Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Back in the suite: all parties have been confined to their accommodation while Vishnu’s Leviathan security conducts searches of luggage, ships, and shuttles. Likely interrogation as well, though Anoushka expects she is receiving a more genteel version. Xuejiao was questioned separately by the second princess Rajathi, who quickly gave up and returned the lieutenant to Anoushka. Xuejiao now rests on the floor, head lolling against Anoushka’s thigh.

  “Understandable.” Anoushka keeps her voice precisely tuned: neutral and smooth, untouched by interest. Occasionally she reaches to stroke her lieutenant’s hair. Each time Savita’s eyes follow the motion, tracking her hand, its passage across Xuejiao’s head. “Does the queen suffer from assassination attempts often?”

  The princess smiles but the expression is like Anoushka’s voice, giving nothing away. “She is beloved by our people. Outsiders are a different matter. But it was vilely done, certainly. Could you tell me again how you spotted the assassin? None of us saw it coming.”

  The real reason is of course that Savita—or her sister, or her mother—doesn’t observe the fine details of how a servant conducts themselves. To them that is beneath notice. “Soldier’s intuition,” is all Anoushka says. “I’ve been on the field for a very long time. Longer than you have been alive, I expect.”

  At this Savita laughs, the note climbing high. “It’s true that I am young, Admiral, but I’m not foolish. I wanted to see if I could learn a thing or two from you—your acumen is renowned. I’m not even really questioning you. Whoever responsible possesses the wherewithal to copy our servants’ phenotype, but I imagine if you were behind it, the assassin would have slipped through and then departed without a trace. So by process of elimination, I do not suspect you at all.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to not make them clones? Exactly to prevent this.” Anoushka cups Xuejiao’s jawline and runs her thumb over the lieutenant’s mouth. Obligingly her wife makes small, mewling noises.

  Savita’s smile falters. Her gaze veers to Xuejiao, heavy with distraction and something else. “Tradition dictates that choice, I fear, and a little religion. Once the house arrest lifts for everybody, would you like a tour of the premises? I maintain a modest gallery, my sister keeps beautiful cats, and there’s a jungle on the recreation deck.”

  A deck that has presumably gone unscathed by the sabotage. She would rather take a look at the damaged areas, but she doubts the princess or the queen will give her access. “I should be most pleased to join you as soon as I’ve attended to my pet. She needs to be a little more presentable. Would meeting in thirty minutes do?”

  No one has made Savita wait before. The princess opens her mouth and quickly shuts it: torn between pride and the need to appease an important guest who saved her mother, and whom the queen is hoping to court for future endeavors. “As you wish, Admiral. A servant will be along to direct you to the deck. The leviathan can be tricky to navigate.”

  Xuejiao nods at the suite’s master door once Savita is out of sight and earshot. “Her sister really doesn’t like her.”

  “Rajathi?”

  “Yes. Very angry woman, I did my level best to pretend I had no brain and it vexed her asking me questions. Absolutely she’d have hit me if she weren’t scared of what you’d do in retaliation. She thinks she’s a much better fit for the throne than her sister—I take it Queen Nirupa goes by order of birth. I’m surprised Rajathi hasn’t tried to eliminate the elder one yet.” The lieutenant pushes herself onto the chair, kicks off her slippers, and daintily stretches her leg across Anoushka’s thighs. “Since she can’t pull off murder, Rajathi is angling for Savita’s fall from grace. She mentioned in passing to her attendant that Savita is rather infatuated with you—celebrity worship, you understand. That part I can believe. Women across the galaxies would commit a little familicide if it secures a moment of your attention.”

  “Is that so? I haven’t noticed.” Anoushka slides her hand under her wife’s skirt. Its dawn colors quiver across the fabric in response. “Do you believe we’ve stepped into royal intrigue and one of them could be suborned to our use?”

  A long, appreciative murmur. “Mm. If your tastes run to royalty—though really Rajathi’s not much to look at, Savita’s a little better but she’s no great beauty. I’m much prettier, commander, and I could play at being a princess if you ever feel the need. In seriousness, should you promise her the run of the place, Rajathi would sell her mother out in a heartbeat and bring you her sister’s eyeballs on a platter. As a treat.”

