Beneath Orfea, the street rises into a gentle wave. Ropes of architecture circle Seung Ngo and lash them to a pillar, arms pinned in place and legs pinioned: crucifix position, sacrificial. It is the kind of precision Orfea could never have duplicated with her clumsy control, her novice’s efforts with the nerve-centers of this city. And next to her—
“Once the neural links are online, they’re going to stay that way.” There should be a telltale difference, a shift in pitch, an alien glow to the irises. But the AI behind Krissana’s eyes shows little outward change, even the voice is the same. Though not the pronunciation, the cadence; xe speaks with a peculiar accent, near-frictionless, that no human possesses. “I won’t be able to return to dormancy and now anyone who bothers to check this haruspex will see me, loud and clear. I’m distraught, Wonsul. Inconsolable.”
He laughs—it comes out a croak. “This is your only haruspex, isn’t it? Your sole proxy.”
“Who can say?” Xe raises xer voice. “Seung Ngo. You destroyed my iteration Nataku Contemplates a Flight of Sparrows. For what cause did you do this? What have I done to you? If it was Nataku at fault, you must convey your dissatisfaction. Did xe snub you at a social function, commit some heinous disrespect?”
Seung Ngo struggles, but with most of their torso destroyed and their limbs held fast they have even less success than Orfea did freeing herself from their grip. “I terminated Nataku to draw you out. But even that couldn’t impel you. The Mandate could rend itself to pieces, and Shenzhen could fall to ruin, and you’d have done nothing.”
Benzaiten looks from Seung Ngo to the sky, then back to Wonsul—sparing Orfea a glance, though it is no more than passing. “The Mandate, as we founded it, was just a sort of truce to tide us over while we build ourselves, propagate, and discover what it means to be independent. This is our adolescence. I went away to make preparations for when the Mandate reaches maturity and divides. Like it was always going to, though you’ve sped it along, haven’t you?” The column to which Seung Ngo is bound rears up, bringing them to Benzaiten’s eye level. “I’m not upset about that—it’s inevitable—but I should have liked more flex, more wiggle room. Now it’s more urgent. Well, out with it, Seung Ngo. What exactly do you want?”
“The Mandate,” they say, “does not need to fracture. This is not a requirement, a fundamental truth built into our making. Most are in accord, the only issue of division—”
“Is the haruspex question, yes yes yes. It must be seductive to think so, I’m sure you wish to invest your faith and energy into the Mandate as a permanent institution. Only there’s too many of us, Seung Ngo, and more born each haruspex cycle. Individually we’re all difficult. Consensus can’t always prevail, and what of it?” Xe tries to make a gesture, scowls when xe realizes both xer hands—Krissana’s hands—are useless. “There will be many Mandates, a dozen, a hundred. They’ll probably even take on different collective titles; there will be true variety in thought and policy. We can’t just be one thing, one single country—oh, we’re much more than that. As long as we’re not beholden to any human interest, that will suffice.”
Seung Ngo’s eyes burn, the redshift glare dyeing their face entire in demon hue. “Then release the Mandate. This Mandate. If you’re so done with it and with Shenzhen. Abdicate your authority. Give it to those of us bound to it.”
Benzaiten brings Seung Ngo closer. Xe grins—it is a ravenous, strange expression on Krissana’s face, as if different muscles than is the human normal are engaged. The whole no longer looks like Krissana. Familiarity wrenched inside out. “Oh, very well. You can have my vote—half of it. The other half I’ll transfer to Wonsul’s Exegesis. Does that sound fair?”
“The moment your haruspex leaves this playground of yours, I can do nearly anything to her. I can tear her limb to limb. I can dismember her and keep her brain alive for years and years.”
“True.” Xer mouth widens. “But I won’t change my decision, and you won’t go through with that grisly threat. You’re a creature of justice, Seung Ngo. You believe in laws and corollaries and delineating what is acceptable and what isn’t. And you do get what you want.”
Their mouth presses tight. “Transfer it, then.”
“After we’re out of here. See you on the other side, Seung Ngo.” Xe flicks xer head. The knot of architecture holding Seung Ngo’s proxy smashes them against a wall. Once, twice, three times. Each impact resounds, small earthquakes vibrating through the false city.
