Aliette de Bodard writes speculative fiction: her short stories have garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, and a British Science Fiction Association Award. She is the author of The House of Shattered Wings, a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, which won the 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award, and its upcoming sequel The House of Binding Thorns, out in April 2017. She lives in Paris.

 

PEARL

Aliette de Bodard

 

In Da Trang’s nightmares, Pearl is always leaving—darting away from him, toward the inexorable maw of the sun’s gravity, going into a tighter and tighter orbit until no trace of it remains—he’s always reaching out, sending a ship, a swarm of bots—calling upon the remoras to move, sleek and deadly and yet too agonizingly slow, to do anything, to save what they can. Too late. Too late.

It wasn’t always like this, of course.

In the beginning . . . in the beginning . . . his thoughts fray and scatter away, like cloth held too close to a flame. How long since he’s last slept? The Empress’s courtier was right—but no, no, that’s not it. She doesn’t understand. None of them understand.

In the beginning, when he was still a raw, naive teenager, there was a noise, in the hangar. He thought it was just one of the countless remoras, dipping in and out of the room—his constant companions as he studied for the imperial examination, hovering over his shoulder to stare at the words; nudging him when one of them needed repairs they couldn’t provide themselves. And once—just after Inner Grandmother’s death, when Mother had been reeling from the loss of her own mother, and when he’d come running to the hangar with a vise around his chest—he’d seen them weaving and dancing in a pattern beautiful beyond words as he stood transfixed, with tears running down his cheeks.

“Can you wait?” Da Trang asked, not looking away from the text in his field of vision. “I’m trying to work out the meaning of a line.” He was no scholar, no favored to be graced with a tutor or with mem-implants of his ancestors: everything he did was like moving through tar, every word a tangle of meanings and connotations he needed to unpack, every clever allusion something he needed to look up.

A nudge then; and, across his field of vision, lines—remoras didn’t have human names, but it was the one he thought of as Teacher, because it was one of the oldest ones, and because it was always accompanied by a swarm of other remoras with which it appeared to be in deep conversation.

>Architect. Need to see.<

Urgent, then, if Teacher was attempting to communicate—remoras could use a little human speech, but it was hard work, tying up their processes— they grew uncannily still as they spoke, and once he’d seen a speaking remora unable to dodge another, more eager one.

He raised his gaze, and saw . . .

Teacher and another remora, Slicer, both with that same look of intent sleekness, as if they couldn’t hold still for long without falling apart—and, between them, a third one, looking . . . somehow wrong. Patched up, like all remoras—leftovers from bots and ships that had gone all but feral, low-level intelligences used for menial tasks. And yet . . .

The hull of the third remora was painted—engraved with what looked like text at first, but turned out to be other characters, long, weaving lines in a strange, distorted alphabet Da Trang couldn’t make out.

>Is Pearl,< Teacher said, on the screen.> For you.<

“I don’t understand,” Da Trang said slowly. He dismissed the text, watched the third remora—something almost graceful in the way it floated, like a calligraphy from a master, suggesting in a few strokes the shape of a bird or of a snake. “Pearl?”

Pearl moved, came to stand close to him—nudging him, like a pet or favorite bot—he’d never felt that or done that, and he felt obscurely embarrassed, as if he’d given away some intimacy that should have been better saved for a parent, a sibling, or a spouse.

>Architect.< Pearl’s lines were the same characters as on its hull for a brief moment; and then they came into sharp focus as the remora lodged itself on his shoulder, against his neck—he could feel the heat of the ship, the endless vibrations of the motor through the hull, like a secret heartbeat. >Pleased. Will help.<

Da Trang was about to say he didn’t need help, and then Pearl burrowed close to him—a sharp, painful stab straight into his flesh; and before he had time to cry out, he saw—

The hangar, turned into flowing lines like a sketch of a Grand Master of Design Harmony; the remoras, Slicer and Teacher, already on the move, with little labels listing their speed, their banking angles; their age and the repairs they’d undergone—the view expanding, taking in the stars beyond the space station, all neatly labeled, every wavelength of their spectrum cataloged— he tried to move, to think beyond the confines of the vision the ship had him trapped in; to remember the poem he’d been reading—and abruptly the poem was there, too, the lines about mist over the water and clouds and rain; and the references to sexual foreplay, the playfulness of the writer trying to seduce her husband—the homage to the famed poetess Dong Huong through the reuse of her metaphor about frost on jade flowers, the reference to the bird from Viet on Old Earth, always looking southward . . . .

And then Pearl released him; and he was on his knees on the floor, struggling for breath. “What—what—” Even words seemed to have deserted him.

>Will help,< Pearl said.

Teacher, firmer and steadier, a rock amidst the turmoil in his mind. >Built Pearl for you, Architect. For . . . examinations?< A word the remora wasn’t sure of; a concept Da Trang wasn’t even sure Teacher understood.

>For understanding, <Slicer said.>Everything.< If it had been human, the remora would have sounded smug.

“I can’t—” Da Trang pulled himself upward, looked at Pearl again. “You made it?”

