Liquid Crystal Nightingale

by EeLeen Lee

  The floor under Gia suddenly opened up to swallow her body and the blood cascaded into the hole, leaving wide trails when the floor reformed around itself.

  “Surrender your shawl, skirt and other practice accoutrements. Your injuries will be treated, but they must go on record. Your version of events is required—as is mine.” Saurebaras spoke with less admonishment than if she had been correcting Pleo’s posture.

  Another hole opened up in the floor area next to Pleo: when she peered inside she saw a long dark chute with smooth sides, yawning into darkness. Her future from this moment on. She took off her shawl and skirt and dropped them in, along with her never-used practice castanets: a waste of 280 uta. The accessories clattered as they bounced off the sides of the chute before landing with a muffled thump in a catchment tray. As the hole closed up, Pleo winced: she remembered her hair was still in the skirt’s pocket.

  The Spinels entered the hall only when the last of the students had cleared out.

  “Wait,” Saurebaras called out to them. “She needs the infirmary.”

  No I don’t, Pleo wanted to say, but she appreciated how Saurebaras was stalling for time. She paced the floor in front of Pleo, who automatically stood up straight and pulled back her shoulders.

  “Excellent posture. It seems you only progress under immense pressure,” observed Saurebaras.

  “Don’t mock, madame.”

  “Far from it; I must give you your assessment before you’re taken away by the Spinels.”

  Pleo waited.

  “Until something has broken or fallen into pieces, I don’t know how it functions. I try to discover individual style in my students by breaking them down. Refinement and polishing don’t happen without friction. Now I realise, a little too late, you will never possess grace or fluidity. But you can become quite, quite formidable.”

  “How so?”

  “This.” Saurebaras pressed a fingertip to Pleo’s forehead.

  Not understanding Saurebaras—and and not wanting to—Pleo backed away.

  “You display skill with thoughtforms. Tell me: was it always in you? Is this ability always possessed by asteroid miners?”

  Pleo recoiled from the questions and turned to run towards the doors. But Saurebaras reached out, pulling back on Pleo’s shoulder with ease. Pleo tried to shake her off and raised her hand to strike at any part of Saurebaras with her forceps. Like a cobra, Saurebaras’s hand caught hold of Pleo’s wrist.

  Saurebaras said, “Despite what happened today, what everyone saw, and what the screens recorded, you didn’t kill Gia.”

  “It’s still an accident.”

  “I was supposed to arrange the accident. That’s why I left out both of you for the opening ceremony.” Saurebaras released Pleo’s hand. “It seems an accident can be arranged too well; I was not expecting you to try and save Gia.”

  Pleo rubbed her wrist, still smarting from Saurebaras’s grip. “I was on the other side of the piste.”

  “You were, but not that other self of yours. I saw a flash of it. It tried to shove Gia out of the way.”

  “Enough!” Pleo yelled. “No one will believe that!”

  “I already do.”

  “Akma.” The word once used to describe her father slipped out of Pleo. “Madame, your reconditioning is wearing off.”

  Saurebaras ignored Pleo. “Listen when I tell you: thoughtform, unknown guest, or hidden self, call it what you like. But until activated, it simply resides in a secret space. In most people it sleeps and never awakens.”

  “Superstition!” Pleo spat.

  “Don’t dismiss it: it’s inherent in the nature of both professions.”

  “I already know what will happen to me.”

  “Do you? Please tell me,” snapped Saurebaras, bringing her narrow face close to Pleo’s.

  “Detention, arrest, expulsion and blacklisting. I can still harvest bat guano in a cave on a Pavey shepherd moon, if I survive my prison term.”

  Saurebaras shook her head. “It’s worse than that: Polyteknical will bring you to the Infirmary and tell you that you’ll be kept under observation for three days until agents from a certain Chatoyance government department send for you. But no infirmary has such little floor space. You’ll be locked in what your interrogators call The Little Room of Forgetting until your limbs and muscles atrophy. Before your body is finally broken, the interrogation begins. Since you caused the death of the scion of the Aront family, I doubt they will observe proper procedure. Pray for a quick death.”

