Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Loi was still speaking--waving his arms, pale and wan and looking so distant Vu wanted to hug him. "We woke up three more colonists this week--God, they're so thin, it makes you wonder how they're going to survive this. The schedule says we should be done on the second wing of the station by Tuesday." He shook his head. "You know schedules. Always an act of optimism."

  Thuy was in the living room, pulling a table and arranging dishes on it. She came to stand by Vu's side, watching Loi's hologram. "You shouldn't have encouraged him," she said. Her face, too, was pale and wan.

  Vu's hands clenched. "It was his dream. How could I tell him he should forget it?"

  Thuy sucked in breath through her teeth--her hands smelled of garlic and fish sauce, a familiar odor that brought Vu back to their childhood, and to a time when everything had seemed so simple, so durable. "His place was here, among us. To abandon the ancestral tombs and shrine for a foolish vision of glory...."

  "He's eldest," Vu said, and saw Thuy wince. "He took the shrine with him. Always, wherever he goes."

  "Wherever he goes." Thuy shook her head, but when she spoke again it was of something else. "You have to stop living in the past, big bro. That's what, six years old?"

  "Eight," Vu said, and he didn't look at her. "I've listened to all of them." And sent back answers, too, even after he'd realized the futility of it all--of eight years passing again till his messages reached the station.

  "You know--" Thuy said, slowly.

  "Don't say it," he said. "You've made your peace with it; I haven't."

  "Only because you don't want to." Thuy's voice was tight.

  "You're here," he said, simply. "Don't forget that."

  "No. But--"

  Eight years out; eight years ago. That was when the official letter from the government's ansible had come: it was somewhere on his desk, covered in dust--filled with elaborately couched words like "regrettable incident," and "sharing your great loss."

  But Loi hadn't been lost, hadn't been dead--not for Vu, not so long as his transmissions came back home.

  And now... his picture was on the table, above the fried rolls and the oranges, and the Hainanese chicken and the rice as white as pearls; and Thuy had lit a stick of incense--arranging everything the same way she'd done for eight years.

  Eight years; and now Vu was eldest, and the ancestral shrine was in his home; and the sweet-smelling banquet from the kitchen was a death anniversary--the eighth such one.

  The doorbell rang. "It's the others," Thuy said. "I'll get it."

  His other, younger siblings and their families. He should remain sitting--he'd have time, later, to greet them. Loi's message was more important: he could replay it afterwards, of course, but it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't have that bittersweet meaning it had, when it had just arrived, as fresh as slaughtered fowl from the market.

  In the hologram, Loi's face was taut with worry; but still, his entire being seemed transfigured--he was doing what he'd always wanted to do, up there among the heartless stars. Had Vu been right, to tell him to go? Had he--

  In space, distance is time. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, and the speed of light is finite--and Loi's message was a glimpse of the past, of what could have been, of what would never be. The last such glimpse.

  Eight years.

  Vu took a deep breath; switched off the console with a flick of his fingers. And as silence spread in the room as heavy as grief, he slowly walked into the hallway, to listen to the living.

  As the Wheel Turns, by Aliette de Bodard

  Prologue: the Wheel

  In the Tenth Court of Hell stands the Wheel of Rebirth.

  Its spokes are of red lacquered wood; it creaks as demons pull it, dragging its load of souls back into the world.

  And before the Wheel stands the Lady.

  Every soul who goes to the Wheel must endure her gaze. Every soul must stop by her, and take from her pale hands the celadon cup, and drink.

  The drink is herbs gathered from the surfaces of ponds, tears taken from the eyes of children, scales shed from old, wise dragons. To drink is to forget, for no soul can come back into the world remembering past lives, or the punishments meted out to it within the other Courts of Hell.

  No soul.

  Save one.

  ***

  1. Yaoxin (Wen-Min Empire), 316 years after the Founding

  The old beggar was a sorry sight, squinting through rheumy eyes. One of his legs was missing, and he leant on his crutch to make his slow, unsteady way on the road.

