by Yoon Ha Lee
“I will not kill for you,” Jedao said in a stronger voice. In that moment, Mikodez saw, like a shadow stretched taut, the man General Jedao might have become, if only.
“How like you,” Mikodez said with an irony that Jedao was incapable of understanding. “Everything in blacks and whites. Have you considered that you might wind up in a situation where your military abilities—however much you’d like to deny them—would save lives? Even, I daresay, do the world some good? Don’t answer. Just think about nuances for once.”
Jedao was silent.
“No,” Mikodez went on, having made his point, “you’re here so I can offer you a job.”
This time the silence was distinctly bewildered.
“Let’s be clear on one thing,” Mikodez said. “As a general you are an asset, but hardly irreplaceable, and not anything like a winning hand, either.” If only Kel Command had figured that out centuries ago. “There are a lot of good generals.”
“I never had any doubt my luck would run out eventually,” Jedao said.
Jedao’s luck had always been decidedly ambivalent, but no need to shove the fact in his face.
“So if I’m not to be your gun,” Jedao said, “then what?”
“I need an instructor,” Mikodez said. “Specifically, I need an instructor to design an ethics curriculum for the Shuos.”
Jedao’s head jerked up. Then he laughed helplessly. “I’m sorry, Shuos-zho, since when do the Shuos care?”
“Normally I don’t,” Mikodez said agreeably. “I don’t have scruples as you understand them. It’s one of the reasons Kujen and I got along so well. We had our disagreements, though. My people don’t use torture.”
Jedao exuded skepticism.
“That’s not because I care about hurting people. I order my share of assassinations. It’s because it doesn’t work in an interrogation context. I don’t believe in doing things that don’t work. It’s wasteful.”
“Everyone has been at pains to tell me how powerful the Shuos have become under your rule,” Jedao said. “You’ll understand, I don’t have the breadth of experience to form an opinion one way or the other. But supposing it’s true, why the offer?”
“Because everything goes up in cinders the moment I die,” Mikodez said. “And because you are an excellent exhibit for how we are doing something wrong, and why I had better fix the problem.” Fuck this. He popped a candy in his mouth. Jedao’s That had better not be poisoned because being blamed for an assassination I didn’t do is too much even for me expression was priceless.
“There’s only one person I trust to succeed me,” Mikodez said, thinking of Zehun and their cats. And some younger prospects, but they needed time to mature into their abilities, time they might not have. “The problem is, they’re significantly older than I am, they’re already as much of a target as I am, and they don’t want the job. There are plenty of senior Shuos with the skills to take over, but most of them would become tyrants if they didn’t start that way. We did this to ourselves, you know. Our entire institutional culture is predicated on backstabbing people. That’s all very well during a game, but deadly for the long-term health of the institution itself. It’s a miracle we’ve lasted this long.”
A flicker in Jedao’s eyes. “You want to reform the Shuos. I assume you’re also pursuing other avenues.”
Mikodez smiled wryly.
Jedao lowered his gaze. “I’ll save you the time,” he said roughly. “You want a curriculum? I’ll give you a three-word treatise: Don’t be me.”
“Such a hothead,” Mikodez said. Another candy. The four-hundred-year-old general had been calculating to the point of resembling an abacus if you looked beyond the deceptively affable mannerisms. But then, even the original couldn’t have started that way. “Or have you lost all your head for strategy? At least hear out the rest of the offer before you reject it out of hand. You should eat, by the way.”
Jedao took a single cracker and bit into it. It was nice having someone around the Citadel follow directions. Not that Mikodez was under any illusions that Jedao would eat without supervision.
