by E. Lily Yu
Between shelves showing paper books in augmens visuals, Lunha waits. She passes the time reading poetry, immersing herself in Huasing’s interlocking seven-ten stanzas, Gweilin’s interstitial prose-sculpture telling of the sun-archer and her moon-wife. They eel through her awareness, comforting, the balm of familiarity.
Xinjia arrives, eventually. It is where she comes to think when she needs solitude, and from what Lunha can tell solitude is precious to her these days, too rare.
The scriptorium is large, and Lunha did not go sixty years in the army without learning stealth. She finds a space to occupy, a blind spot where Xinjia will not look, and for a time simply observes.
Xinjia looks at peace, striding easily to the mat and the bar. She sheds her slippers, most of her clothes, until she is down to pastel secondskin, lavender shifting to gray as she moves. Hands on the bar she arches backward, stretching until her neck cords, the muscles in her torso pushing out in bas-relief.
Lunha turns off vocal mods and says, in her own voice, “Xinjia.”
Her former wife straightens quickly, supple—sinuous. They had elaborate pet names for each other once. Bai Suzhen for Xinjia, after the white snake of legend.
A precipice moment, but Xinjia does not fall. “General Lunha is dead. What are you?”
“A ghost.” Lunha reaches into Tiansong’s grid. Of course there’s a copy of her in the archive of primaries, her knowledge and victories turned to clan wisdom. “But you would be familiar with that.”
“Shall I offer you tea?”
“No,” Lunha says, though she follows when Xinjia leads her to the low table, the cushions. “How have you been?”
“You’d be familiar with updates on me.”
“First of Tiansong.”
“It was necessary to obtain that title to do what needs doing.” Xinjia calls up the ghost: Lunha’s face, serene. Feminine. Xinjia did not much like it when, on rare occasions, Lunha was a man. “This contains much of how you planned, how you dealt with your enemies.”
“The data they sent home would be scoured of classified information.” A jar of ashes, after a fashion.
“I was more interested in how you thought. Strange, but I don’t think I ever knew you so well as posthumously.” The secondskin has absorbed sweat, leaves only a trace of clean, saline scent. Xinjia has never worn perfume. Offstage she goes through the world strictly as herself. “There were votes to input your data to a replicant. I overrode it.”
“We haven’t been spouses for a long time.”
“I remarried,” Xinjia says, “into Silent Bridge. And so we are family, which gives me some rights over managing your image. Your mothers agreed with me the replicant idea was . . . abhorrent. May I touch you?”
Lunha nods and watches Xinjia’s thumb follow the line of her jaw, her nose, her mouth. There Xinjia stops, a weight of consideration, a pressure of shared recall.
“Is it surgery or are you wearing something over your face?”
“The latter,” she says against Xinjia’s finger and entertains the thought of their first time together, feeding each other slices of persimmon, licking the sweetness off each other’s hand. Slick fabrics that warmed to them, braids of sheet slithering against hips and thighs and ankles. For sex Xinjia never liked a still bed. “Why have you undertaken this?”
“A glitch,” Xinjia says, in that detached way. Her hand has drifted away to rest—as though incidentally—on Lunha’s knee. “A glitch that left some out of sync, myself among them. What was it? Something happening on Yodsana, an explosion at a resort. Just a tidbit of news, insignificant, nothing to do with us. I think I was looking up Yodsana puppet theater, or else I’d never have noticed. To me the resort was operating as usual. To everyone else it’d gone up in flames, fifty tourists dead. I made a note to myself. Except a few days later I couldn’t remember why or what it was about. What did I care?”
“That happens.” Rarely. Beyond rare.
Xinjia smiles, faint. “I followed some leads, made discoveries, gained contacts. It isn’t just me, Lunha. As we speak disconnect is happening on more worlds than you realize, one or two persons at a time. I’ve only taken it to a larger scale.”
“You will take all of Tiansong with you.”
“Enough of Tiansong wanted this that they elected me First. Can you imagine how I felt when—” Xinjia blinks, pulls away. A command brings up a floor compartment: a set of cups, a dispenser. “When did they let you . . . ?”