  Judging from Saurebaras’s distant gaze, Pleo realised she was speaking from experience. “Is that what happened to you, madame? When you killed the other instructors?”

  “Contrary to that glorious if inaccurate mural tarnishing the walls outside”—Saurebaras pointed at the double doors with such vehemence Pleo expected fire to shoot out of her fingertips—“fla-tessen was not created because some pathetic hired dancers couldn’t protect themselves. It was born in the shadows of cargo holds and ship passages during the Waves. It’s a fighting art, but some of my former colleagues didn’t agree to let it remain an art. The first one that was killed was an accident, like your case. The rest were in self-defence. But these noble Chatoyant families, Aront and Madrugal and the rest, disapprove of sudden displays of brilliance. They still cling to the belief that inherent qualities, subject to attrition, pressure and the passage of time, yield the best results and people.”

  Seeing no choice, Pleo raised the forceps of her index and ring finger and declared, “Then I choose to be a Nosebleed—this is the quickest way.”

  “Your twin sister is an unfortunate statistic. Do not join her.” Saurebaras slapped Pleo’s hand away from her face. “If you survive this, give me the chance to tell your parents that they named you well.”

  “Pleochroism is observed in most rocks and minerals. My name is more common than dirt.”

  “But how you display it: dull from one perspective but unleashing a hidden brilliance from another. What a most useful quality to possess. Trust me, it will serve you well.” The instructor placed her hand on Pleo’s shoulder, making her flinch. Changing the subject, Saurebaras asked her, “What is the first precept of fla-tessen?”

  “‘Intention designs the weapon’,” recited Pleo.

  “What designs a better weapon?”

  “A better... intention?” Pleo guessed, unsure of where Saurebaras was going with this line of questioning.

  “No, a worse intention,” said Saurebaras. She slid her hand up the back of Pleo’s neck and pricked the skin over the caratoid artery. Pleo tried to fight back, but her face and arms went numb. Saurebaras’s forceps were not remnants of her time as a student or an instructor, but venomous spines. Before Pleo hit the floor, the instructor reached out and caught her by the waist. Head lolling back, Pleo saw the ceiling of the hall jerk into view, a carapace of interlocking golden light-sensitive panels. The inactive screens meant that there were to be no witnesses.

  “Be still!” soothed Saurebaras as Pleo thrashed in her hold. “I gave you a controlled dose. It hurts, but the pain won’t last.”

  A high-pitched whistling rang through her skull and pain exploded in the palms of her clenched fists. Pleo had lost control of her forceps, which retracted and extended under the muscle spasms. Saurebaras wrapped Pleo in a large fla-tessen shawl and hoisted her over the shoulders, like a rug she’d bought at market. The panelled hall ceiling transitioned to the low grubby one of the corridor outside.

  “You and I are the results of the very worst intentions,” Saurebaras whispered to Pleo. “I hope to salvage what is left of you before House Aront finds you. Pray for death if Gia’s parents get hold of you.”

  Clinging on to consciousness, Pleo focused on familiar names: “Gia?”

  “Gia’s entire existence was a lie engineered by her mother.” For the first time Pleo heard sympathy in Saurebaras’s voice. “That poor child. Her struggles are now over, but yours are only beginning.”


  “Cerussa!”

  “I hope she can hear you now,” Saurebaras whispered.

  “They’ll all pay for her death,” Pleo muttered before her mind slipped into darkness.

  INSIDE THE INFIRMARY, Saurebaras lifted the girl off the examination cot and carried her past the rows of empty beds. The place had been designed to take in thirty patients a day back in the early days of Chatoyance’s industrial boom, when Polyteknical student numbers had been much higher. Now, medical bots tackled the infirmary’s few patients.

  One detached itself from an armoire and tried to sound the alarm. Saurebaras kicked it where its waist would be if it was human, forcing the bot back into the armoire. The impact scattered glass tubes and plastic all over the polished floor.