“You will be confined to the Citadel of Eyes,” Mikodez said, “rather than posted to one of the academies proper. Partly this is because I need to keep an eye on you. Partly it’s because it’ll trigger a war if word gets out that you’re wandering loose. I can’t guarantee your safety off this station anyway, given your notoriety. If you follow the protocols, you’ll be as safe as I am.” Good thing he didn’t have to listen to Zehun’s sarcastic commentary. They’d give him an earful later. “Your living circumstances won’t be too onerous, I promise. We can make you comfortable, and you’ll have access to companionship.” Aha: a flinch. “I’m going to insist you take advantage of that, by the way. Loneliness does in more Shuos than bullets do.”
“There’s more, isn’t there,” Jedao said, clearly wanting Mikodez to switch to another subject. “What would my duties be?”
“The development of the aforementioned curriculum,” Mikodez said. “The elaborated form, for those of us who need help working things out from first principles. Publish it in game form or as a paper or lesson plan or whatever. I’m not picky about format. I can get assistants to help you with the pedagogy. We have good archives for you to refer to, and your work will be reviewed by people with the appropriate clearances. Once every few weeks we’ll have lunch, assuming the universe hasn’t blown up. Have some more crackers, by the way. I can see that keeping you fed is going to be a trial.”
“It’s a generous offer,” Jedao said.
“Generous, hell. You’ll draw a first-year instructor’s stipend, plus an appropriate allowance and the usual benefits for being on my personal staff. Given the circumstances, room and board is on me. The basic fare is passable, although my assistant has talked the cafeteria into cutting me off after one slice of cake per meal. The security arrangements are going to be a galloping nuisance, but as social experiments go, you’re a bargain.”
Jedao drew a shuddering breath. “Do I have a choice?”
“Do you want one?”
“Yes,” he said after a pause.
Mikodez remembered how horrified Jedao had looked at the prospect of finishing out his body’s physical lifespan. “I will not free you,” he said. “So it’s not much of a choice. You’ve established that I can’t leave you wandering around.” To say nothing of the assurances Inesser, Brezan, and Cheris had dragged out of him.
“At the same time,” Mikodez continued, “I can offer what you’re really after. If at any time you want to commit suicide, I will give you the easiest death we can work out. This may take some research, given your physiology. But if you put in the request, we’ll figure it out.”
“Even if I work for you—”
“At any time.” He hoped Jedao wouldn’t take the option. But he was also a realist.
“I accept,” Jedao said.
After the guards had returned and escorted Jedao out, Zehun came in. “You’re being too clever,” they said. “What if he destabilizes?”
Mikodez lifted a shoulder. “Then I’ll send him down to Shuos Academy. He won’t stand a chance against all those hotshot cadets. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll resort to assassins. I’m known for it, after all. In the meantime, whether we get anything useful out of Jedao on the ethics front is an open question, but it’s a convenient excuse to keep him around until we can figure out what he knows. All that matters is that he believes it.”
“You’re being lenient,” Zehun said. “Cheris was of the opinion that—”
“Cheris, or Jedao, or whatever she’s calling herself these days, was a judgmental prick in her former life,” Mikodez retorted, “and look where it got everyone. At some point you have to let some of it go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
SHUOS GUARDS ACCOMPANIED Jedao through the Citadel of Eyes, past checkpoints where yellow eyes floated in the dark and fox voices whispered like oracles. Jedao didn’t make a break for it. For
one thing, his augment gave him vertigo whenever he reflexively tried to access the layout. His othersense continued to function without impediment, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to reveal it to the Shuos. Besides, he had no idea where he’d go even if he did make it to a voidmoth. (Did he know how to pilot one? Flying the other way had hurt so much that he suspected it wasn’t sustainable for any distance.) Everyone knew his face and the story that went with it. And, of course, he could only imagine that his escort knew a hell of a lot more about punching people out than he did to have been entrusted with him.
Curiously, he believed the hexarch when he said he didn’t have scruples, but merely wanted to offer Jedao a “job.” The straightforwardness of the transaction, even the pragmatism of offering him a way out—even if it later proved to be a lie—was, in its way, better than Kujen’s elaborate pretense of kindness.