  Dai-Yu, in spite of herself, watched him. There was something about him that drew the eye; something that made her forget the tea leaves and spices her mother had asked her to get from the market in Yaoxin.

  He seemed somehow more real, more sharply defined than the rest of the world. Dai-Yu couldn’t explain the feeling, not even to herself.

  As he passed by her, she drew a string of copper coins from her sleeve, and held it out to him.

  The beggar’s hand brushed hers, sending a tingle of heat up her arm. He stopped, then raised her palm to the light, staring at the darker patch on her skin.

  “I’ve had it all my life,” Dai-Yu said, apologetically. “It’s just a birthmark.”

  “I know that mark,” the beggar said. “So you’re the one, the child they were promised.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His fingers almost distractedly traced the outline of her mark. “Choice-maker. That’s what the sign in your hand says.”

  He was crazy. He had to be. “It’s just a birthmark,” Dai-Yu protested. “I’m nothing.”

  He looked up at her, his face deadly serious. “You are the arbiter. You will have to choose between them.”

  The worst thing about the beggar wasn’t his crazy talk; it was the single-mindedness, the way he kept tracing until Dai-Yu stared at the mark in her hand, trying to see the characters he’d spoken of. “Who—?”

  “Tiger,” the beggar said. “Crane.”

  The words he used weren’t the names of animals, but rather their archaic forms. Even to Dai-Yu, who at fourteen had received no education other than the arts of housekeeping, they could only mean one thing. “The Founders?” She laughed, then stopped when she saw his eyes. The rheuminess was peeling away, revealing a keen gaze trained on her.

  “Yes,” the beggar said. “You will have to choose.”

  “Choose between what? The Founders have been dead for centuries! Demons take you, you’ve told me nothing!”

  “There is a . . . an argument,” the beggar said. “A question they could not solve.”

  “What question?” Dai-Yu asked, but he shook his head, and began walking away.

  “Wait!” she shouted, but he wasn’t shuffling any more—he was running towards the gates of Yaoxin as fast as one leg and his crutch could carry him.

  Dai-Yu ran, too, steadily catching up to him—but then he passed through the gate, and she lost him in the marketplace. She stood shaking in the midst of the crowd, knowing she should have outrun him easily.

  Later that night, she crept into the shrine of her ancestors, and stared at the very earliest tablet: the one that bore, entwined, the names of the warrior philosophers who had founded the Empire. Tiger. Crane.

  The beggar’s words would not leave her.

  Choice-maker. You are the arbiter.

  ***

  2. Yaoxin (Wen-Min Empire), 321 years after the Founding

  They came a few years later. By then, Dai-Yu had married, and moved into the house of the wealthy merchant He En-Lai as his second wife. She spent her days running the household and helping to raise the three children of the first wife.

  One hot, stormy summer evening, Dai-Yu was sitting alone in the wives’ quarters, playing a mournful tune on the zither, when a gust of wind sent rain into her face. Startled, she got up to close the shutters.

  And, slowly, became aware she was no longer alone.

  She did not move. Guards, she knew,
watched the house, and every door was barred.

  “Dai-Yu,” a voice chanted, and it was the lament of the wind. Another voice took up the words of her name, and whispered, “Choice-maker.”

  She moved, then, trembling, to face them.

  They stood in darkness, both of them: vague silhouettes whose faces she could not see. They smelled of old, musty things, books left too long untended.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  One of them smiled. Teeth glittered in the shadows. “You are the child of the promise, Dai-Yu. You must choose.”

  Choose choose choose, whispered the other voice, a raucous, rhythmical chant like the calls of birds.

  “You’re dead,” Dai-Yu whispered. “The Annals say you died in the Imperial Palace.”

  “We cannot die,” the first voice said. “We became something else.”

  “It does not matter,” said the second voice. “She must choose.”

  “You’re crazy,” Dai-Yu said, trying to deny the fear that clenched her chest. “Go away. I wasn’t born to choose anything.”

  The first voice laughed. The sound echoed on and on under the lacquered ceiling, taking strength from the walls. “Do you truly think so?”

