Through the one-way glass, Jirayu watches a man spread-eagled on the concrete floor. Stained; it is hosed down after a session, but the material retains what has bled upon it. Probably that is the entire point of this underground compound: keeping stains, making them obvious to the next occupant. She only purchased the place recently and hasn’t had an occasion to renovate it.
The man’s name is Thomas Peterson, though the bruises and bleeding make him less recognizable than usual. An old rival from a while back, an American who thought he had a home advantage, price-gouging in his country until she came along. It’s not the first time he has put a hit out on her; it is the first time he got close to success. She imagines walking into the harshly lit chamber and grinding the point of her heel into his neck until the windpipe gives, but that’s too personal, and she has no desire to dirty her shoe.
“What’ll you do with him, madam?”
She glances at Ingvild, who a few hours ago brought in a trussed-up, gagged Peterson. The new bodyguard has not explained how she accomplished it. Even Noor was impressed. “I suppose,” she says, “I could hand him over to the authorities. That one attack must’ve produced an entire cluster of terrorism charges. Tricky, though, with his citizenship.”
“Swiss?”
One of the few European polities that remain ascendant, if only by refusing to participate in any conflict. Considerable political heft. “Purchased, yes. The Swiss love their economic migrants.” She considers Peterson a few moments longer. “The police will waste our time. Get rid of him. Minimal mess, if you would.”
Ingvild nods her understanding. “I’m a fair hand at disposal, as well.”
“No need, I have staff for it. But is that a cop thing?”
A faint Norwegian smile. “It is a cop thing, I’m afraid.”
The woman does it efficiently too: she strides in, fires once, holsters her sidearm and then begins to liberate the body from its manacles. Noor calls for a gurney. Peterson was a densely made man, big bones and bigger muscles. Maybe a little lighter now for lack of a soul, insofar as he had one.
By the time Noor arrived at the EmQuartier to extract Jirayu, the attackers were dead, snipers and otherwise. Bullets strategically placed in their craniums, which is normal enough; necks snapped, which is less so. Her lieutenant marveled that whoever did it must have been uncommonly strong, the break was so clean, as if those men’s necks had been made of rotted bamboo.
Next comes the calculus of the aftermath. Peterson had a few organization ties Jirayu will need to worry about, though no family anyone knows of. The men he sent were mercenaries, which simplifies—private military contractors view their employees as numbers in loss and gain columns. Since Peterson already paid them in full, the PMC will hardly come after her. She likes this the least, the necessity of wargaming the consequences, counting kin and allies and beneficiaries. More people should exist in a vacuum. With a few calls, she discovers there’s a bounty on Peterson’s head—a jilted ex in Germany—and makes the necessary arrangements to transfer some of the blame to the woman.
Later, in one of the compound’s offices, she summons Ingvild. Gestures for her to sit in the uncomfortable little stool—but all furniture here is grimly uncomfortable, meant for wardens and inmates. “So how did you really get past Peterson’s bodyguards and abduct him? Alive, at that.”
“His defenses were sloppy, Khun Jirayu. Outdated software on security devices, that sort of thing. I’ve had some counterinsurgency experiences, and I specialized in extraction.”
Extracting VIPs and kidnapping a target take the same skill set, Jirayu would give her that. She leans back in the hard plastic chair. This interview would be better conducted in the comfort and civility of her high-rise office, but she doesn’t want to wait. “It took less than twenty-four hours between me informing my staff it was Peterson and you delivering him like a pig for the slaughter. That’s a great deal of effort for a new hire, Ingvild.” As though there is something to prove, or else an attempt to cement her place, get close to Jirayu.
The woman inclines her head. “You have good reasons to suspect me—I’m trying a little too hard—and in your place I’d be wary too. May I tell you a story?” At a gesture from Jirayu, Ingvild goes on. “I had family in North America. They’ve got out since, but it took a while. People smugglers are expensive. I had no real venue through which to send them money, and not the right sort of contacts to hire one for them. They lived in . . . what used to be Nova Scotia? In any case, you were in the area at the time. One of the local warbands was occupying my cousins’ village. The weapons you sold their enemies brought their defeat, and liberated the village long enough for my cousins to get away.”