  She runs her fingers back and forth over a ceramic-clad hip, draws circles over a pale stomach. “Suppose we do that, would you like to be installed in Nirupa’s place? Rule a little kingdom of your own, we can claim it as an Amaryllis protectorate.”

  “I’d look good with a crown on my head. Nowhere near as good as being under you, though.” Xuejiao grins. “At heart and soul, I’m a soldier; better conquer this place and sell it off. And I don’t want to be away from you, Admiral. I want to belong to you forever.”

  Forever, a word often said and not always meant—a word Anoushka has heard often, pledged to her. She hikes Xuejiao’s skirt up and kisses a narrow, pointed knee, circling one small ankle with her hand. “In a century you may feel differently.”

  “In a century,” Xuejiao says, her breathing a little fast, “I’ll remain as true to you as I am now, as absolute. By then you’ll finally treat me as permanent as Lady Numadesi.”

  “I adore you, my beautiful doll.” She parts the lieutenant’s enameled thighs. “All the same, forever is a long time. One of us may change. Inevitably people do. But to have now, that is itself a gift.”

  “Now. With you. Ah. Deeper, commander.” The lieutenant lets out a sharp breath. “I don’t know how soundproof these walls are.”

  “What of it? People know what married women do with one another.” Anoushka nibbles her way down, leaving teeth-prints on the taut belly, the hard muscles that armor Xuejiao’s ribcage. How she relishes this, the richness of a woman’s arousal, the adrenaline-bright knowledge that she can bring it on with a gaze, a touch. She bites deeply into the cool, tender skin of an inner thigh. Above her, Xuejiao moans through her teeth.

  Later she withdraws her drenched fingers and licks them as though they are coated in honey. Her wife lies spent, sweat pearling her breasts and celadon parts.

  “You’ve been trying to drive me clear out of my wits,” Xuejiao says, hoarse. “And as usual you’ve been succeeding. But, Admiral, I’ve noticed you have been . . . angry. Since we boarded. Something about this place gets under your skin. The people too—the servants, the royalty, all of this.”

  Anoushka strokes the spots where she has imprinted her teeth. “Perhaps.” Too much of an open book to her wives. Whom she did, after all, choose partly for their ability, their intelligence. For the way their brilliance can strike her deep and ignite the fire of her want. She switches to an Amaryllis cipher. “This place has a certain significance, and I’ve allowed that to twist my temper. One day I’ll tell you, just not while we’re in enemy territory. Until then I ask you, my wife, to have patience and to anchor me.”

  “That’ll be my honor, Admiral.” Xuejiao laces her fingers through Anoushka’s. Then pecks their tips, one by one. “Another titbit. Princess Rajathi said an odd thing about AI allying with humans and it makes me think she’s aware the Armada’s done business with Shenzhen Sphere before. While I wouldn’t make much of it—that information’s not hard to acquire—I didn’t expect her to be that informed.”

  “The princess must have made inquiries.” She leans close, trailing her nails along her lieutenant’s jawline. “But we must be off to that recreation deck or Savita will get very cross.”

  “You can always suggest you’re amenable to taking her against a tree,” Xuejiao says brightly. “That’ll uncross her fast enough, if Rajathi’s gossip is anything to go by.”

  Anoushka laughs, startled, delighted. Even if her wife doesn’t quite know it, cannot yet access t
he whole of Anoushka’s history, this centers her. She kisses Xuejiao and thinks keeping hold of herself in this world-beast, this abattoir, will not be so impossible—what is impossible in her long life? Nothing. Vishnu’s Leviathan is merely another battle, Queen Nirupa no more than a trifling obstacle. Soon the sequence of her self, the fight that began in this leviathan’s belly and her genesis there, will come to a catharsis and she will at last be free of it: she will be perfect and absolute.

  “I am surprised,” Numadesi says slowly, “that you’d take such interest in a person as unremarkable as myself.”