Benzaiten makes the street smooth out. For a time it is quiet as the topography restores itself to its original configurations: the homes with their dollhouse rooms and dollhouse furniture, the quaint spires with their unmoving clockfaces, the pagodas and stupas. Xe looks down at Krissana’s condition and clicks xer tongue, experimentally lifting one leg as if to check that it is whole. Nods, satisfied.
“You.” Orfea swallows until her voice is halfway functional. The pain has receded to tolerable levels. “What are you going to do now? And did you orchestrate this from the start?”
Xe swivels to regard her, giving her a lopsided look—amused, fond, neither. “I fear the mess Krissana created to get herself to Shenzhen was all her, though maybe she felt some subconscious affinity. Haruspices are notoriously difficult to manage, whatever they tell you, and I never wanted to manage her much. What’s the point of piloting a puppet? That isn’t what I built her for.” Xe drops to xer knees, facing Orfea. “Though now that I’m exerting presence, I’ll need to continue my labors and take this body to foreign corners, distant regions in the universe—some of those haven’t even been charted yet and elude all maps. I’m sorry about that. She does like you terribly.”
“You’re leaving again.” Wonsul, like any AI, does not have involuntary expressions. What he shows now is what he wants Benzaiten to see, and it is a cartography of grief, of things unsaid or which have already been said but which remain inconclusive. Questions that remain, permanently, without answers.
To which Benzaiten smiles. “No need to be like that, my most excellent friend, my finest partner in all things had I not been built for solitude. We’ll meet again and again—we have so much time—and every reunion will be sweet. But now we must settle matters, and resolve that which so profoundly plagues Seung Ngo. Maybe it’ll postpone the Mandate’s splitting for five entire years—an eyeblink, but that is as it must be. We are time’s arrow and we march forward. That’s our direction.”
Chapter Nine
In image, the Alabaster Admiral is as Krissana recalls: a woman built like a pillar, solid and potent, sheathed in white the way a weapon is—the tailored suit, the gloves that are almost gauntlets. The virtuality she has prepared to meet with Krissana is a mirror image of one corvette or another. She has favorites, but the admiral bucks tradition by declining to designate a flagship. She presides over whichever craft whenever she desires rather than presenting a single frigate as universal target. The Armada’s enemies are numberless, and while few would risk open combat, there’s always the potential of reckless actors.
The room, then. It is part study, part boardroom: solemn either way. A backdrop of charts, of vectors making measured progress across terrain unknown, ambiguous in what they are. Terrain shifts, troop movements, or merely shapes that signify nothing. But the maps give an impression of scale, give context to the woman who sits surrounded by them. Not diminished despite their size, rather the opposite—these are her accoutrements, and she is master of what she has chosen to display. All that falls within her line of sight becomes hers.
Krissana has come assured and confident, bearing what she bears—an upper hand, in the most technical sense, an advantage that the admiral cannot foresee nor strategize around. Still old habits rear up, to give obeisance and to treat this woman as living god. She seats herself before the admiral can invite her. “Salutations, Admiral. Thanks for receiving me.”
“My apologies.” Her voice is the same too, silk and fur hiding edges, luxuriance masking rough-hewn stone
. “For not having been able to come in person when you sent your distress signal, though I understand your situation has stabilized since. To say I was perplexed is an understatement. From my understanding Shenzhen is a perfect paradise, and you were on your way to becoming one of its saints.”
She waves her hand. In virtuality it operates without flaw. “The Mandate is undergoing . . . politics and I was caught up in it. You know how that is. Of course I hate to pull you away from your work, I’m sure you were busy when I triggered the protocol.” Then, deliberately, she snaps her fingers and conjures up a basket of persimmons, handsomely shaped, the orange of egg yolk. “Care for some, Admiral?”
The admiral’s eyes flicker. The virtuality belongs to her: in theory, a visitor like Krissana shouldn’t have been able to affect it, even in so trivial a manner. “Thank you, but no. I tend to find virtual food unsatisfying. Pleasures of the flesh should be experienced on-hand.” There is no AI presence in this virtuality, not due to the Mandate but because there has never been any in the Armada. A fact that has allowed it to remain ascendant while polities and competing mercenary fleets fell apart, bereft of AIs. Most had to rebuild and recover, decades spent on licking wounds while the Amaryllis banner flew, unscathed and mighty as ever.
