The next morning she jolts to consciousness as though electrocuted by the force of her own volition—as if all her neurotransmitters fired at once, in a concerted effort to break her dreams like so much spun salt. Recadat remembers the dreams because the humiliation follows even into her waking moments. They’re never cohesive recreations of true memory but for hours after she will feel hounded, stalked by the shadow of a tall broad-shouldered woman, a ghost of hard bulk and wolfish appetite. In some of the dreams she’s devoured whole. In others she’s pinned down and parted and then annihilated.
When she pulls herself free of the sheets, she half-expects them to transform into snakes, into grasping hands tipped in talons.
But they are just sheets, and when she tries the door she finds that it opens easily. For a moment she focuses on her own respiratory functions, the open and close of it, the rhythm of bronchial whispers. She doesn’t attempt to leave: just because the door is unlocked does not mean she has freedom. Sometimes it means the opposite. The human wardens played such games.
Now comes the time to orient herself. She measures the dimensions of her room, makes sure that there’s only one apparent point of entry—though even that can be fluid—and then she gets clean. She doesn’t relax into or enjoy the hot shower, the soaps and creams that smell—as Vishrava promised—like orange blossom. All of it can be taken away at any time. The only path is to hold nothing dear, and therefore to possess nothing that can be lost. It is easy. She has had practice.
She wonders if Vishrava has ever seen real orange blossoms. Likely yes. Recadat imagines what the AI used to be. All three wardens’ names follow a motif but that is hardly informative, may well have been what they took up after they assumed control of the Garden of Atonement, as a private joke. There is history: this place used to belong to a religious order, a minor ascetic sect whose priests handed out bloody penitence. Absolution could be found in the rawness of bruises and lacerations, in the smell of lymph and the crack of the whip. She walked into this place expecting to see it a charnel house.
The provided wardrobe makes her think of bhikkhunis: so much white. But it is more decadent than it first looks, the fabrics underlaid with roseate and moonstone hues. There are pleated blouses so angular they look sculpted, voluminous skirts that move like seafoam. Both are too feminine for her, but she finds a fitted shirt, a suit jacket and the trousers to match. They settle onto her as though they’ve been tailor-made, and faint calligraphic lines bud across the material as they adjust to her frame. She feels a little more like herself.
She is hungry, but she’s learned to tolerate it well. In a little shelf facing her bed she finds rose-tinted bottles. Plain water, cold and clear. From the bottle’s frigid mouth she sips, little by little. Access to the room’s controls has been granted to her, temperature regulation, lighting and particulate ornamentation. She touches none of them.
When Vishrava enters the room, it is with a covered tray that xe carries adroitly, despite its generous size. Xe puts it on the dining table and xer mouth quirks, wry. “I see you haven’t taken advantage of our entertainment options. Or even decorated this room. Do you prefer minimalism?”
“I didn’t know there were entertainment options.”
The AI uncovers the tray: jasmine rice, basil pork stir-fry, a bowl of green curry. All food particular to the cuisine of Recadat’s homeworld. “We have media libraries you can download. Not the latest, and we don’t produce our own, but there’s a large range—serialized shows, films with options for virtuality participation and without, texts of all kinds, music, games. Even erotic content, if that strikes your fancy.”
Nothing could strike her fancy any less. “Sure. I’ll take a look.”
“It’ll keep you from getting too bored. A well-stimulated mind goes a long way. But first let’s see to you getting fed.”
When Recadat eats, she does so at a measured pace. To show eagerness or enjoyment, or even to admit to hunger, means that her next meal might be delayed or her current one might be knocked or snatched out of her hands. That was the case at her previous prison, and she has no reason to expect any different here. Still it is good—overwhelming her palate, the distinct taste of fish sauce, the spice in the stir-fry, even the jasmine fragrance of the rice. She has to exert the most discipline she’s ever needed in months to keep her expression indifferent.
“This was cooked by one of my other charges,” Vishrava says, pouring a cup of lemongrass tea. Xer albino hair is inert today. “You don’t have to work, naturally—Mahiravanan, Ravana and I can do anything that requires delicacy and we automate the rest with drones. But some people enjoy keeping busy, or enjoy cooking as a pastime. I had to look around for someone who’s familiar with your cuisine. Is this to your liking?”
“It’s flavorful.” In fact it is excellent. “You have another Ayothayan here?” For a split second she wonders if it is her , the woman who haunts Recadat’s dream. That obsession. But of course it couldn’t possibly be.
“No, my charge is from Krungthep Station. Similar cultural and demographic makeup. Do you want to talk about Ayothaya?”
“I haven’t been back there since it was liberated.” Too fraught a place. Too fraught—everything. Her fingers twitch. She forces them to still.
