Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Law, Lucas K.

  The lights appeared in the battle. The lights were the battle. The lights spread, travelling across worlds in immense chariots of fire. Even the cosmos looked like a small place, as the lights danced around the heavens finally to arrive at the ground where he sat. A figure appeared in front of him. Kāila could not understand what it was, but his mind could see it as clearly as the light of the day. The lights danced around four faces of that being.

  “Rudra,” the Brāhmaṇa whimpered. And then the battle vanished. The field of dead lay in front of Kāila.

  He saw her floating next to the gates of the stone city. The lights were brighter and they still danced around her. He saw the Dāsa archers take aim at his daughter. He screamed, but the words would not come from his throat. He lay there among the dead, not dead but not living either.

  He cursed the stone city. Those stones had taken away so much from him. Then in the blink of an eye, the sky above the stone city filled up with the lights. And then in an instant the lights disappeared. The stone city stood still and uncaring, as it always had.

  It was a long while before Kāila moved. His beautiful Ritya was gone. Maybe this was the merciful way to go. The Rājan was gone. So was his tribe. Now he had to go home. Wherever that was. He knew that he had witnessed divinity, yet his insufficient mind did not know how to understand it.

  Ritya. Where are you, my child?

  Kāila sensed something was different. The silent stones told him something that he could not comprehend. He got up and stumbled toward the city, not away from it. There were no ślokas on his lips as he walked ahead, just his daughter’s name. Ritya, he mumbled, over and over again. The gates were still locked, but he stood there. He waited. He did not know for what.

  Ritya. Ritya. Ritya.

  He stood there, near those imposing gates for an eternity. And then he heard noises all around him. Horses and men came. Maybe it was part of a dream. He did not know. He did not care. Maybe the winds had carried the message of death to the Āryas. Nothing united men like the scent of victory. Some men asked him questions. He neither listened nor answered. He had only one word on his lips.

  Ritya. Ritya. Ritya.

  The stone city stood silent as the men tore down its gates. The Dāsas did not stop them. They did not even stir. How could they? As the horses wandered in, he saw them. There was no anguish, no fear, no pain, not even surprise. There was nothing. They had fallen where they stood. Peaceful serene vengeance adorned street after street in the stone city.

  Ritya. Are you here, my child?

  He wandered the dead streets searching. More horses streamed in. There were more noises of men, their weapons, and their animals. He did not care. More questions came at him from the men. He ignored them all. He kept repeating the name of his child.

  Ritya. Ritya. Ritya.

  The stone city was no longer silent. The noises of men reigned in the streets. Somewhere in the city, music started to flow. So did alcohol that the men called soma, the nectar of gods. The songs grew louder under the stars. Kāila heard a familiar name echoing through the winds. Ritya, daughter of Kāila, the voices said. They chanted her name. She won this battle for us, they sang. Daughter of Kāila, they chanted, Kālikā—the goddess of death.

  Kālikā. Kālikā. Kāli.

  The stone city was the mound of the dead, yet it was more alive than it had ever been. And it welcomed them all.

  Author’s Notes:

  Mohenjo-daro (‘Mound of the Dead’ in Sindhi) was one of the largest settlements of the powerful Indus Valley Civilization. About four thousand years ago, the city and the civilization declined with stunning suddenness. The city was located on the bank of the Indus River in the present-day Pakistan and is the best-preserved city of the Indus civilization to date.

  Crash

  Melissa Yuan-Innes

  Luna Yu figured nothing happened on the Moon. Not since her parents colonized it, anyway.

  Her sixteenth birthday started out like any weekday, immersed in partial differential equations while a robot teacher patrolled the pod classroom around Luna, her two siblings, and a four-year-old boy.

  Birthdays did not get you a free pass out of school on the Moon. If anything, you got more homework instead of less. At least Terra hadn’t teased Luna about her bioprosthetic legs today. When Mom and Dad weren’t around, Luna and Puck secretly called their twelve-year-old sister Terror.

