The Tea Master and the Detective

by Aliette de Bodard

  It’d have been a compliment from anyone else. From her, though, said with an utterly impassive face? The Shadow’s Child couldn’t be sure. Not that she should have cared, except that it would affect her relation with a customer. “Your blend is on the table.”

  A raised eyebrow. “So I’ve seen.” Long Chau considered the cup for a while. The Shadow’s Child’s bots climbed up onto her face and head again. She let them, without even so much as a reaction. The dense, urgent pattern of her brain activity was now available to The Shadow’s Child. She’d had enough time now to build a model of what Long Chau considered normal, and nothing there was surprising.

  “It’s not poisoned.” The smell of honeydreamer saturated the room, bringing back, for a brief moment, memories of The Shadow’s Child’s first disastrous attempt at cooking it, when the bots had failed to remove the carapaces and they had popped in the heat, sending shards flying all over her compartment.

  “Of course it’s not,” Long Chau said, with a hint of annoyance. She raised it to the light, lips slightly parted; stared for a while longer. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it, that a few herbs and chemicals can have this effect?”

  Hours of poring over Long Chau’s metabolism and brain patterns, reconstructing the drugs in her system—trying to find out which compounds would keep her functional, guessing at what she might call “slow thoughts”, wondering if the mixture would flat-out short-circuit her neurons, make her suicidal or, more likely, even more reckless and over-confident, with the risk she’d endanger her own life on a whim ... “Are you mocking my work?”

  “On the contrary,” Long Chau said. Her face was set in a peculiar expression, one The Shadow’s Child couldn’t read. “Merely appreciating the value of localised miracles.” She sounded... utterly earnest, in a way that disarmed the angry reply The Shadow’s Child would have given her.

  Silence stretched, long, uncomfortable. The Shadow’s Child became aware again of her core in the heartroom, of the steady beat that sustained her—pulsing muscles and optics and brain matter, holding her connectors in an unbreakable embrace. One two, one two...

  In the cabin, Long Chau appeared utterly unfazed. She merely raised the cup to her lips after a long while, and drank from its thin rim in one long, slow go—didn’t even seem to breathe while doing so—and set it down on the table. “Shall we go?”

  The Shadow’s Child didn’t need to move to dive into deep spaces. She’d already asked for permission from Traffic Harmony, and within deep spaces it wouldn’t matter if they overlapped another ship. She watched Long Chau, because it was her job.

  A centiday since she’d taken the blend—fifteen outsider minutes—and no visible effect yet. The tea The Shadow’s Child had given Long Chau was a mix of a downy white Dragon Quills with a stronger, more full-bodied Prosperity Crescent, with fried starvine root and crushed honeydreamer, scattered among the downy leaves. She watched Long Chau’s vitals, saw the minute changes to breath and heartbeat. The hands moved a fraction faster as Long Chau got up and stared at the walls—through the walls.

  “I’m not there,” The Shadow’s Child said.

  “You’re in the heartroom. I know.” Long Chau’s voice was mildly irritated. “I’m familiar with shipminds, though I’ve seldom had the occasion to go into deep spaces.”

  While she was speaking, The Shadow’s Child plunged into deep spaces—not far in, just enough on the edge that she could see Long Chau’s reactions. “Tell me about the corpse,” she said. Around her, the corridors shifted and changed. A faint, trembling sheen like spilled oil spread across the walls, always in the corner of one’s eyes. Outside, the same sheen stole across the habitats, the sun and the distant stars—a distorted rainbow of colour that slowly wiped them out. Her hull was awash with faint cold, the brisk flow of stellar wind around her replaced by a faint, continuous pressure. It should have felt like coming home—like a fish diving into a river at the end of a long, breathless interval onshore—but all she could feel within her was tautness, and the rapid beat from her heartroom, everything pulsing and contracting in ways she couldn’t control.

  It would be fine. She wasn’t where it had happened. She wasn’t deep in—just at the very edges, just enough to keep Long Chau satisfied. It would be fine.

  “You said any corpse would do,” she said.

