The first fault line we visit is located within an art gallery, a place of lean lines and sudden, stark demarcation between light and shadow. There are walls painted in perspective art, castles and clouds and waterfalls: designed to be photogenic, perfect for social media shots. On a normal day I might push Jirayu to take couple pictures—she doesn’t like being photographed, but she makes rare exceptions. We’re not here for leisure, though, and I’m vigilant against what Ingvild warned me against, and which Jirayu’s handler Tatiana has corroborated. Perhaps both are wrong, or lying to manipulate us. Nevertheless I watch out, cataloguing and gauging every risk. A motorbike speeding too quickly as we cross the street. An old, near-dead tree that slants a little too close to the ground. I become a machine of threat assessment, singularly devoted to my subject’s safety, to the point that the man selling us tickets to the gallery gives me an odd look and—when he catches my eye—nearly flinches.
“I’m not going to drop dead randomly, Yvette,” Jirayu says once we’re through and on the second floor. “No heart attacks or the like in the other ones, were there?”
“No, no illness at all, actually. You’re remarkably healthy.” I think of my permutation with the brain tumor, a seed waiting to sprout across all versions of myself. “Better safe than sorry, though.”
Her smile is faint. There was a time when she rarely smiled—in One Nucleus—and it was a full year after I’d come into her employ that I began to hear her laugh. Noor was the one who finally pierced my denseness by pointing out that I contributed to the shift in her mood. “Then I should be fine,” Jirayu murmurs. “So far it seems to be all-out attacks from old enemies; apparently that’s the angle my destiny leans toward. They’re not going to try to get us here.”
And true, while we’ve come like ordinary civilians, Noor’s already had the place scouted, every nook and cranny subjected to scrutiny. More than that I am here. Gamayun didn’t exactly promise that the body armor I’m wearing under bulky clothes will let me survive a collision with a truck coming on at full velocity. But in terms of impact resistance, it’s close.
I would put myself between her and a speeding vehicle or bullet, every time.
Parts of the gallery are airy passages, white on white, showcasing postmodern sculptures or twisting slashes of paint, or faceless puppets with more arms than the usual two. In one corner of the floor, a shadow play is projected: fast-moving figures, distant cymbals, a glimpse of tigers and sharp-toothed mermaids.
It’s in one such corner that Jirayu finds what she is looking for, pointed to it by Gamayun’s tool. She takes the compass out and holds it in her palm.
I get to see more than thin light this time; in fact I get to see its opposite. What emanates from the Bulwark compass is a black so total it swallows all visibility, blossoming ribbons that slice Jirayu to fragments. For a second this alarms me enough to reach for her, but the effect doesn’t linger along. Soon she is touched by nothing save ordinary shadows, the flashes and silhouettes from a projector.
“That’s it,” she says. “If one is to believe Gamayun, we’ve finished our work here. Supposedly it will be dormant until they activate it.”
Nothing about the place has changed, physically. “Would be nice if you can see anything different.”
“I can.” She gestures at a patch of wall that is as unremarkable to me as before, a panel of stained glass. “There’s a spot there, like heat haze. But if I’m the only one who can see it, all the better. Let’s move on.”
We make our way out, to what appears to be a metered taxi; in actuality an armored car, with Noor at the wheel. Ey gives Jirayu a little mock salute.
The backseat is much more comfortable than is typical for cabs—more plush, less plastic. I strap myself in. “I never did ask. What sort of business are you in these days?” Not her natural trade: in a branch with this much alien presence, human conflict is typically minimized. There would be much less demand for her merchandise. But she remains incredibly wealthy, and I doubt she’s been idle.
Jirayu’s mouth pulls into a grimace. “Office work.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Investments, a few properties, corporate stake-holding. Most of those involve sitting in boardrooms.” Her voice thins with increasing contempt. “In the last few days, I’ve skipped a dozen business meetings. I expect my secretaries are frantic. Don’t worry, though, my money’s safe. I can still foot petrol and hotel bills.”
I let out something between a huff and a chuckle. “Worse comes to worst, I’ll apply for retail jobs, wait tables or wash dishes. What do you want to do after all this?” There will be an after, one in which Jirayu remains whole and able to make any choice she likes. I will make sure of that.
