by Neil Clarke
On Da Trang’s shoulder, Pearl surged—as if it was going outside, as if it was going to join the other remoras watching the star ignite—but then it fell back against Da Trang; and he felt something slide into him: needles with another liquid, which burnt like fire along his spine. At the next lurch of the station, his feet remained steady, his body straight, as if standing at attention, and his muscles steadfastly refusing to answer him—even his vocal cords feeling frozen and stiff. >Don’t move.<
Da Trang couldn’t have moved, even if he’d wished to, even if he wasn’t standing apart, observing it all at a remove, high on Pearl’s trance and struggling to make sense of it all—no fear, no panic, merely a distant curiosity. A star-wildfire; light waves that were destabilizing the station, frying electronics that had never been meant for such intensity—Pearl’s readouts assured him the shielding held, and that radiation levels within the room remained non-lethal for humans, poor but welcome reassurance in the wake of the disaster.
In front of him, the Empress hadn’t moved either; with each lurch of the station, she merely sidestepped, keeping her balance as if it were nothing. Of course she would have augments that would go far beyond her subjects’, the best her Grand Masters and alchemists could design.
Abruptly, the station stopped lurching, and the lights slowly came back on—though they were white and blinding, nothing like the quiet and refined atmosphere of the banquet; and instead of the ambient sound there was only the low crackle of static. The Empress gazed at him levelly, and then went on, as if their conversation had been merely stopped by someone else’s rude interruptions, “In all of the Dai Viet Empire, there is no one who can predict a star wildfire. We can determine when the conditions for the ignition are met, of course, but the scale of such predictions is millennia, if not millions of years. And yet you knew.”
Da Trang shook his head. Pearl had withdrawn; he could still see the remoras outside, now utterly still, though Pearl’s readouts assured him they were not broken—merely oddly, unnaturally still. Merely . . . content. Who knew that remoras basked in wildfire? “Pearl knew,” he said. “You asked how it helped me. That’s how.”
The Empress watched him for a while; watched Pearl nestled on his shoulder, the remora’s prow wedged in the hollow where his collarbone met his neck. “I see. I think,” she said, slowly, softly, “it would be best for you to take your things and come back with us, child.”
And like that—just like that, with two simple sentences, and a polite piece of advice that might as well be a command—Da Trang started his rise at the Imperial Court.
Da Trang is watching his latest remora, a sleek, small thing with a bent thruster—even as he does, he sees it move, and the thruster flows back into place; and the remora dips its prow, a movement that might as well be a nod, and is gone through the open doorway, following the path of the previous ones—pulling itself upward into the sky, straight toward the sun. Toward silence.
>Architect. We are here.< Da Trang’s head jerks up. The words are blinking, in a corner of his field of vision, insistent, and the remora saying this is close by too. It’s not one of the ones he made, but it’s one he’s seen before, a vision from his past when he was still repairing remoras and studying for the imperial examinations—before Pearl, before the Empress. Pitted metal and those broken thrusters at the back, and the wide gash on the right side that he’s never managed to patch; the nub on the prow and the broken-ofF wing, clumsily repaired with only a basic welder bot . . . .
“Teacher,” he whispers, addressing the remora by the name he gave it, all those years ago. “I’m sorry.”
Remoras don’t have feelings, don’t have human emotions. They lie somewhere halfway between ships and bots, outside the careful order of numbered planets; cobbled together from scraps, looking as though they’re going to burst apart at any moment.
Behind Teacher is Slicer, and Tumbler, and all the rest of the remoras: the ones who were with him at the very beginning, the ones who made and gave him Pearl.
Teacher’s image wavers in and out of focus, and Da Trang fights the urge to turn away, to go back to his code, because he owes Teacher that much. Because Pearl was given to him for safekeeping, and he has lost it.
“I’m sorry,” Da Trang says again, though he doesn’t even know if Teacher can understand him.
>New things are more easily broken,< Teacher says. Something very like a shrug, and the remora weaving closer to him. >Don’t concern yourself, Architect.<
“Are you—are you building another?” Da Trang knows the answer even before he asks.
