The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (55 page)

“And you think you can make this better?” Quy couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that she needed to be convinced: on Prime, she’d never seen immersers. They were tourist stuff, and even while travelling from one city to another, the citizens just assumed they’d know enough to get by.
But the stations, their ex-colonies were flooded with immersers.

Tam’s eyes glinted, as savage as those of the rebels in the history holos. “If I can take them apart, I can rebuild them and disconnect the logical circuits. I can give us the language and the tools to deal with them without being swallowed by them.”

Mind lost in the mountains, Third Aunt said. No one had ever accused Tam of thinking
small. Or of not achieving what she set her mind on, come to think of it. And every revolution had to start somewhere – hadn’t Longevity’s War of Independence started over a single poem, and the unfair imprisonment of the poet who’d written it?

Quy nodded. She believed Tam, though she didn’t know how far. “Fair point. Have to go now, or Second Uncle will skin me. See you later, lil’ sis.”

As
you walk under the wide arch of the restaurant with your husband, you glance upwards, at the calligraphy that forms its sign. The immerser translates it for you into “Sister Hai’s Kitchen,” and starts giving you a detailed background of the place: the menu and the most recommended dishes – as you walk past the various tables, it highlights items it thinks you would like, from rolled-up rice dumplings
to fried shrimps. It warns you about the more exotic dishes, like the pickled pig’s ears, the fermented meat (you have to be careful about that one, because its name changes depending on which station dialect you order in), or the reeking durian fruit that the natives so love.

It feels … not quite right, you think, as you struggle to follow Galen, who is already far away, striding ahead with
the same confidence he always exudes in life. People part before him; a waitress with a young, pretty avatar bows before him, though Galen himself takes no notice. You know that such obsequiousness unnerves him; he always rants about the outdated customs aboard Longevity, the inequalities and the lack of democratic government – he thinks it’s only a matter of time before they change, adapt themselves
to fit into Galactic society. You – you have a faint memory of arguing with him, a long time ago, but now you can’t find the words, anymore, or even the reason why – it makes sense, it all makes sense. The Galactics rose against the tyranny of Old Earth and overthrew their shackles, and won the right to determine their own destiny; and every other station and planet will do the same, eventually,
rise against the dictatorships that hold them away from progress. It’s right; it’s always been right.

Unbidden, you stop at a table, and watch two young women pick at a dish of chicken with chopsticks – the smell of fish sauce and lemongrass rises in the air, as pungent and as unbearable as rotten meat – no, no, that’s not it, you have an image of a darkskinned woman, bringing a dish of steamed
rice to the table, her hands filled with that same smell, and your mouth watering in anticipation …

The young women are looking at you: they both wear standard-issue avatars, the bottom-of-the-line kind – their clothes are a garish mix of red and yellow, with the odd, uneasy cut of cheap
designers; and their faces waver, letting you glimpse a hint of darker skin beneath the red flush of their
cheeks. Cheap and tawdry, and altogether inappropriate; and you’re glad you’re not one of them.

“Can I help you, older sister?” one of them asks.

Older sister. A pronoun you were looking for, earlier; one of the things that seem to have vanished from your mind. You struggle for words; but all the immerser seems to suggest to you is a neutral and impersonal pronoun, one that you instinctively
know is wrong – it’s one only foreigners and outsiders would use in those circumstances. “Older sister,” you repeat, finally, because you can’t think of anything else.

“Agnes!”

Galen’s voice, calling from far away – for a brief moment the immerser seems to fail you again, because you
know
that you have many names, that Agnes is the one they gave you in Galactic school, the one neither Galen
nor his friends can mangle when they pronounce it. You remember the Rong names your mother gave you on Longevity, the childhood endearments and your adult style name.

Be-Nho, Be-Yeu. Thu – Autumn, like a memory of red maple leaves on a planet you never knew.

You pull away from the table, disguising the tremor in your hands.

Second Uncle was already waiting when Quy arrived; and so were the
customers.

“You’re late,” Second Uncle sent on the private channel, though he made the comment half-heartedly, as if he’d expected it all along. As if he’d never really believed he could rely on her – that stung.

“Let me introduce my niece Quy to you,” Second Uncle said, in Galactic, to the man beside him.

