Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Law, Lucas K.

  The Slate Moon represents the extremity of darkness. Kaya remembers the views of Myan described in her textbook. That chapter was meant for the descendants of Myanese natives and not in the scope of general exams. Nevertheless, Kaya had read it many times. Apart from the water body that covers the entire planet, having two moons is another important Myan feature. The natives had dubbed the two natural satellites as Algae Moon and Slate Moon. The Algae Moon is larger and selectively reflects green light while absorbing all other frequencies of visible light. The reflected light reaching Myan is a phosphorous green. The Slate Moon is smaller but denser, absorbing all colours of the visible spectrum. These descriptions match what she saw in her recurring dreams.

  So far, the light of the Algae Moon has been with her all along and now it is time for the Slate Moon. As the Slate Moon blocks the Algae Moon, she breathes deeply and steps forward, as if crossing the boundary between light and shadow. Once she is in the darkness, Kaya no longer looks for the creatures below. Instead, she follows a route that has already been determined.

  The blackness of night blinded her sight, but her other senses become more acute. Kaya simply closes her eyes. In the distance, she hears booming waves, clashes of weapons, and curt syllables of Myanese Verbal. There is a faint smell of blood, of gunpowder, of something burnt. It is the smell of war. Kaya opens her eyes abruptly.

  Not far away, there is the glowing light from her dreams. While walking toward it, Kaya feels a strange eagerness accompanied by great serenity. Coming close, she finds no figure inside the glow. There is nothing but an icy blue light, pulsing slowly, its intensity changing slightly. It is taller than a human and undulates gently with the pulse. Kaya puts her left hand into the light, and to her surprise, finds warmth in there. She reaches further, sending in her forearm and elbow. Finally, her entire body falls in.

  She drops into the water, the blue light still pulsing regularly above the surface. The water is not cold; its temperature suggests the Warm-Stream Season.

  The Warm-Stream Season? Why does she remember that now?

  Because you are a daughter of Myan. A voice comes into her mind.

  Who is this? Kaya is puzzled, but the voice sounds soft and firm. Her alarm and anxiety ease up.

  Look at this. It is not answering her question.

  Kaya senses the currents are trying to guide her downward. She swings her tail, diving into its depth. Since when does she have a fishtail again? This must be a dream, one that feels especially real.

  For some inestimable time, she swims along, until a fluorescent presence appears ahead. It is a temple of luminescent corals. Kaya draws closer, pushing aside the seaweeds in front of the door and entering the temple. The interior walls are brighter than the ones outside, illuminating the hall. A swarm of tiny shrimps swims past her, heading outside through the gaps in the coral walls. Creatures still live here.

  The warmth here will not last for long, but the little creatures are oblivious to it. The voice is helpless and sad.

  Kaya gazes around the place. It is a room with seven walls. A rack stands against each of the walls except the one with the door. The racks reach the ceiling. Each rack holds glittering, translucent balls of various sizes.

  These are the memories of Myan, from the first glacial, Natalesian, to the last, Tribalenan, and to the interglacial after that, which is the present time, an age of long and gracious summer, even spurring the birth of intelligent life. The fourth glacial should not have come so early. The voice sounds a bit unfocused as if lost in its endless memories.

  Kaya moves to the right-most rack and takes down the last sphere. It is very light, its gravity probably mitigated by buoyancy. Kaya prods the surface of the ball lightly with her nose and it gives way a little, like a bubble in the water. She plunges into the sphere.

  She is looking at a floating ice above the water. The Myanese had gone, and the remaining creatures had sensed the unusual change in the climate. Light and heat from Saion was declining. Ice covers formed all over the surface, gradually expanding downwards. There was only one place in this planet still holding warmth, to which all living things were migrating. They might exhaust themselves on the way. They might get caught within the frozen ice and turn into ornaments that would never decompose. The few who were lucky enough to arrive still had to go deeper to seek more heat. Some could not bear the heavy weight of water and gave up, submitting themselves to a frigid death.

  Kaya emerges from the bubble, tears in her eyes. She puts back the memory sphere and holds up the second last one.

  The Union had proposed generous offers. The extraction of rare particles from the sun Saion would change the Myan ecology. In exchange, the native people of Myan would migrate to other planets. However, the natives refused to leave their birthplace and even more unwilling to have their planet become a frozen world forever. So the war between the Union and the Myanese began. The outcome should have been obvious. The Union had well-trained troops, equipped with advanced weapons and warships, while the children of Myan could only muster weapons made of stones and shells and rely on water for shelter.

  The Union had not meant to kill in the beginning. Not wanting to take any lives, the Union soldiers simply tried to disperse the natives with gunshots when they attacked. But the Union gave up passive defence after one violent night, during which three Union soldiers were killed by the natives in a raid. They did not care for the lives of the natives anymore and the war heated up. Even at this stage, the Union still restricted themselves to personal combat. Again, the familiar noises: clashes of weapons, shouting in Myanese language. The familiar smells of blood and gunpowder. Union warships retrieved their fallen soldiers, and the perished natives sunk into the water.