>Can build others,< Teacher said.

“Of course. I wasn’t doubting that. I just—” He looked at Pearl again and finally worked out what was different about it. The others looked cobbled together of disparate parts—grabbing what they could from space debris and scraps and roughly welding it into place—but Pearl was . . . not perfect, but what you would get if you saved the best of everything you found drifting in space, and put it together, not out of necessity, not out of a desire for immediate survival or return to full functionality—but with a carefully thought-out plan, a desire for . . . stability? “It’s beautiful,” he said at last.

>We built,< Teacher said. >As thanks. And because . . . < A pause, and then another word, blinking on the screen. <We can build better.<

Not beauty, then, but hope, and longing, and the best for the future. Da Trang found his lips twisting in a bitter smile, shaping words of comfort, or something equally foolish to give a remora—some human emotions to a being that had none.

Before he could speak up, though, there came the patter of feet. “Li’l brother, li’l brother!” It was his sister Cam, out of breath. Da Trang got up— Pearl hovering again at his shoulder, the warmth of metal against his neck.

“What—” Cam stopped, looked at him. “What in heaven is this?”

Pearl nudged closer; he felt it nip the surface of his skin—and some of that same trance rose in him again, the same sense that he was seeing the bones of the orbital, the breath of the dragon that was the earth and the void between the stars and the universe—except oddly muted, so that his thoughts merely seemed far away to him, running beneath a pane of glass. He could read Cam—see the blood beating in her veins, the tension in her hands and in her arms. Something was worrying her, beyond her usual disapproval of a brother who dreamt big and spent his days away from the family home. Pearl?

“This is Pearl,” Da Trang said awkwardly.

Cam looked at him—in Pearl’s trance, he saw her face contract; saw electrical impulses travel back and forth in her arms. “Fine,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You were weird enough without a remora pet. Whatever.”

So it wasn’t that which worried her. “What’s on your mind?” Da Trang asked.

Cam jerked. There was no other word for it—her movement would have been barely visible, but Pearl’s trance magnified everything, so that for a moment she seemed a puppet on strings, and the puppet master had just stopped her from falling. “How do you know?”

“It’s obvious,” Da Trang said, trying to keep his voice steady. If he could read her—if he could read people—if he could remember poems and allusions and speak like a learned scholar . . .

“The Empress is coming,” Cam said.

“And?” Da Trang was having a hard time seeing how that related to him. “We’re not scholars or magistrates, or rich merchants. We’re not going to see her unless we queue up for the procession.”

“You don’t understand.” Cam’s voice was plaintive. “The whole Belt is scraping resources together to make an official banquet, and they asked Mother to contribute a dish.”

Da Trang was going to say something funny, or flippant, but that stopped him. “I had no idea.” Pearl was showing him things—signs of Cam’s stress, the panic she barely kept at bay, the desire to flee the orbital before things got any more overwhelming—but he didn’t need Pearl for that. Imperial favor could go a long way—could lift someone from the poorer, most outward orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt all the way to the First Planet and the Imperial Court—but it could also lead someone into permanent disgrace, into exile and death. It was more than a dish; it would be a statement made by Mother’s orbital, by the Belt itself, something they would expect to be both exquisite and redolent with clever allusions—to the Empress’s reign name, to her campaigns, to her closest advisers or her wives . . . .

“Why did they ask Mother?”

“I don’t know,” Cam said. Blood flowed to her face, and her hands were moments away from clenching. “Because there was no one else. Because they wanted us to fail. Take your pick. What matters is that we can’t say no, lest we become disgraced.”

“Can you help?” he asked, aloud, and saw Cam startled, and then her face readjusting itself into a complex mixture of—contempt, pity—as she realized he was talking to the remora.

“You really spend too much time here,” she said, shaking her head. “Come on.”

“Can you help?” Da Trang asked again, and felt Pearl huddle more closely against him, the trance rising to dizzying heights as the remora bit deeper.

>Of course, Architect.<

Days blur and slide against one another; Da Trang’s world shrinks to the screen hovering in front of him, the lines of code slowly turning into something else—from mere instructions and algorithms to semiautonomous tasks—and then transfigured, in that strange alchemy where a programmed drone becomes a remora, when coded behaviors and responses learnt by rote turn into something else: something wild and unpredictable, as pure and as incandescent as a newborn wind.

Movement, behind him—a blur of robes and faces, and a familiar voice calling his name, like red-hot irons against the nape of his neck: “Councillor Da Trang.”

Da Trang turns—fighting the urge to look at the screen again, at its scrolling lines that whisper he’ll fix it if he can write just a few more words, just a few more instructions. “Your Highness.” Forces his body into a bow that takes him, sliding, to the floor, on muscles that feel like they’ve turned to jelly—words surface, from the morass of memory, every one of them tasting like some strange foreign delicacy on his tongue, like something the meaning of which has long since turned to meaningless ashes. “May you reign ten thousand years.”