  And Dai-Yu, shocked, saw that the birthmark in her hand glowed red, like maple leaves, like the lanterns of New Year’s Eve. “No,” she whispered.

  “This is the choice laid before you.” The first voice was the drawl of a large feline, one that would toy with its prey until exhaustion brought death. Tiger. “When we founded the Empire three hundred years ago, we argued over what would keep it together.”

  “Duty,” Crane said. “Homage to one’s ancestors, and respect of the law. Those are the things that will make us last.”

  “Man knows no duty,” Tiger said, breathing into the room the humid smell of jungles. “Man knows no respect. Only fear will keep the Empire intact. Fear of our neighbours to unite us. Fear of death and chaos to keep us from crumbling.”

  Dai-Yu, poised near the open window, said, “This is . . . “a philosophers’ argument,” she wanted to say. Children’s words, without meaning. It’s not ideas that will keep us together, that will keep the Hsiung Nu from our frontiers.

  Crane whispered, “It is no game. The loser will renounce. No longer shall he guide the destiny of the Empire.”

  “Because you decide anything? What about the Emperor? What about the Imperial Court?”

  A dry bout of laughter, from Crane. “Everyone listens to their ancestors, child. We cannot die. We still rule. Now choose.”

  Dai-Yu stared, trying to see their faces through the darkness. “I know nothing.” They were each as vast and terrible, both as unfathomable. “This is ridiculous. Just find someone else.”

  “There is no-one else.” The shadows behind Crane drew the darker hint of wings the colour of obsidian. “Choose.”

  “I can’t,” Dai-Yu whispered, the words forced out of her before she could think.

  In the darkness, she could feel their combined gaze, assessing her, judging her. The hollow in her stomach would not go away.

  “Very well,” Crane said. “You are not ready.”

  “Think on it,” Tiger whispered. “We will come back.”

  There was no noise when they left, but Dai-Yu could breathe more easily; she no longer had the sense that every word she said was being set apart and weighed.

  The shadows returned to those of the wives’ quarters.

  She could not stop shaking. What did they think she was, to be embroiled in their vast, unknowable games? She was human. She had a husband, and soon would have children of her own. She was no prophet, no wise woman.

  All she wanted was to sleep, and to forget. To forget that they had ever been there, or that they would ever return.

  In silence she moved through the house, her sandals making no noise on the slats of the floor. She was almost at the door of her own room when something stopped her.

  She could not have told what. Like with the beggar, it was a sense that something was more real than it ought to have been.

  The door to the nursery was ajar, as it had been earlier in the evening. And yet . . .

  Gently, Dai-Yu slid the door open, then entered the room. Through the gaps in the shutters fell the white light of the moon, tracing the outlines of three beds.

  Dai-Yu could feel nothing. Not even fear, nor anger. She moved towards the furthest bed, where Pao, the youngest son, was sleeping.

  A ray of light lay across his face, throwing into relief what they had done to him. There were scars, like claw-marks: three swipes on each cheek, bleeding in the white light.

  And it was a claw-swipe, too, that had opened his chest, laying the heart bare amidst its cage of ribs.

  The wind whispered, in Tiger’s voice: A reminder, Dai-Yu. Until we return.

  She screamed, then: a sound torn out of her lungs that echoed throughout the house, a scream of rage and grief and despair. It woke the other two boys, who huddled in their beds, their faces frozen in shock. It summoned the servants, and then her husband and his first wife.

  “Dai-Yu?” En-Lai, her husband, said. He was shaking her, but she could not answer him; she could not banish the image of the dead boy in his bed. The more he insisted, the more she withdrew within herself, until she hovered at the edge of a chasm in her mind, knowing that if she fell into it there would be no return.

  “Lin Dai-Yu,” another voice said.

  She looked up. This was the district magistrate, with his jade robes of office and his velvet cap. Three militiamen had taken position at the entrance of the room, their staffs at the ready.

  “What happened here?” The magistrate’s face was stern.

  “That slut killed my boy,” the first wife said, quivering with anger.