  “Of course.” Long Chau appeared utterly unfazed by deep spaces. The Shadow’s Child would have liked that to be a front, but Long Chau’s heartbeat, even and slow, said otherwise. “I’m writing a treatise on decomposition. How the human body changes in deep spaces is a shamefully undervalued area of study.”

  “I can see why you’d be a success at local poetry clubs,” The Shadow’s Child said, wryly.

  It didn’t seem to faze Long Chau. “I would be, if I had anything to do with them.” She looked around her. The walls had caved in now, receding in what seemed a long and profound distance; the table was folding back on itself, showing the metal it had been made from, the bots that had hammered it into shape—the broken scraps of what it’d be, when it finally broke down, every moment existing tightly folded on top of one another. “How deep are we?”

  Two centidays since she’d taken the blend. She seemed fine. Unfair. Heartbeat normal, veins slightly dilated but not past the expected top of the range, pupil constriction slowly easing up—the activity map almost a match for when she’d sat in The Shadow’s Child’s office. The Shadow’s Child tried to calm herself down. She stretched her core in the heartroom, slowly and deliberately, away from Long Chau’s prying eyes. A good thing she hadn’t boosted up the arrogance: it was an easy way to keep people functional in deep spaces if they had enough self-confidence to start with, but she didn’t think she could have borne the result for long.

  “Not very deep,” The Shadow’s Child said. “I’d rather keep you in safe areas.” It was untrue.

  “And yourself from unpleasant memories,” Long Chau said. “It makes sense.” And then, with an odd expression in her voice, “You’re not recovered. Even being here makes you nauseous.”

  “Shipminds don’t get nausea,” The Shadow’s Child said. It was a lie—especially now, with no distance between her body and herself, she felt rocked by alternating waves of warmth and cold, her core coming apart in ten thousand pieces in the heartroom. She forced herself to be calm. “And you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re guessing.”

  “I don’t guess.” Long Chau’s voice was curt. “You were in an accident during the uprising. A mission gone bad because of lack of information. Something that badly crippled you, and left you in deep spaces for some time.”

  She—she’d hung around in places where nothing made sense anymore, with no one alive onboard anymore. The crew was gone, and Captain Vinh was lying curled just outside the heartroom, her hands slowly uncurling as death took hold. Nothing but the sound of her panicked heartbeat, rising and rising through empty corridors and cabin rooms until it seemed to be her whole and only world—she was small and insignificant and she would be forever there, broken and unable to move and forever forgotten, her systems always keeping death at bay...

  Long Chau was still speaking, in that same dispassionate tone. As if nothing were wrong, as if she could not feel the chills that ran up and down the corridors, the pressure that was going to squeeze The Shadow’s Child into bloody shards. “There is no information about you during the uprising, and you’re in surprisingly good shape considering your age, and the fact that you’re barely scraping by earning your living. That means either a wealthy family—but you don’t have the accents of wealth—or that the military shouldered your maintenance until a few years ago.” Every word hurt—the currents of deep spaces pressing against her hull, again and again, drawing the will to live out of her—but she couldn’t commit suicide because everything was offline or broken.

  “But you haven’t been with the military for the last five years or so. That ugly gash on your hull, just below the painting of the Azure Dra
gon gardens, is around that age and no one fixed it. Which means you were discharged shortly after the uprising. You’re completely traumatised, but showing no other sign of damage. Meaning whatever happened was under the military’s watch, and they repaired it for you. So a mission gone wrong.”

  “I. Am. Not. Traumatised.” It felt like swallowing shards of glass. She’d still be there, body non-functional, coms dead, if another mindship hadn’t happened to go by and notice a light blinking on her hull—near that painting Long Chau was so casual about.

  It had only been a bi-hour or so, in outside time—eight centidays, nothing more—not even the time it took for a banquet, such a pitiful duration to someone like her. Except that, in deep spaces, it had felt so much longer.

  “You tiptoe around deep spaces like a mouse around a tiger’s claw.” A gentle snort from Long Chau. “See. I don’t guess.”

