Asimov's SF, February 2010 (17 page)

The woman, lying in the stickiness of her own blood, tried to pull herself upward, fell back with a cry. She was whispering something, over and over; and it was a while before Shinxie realized that it was Gao's personal name, only used by his intimates.

Gao looked at the woman, uninterested; his aura did not waver.

Shinxie shook her head at the Prince, willing this farce to be over.

"I see,” the Prince said. He looked at the two pitiful, broken bodies below him. “I humbly apologize, in the name of the Tianshu Emperor, for this ill-treatment. The imperial alchemists here will see about your wounds. Come, Yue."

She followed, Gao's hand still in hers—cool, reassuring, unwavering.

As they walked out of the courtyard, the woman cried out, “Husband!” Her voice was a sob.

Gao turned, bowing to her—dragging Shinxie with him. “Guilin,” he said, speaking her personal name.

"Lisai,” the woman whispered. “Please..."

Gao shook his head, very gently. “It was a long time ago, Guilin. I am deeply sorry. You'll recover, and have a long, prosperous life.” He glanced at the Sixth Prince, and added, “They'll make sure you lack for nothing."

But his aura was undisturbed, his second-skin cool under Shinxie's touch. He meant none of it.

Later, the Prince came to her office, looking small and wan. “I'll be going back to the capital, Yue. I'll report that there's nothing to see here, nothing to threaten the Flowering Empire. My work is done."

"I see,” Shinxie said. She still heard the sounds of the canes rising and falling—still smelt the sharp, animal tang of blood in the morning—and felt Gao's aura, utterly unperturbed. A dandelion, going where the wind blew; a cloud, a storm. There was nothing more to him; not anymore—and she was the one who had shaped him, who had made hundreds like him.

The Prince's face was pale, and even his formal makeup couldn't quite disguise it. “I shouldn't have done it, should I?” he asked.

Something twisted within her. “You had to protect the Empire,” she said. “You had to make sure."

The Prince's hands clenched, slightly. “The alchemists will repair the skin, and mend the broken bones. It will be as if it had never happened. I'll make sure they're compensated—that they're pardoned, with enough money to establish themselves. It will be as if it had never happened.” His tone was that of one who didn't believe in what he said; and for the first time since she'd known him, his voice shook and broke.

Shinxie fought the crushing feeling that threatened to overwhelm her chest. “Go home,” she said, gently. “You have wives and children. You have no reason to cling to any of this."

"Yue—” the Prince said, and stopped. “If I were to—” He stopped again, as if words would no longer come to him. “Come back with me,” he said. “Please."

He had never asked. He had never begged. In all the days of their liaisons, even in the days since he'd come back into her life....

Oh, Your Excellency....

If he told you, tomorrow, that you could come back as his concubine, what would you do?

She hadn't been able to answer Gao, then. But now, in the quiet of her office, there was only one thing she could say, one answer that would make sense. “My place is here. My work is here. I am sorry. Go home. Forget about this place.” Forget about me.

The Prince's face contracted, very slightly. Shinxie reached out, feeling nothing but a shadow of her old desire—stroked his hand, gently. “May you live long, and attain all five blessings, Your Excellency."

And, in that instant—looking at this small, hunched man who was no less broken than the prisoners he'd chosen to beat—she knew.

Gao was waiting for her in the Hall of Cultivating the Body and Mind—standing in the center, amid the students deep in their meditations. He bowed to her when she arrived.

It was the hour after dusk; the drum had been beaten, signaling the end of this day's teaching. The teachers had gone back to their rooms; the alchemists to their laboratories. The procession that accompanied the Sixth Prince was making its slow way down the mountain, taking with it Gao's wife and son in palanquins—pale and shrunken, their bodies repaired by the alchemists’ painstaking work.

"I know how you came back,” Shinxie said.

Gao's face turned toward her, the eye-facets gleaming with the first star. He said nothing.

"Balance,” Shinxie whispered. “You can't open a singularity unless you care about nothing—but that's not how it works, is it?” That wasn't how ... She took a deep, trembling breath, feeling the icy air go down, all the way into her lungs. Finally she said. “If you loved everything on this earth—the mountains and the valleys, the storms and the sunlight—the Emperor, the merchants and the laborers, the alchemists and the workers...” If nothing truly stood out, if everything was in balance...

Gao said, finally, “Then, if you've listened to what I told you, you'd know that wouldn't be love anymore."

No, not in the sense of desire or lust—it wouldn't set people apart, wouldn't tear away at the fabric of the world....

He did not move—and she was half-relieved, half-disappointed. Would he not even attempt to silence her?

"You needn't have come back here,” she whispered, and then something came loose within her, some pent-up anger or frustration. “You needn't come back here and go through this pretense—there was no need—” Not for the Sixth Prince, not for the canes, not for the memory of blood clogging up her nostrils, the nausea that threatened to overwhelm her every time she paused....

"This is White Horse,” Gao said, gravely. “A refuge for the Flowering Empire's dreamers; the only place where they can thrive. If you cannot grasp what this is about, then who will?” He tilted his head—and, with a growing, convulsive shiver, she remembered the conversation they'd had in the Hall, the students in meditation, his words about love and equality, nesting at the back of their minds like coiled snakes....

New teachings. He had come back because of the students, because of what he thought he could give them. Because he meant to change them.

"You—” she whispered.

"There is so much blindness in this world,” Gao said, and for the first time, she heard kindness in his voice. It did nothing to quell the tremors that ran up her arms. “So much misery to extinguish."

"And you'd change us?” she whispered. “To fit your rules? What gave you the right—?"

