Bao was no scholar. It was Xuan Rua who looked up, and said, “How far does it spread?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do my utmost to ensure it doesn’t extend to you.” The younger generation, the children, the future, everything Prosper would and could become. It would not be wiped out.
“It’s Cousin Linh, isn’t it?” Bao said. “The act of welcoming her on Prosper made her kin to us.”
Quyen leant back in her chair, feeling a great weariness descend upon her. Everything was bleak, and she saw no way out. “I’ll lie. Say I was the only one involved in welcoming her.”
“And you think they’ll believe this?” Bao asked.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. “It’s worth a try. They might be kind, or merciful.” Quyen knew, though, in her heart of hearts, that they would be neither. “Tell me again about the adjustments,” she said to Xuan Rua.
Her niece was pale, but her voice did not waver as she outlined her plans, from fixing the small things to coordinating the last stage of renewing the Honoured Ancestress. “You did well,” Quyen said.
Xuan Rua flushed. She’d grown in maturity. What a pity that all of that had come at such a high cost.
Quyen sat back, pondering, and sought out the trance.
“I can’t make the decision for you,” she said.
For an awful, quivering moment, she thought that the Honoured Ancestress had not heard her. But then Her voice spoke in her ears, low and wan, like a sick woman’s. “Neither can I, child.”
“You’re old and wise,” Quyen said, and heard Her laugh.
“I am selfish, child, and scared. I would rather everything went on as it has always done. I would rather remain by your side, and be your guide.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“You have made all the decisions before,” the Honoured Ancestress pointed out, gently. “Why would this one be different?”
“I don’t...” Quyen thought of Lady Oanh’s words, and realised she was lying to herself. “I run the station, but this is different.”
“No different.”
“Yes. It is your life, Honoured Ancestress. I won’t make your choices for you.”
“As you did for Linh?”
“I did nothing to Linh that she did not choose for herself.”
A low, soft chuckle. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Forgive me, child. My mind is wandering. But you know there is only one choice I can make, that any of us can make.”
“But...you’d leave us alone,” she wanted to say. “You’d leave me alone.” And then she remembered the bitter knowledge: children weren’t beholden to their parents. “Lady Oanh said... that it could go on.” That there were fail-safes, that she might hurt them, but that she wouldn’t kill them.
“You wish me to sow chaos among you once more?” The Honoured Ancestress’ voice was low, ironic. “This isn’t what I was designed to do, child. The fail-safes will keep you alive; but there is more to life than merely living it.”
Good fortune, children, long life, Quyen thought, before she could stop herself. And would the Honoured Ancestress not lose it all—the children that would become strangers, the memories of her life vanishing, and their good fortune wrecked by the Embroidered Guard?
“It might all be for nothing. With the Embroidered Guard upon us...” Quyen had never been a good liar, and she knew it.
“I can lie,” the Honoured Ancestress said, low and serene.
“You’re not human.” She was a Mind, impervious to the passage of time, present in ten thousand places at once. But she followed rules and logics which had been set down by humans. “You weren’t made to lie.”
“Neither was I made to fall apart,” the Honoured Ancestress said, gravely. “Or to malfunction. I can try, at the very least.”
It wouldn’t work, Quyen thought, but could not say it aloud, could not contradict an elder.
“You worry too much, child,” the Honoured Ancestress said. “Take each thing as they come, within the flow of the universe.”
The flow of the universe. She was the one who faced the darkness of oblivion, and She could still give lessons in humility. “Oh, Grandmother.” Quyen stifled a bitter laugh, staring at the darkness. “What will we do without you?”
The Honoured Ancestress said nothing. The touch against Quyen’s mind faded, and she found herself staring at Xuan Rua and at Bao. “She agrees.” She kept her voice cool and steady, as if she were not breaking inside. “Go seek out the rest of the family. We might as well do this before the Embroidered Guard arrives.”
