He ran a finger on the wok on the hearth, half-expecting information to pop up in his field of vision—what brand it was, what had last been cooked in it. But there was nothing.
The clerk nodded.
“Anything interesting?”
Silence, for a while. “A message from his daughter,” she said at last. “Diem Huong. She says she’s gone to work with Lam, at the teahouse.”
Diem Huong. Long Lam. Suu Nuoc didn’t even pause to consider. “Where is the teahouse?”
“I don’t know—” the clerk started, and then another of her colleagues cut her off. “It’s the old teahouse,” he said. “Where the youngsters hang out, right by the White Turtle Temple on the outer rings.”
“Take us there,” Suu Nuoc said. “And keep looking for Quoc Quang!”
It was all scattering out—that familiar feeling he had before entering battle, when all the bots he was linked to left in different directions, and the battlefield opened up like the petals of flowers—that instant, frozen in time, before everything became rage and chaos; when he still felt the illusion of control over everything.
But this wasn’t battle. This didn’t involve ships or soldiers; or at least, not more than one ship. He could handle this.
He just wished he could believe his own lies.
The White Turtle Temple was a surprise, albeit a provincial one: a fragile construction of rafters and glass that stretched all the way to a heightened ceiling, a luxury that seemed unwarranted on an orbital—though the glass was probably shatter-proof, or not even glass. It had a quaint kind of prettiness; and yet . . . and yet, in its simple, affectless setup, it felt more authentic and warm than the hundred more impressive pagodas on the First Planet. When all this was over, Suu Nuoc should come there; should sit, for a while, in front of the statues of Quan Vu and Quan Am, and meditate on the fragile value of life.
The building next to the temple, squat and rectangular, had indeed been a teahouse—some tables were still outside, and the counter was lying in two pieces in the corridor. But that wasn’t what raised Suu Nuoc’s hackles.
The building glowed.
There was no other word for it. It was a faint blue radiance that seemed to seep through everything, making metal and plastics as translucent as high-quality porcelain—light creeping through every crack, every line of the walls until it seemed to be the glue that held it together. And it was a light that thrummed and throbbed, like . . .
He had seen this somewhere bef
ore. He gestured to the Embroidered Guard, had them position themselves on either side of the entrance. It didn’t look as though there was any danger they could tackle—“unnatural light” not exactly being in their prerogatives. He’d been too cautious: he should have asked at least one of them to plug into the communal network—they would be blind to local cues. It had been fine when they’d just been on a mission to pick up a witness, but now . . .
He looked again at the light, wishing he knew what it reminded him of. That annoying buzz, just on the edge of hearing—like a ship’s engine? But no, that wasn’t it. How long had it been spreading? “I want to know if the monks of the temple filed a report,” he said.
The magistrate looked at one of his clerks, who shook her head. “Not in the system.”
Not so long, then. Perhaps there was still time.
But time for what?
“I can go in,” a voice said. “Have a look.” The Turtle’s Golden Claw.
“Out of the question.” Ngoc Ha’s voice was flat and almost unrecognizable from the small, courtly woman who seldom spoke her mind so bluntly. “You have no idea what’s in there.”
“I’m not here,” The Turtle’s Golden Claw said. “Not really. It’s just a projection—”
“There’s enough of you here,” Ngoc Ha said. “Bits and pieces hooked into the communal network. That’s how you work, isn’t it? You can’t process this fast, this quickly, if you’re not here in some capacity.”
“Mother—”
“Tell me you’re not here,” Ngoc Ha said, relentless. Her hair was shot through with blue highlights—lifted as though in an invisible wind, and her eyes—her eyes seemed to burn. Did everyone look like that? But no, the clerks didn’t seem affected to that extent. “Tell me there’s no part of you here at all, and then I’ll let you go in.”
“You can’t force me!” The Turtle’s Golden Claw said. “Grand Master Bach Cuc—”
Ngoc Ha opened her mouth, and Suu Nuoc knew, then, exactly what she was going to say. He found himself moving then—catching the heated words Ngoc Ha was about to fling into her daughter’s face and covering them with his own. “The Grand Master is probably dead, Ship. And what killed her might be inside.”
There was silence; and that same unnatural light. At length the ship said—bobbing up and down like a torn feather in a storm—“She can’t be. She can’t—Mother—Book of Heaven—”
“I’m sorry,” Ngoc Ha said.
“We’re not sure—” Suu Nuoc started.
“Then there’s still a chance—”
“Don’t you recognize what this is?” Ngoc Ha asked.
“I’ve seen it before—”
Her voice was harsh, unforgiving. “It’s the light of a harmonization arch, General.”
She was right. Suu Nuoc suppressed a curse. Harmonization arches were localized around their surrounding frames—the biggest one he’d seen had been twice the size of a man and already buckling under the stress. They certainly never cast a light strong enough to illuminate an entire building. Whatever was going on inside, it was badly out of control.
“I need your help,” he said, to The Turtle’s Golden Claw.
“Yes?”
“Tell me if the illumination is stable.”
The ship was silent for a while; but even before she spoke up, Suu Nuoc knew the answer. “No. The intensity has been increasing. And . . . ”
More bad news, Suu Nuoc could tell. Why couldn’t he have some luck for a change?
“I would need more observations to confirm, but at the rate this is going, it will have spread to the entire orbital in a few hours.”
“Do you know what’s inside?”
“Not with certainty, no. But I can hazard a guess. Some volatile reaction that should have required containment—except that the explosion has breached the arch,” The Turtle’s Golden Claw said.
