We Have Always Been Here

by Lena Nguyen

  —

  In her sleep, Park felt an alien presence watching the scene along with her with acute interest: she could not tell if it was Sagara, or Taban, or Jimex, or even something else entirely. But she felt its crowding, its curiosity: it wanted to know what had happened to Glenn.

  He died, she thought. She remembered finding out the month before her uncle died. Remembered his small and yellow face on the wrist console screen, the dim lighting of her old apartment turned alien through the different lens. She nearly hadn’t taken his call, as she hadn’t for the two years she’d been at university—but some premonition, some flash of instinct, compelled her to pick up.

  “I’m about to eat,” she’d said as a greeting. Which was true: she was sitting in her tiny dormcube, staring at a salad she’d bought from the market with strawberries in it—some backbred fruit she’d never seen before, repulsively heart-shaped things filled with giant pores. She wasn’t looking forward to the meal, but at least it gave her a way to impose a limit. An easy excuse for them both to leave the conversation at any point.

  “Glenn is gone,” Park’s uncle had said. “I thought I should tell you.”

  Park waited, but he said nothing more. A kind of cold anger scraped up her spine. “What do you mean?” she heard herself ask.

  “He’s gone,” her uncle repeated. “The rioters . . . they recognized him as the bot with the gun. They caught him while he was out and tore him apart. They didn’t even leave a data cache behind.”

  The room ought to sway, Park thought. Her knees should buckle—she thought she would have to put out a hand to steady herself. But she was already sitting down. She said dully, “No chance of recovery?”

  “No,” he answered. “I looked. They delivered the parts to me in a box, but I couldn’t even sell it for scrap. I looked around the area where it happened—but there was nothing.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  The corners of his mouth turned down: a reproachful look, like a child who felt he’d been wrongly scolded by an adult. “It was him, Grace. There’s no doubt.”

  “I see,” Park said, her voice oddly formal and brisk, even to herself. She could barely hear anything through the thudding of the blood in her head; her ears were ringing, as if someone had shot a gun. As if they were combatants, she a shell-shocked soldier, unable to speak over the rush of noise around them or rally herself in crisis. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “I’m—” He hesitated. “I’m sorry. I knew it would be hard for you.”

  “It’s not,” Park said. “Thank you. It’s not.”

  She pulled away from the memory then, repulsed by her own lie. Stunned by herself, her inhuman coldness. The presence clamored for more, but Park slid away from the scene. She was aware that she was dreaming—but even in sleep, she did not want to relive that moment.

  What happened next happened fast, like a flash from a camera. A feeling suddenly pulsed into Park’s brain, as quickly as a static shock. It felt as if someone had turned on a light, illuminating parts of her mind that she hadn’t known were dark. Park felt a headache kick up in her physical body, but did not feel it in the dream: she inhabited the two things at once, sensation and not-sensation, disconnected pain and disembodied strength.

  The light in her mind grew and grew. Then sounds came to her, distant and incomprehensible. Gradually her mind made sense of them, of the scene that was piecing itself together in front of her. It was as if she was looking at the world through fractaled eyes, as if she was everywhere and nowhere at once, looking at distant shapes from a hundred different directions. Her brain struggled to process the shapes into one cohesive picture, thrashing against having to unify so many different perspectives. But eventually she understood what she was seeing. She was looking at Fulbreech. And Natalya.

  They were arguing in the bridge, Natalya seated by a control panel, Fulbreech pacing restlessly. Both were heedless of her presence. Park felt a slow-moving, glacial anger shift within her and opened her mouth to speak, but found somehow that she lacked a mouth. When she made to step forward, she felt rooted in place. Icy terror shot up her spine for a moment, but she told herself to stay calm and observe—just as she had always done.

  Fulbreech was saying, “This is wrong. You all lied to me. It was never supposed to happen like this—”

  “Things happen,” Natalya gritted out. Chanur came into view, holding up her med-kit; comfortably, with the familiarity of old friends, she lifted Natalya’s hair and began to scan the back of her neck for injuries. “We didn’t lie. But plans change. We’re doing it this way now.”