  The old access serviceway was her best bet for avoiding the Spinels stationed in the corridor outside. She knew the place better than most staff and hoped the serviceway connecting the infirmary to the side alley had not been sealed off. Most of the teaching staff and students had left before the end of the Shineshift, but Saurebaras did not want to risk discovery.

  She passed through the serviceway with Pleo, emerging from grimy darkness onto an empty passageway, and stood in the shadow of the suspended walkway to avoid any Constabulary officers on evening patrol.

  There were none. Saurebaras glanced up at the sky and saw the possible cause: Shineshift glitch. Gachala was throwing a tantrum with a display of solar flares, affecting vital mechanisms on nearby settlements. She drew encouragement from the flashing lights and slipped into an underpass and along a succession of disused tunnels to the nearest Retail Sector. It was the best place to leave an unconscious person: dead bodies turned up all the time in the fountains.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE SHINESHIFT ENDED fifteen minutes late. Marsh stood in the main concourse of the ’Cinth as people congregated and noted the time. He studied the dendritic patterns worked into the underside of the ’Cinth’s arching roof, but soon gave up trying to keep himself occupied. An eerie calm permeated the ’Cinth, as though every commuter had their breath sucked out of their bodies.

  Shineshift glitches: he had heard about them from Setona, but this was his first time experiencing one. A faint breeze, perfumed by ozone, blew down the main track as he sat on a large girder protruding through the floor of the platform like the spine of a dragon, the huge black rivets running along its length like scales. The visible sections of indigo sky in the roof flashed as if light was cracking through the firmament.

  Then he realised: Cabuchon must’ve given the order at last. He imagined the autonomous Demarcation satellites breaking out of their tight formation in the circumstellar disc around Gachala. They would amass in orbit around Chatoyance, like a beautiful canopy that admitted nothing in and out. Marsh ran to the nearest highlights column seeking more information or reassurance. The highlights remained oblivious to his alarm; the strips twitched and pulsated before they were shed en masse to refresh the newsfeed.

  Marsh tore off a fresh strip of highlight as soon as the column generated it:

  TIER DWELLER SCION FATALLY INJURED IN FREAK DANCE ACCIDENT

  The highlights that followed gave the story top coverage but the news was only speculation and noise. It was murder, no suspects had been arrested yet. Marsh dropped the highlights on the station floor.

  The tannoy buzzed to life. “Await official Shineshift change announcements. Remain calm and go about your business. Do not look towards the sky. Do not listen to rumours for guidance.”

  People remained quiet, but not calm. Marsh read their faces—well, the ones that were not covered with filter veils or implants, the unaugmented eyes wide with trepidation. As for the people whose eyes he couldn’t read, he noticed their jaws set in tension. Everyone was caught between anticipating calamity and contemplating the welcome relief it would bring from Chatoyance’s incessant activity—but not release, for that would take generations of unlearning.

  Their delayed response calmed Marsh, but he recognised how typically Cabuchoner it was to assume the worst. He crushed the discarded highlights underfoot and returned to the girder.

  He recalled telling a story to a group of Chatoyant children on a platform at the ’Cinth. It had been his first time experiencing a transport delay on Chatoyance. He began by telling it to himself, as a way to relieve the tedium of waiting for signal failures and track faults to be repaired on the Subaltern’s Parade. With a few embellishments and gestures, he recited the version he had read many times as a child; and before long, a small curious audience had gathered around Marsh.

  Long ago, the Overseers abducted people from Home System and took them to a vast world of mineral wealth hidden underground. The slaves dug and dug until they could see no more.

  Look closer, the Overseers said. Go deeper.

  They removed the eyes of their slaves and in their place inserted eyes of the Overseers’ own making. They scattered the slaves’ old eyes across the sky where they shone together with the other stars. The slaves were forced to see with new eyes that could only pick out minute details of rock and stone in the total darkness of the mines.

  Over time, some of the slaves’ eyes disintegrated into clouds of dust and vapour. When it rained, the slaves bathed in the rainwater and the water coated their eyes, restoring some semblance of normal sight. Over time, the old eyes fell from the sky into forests where their former owners retrieved them. These slaves tried to remove the Overseers’ eyes but they could not, so in utter desperation they gouged out one eye and crammed their original eye into the bloodied empty socket. This combination allowed them to see to the horizon, into space as well as the microcosm.