Which was emphatically not good for the orbital, whichever way you put it. Suu Nuoc’s physics were basic, but even he could intuit that. He took in a deep, trembling breath. The battle joined, again; the familiar ache in his bones and in his mind, telling him it was time to enter the maelstrom where everything was clean-cut and elegantly simple—where he could once more feel the thrill of split-second decisions; of hanging on the sword’s edge between life and death.
Except it wasn’t a battle; it wasn’t enemy soldiers out there—just deep spaces and whatever else Bach Cuc had been working on, all the cryptic reports Suu Nuoc had barely been able to follow. Could he handle this? He was badly out of his depth . . .
But it was for the empress, and the good of the empire, and there was no choice. There had never been any choice.
He gestured to the Embroidered Guard. “Set up a perimeter, but don’t get too comfortable. We’re going in.”
The Engineer
The world around Diem Huong shifted and twisted, and then vanished—and, for a moment, she hung in a vacuum as deep as the space between stars, small and alone and frightened, on the edge of extinction—and, for a moment, she felt the touch of a presence against her mind, something vast and numinous and terrible, like the wings of some huge bird of prey, wrapping themselves around her until she choked.
And then she came slamming back into her body, into a place she recognized.
Or almost did. It was—and was not—as Diem Huong remembered: the door to Mother’s compartment, a mere narrow arch in a recessed corridor, indistinguishable from the other doors. From within came the smell of garlic and fish sauce, strong enough to make her feel six years old again. And yet . . . and yet it was smaller, and diminished from what she remembered; almost ordinary, but loaded with memories that threatened to overwhelm her.
Slowly, gently—not certain it would still remain there, if she moved, if she breathed—she raised a hand, and knocked.
Nothing.
She exhaled. And knocked again—and saw the tips of her fingers slide, for a bare moment, through the metal. A bare moment only, and then it was as solid as before.
She was fading. Going back in time to Lam’s lab? To the void and whatever waited for her there?
No use in thinking upon it. She couldn’t let fear choke her until she died of it. She braced herself to knock again, when the door opened.
She knew Mother’s face by heart; the one on the holos on the ancestral altar, young and unlined and forever frozen into her early forties: the wide eyes, the round cheeks, the skin darkened by sunlight and starlight. She’d forgotten how much of her would be familiar—the smell of sandalwood clinging to her, the graceful movements that unlocked something deep, deep within her—and she was six again and safe; before the betrayal that shattered her world; before the years of grief.
“Can I help you?” Mother asked. She sounded puzzled.
She had to say something, no matter how inane; had to prevent Mother’s face from creasing in the same look of suspicion she’d seen in the monk’s eyes. Had to. “I’m sorry, but I had to meet you. I’m your daughter.”
“Diem Huong?” Mother’s voice was puzzled. “What joke is this? Diem Huong is outside playing at a friend’s house. She’s six years old.”
“I know,” Diem Huong said. She hadn’t meant to say that, but in the face of the woman before her, all that came out was the truth, no matter how inadequate. “I come from another time,” she said. “Another place.”
“From the future?” Mother’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better come in.”
Inside, she turned, looked at Diem Huong—every time this happened, Diem Huong would wait with baited breath, afraid that this was it, the moment when Mother would start forgetting her again. “There is a family resemblance,” Mother said at last.
“I was born in the year of the Water Tiger, in the Hour of the Rat,” Diem Huong said, slowly. “You wanted to name me Thien Bao; Father thought it an inappropriate name for a girl. Please, Mother. I don’t have much time, and I’m running out of it.”
“We all are,” Mother said, soberly
. She gestured toward the kitchen. “Have a tea.”
“There is no time,” Diem Huong said, and then paused, scrabbling for words. “What do you mean, ‘we’re all running out of time’?”
Mother did not answer. She turned back, at last, and looked at Diem Huong. “Oh, I’m sorry, I hadn’t seen you here. What can I do for you?”
“Mother—” the words were out of Diem Huong’s mouth before she could think, but they were said so low Mother did not seem to hear them. “You have to tell me. Why are you running out of time?”
Mother shook her head. “Who told you that?”
“You did. A moment ago.”
“I did not.” Mother’s voice was cold. “You imagine things. Why don’t you come into the kitchen, and then we can talk.” She looked, uncertainly, at the door. She wouldn’t remember how Diem Huong had got in—she was wondering if she should call the militia, temporizing because Diem Huong looked innocuous, and perhaps just familiar enough.
Don’t you recognize me, Mother? Can’t you tell? I’m your daughter, and I need to know.
The corridor they stood in was dark, lit only by the altar to Quan Am in the corner—the bodhisattva’s face lifted in that familiar half-smile—how many times had she stared at it on her way in or out, until it became woven into her memories?
“Please tell me,” Diem Huong said, slowly, softly. “You said the Citadel still stood. You said you didn’t know for how long.” She should have started over; should have made up some story about being a distant relative, to explain the family likeness—or even better, something official-sounding, an investigation by a magistrate or something that would scare her enough not to think. But no, she couldn’t scare Mother. Couldn’t, wouldn’t.
Mother’s face did not move. Diem Huong could not read her. Was she calling the militia? “Come into the kitchen,” she said, finally, and Diem Huong gave in.
She got another puzzled look as Mother busied herself around the small kitchen—withdrawing tea from a cupboard, sending the bots to put together dumplings and cakes that they dropped into boiling water. “I’m sorry,” Mother said. “I keep forgetting you were coming today.”
