Void Star

by Zachary Mason

  “Thank you,” she says. “How’d you like to meet me in Japan at the Imperial Tokyo Hotel?”

  * * *

  Packed again, she checks in the bathroom and under the bed for overlooked things.

  She’s getting low on cash. She’s got bank accounts all over the world, three in Switzerland alone, but Crédit Nuage is the most secure and discreet. She goes to its site on her phone, enters her account number and passcode.

  Her money is gone.

  55

  Form on the Water

  Nothing but water, jungle, grey skies, sand. No passing drones, no distant planes, no sound but Kern’s breathing and the waves. Here and there the skeletal, silted branches of drowned trees pierce the surface of the sea. An hour ago he’d tripped on what was once a pipe, is now a solid mass of flaking rust, the only proof that this isn’t new creation. Bugs orbit him, but he’s seen worse, and mosquitoes have never liked him.

  Hours since Akemi spoke a word. He tells himself not to mind—who knows what’s going on with her—though with the risks he’s taking, you’d think she could check in. “I’d like to know more,” he says, out of the blue, hoping she’s listening. “Where I’m going. What it is I’m supposed to do. This all seems … conjectural.”

  No response. He takes off the earpiece and stares into the tiny lens, hoping it will be like meeting her eyes, but there’s no sense of connection. At least for the moment he knows where he’s going, and you can’t get lost following a coastline.

  He reminds himself that if Hiro finds him he can’t let himself be taken; if it comes to that, he has to force them to shoot. It’s a hard thing to face, but this is where his choices have led. Resigned, he feels lighter than ever.

  * * *

  Evening is falling when he sees stellate lights burning on the eaves of huts down the beach. Breaking surf rolls whitely, and a black shape on the water becomes a wetsuit-clad surfer standing up to catch a wave and immediately wiping out. He thinks of Bo from the training camp, wonders what he’s doing.

  On the side of the nearest hut is a placard for Singha beer, weathered almost past legibility. Music from inside. Breakers roll around its stairs; he times them, gets up the stairs dry.

  The decor runs to driftwood and coconut shells; the bartender, who’s your basic sun-ravaged vegan in a coral necklace, glances at him and goes back to his phone. Kern fingers the money in his pocket, wonders how much boats cost, and feels a pang of regret for his suit, which made him feel like someone else but will surely soon be ruined.

  “Nice evening,” says the only other customer, smiling, his voice vaguely British though he looks Chinese. He might be twenty-five, is about Kern’s size, and even though he’s wearing damp board shorts and a frayed T-shirt he has the air of a toff, the slumming son of someone important. Empty glasses arrayed on his table, like he’s settled in for the night.

  “How’d you like to own a genuine Mr. Li suit?” asks Kern.

  “I’d love to,” the man laughs, “but he’s booked out fifteen months in advance. Why, do you have an in?”

  Kern opens his bag, brings out the suit, which is wrinkled but otherwise okay. “No, but I’ve got one of his suits, and I’m looking to sell.”

  The man’s hands run competently over the cloth, checking inside the sleeves, lapels, collar. “This is very nice,” says the man. “And most unexpected. A beautiful suit, and a story to match. How much would you like for it?”

  “I’m open to offers,” Kern says, having no idea.

  The man takes out a glossy leather wallet, riffles through a sheaf of pink yuan, shrugs, proffers it all. “I’m afraid this is all I have with me,” he says. “Consider it a down payment? I’d be happy to get more and meet you back here tomorrow.”

  “Actually, this will do.”

  “It’s really far short of the true value. You’d be losing out.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t need a suit where I’m going,” Kern says, which is probably true but sounds portentous.

  “If you’ll forgive my asking, where’s that?”

  “Fishing,” Kern says. “Tonight.” On impulse he adds, “If you think you still owe me, want to help me find a boat?”

