Despite herself, Suzhen speculates: who this woman was before, what advantages she possessed, what gave her these manners and this confidence. Not that status in the colonies means anything once the person is on Anatta, reduced, pared down to Bureau quantification. Previous wealth, previous position, all that is wiped out. The process of asylum equalizes. “I’m your caseworker. Whether or not you like it, I’ll be spending most of my time with you for half a year. Less if you can become independent before then.”
Ovuha blinks at her slowly. “I said only what I meant. What you do is above and beyond. I do not know how it is that I may repay you, as the rodent does not know how to repay an elephant.”
Ovuha’s register has grown more formal as she speaks until it reaches that, a proverb, her language turning as calligraphic as a painting. Again Suzhen’s temper flares. She tamps it down. How stupid, how petty. There is nothing in this foreign woman, this finely made creature, that should provoke her. She is not a warden, she is not one of those sadists. Taking her trauma out on a potentiate will not ease her past, will not undo her own injury. “What I am doing is my job. Your integration as a citizen who can serve Samsara is my duty and priority.”
“Purpose shapes what we are. To perform none is to forfeit one’s place in the human order.” Ovuha polishes off the last of the cake. “The subtleties and contours of it all pale before that stark truth, don’t they?”
The partition around them parts; the privacy filter toggles off. The restaurant’s air turns to fragrant gold and the fresh dew of a new day. Song fills the deck, silencing public feeds, suffusing both the restaurant’s physical space and each citizen’s personal datasphere. This is not a normal broadcast. It is Samsara, the deific force, the supreme intelligence. That which encompasses.
The AI has chosen to manifest as a projected image, city-vast, a presence of sheer scale. Behind its landscape body a single banner flies, one that Suzhen has seen before, if not as familiar to her as the Mirror. A lattice of thornworks, pointed inward to itself, the outside a smooth hexagon. Sigil of one of the greatest wasteland rulers, the commander whose armada is said to be numberless, the one general whose force could breach the sanctity of Anatta. The Warlord of the Thorn.
Behind Samsara, the banner burns, crisping to soot at the edges.
When Samsara speaks, its voice is petal-sweet. “Long ago the great architects created me with one purpose: to serve and protect humanity from the wounds it seeks to inflict upon itself, to kill the seeds of its self-destruction before they can flower. To guide you onto a path of peace is my greatest duty. Today another wall before my prime directive falls. The Warlord of the Thorn has been vanquished and humankind is one step closer to unity. The wild dominions will soon end and all of Anatta’s children will be returned to their rightful cradle.”
Diners and servers alike stop what they are doing; glasses and cutlery are put down in sudden chorus, and as one they break into applause that vibrates through the deck, an avalanche of voices and clapping hands and stamping feet. Outside the window Samsara too declares this victory, its image laying ownership to the sky, the burning banner crumbling to ashes in its hands. There is no footage of the warlord’s death or capture, a figure in armor lying in blood and smoke perhaps, but later there will be. There must always be clear, undeniable evidence, a grotesquerie of twisted limbs and melted helm. But not now, in the moment of divine communion. The facts and figures, how subjects of the Thorn will be dealt with, those too will come in time—the mundane things, the moving parts that would dilute the grand statement.
The high spirit goes on. Other tables call for liquor, a server arrives to say everything is on the house. For politeness Suzhen asks for a tigersmoke cocktail. Ovuha demurs. When the waiter is gone Ovuha’s hand convulses on the table, her knuckles white. She breathes deeply, in, out. In a few minutes she steadies herself. Her neck is rigid, her expression wiped clean of feeling.
Suzhen sips her tigersmoke when it comes. The whirligig glass is captivatingly pretty and the taste of the cocktail is just right, laced with rose salt and gentle stimulants, a marvel of flavor notes. She thinks to ask whether the Thorn was Ovuha’s warlord, whether Ovuha was ever required to tear an image to shreds, but she does not.
Here it is. Ovuha as breakable as anyone.
Taheen’s gallery sprawls across a terrace that stretches over the largest lake in Huajing District. Being here gives the impression of floating, the floor as translucent as jellyfishes and seemingly as unmoored. There is no human help. The units that assist Taheen are creatures with faceted faces, mouthless and spindly-limbed, with semi-precious gemstone eyes: spinels and rutiles, turquoises and aquamarines. Taheen has affectionately named each after its stone.
Mannequins line the windows, seated and standing, lying on their side or their back. A few stretch in croisé devant, though what they wear has nothing to do with ballet. Every shape is modeled, the statuesque and the squat, tapering and flaring torsos, thin and bulky limbs, and no two outfits are alike. One mannequin wears a waterfall bodice, the left sleeve slender and piscine, the right broad and draconic. The next is dressed in frosted glass and ceramic shards; the next still is in a brocade of jagged granite, gray slashed through with obsidian. There is a propensity for sharp things, as though the outfits are meant to wound the wearer and then dispose of themselves when that purpose has been fulfilled—assassination by haute couture.
Most expect Taheen to be narrowly made, cadaverous, but they’re broad and plump. Today they leave their heavy breasts bare, painted in animated calligraphy that has been scripted against cohesion: it is always gibberish that moves across fat and muscle and amber skin. Gorgeous gibberish, cascades of fragmented code and kaleidoscope poetry.
“You invest too easily,” they are saying as they light up. A ruby cigarette. This has a much deeper aroma than those they give Suzhen, oodh and sandalwood, a hint of camphor. Spumes of bladed phantoms rise. “Is the refugee—sorry, the potentiate—pretty to look at?”
“That’s a repulsive thing to ask, Taheen.” Suzhen picks at the dessert one of the automata has brought. Chiseled ice pastry on the outside, molten egg yolk on the inside, salt-sweet. It is peculiar, slightly unpleasant, as all gourmet inventions seem to be. “I don’t ever look at any of them that way. And I should say that you invest nothing at all.”
They laugh around the cigarette, the cylinder effortlessly clasped in their mouth. “Why, how should I invest myself? Donate my income? Your Bureau neither needs nor accepts it, my delightful friend; Samsara provides. You’ve misplaced yourself, you know.”
“I’ve got more paid vacation time than I could ever need.” This is an argument the two of them have had many times. It is rote. Still they continue to have it, insist on it, this routine between them as tried as breathing.
“Yes, yes, paid vacation. Very nice.” Taheen takes a long drag of the cigarette. The smoke they exhale is tinged red, strands of asymmetric helices. “Changing the system from the inside never works out, Suzhen. What happens is you become part of it, another function in the system, while nothing changes at all. You really could be putting your time elsewhere. It bothers me that you don’t sing anymore.”
Another component. Another function. This point Suzhen never responds to, on account of having no answer for it. To admit they are right is defeat, to refute it impossible. “How does designing dresses affect systems?”