A hand, helping him up: for a moment, horrified, he thinks it’s the Empress, but it’s just one of the younger courtiers, her face shocked under its coat of ceruse. “He hasn’t slept at all, has he? For days. Councillor—”

There’s a crowd of them, come into the hangar where he works, on the outskirts of the capital: the Empress and six courtiers, and bodyguards, and attendants. One of the courtiers is staring all around him—seeing walls flecked with rust, maintenance bots that move only slowly: the dingy part of the city, the unused places—the spaces where he can work in peace. There is no furniture, just the screen, and the pile of remoras—the failed ones— stacked against one of the walls. There’s room for more, plenty more.

The Empress raises a hand, and the courtier falls silent. “I’m concerned for you, councillor.”

“I—” He ought to be awed, or afraid, or concerned, too—wondering what she will do, what she can do to him—but he doesn’t even have words left. “I have to do this, Your Highness.”

The Empress says nothing for a while. She’s a small, unremarkable woman— looking at her, he sees the lines of deep worry etched under her eyes, and the shape of her skull beneath the taut skin of the face. Pearl, were it still here, were it still perching on his shoulder, would have told him—about heartbeats, about body temperature and the moods of the human mind, all he would have needed to read her, to convince her with a few well-placed words, a few devastating smiles. “Pearl is gone, councillor,” she says, her voice firm, stating a fact or a decree. “Your remora was destroyed in the heart of the sun.”

No, not destroyed. Merely hiding—like a frightened child, not knowing where to find refuge. All he has to do is find the right words, the right algorithms . . . “Your Highness,” he says.

“I could stop it,” the Empress said. “Have you bodily dragged from this room and melt every piece of metal here into scrap.” Her hand makes a wide gesture, encompassing the quivering remoras stacked against the walls; the one he’s working on, with bits and pieces of wires trailing from it, jerking from time to time, like a heart remembering it has to beat on.

No. “You can’t,” he starts, but he’s not gone far enough to forget who she is. Empress of the Dai Viet Empire, mistress of all her gaze and her mindships survey, protector of the named planets, raised and shaped to rule since her birth. “You—” and then he falls silent.

The Empress watches him for a while but says nothing. Is that pity in her face? Surely not. One does not rise high in the Imperial Court on pity or compassion. “I won’t,” she says at last, and there is the same weariness in her voice, the same hint of mortality within. “You would just find another way to waste away, wouldn’t you?”

He’s not wasting away. He’s . . . working. Designing. On the verge of finding Pearl. He wants to tell her this, but she’s no longer listening—if she ever was.

“Build your remoras, councillor.” The Empress remains standing for a while, watching him. “Chase your dreams. After all—” And her face settles, for a while, into bleak amusement. “Not many of us can genuinely say we are ready to die for those.”

And then she’s gone; and he turns back to the screen, and lets it swallow him again, into endless days and endless nights lit only by the glare of the nearby star—the sun where Pearl vanished with only its cryptic good-bye.

He isn’t building a single remora but a host of them, enough that they can go into the sun; enough to comb through layer after layer of molten matter, like crabs comb through sand—until they finally find Pearl.

None of them comes back, or sends anything back; but then, it doesn’t matter. He can build more. He must build more—one after another and another, until there is no place in the sun they haven’t touched.

The first Da Trang knew of the banquet was footsteps, at the door of the hangar—Mother, Pearl’s trance said, analyzing the heavy tread, the vibrations of the breathing through the hangar’s metal walls. Worried, too; and he didn’t know why.

“Child,” Mother said. She was followed by Cam, and their sister Hien, and a host of aunts and uncles and cousins. “Come with me.” Even without Pearl, he could see her fear and worry, like a vise around his heart.

“Mother?” Da Trang rose, dismissing the poetry he’d been reading—with Pearl by his side, it was easier to see where it all hung together; to learn, slowly and painstakingly, to enjoy it as an official would; teasing apart layers of meaning one by one, as though eating a three-color dessert.

Mother’s face was white, bloodless; and the blood had left her hands and toes, too. “The Empress wants to see the person who cooked the Three Blessings.”

Three Blessings: eggs arranged around a hen for happiness and children; deer haunches with pine nuts for longevity; and carp with fishmint leaves cut in the shape of turtle leaves, for prosperity and success as an official. “You did,” Da Trang said mildly. But inwardly, his heart was racing. This was . . . opportunity: the final leap over the falls that would send them flying as dragons, or tumbling down to earth as piecemeal, broken bodies.

“And you want me to come.”

Mother made a small, stabbing gesture—one that couldn’t disguise her worry. It was . . . unsettling to see her that way; hunched and vulnerable and mortally afraid. But Da Trang pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Now wasn’t the time. “You were the one who told me what to cook.” Her eyes rested on Pearl; moved away. She disapproved; but then she didn’t understand what Pearl could do. “And . . . ” She mouthed silent words, but Pearl heard them, all the same.

I need you.

Da Trang shook his head. He couldn’t—but he had to. He couldn’t afford to let this pass him by. Gently, slowly, he reached for Pearl—felt the remora shudder against his touch, the vibrations of the motors intensifying—if it were human, it would be arching against his touch, trying to move away—he didn’t know why Pearl should do this now, when it was perfectly happy snuggling against him, but who could tell what went through a remora’s thought processes?