  Luna’s eye screen flickered once. Twice. She took it off projection mode, which was inherently more unstable. They only used it so that the other students could see what everyone was studying. The robot teacher had a direct input line on their studies, but the students’ efficiency doubled when they realized other humans could watch them in real time. Also, it was supposed to rest their eyes, to focus on a metre away instead of the usual 30 centimetres, but mostly the colony cared about the efficiency part.

  The near screen flickered, too, before it blacked out, only to be lit up in red letters.

  RED ALERT:

  ALL COLONISTS TO RETURN TO T1 IMMEDIATELY.

  SECURE YOUR PREMISES.

  AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

  Teacher began to parrot the words in a loud monotone. “Red alert. All colonists to return to T1 immediately . . .”

  “What’s wrong?” said Puck, dropping his pencil. Its free end rose into the air with 1/6 grav.

  Luna batted the pencil to the side and scooped their four-year-old neighbour, Franklin, in her arms. He was a chubby kid, heavier than he looked, and smelled a bit like old cheese. “We have to get back to our pods. Time to go to sleep!”

  Franklin scowled at her and pushed his arms against her chest. “It’s not sleep time. It’s only 9:13 a.m.!”

  “Yeah, Luna,” muttered Terra.

  “Okay, not sleep, then,” said Luna, struggling to keep Franklin on her hip. He wasn’t half as heavy as the weights she practiced with for three hours every day, but the weights didn’t wiggle. “They just want us back in our pods. Maybe it’s an asteroid drill. They’re probably timing us. Let’s hurry, okay?”

  “I want to walk! I’ve got real legs,” said Franklin.

  Luna set him down a little harder than necessary. Her legs were real, just not completely biological.

  “. . . Secure the premises. Await further instructions,” droned Teacher as they left, vacuum sealing the classroom door behind them.

  “Well, that was creepy,” said Terra.

  Puck nodded. Franklin reached for his hand, and Puck took it.

  Boys. Luna turned to her sister. “Wanna race back to T1?”

  “No,” said Terra, but Puck started to run, which meant that Franklin did, too, giggling. Terra rolled her eyes, but at least she trotted. The air in the airlock was cooler, since the colony didn’t want to waste energy on sections that were only “pass-bys,” and because they’d passed deeper underground. Less than five minutes later, they reached Terminal One, or T1, except Terra, who was still dragging her feet and mumbling about “secure vs. insecure” premises. The T1 hallway red alarm lights were flashing, making Luna uneasy, even though someone had already disabled the siren. Her siblings alternated between looking like devils and shadows, depending how the lights strobed.

  Terra grinned at her, flashing her bright red teeth, and crossed her eyes.

  Luna felt a bit better.

  Franklin’s parents must have tracked his progress through his implant, because the door whooshed open before the sensor should have detected Puck. Dr. Wei snatched Franklin up in his arms.

  “What’s happening?” asked Luna.

  Dr. Wei said, “Don’t know. Your parents are waiting,” and sealed the door. Luna ran flat out the last five metres to the Yu pod. It unlocked automatically to her retinal print, and she stumbled into the chamber, shouting, “Mom? Dad!”

  “Shh. It’s okay. We’re both here,” said Mom, folding Luna in her arms. Mom was the only person in the colony who smelled like lavender, because she synthesized it in her lab.

&nbs
p; Dad was already double-hugging Puck on one side and Terra on the other. “Are we ever glad to see you—”

  “What happened?”

  Mom and Dad exchanged a look before Dad said, “There was a crash north of Cabeus Crater.”

  Luna wasn’t sure what the big deal was. Even Franklin knew that the colony was set up on the Moon’s south pole, on the edge of Shackleton Crater, so they could benefit from nearly constant sunlight while staying in good radio contact with Earth. Strange to think there had been a crash on the opposite side, but Luna hadn’t noticed any earthquake, so either it wasn’t a big impact, or their structures were really well-built, or both.

  “What kind of crash?” asked Puck. He didn’t talk often, but it just meant that everyone paid more attention when he did.

  Mom and Dad exchanged another look. “A team is investigating. In the meantime, the rest of us are staying here to be safe.”