“Of course.” Jirayu keeps both her voice and expression neutral.
“I’m aware it sounds like a sob story I invented on the spot. Here.” Ingvild draws a photograph from her jacket and slides it across the table. “You passed through the village to refuel. My little cousin, the one with the braids, got to meet you and tried to give you water; you turned her down. Noor will remember her. I understand ey has an eidetic memory for faces.”
A family of four squeezes into the rectangle, posing stiffly. They do bear a striking resemblance to Ingvild, and she does vaguely remember a village in Nova Scotia full of ragged children running in the dusty roads. “And this complete coincidence motivated you to come work for me?”
“You’re more ethical than most gunrunners. You don’t invest in the flesh trade. You never supplied to what remained of the American military, either, when they were hunting people for sport.”
An interesting qualification coming from an ex-cop who just brought her a man to torture. She supposes Ingvild’s previous position necessitated a certain compartmentalization. “That’s because they had their own stockpile and didn’t need me. But if you insist. What happened to your family in Nova Scotia?”
“Some of them I got out. Some of them I couldn’t get to in time.” Her expression is smooth, a lake’s surface tension. “The little girl with the braids is long dead.”
Jirayu offers no condolences, knowing none will be welcome, if any part of the anecdote is even true. “Noor will brief you on my schedule tomorrow.” One day at a time—new hires do not get her complete calendar. Most don’t, even the staff who have been with her for years. “In the meantime, why don’t I take you to a late lunch? You can tell me more about Nova Scotia or Oslo or anything else.”
Ingvild smiles and bows. She knows, of course, that it will be an extended interview: a test to see if she can be caught out, whether she will slip up and reveal that some facet of her story—her background checks, too—has been fabricated. Neat resumes always leave out crucial factoids.
Jirayu spends her last few office hours going over unavoidable routines, keeping track of portfolios, taking reports from four different secretaries who each handles a department. For all that she’s competent enough—gunrunning was all about details—she does not enjoy this work: there’s no dignity in it. Meaningless numbers. She allocates a large amount to charitable donations, not to the large-scale international organizations but to specialized grassroots ones. With the former, she might as well fling her money into the sea. With the latter, she ends up funding interesting causes. Anti-poachers, anti-missionaries. Doing her part for post-colonial reparations.
She brings Ingvild to an establishment where everything comes in viciously tiny portions: perfect little slices of duck served with grapefruit compote, abalone that looks so precious it might be mistaken for pearls, almost-raw wagyu so tender it melts in the mouth.
Jirayu asks her companion about the Nordic region. “The aliens don’t seem too interested in Europe,” Jirayu says.
“Not many ships hovering over Oslo or the fjords,” Ingvild agrees. “Or Paris or Munich either. I do have a theory, if I may be so politically incorrect.”
“Oh?”
“The entire cognate business. Caucasians make poor collaborators—they’re so used to being on the other end of colonization. They’re not going to listen and do what they’re told when a mannequin ambassador tells them their bodies or brains are going to be put to extraterrestrial use. Instead they’ll pitch a fit and pick a fight and it would all turn violent, which the aliens don’t seem to want. Even if they’ve cowed every government into shutting up and letting them have free rein.”
Amusement tugs at Jirayu’s mouth. “You’re saying they find white people too annoying to be cognates.”
“I’m sure some would love to be. In aggregate though, probably not worth the aliens’ time.” Ingvild makes an expansive gesture. “Not that I know anything about how they pick cognates; I barely know what a cognate does, other than that they get an amazing stipend. Must be nice.”
Jirayu steers the conversation toward Ingvild’s background next, cloaking it in the politesse of small talk, searching for cracks and creaks. She knows how to pick at innocuous details and widen them into gaps that reveal the lie. But Ingvild has either been completely honest or has prepared her cover story comprehensively. Yes, the relations in Nova Scotia were the children of Chinese immigrants, many generations removed. Most have gone to live on the mainland now, integrating with some difficulty, cultural and language barriers. They don’t speak enough Putonghua, the shame of Canada having stolen that from them. Ingvild lets slip, once, that she used to work with spies. A concession, perhaps, to explain why she was so good at capturing Peterson.