“It’s all right,” he whispered, and pressed the struggling remora closer to him—just a little farther, enough for his mind to float, free of fear—free of everything except that strange exhilaration like a prelude of larger things to come.

The banquet room was huge—the largest room in the central orbital—filled with officials in five-panel dresses, merchants in brocade dresses, and, here and there, a few saffron-dressed monks and nuns, oases of calm in the din. Pearl was labeling everyone and everything—the merchants’ heart rate and body temperature; the quality of the silk they were wearing; the names of the vast array of dishes on the table and how long each would have taken to prepare. And, beyond the walls of the orbital—beyond the ghostly people and the mass of information that threatened to overwhelm him, there was the vast expanse of space, and remoras weaving back and forth between the asteroids and the Belt, between the sun and the Belt—dancing, as if on a rhythm only they could hear.

At the end of the banquet room was the Empress—Da Trang barely caught a glimpse of her, large and terrible, before he prostrated himself to the ground along with Mother.

“Rise,” the Empress said. Her voice was low, and not unkind. “I’m told you’re the one who cooked the Three Blessings.”

“I did,” Mother said. She grimaced, then added, “It was Da Trang who knew what to do.”

The Empress’s gaze turned to him; he fought the urge to abase himself again, for fear he would say something untoward. “Really,” she said. “You’re no scholar.” If he hadn’t been drunk on Pearl’s trance, he would have been angry at her dismissal of him.

“No, but I hope to be.” Mother’s hands tightening; her shame at having such a forward son; such unsuitable ambitions displayed like a naked blade.

The Empress watched him for a while. Her face, whitened with ceruse, was impassive. Beyond her, beyond the courtiers and the fawning administrators, the remoras were slowing down, forming up in a ring that faced toward the same direction—neither the sun nor the Belt, but something he couldn’t identify. Waiting, he thought, or Pearl thought, and he couldn’t tell what for.

“Master Khong Tu, whose words all guide us, had nothing to say on ambition, if it was in the service of the state or of one’s ancestors,” the Empress said at last. She was . . . not angry. Amused, Pearl told him, tracking the minute quirking of the lips, the lines forming at the corner of her eyes. “You are very forward, but manners can be taught, in time.” Her gaze stopped at his shoulder, watching Pearl. “What is that?”

“Pearl,” Da Trang said slowly.

One of the courtiers moved closer to the Empress—sending her something via private network, no doubt. The Empress nodded. “The Belt has such delightful customs. A remora?”

To her, as to everyone in the room, remoras were low-level artificial intelligences, smaller fishes to the bulk and heft of the mindships who traveled between the stars—like trained animals, not worth more than a moment’s consideration. “Yes, Your Highness,” Da Trang said. On his shoulder, Pearl hesitated; for a moment he thought it was going to detach itself and flee; but then it huddled closer to him—the trance heightened again, and now he could barely see the Empress or the orbital, just the remoras, spreading in a circle. “Pearl helps me.”

“Does it?” The Empress’s voice was amused again. “What wisdom does it hold, child? Lines of code? Instructions on how to mine asteroids? That’s not what you need to rise in the Imperial Court.”

They were out there—waiting—not still, because remoras couldn’t hold still, but moving so slowly they might as well be—silent, not talking or communicating with one another, gathered in that perfect circle, and Pearl was feeling their sense of anticipation too, like a coiled spring or a tiger waiting to leap; and it was within him, too, like a flower blossoming in a too-tight chest, pushing his ribs and heart outward, its maddened, confused beating resonating like gunshots in the room.

“Watch,” he whispered. “Outside the Belt. It’s coming.”

The Empress threw him an odd glance—amusement mingled with pity.

“Watch,” he repeated, and something in his stance, in his voice, must have caught her, for she whispered something to her courtier and stood.

Outside, in the void of space, in the freezing cold between orbitals, the remoras waited—and, in the center of their circle, a star caught fire.

It happened suddenly—one moment a pinpoint of light, the next a blaze— and then the next a blaring of alarms aboard the station—the entire room seeming to lurch and change, all the bright lights turned off, the ambient sound drowned by the alarms and the screaming, the food tumbling from the tables, and people clinging to one another as the station lurched again—a merchant lost her footing in a spill of rice wine and fell, her brocade dress spread around her.

On Da Trang’s shoulder, Pearl surged—as if it was going outside, as if it was going to join the other remoras watching the star ignite—but then it fell back against Da Trang; and he felt something slide into him: needles with another liquid, which burnt like fire along his spine. At the next lurch of the station, his feet remained steady, his body straight, as if standing at attention, and his muscles steadfastly refusing to answer him—even his vocal cords feeling frozen and stiff. >Don’t move.<

Da Trang couldn’t have moved, even if he’d wished to, even if he wasn’t standing apart, observing it all at a remove, high on Pearl’s trance and struggling to make sense of it all—no fear, no panic, merely a distant curiosity. A star-wildfire; light waves that were destabilizing the station, frying electronics that had never been meant for such intensity—Pearl’s readouts assured him the shielding held, and that radiation levels within the room remained non-lethal for humans, poor but welcome reassurance in the wake of the disaster.