  “I’d be happy to help you find a fishing boat,” the man says, pleased, a rich boy having an adventure, and he radiates a lack of awareness that Kern could have any other reason for wanting a boat. “My name’s Yi Chen, by the way,” he says, offering his hand.

  * * *

  They follow a creek up into the trees in the fading light. Night birds sing invisibly, and clouds of gnats rise with every step. It feels peaceful, but not safe, and he’s starting to worry that it might be a setup when a dog starts barking and a light comes on over the porch of a dilapidated hut.

  A man regards them from a hammock, a rope-muscled Chinese in disintegrating basketball shorts, his teeth as brown as his deeply tanned skin. He’s nothing like Yi Chen, but they seem happy to see each other, and start talking in rapid-fire Mandarin.

  The man heaves himself out of his hammock, scratches his stomach with oil-blackened nails and leads them around the hut to a rotting dock where a small blue-and-white motorboat is tied up, bobbing in the creek.

  “Will this do?” asks Yi Chen, the light of his cell phone wandering over the hull while the other man loads it with jerrycans of fuel.

  “Sure,” says Kern, but then notices pinpoints of light moving inside the boat as Yi Chen moves his cell. He kneels, runs his hand over the hull, finds a cluster of holes in the fiberglass, each the width of a small-arms round, their edges warped inward.

  “Piracy has been known to occur in these waters,” Yi Chen says gravely, almost smiling. “But the boat is perfectly seaworthy—Yu Long here has been out hundreds of times.”

  Yu Long says something, at which Yi Chen frowns and says, “I’m afraid there are only the four cans of diesel. We could get more, if you were willing to wait until morning…” He trails off.

  In his ear Akemi says, “Take what they have and go now.”

  * * *

  He loses the shore as the last light leaves the sky. The village becomes a stain of light on the clouds, then is gone.

  The boat’s outboard motor, coated in thick blue latex paint, is an antique, so old it has no computer.

  The dark water looks the same in every direction, so he steers by GPS and compass with his non-Akemi phone. He finds himself doubting that the green numbers on the tiny screen have some relationship to the world, that he’s not circling aimlessly in a waste of sea.

  Akemi told him there’s enough fuel to get where he’s going, and to correct for drift once he’s there. She went away again before he could ask if there’s enough for him to get back to shore, but that’s okay, it’s fitting that he commit himself and let the future take form on the water.

  Sometime in the small hours there’s a basso thrumming and then a glaring constellation of red and white lights emerges high overhead from the dark, probably a tanker, passing so close he feels the vibration of its engines, the loom of its mass, and then it’s gone, its wake lifting the boat, subsiding.

  56

  Axis Mundi

  So this is death, Thales thinks.

  Not a thought one expects to have.

  In the event, death is a yacht running through heavy seas in a black squall, the marbled foam sliding over the water as the sails vibrate and crack.

  He stands at the prow, rain coursing down his forehead. But is it rain, or just a symbol of rain? Wet, in any case, and freezing, and pounding down.

  Thales clasps the railing as the yacht starts its descent down a hill-sized swell.

  He wonders what would happen if he fell over the side. The sea is bleak, immense, unresting, cold … He wonders if it has any substance but words.

  The rail under my hand is an illusion, he thinks, like the water running down my face, but the rail feels solid, and the water cold; apparently his knowledge gives him neither comfort nor sway.

  The yacht
’s speed is exhilarating, almost sickening.

  Behind him, yellow light glows in the fogged windows of the cabin.

  A rain-slick brass wheel opens the cabin door. The cabin is warm; water streams from his slicker, but beneath it his clothes are dry. He tells himself to be grateful for these comforts—it could have been any kind of a hell.

  The cabin is the interior of the mountain house, in essence, but smaller now, perhaps because there’s less room at sea.

  Akemi is at the computer, the archaic one his mother would never replace. The monitor shows evening on a tropical beach—grey skies, the dark mass of jungle, water frothing over pebbles. It’s the view from Kern’s earpiece, Kern being Akemi’s friend, or paladin, or pawn.