Dessert: souffle pancakes, frozen sorbet, things that are light as air in the stomach alternating with slices of the arctic. It is a satisfying meal. Ingvild thanks Jirayu without being obsequious. A difficult balance, but she manages it.
Jirayu stays behind for a while longer, arranging to have her newest bodyguard surveilled. A necessity in this line of business, no matter how good a conversationalist someone is.
By the time she returns home, Jirayu is not quite exhausted. But she is tense. She anticipates. Premonition bristles under her skin.
When she enters the indoor garden, she is not surprised to find her wife there, back to her, next to the window that’s been designed to maximize light just into this room.
Yvette’s beauty is that of a Doberman. Sleek, long-limbed, and bred for loyalty. Her skin is a few shades darker than Jirayu’s, owing to Greek forebears with whom she’s never established a cultural connection—America is that sort of place, erasing all else and rebuilding souls in its own brittle image. Dark brown hair, highlighted in a red unnatural to human keratin, found only in the glare of a sunken sun and expensive dye.
She is dressed in off-the-rack clothes Jirayu would never have permitted on her. But otherwise there is no difference. This is her wife, true to her recall in every detail, as perfect as Galatea is to Pygmalion.
Yvette turns. Her breath hitches. “God. You’re so beautiful.”
“What did I say about invoking the Christian lord? No god should come before me.” Jirayu has rehearsed this in her head so many times, throughout the day, even though there was no guarantee she’d come home to this. But she knew. Intuition or cognate clairvoyance. She holds out her hand. “Come to me.”
Her wife grins as she crosses the few steps and takes Jirayu into her arms. “The most beautiful woman in the world. I’m never going to tire of calling you that.”
“As well you shouldn’t; I’m your wife.”
Yvette’s expression changes. “You—married me?”
Jirayu starts, for the first time jarred. Tatiana already explained, but it did not occur to her that events in another branch would have . . . except naturally there must be points of divergence. She puts her brow to the crook of Yvette’s neck. “Of course. I had to make you mine permanently, didn’t I?”
“Good. I’m glad.” For a second time Yvette’s voice catches. Her fingers dig into Jirayu’s blouse. “Let me touch you, all of you. Please.”
At a nod from Jirayu, Yvette unbuttons her blouse, artless in her haste—in her desperation. Jirayu has spent years refining her as a lover and Yvette has some of the steadiest hands in the business, but now she fumbles with the zipper of Jirayu’s skirt, the clasps of her bra. When finally all that remains on Jirayu is stockings and underwear, Yvette drops to her knees, to kiss and inhale and revere. “I missed you,” she says against Jirayu’s stomach. “I missed you so much.”
“Yes.” Jirayu does not return the expected: I missed you too. Her feelings outpace words so simplistic. She will speak them with her body. “Take the rest off me.”
Defter, this time. A peeling of fabrics. Yvette’s breath on her thigh. Another invocation of the Christian god, against Jirayu’s instruction, and then Yvette delves in with her tongue. Her fingers follow. She holds onto Jirayu’s hips firmly and as Jirayu buries her fingers in her wife’s hair, she knows that when orgasm crests and her knees fold she’ll be eased gently to the floor, among the potted greens and flowers, among this little orchard that belongs to Yvette. Her eyes squeeze shut. Her calves tense as Yvette proves she is as consummate at this art—the art of Jirayu—as she has ever been, that whatever the divergences this aspect of their relationship persists. A small gasp escapes her lips as she shifts her grip to Yvette’s taut, broad shoulders.
The unspoken promise is kept. Yvette holds her upright, and then slows her downward slide. They’re a heap of limbs; Jirayu wraps her legs around Yvette’s waist, securing herself on the seat of Yvette’s thighs and pelvis. The smells of arousal and climax compete with that of jasmines.
Up close, she notices a glint in Yvette’s eyes that she was too distracted to see before. Pinpoints of gold in each pupil, perceptible when the light hits from an angle. She brushes a drop of sweat off Yvette’s brow. “You’re a little different.”
“The eyes?” A pause. “There’s more.”