  Dai-Yu, still struggling to remain focused, could only shake her head. No no no. Not I. He did that.

  The magistrate looked at her, his grey gaze expressionless. She looked back.

  The magistrate’s gaze moved to the bed, then back to Dai-Yu. “No. It could not have been her. What weapon would she have used?” He raised Dai-Yu’s hands, displayed their shorn nails. “See,” he said. “These are not claws.”

  “Then who did this?” En-Lai demanded in anger, and grief.

  The magistrate’s gaze rested on the servants for a moment. “Who indeed.” And now his look was trained on the first wife, and on the long, lacquered fingernails that were her pride. Each of them was protected by an elegant bronze sheath—a sheath that tapered to a sharp, clawlike point.

  The first wife was still standing near Dai-Yu, ready to accuse her again. Her gaze met the magistrate’s, and her face pinched in anger. “You accuse me?” she said, drawing herself to her full height. “Of killing my own son?”

  The magistrate smiled without joy. “I have seen mothers do worse than that.”

  “No,” Dai-Yu whispered, understanding that the nightmare was not over. But no-one was listening to her.

  “You’re making a mistake,” En-Lai said, as the militiamen came into the room, and bound the first wife’s wrists. “That accusation is ludicrous.”

  Dai-Yu found her voice from some remote place. “This wasn’t done by human hands.”

  The magistrate turned to her. The light falling on his robes bleached them white for a moment, like a coat of feathers; a moment only, but in that moment Dai-Yu looked into his eyes, and saw the ageless, malicious gaze of Crane.

  No.

  “The law must be honoured,” the magistrate said, with a tight smile, and they were not his words, but something far older, far more vicious. “A crime cannot go unpunished. We will find out the truth.”

  Tiger’s voice in her mind, endlessly whispering its promise: A reminder, Dai-Yu. Until we return.

  Crane’s voice: A crime cannot go unpunished.

  A dead boy in his bed, his face slashed, his chest yawning with the heart inside.

  The first wife, struggling as they dragg
ed her out of the room, screaming, calling them names. In vain.

  The chasm in Dai-Yu’s mind opened wider, and she tumbled into the darkness, screaming all the while.

  Her husband En-Lai, seeing her face go slack, shook her again, but she no longer had speech.

  The doctor, summoned to the scene, found the body of the boy, the husband protesting his wife’s innocence, and Dai-Yu standing tall and straight, yet silent.

  He listened to the voice of her heart, but could find nothing wrong. In the end, he prescribed a calming brew to En-Lai, whose sickness he could understand, then left the house, glad to be away from Dai-Yu’s stare.

  The first wife admitted to the murder of her son under torture, and was executed.

  En-Lai had Dai-Yu moved to a dark room at the back of the house, where two very old servants tended her. For seven years she spoke little, only dwindled away, the skin over her bones as translucent as rice paper, the gestures she made more and more sluggish.

  In the end, she caught the lung sickness, and died.

  Thus ended her first life.

  ***

  Interlude: Tenth Court of Hell

  The soul comes before the Wheel for its first rebirth. But the Lady does not move. Her hands are empty.

  “Why?” the soul asks, and its voice is a mere whisper.

  “You cannot drink. You must remember,” the Lady says. Her face is emotionless. “You must answer them.”

  The soul’s face is indistinct; if it had any expression, it would be anger. “Never,” it says.

  “You have no choice.” The Lady’s yellow sleeves billow in the wind, beckoning the soul onwards. “Come, child. There is another life awaiting you.”

  ***

  3. Wen-Min Empire, 343-631 years after the Founding

  Thus, in every life, Dai-Yu was born knowing everything, from her first birth to her last. No more childhoods of innocence, no more days free from fear. In every life, she dreaded that Tiger and Crane would come back and ask the question.

  They did not always come, but, when they did, they destroyed everything. Tiger killed her family. Crane had them arrested, or aroused in them the desire to fight on the border: they took up the swords of soldiers, and came back wounded and silent, or not at all.