On a Red Station, Drifting

by Aliette de Bodard

  She could feel Her, the vastness of Her thoughts; the shudders that ran through her, wracking Her like coughing fits. “You’re sick,” Linh said, horrified.

  “Don’t worry, child. I’m not dying yet.” The Honoured Ancestress made that strange sound which Linh knew to be laughter. But it sounded weak, done for Linh’s benefit more than out of genuine feelings. “And Lady Oanh is taking good care of me.” She sounded sad.

  Don’t cry, Linh wanted to say. I’m sorry for bringing so much grief to you. But, even in the trance, the words wouldn’t get past her lips.

  “Bao once told me you tracked everyone on Prosper Station.”

  There was silence, as in the moment before the storm died. “Yes. But I don’t know, child. It’s...been hard, currently.”

  “Even to track family?” Linh asked. “Huu Hieu?”

  The Honoured Ancestress did not answer. Linh went on, in the silence, “I can restrict search areas if necessary. Any places with large bodies of water. The park with the Reclaimed Sword Lake, the water vats...And any apothecary on Prosper Station.” And places to hang himself, too; but she didn’t think he was going to try that. Finding a beam and a rope was much more effort than any of the alternatives.

  Still that same disquieting silence. Linh hadn’t realised until now how much she’d grown accustomed to the Honoured Ancestress’s pressure against her mind.

  At last, the Honoured Ancestress said, “In the fish sauce vats area. I can’t locate him more precisely. I apologise.”

  “Don’t,” Linh said, more forcefully than she’d intended to, because it cut deep to hear the Honoured Ancestress hesitate, or be unsure of Herself. “Please.”

  A dry chuckle that made Her sound almost as She had before. “Don’t worry, child. I’ll take care of myself.”

  Her presence faded, and Linh almost believed Her last words.

  Almost.

  “The fish sauce vats,” she said, every syllable leaving a numbing imprint on her tongue, like swallowing ice cubes. “How well guarded are they?”

  By his grimace, she knew that they weren’t. Linh got up. “Come on. We don’t have time to waste.”

  The lights were flickering as they ran through the corridors. Though everything else appeared normal, Linh wondered how far the rot had spread. Prosper had been built on fragile foundations, and now the tide was crashing in, everything collapsing, as if the war and its disastrous consequences had followed her all the way to Prosper, like a messenger ahead of a defeat, carrying ill-luck into every house.

  Steel and the glint of lamps; holos of paintings that twisted, rain pelting lonely mountains, waterfalls crashing into lakes, fishermen pulling net against the vast landscape of a river; and more modern paintings, passersby in the streets of a city decked in red lanterns; airships crossing each other between dizzyingly high buildings.

  Corridor after corridor, each with their own ambience, their own muted music or poetry, and fragments of words following her; and Fifth Ancestor Hoang pressing against her mind until Linh could taste his fascination, his desire to speak, even against First Ancestor Thanh Thuy’s prohibition...

  Onwards, and every corridor seemed to merge into the next, until she was utterly lost. She called up the trance, felt it flicker against her mind, a weak overlay showing her the path to the starboard side of the station, where the fish sauce vats sucked in the light from the Red Turtle Star.

  They couldn’t be on time. It would take two, three minutes for a human being to drown? Perhaps more to be utterly past recovery by medbots; but still, Huu Hieu had had far more time than this. But he might not have had their desperate clarity, the need that even now turned Bao’s face a muddy white that gripped Linh’s heart with a fear she’d thought forgotten in the aftermath of Giap’s death.

  At last, at long last, they reached the widest room Linh had seen on Prosper: the curvature of its ribbed ceiling evident, its steel rafters unadorned. Light streamed in, curiously muted and reddish, coming from the tinted glass bay that occupied the back of the room. And over them towered the vats, the huge cylinders in which the small rice fish and the salt gradually macerated into pure, undiluted fish sauce.

  They’d been wood in Ancient Dai Viet, but now everything had become metal, its components carefully assessed and assembled to ensure the best spread of flavour; and bots within the vats, their sensors wide open in order to make sure the fermentation was going as foreseen.