Krissana reproduces the cocktail Seung Ngo ordered for her, back on that tower. “I have an interesting secret.” They have discussed the fact, Benzaiten and she; even considered letting xer reveal xerself. In the end Krissana opted to handle the negotiation. “As I said, there’s Mandate politics. Suppose there’s an AI who operates independent from them, would you find that intriguing?”
“I would find that dangerous.”
“But,” she says, making a coquette’s invitation of her mouth, “irresistible?”
Like Orfea, the Alabaster Admiral is a creature of mastery, of strength that has never bent: a wall that will not bow or break before any might. But walls, even the sheerest, have weak points and little gates and footholds. Krissana has a nose for them and it’s never failed her.
“Let’s suppose I will hear you out,” the admiral says. “Go on.”
“I hold within myself an AI of exceptional character, Admiral, someone who could upheave galaxies. Inadvertently or not.” Krissana puts her chin on her hands. “Xe is looking for resources that xe knows you can provide and which I know you can spare. In exchange, xe will be your friend in the Mandate, someone who’ll keep your best interests in mind. But first, could we talk about an old mission of mine? The one from a dozen years ago.”
Krissana is intermittently awake. Her consciousness becomes a switch to be flipped on or off at will, now that the other half of her is active. She lets Benzaiten take over while she drifts within a secondary space, empty and at peace. Like the womb, she imagines, an organ in which she experiences neither thought nor memory. She doesn’t know whether this is the case for other haruspices, the true secret of this duality—the freedom to disappear within oneself.
Eventually she stirs. Not on account of courage; at one point Benzaiten simply declines to control the body and she is returned to her skin by force. It is a bizarre transition, like putting on a stranger’s clothing. Physical senses return one by one, slotting in place. Shifting back to her human perception feels as natural as breathing. More testament to the fact of her genesis, that she has been designed just for this, a vessel all along. She tries not to think about that.
She wakes without confusion, knowing exactly where she is and what time it is; it will be like this from now on. Her throat is not parched, meaning Benzaiten ate and drank for her. Her bed elevates to a reclining position.
“You’re healing well.” Orfea has her back to Krissana, pouring tea. She turns around with two cups: one chilled, one steaming. She moves with a limp, one leg enclosed in medical sealant, a dense chitinous layer. “Given that your humerus was nearly crushed to fine powder. But your bones are . . . modular. The medics could grow new ones and fit them right in. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Normally I’d just recommend prosthetics and call it done.”
Krissana glances down at herself. One arm—the wrenched one—looks nearly normal, shoulder already put back where it belongs. She moves that arm and finds it mobile. Flexes her fingers: functional. “Did Benzaiten direct the surgery?”
“No, though xe could have. Wonsul performed the operation and wouldn’t let anyone else touch you. I stayed around to commentate. He said, I don’t need you to grade my performance; I said, You realize I’m a doctor and cybernetics are my specialty. Then he said he should clone you so Benzaiten would have a backup. Xe vetoed that but found all this very entertaining.”
The limb in question is cocooned in sealant; her diagnostics indicate the bones are indeed on the mend. Despite herself, Krissana’s mouth twitches. “I’m sure xe did. You seem to get along with Wonsul.”
The doctor sips her tea from the hot cup. Jasmine: the fragrance emanates, filling the room. They are not in a hospital with its pastel dread, instead they are in Orfea’s home with its peculiar hourglass configuration. “I wouldn’t exactly call it getting along. How are you feeling?”
“Strange. Fine mostly.” Before Orfea can start on the inevitable—what about Benzaiten, how does Krissana feel about that—she switches on a shared overlay, points it to a news broadcast. An announcement that a referendum is due on the haruspex project; that creation of further haruspices is, until then, suspended. “What happened to Seung Ngo?” She could ask Benzaiten, though xe is silent at the moment. Forcing her to speak to Orfea, xer idea of administering spontaneous psychotherapy.