  “You—” The Shadow’s Child tried to breathe, to say something, anything that wouldn’t be a scream. Outside, the currents of deep spaces bathed her—clinging, lightly, to her hull—like hands, awaiting the right moment to curl into claws. “You have no right.”

  Long Chau looked puzzled, for a moment. “Why not? You asked me to prove it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  A long, awkward silence. “Oh. My apologies. I thought you’d want to see how I’d come to those deductions.”

  The Shadow’s Child was still shaking. “No. I don’t.”

  “I see.” A long, careful look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt, but it doesn’t change that it did happen.” A further silence. Then, “Tell me about the wreck.”

  A customer. Long Chau was just a customer. And The Shadow’s Child needed those, no matter how eccentric they might be. She had to remember that—but all she wanted was to drop Long Chau off on the habitat and forget any of this had ever happened. “There is no shortage of wrecks here. The Three in the Peach Gardens isn’t very far in, and he was carrying passengers when he died.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Not during the uprising. Five years ago,” The Shadow’s Child said. She’d picked a ship she hadn’t known, not even as a distant acquaintance. She supposed it’d be different, to see a wreck washed by the tides of deep spaces rather than a recent corpse, but she wasn’t sure enough of how she would react.

  She’d stared at ships’ corpses, back then, after the ambush—at twisted, inert metal, at dead optics, at broken hulls, the damaged wrecks all around her, the lucky ones who’d died—knowing that her own damage wasn’t severe enough and that she would merely remain trapped, for moments that would stretch to an eternity.

  Long Chau laid a hand on the wall. Her touch was a jolt, a small pinpoint of warmth in the vastness of The Shadow’s Child’s body. “I see. Fresh is better, from my point of view. The older corpses just become unrecognisable.” She shook her head. “Not much to work on.” And then, looking up once more, “You’re not disgusted, are you.”

  “By what you want?” The Shadow’s Child forced herself to be casual. “I’ve seen corpses during the uprising. They don’t frighten me.”

  She moved, slowly and cautiously, among the outer layers of deep spaces with short and controlled motor bursts, keeping the time and space differentials as small as she could—even smaller than she’d done for her passengers, back when she was carrying them. She wasn’t sure how Long Chau would react, even if so far everything seemed to be proceeding as expected.

  The world rippled and changed. The cold outside her hull became replaced with a touch of that odd, familiar warmth—something that bit deep inside, all the way to her heartroom, a memory of being held and loved, and safe—a centiday after her birth, being carried to the heartroom and safely enclosed there, where nothing could harm her. A memory of herself, slowly stretching tendrils through the connectors, making the ship her body, now and forever. Mother’s hands were shaking with weakness, but she didn’t falter, and even from far away, even dazed with the shock of breathing in dry, searing air, with the shock of touch after so long in the womb, The Shadow’s Child felt her absolute determination, her unwavering strength and love.

  And then she remembered that this was the place that, but for a quirk of fate, would have forever trapped her, drained and broken beyond healing.

  She was safe. She was just on the shallow end of deep spaces. They couldn’t harm her.

  “Here.” The Shadow’s Child kept her voice steady, and called up the sensors for Long Chau. A viewscreen hung in front of her in the room rather than a straight beam, as she’d not granted Long Chau any implants access.

  The Three in the Peach Gardens had been a larger ship than The Shadow’s Child. He had survived the wars and the uprising, but not the technical malfunction that had blown the motors and half of his heartroom, cutting off coms. By the time anyone realised what was wrong, the ship was already dead, the passengers struggling to reach shuttles without any of the protections the shipmind had afforded them against the deep spaces. Some of them had made it, but not all.

  The wreck was lit with washes of light, as if a child were painting over it, over and over—every few moments the colours slowly shifted, and not in a uniform way, patches of deeper radiance spreading from random areas on the wreck of the hull. Here and there, the light snagged on something: a piece of stray metal, a fragment of glass; the lighter shape of a corpse.