>Like Pearl? No.< Teacher is silent for a while. >It was flawed, Architect. Too . . . much vested into a single vessel. We will ponder how to build oth-erwise.<
Da Trang cannot wait. Cannot stand to be there, with the emptiness on his shoulder, where Pearl used to rest; to gaze at the remoras and the hangar and have nothing about them, no information about their makeup or their speed; all the things Pearl so easily, effortlessly provided him. If he closes his eyes, he can feel again the cold shock of needles sliding into his neck, and the sharpening of the world before the trance kicked in, and everything seemed glazed in light.
Slicer weaves its way to the first pile of remoras in the corner of the hangar: the flawed ones, the ones that wouldn’t lift off, that wouldn’t come to life, or that started only to crash and burn. It circles them, once, twice, as if fascinated—it never judges, never says anything, but Da Trang can imagine, all too well, what it sees: hubris and failure, time and time again. He’s no Grand Master of Design Harmony, no Master of Wind and Water: he can repair a few remoras, but his makings are few, and pitiful, and graceless, nothing like Pearl.
“I have to try,” Da Trang whispers. “I have to get it back.”
>It was flawed,< Teacher says.> Will not come back.<
They know too, more than the Empress does, that it will take more than a sun’s warmth to destroy a remora. That Pearl is still there. That he can still reach it, talk to it—make it come back.
Teacher moves, joins Slicer around the pile of stillborn remoras. >Architect. Use of this?<
No scraps of metal left unused, of course—they scavenge their own dead, make use of anything and everything to build. Once, Da Trang would have found it disquieting; but now all he feels is weariness, and impatience that they’re keeping him from his algorithms. “I don’t need them anymore. They’re . . . flawed. Take them.”
>Architect. Thank you.< He’d have thought they didn’t know gratitude, but perhaps they do. Perhaps they’ve learnt, being so close to humans. Or perhaps they’re merely doing so to appease him—and would it really make a difference if that was the case? So many things human are fake and inconstant—like favors. >We will return. Much to ponder.<
“Wait,” Da Trang calls, as the remoras move away from his discarded scraps, from the blurred, indistinct remnants of his failures. “Tell me—”
>Architect?<
“I need to know. Was it my fault?” Did he ignore Pearl—was there some harbinger of the things to come—were the odd times the remora fell silent, with its prow pointed toward the sun, a sign of what it secretly yearned for?
Could he . . . could he have stopped it, had he known?
Silence. Then Teacher’s answer, slow and hesitant. >We built. We made, from metal and electronics to the spark of life. We didn’t determine, Architect. It went where it willed. We do not know.<
No answer then, but why had he thought it would be so easy?
On the morning of the day he was to be raised to councillor, Da Trang got up early, with an unexpected queasiness in his stomach—fear of what would happen, of Mother and her dire warnings about Empresses’ fickle favorites being right?—no, that wasn’t it.
Pearl was gone. He reached out, scratching the callus on his neck, in the place where it usually rested—scanning the room and finding nothing, not even a trace of its presence. “Pearl? Pearl?”
Nothing under the sheets, noth
ing in the nooks and crannies of the vast room—he turned off everything, every layer of the Purple Forbidden City’s communal network, and still he couldn’t see Pearl.
Impossible. It wasn’t human; it didn’t have any desires of its own except to serve Da Trang, to serve the whims of the Empress and her endless curiosity about anything from stellar phenomena to the messages passed between remoras and bots, to the state of the technologies that underpinned the communal network—to be shown off to scientists and alchemists and engineers, its perceptions and insights dissected and analyzed for anything of use to the Empire. It couldn’t just go wandering off. It—
Da Trang threw open the doors of his room, startling one of the servants who’d been carrying a tray with a cup of tea—almost absentmindedly, he reached out and straightened the tray before moving on. “Pearl? Pearl?”