“Travel the world.” Her voice is unserious: she’s always been able to do so, and has. “Fund children’s charities and global peace.”
“She’s not going to do that,” Noor says from the driver’s seat. “We both know it too.”
Jirayu throws up her hands in mock outrage. “You spend most of your life selling weapons and everyone thinks you can’t turn a new leaf. But fine. I’ll probably do something that makes me feel more alive than sitting in offices and attending fucking teleconferences.”
It’s not particularly funny, but both Noor and I bray. I’ve never seen Jirayu confess to discontent. In her previous business she was a being of quicksilver computation, weighing risk and reward. She did not have to stay in the arms trade—her inheritance enabled her to do whatever she liked—but she enjoyed the danger, delighted in what she could do to the world and the authority she wielded over it. One might call it egomania. It’s not a righteous motivation and I imagine within her religion, insofar as she is culturally Buddhist, it marks her for the worst turn in samsara possible. But I believe in only a single life, quantum permutations aside. We get the one chance. How we reincarnate, if at all, is moot.
What is important is now. What is important is the spark in Jirayu’s eyes, the lightness of her steps, and the warmth of her in my arms. The world at large is impersonal and faceless, and for most of my life it has not been greatly kind or forgiving to me. Jirayu has been its obverse.
We turn in to a market. Parking’s tricky, but Noor is a master at it, chameleoning our car between cabs and rows of tuk-tuks and motorbikes. Ey hasn’t been able to reconnoiter this place as well as the gallery, but ey’s posted snipers in several of the surrounding tenements. They don’t have a comprehensive vantage point—the market, like most places of its category, is a tangle of roofs permanent and transient, tarps and corrugated metal and fishing nets raised not out of poverty but for the aesthetic.
Upon seeing a Krungthep market for the first time, I assumed that it would be a humid, stinking place and the stalls would be peddling exotic meats, exotic pets: engorged amphibians, sickly crustaceans, minks and crows ready for the butchering. The reality of it was far stranger than my fantasies. In my native land I couldn’t imagine a market that stocked more than the most basics—hard breads and harder cheeses, wilted vegetables and blanched fruits, and even then there might be only a single market to two or three towns. To be able to walk a few blocks from my residence and find a place where I can buy anything remains novel to me.
And the stalls do offer everything, from fruits so bright and tart that eating them the first time brought tears to my eyes: the brilliance of flavor, the jeweled colors. Skewers of every sort of meat (I was right about some of the more exotic ones), soaps hand-carved into delicate blooms, tiny glass animals, lanterns made from fabric and paper and recycled plastic, nielloware portraits, paintings in acrylic and watercolor and oil. The combined smells, food and garlands sold to offer to the nearby shrine, are overwhelming even now. Once I could not even visualize this sheer number of things, this incredible variety. I used to visit markets on my own, to breathe and breathe in the aromas of everything, even the faint industrial stink common to any city.
Noor keeps several paces behind us, blending into the crowd. Ey’s much better at undercover work than I am. The best I can manage is pretending I’m a tourist.
Jirayu pauses by a boba tea stall and asks, “Which kind do you like?”
“Black tea with cheese foam.”
She buys me one of those, and herself jasmine tea with passionfruit jelly. Jirayu is always so elegant and poised, and the act of drinking boba tea is neither; the sight is the most ordinary in the world, and to me the most enthralling. Still I do say, “I gave the wrong answer, didn’t I?”
“There’s no wrong answer.” She lowers her drink. “I used to get her—you—this frothy, milky coffee with tapioca pearl.”
“That’s a surprise. I don’t do well with coffee at all.” Almost I ask, Do you want her back? But that’s a question with too many thorns. I’ll lacerate us both voicing it. “Do you?” The Jirayu I knew liked her coffee black, unsweetened.
“Not a bit. At most I’ll take butterscotch milk with some coffee for flavor.”
The discrepancy does not perturb me; rather the opposite. In an odd way it’s endearing to know that there are minor divergences, in the trivial bifurcations of taste. And I want to discover the rest; I want to get to know her anew. The cuisines she likes. The dishes she orders at every restaurant, the vegetables she enjoys or avoids.
We’re nearly at the batik shop—where she is meant to plant the next seed of the Vector’s downfall—when the taste of iron fills my mouth and I know. You don’t question intuition developed over a lifetime, not when you’ve stood over and helped dig mass graves.