“Ayothaya’s saviors were unusual,” xe goes on. “A human and an AI, though their identities have been obfuscated—it wouldn’t do for a Mandate member to interfere so dramatically and publicly. What do you think?”
“I have no opinion.”
Vishrava looks at her but does not press. “I should introduce you to your new home, and to your cohabitants.”
Cohabitants—what a toothless word, a select euphemism, as though she and the others have come here of their own free will: a meditative retreat under the benevolent guidance of three AIs who have styled themselves after demons. All the same she smiles and falls into step, lets Vishrava put a hand on the small of her back. Such a careful gesture it is, chivalrous, yet a reminder whose control she is under. She let herself fall apart during her intake; it is not an error she intends to repeat.
In a lounge, two inmates—alerted to and likely pre-informed about her—are waiting. One mid-board game in the corner. The other is at the piano, an instrument of copper wood and brilliant teeth. All conversation and music cease on Vishrava’s arrival.
“This is Recadat.” Vishrava presents her the way xe might present a prize student or a piece of art freshly made, proudly tempered. “She will join us from today onward.”
The pianist straightens from her seat, giving Recadat an once-over. She is a woman in deep, lustrous red, a dress of tight bodice and skirts that look as though they are made from panes of warped glass. Recadat immediately tenses—too much like Chun Hyang’s Glaive. The woman notices. “Well, hello there,” she drawls. “I’m Ceres. You’re very pleasant on the eye. What is your background?”
“Public security,” Recadat says.
This makes the boardgame player straighten. “Now we don’t get one of those every day.” Ey tips eir head at her; faint cobalt glints in the black prairie of eir hair. “I’m Zerjic. Welcome to our odd little club. We’re all in Vishrava’s care here, and bless xer for xer patience with us.”
“You all make it so easy.” The AI bends down to kiss Zerjic on the mouth, light, quick. She does the same with Ceres. “I’ll leave you here to acclimate to one another. How do you all feel about a shared dinner tonight?”
The two murmur their assent. Recadat makes noise to the same effect. It is just as well—she needs to assess them, threat and risk factors, whether they will be enemies or allies. A simple binary, and through it she can get her bearings. Ever since the prison, that has always been the easiest way for her to understand the world: friend or foe, safety or danger.
Vishrava leaves. For a time they regard each other in silence. Recadat looks for marks of visible trauma on Ceres and Zerjic—fresh injuries, scarring, any sign of lacerations or broken bones. None seem in evidence. Ceres is full-figured, soft-looking, not someone Recadat would read as a threat in the wild. Zerjic is her opposite: thick biceps and thick thighs under eir trousers and eigenvector shirt, powerful shoulders, a jawline that could slice glass.
“So.” Zerjic gestures at the chair across eir board. “Before we came here, all of us were in Mandate detainment for heinous sins. What’s yours? I’m asking sincerely. Vishrava didn’t show us your dossier or anything, that’d be a violation of privacy.”
Privacy in a place like this is mere illusion, Recadat might say, but there’s no gain in belaboring the obvious. “Tell me yours,” she says. “I’m at a disadvantage.”
Ceres and Zerjic exchange looks, speculative. Perhaps they have made bets, a pool of two guessing at her sins. Developing theories based on how she looks, how she carries herself. They would both be wrong.
“I’m in here for a heist.” Ceres lifts her hands from the piano, clipping on a set of nail guards long enough to be claws: they are elaborately made, a silver base embellished by jagged crystal motifs, gold and garnet and tourmaline. “That is to say, I stole a sacred ship from the Vatican. They got me five years after the fact—really hold a grudge. What with this treaty and that, the Mandate paid for my transfer from a Vatican detention facility. They were curious how such a place affected my psychological profile, whether I was successfully converted to Catholicism. I wasn’t, by the way. They tried though, wanted to make me a nun and everything—hilarious.”
Petty theft, Recadat thinks. Mundane. In her previous profession she would not have spent more than a minute assessing Ceres; no point building a criminal profile. “And you?”
Zerjic makes a little gesture. “I got involved with a scheme to help a Mahakala heiress get into Shenzhen Sphere, not completely legally.”
As far as she knows, Shenzhen takes their immigration control with brutal seriousness. “Did you have a death wish?”
Eir laugh is slow and smooth, decadent. “I had a lot of ambition; the heiress was going to pay well. Go on—tell us yours.”
Recadat puts herself on a chaise lounge not far from the piano. The furniture, like Ceres’ dress, is themed after crystals and glass, complex silicate structures. The armrest has the appearance of bismuths lashed together haphazardly. “I tried to destroy an AI’s core.”