Yvette unbuttons. Under the shirt, her muscles are as exquisite as Jirayu recalls, all finely chiseled planes, the architecture of combat. Several scars are not where she expects them to be, minor discrepancies that don’t matter. But there’s something else, a nacreous glimmer that hides beneath the skin. Thin, faint capillaries that cross between Yvette’s small breasts, veining her abdomen. More across her shoulders. Science-fiction chromatophores.
“The Bulwark—” Yvette slows down. “That is the other faction of aliens, opposed to the Vector. They operate differently where I’m from, and when they chose me as a cognate they also offered me a few changes that’d make me harder to kill. Muscle and bone enhancements. Something done to my lungs so I can weather airborne neurotoxins. A number of neurological improvements. I can see in the dark.”
The power cutting off at the EmQuartier. The mercenaries with broken necks. Jirayu presses her fingertips against one of the pearly cicatrices. To the touch it feels no different from the surrounding skin. “Very handy.”
“And more useful to you.” Yvette nibbles at her shoulder. “You really married me?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Jirayu says dryly. “I’ll marry you again if you consider it nullified because you’re not technically the same person. How did I die?”
“You’re such a romantic.” But Yvette’s laugh is strangled. “We were outdoor. A hotel balcony, I don’t even remember anymore why we were there. There was a sniper. They got you.”
She does not feel the expected shock, the terror: a sniper round is how she anticipates her end in any case. Humdrum. Routine. The most predictable thing in the world. “That is it? I must’ve been practicing the world’s worst opsec.”
Another laugh that sounds like asphyxiation. “You’d just proposed to me. I accepted. And then you bled out in my arms. I was covering your body but—it was a shot through the skull. The sniper didn’t stay around to get me, but I’d have liked them to.”
Jirayu is quiet for a moment. Then she disentangles herself from Yvette, taking her wife’s hand. “Get to your feet, Yvette.”
Yvette complies, no question asked. As ever she has. As ever she will, Jirayu marvels; her other self, in that branch, must have trained Yvette well.
She cradles Yvette’s jawline, turning her head to meet the light. The two of them are not far apart in height—Yvette has ten centimeters on her—and Jirayu has always found that convenient. “Yvette, do you take me to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“What? Oh.” Yvette’s breath unfurls like a serrated knife. Her eyes are bright, wet. “Yes. Of course. Yes.”
“Will you cherish and honor me, in sickness and in health?” She doesn’t know all the words; she is aware of them, faintly, as the wedding vows that Yvette would be most familiar with. What she is saying is probably not correct. She tries, all the same, putting into them the firmness and holiness that they must have had in the ruin of empire past.
“Yes.” Tears well and fall.
“Then, till death do us part, I pronounce us wife and wife.”
At the beginning of their acquaintance, Jirayu never saw Yvette cry. There was a lack of expressiveness that stemmed from harsh formative years, a refusal to look back to her time as a child soldier and allow its long reach to touch her. When they first met, Yvette struck her as a thing of stone and frazils. But Yvette weeps and shudders now. Jirayu holds her, this large beautiful hound that she’s taken from a battlefield, and which she intends to care for until she no longer can.
On the way to the bedroom, she stops to fetch a jewelry box. The collar she had the saleswoman keep for her. Away from the harsh illumination, the rubies shine deeper, more sanguinary. She presents it to Yvette. “A wedding gift.”
Wordlessly Yvette bends down to let Jirayu put it on her. It doesn’t go with the rest of what Yvette is wearing, so Jirayu removes those until she has before her a bride naked except for the platinum band. She touches what she wants: a few lovers have remarked that her hands feel appraising, like a trader weighing a new purchase. Perhaps that is the case, but Yvette’s never complained, and her opinion is the only one that counts.
Jirayu cups one small breast, and Yvette’s breathing trembles. She touches one hip, and muscular thighs part for her. Aesthetically exquisite, but more than that Yvette is the sole person who inspires Jirayu’s tenderness. Noor—when Noor remembered that Yvette existed—said that the way Jirayu described it sounded very much like love; Jirayu disagreed. It is merely neurochemical calculus.