I tackle Jirayu to the ground.
Gunshots ring out. Some people will say they resemble thunderclaps, but I’ve found they don’t really resemble anything much—they’re unique unto themselves; firecrackers come the closest. You could have me listening to clips, sound samples, of a hundred different kinds of impact and I’ll be able to pick out gunfire every time, occasionally tell you the firearm’s specifications and caliber. It’s blind luck that I haven’t lost my hearing, in all my years of mentally cataloguing combat’s cacophony.
The vendor who was selling ice cream just a moment ago falls. A shopper follows. Blood pours onto the pavement that’s already been stained over the decade with bird droppings and spilled drinks and mashed fruits; the ground—the earth—is always the most weathered of witnesses.
People stampede around us. I half-crawl, half-roll Jirayu into the relative shelter of a stall that smells of glutinous rice and coconut milk and pandan. I hold her within the circle of my body, skin to skin, her pulse next to my own. Adrenaline sings between us.
“We’ve got a bead on one shooter.” Noor’s voice in my earpiece. Slightly distorted by commotion; ey must have taken cover too. “I’m having that one taken care of. Do not leave cover.”
“Roger that.” I draw from my armor a fistful of defensive drones, activate them, and toss them out. They hover off the ground, dark discs each no bigger than a coin. Jirayu’s gaze follows them with interest. To her I say, “They’re supposed to intercept fire. Catch bullets for you, that sort of thing.”
“Futuristic,” she murmurs into my throat. In her hand she’s cradling her gun. Jirayu doesn’t go anywhere unarmed.
The gunfire stops. Neither of us is fooled by the lull; we will wait until Noor gives us the all-clear. On my part I pull up the short-range links that let me peer through the drones’ cameras, the world woven in kaleidoscope: compound and parallax, a hundred miniscule lenses rapidly resolving into an image I can understand. Brief nausea as my vision adjusts.
Some of the drones gain enough elevation to let me survey our general vicinity. People have fled quickly—the advantage of an outdoor market; many exits. A few lie groaning and twisting on the ground, legs or arms crushed under the rush of shoppers seeking safety. From a distance off, several children are screaming.
Then I see it: a black cloud of drones not unlike my own. Alien tech.
Incandescence fills the air, colors shifting rapidly across the visible spectrum, every change bringing with it a new visual agony. My eyeballs burn and my head rings. The drone-composite view resists even as my retinas yield—the blindness lasts on and on, not from a flash grenade but something much more advanced—and I clutch Jirayu to me, covering her eyes as best I can. I can still see through the neural uplink, the humming cyborg parts that make me more than my meat, and I pick out a path, pulling Jirayu with me; we stumble together, crashing through ceramics and costume jewelry.
A gun goes off. One of the drones catches it, expanding to absorb the bullet. Distending around it as it spits the metal back out. I let them do their work autopilot as I look through their cameras. We’re too far from the armored car, running in the opposite direction in fact.
Static in my ears. Then: “Get to the canal.”
It is not Noor’s voice. “Who the fuck are you?”
From that end comes a sigh. “Ingvild Tang? Your memory can’t be that bad. Hello, Khun Jirayu. I can see you’re conscious and whole. I trust I remain on your payroll, because I’m about to do something very much worth paying for. Both of you, get to the canal. The air’s clear, by the way. You can open your eyes now.”
I shift one of the drones to an emulation of human sight and confirm that it’s true. When I blink, though, my vision remains smears of harsh hues: a lattice of diamond spark and diffuse gold. A black silhouette emerging from the right—
Jirayu shoots, with her characteristic good aim and lack of hesitation. The shape drops. “The canal, then.”
By the time we reach the water line, my sight has cleared up enough that I can discern the motorboat and what is probably Ingvild in it. Again I use one drone to help me see; she is waving at us. A rifle is slung over one shoulder. There is a smell of char and sulfur—she’s been putting the firearm to good use.
Wordlessly Jirayu steps onto the boat. I follow, because that is what dogs do, through thick and thin, from the beginning to the end.
The boat cuts through the water, faster than it has any right to be. Jirayu ignores the spray on her cheeks—canals are far from the cleanest, but she’ll take it over a bullet lodged in her cranium—and pings Noor. She confirms that she is safe and that ey should withdraw.