  “We weren’t supposed to take Park and Sagara as hostages. You think your sister’s going to be proud of you for that?”

  “Don’t speak to me about pride,” she flared, beginning to stand up. Chanur tutted and pushed her back into her seat. “We had no pride, no dignity back there; we can have it now! We were slaves for the ISF, all of us. This way we can be free.”

  “But at what cost?” Fulbreech demanded, throwing up his hands. “Is it worth it if you have to kill? Wick was a good man: you didn’t have to murder him. You could have knocked him out, tied him up—”

  “Command only goes to one of us if the system senses he’s dead,” someone growled from a corner Park couldn’t see. A sickening sensation overwhelmed her as she strained to turn, a feeling of corkscrewing in one direction without actually moving. It was like exiting one of those ancient virtual reality cocoons too fast, or lying on a bed after too many drinks. With a feeling of faint nausea, suddenly her perspective switched to a different part of the room.

  Now she was looking at Boone, standing to the side and watching the argument with his arms folded. He pushed himself off of the wall with one shoulder and said, “I didn’t want to kill him. But we had no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice,” Fulbreech said. He sighed and rubbed the back of his head; his fingers vibrated with suppressed nervous energy. “Look. Let me take Sagara and Park and the robot downstairs. We’ll get in an escape pod. You don’t have to tell us where you’re going. We’ll leave, you can take the ship, and by the time we make it to Corvus, you’ll be long gone. They’re never going to find you then.”

  Natalya pressed her lips together. Chanur glanced at Boone. Fulbreech pressed, “We’ll tell them you all died. That the ship was destroyed in an accident. They won’t even go looking for you.”

  “You know too much,” Natalya said sharply. “Too much about our plans. The Nikolai—”

  “I’m not going to put your families in jeopardy,” Fulbreech said firmly. “My brother’s family was going to board the ship, too. I’m not—I still get why you want to leave. I won’t turn you in for doing it. But we can’t keep Park and Sagara in the freezer. It’s inhuman.”

  “If we let you go with them, they’ll just take the pod back to us and do something stupid,” Chanur said abruptly. “They won’t be content to just go back to Corvus.”

  “I’ll make them content.”

  “You’ll do anything Park wants,” she said dismissively, tossing her head. “You’re infatuated, for God’s sake! Here and now, of all places!”

  Fulbreech’s mouth fell shut for a moment. Then he said, “You’re all acting like I’m unreasonable for wanting them to live. Because I don’t want to use them as collateral.”

  “You’re being a child, Kel,” Natalya said, crossing her legs and leaning back into Chanur’s touch. “We’ve all voted. This is how it’s going to be. Now it’s time to get this ship moving.”

  Park wanted to say something, do something—she wanted to see if Fulbreech could see her, she wanted to throttle the three mutineers. But at the urge to move, she felt the corkscrewing, spinning sensation again, and then the feeling of hurtling away from the scene, falling back toward her own body. The golden light retreated from her mind. There was the feeling of coming back to he
rself with a horrible jolt, as if she’d been sleeping on a flight and had experienced sudden turbulence. And when Park opened her eyes, she felt that she could control herself again, that she could breathe—but also as if she were limited, constrained within the dense, heavy clay of her own body. For a moment she was not sure of who or where she was.

  Then she looked at Sagara and said, “I think I can open the door.”

  * * *

  —

  To Sagara’s credit, he didn’t question her. He only tested his leg lightly and said: “I think I can stand.”

  Park felt a little silly at that; only the sudden fierce throbbing pain in the back of her head distracted her from her embarrassment. She said, “I think the unity rain came while we were asleep—”

  “I was not asleep,” Sagara corrected. She noticed for the first time that he had the silver point of the Regenext syringe glinting in his clenched hand. “But I did feel—something. I think they’re trying to start the ship.”

