On a Red Station, Drifting

by Aliette de Bodard

  “Of course I don’t,” Quyen said; and it was the unadorned, bald truth. But she knew the Honoured Ancestress would not believe her.

  “You do, child. You should trust in yourself more,” the Honoured Ancestress said, and Her voice was sad. The pressure against Quyen’s mind withdrew; the Honoured Ancestress had left, finding something else aboard Prosper that required Her full attention.

  Quyen turned to the other matters for the day: the supplies she owed for the war effort, which had to be put aboard a merchant ship and sent back to the First Planet, their own dwindling stock of food. She studied the Honoured Ancestress’s star-views to determine which ships were on their way to them. There would be a strong influx of merchant ships soon, an ideal time to replenish their supplies—provided, of course, they had actually had what Prosper needed. The war had depleted everyone’s resources, and merchants were liable to be boarded by any of the two rebel armies, the contents of their holds used to support the space sectors in open rebellion.

  Quyen was down to reviewing the order of the day for the Assignment of Resources meeting, when a blink in the corner of her field of view indicated a priority message. She slipped into the trance to view it.

  It was from Xuan Rua, the eldest of her nieces, uncharacteristically brief and to the point: “Come to Eastern Gate. Now.” If it had been paper the ink would have bled, and the letters hung slightly askew. But it was simulated calligraphy, always neat and perfect no matter what happened, and the only indication of the high emotion behind it was the curt, unornamented style.

  Eastern Gate. One of the entrances to the family’s Inner Quarters, not the grandest, or the most accessible. What could possibly—

  She was wasting time. Xuan Rua wouldn’t have summoned her for anything less than an emergency. Quyen put away the papers she was using. She wondered, for a brief moment, if she should call up the surveillance sensors’ feed in the trance. But she couldn’t do that and move, and it would only waste time.

  Instead, she ran. It was slightly undignified, considering her position as Administrator of Prosper Station, but propriety be damned. Eastern Gate. She crossed courtyards with vegetation, both the stunted low-oxygen varieties, and the more expensive ones imported from planetside; and practically shoved citizens out of the way as she ran.

  She rushed through the silent library, where she saw one of her younger sisters-in-law give her a startled look from her seat; and then Quyen left her behind: going onwards, past corridor after corridor with the words of poets and statesmen blinking on the walls, the colours shifting from red to green as she ran.

  Eastern Gate was small, barely a hole in a wall, surrounded by a few plants to make it appear grander than it really was. Quyen heard the argument long before she reached Eastern Gate: the Honoured Ancestress was doing Her best to muffle the voices, but Her systems had limits, and She couldn’t completely change the walls’ texture. They had been conceived to reflect sound as much as possible, to ensure that anyone who entered the Inner Quarters would pass from the noise of the world into a quieter environment.

  Three people stood before the closed gate, darker shapes against the vivid red of the welcome signs: Xuan Rua, her uncle Bao, and...

  She should have known. The third person standing there—though standing was an overstatement, since he clung to the panels of the gates, probably the only things that prevented him from collapsing like a punctured habitat—was Brother Huu Hieu, Xuan Rua’s father.

  “Drunk again?” she asked, coldly, to Xuan Rua, who was hovering, uncertain whether to come closer or not. “Or gambling again?” From Xuan Rua’s grimace, she knew it was both.

  Still, it was hardly an emergency, save that the scandal had never been this spectacular.

  “Sister.” Huu Hieu’s speech was slurred, the accents on the words almost mangling everything past recognition. “Fancy seeing you there.”

  Quyen made her voice as cold and sobering as the void of space. “Your wife would be ashamed to see you.” Quyen’s sister-in-law had left three years ago, along with nearly all of the family’s greater spouses, called to other planets by the war. Many ships from the war-zones had docked since, but none of them had brought her back. Or any of them back.

  Huu Hieu laughed, attempting to pull himself upwards, failing and ending cross-legged on the floor, pathetic. “My wife? She’s not coming back, Sister, and that’s the truth of it. They’re not coming back, any of them. The war has gobbled them up.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Nonsense? The Russian czars did it, you know: pick up people from where they lived, and strand them back at the other end of the country after their service was done. If the state ever came for you, you ran and hid. That’s what we should have done. Run and hide.”