She folds herself into Yvette’s lap. The boat does not offer much space. “Perhaps you’d like to explain, Ms. Tang.” In English; Yvette doesn’t need to struggle with the language too when she’s already struggling with her eyes. Not irreparable damage, Jirayu hopes. Those alien modifications must be good for something.
“I was scouted.” The Norwegian shifts when the rifle pushes against her hip. Sighs when it will not stay put. “The Bulwark gave me a counteroffer to defect from the Vector. I accepted. Oh, and those just now were Vector assassins, I’m afraid. What did you do to piss off Tatiana, Khun Jirayu?”
“Nothing special.” She touches the small of her wife’s back and receives a near-imperceptible nod. Yvette’s sight is likely returning piecemeal. “What brought you around?”
Ingvild squints against the sun glaring off water. It is a day suited to leisurely strolls down the canal’s banks, or to river cruises, as long as one ignores the water’s stink. Year in and year out, no matter municipal efforts, there’s still garbage flung into the narrow vein of canal that leads toward a river toward the sea. The smell seems impossible to get rid of. Even the aliens have not changed that, but then they are interested in course-correcting climate change only insofar as cognates are involved. Enough humans must live to be chosen. All else is beside the point.
“I was made aware,” says Ingvild, “of the concept of the cognate pair only recently. I also have no idea who my partner is. The Bulwark offered to help me find them.”
“How can you not know who your anchor is?” Yvette says, not bothering with diplomacy. “It’s like gravity. It’s . . . a tension of belonging.”
Ingvild cuts an arch look. “Well, I’m sorry, not all of us have had the luck to meet our soulmate. From what I can tell it’s usually someone close to you. Maybe a sibling, maybe even a parent. I just have never met mine that I know of. Most of my family’s dead.”
“Your story about the extended family in Nova Scotia,” says Jirayu, “was a total fabrication.”
“What can I say, I had to come up with something.” A shrug. “I actually reached out to my exes, but no one disappeared the way your Yvette’s Three Corolla instance did. When I asked old girlfriends if they’d been contacted by aliens, they all thought I’d gone lunatic. Not a single cognate among them at all. By process of elimination this means I have never met my other half.”
Jirayu winds her arms around her wife, ostensibly for a better hold, intentionally a little salt in Ingvild’s wound. Sometimes people can be persuaded to reveal their truths and scars by gentle coaxing; she specializes in the other kind. “This may be tactless, but why is it so important? You can wine and dine like a normal person, take lovers when and where they strike your fancy. There’s no need to find some mystical connection. I didn’t meet my wife with the idea we were joined at the metaphysical or quantum level.”
“You met her pre-invasion. There wasn’t any metaphysics we knew of.” Ingvild jiggles one knee, catches herself, stops. “And I suppose you’re not a romantic, madam.”
“So you would risk the Vector coming after you.” Pushing a little further—Jirayu knows how to interrogate without appearing to; all she needs to do is to sound argumentative. “Because you need to find this person who may or may not actually exist, and whom you don’t know in any way. Who could be absolutely hideous and whose personality you might hate. Or who may not even be the right gender.”
The Norwegian spreads her hands. “I’ve gone on blind dates with worse odds, and I’m not particular about gender as long as it’s not a man; my chances are excellent. I’m sorry if this is not a believable motivation, Khun Jirayu. But I like poetry.” As if that explains anything.
Jirayu raises an eyebrow. “You’re a romantic. And you could also be a double agent.”
“I am.” Ingvild slants a grin. “Though not for long, Tatiana’s going to discover soon enough I was murdering Vector cognates. Do you have a safehouse?”
“What’s the name of the Bulwark ambassador who approached you?” This from Yvette, quick on the draw to ferret out whether the Norwegian is telling the truth. Jirayu approves.
“Gamayun.” Ingvild sniffs. “You were trying to catch me out, weren’t you. I think they were listening when you were trying to beat me up; they appeared before me not long after that to tell me about the anchor factor. Very prompt.”
Balancing the scale of attrition, Jirayu judges: the Vector must have more cognates under its command—its ownership—and the Bulwark is always looking to change the equation. Aggressive poaching. “I do have a safehouse,” she says, satisfied finally that this woman is not lying entirely, not a ticking time bomb about to go off in her face. The possibility exists. But all bodies yield to the force of a bullet, and they’re two on one.