  Bao’s gaze was moving right and left, desperately trying to find something in the morass of readings. Linh called up the trance again but was blocked. It seemed the production of fish sauce was a secret kept on Prosper, even down to details on the contents of the vats. Her gaze, instead, roamed the alignment of vats, looking for any detail that didn’t fit.

  “There are hundreds of them,” Bao said, his voice brimming with panic.

  Linh raised a hand, cutting him off. Hundreds. But Huu Hieu was a man in a hurry, wasn’t he? He wouldn’t want the first vats, so close to the door: too obvious. But neither would he look for something too far away. Second row...

  She moved, almost without thinking, towards the back of the room, her gaze tracking the vats. Nothing but the growing silence here, not ambient music or poetry to disturb the maceration, everything oddly deserted...

  There.

  A flash of a deeper colour in her sharpened vision and, as she moved closer, her pace quickened with each step. She saw the ladder leading to the top of the vat, which hadn’t been retracted all the way. She reached out a hand. For a slow, agonising moment, she thought the station would deny her, but the ladder came sliding down as silently as a knife stroke. She clambered up its steps, heedless of whether Bao was following at all.

  The sauce within the vats was a deep black, the same colour as the space between the stars, with an oily sheen that reminded Linh of the Honoured Ancestress’ presence. And, in the midst of the blackness, a stain of something clearer: a tunic, a body floating face down.

  Too late. Too late!

  Footsteps behind her: Bao, clearing the top of the ladder. His eyes were blinking fast, not looking at anything beyond the trance. The surface of the liquid heaved up, bringing up a strong smell of ripe fish, and as the monitoring bots rose from the bottom of the vat, dozens of sleek metal crafts settled under the body, pushing it towards the edge; flipping it over, so thatx Huu Hieu’s pale face stared up at them, his eyes glazed over by the black, thick liquid.

  The odour of fermented fish was overpowering, bringing back childhood memories of watching Mother open up a bottle as Linh crushed garlic in a mortar and pestle: mixing the dipping sauces by hands as their ancestors had done for centuries instead of relying on the automatic kitchen, a pleasant memory turned sour by the proximity of death.

  Bao knelt, pulled up Huu Hieu as if he were a sack of rice. Linh had no idea what he was doing, but his gaze had the familiar distant look of one within the trance. When he spoke, it was clear he wasn’t relying on his eyes alone. “He’s alive. Though he’ll probably regret it, come morning. Come, give me a hand. We need to take him back to his quarters.”

  And Linh wasn’t sure, after all, if she was going to weep or rejoice.

  ***

  There was a ship.

  It had emerged from the deep spaces, flaring into existence like the heart of a star even as Lady Oanh’s own ship vanished, swallowed by the maw that marked the first step in her journey home to the capital. Its re-entry point had been a few days from Prosper; and now it hung in space, making its slow way to them, like the inexorable course of justice.

  The Embroidered Guard, after all, never chose to hurry if they could avoid it.

  The ship was sleek and deadly, like the blade of a knife, everything about it a weapon, from the sharp, angular protrusions on its hull to the cold sense of purpose that emanated from its Mind.

  It had sent no comms, no call on the trance, but its destination was unmistakable. And so was its purpose.

  Quyen had gone online, f
rom the trance into the wider world, and looked at the edicts from the Grand Secretariat. She wasn’t on the First Planet and couldn’t easily search through them, so she read them one by one, until she found the name of Lê Thi Linh, Magistrate of the Province of Great Light for the Twenty-Third Planet, until she found the order that had made Cousin Linh a criminal.

  Among all the offences within the Empire of Dai Viet, some were graver than others. Some called for punishment, not only on the offender, but on their kin.

  Uttering treasonous words against the Dragon Throne was one of these, and the edict had made it all too clear that the Great Virtue Emperor had taken Linh’s memorial as such. And, if she would not have the decency to ingest meds, or hang or drown herself, why, then, the Emperor would be all too glad to send guards to make his point.

  Linh, and her kin. Of course, Dai Viet was merciful and considered kin, not only through ties of blood, but through actions. A man’s kin stood with him: wrote messages, shared death birthdays, births and funerals, and New Year’s Eves. Or helped them, should they come as destitute refugees to a space station.