  “They are,” Park said in a rush. She closed her eyes, trying to recall the golden feeling, the ethereal scene she’d witnessed. “They were arguing about it.”

  “How do you know?”

  I think I merged with them, Park wanted to say, but that didn’t feel right: if it were true, why had none of the others reacted to her presence, or consciousness, or whatever it was? She felt another tremor of nausea as she reviewed the details of the experience; how she’d seemed to turn without turning. The feeling of corkscrewing in place. When she thought of that, the sensation of light flooded back into her again, but this time it was a different feeling as well: something almost wrathful, sudden and confounding like lightning, heavy and metallic like dark iron being poured into her bones. Park felt a shifting in her brain, like gears clicking together. Then she pushed the feeling outward, away from her and toward the door—and there was a sudden clicking noise. The sound of pneumatic locks withdrawing.

  Park opened her eyes to find Sagara staring.

  “It can’t be open,” he said.

  “It is,” she told him, more certainly than she felt.

  Sagara reached out and pushed open the freezer door.

  23.

  They checked the hallway to make sure it was empty before they crept back out. The ambient temperature of the air blasted into Park so that she nearly howled with pain; she had to blink away smarting tears as she hobbled after Sagara to the corner, where he crouched with difficulty to check the other corridor.

  Then he turned back to her and whispered, “I’m not even going to bother questioning how you did that. We need to get to the weapons locker.”

  “Weapons locker?” Park’s head was spinning—she didn’t know if it was from the thawing out or from the golden feeling leaking out of her brain like disturbed dust flying out a window. She blinked and shook her head. How armed had this crew come, without her knowing it? And how many weapons did that give the mutineers access to?

  Sagara nodded. “It’s on Deck A, through a hatch in my room.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am,” he said, unblinking. “I don’t know if Boone and the others know about it. I have to assume not, since I didn’t see any of them carrying anything from there. We’ll get there, arm ourselves, and then—”

  “And then what?” Park asked, shivering violently now. Her teeth chattered as she looked at him. “We’ll storm the bridge, just the two of us? You with your game leg and me with my zero weapons training?”

  Sagara made a face, and it looked like he was about to argue when they both heard steps from around the corner. Sagara stiffened, and he motioned for her to scoot as far back as possible. Park saw the wicked silver gleam of the syringe in his hand again.

  I’m not prepared for this, she thought in that tense second; she was not prepared for a confrontation, to try and kill someone again. But even as she thought it, some of that golden, sparking strength rushed back into her, and her heart swelled.

  Someone rounded the corner before Park could say anything. Sagara surged up like a panther and rammed the needle savagely into the intruder’s throat; the person fell over soundlessly and he went with them, stabbing once again for good measure.

  Someone else yelled. Park leapt after Sagara, feeling the fiery phantom pain of limbs gone cold, ready to hurl herself at the second patroller—but then a voice stopped her in her tracks. She lurched to the side, clutching at the wall to keep her balance.

  The person on the ground said, “It is Jimex, Captain Sagara. Please stop your assault.”

  She looked. It was indeed the custodian android, lying there on the floor and looking up at Sagara with a politely unimpressed look. The syringe stuck harmlessly out of the synthetic skin of his neck. Sagara growled and shoved himself off of him, whirling around to face the second person—Fulbreech—who sprang back and yelped.

  Park felt all of the air leave her lungs at the sight of him. She said, barely hearing it: “Stop.”

  Sagara heard her and paused, his clenched fist wound back and ready to be launched in the direction of Fulbreech’s face. Fulbreech looked at Park, then Jimex on the ground, and turned white. “Holy shit,” he said finally, staring at the syringe. “You would have killed me.”

  “Who’s to say I won’t?” Sagara’s whole body was tense, poised as he was on the balls of his feet. “Where are the others?”

  “Natalya’s in the bridge, trying to get in contact with our families,” Fulbreech told him in a rush, holding up his hands. “Boone’s also there, prepping the ship for takeoff. Chanur’s patrolling Deck C, keeping an eye on Taban. And Wan Xu is supposed to be patrolling this deck, but—” He cast an awkward glance at Jimex, who said, “I put him in the closet.”