Her safehouse is an abandoned apartment complex, built to completion, the owning company bankrupted and the property defaulted to a bank that had no success selling it off until she came along. She’s had the building wired up and maintained, and donated most of the floors to an organization working against homelessness—it is a good cover, and the basement Jirayu has kept for herself is out of sight, out of mind; in all the years she’s owned this building, no one has attempted to look for it, let alone breach it. The building’s residents are content to mind their own business.
They enter through a locked garage lift, itself ensconced behind a false wall that—without the correct key—would take both Yvette’s and Ingvild’s cyborg strength to move. The lift requires a few extra layers of authentication; she is pleased to find everything is running as it should, hooked into the building’s auxiliary generator. She paid good money for this.
Strip lights turn on as they descend the steps, motion-sensitive. Ingvild surveys the low ceiling, wary, until they emerge into the living area. The place is not precisely polished to a high sheen—a layer of dust clings to the furniture—but the absence of dead roaches and assorted vermin suffices in Jirayu’s estimate. The basement is well-insulated and has nothing to attract insects.
“So,” the Norwegian says, “a post-apocalyptic bunker. In case Krungthep goes the way of America?”
“Not exactly.” Jirayu doesn’t mention the version of Krungthep that has become precisely that, or something resembling the beginning of America’s fall. “It has all the amenities you’d expect at, oh, a four-star? Two bedrooms. En-suite bathrooms. The pantry has canned food and sealed rations; I assume they taste like dog food. Not where you’d stay for any amount of time, and we do have to keep moving. Do you have a plan?”
Ingvild drops into one of the sofas. “I was hoping you would, madam.”
“You enlisted yourself to my side without thinking much through.”
From behind her, Yvette makes a noise halfway between amusement and exasperation. “My original plan, Jirayu, was that I’d make a run for you then translate back to Comet One Nucleus. But that’s been . . . stymied. At the moment I don’t think I can return to One Nucleus at all.”
Partly to inform Jirayu, partly to let Ingvild know that Yvette provides no value as to the path back to One Nucleus. Jirayu appreciates the efficiency. But she means to get to the point even faster. “Gamayun,” she says aloud. “I will speak to you.”
There’s no fanfare, no rip through spacetime. Gamayun is not here, and then they are, in their colorful mannequin glory. A statue to which someone with little skill or art has glued countless semi-precious stones.
“You should at least light some incenses,” they chide. “I feel greatly disrespected to be summoned as if I’m at any cognate’s beck and call.”
“In Three Corolla, we’re the only functional game pieces you have got, aren’t we?” Jirayu takes one look at Gamayun’s writhing shadow and turns her gaze elsewhere. The shadow does not match the mannequin. “I don’t see that you have many choices.”
“Very rude. I could tell you that you don’t have a lot of options, either, in fact you have much fewer. It’s me or nothing.” Gamayun’s avatar has several mouths, one in the expected place, four or five more spread out along the collarbones and shoulders. They smile now, in unison. “I like dealing with your wife better, Khun Jirayu. She does what she’s told and doesn’t ask questions.”
“She asks questions,” Jirayu corrects, “when they’re necessary. Don’t insult her. Speaking of insults—is this all you’ve got for a scheme? For me to go from fault line to fault line hoping for the best and trying not to die?”
“It’s not just that, you know. You are going to get back at Tatiana. In a manner more direct than you might think. But very well, the plan as it stands is not the most streamlined.” They sigh. “When there’s only one of you, particularly; shame I haven’t figured out how to gather a dozen instances in one place—it would make things so much easier. Well, what would you like? For me to recruit more modified cognates so you’ll have an army escorting you wherever you go?”
“For you to produce a more intelligent idea. I’ve been given to understand you are of a higher species, omnipotent and omnipresent.”
Some of the mouths flash their teeth at Jirayu. “You are being unkind on purpose. I cannot be provoked, however. But it’s true, you are at some risk. A new maneuver must be tried. I know! I’ll create a distraction.” Gamayun points their fingers at the ceiling. “How about I make one of those ships hovering over this city fall from the sky? Will that be sufficiently impressive, Khun Jirayu, and meet with your approval for an intelligent plan?”