  Ever the coward, the unsubtle, unaware of propriety or decorum. Sometimes, she wondered what her sister-in-law saw in the man. Theirs had been a marriage of convenience, but they had genuinely cared for one another, much like Quyen had come to care for her own husband.

  “They did their duty to Dai Viet, and to the Son of Heaven, which is more than can be said of you. Get inside,” Quyen said. “Sober up, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Xuan Rua throw glances at her uncle Bao. Bao hadn’t moved, remaining standing in the corridor, as if everything passed him right by. And perhaps it did. Bao had been retreating further and further from the world ever

  since his own wife had been called to service.

  “Uncle, please.”

  Bao hesitated, and then nodded. “My eldest niece won’t say it because he’s her father and deserves her respect, but I have no such boundaries. We think that he’s traded away his mem-implants.”

  That stopped her. She’d been bending over Huu Hieu, trying to coax him to stand, and now she looked at him anew. His hair hung askew, freed from the topknot of officials’ spouses, his eyes bleary, the veins splayed on his cornea like a spatter of blood on a pristine floor. Her hands, searching, combed the matted hair, far heavier than it should have been, now that she thought of it. For a long, long while, nothing made a noise, as if the entire station were holding its breath; her fingers parting strand after strand, readying a silent apology to her ancestors for touching her brother-in-law, if she should be proved wrong...

  There.

  Her hands found the shaved patches of the skull where the mem-implants had been affixed, traced their outlines. Instead of old bone growth she found a slight yield, like the broken shell of a crab, and her hands came back with the strong, acrid smell of disinfectant.

  “You’re right,” she said without looking at Bao or Xuan Rua. “Someone’s cut into his skull.” And, if they’d gone to that much trouble to keep it hidden, they wouldn’t have just taken a look, either.

  His mem-implants. All that was left of his ancestors, to advise him through life. A favour he didn’t deserve. He was no official and should have been as devoid of implants as Quyen; but his family had had no other descendants, and thus no one else to take care of the ancestral altars. How could he possibly think of selling those?

  “Who took them?” she asked. If you weren’t kin to the persona stored in a mem-implant, the affixing procedure had a strong chance of driving you insane; but there were always those hankering for the knowledge they brought: students desperate to pass the imperial examinations and attain the status of a state official.

  “Who cares?” Huu Hieu’s speech was slurred again, his eyes rolling up in their orbits. She’d thought it was an excess of drink; but it might have been the side-effects of the anaesthesia. “As if you ever did, sister. Frigid bitch...”

  “You’re making a fool of yourself, elder brother,” Bao snapped, and something in his voice must have reached Huu Hieu, because he mumbled something indistinct before his eyes closed, and didn’t open again.

  “I don’t think he’s in a state to tell us,” Xuan Rua said, cautiously.

  Quyen sat, cradling Huu Hieu in her lap, br
eathing in the sickening smell of alcohol mingled with the gods knew what. Sold them. Given them away. She didn’t care if he sold or dishonoured his own ancestors—that was his own problem, and he was welcome to it! But one of the mem-implants he’d so casually disposed of wasn’t his but his wife’s.

  They had, as was customary, traded implants so that they could access the higher functions of the station, and have direct contact with the Honoured Ancestors, both on Prosper and on Huu Hieu’s natal station.

  One of Huu Hieu’s implants belonged to them. To Prosper. To the Honoured Ancestress. One of the family’s treasures that Quyen had been responsible for, as she was responsible for the rest of the station. What would the Honoured Ancestress think? She shirked from the picture, as fractured and as cold as a blade of ice driven through her ribs.

  “What do you know?” she asked.

  “Not much, sorry,” Bao said. “I picked him up rimwards, in one of the gambling circles.”

  “And you thought something was off? Why the mem-implants specifically?”