“Quy,” the man said, his immerser perfectly taking up the nuances of her name in Rong.
He was everything she’d expected; tall, with only a thin layer of avatar, a little something that narrowed his chin and eyes, and made his chest slightly larger. Cosmetic enhancements: he was good-looking for a Galactic, all things considered. He went on, in Galactic, “My name is Galen
Santos. Pleased to meet you. This is my wife, Agnes.”

Agnes. Quy turned, and looked at the woman for the first
time – and flinched. There was no one here: just a thick layer of avatar, so dense and so complex that she couldn’t even guess at the body hidden within.

“Pleased to meet you.” On a hunch, Quy bowed, from younger to elder, with both hands brought together – Rong-style, not Galactic – and saw a shudder run through Agnes’s body, barely perceptible; but Quy was observant, she’d always been. Her
immerser was screaming at her, telling her to hold out both hands, palms up, in the Galactic fashion. She tuned it out: she was still at the stage where she could tell the difference between her thoughts and the immerser’s thoughts.

Second Uncle was talking again – his own avatar was light, a paler version of him. “I understand you’re looking for a venue for a banquet.”

“We are, yes.” Galen
pulled a chair to him, sank into it. They all followed suit, though not with the same fluid, arrogant ease. When Agnes sat, Quy saw her flinch, as though she’d just remembered something unpleasant. “We’ll be celebrating our fifth marriage anniversary, and we both felt we wanted to mark the occasion with something suitable.”

Second Uncle nodded. “I see,” he said, scratching his chin. “My congratulations
to you.”

Galen nodded. “We thought—’’ he paused, threw a glance at his wife that Quy couldn’t quite interpret – her immerser came up blank, but there was something oddly familiar about it, something she ought to have been able to name. “Something Rong,” he said at last. “A large banquet for 100 people, with the traditional dishes.”

Quy could almost feel Second Uncle’s satisfaction. A banquet
of that size would be awful logistics, but it would keep the restaurant afloat for a year or more, if they could get the price right. But something was wrong – something—

“What did you have in mind?” Quy asked, not to Galen, but to his wife. The wife – Agnes, which probably wasn’t the name she’d been born with – who wore a thick avatar, and didn’t seem to be answering or ever speaking up. An
awful picture was coming together in Quy’s mind.

Agnes didn’t answer. Predictable.

Second Uncle took over, smoothing over the moment of awkwardness with expansive hand gestures. “The whole hog, yes?” Second Uncle said. He rubbed his hands, an odd gesture that Quy had never seen from him – a Galactic expression of satisfaction. “Bitter melon soup, Dragon-Phoenix plates, Roast Pig, Jade Under
the Mountain …” He was citing all the traditional dishes for a wedding banquet – unsure of how far the foreigner wanted to take it. He left out the odder stuff, like Shark Fin or Sweet Red Bean Soup.

“Yes, that’s what we would like. Wouldn’t we, darling?” Galen’s wife neither moved nor spoke. Galen’s head turned towards her, and Quy caught his expression at last. She’d thought it would be contempt,
or hatred; but no, it was anguish. He genuinely loved her, and he couldn’t understand what was going on.

Galactics. Couldn’t he recognize an immerser junkie when he saw one? But then Galactics, as Tam said, seldom had the problem – they didn’t put on the immersers for more than a few days, on low settings, if they ever went that far. Most were flat-out convinced Galactic would get them anywhere.

Second Uncle and Galen were haggling, arguing prices and features; Second Uncle sounding more and more like a Galactic tourist as the conversation went on, more and more aggressive for lower and lower gains. Quy didn’t care anymore: she watched Agnes. Watched the impenetrable avatar – a red-headed woman in the latest style from Prime, with freckles on her skin and a hint of a star-tan on her face.
But that wasn’t what she was, inside; what the immerser had dug deep into. That wasn’t who she was at all.

Tam was right; all immersers should be taken apart, and did it matter if they exploded? They’d done enough harm as it was.

Quy wanted to get up, to tear away her own immerser, but she couldn’t, not in the middle of the negotiation. Instead, she rose, and walked closer to Agnes; the two
men barely glanced at her, too busy agreeing on a price. “You’re not alone,” she said, in Rong, low enough that it didn’t carry.