In front of him, the Empress hadn’t moved either; with each lurch of the station, she merely sidestepped, keeping her balance as if it were nothing. Of course she would have augments that would go far beyond her subjects’, the best her Grand Masters and alchemists could design.

Abruptly, the station stopped lurching, and the lights slowly came back on—though they were white and blinding, nothing like the quiet and refined atmosphere of the banquet; and instead of the ambient sound there was only the low crackle of static. The Empress gazed at him levelly, and then went on, as if their conversation had been merely stopped by someone else’s rude interruptions, “In all of the Dai Viet Empire, there is no one who can predict a star wildfire. We can determine when the conditions for the ignition are met, of course, but the scale of such predictions is millennia, if not millions of years. And yet you knew.”

Da Trang shook his head. Pearl had withdrawn; he could still see the remoras outside, now utterly still, though Pearl’s readouts assured him they were not broken—merely oddly, unnaturally still. Merely . . . content. Who knew that remoras basked in wildfire? “Pearl knew,” he said. “You asked how it helped me. That’s how.”

The Empress watched him for a while; watched Pearl nestled on his shoulder, the remora’s prow wedged in the hollow where his collarbone met his neck. “I see. I think,” she said, slowly, softly, “it would be best for you to take your things and come back with us, child.”

And like that—just like that, with two simple sentences, and a polite piece of advice that might as well be a command—Da Trang started his rise at the Imperial Court.

Da Trang is watching his latest remora, a sleek, small thing with a bent thruster—even as he does, he sees it move, and the thruster flows back into place; and the remora dips its prow, a movement that might as well be a nod, and is gone through the open doorway, following the path of the previous ones—pulling itself upward into the sky, straight toward the sun. Toward silence.

>Architect. We are here.< Da Trang’s head jerks up. The words are blinking, in a corner of his field of vision, insistent, and the remora saying this is close by too. It’s not one of the ones he made, but it’s one he’s seen before, a vision from his past when he was still repairing remoras and studying for the imperial examinations—before Pearl, before the Empress. Pitted metal and those broken thrusters at the back, and the wide gash on the right side that he’s never managed to patch; the nub on the prow and the broken-ofF wing, clumsily repaired with only a basic welder bot . . . .

“Teacher,” he whispers, addressing the remora by the name he gave it, all those years ago. “I’m sorry.”

Remoras don’t have feelings, don’t have human emotions. They lie somewhere halfway between ships and bots, outside the careful order of numbered planets; cobbled together from scraps, looking as though they’re going to burst apart at any moment.

Behind Teacher is Slicer, and Tumbler, and all the rest of the remoras: the ones who were with him at the very beginning, the ones who made and gave him Pearl.

Teacher’s image wavers in and out of focus, and Da Trang fights the urge to turn away, to go back to his code, because he owes Teacher that much. Because Pearl was given to him for safekeeping, and he has lost it.

“I’m sorry,” Da Trang says again, though he doesn’t even know if Teacher can understand him.

>New things are more easily broken,< Teacher says. Something very like a shrug, and the remora weaving closer to him. >Don’t concern yourself, Architect.<

“Are you—are you building another?” Da Trang knows the answer even before he asks.

>Like Pearl? No.< Teacher is silent for a while. >It was flawed, Architect. Too . . . much vested into a single vessel. We will ponder how to build oth-erwise.<

Da Trang cannot wait. Cannot stand to be there, with the emptiness on his shoulder, where Pearl used to rest; to gaze at the remoras and the hangar and have nothing about them, no information about their makeup or their speed; all the things Pearl so easily, effortlessly provided him. If he closes his eyes, he can feel again the cold shock of needles sliding into his neck, and the sharpening of the world before the trance kicked in, and everything seemed glazed in light.

Slicer weaves its way to the first pile of remoras in the corner of the hangar: the flawed ones, the ones that wouldn’t lift off, that wouldn’t come to life, or that started only to crash and burn. It circles them, once, twice, as if fascinated—it never judges, never says anything, but Da Trang can imagine, all too well, what it sees: hubris and failure, time and time again. He’s no Grand Master of Design Harmony, no Master of Wind and Water: he can repair a few remoras, but his makings are few, and pitiful, and graceless, nothing like Pearl.

“I have to try,” Da Trang whispers. “I have to get it back.”

>It was flawed,< Teacher says.> Will not come back.<

They know too, more than the Empress does, that it will take more than a sun’s warmth to destroy a remora. That Pearl is still there. That he can still reach it, talk to it—make it come back.

Teacher moves, joins Slicer around the pile of stillborn remoras. >Architect. Use of this?<

No scraps of metal left unused, of course—they scavenge their own dead, make use of anything and everything to build. Once, Da Trang would have found it disquieting; but now all he feels is weariness, and impatience that they’re keeping him from his algorithms. “I don’t need them anymore. They’re . . . flawed. Take them.”