In the bed, she returns the favor Yvette visited on her, with more bite. She takes hold of hard muscle and soft flesh between her teeth; she treats Yvette’s nipples like ripe grapes she means to crush in her mouth. Yvette digs her fingers into the sheets, quiet out of long habit, from teenage years having to steal intimacy—such as it was—between deployments, in dark warehouses that reeked of fungal rot and dead mice.
“Did the other Jirayu fuck you like this?” she whispers against Yvette’s mouth.
“To me you’re the same person every time.” A gasp. “Yes.”
Jirayu reaches for the nightstand. She finds what she wants and quickly puts it on, deft with the harness from habit. Its straps draw tight on her waist and hips. Yvette watches her on a propped elbow. Expectant. Wanting.
There’s more to marriage than this, but it is in coitus that Jirayu can best show herself to her wife. In this way she’s able to mark Yvette. She straddles and eases the toy’s tip in, making sure it needs no outside lubricant, before she mounts Yvette all the way through. She moves in short sharp jerks, then in longer strokes; she runs her nails over where she’s used her teeth on Yvette’s breasts. When she breathes, the musk of her wife’s arousal fills her lungs; she draws it deep and grips Yvette’s hips, angling the silicone length just so.
Yvette convulses. Her jawline grows tight, the lines of her face drawn into that exquisite point where pleasure and agony meet, the edge of too much. Jirayu gives one last thrust and lowers her mouth to Yvette’s breast.
She rolls off onto her side, to wrap herself around Yvette as she shudders and comes down. This is how Jirayu best likes her wife, a suspension of time during and post-climax when Yvette—otherwise a coiled spring, a creature of industrial edges—loosens, turning pliant and soft. Surrendering whole and entire. Jirayu can, almost, grasp and hold her wife’s soul in her hands.
“I really did miss you, in every way.” Yvette runs her fingers through Jirayu’s hair, kissing her temple. “Your hair’s gorgeous—you’re so consistent across the branches. It’s a little incredible.”
Always an arms-dealer or something adjacent, she assumes—something that brought her to the warzone of America, that put her in contact with Yvette. Her fingers sweep over the collar, lingering at the demarcation where metal and skin meet. “Did you ever get fluent in Thai?” They’ve been speaking English, the language Yvette’s most comfortable with.
“Well. I can do basic phrases. Read signs.” A grimace. “You sat me down and tried to teach me. Read children’s books to me and everything. Didn’t take. Sorry; I really did try.”
Jirayu smirks. “That is consistent. Just as well. You’re my Yvette now. Want me to tell you a bedtime story?”
“You’re the only bedtime story I need.” Yvette buries her nose in Jirayu’s hair. “Now and forever.”
I didn’t think this could happen again, that I could have this once more. To curl up around Jirayu, to hear her rhythms in sync with mine, to take joy in something as simple as a warm bed. In sleep she looks immortal, a woman who will never age, a goddess impervious to earthly harm.
During our first months together, I was terrible. She pursued and I fled. The religious hang-ups, initially—we were both women, this was the temptress call of a succubus, and I must resist. Soon, though, I came to see that that was an excuse with which I fooled myself. It wasn’t her gender; it was the fact that she was a being of fine opalescence, and I a mangy stray she picked out of a nation’s detritus. I schooled myself to a single objective: serving her as the wall of meat and arterial spray between her and harm’s way. Anything more was unthinkable, beyond belief. Her interest in me would pass.
But she was patient as she was patient with no other. She invited me out to meals, not as her bodyguard but as her dining companion. She taught me the names of strange, foreign meats; she showed me the distinctions between condiments. Under her tutelage, I learned to appreciate the subtleties of expensive fruits, the delicacy of pricey baked goods, how to identify real shark fins in soups. And she trained me to hear the tones of her language, and told me I deserved to sleep on good beds. She helped me pick out a cologne; she convinced me that I was beautiful, at least in her eyes. Little by little she tamed my animal instincts, made of me a creature that’s more than its scar tissue. She opened up parts of me I was not even aware I was guarding.
All my life I thought of peace as a place, a physical location in which I may shelter. In Jirayu I found that peace is a woman who holds your leash and promises she’ll never let go.