Again, that odd, disjointed flash. “You have to take it off,” Quy said, but got no further response. As an impulse, she grabbed the
other woman’s arm; felt her hands go right through the immerser’s avatar, connect with warm, solid flesh.

You hear them negotiating,
in the background – it’s tough going, because the Rong man sticks to his guns stubbornly, refusing to give ground to Galen’s onslaught. It’s all very distant, a subject of intellectual study; the immerser reminds you from time to time, interpreting this and that body cue, nudging you this way and that – you must sit straight and silent, and support your husband – and so you smile through a mouth that
feels gummed together.

You feel, all the while, the Rong girl’s gaze on you, burning like ice water, like the gaze of a dragon. She won’t move away from you; and her hand rests on you, gripping your arm with a strength you didn’t think she had in her body. Her avatar is but a thin layer, and you can see her beneath it: a round, moon-shaped face with skin the color of cinnamon – no, not spices,
not chocolate, but simply a color you’ve seen all your life.

“You have to take it off,” she says. You don’t move; but you wonder what she’s talking about.

Take it off. Take it off. Take what off?

The immerser.

Abruptly, you remember – a dinner with Galen’s friends, when they laughed at jokes that had gone by too fast for you to understand. You came home battling tears; and found yourself reaching
for the immerser on your bedside table, feeling its cool weight in your hands. You thought it would please Galen if you spoke his language; that he would be less ashamed of how uncultured you sounded to his friends. And then you found out that everything was fine, as long as you kept the settings on maximum and didn’t remove it. And then … and then you walked with it and slept with it, and
showed the world nothing but the avatar it had designed – saw nothing it hadn’t tagged and labelled for you. Then …

Then it all slid down, didn’t it? You couldn’t program the network anymore, couldn’t look at the guts of machines; you lost your job with the tech company, and came to Galen’s compartment, wandering in the room like a hollow shell, a ghost of yourself – as if you’d already died,
far away from home and all that it means to you. Then – then the immerser wouldn’t come off, anymore.

“What do you think you’re doing, young woman?”

Second Uncle had risen, turning towards Quy – his avatar flushed with anger, the pale skin mottled with an unsightly red. “We adults are in the middle of negotiating something very important, if you don’t mind.” It might have made Quy quail in other
circumstances, but his voice and his body language were wholly Galactic; and he sounded like a stranger to her – an angry foreigner whose food order she’d misunderstood – whom she’d mock later, sitting in Tam’s room with a cup of tea in her lap, and the familiar patter of her sister’s musings.

“I apologize,” Quy said, meaning none of it.

“That’s all right,” Galen said. “I didn’t mean to—” he
paused, looked at his wife. “I shouldn’t have brought her here.”

“You should take her to see a physician,” Quy said, surprised at her own boldness.

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” His voice was bitter. “I’ve even taken her to the best hospitals on Prime. They look at her, and say they can’t take it off. That the shock of it would kill her. And even if it didn’t …” He spread his hands, letting
air fall between them like specks of dust. “Who knows if she’d come back?”

Quy felt herself blush. “I’m sorry.” And she meant it this time.

Galen waved her away, negligently, airily, but she could see the pain he was struggling to hide. Galactics didn’t think tears were manly, she remembered. “So we’re agreed?” Galen asked Second Uncle. “For a million credits?”

Quy thought of the banquet; of
the food on the tables, of Galen thinking it would remind Agnes of home. Of how, in the end, it was doomed to fail, because everything would be filtered through the immerser, leaving Agnes with nothing but an exotic feast of unfamiliar flavors. “I’m sorry,” she said, again, but no one was listening; and she turned away from Agnes with rage in her heart – with the growing feeling that it had all
been for nothing in the end.

“I’m sorry,” the girl says – she stands, removing her hand from your arm, and you feel like a tearing inside, as if something within you was struggling to claw free from your body. Don’t go, you want to say. Please don’t go. Please don’t leave me here.

But they’re all shaking hands, smiling, pleased at a deal they’ve
struck – like sharks, you think, like tigers.
Even the Rong girl has turned away from you, giving you up as hopeless. She and her uncle are walking away, taking separate paths back to the inner areas of the restaurant, back to their home.