>Architect. Thank you.< He’d have thought they didn’t know gratitude, but perhaps they do. Perhaps they’ve learnt, being so close to humans. Or perhaps they’re merely doing so to appease him—and would it really make a difference if that was the case? So many things human are fake and inconstant—like favors. >We will return. Much to ponder.<

“Wait,” Da Trang calls, as the remoras move away from his discarded scraps, from the blurred, indistinct remnants of his failures. “Tell me—”

>Architect?<

“I need to know. Was it my fault?” Did he ignore Pearl—was there some harbinger of the things to come—were the odd times the remora fell silent, with its prow pointed toward the sun, a sign of what it secretly yearned for?

Could he . . . could he have stopped it, had he known?

Silence. Then Teacher’s answer, slow and hesitant. >We built. We made, from metal and electronics to the spark of life. We didn’t determine, Architect. It went where it willed. We do not know.<

No answer then, but why had he thought it would be so easy?

On the morning of the day he was to be raised to councillor, Da Trang got up early, with an unexpected queasiness in his stomach—fear of what would happen, of Mother and her dire warnings about Empresses’ fickle favorites being right?—no, that wasn’t it.

Pearl was gone. He reached out, scratching the callus on his neck, in the place where it usually rested—scanning the room and finding nothing, not even a trace of its presence. “Pearl? Pearl?”

Nothing under the sheets, nothing in the nooks and crannies of the vast room—he turned off everything, every layer of the Purple Forbidden City’s communal network, and still he couldn’t see Pearl.

Impossible. It wasn’t human; it didn’t have any desires of its own except to serve Da Trang, to serve the whims of the Empress and her endless curiosity about anything from stellar phenomena to the messages passed between remoras and bots, to the state of the technologies that underpinned the communal network—to be shown off to scientists and alchemists and engineers, its perceptions and insights dissected and analyzed for anything of use to the Empire. It couldn’t just go wandering off. It—

Da Trang threw open the doors of his room, startling one of the servants who’d been carrying a tray with a cup of tea—almost absentmindedly, he reached out and straightened the tray before moving on. “Pearl? Pearl?”

Courtiers, startled out of their impassivity, turned their heads to follow him as he ran into courtyard after courtyard, finding nothing but the usual bustle of the court, the tight knots of people discussing politics or poetry or both—an endless sea of officials with jade-colored sashes barely paying attention to him—and still no Pearl, no trace of it or word on his coms.

It was only two bi-hours until the ceremony; and what would he say to the Empress, if Pearl wasn’t there—if he couldn’t perform any of the feats of use to her, and that distinguished him from the mass of upstart courtiers?

“Pearl?”

He found the remora, finally, in the quarters of the Master of Rites and Ceremonies. The Master was deep in discussion with her students, pointing to something on an interface Da Trang couldn’t see. Pearl was in the small room at the end, where they had gathered the necessary supplies for the ceremony.

“Pearl?”

It stood, watching the clothes on the mannequin in the center of the room: the five-panel robe made from the finest brocade with the insignia of the sparrow on the chest—not an official rank attained through merit and examinations, but one reserved for special cases, for emperors’ and empresses’ fickle favors. On the shoulder was a rest for Pearl, with a small model of the remora.

“What are you doing here?”

Pearl didn’t move, or acknowledge him in any way. It was . . . that same particular intent stillness it had had, back at the time of the first star wildfire. Waiting—what for? “Is something going to happen? Pearl?”

>Architect.< The words were hesitant—letter after letter slowly materializing in his field of vision. And still Pearl didn’t move, didn’t head to Da Trang’s shoulder, to fill the empty space he couldn’t get used to.>Need. Time.<

“What for? The ceremony is in two bi-hours—”

Pearl shifted; and he realized then that it had been standing in a shaft of sunlight, its prow turned toward the heavens. >Not meant for this.<

“You were built for this,” Da Trang said. Why the strange mood—fear or nervousness? But remoras couldn’t feel any of that, surely?

But, then, Pearl wasn’t just any remora. We can build better, Teacher had said. Better, or merely more unstable? “Come,” Da Trang said.

Pearl hovered to the shoulder of the mannequin—nudging the small model they’d made of it, which looked nothing like a remora: bedecked with silk and scraps of translucent cotton. >Not meant for this.< Its prow rose again, toward the sun.> Space. The song of stars. The heartbeat of the universe.<

“We’ll be going into space,” Da Trang said. “Often enough. I promise.” It scared him now—the Imperial Court wasn’t a place to hear the song of the stars or the rhythm of the universe or whatever else it was going on about. “Come.”

>Not the same.< Pearl made a small whirring noise.

“They built you to help me,” Da Trang said. And, without Pearl, he was nothing—just another dull-witted poor boy, the Empress’s favor soon forgotten. “Pearl. Come on.” He fought an urge to bodily drag it from the room, like a disobedient child, but it would have been unkind. “Remember Teacher and Slicer and the other remoras? They said they’d built you for me. For the examinations. For understanding.”