I untangle myself from her limbs and the sheets, immediately missing her warmth. The apartment is at once familiar and strange; I know the general outline of her tastes, the colors and themes and preferred materials. But the specifics differ. Table lamps in different shapes, bedsheets in different shades, redwood for her wardrobe instead of teak. Rugs in pale furs instead of gray-black. I haven’t had the occasion to enter her—our—apartment in the branches I’ve passed by, and have no basis for comparison otherwise. There’s just this one, and the one in my native timeline. What a disorienting experience to step into your residence and find the furnishings subtly changed, their locations a few centimeters off.
Her vanity holds all the expected items, the makeup brushes and eyeshadow, the frosted glass bottles of foundation emblazoned with delicate lettering. Her cosmetics are customized, from boutique brands so exclusive they don’t appear in department stores, created from specialized pigments and fragranced by uncommon perfumes. An accessory cabinet, rings and necklaces and pendants—she doesn’t wear it often; most jewelry is at risk of being yanked on in a scuffle, and earrings might tear off her earlobe. One of the pendants does not quite belong, a silver butterfly that holds at its center a chunk of amber. I unhook it from its slot and hold it up to the light. What I bought her wasn’t identical—mine was green amber—but it’s similar otherwise.
I know it’s not worth much. Probably you don’t even want to look at it next to all your other nice things. But I’d like you to have it. Even if you throw it away later.
I’m not going to throw it away, Yvette.
She didn’t always wear it; she did keep it in her vanity. And occasionally she would thread it onto a white gold chain—far pricier than the pendant—and tell me to clasp it around her neck.
By and by I find other belongings of mine—or things that represent me—scattered about: empty cologne bottles, a collection of seashells and starfishes, photographs pinned to a corkboard. The last are not always flattering, and most have been taken on security cameras.
That I’m dead in Helix Three Corolla is obvious. I wouldn’t have been able to stay here otherwise; the original instance would cause this branch to reject me. Jirayu hasn’t told me what took me or how. When I attempt to imagine what it was like for her—what my demise did to her—my thoughts stumble and snag. Both because the thought of her grief cuts like a scalpel, and because I’m unable to think of her as anything less than a being of seamless strength. I cannot visualize, or bear, the thought of her shattered by my absence. Stone-cold through it, then, I decide.
In the indoor garden, I pick up my equipment from where I left it by a group of succulents. Gamayun allotted me a couple sets of drones, and it’s tempting to activate one and leave them here to defend Jirayu. But it’d be a dead giveaway to the enemy. Alien frequencies call to alien frequencies, and they’ll likely find it in no time. I have not yet seen how closely the Vector surveils her, though it can’t be closely if they nearly let her die back at the mall. Or, a more chilling thought, the Vector’s already aware I am here, an agent serving the Bulwark, and Jirayu has been the Vector’s bait to lure me out. No. I get ahead of myself. I crouch on the tiled floor and try to think, to plan. First I need to give Jirayu all the information I have; leaving her in the dark does neither of us any good—
I whip to my feet, turning around with my gun leveled: the soldier’s equation, the answer to every possible inquiry. Only when my cognitive faculties catch up do I realize what I’m looking at. The usual mannequin body, gold-striped cobalt, with the cadaverous mask for a face and the skeletal limbs. “Gamayun,” I say. They don’t often appear in person. Have never done so since they sent me out of One Nucleus. All messages have appeared in my neural interface, flashes of communication that erase themselves almost as soon as I’ve read them.
“Urgent news.” The mouth on their masked head moves, unlike most aliens’ avatars. The sight is more unnerving rather than less. “You’re stranded in Helix Three Corolla.”
“Explain.”
“So rude,” they say, without inflection. “Your anchor’s being murdered and erased at a more rapid rate than usual. Interesting; I originally thought you were their sole target, and she merely the collateral damage.”
My gut twists. The thought of her dying, any of her, still pierces me and stops me short. I’ve reached an instance of her that lives, now, and I have a second chance, yet . . . “Why the two of us in particular?”