  Minutes ago, Luna had assumed that everything exciting had happened before she was born. Technically, she was one of the first Moon colonists, since her parents had escaped from the Earth when her mother was pregnant with her, but Luna didn’t remember anything about it except the leg operations. Sometimes, when she was feeling down, she figured that she’d gotten all of the bad stuff and none of the good stuff about being a pioneer. By the time Mom got pregnant again, they’d figured out how much fetal development relies on 1 grav and trace minerals, so Puck and Terra were okay.

  Now, Luna found herself looking, really looking, at their pod. Compared to the other families, they had a giant amount of space because, not only did their sleeping area have to fit five bodies instead of two or three, but since everyone slept kind of upright, strapped in their sleeping bag, more bodies just took more room. They also got a larger “living area,” where they ate or played games together, but they still had to share the communal toilet and sponge bath like everyone else. Mom and Dad kept the moon rock walls plain except for a picture of the Buddha anchored to the domed ceiling with a red ribbon.

  At first, it was fun to have Mom and Dad home in the middle of the day. Dad told them funny stories, like how he tried to build a new kind of 1/6 G toilet that turned out disastrous, and Mom showed them a new card game called Bingo Newton, which was about science trivia. But Luna noticed Mom talking on her com link while Dad was laughing, and Mom trying to distract them with a new flavour of soy bean paste while Dad was talking on his com link. So something was going on.

  That was good, right? Because Luna had been so bored.

  But actually, her heart thudded in her chest and her armpits prickled with sweat, because she knew her life was changing in front of her eyes, even before Mom got called away.

  “I’ll be back soon. I love you,” Mom said, which was not like her at all. She usually said, “Be good.” And then she did something stranger. She kissed Luna’s cheeks and looked like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t. When Luna opened her mouth, Mom shook her head and kissed Puck on his forehead. He watched Mom silently as Mom turned to Terra and offered her a hug.

  After a second, Terra took it and hugged Mom back.

  The hugs worried Luna most of all.

  When the door sealed behind her, Terra turned on Dad. “You have to tell us what’s going on.”

  Dad shook his head. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Mom’s acting like she’s going off to war!” Terra said.

  Sometimes, Luna loved Terra because she said exactly what everyone else was thinking but didn’t have the nerve to say.

  While Terra and Dad argued, Luna tracked her mother’s progress. Mom had exited T1 and was heading north, to the transportation unit. Then her implant paused for 20 minutes before it made a jerky, jagged progress north.

  Mom was going to the Cabeus Crater, to the crash site.

  Luna’s fingers felt numb. Her breath came in short gasps. But she tried to reason it out. They’d called both Mom and Dad, but in the end, they asked Mom. Mom was a family doctor and a biomedical research scientist who specialized in viruses. Dad was a mechanical engineer who liked to joke that Mom had married beneath her. If they needed both their expertise, then it was not just some sort of technological problem but also a living organism that needed tending.

  Could the crash site be contaminated with some sort of virus?

  Was their colony under attack?

  Mom and Dad didn’t like talking about what had happened to Earth. They talked about good stuff. Puck was always asking about what trees and rivers looked and felt like, and Luna wanted to know about their ancestors.

  But whenever Terra brought up stuff like nuclear bombs or deforestation, they either changed the subject or stopped talking altogether. “You don’t need to know that. We came here to get away from it.” And then their com links’ information on all the bad stuff would kind of disappear, bit by bit, until Terra figured it out and started keeping her mouth shut sometimes.

  Terra should know better than asking Dad directly. It wouldn’t get her any answers, but at least it kept them both busy, especially now that Terra was bugging Puck to say something.

  “Don’t you care about Mom? Don’t you think we should know?” she said, while Puck backed into the sleeping area, trying not to get involved. He sent Luna a look, but she deliberately closed her left eye at him to show him that she was using her com link.