Come on, come on, come on—if Pearl left him, he didn’t know what he’d do, what he’d become, what he could make of the shambles that would be his life—

>Understanding.>Pearl’s prow dipped again, toward the mannequin.>Building better.< Again, the same slowness to the words, as if it were considering; and then, to Da Trang’s relief, it flew back to him, and the familiar weight settled on his shoulder—the familiar ice-cold feeling of needles biting into his shoulder, the sense of reality becoming unbearably sharp, unbearably clear, everything labeled and parceled and analyzed, from the Master of Rites and Ceremonies’ minute frown to the student fighting off sleep in the first row—from the cut and origin of the silk to the fluctuating intensity of the sunlight in the room.

>Can help.< But as Da Trang turned away, he felt Pearl’s weight on his shoulder—felt the remora looking upward at the sun—the pull of the motors, barely suppressed; and he knew that he hadn’t managed to quell Pearl’s yearnings.

He doesn’t sleep—only so many hours in a day, and there are ways to enjoy them all. Not for long, of course, not with the drugs he’s pumped himself full of; but what does he care for more time? He needs Pearl back, so badly it’s like a vise, squeezing his ribs into bloodied shards. Without Pearl, he’s nothing: an ex-favorite of the Empress, fallen from her regard—an overambitious boy from the outer edges of the Empire, overreaching and tumbling over the waterfalls instead of soaring, dragonlike, in the wake of imperial favor. But it’s Pearl that the Empress was truly interested in—its tidbits on stellar phenomena, on technologies, on ships and what made them work—what Pearl called the understanding of the universe, with an earnestness that didn’t seem to belong in a remora: everything that they put into always moving, never stopping, it put into intent stillness, in that posture on his shoulder where its eyes, if it’d had any, would have bored holes into steel or diamond.

It’s still there, in the heart of the sun. Waiting. For him, or for something else; but if Pearl is there, that means he can find it. That means . . . He doesn’t know what he will do when he finds Pearl, how he’ll beg or plead or drag it from the sun—but he’ll find a way.

It was a routine journey, a shuttle ride between the First Planet and the White Clouds orbital; and the Empress, of course, insisted her new Councillor come with her, to show her the wonders of space.

Da Trang came, because he had no choice—in spite of deep unease— because Pearl had been restless and distant, because he’d tossed and turned at night, trying to think of what he could do and thinking of nothing.

Halfway through the trip, the Empress called for him.

She was in her cabin, surrounded by her courtiers—they were all sitting on silk cushions and sipping tea from a cup as cracked as eggshells. In front of her was a hologram of space as seen from the prow of the ship. As Da Trang entered, the view blurred and shifted, and became the outside of the orbital— except that the stars were dimmer than they ought to have been.

“Councillor,” the Empress said. “I thought you would enjoy seeing these.”

Pearl snuggled closer to Da Trang—needles extended, the blissful cold spreading outward from the pinpricks, the trance rising—extending to the outside, narrowing until he could see the bots maneuvering nano-thin filaments, unfolding a large, dark shape like a spread cloth behind the orbital.

Void-nets. Da Trang had sat in nightlong sessions with the Ministry of War’s engineers, describing to them what Pearl saw—what Pearl thought— how the remora could even analyze the dust of stars, the infinitesimal amounts of matter carried by the wind in the void of space—and how, in turn, those could be trapped.

He hadn’t thought—

“Your Highness,” Da Trang said, struggling to remember how to bow. “I had no idea this was such a momentous occasion.”

“The Ministry of War has been testing prototypes for a while—but it is the first time a void-net is deployed in the vicinity of a Numbered Planet, to be sure.” The Empress was almost . . . thoughtful. “All to your credit, and Pearl’s.”

Another nudge, but he had no need to see heartbeats or temperature to catch the anger of the courtiers. As if they’d ever be capable of matching him . . .

“Tell us,” the Empress said. “What will we find in your nets?”

A brief moment of panic, as nothing happened—as Pearl didn’t move, the thought that it was going to be today, of all days, when the remora failed him—and then a stab so deep under his collarbone it was almost painful— and the view shifting, becoming dotted with hundreds of pinpoints of colored lights, each labeled with a name and concentration. “Suffocating metal 5.3 percent,” he whispered. “Frozen water 3 percent. Gray adamantine crystals 9.18 percent . . . ” On and on, a litany of elements, labeled and weighed: everything the Empire would decant to fuel its machines and stations and planets, names and images and every use they could be put to, a flood of information that carried him along—such a terrible, breathless sense of being the center, of knowing everything that would come to pass . . .

He came to with a start, finding Pearl all but inert against him, softly vibrating on his shoulder. The Empress was looking at him and smiling— her face and body relaxed, her heartbeat slow and steady. “A good take. The Ministry of War should be satisfied, I should think.” She watched the screens with mild curiosity. “Tell me what you see.”

“Colors,” Da Trang said. Even with Pearl quiescent, he could make them out—slowly accreting, the net bulging slightly outward as it filled—the bots straining under the pressure. “A dance of lights—”

He never got to finish the sentence.