  “What, dead?” Sagara asked with flat non-surprise.

  “Asleep,” came the serene response. “He is very physically weak.”

  Now the android clambered to his feet and dusted his uniform off, picking something off his sleeve conscientiously. “It was lucky that I went first,” he said, oblivious to whatever else was going on; he removed the syringe from his neck and offered it out to Sagara, who snatched it back. “Real harm would have been done otherwise.” Then he rotated his body toward Park and said sympathetically, “You have been through much, Park. Are you all right?”

  All at once she felt a cluster of tears fight up her throat; she pinched them back and nodded. She wanted to run towards Jimex, fall into his arms, cry for days. She wanted to make sure he was all right: she knew now that he was not the android she’d befriended when she first boarded the ship, but she felt the same fierce worry for him all the same. And love. She dashed something traitorous away from her eye and said shakily, “I’m all right, Jimex.”

  Fulbreech was looking at her, even while being menaced by Sagara. Park was suddenly aware of how she must look: there was ice encrusted in Sagara’s hair and clothes, and she had to look the same—like a frozen, bloody corpse, the victim of some accident that had left her to be excavated from wintry gutters, or from the Antarctic ice. Park looked away from him and said to Jimex, “Where are the other androids?” She remembered Natalya’s gunshot. “Is anyone hurt?”

  “Three are dead,” Jimex answered, in a sad, distracted way. He straightened his cuffs. “Philex, Allex, and Timex. The rest are in hiding. Officer Severov has decided all synthetics aboard must be destroyed.”

  Park wanted to touch him—then felt the acute understanding that it would mean something different, now. “I’m so sorry, Jimex.”

  He made a gesture she didn’t understand: something like a shrug and a cocking of his head. Fulbreech said, “It’s why I went looking for him. I figure we can save the rest of them, use them against Boone and the others—”

  Despite herself, a sharp, painful, hysterical kind of laugh burst out of Park at that. The arctic bite of the freezer was still bracing her up, as if she ne
eded to be braced—as if seeing him in the flesh again had made her go soft. As if she was sagging into herself, into the floor. But now a fierce, cold anger animated her, and she said, “You won’t use them for shit. They’re not your tools. They’re thinking, feeling beings—not pawns in your stupid, senseless, idiotic—schemes!”

  She stopped talking; took in Sagara and Fulbreech’s shocked expressions, both. The color of Fulbreech’s eyes seemed to have changed, impossibly: now they were spangled with gold.

  Sagara was still holding up the syringe like he was holding Fulbreech at gunpoint. He said, “So you’re trying to say you’re defecting back to our side?”

  Something passed over Fulbreech’s usually open face; emotions shifted like tectonic plates. He said faintly, “I was always on your side.”

  Liar, Park thought, even as the vision she’d had in the freezer plucked at her. Sagara said, “Not true. Our side is with the ISF. You don’t support them.”

  “He doesn’t speak for me,” Park interrupted then. “I’m—” On my own, she wanted to say. Then she glanced at Jimex. Or on the androids’ side.

  Fulbreech was shaking his head. “I’m on your side,” he said again. “Both of yours. I don’t support ISF, no, not when they’re forcing my brother to—” He stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to make sure nothing happens to you.” His mouth tightened. “I know what we—what I—did was wrong. And I’m sorry. It was never meant to go that way. But I’m trying to make it right now.”

  Neither of them said anything to that. Jimex looked between all three of them and said, “We do not have much time left.”

  “Time until what?” Park asked, just as Sagara said, “He’s right. They’ll be taking off at any moment.” He turned to Park. “We need to get control of the ship before that happens. If we get into a firefight while the ship is in motion, we could all be killed. And we can’t let them pilot us to nowhere-space, where ISF can’t reach us. We need to end them and go back to Corvus.”