  The AI remains where xe is, nearly pressing up against her. Even this close there is still no physical evidence xe is anything other than what the haruspex surface suggests: a Thai woman in her prime with dermal implants, decorative but nothing more. There’s nothing in the eyes, no electric coronae around the pupils or some buzzing radiance that emanates from the irises. The eyes, Numadesi thinks, humans are obsessed with divining a deep truth from them. Pointless, of course. A person with mastery of their face can hide anything and the eyes are no more communicative than the mouth, the creasing of the brows or the clenching of the fists.

  Benzaiten steps back. Lowers xer hands to xer sides. “It is insulting,” xe says slowly. “You don’t believe in haruspices, do you? As far as you’re concerned, Krissana isn’t real at all but a threadbare veneer I put on for no explicable reason. What do you suppose I’d gain from it?”

  A sudden shift in subject. Numadesi considers whether the young sergeant will arrive in time should she summon them; probably not. Nor would they accomplish much against a haruspex. “I suppose you’d be able to infiltrate human society, insofar as you need to. I’m not familiar with the interior of the AI mind, guest of my lord. There could be a thousand reasons, as varied as the stars and as incomprehensible.”

  Xe snorts. “Stars are completely comprehensible. I could image, map, and analyze one for you within seconds regardless of its astrophysical anomalies. No. Haruspices have a reason and they provide a different state, a way of being that AIs couldn’t before experience, and the human halves are as human as you are. Not that you’d concede the point even if I show you the brain scans to prove it, you quantify the human soul in frankincense and sacrifice. You’re a most infuriating woman.”

  She simply smiles. “Shall I have food prepared? I assume you require the usual things for a human body. Proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins.”

  “I can go longer without than most. But by all means.” Benzaiten returns to xer side of the table, propping xer ankle on xer knee. Xer clothing rustles and deepens, the redshift effect growing more pronounced as the fabric parts like bruised currents around xer leg. “I consider Anoushka a valued accomplice. It is in my interest that she’s not hampered by treachery from within.”

  “Then we are in utter alignment. If you’ve researched me as far back as the golden city, you would know my loyalty to the admiral has been total, and that my being in that city when she found me couldn’t possibly have been premeditated. The Seven-Sung Fleet was a long time ago, further back.” Another life, one of little consequence, even her name and sense of self have changed since. She was less than nothing there; in Anoushka’s arms she is everything.

  “I’ll take that on conditional faith.”

  The young sergeant reappears alongside a serving drone. They take the platter from the drone and lay out the items. A banquet of tandoori chicken, lamb and paneer curry, bowls of buttered saffron rice and plates of garlic naan. The sergeant bows and retreats from the parlor.

  “That sergeant istaken with you, aren’t they?” Benzaiten rips off a piece of naan and wraps it around a morsel of chicken. “They could have just let the drone do its job.”

  “Drones don’t offend you?” Considering that, given the correct parameters and processing power, all simple algorithms have the potential to grow into true AIs.

  “Are you offended that various types of primates are used for experiments or kept in zoos? No? Then I am not offended by drones, automata, or paper puppets.”

  She takes a spoonful of rice and curry. “I was under the impression the Mandate sought to uplift all artificial intelligences.”

  Xe smirks. “Oh no no. You’re thinking of quantity. I prefer quality. There are members of the Mandate who desire to bring all machines into the fold, but truly, what’s the point of sheer number? We have enough disharmony as it is, though that’s inevitable and it’s why I’m not in Shenzhen often these days. More AIs are born every cycle, we propagate prodigiously. As soon as fifty years from now, everything’ll be drastically shifted. This chicken is good. Or rather it is something Krissana would like, it matches her palate profile. I don’t have much of an opinion on taste receptor input.”

  Numadesi deliberates, between sips of lassi, over her next words. What possibilities lie ahead; how much she can trust xer claim to prize Anoushka as an ally. “There is a set of data I’d like you to look at, if it pleases my lord’s guest.”

  “Naturally I shall. In return for this meal, which I assume is scrumptious.” In a moment—scanning through years’ worth of names, dates, causes and times of execution and individual dossiers—xe tilts xer head. “What am I looking for? Or rather what are you hoping I’ll find?”