  “I...I can’t tell you.” Bao’s hand made a sign, tracing Xuyan characters for “Peach Garden”. It was a reminder of a brotherhood oath, which would weigh as heavily as family ties.

  “I see,” Quyen said, slowly. “Have you any idea who took them?”

  Bao shook his head. “The Tile and Deer Abode. That’s all I have.”

  “I see.” Quyen let go of Huu Hien, letting him fall to the ground far more softly than she’d have wished to. “I need to think about the best way to handle this.” And to Xuan Rua: “Can you take him home?”

  Her niece appeared on the verge of tears, but she nodded. Quyen said, as gently as she could, “Master Kong himself said that a man’s duty to a superior included steering them away from evil acts. You did no wrong.”

  Xuan Rua swallowed audibly, and came to lift her father’s prone body. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Quyen said, rising.

  Back in her quarters she straightened the holos of her own ancestors: her parents-in-law, and her own parents, who had given her in marriage to Prosper Station as part of a trade alliance. She disrobed, slowly, looking into their eyes. She had no mem-implants to remember them. Those had gone to her elder sister, who had passed the imperial examinations and become a state official, while Quyen herself remained the lesser partner of a marriage, managing the daily business of her house, and waiting for her husband Anh to come back.

  To come back; to give her a son and to confirm the status she had on Prosper; to look at her with wonder in his eyes, and see how worthy of him she’d become...

  She said, aloud, “You didn’t call me.”

  There was the familiar feeling of the world twisting around her, and the touch on her mind, strong enough to hold her against all storms. “I didn’t hear anything until my grandniece sent her message.” The Honoured Ancestress’s voice was fainter than usual, as if coming from a great distance.

  “But you heard,” Quyen said.

  “From the moment my attention was called to Eastern Gate, yes, I heard it all. The implant that was lost...it holds the memory of Du Khach. She’s old, from the generation of your grandparents, but I remember her as though it were yesterday. She’d roam through the outer circles, peeking behind panels and trying to understand how the Station worked, and sit with me late in the evenings, listening to my ramblings. I can see her, shaping environments within the heart-room, so we could sit together and have tea...” The pressure against Quyen’s mind became warm, tinged with a bitter sweetness. “No wonder she made herself into a designer of mindships and space stations in the end. She made us all proud.”

  Quyen said nothing. She had not known Du Khach; and could barely even imagine what the passage of time would mean for the Honoured Ancestress. To see them all, from birth to senility and death, and yet go on, taking the children under Her wing, even while knowing they, too, would die...

  “Child?” the Honoured Ancestress said. The trance-link was tinged with sadness, like unshed tears. “Will you find it, daughter? It...it means much to me.”

  Daughter. The emphasis was unmistakable. Quyen thought of herself a decade ago: a frightened young girl just off the ship, praying that her husband would be kind; and of the strange sheen rising around her, the all-encompassing embrace that took her in, and asked nothing back. Nothing, save her love and piety; and were they not such a small price to pay?

  “Of course I’ll find them,” Quyen said. She could taste salt on her tongue, and an acrid bitterness. “I won’t disappoint you. But promise me you won’t strain yourself too much. You can’t care for us all.”

  “I’m not mortal, child.”

  She wasn’t human. She might have been borne in a human womb, She might share an ancestress with Quyen’s husband, but She’d been designed from optics and fibres and nanobots and She’d lived far beyond human lifetimes. But She was...

  Quyen dared not voice the thought; and one did not contradict an elder. “You have limits.”

  The Honoured Ancestress made a sound that sent chills up Quyen’s arms, which might have been laughter, which might have been tears. “We all do. Good night, child.” And with that, she was gone, leaving Quyen in the silence of the empty room.

  ***

  Linh was bored. Giving lessons to two young girls, no matter how gifted or dedicated, was a task for menials, and certainly did not require a holder of an exalted Metropolitan degree, much less a former magistrate.

  She did everything Quyen had asked of her—provided essay topics, and hammered the classics into their heads until they breathed the words of the ancients with every step.