“Here you are,” said the head guard, who had introduced herself earlier. She let him enter his new suite after explaining how to set the door to tell people whether he was accepting visitors or not, although naturally there were overrides. “You can go to the cafeteria in this section at any time, or have food sent up, and the recreation areas and gardens are close by. Your augment is cleared to give you the maps. Are you hungry right now?”
“No,” Jedao said, looking around at the receiving room. The furnishings were modest, and in transparently calming shades of green. He liked the colors, which reminded him of growing things, in spite of himself. There was a table, a couch for three, a chair of pale wood.
“You can redecorate,” the guard said with more kindness than the statement warranted, “but unless the setup fills you with immediate loathing, take some time to decide what you want. We keep a couple interior designers on staff if you need help.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to Jedao. He would have accepted a blanket on the floor. “I will think about it,” he said politely.
“If you need anything,” the guard said, “ask the system for me, or make a request, and it’ll put you through to whoever’s on call. You’ll figure it out soon enough. We’ll introduce you around tomorrow, but Mikodez thought you’d like to get settled in first.” With that, she bowed to him, then led the other guards out.
Jedao was left surrounded by the walls. The next thing he did was survey the apartment. There was a tidy kitchenette and a space where he could entertain a few people. (Did he know how to cook? Perhaps he could learn.) A water closet and a bath that was the most decadent thing in the place, stocked with stoppered scented oils and a basket of fragrant soaps. The cabinet next to the sink held towels and absurdly fluffy red bathrobes.
A study, with a terminal and a more old-fashioned escritoire, including calligraphy supplies. Jedao didn’t know whether he could do proper painting or calligraphy either. He fingered one of the brushes, then set it aside.
Two items awaited him on the escritoire besides the obvious supplies: the deck of jeng-zai cards that Kel Talaw had given him, and which the Shuos had confiscated what felt like forever ago; and, bizarrely, a potted plant. To be specific, not even an ornamental plant, or a flower, but a green onion. A small ceramic watering pot, painted with a cheerful lizard, accompanied it. The message was clear: Take care of this.
Jedao checked the soil. It was slightly dry. He filled the pot, then watered the green onion. Looked at it, not daring to touch the leaves. After a while, he replaced the pot so he could head into the last room.
The bedroom had a bed large enough to accommodate two (or three if the three didn’t mind being squished together) and neatly folded blankets. Next to it stood a table with a tray of candies. Presumably the hexarch was projecting.
Then he returned to the study and sat at the terminal. This was not necessary, but he didn’t want to deal with floating images, which reminded him of the mysterious yellow eyes.
“If I wanted to request suicide,” Jedao asked the grid, “how would I go about doing so?”
The terminal blinked. But he wasn’t looking at it. A light had flashed red behind him. He sprang out of the chair and whirled, dropping into a crouch. Cursed himself for not paying attention to his othersense, which could alert him of ambush.
A snakeform servitor confronted him.
“Hemiola,” Jedao breathed. “Is it safe for you here?”
“I made contact with the local enclave,” Hemiola said. “We’re safe enough as long as we’re discreet.”
“How did you escape the Revenant?”
“I got off and signaled for help as soon as the battle started,” Hemiola said. “Some of Cheris’s allies rescued me.”
Jedao thought of the servitors who had slaughtered the Kel on the Revenant and fell silent.
“I was listening in on the interrogations,” Hemiola said. It had divined his misgivings. “The servitors who did that... they were rogues. If Kujen is gone, then we’re free of him. Both of us.”
Jedao stirred. “I—” The words choked him on the way out. “I loved him. I killed him. I don’t know which is worse.”
“I understand something of that,” Hemiola said. “For a long time Kujen defined my world.” It hovered closer, then settled across from him, lights glowing violet in sympathy.
“Did Cheris send you to finish the job?”
“I sent myself,” Hemiola said with curious dignity. “I had a disagreement with her. And now we are both alone in a new place. I thought... I thought you might like a companion.”