“Or,” Gamayun goes on as if I’d said nothing, “the target is still you and removing her is about removing your anchors. So the goal is to cut down your options until your only way out of here is Comet One Nucleus. Meaning they’re absolutely aware you are here, and will no doubt be closing in soon, so now I’m most invested in preventing your capture. As Jirayu is your bait, it’s best that you stay away from—”
“No,” I say even as I know it is impractical. “I’m not doing that. She almost got assassinated.”
The Bulwark ambassador’s gaze is a thing of cinderous red, as though something infernal dwells behind the mask. “I don’t see that you have a choice. I’m not going to translate you from here back to One Nucleus in a straight line. That’s just asking for trouble. I’ve invested time and resources in you, but I’m very aware of what humans call the sunk cost fallacy.”
“You’re here.” Gamayun is in this branch, and not just the avatar.
The mask’s mouth nearly lifts into a smirk but doesn’t quite get there, held back by its motion range. “We’re compound. That’s hammered home to every cognate, but it never seems to stick. No offense. I’m not calling you stupid, just that as a species you’re bad at grasping this particular concept. The point is that I never had to translate here, I was already here, as I am present across all branches simultaneously.” Their hinges and joints click and rattle into a shrug. “I suppose I could simply desert you and let the Vector terminate you. They could torture you for the rest of your life and not find the way to One Nucleus; it’s not like your brain can hold the quantum pathfinding.”
“Then,” I say, “why are you doing this?” Jirayu would formulate better questions. She would probe and twist; she might even be able to bend an alien to her purposes.
“Perhaps I’m greatly fascinated with human love. We could be romantics, too.” Gamayun opens their hand. In it, a black cube the size of a medication tablet. “This compass is specially configured. It’ll let you briefly translate to timelines where Jirayu is alive, and let you snap back to Three Corolla. As long as she lives here, at any rate. For obvious reasons your options will dwindle as the hunt goes on, but it’ll save you in a pinch. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem I will be able to prevent you from latching on to your anchor and remaining at her side, against all good sense.”
“That’s it? You’re not going to try harder to dissuade me.”
The mannequin attempts a second time to grin. The result is grotesque, a skull splitting in the wrong places. “For now, my priority is to prevent you from being completely wiped out from all branches. I’ve got a barely-stable web of equations going on. Don’t ruin it.”
Gone, just like that, as though they were no more than a product of my hallucination. I clench my fingers around the black cube and feel that familiar hum. With care, I pop it in my mouth and dry-swallow it. Once its use as a compass has expired, it’ll dissolve into the rest of me, recycled by the alien-given implants. Out of all my modifications, this one has been the oddest and most unnerving, for all that it doesn’t make me feel any different. Nanites in my bloodstream, rearranging chemicals and cells and foreign matter far too futuristic for me to comprehend.
When I return to the bedroom, Jirayu is up, reading a book. A title in English on—oddly enough—the art of translating Sumerian. She rarely reads fiction; finds my predilection for fast-paced thrillers and languid historicals amusing. Her limbs are half in and half out of the sheets. A glimpse of thigh and calf makes me want to bury my face between her legs all over again, to drink and breathe in the vastness of her.
She looks up, taking me in; seems satisfied to find that I’m still naked except for the collar. “Where were you?”
I join her, setting my gun down on the nightstand. She likely has her own in one of the drawers. “Taking my marching orders.”
“From someone who’s not me? Why not cheat on me too while you’re at it.” But she smirks: her lipstick has stayed on, a shade between red and fuchsia. She suits cool tones better, she told me once after teaching me the difference between a cool- and warm-toned red. “So you were talking to your alien handler.”
As succinctly as possible, I give her the summary; she’d be able to do more with the information than I can. She listens, her expression smoothing over as she absorbs and manipulates the pieces of intelligence into a picture that’ll best benefit her—and us. It’s not that I believe in the brain/brawn binary, but my regard for her goes beyond sexual attraction. She survived a tumultuous childhood, inherited her business from her mother, and came to thrive in a field that’s cutthroat at the best of times and rife with assassination attempts at the worst. I’ll not lie to anyone and say I believe her profession or inclinations have ever been virtuous, or that my desire to serve her—body and soul—makes me morally just. But you don’t encounter a tiger in the wild and contemplate its sense of ethics; instead your world narrows down to the points of its fangs, the gleam of its claws.