  Keeping their newfound sight a secret from their masters, the slaves bided their time. With patience they dug deeper to extend the mine shafts and hollowed out hidden chambers in strategic positions. With their new sight they honed weapons out of their tools and made new ones.

  The Overseers had grown neglectful and complacent in their watch and so mistook the increased activity of the slaves for enthusiasm or subservience as the Day of Falling Dust approached. The slaves had to strike soon or else there was going to be no chance, after the Overseers sealed the mines with explosives and transported the slaves to other worlds.

  On the eve of the Day of Falling Dust, the Overseers stood gloating over the open pits and shafts of the mines as they had done so many times before. The slaves greeted their masters with news of a new discovery. The slaves also suggested that the closure of the mines had to wait.

  Lax and slothful over the years, the Overseers indulged the slaves. Blinded by greed and complacence they believed the exhausted mines still contained an untapped seam of riches.

  “Where is it?” demanded the Overseers, straining to see in the darkness.

  “Look closer,” replied the slaves, as the Masters had always told them.

  The Overseers screamed their impatience and their voices shook the tunnels. They pounded the walls of the shafts. Dirt rained down on them.

  “We cannot see these new gems!”

  “Go deeper,” the slaves said, in the Masters’ words.

  “Enough of this!” roared the Overseers. “We are leaving!”

  And the slaves replied with silence, which terrified the Overseers for the first time in their lives. They were not used to being in the dark tunnels for so long.

  “All of you are not leaving these mines.” The slaves spoke again, voices ringing out in bitter triumph. “Our homes are now your graves.”

  The Overseers barely had time to understand when the tunnels shook and the roofs collapsed. Quickly the slaves fell upon the Overseers, wielding their new weapons. With their sharpened tools the slaves cut out the eyes of their masters and scattered them deep in the earth.

  Now chained together, the Overseers stopped screeching in agony and began pleading for mercy.

  “All of you wanted to see new treasures in the mine?” The slaves addressed their former masters. “Now your
eyes are the gems. Your bodies will join them!”

  The Day of Falling Dust went ahead as the slaves sealed off the mines for good and fled the planet in the Overseers’ ships. The Overseers still thrashed and cried out in their subterranean prison, fading into silence as time went by. Their bodies changed into valuable gems and their eyes the most valuable of all.

  But, it is said, not all of the Overseers perished on the Day of Falling Dust. Some clawed their way out of the mines and swore vengeance on their escaped slaves, no matter how long it took. To this day the Overseers are still searching.

  With perfect timing, the tannoy in the ’Cinth had emitted an audio mishmash of static and breaking news as soon as Marsh ended the story, and Marsh had joined the throng heading down into the T-Cars. After his performance he clung onto a pole in the next T-Car, taken aback at how easily he remembered the story. It was one of many collected in various children’s books; he had never had reason to inquire into its authorship. Those books claimed the Overseers story had originated from the expansion phase of Home System, accumulating details over time.

  It was an odd choice of tale for children. Definitely not a comforting bedtime story. Marsh figured it started out as a mnemonic, evoking a bygone age of fraught pioneer exploration beyond the Kuiper Belt. He felt such history held little meaning now for the Archer’s Ring, since Home System was mostly abandoned, except for the Jovian and Saturnian moons.

  The story had to be based on some real incident or incidents, or else it would not have persisted. Cynical of his people, Marsh saw a good reason for its subsequent decades of retelling: it fed into the fortress mentality of most Cabuchoners.

  Marsh hated to admit that the Doyen was right. Standards were slipping indeed. The Doyen, like his companion Tier Dwellers, recognised and feared the first signs of Cabuchon’s inertia.

  ON THE MORNING after the Doyen’s visit, Setona waved to Marsh from inside the dimness of the stock room. By accident he snapped in half another flimsy pair of vending-machine chopsticks and made a gesture in SignalPose: [dabbing at his lips with his forefinger]. It meant, “Not now. Having my lunch.”