  Luna tuned back into tracker mode. The whole Moon was mapped out so that if anyone ever wandered off-base, they could find her quickly and easily until she blasted off into space. Luna paused at that thought, but it was really, super unlikely that Mom was going off-Moon with no prep. Still. Scary. All colonists had an implant behind their right ears that identified them on the tracking system, so Luna could see that Mom was travelling at space jeep speed, heading straight for the other dots clustered at what must be the crash site. On closer inspection, these turned out to be Mr. Lau, Dr. Bing, and Dr. Chan.

  Mr. Lau was the colony’s main surgeon trained under the British system, where surgeons were called Mister. Luna had spent way too much of her life with him while he reconfigured nanobot after nanobot for her legs, until he finally gave up and he and Mom developed the bioprostheses. Just seeing his name gave her a chill, even though she hadn’t seen him for over four months.

  Dr. Chan was a doctor, too, but he was younger. He studied both Eastern and Western medicine, so Luna would see him practicing Tai Chi in the exercise room while everyone else lifted weights.

  Dr. Bing was an engineer who specialized in applied science research so complicated that Luna thought even her parents didn’t exactly understand it. Many colonists whispered about her because she was one of the single women on the base and certainly the most beautiful and the most reserved. Luna didn’t like her.

  Luna signalled Puck over and showed him the tracking map. He studied it carefully. “Makes sense,” he whispered.

  “What does?”

  “Well, I figured she was going to the crash site.”

  “But look at the people she’s with! She could be in terrible danger. What if someone hit us with a bioterrorist bomb, and that’s why they need Mom? To collect and analyze the virus?”

  Puck shrugged. “They could have asked her because she’s a family doctor. There are two other doctors there, you know.”

  “And Dr. Bing. Why Dr. Bing?”

  He shook his head. She could see his mind was already drifting. Puck didn’t really like people or talking about things. He’d rather head over to the biofarm and hang out with the radishes.

  Terra bellowed, “Why. Won’t. Anybody. Help. Me? Mom won’t answer her com link, Dad’s not answering any questions, and you two don’t care!”

  From the look on Puck’s face, Luna could see that Terra had shattered their brother’s usual calm.

  “We care,” Luna said, “but yelling’s not helping. Want to play Bingo Newton, Dad?”

  Dad shook his head. “You three go ahead.”

  Terra said, “No way! You must think
I’m an idiot.”

  Puck jumped up and held out his hand for the cards. “Gosh, that sounds like a good idea.”

  After a minute, Terra gave them a funny look and trailed after them to the sleep closets. “If you think I’m some little kid that you can distract with a little game—”

  “Hush up a minute,” said Luna. She explained the tracking chart.

  “Let me see that,” said Terra. She spent so long staring at the tracking chart that Luna wanted to ask her what was wrong. Terra blinked hard and said, “Mom’s dot isn’t moving as much as the others.”

  “Let’s move the scale in tighter,” said Puck, so Luna made the increments smaller, double-blinking on Mom’s dot to make it the focus.

  It was true. Mom’s dot stayed in place while Dr. Bing’s moved the most, in a little semi-circle. The two other dots moved just once in a while, but they flickered.

  “It could mean nothing,” said Puck, after a second. “She could be collecting viruses and have to stay in position.”

  “I thought you said she was probably there as a doctor and not because it was bioterrorism,” snapped Luna.

  “Bioterrorism?” said Terra.

  Oh, yeah. Luna had left that angle out. By the time she’d finished telling Terra, her little sister was ready to steal a moon jeep and race after Mom, yelling, “We’ve got to save her!”

  Luna remembered her first aid course, though. You couldn’t rush in to save someone if it meant a stampede of people running into a depressurized chamber because then you might all smother together. Maybe one person could suit up and drag the victim out while a team fixed the pressure. ”We just need to know what’s going on.”

  “But she’s not answering us!” said Terra.

  “Let’s see,” said Luna. She closed everything down to reboot her system.

  “What are you doing?” asked Puck.

  “Wiping the slate clean. You know it works maybe ten percent of the time.” She just didn’t mention that she was also shutting down the projection mode so that she could log back in as Dad. He changed his password every two days but kept the same master password, which she figured out a month ago. She checked his logbook, gasped, and opened the projection for them.