  Finally, on a night when the two moons overlapped and all electronic devices blacked out, a team of natives approached a Union warship from below and coerced dozens of acid squids to spray their corrosive ink over the bottom of the ship. The warship went down, together with all the soldiers aboard, sinking to their watery death.

  The next day, all the Union ships floating on the water withdrew. Before the natives could celebrate their victory, sudden explosions blew them into pieces. The Union carrier in orbit opened fire with a weapon of mass destruction. Almost all the adult natives were killed. The elders came up from the deep water with the younglings to surrender. After extracting a promise from the Union to keep the young ones safe, the elders killed themselves with the shell knives on their belts. The Union fleet left with the last native people of Myan.

  Kaya is trapped in the bloody memories, her heart torn. She puts down the sphere and curls up, retching. So that was the disaster. That was the truth about the Myanese refugees rescued by the Union. But why? She screams silently.

  For the fortunes of Saion they craved, Myan was merely a sacrifice. The voice speaks again.

  Couldn’t they just look for another target? There are many other stars like Saion in the universe, aren’t there? Kaya still cannot understand.

  There is only one Saion, just like there is only one Myan. The children of Myan would not relinquish their native planet, but the Union did not wish to give up their hard-won treasure either. There is immense sorrow in that voice.

  Kaya bites down on her lower lip and picks up the third sphere, which is the smallest but the most iridescent.

  It was a clear day. In the golden light of Saion, several natives relaxed on the surface. A female adult was carrying a youngling and softly humming some simple tunes. The youngling’s eyes glistened, and its tail swung with the rhythm of the song. The water nearby rippled. A male adult emerged. He moved closer to the female, holding up a freshly captured fish. She reached out her left arm in response to his embrace. After taking over the fish with her left hand, she tore out meat with her teeth and fed the child. He watched them fondly, and she met his eyes, their entwined tails stirring up waves below the water.

  Some of Kaya’s memories come back. They are—

  Your pare
nts. They loved each other deeply, and they loved you as much. The voice is full of tenderness now.

  Kaya is crying again, her tears dissipating into the water. May I take away these memories?

  They have been in your heart all the time. No one can take away the memories from the children of Myan. And always, Myan remembers. Kaya’s grief subsides in the steadiness of the voice.

  “You are—Goddess of Myan,” Kaya suddenly realizes.

  Many address me this way, but I am no goddess. I am Myan, the planet. The voice peters out, and Kaya falls into the blue light again.

  When she awakens, Kaya finds herself lying on the ice, bathing in the faint light of Saion. She is cushioned on sundried seaweeds. The pain in her right knee has receded as she rises to her feet. Blades mounted onto the shoes again, Kaya skates toward The Flying Fish.

  She greedily breathes in the Myan air, remembering its smell. She dreams of diving into the Myan water, to let the brine wash through her mouth and out from her gills. No chance now. She has to go back to The Flying Fish and, subsequently, the project base.

  Three standard days later, she takes off as scheduled, flying to Saion with the membranes meant to close the last opening. But instead of carrying them to the designated position, she wrecks the framework, pushing it toward Saion, making the broken membranes drape down and point to the blazing star. Before the base realizes what is happening, she flies the ship into Saion. She knows that her ship alone will not cause enough turbulence, but fuelled by the chain reactions, the fiery tongues of Saion will consume the membranes and framework gradually. Eventually, enough light and heat will return to Myan. Ice will melt, releasing frozen creatures. Waves will surge again and the gravity of the two moons will cause tides to rise and fall. Planet Myan, her homeland, will come back to life again.

  Meridian

  Karin Lowachee

  They all tried to save me.

  “I think this one’s still alive.”

  “Tag him.”

  In that space between life and death, you make a decision whether to wake up. Maybe that’s when time ceases to matter. I felt older than four years old and too young to remember. My world was telling me not to remember how the strange crew and its dead-eyed captain came to our far-away colony and nothing was the same again.

  I might’ve fought, giving them a reason to shoot me.

  Or maybe there was no reason at all.

  A long time later, after I was better, I heard them. Other people. Not the same bad crew. Speaking outside the door of the medical room where they kept me. It was a family ship, and they talked about dropping me at the nearest station, but--

  “He’ll just cycle through the system, and how will that help?”

  “Well, what do you wanna do with him?”

  “Maybe we can just keep him here.”

  “We don’t even know his name. He won’t talk to us. In the system, they’d be able to find out. They’d have the colony manifest. DNA records.”

  DNA. In school, they ran a test for fun to find out where on Earth I was from and what kind of people I belonged to, people who had lived long ago on a far-away planet. East Asian: 61%. Spanish European: 22%. Anglo-Saxon: 17%. I coloured a map of Earth, highlighting the places those people had come from and took it home to show my parents and brothers. We had things in common that spoke of our heritage: dark eyes that tilted at the corners; dark hair.