***
Huu Hieu in repose looked, if anything, worse than he had in the vat. What the bots had pulled had looked like a corpse, and had allowed her the illusion of thinking him dead. What Linh saw now turned her stomach: the skin that looked too pale to be natural, the bruises on the throat and under the eyes a darkened blue, like ink that had lost its virtue; the shorn scalp, glistening with perfumed oil; and the faint smell of fish sauce that seemed to cling to him, no longer the bright memories of childhood, but the rank, sour odour of rotting fish.
The Embroidered Guard. They were coming.
It wasn’t the arrest, or even the thought of being brought back to the capital as a prisoner. Linh’s family had long since died, and she would not disappoint them, or even bring punishment upon them. She did not fear death, or shame, but rather it was the thought that her memorial had been for nothing, that her words would be dismissed as the ramblings of a diseased mind, and that the war would go on, tearing the Empire apart.
That people like her and Giap would have died for nothing, changing nothing in the world.
Then again, she was one to talk—the brilliant scholar, the fearsome magistrate without a tribunal, standing in a spirits-forsaken station and railing about the world. As if she’d ever made a difference. What arrogance!
Another, better scholar would have committed suicide. Linh had no such courage.
So, after all, she thought, looking down at Huu Hieu, perhaps I am the coward, and you the braver one of both of us. Perhaps. He would have laughed at the thought, had his lungs not been wrung out by bots to resuscitate him.
The room’s wall were painted the red of good fortune, and the closed doors bore guardian spirits on both sides to keep evil spirits out, and to prevent the ghosts of the dead from flitting around Prosper. A strong smell of camphor and musk rose from Huu Hieu’s body: ointments for the healing of wounds, for keeping the body warm against the cold of the underworld.
She was turning to leave the room, when something brushed her, a fluttering touch that was all too familiar. “Honoured Ancestress?”
“He is awake, child,” the Honoured Ancestress said.
What? Linh’s gaze moved to Huu Hieu. His eyes were closed. But no, they were blinking, and a thin, narrowed line trembled between the upper and lower eyelids. Awake. Watching. Too weak to speak, or too angry to do so.
“You are...” Linh said, but the pressure against her mind was weak, the thin liquid of blood leaking away from cut veins. “I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t quite sure why.
“You worry too much, child. This is no longer your business. Leave the family to sort its own problems.”
The family, which did not include her. Of course. It was only to be expected, after what she’d done “I don’t worry,” Linh said. But the Honoured Ancestress was gone, leaving an odd emptiness in Linh’s stomach.
Huu Hieu was still watching her. He lay back like a corpse, with only the eyes alive in the whole of his face. But his voice, when he spoke, was perfectly composed. “They say you and Brother Bao pulled me from the vat.”
“Yes.” Linh found herself moving. Everything felt so far away, seemed to be happening to someone else on some distant planet. Her hand moved towards his and rested, lightly, on the bruised and pallid flesh. “I’m sorry.” She called up the trance, felt its shards gathering itself around her, and felt the Honoured Ancestress’s touch across her mind, light and fleeting, and inf
initely more frightening than the pressure.
The landscape that took shape was ruined. The mountains Linh had called up reared against a torn sky, with stars falling like rain from the devastated Heavens. The grass under their feet was run through with cracks; beyond the island of safety where they both stood, the landscape dissolved away into darkness.
Huu Hieu, grimacing, stood tall. But even in the designed environment his skin was awfully pale, with the bluish marks of the bruises at his throat, shining in the starlight through the cracks in his robes. He watched her, as if waiting for something more, and she wasn’t sure she could give him the words.
“I thought I could be smarter than Quyen. I never meant to...” Linh’s words trailed into insignificance, swallowed by the darkness around them, by Huu Hieu’s burning gaze. “But I won’t apologise for pulling you from the vats.”
Huu Hieu made a low, rasping sound. It was only after a while that she realised it was laughter, coming from lungs that remained weak, even in this environment. Everything about him seemed smaller than it had been and in a way she couldn’t pinpoint, for he’d never been someone she respected, not like Giap or Lady Oanh.