“General. After three successful campaigns.” At this point it seems senseless to keep unsaid. “I underwent preparatory conditioning to minimize dissonance, though at the time I didn’t realize what it was for.”
“Hegemonic personnel must’ve let it slip. To friends, loved ones.”
“Seldom. Easily overwritten.” Easily detected. The penalties exorbitant.
“You are all right with this?” Xinjia pours. Chrysanthemum steam, the tea thick with tiny black pearls harvested from Razor Garden orchards. “Sixty years in service, an illustrious career. You can’t understand at all why I’m doing this, why others want me to do this?”
“In principle I can guess. In practice—this is not wise.”
A cup is slid toward her. “They can take all we are from us. They can rob us of our languages, our cities, our names; they can make us strangers to ourselves and to our ghosts, until there’s no one left to tend the altars or follow the hour of thought or sweep the graves.”
Lunha sips. She misses touch, not just any human contact but Xinjia’s specifically. “The Hegemony has no cause to do that. The amount of rewriting it’d take would be colossal.”
“It would cost them less to reduce Tiansong to scorch marks than to process that much. Yes. Should they find a reason though, my soldier, they will do it. Changing us a little at a time. Perhaps one day we’ll stop lighting the incenses, the next we’ll have Costeya replicants cooking for us. After a month, no one dances anymore the way I do. Instead: Costeya scripts, chrome stages and replicants performers, like on Imral and Salhune. They’ve this hold on our . . . everything. That I cannot abide.” Her former wife, someone else’s now, looks up. “I believed that neither would you.”
“Xinjia. Bai Suzhen.” Lunha does not reach out, still, will not be the one to yield tenderness. They haven’t been spouses for so long. “Eighty years ago there was a conflict between Iron Gate and Crimson Falls. It was escalating. It’d have torn Tiansong apart, a field of ruins and carcasses, until the Hegemony intervened. A thorough edit. Now no one remembers that; now Iron Gate and Crimson Falls are at peace. You may not believe it, but that is what soldiers fight for—to preserve equilibrium, to bring stability.”
“To enforce the Hegemonic definition of that.”
“It’s one that works.”
“And the massacres of Tiansong empresses when Costeya first took over, what about that? Is that stability; is that peace? Or is it bygones simply because it’s been all of three centuries? No. Don’t answer that.”
“There are planets now which suffer much worse. I’ve been there; I’ve ordered their ruin and the execution of their citizens.” Lunha knows that she has failed, already. That there was never a way to win. Not here.
“You are not yourself,” Xinjia says softly.
“I am. I have always been myself.”
“Then there is no ground on which we can meet. Perhaps there never has been.”
Lunha drinks until there’s no more in her cup, tea or pearl. “I will find a way to keep Tiansong safe.”
In the end neither of them surrenders. They do not touch; they do not kiss. A parting of strangers’ courtesy.
“Isren.”
It takes no more than that, on their unique frequency, to summon the operative. A link, with visuals to let her know Isren remains in the habitat. “Yes, General?”
“I could not dissuade First of Tiansong.”
“In that case please head for Iron Gate. There’ll be a shuttle keyed to one of our ships in
orbit.”
“No.” Lunha gazes out through the round window, makes it widen to take up the whole wall. Silent Bridge at midday is platinum. “Bring me armor. I expect it within seventy-two hours. Are you authorized to officiate a duel?”
Her handler’s expression does not change, save for a rapid blink. “That’s not what we had in mind, General.”
“A duel minimizes collateral damage. Tiansong’s representative wins and we leave it under embargo, to limit the influence of disconnect. If Xinjia is assassinated, apprehended or otherwise forcibly stopped there will be others, and not on this world alone. It’ll be almost impossible to track the unsynchronized.” It is not a certainty, but it is how Xinjia would have learned to plot from Lunha’s image. “I win and Tiansong gives up its schemes, surrenders to reintegration. I don’t lose, Operative Isren.”
“You invoke an archaic statute.”
“I invoke it correctly, and this is not the first time I’ve pushed to resolve by single combat. This is a situation where military destruction is untenable, diplomatic solution impossible.”