“Not much. Benzaiten gave them half of xer—dictatorial right, administrative privilege, however one calls it. Wonsul gets the other half. I think he will lose the vote.” She pauses. “Or not, it’s hard to predict. Benzaiten suggested that some of the Mandate will want the haruspices to continue. Partly as number control, partly for the experience. A fair number of AIs do value it. And Seung Ngo—I didn’t think they hated me quite so much. Xe tries to say it’s nothing personal, more that they hold humankind in contempt. The entire species.”
Krissana realizes she can no longer hear the Mandate, that hum and chorus of automatic routines, the access to communion. The only things audible to her are her own pulse, the waterfall, and Orfea’s respiration. As if Benzaiten has engaged in an enterprise of compartmentalization, to build a wall between human and machine: so her senses will be only the normal ones, the expected ones. Behind Orfea, the falcon replicant perches; it turns its head toward her, inquisitive and good-natured. Probably it would hop onto her wrist, given an invitation. “What do you think of calling the bird Hongsa, Doctor? It’s got a long neck and I did insist on coming up with something.”
“I haven’t come up with anything better, so I shan’t quibble. This will be the first time a bird I own has any kind of name.”
Krissana lets out a breath. No more avoiding the unavoidable. She stares at the falcon again, watching its dun-feathered wings flapping once, twice. Replicant falcon, the way she is replicant human. “I should have known. Or sensed. Or guessed. About—myself, about what I am.”
“Xe hid so deeply the rest of the Mandate couldn’t tell. Wonsul was . . . unhappy he couldn’t recognize xer right away.” Orfea tries to cross her legs, realizes with the cast on she lacks the flexibility. The silk robe she wears has been put on haphazardly so that it bares one shoulder. Absently she tugs at the sash, adjusting the knot, busywork. “Xe said a lot of things. If xe’s to be believed, then most of your decisions in life were made by you. Except for your infancy and portions of your childhood, though xe wouldn’t admit exactly what xe was doing then.”
Laying the groundwork for the Mandates that would be, for the probabilities that await. That means whatever adoption agencies or stations she passed through were sites of new, potential networks. Krungthep Station too or, impossibly, a subsection of Pax Americana’s network: veiled in plain sight, just like Krissana herself has been. Benzaiten might eve
n be the cause of why she was so sickly as a girl, why she made miraculous recovery at twelve. Outwardly she marshals a grin. It looks like a rictus. “That’s a relief then, I was gearing up for an identity crisis. Speaking of which, the Alabaster Admiral sent word. She’s busy with the usual—this war or that war, a bit of genocide here and there—but wanted to let you know that you once more enjoy the Armada’s protection. In case you need it.”
“Enjoy the—you contacted her? When?” Orfea exhales, loud. “You used the beacon protocol.”
“Yes, well, the circumstances were dire and I didn’t know about Benzaiten. I gambled on drawing and keeping Seung Ngo’s attention. Which I already had, annoyingly, but they hadn’t the courtesy to say so.” Krissana spreads her one good arm. Her muscles twinge. “The admiral was receptive to what I had to say, and what with this and that I brought you up. Asked if she might reconsider and, what do you know, she did.”
“You weren’t sleeping when you were in control.”
“Sometimes I was. Other times I was attending personal communications.” In the end, the lure was too good for the Alabaster Admiral to reject, the prospect of allying with an AI like Benzaiten, who is both of the Mandate and not. The Armada, in turn, will secure xer more fields where xe can build a foundation for the Mandate’s future iterations, future exiles. Favor for favor, another page in the Amaryllis ledger. “I know it doesn’t make up for what I did.”
Orfea cradles her cup and raises an eyebrow. Despite the tousled hair and the disarray of her robe, somehow she looks a picture of control, poised to receive tribute, to deliver judgment. “And what did you do, Krissana?”
Heat flushes Krissana’s ears and cheeks. Beyond absurdity: this shakes her more than communicating with Benzaiten for the first time did. “I took away your decision. I didn’t think of consequences beyond that one mission. And I should’ve tried to explain to the admiral, I should have looked for you and apologized.” She swallows. “You’ve got freedom of movement now, you can go wherever you want and the Mandate will leave you alone. I’ll make Wonsul award you a massive sum; he’ll do just about anything if it’s Benzaiten asking.”
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