  The computer was connected to the net, for a little while, but now the connection is gone, and Kern’s phone is their only window on the world.

  “I’d like to know more,” he hears Kern say, almost in a whisper. “Where I’m going. What it is that I’m supposed to do. This all seems … conjectural.” His voice is measured, precise, at odds with his history, which Akemi says is violent, and threadbare.

  The camera feed becomes a jumble of wet jungle and sky, then frames Kern’s face. He looks mestizo, and underneath all the sweat and sun damage is about Thales’ age. He’d be forgettable-looking were it not for the remnants of a hipster haircut and a lean muscularity Thales associates with professional cyclists and boxers. Feeling passes over his face like weather—a touching vulnerability gives way to remoteness and then the light must have shifted because he suddenly looks older, and entirely cold, as though an ancient killer had appeared behind his eyes. Finally Kern sighs, looking disgusted and young again, and puts the earpiece back on.

  The ship creaks, the rain drums and the computer’s speakers bring the hiss and crash of other waves. Thales asks, “Why won’t you talk to him?”

  “He knows enough to keep going forward. I don’t want to distract him, or get into a debate. Also, he was right. It is all a little conjectural.”

  His mother’s books shift on their shelves as the yacht reaches a trough, starts ascending.

  “So where are we going?”

  For a moment he sees himself through her eyes, feels her decide she has to tell him something.

  “Irina worked it all out before she died. Well, not Irina, exactly, but we’re not exactly us.”

  Which makes us … what? he wonders, but says, “I always thought of her as the magician.”

  “The magician, then. So, the old man you saw in the videos? That’s Cromwell. He made a deal with the big AI, the surgeon’s boss—the mathematician, she called it. Irina got caught up in the middle.”

  “I think I met the mathematician,” Thales says. “He was unexpectedly kind. I think he might have identified with me.”

  “I hope you didn’t get too attached.”

  “Not especially.” (Though what, if anything, is he attached to?)

  “That’s good, because the magician intends to kill it.”

  “With what possible weapon?”

  “With Irina, the real one, though she doesn’t know it yet. The problem is, the mathematician is cautious, and justifiably so—it disconnected itself from the net until all this works itself out. I have to get Kern to physically reconnect the mathematician’s hardware to the net so Irina can do her thing.”

  “If he can get close enough to fiddle with the hardware, why bother attacking over a network? Just get Kern to smash it with a rock.”

  “We have to get something from the mathematician before it dies. Something unique. If Kern just smashes the hardware, it’s lost for good.”

  He wonders what the magician values so highly, but has the sense Akemi isn’t ready to talk. He says, “All right, but so what? We aren’t in the world anymore. The magician was nice but I’ve never met this Irina. It sounds like we’re caught in the middle of a power struggle between a plutocrat, a computer program and a total stranger. What’s it to me?”

  “For one thing, we owe the magician, and she and Irina are more or less the same person, except the magician was better informed. She didn’t have to do anything, but she did her best for us.”

  “Her best for us, or her best to use us?”

  “Remember at the end, when the city was dying? She sought me out and gave me all the happiness she could. I’m guessing she did the same for you. Maybe that means something to you, or maybe it doesn’t. I guess you have to decide for yourself.”

  He feels petty and ungrateful, and at the same time like his objections stand. To change the subject he says, “Where are you sending Kern?”

  “First to sea, to meet some ships, and then to the axis of the world.”

  57

  Vaguely Cetacean

  Kern checks his GPS, is still within meters of where he’s supposed to be. The sun must be coming up, as there’s now enough light to see the grey swell. He tries to keep a good watch but the fog and rain are always the same and his mind wanders.

  Akemi’d said the ships ran silent, like black ghosts on the water. The rain hisses on the sea’s curvature.

  He pulls his windbreaker tighter. He’d found it wadded in the forward compartment. It keeps out most of the wet and none of the cold.