Courtiers, startled out of their impassivity, turned their heads to follow him as he ran into courtyard after courtyard, finding nothing but the usual bustle of the court, the tight knots of people discussing politics or poetry or both—an endless sea of officials with jade-colored sashes barely paying attention to him—and still no Pearl, no trace of it or word on his coms.
It was only two bi-hours until the ceremony; and what would he say to the Empress, if Pearl wasn’t there—if he couldn’t perform any of the feats of use to her, and that distinguished him from the mass of upstart courtiers?
“Pearl?”
He found the remora, finally, in the quarters of the Master of Rites and Ceremonies. The Master was deep in discussion with her students, pointing to something on an interface Da Trang couldn’t see. Pearl was in the small room at the end, where they had gathered the necessary supplies for the ceremony.
“Pearl?”
It stood, watching the clothes on the mannequin in the center of the room: the five-panel robe made from the finest brocade with the insignia of the sparrow on the chest—not an official rank attained through merit and examinations, but one reserved for special cases, for emperors’ and empresses’ fickle favors. On the shoulder was a rest for Pearl, with a small model of the remora.
“What are you doing here?”
Pearl didn’t move, or acknowledge him in any way. It was . . . that same particular intent stillness it had had, back at the time of the first star wildfire. Waiting—what for? “Is something going to happen? Pearl?”
>Architect.< The words were hesitant—letter after letter slowly materializing in his field of vision. And still Pearl didn’t move, didn’t head to Da Trang’s shoulder, to fill the empty space he couldn’t get used to.>Need. Time.<
“What for? The ceremony is in two bi-hours—”
Pearl shifted; and he realized then that it had been standing in a shaft of sunlight, its prow turned toward the heavens. >Not meant for this.<
“You were built for this,” Da Trang said. Why the strange mood—fear or nervousness? But remoras couldn’t feel any of that, surely?
But, then, Pearl wasn’t just any remora. We can build better, Teacher had said. Better, or merely more unstable? “Come,” Da Trang said.
Pearl hovered to the shoulder of the mannequin—nudging the small model they’d made of it, which looked nothing like a remora: bedecked with silk and scraps of translucent cotton. >Not meant for this.< Its prow rose again, toward the sun.> Space. The song of stars. The heartbeat of the universe.<
“We’ll be going into space,” Da Trang said. “Often enough. I promise.” It scared him now—the Imperial Court wasn’t a place to hear the song of the stars or the rhythm of the universe or whatever else it was going on about. “Come.”
>Not the same.< Pearl made a small whirring noise.
“They built you to help me,” Da Trang said. And, without Pearl, he was nothing—just another dull-witted poor boy, the Empress’s favor soon forgotten. “Pearl. Come on.” He fought an urge to bodily drag it from the room, like a disobedient child, but it would have been unkind. “Remember Teacher and Slicer and the other remoras? They said they’d built you for me. For the examinations. For understanding.”
Come on, come on, come on—if Pearl left him, he didn’t know what he’d do, what he’d become, what he could make of the shambles that would be his life—
>Understanding.>Pearl’s prow dipped again, toward the mannequin.>Building better.< Again, the same slowness to the words, as if it were considering; and then, to Da Trang’s relief, it flew back to him, and the familiar weight settled on his shoulder—the familiar ice-cold feeling of needles biting into his shoulder, the sense of reality becoming unbearably sharp, unbearably clear, everything labeled and parceled and analyzed, from the Master of Rites and Ceremonies’ minute frown to the student fighting off sleep in the first row—from the cut and origin of the silk to the fluctuating intensity of the sunlight in the room.
>Can help.< But as Da Trang turned away, he felt Pearl’s weight on his shoulder—felt the remora looking upward at the sun—the pull of the motors, barely suppressed; and he knew that he hadn’t managed to quell Pearl’s yearnings.