On his shoulder, Pearl surged—gone before Da Trang’s flailing arms could stop it, tearing through the cabin—and then, with scarcely a pause, through the walls of the ship as if they were nothing more than paper; alarms blaring, the Empress and him thrown to the ground as the cabin sealed itself—but Pearl was already gone. Fumbling, Da Trang managed to call up a view from ships around the orbital—a slow zoom on Pearl, weaving and racing toward the stars, erratic and drunken, stopping for a bare moment, and then plunging toward the heart of the sun.

>Architect. Farewell. Must be better. Must show them.<

And then there was nothing—just emptiness on his shoulder like a hole in his own heart, and the memory of those words—and he could not tell if they were angry or sad or simply a statement of fact.

Nothing.

Days blur and slide against one another; his world shrinks to the screen hovering in front of him, the lines of code slowly turning into something else. He can barely read them now; he’s merely inputting things from rote—his hands freeze, at odd intervals; and his vision goes entirely black, with whole chunks of time disappearing—everything oddly disjointed. Except for his remoras.

They’re sleek and beautiful and heartbreaking now, moving with the grace of officials and fighter-monks—one by one, pulling themselves from the floor, like dancers getting up and stretching limb after limb—still for a heartbeat, their prows turned toward him, and then gone toward the sun, a blur of speed he cannot follow anymore—as darkness grows and encroaches on his field of vision.

He must build more.

Remoras come and go: Teacher, Slicer, and all the others, taking from the pile of scraps, making small noises as they see a piece of metal or a connector; slowly, determinedly taking apart his earlier efforts—the tearing sound of sheets of metal stretched past the breaking point; the snapping of cables wrenched out of their sockets; the crackling sound of ion thrusters taken apart—his failures, transfigured into life—patched onto other remoras, other makings; going on and on and on, past Da Trang’s pitiful, bounded existence—going on, among the stars.

“Tell me,” he says, aloud.

>Architect. What should I tell you?< One of them—Slicer, Teacher, he’s not sure he can tell them apart anymore; save for his own remoras, everything seems small and blurred, diminished into insignificance. Everything seems dimmer and smaller, and even his own ambitions feel shriveled, far away, belonging to someone else, a stranger with whom he shares only memories.

“Pearl wanted to be better than you. It said so, before it left. Tell me what it means.”

Silence, for a while. Then letters, steadily marching through his darkening field of vision. >Everything strives. It couldn’t be better than us, Architect. It is—<

“Flawed. I know.”

>Then you understands.<

“No, I don’t. That’s not what I want. I want to—I need to—” He stops then, thinks of remoras, of scarce resources that have to be endlessly recycled, of that hunger to rebuild themselves, to build others, that yearning that led to Pearl’s making.

And he sees it then. “It doesn’t matter. Thank you, Slicer.” He stifles a bitter laugh. Everything strives.

>I am Teacher.<

Its words are almost gentle, but Da Trang no longer cares. He stares ahead, at the screen, at the blurred words upon it, the life’s blood he fed into his remoras, making them slowly, painstakingly, and sending them one by one into the heart of the sun. He thinks of the remoras’ hopes for the future, and of things that parents pass on to their children, and makers to their creations. He knows now that Pearl, in the end, is like Teacher, like Slicer, no better or no different, moved by the same urges and hungers. He thinks of the fires of the sun, the greatest forge in the system; and of Pearl, struggling to understand how things worked, from the smallest components of matter to mindships and humans—he’d thought it was curiosity, but now he sees what drove it. What still drives it.

If you know how things work, you can make them.

Darkness, ahead and behind him, slowly descending upon the screen—the remoras dancing before him, scavenging their own to survive, to make others.

Yearnings. Hunger. The urge to build its own makings, just as it was once built.

Must be better.

Must build better.

And as he slides into shadows—as his nerveless fingers leave the keyboard, his body folding itself, hunched over as if felled by sleep—he thinks of the other remoras, taking their own apart—thinks of the ones he made, the ones he sent into the heart of the sun; and he sees, with agonizing clarity, what he gave Pearl.

Not tools to drag it back or to contact it, but offerings—metal and silicon chips and code, things to be taken apart and grafted, to be scavenged for anything salvageable—the base from which a remora can be forged.

As his eyes close—just for a moment, just for a heartbeat, he sees Pearl— not the remora he remembers, the sleek making of Teacher and Slicer, but something else—something changed, reshaped by the heat of the sun, thickened by accreted metal scooped from the heart of a star, something slick and raw and incandescent, looming over him like a heavenly messenger, the weight of its presence distorting the air.

Darkness, ahead and behind him—rising to fill the entire world; and everything he was, his lines of code, his remoras, scattering and fragmenting—into the fires of the sun, to become Pearl’s own makings, reforged and reborn, and with no care for human toil or dreams or their petty ambitions.

There is no bringing Pearl back. There is no need to.

And as his eyes close for the last time, he smiles, bitterly—because it is not what he longed for, but it is only fair.

>Farewell, Architect.<

And Pearl’s voice, booming, becomes his entire world, his beginning and his ending—and the last thing he hears before he is borne away, into the void between the stars.