  Such a waste. All these lives, extinguished so fast. Her sensors could pick out fragments of jade, implants, teapots and tea cups: too many of them with the same delicate pale green eggshell pattern, they must have been from The Three in the Peach Gardens’s personal stores—and his burnt bots, each loss a wound; though he wouldn’t have suffered, would he? At least it would have been fast.

  At least...

  Watch over them, A Di Da —may they reach the Pure Land and be cut free from the cycle of rebirth and pain...

  Long Chau watched the screen. Nothing in her expression changed: she might as well have been admiring a painting or a particularly fine poem. “Here,” she said, making a gesture with her hands. Bots ran up, clinging to her wrists. She shifted the view with sweeps of her fingers until it settled on a particular shape. “This one.”

  A middle-aged woman, with loose, mottled skin hanging loose on rib cage and pelvic bone, her shape already compressed into improbable angles by the pressures of unreality around her—she’d had a shadow skin to survive the vacuum of normal space, but of course it wouldn’t have survived the plunge into deep spaces: the long, dark tatters of it streamed from her corpse like hair, or threads tying her to an impossibly distant puppet-master.

  “Why that one?” A stupid question. She’d said any corpse would do.

  Long Chau watched the corpse like a hawk. “Because it’s wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Long Chau fell silent, and The Shadow’s Child wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of asking questions. The sooner she got the corpse the faster they’d get out, and the sooner she’d get paid—though part of her still yearned for the comfort of being there, of coming home. She sent her bots out and one of her antiquated escape pods, just large enough that the bots could manoeuvre the corpse into it.

  Long Chau watched them intently. “Don’t fold her,” she said, sharply, as three of the bots started dragging an arm towards the open hatch of the pod. “No, not that way!”

  “You’re quite free to handle the bots yourself,” The Shadow’s Child snapped.

  For a moment she thought Long Chau would ask to. It would have been a headache and a waste of time, as Long Chau’s dexterity with bots was far inferior to The Shadow’s Child, but then she subsided in sullen silence. “Try not to damage her,” Long Chau said.

  The Shadow’s Child opened one of her empty bays. Cold blew in through the open airlock, a wind that seemed to freeze all feeling out of her, followed a moment later by a blast of shrivelling warmth, and a faint sound on the cusp of hearing, like the c
hittering of a thousand crickets. Colours shifted and played across the walls of the bay—again and again, the pressure subtly changing as they moved. The pod docked with a crunch. She clenched the airlock closed. The pressure differentials slowly smoothed themselves out, and silence spread across the bay. She found her core beating hard and fast, the connectors trembling in her grasp.

  Breathe. She could do this.

  The bots dragged the corpse out of the pod. Their feet clicked, one by one, on the floor. The corpse was a heavier, harsher weight—not the suppleness of tissues, but something more akin to polished stone, soundlessly scraping against the floors of the bay. The Shadow’s Child adjusted the temperature downwards to prevent further decomposition. It lay there, staring at the ceiling: its eyes had started to harden into jewels, the cornea looking more like ivory than tissue. The nails had started to bulge outwards—faint drops of blue pearling on their edges, with the dirty rainbow colours of oil spills—and the entire skin had taken on the translucent brittleness of jade.

  As Long Chau headed there—still utterly unfazed by the alien traceries of light that deep spaces caused to play on the walls and floor—The Shadow’s Child reviewed the bots’ data.

  By the time Long Chau reached the bay, she was thinking, hard.

  “We might have a problem,” she said, because she didn’t want to admit out loud that Long Chau had been right. Her voice echoed in the empty bay, the words multiplying for the briefest of moments, shifting into a crooning lullaby. Bleed through. They were drifting in too deep.

  Not on her watch.

  She nudged her motors into life, started climbing towards the shallows again. The pressure eased. The temperature stabilised again, and there was just that odd light, trembling on every wall and every floor from cabins to heartroom. Her bots felt sluggish, her body too large to contain her thoughts. Exhaustion was creeping in. It shouldn’t have, but of course she knew why she was so tired. It was fighting her own treacherous memories that did it.