(In one of my dreams, she is a tiger and I am the prey; she descends upon and devours me, a single act of perfect consumption. I’ve never told her about this.)
When I’m done, Jirayu says, “You’ve been purposefully herded to this timeline.”
The thought does not sit well. “How?”
“The Yvette I know disappeared when the Vector arrived. None of your—her—belongings remained. You vanished from all security footage, from my payroll logs, from everything. I was the only one who could remember you; everyone else thought I’d imagined a whole person. Even Noor felt I’d gone insane.” Her hand comes to rest on my thigh; her voice does not shake. “That’s not how you died in the other branches, is it?”
She’s offered me no gap, no space in which I may reach out and comfort her for my obliteration, for the terror of feeling as though she’d lost her sanity. This is intentional. Jirayu is tactical in her emotions, when to open and when to shutter. “No. I die from the usual things. Bullets, artillery, an arsonist once. Cancer that one time.” It’s an easy list to recite. My deaths do not wound me. Hers do.
“Gamayun wants you here in particular.” Her fingers play absently with the pages of her book. “The Vector told me their erasure of your existence here was an accident. I no longer believe that. Did Gamayun tell you what effect this has, as opposed to you dying more . . . conventionally?”
“They didn’t bring it up at all.”
“I learned a little laypeople’s quantum theory. Pop science, really, and useless for the most part. I wonder though, does the fact you never existed here—in one technical sense—let you stay here better? Perhaps this branch won’t reject you?”
“Yes. If my instance is still alive here, I would be able to stay no more than—at most—a few minutes, an hour if I’m lucky.” A grimace pulls at my mouth. “Beyond that, I know only a little bit about the mechanisms of it all. Gamayun only tells me the bare basics.”
“Tatiana tells me even less.” Jirayu smiles thinly. “We’re their pawns. I dislike that. I dislike that very much.”
I don’t say that there is little we can do about the fact. She would chafe even more. Jirayu hates being beholden to any entity, any institution. Instead I fit my body to her back, kissing her spine, licking her skin when I can’t help myself. She’s joked that I have an oral fixation; I replied that my only fixation is her. Physical touch is also the only acceptable method for me to soothe her, and she’s admitted it helps her focus.
“Gamayun,” she says at length, easing herself into my hold. “Can I speak to them?”
“I can try to make that happen.”
“Whatever is at play, they need us. Possibly they even need us to be willing to cooperate. We’re not completely powerless; I will negotiate from a position of—” Her mouth curves. “Not strength, but a good pretense at it. The arms trade is all about bluffs, anyway.”
Hesitation slows my next words. I do need to get them out. “My plan is to take you with me back to Comet One Nucleus. The Vector isn’t present there, the Bulwark has control of it entirely. But they don’t interfere. They don’t even show themselves to most humans.”
“No enforced world peace, then.”
“None.” I attempt a smile. “You can go right back to business. More than that, it’s safe from the Vector. They can’t touch that branch—they can’t see it at all.”
Her gaze turns thoughtful. She rubs at my knee, fingers tracing down its slope. “It’s a stronghold the Bulwark wants to defend. Then why send you here at all? To them you’re a liability; when you translate back that’s going to give the Vector some idea of how to reach One Nucleus, no?”
“Gamayun means to obfuscate my wake by having me translate multiple times, to multiple branches.” I pause. “But you’re right. It seems an undue risk—the Bulwark must have some deeper scheme.”
“I’m developing an idea as to that.” She turns in my lap and hooks her thumb in my collar, bringing my face close. “I’m pleased you returned to me. But you said you must be my secret; does that mean you’ll only come to me here?”
That would be the wise choice. Yet I already told Gamayun: when it comes to Jirayu, I’ll throw caution to the winds. She is my world. “No.” I think of the cube that sings its compass music even now in my body, mapping the way, pointing toward the next branch. This will be our insurance. Any time, I can spirit my wife away from peril. “Come hell or high water, I’m never leaving your side again.”