He doesn’t sleep—only so many hours in a day, and there are ways to enjoy them all. Not for long, of course, not with the drugs he’s pumped himself full of; but what does he care for more time? He needs Pearl back, so badly it’s like a vise, squeezing his ribs into bloodied shards. Without Pearl, he’s nothing: an ex-favorite of the Empress, fallen from her regard—an overambitious boy from the outer edges of the Empire, overreaching and tumbling over the waterfalls instead of soaring, dragonlike, in the wake of imperial favor. But it’s Pearl that the Empress was truly interested in—its tidbits on stellar phenomena, on technologies, on ships and what made them work—what Pearl called the understanding of the universe, with an earnestness that didn’t seem to belong in a remora: everything that they put into always moving, never stopping, it put into intent stillness, in that posture on his shoulder where its eyes, if it’d had any, would have bored holes into steel or diamond.
It’s still there, in the heart of the sun. Waiting. For him, or for something else; but if Pearl is there, that means he can find it. That means . . . He doesn’t know what he will do when he finds Pearl, how he’ll beg or plead or drag it from the sun—but he’ll find a way.
It was a routine journey, a shuttle ride between the First Planet and the White Clouds orbital; and the Empress, of course, insisted her new Councillor come with her, to show her the wonders of space.
Da Trang came, because he had no choice—in spite of deep unease— because Pearl had been restless and distant, because he’d tossed and turned at night, trying to think of what he could do and thinking of nothing.
Halfway through the trip, the Empress called for him.
She was in her cabin, surrounded by her courtiers—they were all sitting on silk cushions and sipping tea from a cup as cracked as eggshells. In front of her was a hologram of space as seen from the prow of the ship. As Da Trang entered, the view blurred and shifted, and became the outside of the orbital— except that the stars were dimmer than they ought to have been.
“Councillor,” the Empress said. “I thought you would enjoy seeing these.”
Pearl snuggled closer to Da Trang—needles extended, the blissful cold spreading outward from the pinpricks, the trance rising—extending to the outside, narrowing until he could see the bots maneuvering nano-thin filaments, unfolding a large, dark shape like a spread cloth behind the orbital.
Void-nets. Da Trang had sat in nightlong sessions with the Ministry of War’s engineers, describing to them what Pearl saw—what Pearl thought— how the remora could even analyze the dust of stars, the infinitesimal amounts of matter carried by the wind in the void of space—and how, in turn, those could be trapped.
He hadn’t thought—
“Your Highness,” Da Trang said, struggling to remember how to bow. “I had no idea this was such a momentous occasion.”
“The Ministry of War has been testing prototypes for a while—but it is the first time a void-ne
t is deployed in the vicinity of a Numbered Planet, to be sure.” The Empress was almost . . . thoughtful. “All to your credit, and Pearl’s.”
Another nudge, but he had no need to see heartbeats or temperature to catch the anger of the courtiers. As if they’d ever be capable of matching him . . .
“Tell us,” the Empress said. “What will we find in your nets?”
A brief moment of panic, as nothing happened—as Pearl didn’t move, the thought that it was going to be today, of all days, when the remora failed him—and then a stab so deep under his collarbone it was almost painful— and the view shifting, becoming dotted with hundreds of pinpoints of colored lights, each labeled with a name and concentration. “Suffocating metal 5.3 percent,” he whispered. “Frozen water 3 percent. Gray adamantine crystals 9.18 percent . . . ” On and on, a litany of elements, labeled and weighed: everything the Empire would decant to fuel its machines and stations and planets, names and images and every use they could be put to, a flood of information that carried him along—such a terrible, breathless sense of being the center, of knowing everything that would come to pass . . .
He came to with a start, finding Pearl all but inert against him, softly vibrating on his shoulder. The Empress was looking at him and smiling— her face and body relaxed, her heartbeat slow and steady. “A good take. The Ministry of War should be satisfied, I should think.” She watched the screens with mild curiosity. “Tell me what you see.”
“Colors,” Da Trang said. Even with Pearl quiescent, he could make them out—slowly accreting, the net bulging slightly outward as it filled—the bots straining under the pressure. “A dance of lights—”
He never got to finish the sentence.