  To the Embroidered Guard, all of Prosper would be kin, to the ninth generation, enough to encompass most of the inner rings of the station. All of them guilty of the same crime, and brought back to the First Planet for judgment and punishment—if the Embroidered Guard didn’t decide to forgo procedure and summarily execute them all on the spot.

  Better, perhaps, for the Honoured Ancestress to forget them all. Better that She not wake up, and wonder what had happened to Her descendants, what calamity could have erased them all from within the station. Yes, better than realising they’d been betrayed by their own openness, their own casual grant of hospitality to one who had never deserved it. Kin stood by kin, but Linh had taken that rule and callously broken it into ten thousand unrecognisable shards.

  With a coldness she hadn’t thought was possible, her heart as coiled as a rattan roll within her chest, Quyen went to see Linh.

  Linh made her wait. Quyen stood in the ornate courtyard for a while, breathing in the smell of water from the fountain. It was unfair, almost, that here everything seemed normal, without a hint of the centipede gnawing at the Honoured Ancestress’ insides.

  When Linh emerged, she wore a shift of clear linen, more suitable for the privacy of one’s quarters than for receiving visitors. The lights overhead had dimmed, recalling the fall of twilight. A deliberate insult, Quyen thought, but then she saw the drawn lines of the face, the red-rimmed eyes, and the slight, very slight quiver in the muscles, a loss of control grievous by an official’s standards.

  “What do you want, Cousin? I don’t have time for any of this.” Quyen flinched at the crudeness. Fine, if this were a time to let the masks fall, to behave like uncouth Barbarians, she could play this game, too. “You’d better find it, Cousin. Did you honestly think I would never find out?”

  “Find what out?” Linh shook her head. “Look, I apologise, but—”

  “It’s going to take more than an apology.” All the facts were there, one following the other like a perfect chain of thought, and all Quyen had to do was speak fast enough not to be interrupted. “You came here as a war refugee. You said the invaders had destroyed your tribunal, that you had nowhere else to go, and therefore had gone to seek refuge with your kin. With us. With Prosper. You took our hospitality, ate our rice and our fish sauce. You smiled at us—no, I won’t say smile, because from the start you acted as if you were above us all, as if everything we did was of lesser value—and you thought I would never check what had sent you fleeing from the Twenty-Third Planet. I know.”

  Linh pulled herself up. Her face was pale, leeched of colours in the courtyard’s dim light, like a ghost, risen from its tomb, the light accentuating the rough folds of her clothes until they seemed mourning garb. “You’re the one who doesn’t know anything, Cousin.”

  “You made that clear enough.” Quyen hadn’t meant the words, but they came up, spit like white-hot stones. “Did you really think me too foolish to understand a poem?”

  “You’re too foolish to understand anything.”

  “I understand courtesy, at least.”

  “Courtesy?” Linh spat the word. “You could have asked, couldn’t you? Asked where I’d come from, or why? But no. You granted me an audience like an Empress, let the Honoured Ancestress question me, and then you sent me on my way and never worried about me anymore.”

  How dare she! How could she stand there, with everything that Prosper was in tatters, and look obscenely proud of everything she’d done? “You weren’t content with overturning the harmony of this family, were you?” Quyen kept her voice flat, but it cost her.

  “I think you did that on your own.” Linh smiled, an expression utterly leeched of joy. “Ask your brother-in-law what he thinks of your family harmony.”

  “I won’t waste tears on Huu Hieu. He’s done enough for this station, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, I have no doubts.” Linh’s lips thinned, revealing teeth as sharp as fangs. “Including going off and attempting to commit suicide. But of course you only care because of the scandal, don’t you? Better that he be dead than besmirch the family name. Better that his ghost linger over the fish sauce vats, while you bat your eyelashes and pretend to grieve, thinking that it’s really all for the best, that a drowning is cleaner than a scandal.”

  Fish sauce vats? Drowning? “He wouldn’t.” Quyen’s voice was flat. He’d always been a coward, always been inclined to retreat from the world, from his responsibilities. But this?

  “I think his sense of family duty doesn’t go that far.”

  Cousin Linh’s smile was wild, feral. “Unlike yours, of course.”