“Oh, Cousin,” he said. “That was the most graceless apology I’ve ever heard.”
“And have you been hearing many of them, lately?”
That silenced him. She realised how sharp, how unpleasantly cutting she’d become. “I’m sorry.” Linh brushed her hands against the silk of her robes, feeling the cloth under her fingers, fibre by broken fibre. “I only came to see how you were doing. But I don’t want to disturb you further, and I’m the last person who should be here.”
“You’re the only one.” Huu Hieu’s gaze was mirthless.
“Hasn’t your brother—”
“My brother’s a coward.” His eyes burnt with an expression that made her uncomfortable, even though it wasn’t directed at her. “He spit out the world a long time ago, and he hasn’t looked back.”
“He saved your life.”
“Perhaps,” Huu Hieu said. “Or perhaps that was you.”
Both of us. You wouldn’t still be alive if it hadn’t been for both of us. “The girls have been here, I’m sure.” She wasn’t sure where the perverse desire to contradict him came from; how she, of all people, found herself defending Prosper and its family. “You’re not alone, Cousin.”
“After this, I might as well be. Quyen will make sure that I’m never alone again, never trusted again. Spirits, I’ll be lucky to be invited to the family banquets.” Again, that rasping sound. “You showed her she wasn’t mistress of Prosper. I’m glad for that, if nothing else.”
“I...I did this to you.” All of this: the empty room where his body lay, the faint smell of fish sauce, the door that wouldn’t open from the inside, the taut face that looked as though it would split open to reveal the cruel smile of a demon. She wanted to apologise again, but how many times could she repeat empty words without becoming empty herself?
Huu Hieu blinked, slowly. “We did many things to each other, cousin, and I don’t think it will do us any good to keep track of it all. It’s this place, this wretched place, where they never stop watching, where they never stop judging. It makes monsters out of us.” His voice was shaking.
And some of us are already monsters, First Ancestor Thanh Thuy said in Linh’s mind. Her disapproval spread like an ink stain, dirtying everything it touched. Linh extended a hand, touching Huu Hieu’s skin, feeling it yield against her fingers, too soft and supple to be anything but that of an old man.
“Peace, then?”
“Peace.” Huu Hieu smiled, bitterly. “We’re both the same, after all. You and me against the world. Against Prosper, against Cousin Quyen.”
Both the same. And welcome to each other, with Cousin Quyen’s blessing. The thought rankled, somehow. Both the same. The eyes trained on her burnt with hatred, and that seemed to be the only thing left to Huu Hieu, the only emotion animating him: not love, not affection for his daughters, or belief in his own future. “You’re going to try again, aren’t you.”
Huu Hieu said nothing. Behind him, the sky was falling apart. All the stars were gone, and the darkness deepened to reveal an abyss hungry for all human lives into which everything was falling, from Linh to the Honoured Ancestress to the whole of Prosper.
“I’m sorry,” Linh said. “Of all people, I don’t have the right to ask you this. You don’t want me to know.” But she knew, already. As Bao said, she’d taken his measure, and seen everything there was to see. He’d try, again and again, until he was finally successful. And he wouldn’t be doing it to escape Prosper and a life grown too confining, or to keep the dignity he’d had in life.
No, he’d do it because he wanted to rankle Quyen. Because he wanted to show her that she wasn’t mistress of his fate; and to leave her to deal with the scandal and the mess of his suicide.
She could have appealed to his love for his daughters, but she knew already that it had been scoured clean away from him, that he was a husk, a ghost already moved by anger, hungering only for revenge.
We are the same.
And the thought was a stain within her, spreading like First Ancestor Thanh Thuy’s disapproval, like the Honoured Ancestress’ touch. The same. Shambling corpses, exhaling only hatred, hollowed out by it. The same.