  “I don’t want to give him to the system,” this woman said.

  “Now we’re kidnappers?” said the man.

  “We weren’t the ones who attacked his colony.”

  “No, we just swept in like those pirates right after.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. We legitimately found him. Only him. Look at him. It was the pirates who did it. You want to hand him over to EHHRO?”

  “He might still have family outside of the Meridia colony. We don’t have the right.”

  “Where’s EarthHub now? What’re their human rights organi-zations doing when their colonies are being attacked?”

  “Look—we’ll hand him over. If no other family speaks up, we’ll apply to foster him. Eventually adopt him if it comes to that. They’ll want to get him out of their hands so it shouldn’t be too hard. That way no authorities will get on our ass.”

  “Your name’s Paris, do you remember?”

  I remembered. But a part of me didn’t want to.

  This new lady at the station said my last name was Azarcon. They’d gotten my DNA and matched it to the records. Paris Azarcon. I remembered my two older brothers. It hurt right where I’d been shot. Right through my body.

  Mama and Daddy. They were shot first. In their heads.

  So much screaming.

  My brother, Cairo, stood in front of me, trying to protect me, but it didn’t make a difference.

  “Paris?”

  I didn’t want to remember anymore. I ran to a corner.

  Days like this. Back and forth. Do you remember anything else? They all wanted me to remember until I screamed at them to stop it.

  Then they said they were going to send me away from the station. That someone wanted me. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care anymore.

  “Your name’s Paris, and this family is going to take you to their ship to live. They found you and they care about you. We’ll check in a little later, okay? But you can go with them now.”

  “How old are you now?”

  I held up my hand, fingers spread.

  “Five years old. That’s good. Do you know your name?”

  “Paris.”

  “How about your last name?”

  I didn’t want to say it.

  These people weren’t my family, even though they said they were now.

  I thought of the map of Earth that I’d coloured. A planet I’d never been to. It was nothing like Meridia and its rocky ground, where Daddy and Mama and my oldest brother, Bern, worked at the mines.

  “It’s going to be Rahamon,” the lady said. She called herself Captain Kahta. “That’s your last name,” she said. “Look here on this ID tag. You always wear this around your neck, okay? Paris Rahamon. The newest crew member of Chateaumargot.”

  Everything was muddy in my mind for a long time. I only knew what the captain and her mister said about how they’d caught a signal from a moon. They found me shot in the back outside my home, but I was still breathing. When they said those things, it was like they were telling me a story from a slate, one that someone else made up, except I didn’t have pictures to go with it. Maybe there was a drawn image of what my colony looked like, but I didn’t see it, couldn’t remember, and nobody let me look it up. The captain and her mister took me to a station and got me help. After a while, when I was fixed, they came back to get me and the station let me go. They said I had a new life now and it was good.Nobody would make me go back to the other life anymore.

  I didn’t want to talk about my real family anyway.

  I didn’t want to talk about the things I remembered before they were all gone. Everything was going to fade. For a while, after first waking up, I barely remembered anything. Then it started to come back and that was worse.

  Back and forth. Remembering and forgetting. Remembering.

  They wanted me to like Chateaumargot. They bought me toys and clothes, and at first I didn’t have to work. Their teenaged daughter looked after me when the captain or her mister weren’t around. Sanja played with me and took me around the ship to show me the garden and the games and the gym. Captain Kahta saw me when she finished work, and Mister Chandar cooked for me or showed me how to build models of ships and stations, though he said I would have to grow older before I did other stuff. He probably meant work.

  For a few months aboard the ship, life was like that and I forgot most days after they passed. Captain Kahta said that was okay. They seemed happy having me, even though I didn’t talk much and hardly ever felt like playing games with them. They stopped trying to force me to play games when I took their toys and t
hrew them against the wall. For a few days all I did was break the things they gave me, so then they gave up.

  On my first birthday with them, I hit Sanja in the eye and she screamed. I didn’t mean to give her a black eye but she’d forced me to sit and do math. I hated math. It was frustrating and she kept pushing. I told her she wasn’t my mom so she needed to stop. She said Captain Kahta wanted me to learn math, and I said Captain Kahta wasn’t my mom either. Sanja got this look in her eyes like she was mad even though it was true, and she put the slate back in front of me and told me to stop being a brat and do my work. So I punched her face.

  Mister Chandar locked me in my cabin alone. My stomach was growly by the time Captain Kahta came in. She sat on my bed next to me.

  “Paris, why did you hit Sanja?”

  I stared at my hands.

  “Paris?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. Sanja says you don’t want to do the math work.”

  I shrugged. What did it matter?

  “Paris. Look at me.”

  I looked at Captain Kahta. Her dark eyes looked sad. For me. The dot on her forehead seemed to judge me. The people on the station had looked like that too, from what I remembered. I wished they would stop.