  “And you’re such a dutiful woman.” Daring to stand there, Quyen thought, to make glib remarks about it all, flinging it into her face as if it were her fault. But...but Linh’s face was drawn and taut, and the vague, familiar smell in the air was indeed that of fish sauce, not easily scrubbed from clothes and skin without proper bot instructions.

  At least Huu Hieu had someone to care for him. The thought was low and savage in her mind, like a knife stroke. “As far as I’m concerned,” Quyen said, slowly, “you two deserve each other. So go ahead and save each other’s lives, or commit suicide. It won’t make a difference now.” Her hands had clenched into fists. “Not after you’ve brought the Embroidered Guard here to kill us all.”

  She hadn’t thought Linh’s face could get any paler. “What do you mean?”

  But Quyen was no longer in the mood to trade insults. “Check the logs, Cousin. I’m sure you can work it out on your own. You’re smart, after all; and I’m just a provincial housewife.”

  And she left, without turning back.

  ***

  A knock at the door made Quyen look up. It was Xuan Rua and her uncle Bao. Xuan Rua was carrying rolled-up papers, an odd sight on a station in which barely anything was printed anymore. But then everything was falling apart, and the trance was no longer as accessible as it had been.

  “May we come in, Aunt?”

  Quyen nodded. She’d been trying to put the conversation with Linh out of her mind. She was unsuccessful, as every time she so much as blinked she’d see Linh’s pale, arrogant face, accusing her of neglecting her own brother-in-law. The gall! The unbreakable, utterly unsuitable pride...

  Xuan Rua’s face was pale, her eyes rimmed with red. Bao’s topknot was askew, with wisps of hair escaping from its confines, giving him the air of a dishevelled beggar. “You know about Huu Hieu?” Quyen asked.

  Bao sighed. “Yes, but this isn’t about him.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Father’s...achievements.” Xuan Rua’s face was harsh, as if she’d turned into her less naive sister overnight.

  “I understand,” Quyen said. “When more time has passed...”

  “No. He has gone beyond the limit of what we can tolerate.”

  “You can’t criticise your elders,” Bao started
, but Xuan Rua’s gaze whipped towards him with the savagery of a leaping panther.

  “Can’t I? He’s devastated this family and this station by thinking only of himself at every turn. I owe him filial piety; but it is also written that a child’s duty is to show their father the way. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “He’s your father,” Quyen said, wearily. “And part of the family. You won’t ever change that.” Much as they would all like to, they couldn’t remove blood-ties.

  Xuan Rua shook her head, and did not answer. “I came for this,” she said, unrolling the papers she held on the low table. They were Lady Oanh’s schematics, adorned in a cursive, effortlessly elegant script, and annotated here and there in Xuan Rua’s crabbier handwriting.

  “You’ve looked at them?” Quyen’s cheeks burnt. She should have made time for this.

  Xuan Rua made no remark. Of course she wouldn’t; children didn’t criticise their elders. “It’s not complicated. All that it asks for are minor adjustments in the flow of the five elements in several places over the station. Most of those can be done in advance. Those, however, the very last ones...” Her hands rested, lightly, on Lady Oanh’s beautiful, effortless calligraphy, pointing to the heartroom, and four places on the outer rings. “Those have to be done within seconds of each other.”

  In other words, coordinated through the trance, which was falling apart. “And if not done right?” Quyen was amazed at how steady her voice was.

  “You know.” Bao’s voice was serene. “It’s a risk.”

  A risk that she had to be willing to take, for the sake of Prosper, for the sake of the Honoured Ancestress. For a future none of them might see. And yet...She took a deep breath. “There are complications.”

  Bao looked mildly enquiring. Xuan Rua was bent on the schematics, and did not look up. “The Embroidered Guard is coming here.”

  Bao did not move, and Xuan Rua sucked in a sharp breath. “Why?”

  It was the perfect opportunity to accuse Cousin Linh, to pour her anger and her bile. But she was weary of it all, of the strife, of the dancing on the edge of the abyss, weary of the family tearing itself apart. “It doesn’t matter,” Quyen said. “What matters is that there might be an extermination order for the lineage.”