“If you lose, General, I’ll be overriding the result.” Isren is silent for a moment. “A duel to the death.”
“So it goes.”
She sends word to Xinjia to choose a single-combat proxy, briskly outlining the terms. Xinjia accepts them immediately. They are the best that can be had, under the circumstances.
Lunha revokes the edits she made and takes off the facial mesh. She spends some time cleaning, hot water this side of scalding, balm and pigments to smooth away marks left by the mesh. Tiansong commanders of old did that, purify mind and body before going into battle, and Lunha has always followed suit. Not much time for the mind, but few engagements ever gave her the leisure.
Isren’s arrival is not covert, and Silent Bridge is prepared. Lunha watches a feed from the operative’s eyes as the primaries greet the neutrois, coolly formal. Isren’s readouts telling who is disconnected: Lunha’s mothers, two other primaries, distant cousins Lunha doesn’t know—too young.
They escort Isren, courteous. Lunha does not admit them into her room. Her mothers catch a glimpse of her face—her own, the face she was born and grew up with—and Mother Yinliang’s eyes widen, stricken.
Isren unpacks armor, dress uniform, more weapons. “I assumed you’d want this to be ceremonious. I’ve obtained authorization for your . . . tactical decision.”
Perhaps she should’ve found time to speak to her mothers, Lunha thinks, but it is too late, she moved too fast. Odd, that. In battle there’s never been such a thing as too fast. “I appreciate it.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Isren tilts their head, just enough to emphasize a pale throat notched by a jeweled implant.
“I don’t intend to become familiar with you, Operative.”
The neutrois’ laugh is ambiguous. “I’m married, quite happily. A career soldier like you, though she’s not half as feted. There’s an advantage to partnering within the ranks. Fewer secrets to keep. Speaking of that, has the First of Tiansong gone entirely offline, physically removed the neural implants? Can she still interface with the grid?”
“She’s kept the implants.”
Isren inclines their head. “I’ve sent you a program. Experimental. It’ll reintegrate her into sync. The infiltration method is the best of what we have; all you need is to establish a link with her and it’ll latch on.”
“Side-effects?” Lunha grips the helm in her hands and decides against it. She’ll show her face.
“So far as it’s been tested, none. The worst that could happen is that it won’t work.”
No side-effects. A program that forces neural interface back into the grid, and Isren would have her believe there are no side-effects. Isren wears no immediately visible protection, but they are not without. Lunha calculates her odds of avoiding the nerve toxins and disabling Isren before the operative’s nanos activate. Aloud she says only, “I’ll take that into account, Operative Isren. My thanks.”
At night, Silent Bridge is sapphires. All the colors that sapphires can be, the finest grade and luster.
Under her armor the dress uniform is snug; at her hip the orchid-blade rests with the ease of her own limbs. The winds cut harsh enough to sting and the summit of the great house is sheer, the tiles under them smooth.
Mother Yinliang has no expression anymore; Mother Fangxiu never did. Xinjia merely looks abstract, her gaze apathetic save when it rests on her proxy. A broad woman, sleek and muscled like a fox, veteran champion of Iron Gate pits. An insult, when it comes down to it, though Lunha does not underestimate.
Each pair of eyes records and broadcasts. The uniform, the armor. She is a Hegemonic general. Except for her and Isren there is no hint of Costeya anywhere in Silent Bridge.
Still time to execute that program, General. Isren’s voice through the private band.
Lunha strides forward to pay her mothers respect. Bending one knee, head bowed, the submission of a proper child. Neither answers her; neither touches her head. She accepts that and rises to face the pit fighter.
The first trickle of adrenaline. Her reflexes coil and her mind settles into that space of faceted clarity, the interior of her skull arctic and luminous.
She unsheathes her orchid-blade, its mouths baring teeth to the wind, its teeth clicking hunger to the cold.
They begin.
About the Author
Benjanun Sriduangkaew spends her time on amateur photography, makeup, and cities. Her fiction can be found in GigaNotoSaurus, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and anthologies from Solaris Books and Mythic Delirium.
1016 to 1
James Patrick Kelly
But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.