“No,” she said, slowly. “You’re right. I don’t want to know.” She let the environment fall away; stared down at him, old and hollowed before his time, and felt revulsion rise in her like a wave.
Slowly, she walked towards the door, emptied of everything, standing balanced upon the Great Void. She wanted the world to fold itself back and embrace her. She wanted Giap to be alive, her tribunal overflowing with complainants, and none of that would ever come to pass. Child. The Honoured Ancestress had named her well; had named them well.
Her fingers were digging into the skin of her palm, so hard blood flowed. Child. Named well.
At the door she turned, stared at Huu Hieu, until he looked puzzled. “Linh? What’s the matter?”
“She was wrong.” Linh’s voice started low, and gained with every word; the magistrate’s mask slipping on once again, lending her the strength she’d lacked since the beginning. “Wrong, don’t you see? We’re not the same, Cousin. And I’ll prove it to her.”
If Huu Hieu said anything behind her as she turned away, she didn’t hear it. The door closed and cut her off from him. The metal of Prosper Station lay between them like an unbreakable wall, like a broken bridge across Heaven, one that could never be mended.
***
Quyen stood in the heartroom, watching a simple thing: a clock on the walls, wedged between the flowing lines of text. Another clock, a physical one, with a mechanism of shimmering metals that made a noise like a heartbeat, stood at the foot of the Honoured Ancestress’ core, marking time.
Quyen held the trance, lightly. She felt the Honoured Ancestress’s presence recede as Bao and the other members of the family moved eight-sided mirrors, drove copper nails, and cut through cables, rerouting the power to empty sections of corridors; shifting the balance of the elements within the station, smothering the Honoured Ancestress’s voice.
The equivalent, she thought, shivering, of putting a man to sleep before opening up his brain. That was the schematics.
Around her, the station was deserted. They had notified the inhabitants of Prosper to remain inside their homes. As the power receded, the lights and the temperature regulation became more erratic, discouraging people from wandering outside.
Quyen held a single blade in her hand and watched the clock. When the time was right, she would cut the three cables in the centre, moments after Xuan Rua and the others cut three cables in their own section. This would reroute the power...
No, this was the wrong word. It would render the Honoured Ancestress unconscious, and, when She woke up again She would have to mould herself to Prosper’s new shape. And She would be irretrievably, irremediably changed.
She could hear the breath of the Honoured Ancestress, coursing around her through every vent and every metal sheet, until the entire room seemed to be Her trembling body. She could imagine the station from the outer rings to the family quarters; she could breathe in, and remember that it would never, ever be the same again.
The colours around her were slowly bleeding, the pressure in the room rising to meet the hollow in her stomach. “Child.” The Honoured Ancestress’ voice was small, as if coming from very far away.
“Grandmother.” Her throat felt dry and everything seemed to be far away from her, happening in another of the myriad worlds under the Buddha’s gaze. “I’m sorry, we didn’t find Du Khach’s implant.” Bao and the attendants had searched the school, thoroughly, and found nothing. “I would have liked you to have it.” A last gift, to reassure the Honoured Ancestress, at the very end, to show Her that Quyen could keep her promises, that she was capable of guiding the station in the lonely years that would follow.
The pressure against her mind was kind, a mother’s gentle caress. “It doesn’t matter, child. You have other things to worry about.”
But it did matter, in the light of all her other failures and of the decision sitting on her shoulders like a demon, gnawing away at her mind. “Grandmother, there is still time.”
Silence. The pressure abating a fraction, like a stuttering heartbeat. “No,” the Honoured Ancestress said. “I won’t live like this, child. I cannot.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” Quyen said, every word burning like a hot stone in her throat.
She remembered her first time in Prosper. She stood in a corridor, just on the other side of the wall from the ship that had brought her in, going to meet a husband she had only exchanged a few calls with—her own ancestors honoured by her sister’s children, her family line merging with his own, everything that had made her until now undone, flapping loose in the wind like torn flesh.
On a Red Station, Drifting Page 11