  His old cell bleats as it finds a new network, though he sees nothing in the fog.

  “They’re close,” Akemi whispers in his ear. “Connect to the network. Hurry. I’ll give you the password. Please no mistakes.”

  He taps in the digits of the password as she recites them. The network is duly acquired. He waits, but nothing happens.

  Akemi exhales. “It worked,” she says.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’re still here. If it hadn’t worked, we might have had time to hear the missiles launch.”

  At first he thinks they’re waves, so smooth is their emergence from the fog. There are about ten of them. Very dark, the ships, their lines more organic than industrial.

  “That one,” Akemi says. “Head for the biggest.”

  He maneuvers the boat alongside the hull’s smooth expanse, taking pains not to bump it. The noise of his motor violates the silence. Halfway along the ship’s length there are rungs set into its surface—he brings the boat ahead of the ladder, shoulders his duffel and kills the motor for the last time. He stands, arms out for balance, the boat aimless under his feet. As the ladder slides by, he jumps.

  As his hands find the rain-slick rungs he looks down to see the boat peeling away, as though of its own accord, and thinks of it drifting for days, or for years, and wonders where it’s going. By the time he’s climbed onto the deck the boat has vanished in the fog.

  The ship’s form is streamlined and vaguely cetacean, an effect aided by its black ceramic hull. There are no railings, no doors, no evident way into its interior. Hemispheres the size of beach balls protrude at random from the deck—missile pods? sensors?—and he’s reminded of the gardens they have in Japan that are just sand and rocks, but he doesn’t think those are quite so geometric or so uniformly black.

  There’s a sort of shallow cavity toward the back of the ship. He can just squeeze himself in, which at least gets him out of the wind. He clasps his arms to his chest, using the duffel for a pillow.

  “Now what?” he asks Akemi, but she isn’t talking.

  * * *

  He’d meant just to close his eyes for a moment, but when he wakes it’s night.

  He stalks the deck, stretching his legs and shadowboxing. The only lights are the stars and his phone’s weak glow. He catches himself scanning the horizon for the boat.

  His old phone picks up a dense fog of encrypted transmissions, presumably the ships discussing whatever it is that fleets of autonomous seacraft have to talk about. He imagines their silent voices washing over him, this endless conversation in the dark.

  58

  Touch Nothing

  Even at midnight it’s long drive from Tokyo-Narita into the city, and no evident way to
shut down the cab’s screens or their ceaseless waves of clamoring ads. Snowflakes land on the windshield, their structure visible for a moment, then dissolved in the glass’s heat.

  She retreats into the memory of an evening in Baja California, the sliver of beach before the desiccated mountains, how she’d felt that she was flying as the blood-warm waves lifted her up, let her down, passed on toward shore. The continental shelf is close to land there; she’d dived down and touched sand, and then, swimming a little farther out, dived down and down and touched nothing. Just darkness, below, and she’d been terrified, as though she were falling into an inverted sky, but she’d swallowed her panic and made herself stay there and tread water, and then her weight shifts as the cab corners and she’s back in the present looking up at the looming mass and scattered lights of the Imperial Tokyo Hotel.

  She steps from the cab into bitter cold, thinks of the reversal of the Pacific currents, the climatological irony of the rim islands getting colder. A bellman in a sort of Ruritanian officer’s uniform reaches for the bag she bought in Athens; she dislikes being waited on, but his deep reserve demands no response so she lets him take it.

  The hotel doors close behind her, enclosing her in the sound of the place, a somehow benign distillation of distant conversations. The interior is Moorish, the limestone walls and pillars carved with abstract geometric patterns.

  The blazered desk clerk welcomes her in rather formal American English. Having made no reservation, she wonders what cue of dress or bearing gave away her nationality—she’d have thought she passed for any stripe of European. She feels a stab of guilt as she remembers that there was a first Imperial, built on the same site, leveled by the U.S. in the second World War.