—Stephen Hawking, “The Future of the Universe”
I remember now how lonely I was when I met Cross. I never let anyone know about it, because being alone back then didn’t make me quite so unhappy. Besides, I was just a kid. I thought it was my own fault.
It looked like I had friends. In 1962, I was on the swim team and got elected Assistant Patrol Leader of the Wolf Patrol in Boy Scout Troop 7. When sides got chosen for kickball at recess, I was usually the fourth or fifth pick. I wasn’t the best student in the sixth grade of John Jay Elementary School—that was Betty Garolli. But I was smart and the other kids made me feel bad about it. So I stopped raising my hand when I knew the answer and I watched my vocabulary. I remember I said albeit once in class and they teased me for weeks. Packs of girls would come up to me on the playground. “Oh Ray,” they’d call and when I turned around they’d scream, “All beat it!” and run away, choking with laughter.
It wasn’t that I wanted to be popular or anything. All I really wanted was a friend, one friend, a friend I didn’t have to hide anything from. Then came Cross, and that was the end of that.
One of the problems was that we lived so far away from everything. Back then, Westchester County wasn’t so suburban. Our house was deep in the woods in tiny Willoughby, New York, at the dead end of Cobb’s Hill Road. In the winter, we could see Long Island Sound, a silver needle on the horizon pointing toward the city. But school was a half hour drive away and the nearest kid lived in Ward’s Hollow, three miles down the road, and he was a dumb fourth-grader.
So I didn’t have any real friends. Instead, I had science fiction. Mom used to complain that I was obsessed. I watched Superman reruns every day after school. On Friday nights Dad used to let me stay up for Twilight Zone, but that fall CBS had temporarily cancelled it. It came back in January after everything happened, but was never quite the same. On Saturdays, I watched old sci-fi movies on Adventure Theater. My favorites were Forbidden Planet and The Day The Earth Stood Still. I think it was because of the robots. I decided that when I grew up and it was the future, I was going to buy one, so I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.
On Monday m
ornings I’d get my weekly allowance—a quarter. Usually I’d get off the bus that same afternoon down in Ward’s Hollow so I could go to Village Variety. Twenty five cents bought two comics and a pack of red licorice. I especially loved DC’s Green Lantern, Marvel’s Fantastic Four and Incredible Hulk, but I’d buy almost any superhero. I read all the science fiction books in the library twice, even though Mom kept nagging me to try different things. But what I loved best of all was Galaxy magazine. Dad had a subscription and when he was done reading them he would slip them to me. Mom didn’t approve. I always used to read them up in the attic or out in the lean-to I’d lashed together in the woods. Afterwards I’d store them under my bunk in the bomb shelter. I knew that after the nuclear war, there would be no TV or radio or anything and I’d need something to keep me busy when I wasn’t fighting mutants.
I was too young in 1962 to understand about Mom’s drinking. I could see that she got bright and wobbly at night, but she was always up in the morning to make me a hot breakfast before school. And she would have graham crackers and peanut butter waiting when I came home—sometimes cinnamon toast. Dad said I shouldn’t ask Mom for rides after five because she got so tired keeping house for us. He sold Andersen windows and was away a lot, so I was pretty much stranded most of the time. But he always made a point of being home on the first Tuesday of the month, so he could take me to the Scout meeting at 7:30.
No, looking back on it, I can’t really say that I had an unhappy childhood—until I met Cross.
I remember it was a warm Saturday afternoon in October. The leaves covering the ground were still crisp and their scent spiced the air. I was in the lean-to I’d built that spring, mostly to practice the square and diagonal lashings I needed for Scouts. I was reading Galaxy. I even remember the story: “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” by Cordwainer Smith. The squirrels must have been chittering for some time, but I was too engrossed by Lord Jestocost’s problems to notice. Then I heard a faint crunch, not ten feet away. I froze, listening. Crunch, crunch . . . then silence. It could’ve been a dog, except that dogs didn’t usually slink through the woods. I was hoping it might be a deer—I’d never seen deer in Willoughby before, although I’d heard hunters shooting. I scooted silently across the dirt floor and peered between the dead saplings.