She swung her hand, clumsily, toward him; he caught it in his own, imprisoning the fingers in an unbreakable hold.

"Shinxie,” he whispered, and in his voice was an echo of the Prince's need, of his aching tenderness. “The Tianshu Emperor shapes us to his needs. Do you think it's a better rule?"

The Imperial edict, sending her into her exile; White Horse, the gateway to a voyage of no return; the casual arrogance of the Sixth Prince, the faith that the Empire should be safeguarded, at all costs. “I don't know what your rule would be,” she said.

"You know how I came back,” Gao said. His aura washed over her, unchanging—all five elements, entwined into perfect balance; fire and wood, earth and water and metal generating each other, destroying each other, supporting each other in their endless cycle. “That's all I can offer you."

"I could call him back,” Shinxie said. “The Prince. Tell him what happened, tell him what you did."

Gao said nothing. “If that is your wish, I will not gainsay it."

"You wouldn't?” She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. “You let your wife and son be beaten rather than reveal anything, and you wouldn't stop me?"

"My wife and son were never in real danger,” Gao said. “Many things are wrong in the Flowering Empire, but the death of two innocents is not yet condoned. But to stop you would require violence,” Gao said. “Perhaps even killing you."

Shinxie laughed. She couldn't help herself—the sounds racked her, bitter sobs with nothing of joy. “You—"

He was still watching her, his head bent at an angle, like a curious bird; and suddenly she realized that everything he had ever said or done had led to this point—that every one of his acts had aimed to let her know, to put her in the position when she knew exactly what he felt—as if he still needed some kind of judgment passed on him, some reassurance that he was right.

No, that was not it.

He had come here, in White Horse, for a change that would start among the Flowering Empire's dreamers—among her students. A change she would witness; for she was Abbess of White Horse.

Of course he would want her to understand.

"Celestials take you,” she whispered.

Gao's lips thinned into a smile. “You'll find that's impossible."

"I could stop you,” Shinxie said—but she thought of the Prince's haunted face, and knew she couldn't. “But it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair."

Gao inclined his head, and said nothing. His aura washed over her, with the regularity of waves on a calm morning—something she could cling to, even now.

"The others,” she said. “On Penlai Station. Will they come back?"

"Who knows? I can't speak for them."

Gao made a slow, sweeping gesture with his hands; and the air started to sparkle around him. Slowly, the singularity came into being, blurring the edges of his being—layer after layer of his body slowly erasing itself from reality. “Goodbye, Yue Shinxie. I trust we will meet again."

After he was gone, she stood for a while, the silence of the Hall washing over her—the familiar sounds of nightingales singing, the crisp, biting air of the night on her fingers, the lights reflected in the facets of her students’ eyes.

She wondered how he would fare, out in the Flowering Empire—what else he would do.

Whatever the case, things would never be the same.

She wanted to laugh, or to weep, but even that seemed to be beyond her. Instead, she felt a slow, inexpressible feeling rise up in her: a desperate wish for the world to thrive, no matter what happened; for the Emperor, the merchants and the laborers, the alchemists and the workers to live and prosper and understand what was right—Gao's love for everything, strong enough to crush the bones of her chest.

And, standing shivering in the courtyard, she finally understood the gift he had left her.

The path to transcendence had shifted, away from the dry detachment of Penlai Station and the emptiness of Heaven: it now lay in the shadow of his footsteps, in the singularity that compassion had opened—wide and clear and ready to be followed.

Copyright © 2010 Aliette de Bodard

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I, too, was bored senseless

when my high school biology teacher

described in neat chalk-rings

the orbits of electrons

around the nucleus, clean

fields of addition and subtraction,

which all of us could sense

had nothing to do

with the real world. Years passed.

More doubt, more body hair,

more black holes and botched affairs.

In time, truth wormed its way

into the apple of any brain.

Truth—electrons bounce and jangle

at the speed of light,

so erratic, so unhinged that

sometimes, literally,

they disappear from the universe,

fly off to god knows where

then return like nothing happened,

blushing like party guests

back from making out in the bathroom.

We should have known better

than to fear being laid

beneath the business end of a shovel.

Wherever we are going,

we have gone there before

and broke free using nothing more

than the paltry speed of stars.

—Michael Meyerhofer

Copyright © 2010 Michael Meyerhofer

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Stephen Baxter's new novel,
Ark,
a sequel to
Flood,
will be out from Ace later this year. The author is currently working on his “Northland” alternate-prehistory series of novels, which has locations close to where he lives, in north England—as does “Ice Line,” where, he tells us, “Admiral Collingwood is a local hero!"

Author's Note: This story takes place some eighty-five years after the events of “The Ice War” (
Asimov's,
September 2008), and is similarly loosely related to my 1993 novel
Anti-Ice
. In our timeline Admiral Collingwood did fight beside Nelson at Trafalgar, and Robert Fulton's
Nautilus
was built and trialed, though never used in war.

Prologue

I discovered the attached manuscript on January 1st 1806, a dismal New Year, when with my father's staff I was sifting through the charred wreckage of the Ulgham manufactory. It was scribbled on odd bits of paper that themselves tell something of the author's extraordinary story—a torn blueprint of the old
Nautilus
submersible machine, a warship's victualling sheet still reeking of gunpowder, even a memorandum in my own hand, all rolled up and stuffed into a spent Congreve rocket shell, presumably in the very last moments before the
Tom Paine
rose for its momentous journey to the Phoebean nest and the ice line. Though I did not immediately recognize his hand, it was immediately clear to me who was the author.