From where he stood, half hidden behind the bank of monitors on the roof of the Inn, Ben Shepherd turned in the bulky VR harness, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips, and gave a small bow of acknowledgment to the four soldiers seated just beyond. It was the best take yet. Those last few adjustments—that tiny change of emphasis and the decision to focus on the single red-haired sailor—had made all the difference.
Beside him, his sister, Meg, looked up from the replay monitors.
"Well?" he asked, "did we get it all?"
She nodded, but he could see that she was still unhappy. She wanted Tong Ye to live. Wanted a happy ending, the lovers reunited. Whereas he...
"Maybe she can nurse him," she said quietly.
He shook his head. "No. We have to experience all that built-up anger and resentment. To feel it in our blood and understand exactly what it means—what all of this results in. If Tong Ye lived it would take the edge off things. We would have no sense of tragedy. As it is..."
"As it is, I feel angry. Denied something."
He stared at her a moment, then gave a single nod. "Good. We'll build on that. Feed that tiny spark until it's a roaring flame. We'll start tonight, after dark, while we're in the mood."
She watched him as he struggled out of the silvered harness. Ben had filled out this last year; had gained weight to match his height, shrugging off the last vestiges of childhood. Now he was a man, sun-bronzed and tall, his movements easy, confident. Even so, he still lacked something. Was still somehow less than his dead father. But what was it? In what did that crucial difference lie?
Ben hung the exoskeleton on the rack, then turned back. There, stacked on their sides in a long, reinforced metal frame, were his notebooks—thirty huge, square-shaped, leather-bound volumes that he called his "roughs." Embossed into the spines, as in the center of each cover, was a single word in an ancient gothic script, Heimlich, followed by a number. Unerringly, he reached out for the volume numbered fourteen and lifted it from the rack, his artificial hand coping effortlessly with the book's weight.
They had worked hard these past six weeks, taking advantage of the long days, the perfect light. Most of the "internals"—the sensory matrices that constituted the major part of Ben's Shell experience— had been completed long before. These "externals"—brief, carefully choreographed scenes which owed much to the ancient cinematic art—were the final stage, providing a backdrop to the rich, sensory data flow. When the two were paired the work would be complete. That was, if Ben was satisfied.
It was a big if.
"Here," he said, setting the book down beside the storyboard he had been working from and opening it up. "I reckon we can simplify things."
Meg moved closer, leaning over him to see.
The open pages of the rough were covered in a jumble of brilliantly colored lines and symbols, Ben's neat, tiny handwriting boxed-in in places where he had made subtle changes to his scheme.
She smiled, realizing how familiar all of this had become. Until a year back he had not let her share this, but now she was his constant helper, there at his elbow at every stage of the work. She studied the rough. Eighty-one lines crossed the page, each representing one of the eighty-one input nodes in the brain and body of the ultimate recipient of this artificial reality "experience."
"The experiencing viewpoint is predetermined," he said, tapping the page. "We can't change that without restructuring the whole of the internal for this section. But we can cut things to the nub when it comes to the external. Have one man set the fires, not three. Likewise, we can cut the number of guards. It'll save time setting up. We'll only have the seven morphs to program, not twelve."
She nodded. "I agree. It'll make things tighter, more direct. And why not make Tong Ye's friend our focus—the fire-setter?"
Ben looked up. "Yes. I like that. Maybe we can add something earlier. A small moment between the two just to emphasize things."
"And the girl?"
Ben shook his head. "I know what you think, Meg, but what happens to her has to happen. Without that. . ." He shrugged, staring away across the twilit estuary, touching the black pearl that hung on a golden chain about his neck, then looked back at her, his green eyes dark, thoughtful. "Just wait, my love. You'll understand. I promise you. You'll see why I did it like this. Why it had to be like this."
STILLNESS. Silence. Moonlight on velvet blackness. And then the surface breached. A head, its fine dark hair slicked back. The inverted image of flame in a bright, black-centered eye. And gone. The surface dark, still. Footsteps on stone cobbles. Booted feet in movement, patterns of light and shadow on the folds of leather, gold and midnight black. The flutter of naked flame in a metal brazier. Shadows dance, revealing the whorled grain of ancient oak. Silence, then the creak and slow groan of a heavy door opening. A sudden spill of light, golden and warm. Laughter. A chapped and pudgy hand, the flesh pale, blotchy, plain silver ring on the index finger, wiped against a beer-stained apron. The scent of jasmine. Darkness. A head surfacing, fish-mouth gasping for air. And gone. The slosh of water against the stone steps of the quay. Booted feet turning. The brief flash of lamplight on a musket stock. And laughter. Uneasy, guilty laughter.
The camera eye draws back.
The landlord stands there a moment, hands on his ample hips, half in shadow, watching the woman leave, her long skirts rustling, whispering in the early morning silence. He turns, looking out across the water toward the distant hills. Out in the center of the estuary the junks rest silently, their mooring lamps reflected in the darkness of the water. Downriver, the merchantman is quiet, the shape of a guard silhouetted against a bulkhead lantern.
He yawns, stretches his arms. Behind him the brightness of the doorway darkens with a second presence. The constable leans languidly against the solid oak beam of the doorpost and points out toward the junks, his words a low, indistinguishable murmur, heavy with insinuation. The landlord laughs quietly and nods, then turns away, returning inside, pulling the heavy door closed behind him. There is darkness, the click of a latch being lowered, then silence. A moment later footsteps sound on the cobbles. The moon is high. It is an hour before the guard will be relieved.
The camera angle changes, giving a view of darkness. Slowly the dark resolves itself. A young Han crouches on the smooth, worn stone of the Pilgrims' Steps, his slender form concealed from the guard by the stone lip of the quay. Behind him lies the still, black surface of the water. For a moment he seems frozen, carved from the darkness, then, as the footsteps recede, he draws the oilskin bag from about his neck and unseals the pouch. Something small and bright gleams briefly in the moonlight, then is gone inside the sodden cloth of his shirt.
The camera draws slowly back, revealing the steps, the nearby inn, the pacing guard. A patch of quartered light reveals an unshuttered window in the narrow alleyway beside the inn. All is stillness, then, to the left of the picture, a shadow slips over the stone lip of the quay wall and melts into the darkness beyond. Farther along, the guard has stopped and stands at the edge of the quay, staring out across the water at the junks.
The remote tide drifts slowly in. There is the flicker of light on a musket stock, a glimpse of wide, curious eyes, a smoothly shaven cheek, and then it is past, skirting the wood-and-plaster frontage of the inn.
The alleyway seems empty: a narrow length of blackness framing a rectangle of yellow light. But then the darkness grows, sheds a form. A head bobs into the light beneath the sill. There is the glimpse of dark, sodden cloth, of slightly built shoulders and the sleek curve of a back.
The camera eye moves inward, taking a line into the darkness, then turns, looking past the crouching figure into the lamplit room.