  Today, after the usual drills, she dragged them into the trance where she had them superimpose an environment of their own design onto reality, without asking the Honoured Ancestress for help. It was an exercise requiring one to walk on the knife’s edge between focus and flow, at which Linh herself had excelled, but had seldom practised since her student days.

  And they were both failing miserably at it.

  They were meant to work together, and had picked a deliberately old-fashioned environment: the interior of an Exodus spaceship from Old Earth, gleaming with obsolete boards and control panels, and obscure parts the purpose of which had long vanished in history. The basic structure was sound, but here and there, the illusion flickered as if it were falling apart, and cracks had appeared everywhere in the metal walls, spreading further and further the more Linh watched.

  The youngest and most ambitious of the sisters, Xuan Kiem, seemed unusually distracted, though she did her best to hide it. Her sister Xuan Rua, who usually assisted Quyen in the day-to-day running of Prosper, was worse; barely listening to anything Linh had to say.

  “Enough,” Linh said, waving a hand. “That will be all for today.”

  The illusion flickered and died, and the girls emerged from the trance, blinking furiously. Xuan Kiem looked as though she might approach Linh, but Xuan Rua made a gesture towards her and the two of them scattered, fleeing the courtyard like startled sparrows.

  What was going on? It was frustrating—no, infuriating—to be cut out of any responsibilities. But not being informed of mportant matters was worse. More than ever, it made Linh feel an exile, and wonder whether she had made the right decision in coming to Prosper.

  She missed Giap, more than ever. Her tribunal’s first lieutenant would found the words to comfort her, to remind her of her purpose. Her ancestors on the mem-implants could do that. But their advice was hollow, dispensed by poor copies of men and women long settled into the afterlife.

  Giap...

  Giap was back on the Twenty-Third Planet, and likely he had died in the invasion. The thought weighed in her stomach like a cold stone. She was alone now, swimming upstream in an unknown, dangerous country, not knowing anything of what lay on the banks, or where the river took its source.

  She felt First Ancestor Thanh Thuy’s amusement. The fish who finds the source becomes a dragon.

 
Yes, there was that. She had leapt the falls of the examinations, risen up as an official, and made her own way in the world. She was no harmless frog; she was a dragon, and her place wasn’t here in this dingy school, teaching girls who had no need of her services to succeed at the examinations. Xuan Kiem would pass by virtue of her talents, and the eldest, Xuan Rua, obviously had no interest in anything but Prosper.

  Like Cousin Quyen.

  Her hands itched. She was tired of being idle, of being blinded and kept in the dark.

  Fine.

  If Cousin Quyen wanted her servile, Linh wasn’t going to oblige her. Ever since she’d arrived, the family had kept her busy, either under Quyen’s orders, or those of the Honoured Ancestress. When her lessons with the girls were finished, a woman would come and ask her opinion of a poem; or the girls’ uncle, Bao, would casually stroll in, and discuss Buddhist texts with her. It could have been coincidence, but there had been too many such events. For whatever reason, Cousin Quyen wanted Linh busy, and not wandering around the station.

  Which was precisely what Linh was going to do.

  She walked out of her quarters, and into the wide courtyard of the common area. No one stopped her. She guessed she had a little time before the girls went to Quyen. And perhaps more, if the family was affected by whatever had distracted them.

  She headed out, towards the outer rings, passing under the wide gates of the family quarters. As she moved away from the core of the station the crowd changed. The red-clad workers in livery were replaced by grey-clad techs and movers of bots. Then the crowd itself seemed to mould, taking on the vivid colours of the hundreds of people on the station: the poets, the scholars, the Masters of Wind and Water, the Commissioners of Supplies, and the myriad of people who made life aboard the station possible.

  Linh let herself be carried away by the flow, past large complexes tucked away behind grey facades, and shops selling everything from medicine to scrolls and holo-displays. But, as she did so, her magistrate’s mind was still working, and her enhanced vision was making notes of all the small details: how the store fronts were almost empty; how people with gaunt faces loitered in the streets, hesitating over whether to accost someone; how the crowd that watched the xanh-insects fight kept glancing sideways, their eyes not on the fight, but on other, more serious matters.