The Shuos hexarch had warned him, hadn’t he? Loneliness does in more Shuos than bullets do. Perhaps it was even true.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’d like that.”
He didn’t know if servitors lied; if Hemiola had any connection to the servitors on the Revenant, who had spared him but killed his Kel. The only way he could find out was by getting closer to Hemiola. Not much of a reason to live, but it was what he had.
Jedao rose and dismissed the euthanasia request form that had come up on the main display. “You should go,” he said. “You don’t want the Shuos hexarch’s people to catch you here.” He assumed that the servitors had some way of jinxing surveillance—and that, too, was something he wanted to learn more about.
“I will come to you another time,” Hemiola said. “Take care, Jedao.” It hovered up to a maintenance passage and quickly vanished from sight.
Jedao shivered, eyes blurring. It was tempting to give up anyway. To close his eyes and pretend he had returned to Kujen’s care, living in rooms as luxurious as sunlight. That in a moment he would change into the Kel uniform he found and that Kujen would greet him, smiling and amused and heartrendingly beautiful.
But he had chosen otherwise, and he would have to live with that.
He picked up the deck of cards and took it into the bedroom. One by one he arranged the cards on the bed, making no effort to order them. He would never see Talaw again, or find out what had become of them, or the rest of the Kel in the swarm. It was better that way.
The cards took up an inordinate amount of space, and had an irritating tendency to slide around on the subtle slopes formed by the blanket. The Deuce of Gears, alien in silver and black, had turned up in the sixth column. Jedao plucked it out and stuck it on top of a dresser face-down. He didn’t need it anymore. Then he put the rest of the cards back in their box. The deck was no longer good for fortunetelling or playing (fair) jeng-zai, but neither endeavor interested him.
Then Jedao went back out to the study to begin his work. It was time to change the game.
EPILOGUE
THE SHUTTLE MADE planetfall in a slow, imperfect arc, turning this way and that to give its passengers a good view of the small settlement they were approaching. Earlier they had passed over a worn-down series of mountains and the purple-green forest at its base. It wasn’t much of a view, but the shuttle’s pilot seemed determined to make the best of it, talking up this boulder or that formation of trees as though they had been designed by a master landscaper for their viewing pleasure. Cheris, who had ta
ken a seat near the back, conceded that this wasn’t impossible. As far as she could tell, though, the trees looked like they had been growing wild for some time. Haphazard terraforming, perhaps, or simple neglect.
During the flight, people had talked about simple things. Births and marriages and deaths. Fashion. The best recipe for lamb with yogurt. A stray discussion of a math problem, which she had to bite the inside of her mouth from joining in, because the two young people (students?) were both wrong about order of operations. It was not, however, her job to correct them... yet.
Cheris had modded her face, a concession to safety, with the aid of a surgeon recommended by Mikodez. “You didn’t want to be devastatingly beautiful?” he’d asked in disappointment after he saw the results he’d paid for—what he called a “professional courtesy.” “You should have taken advantage.”
She’d shaken her head and said, amused, “I’m trying to fit in. My people don’t generally go in for fancy expensive mods, remember?” And he’d let the subject drop.
The shuttle landed lightly, like a butterfly, and she reached for her duffel bag. She hadn’t brought much in the way of belongings, just a bare minimum of clothes, and her raven luckstone, and the watch that General Khiruev had given her. The Welcome Committee had assured her that they’d provide new settlers enough to get started with, courtesy of their Shuos benefactors. (Cheris would never quite believe Mikodez had rescued some of her people out of principle, but she couldn’t deny that he’d saved them from extinction.) She’d already secured her housing assignment, which she’d be sharing with several other singletons. Mwennin preferred to live with relatives, but the purge nine years ago had splintered many extended families. The survivors would have to make do.
Cheris was last off the shuttle. A number of the other passengers had already gravitated toward the small crowd waiting to greet them. Some of them called out to each other, embraced. She watched them, ambivalent, feeling like an impostor.