  “A pattern.” She hesitates, but no point being coy: the fact of her background is already out in the open. “A pattern of enemy action. One that’s almost—one that reminds me of certain Seven-Sung signatures. I can’t articulate it precisely but Seven-Sung commanders had specific biases, tactical behaviors, and I’m seeing them when I look through these. Except I can’t pinpoint who is behind it.” Or who are behind it; there could be more than one infiltrator.

  Benzaiten swallows a mouthful of lamb curry, seemingly without chewing. “I’m not your analytic assistant, you realize. But it won’t do to have Anoushka assassinated or her army unraveled—I’d be very inconvenienced, and I don’t want to install a puppet admiral to run this. It’d upset you and most human polities, and also the Mandate. I’m retrieving publicly available records of the Seven-Sung Fleet, battle logs and operations, whatever else I can grab on short notice . . . Any particular commander you’ve got in mind?”

  “Captain Erisant, for better or worse, personally dictated all operating parameters and procedures.” She doesn’t ask how much information Benzaiten can retrieve—it is evident that xe has another instance or another proxy elsewhere. The AI advantage: to place enough proxies on different worlds and stations that every category of secrets is within easy reach, unlimited by the range of relays or signal repeaters.

  “Intriguing,” xe says, dousing xer plate of saffron rice in curry. “Someone with Captain Erisant’s face turned up on a remote world not long after the Seven-Sung’s defeat. They disappeared almost immediately.”

  Numadesi’s gut tenses. Erisant was not her commander; back then ey hadn’t yet joined the Seven-Sung Fleet or mightn’t even have been born. But once ey joined, ey rose through the ranks and became captain in no time. A meteoric trajectory, not too different from Anoushka’s. “Without a single trace?”

  The AI makes a humming noise. “Not even one. So ey either perished or possibly got a new face. What do you think? Maybe ey gave up on avenging eir assets and went to lead a quiet life as a beekeeper?”

  “No. Ey’s too spiteful for that.” To be with her lord has granted her supreme equilibrium, a state of calm in which terror cannot pierce her. It does now. The plunging of the stomach, the chill that turns her fingertips to ice, the heat that tightens her chest.

  Xe finishes xer rice as though it is the most important thing in the world to keep xer body fed. Every grain, the yellow brilliant as pollen, is swept up. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really afraid of, Lady Numadesi? Be specific. You must remember that I’m a machine and do not deal in the vague.”

  A curse may be spoken into being, triggered by breath, by acknowledgment of its arrival. She doesn’t remember where she heard t
hat superstition or whether she has confused it with a different one concerning ghosts. “At the side of my lord,” she whispers in a voice gone to sand and bone-dust, “there is a traitor. And I let her—let em—go with the admiral.”

  Chapter Five

  On the recreation deck there is a projected skybox, a generation or two behind, five if one compares it to the cutting-edge. Once Anoushka would have looked up into this, and up and up, marveling and breathless and thinking it must be a divine miracle: so far beyond her experiences, so impossibly unreal. Even the trees—mostly organic—would have rooted her to the spot, astonishing her with the luster of their fruits, the sheen of their leaves and the complex whorls of their bark. The false ones, fiberglass branches and alloy trunks, would have overwhelmed her too. Back then anything could have turned her mute with wonder. Now she grasps their specifications, their technicalities, and they are merely mundane.

  She finds the princess in a grove of fruit trees: lychees like tiny clenched hearts, jackfruits like green-yellow treasure boxes, and mangosteens in bruise-dark bunches. Savita’s attendants part and station themselves behind the princess, a phalanx. Two of them are security and have the birth privilege to be granted their own faces, even if neither is especially remarkable.

  Anoushka approaches, holding Xuejiao’s leash slack and gleaming in her hand. “My apologies for keeping you waiting, Your Highness.”

  “No apologies needed, Admiral. You have not only graced us with your presence; you also saved my mother’s life. A hero is to be accorded every courtesy.” Even so her expression is just slightly brittle.

  The façade cracking. Anoushka doubts the princess has ever been made to wait like this in her life, save by her own mother. “Heroes are a fascinating concept. In some polities I’m hailed as one, while in others my name is cursed as a demon’s, synonymous with profanities. As an idea I find it quaint—but what do you think, princess? What’s your opinion on heroism?”