Zerjic whistles. “And you asked if I had a death wish. How close did you get?”
“Enough that the AI felt threatened.” She folds her hands in her lap. “I’m not trying to brag.” Vishrava and the rest would be watching, in any case. What she does not admit is that at the time she did have a death wish.
“Oh, but it is worth bragging about.” Ceres leans forward. “You’re going to tell us how you managed the feat.”
“I don’t think so.” Not that the help she received is the kind she will disclose or betray. They swore her to secrecy, and she’s dutifully kept to it even under torture.
“Pay no attention to Ceres. She likes to be seditious.” Zerjic grins abruptly. “How long are you staying here? I have eight months to go. Ceres has seven, but she doesn’t behave so it keeps getting extended.”
“A year.” Recadat winces at this reflexive openness: when did she begin to answer questions so easily and mindlessly. A habit built as a defense—when she has something to hide, she loosens all else, a deluge of answers that don’t matter to bury and conceal the secret. “What is Vishrava like?”
“Lenient,” says Zerjic.
“Attractive,” offers Ceres. “Xe’s one of those AIs who will have sex with humans.”
Recadat doesn’t ask how Ceres knows that; resolves to specifically never ask about that. For a second time she looks over the other inmates. Zerjic has a full mouth and a deep umber complexion: Sinhalese she thinks, from Vishnu’s Leviathan or Sinhapura perhaps, though ey would blend into dozens of polities. The name is almost certainly an alias. Ceres is Korean or Chinese and keeps her hair black, threaded through with metallic strands in red and electrum. A blunt nose and full cheeks, skin in pale gold, brilliant eyes—one natural, the other gilded with a complicated ocular lens, patterned in slow-revolving stars.
Zerjic takes it upon emself to show Recadat the premises; Ceres returns to her piano. The lounge is one of their three common areas where they will eat if they’re not joining the greater dining hall shared by all inmates. “Which we don’t very often,” ey admits as ey brings her to the gym. “This place we share with Ravana’s . . . brides. They don’t talk much. Quite intense. We leave them alone.”
At the moment the gym is empty, one section filled with weights, running equipment, and punching bags. The other half is a hexagonal pool that smells like the sea, and a floor-to-ceiling panorama that shows a sunlit expanse, waves foaming and lapping at a distant shore. A horizon without an end. Recadat catches herself staring. It is not real—of course it is not, they are inside a hollow artificial moon—but even in image she hasn’t seen anything like this for so long. No overlays. No virtuality. She tries not to count backward, measure out the time in prison. To think about it is to confront what was done to her there, the depth to which she lowered herself so she could survive—and could, eventually, reach this place.
The next spot Zerjic shows her is a second, massive solarium. Walkways crisscross the air, linking platforms cantilevered to baobab trunks and half-veiled by cascades of wisterias. Waterfalls murmur and splash; shadows of birds flit across. Recadat looks up into the vaulted ceiling of fractal glass fringed by black metal lace and green-gold leaves.
“Why is it like this?” she asks, her voice muted.
“Not as spartan as you expected?” Ey taps a low-trailing wisteria. “By some standards this isunbearable poverty, but you and I are of diminished circumstances and we must endure the best we can. In any case it’s best to think of ourselves as chosen. We’ve already done our penance in unlovely places, why shouldn’t we enjoy a comfortable halfway-house before we’re out? All we need to do is behave.”
But what does that mean, Recadat thinks, what does it entail. There is no freedom without a price. Even basic ease—food, shelter—must be paid for, in currency or in blood. The apparent luxury cannot be all it seems. “What is Vishrava really like?”
“You don’t trust me and you don’t trust xer.” Ey chuckles. “That’s natural. When xe says that xe’ll make you a weapon, xe means that xe will make you whole. A weapon in mind and body. There’ll be physical regimens, of course, but you already have the background for that—am I right? It’s about regaining control over your thoughts, your nervous system, your limbic assets. It’s about emerging into the outside world again ready to face whatever you’ve left behind.”
Her chest tightens. “You sound like a therapist.” Or an indoctrinated believer.
“No such thing.” Zerjic holds up eir hands. “I’m an ex-convict. More so than the usual—I’ve been through . . . various forms of prison, let’s just say. You and I are natural enemies.”
“I haven’t been in public security for a long time.” When once that career meant everything to her. But outside Ayothaya it means nothing, and she hasn’t been back on her homeworld for years. All she had left, after leaving Septet, was the vast desire to see Chun Hyang turned to cinders. And she worked toward that, careful machinations and schemes; she accepted forbidden help; she did everything perfectly.
Perfect did not suffice.
“Suppose you’d tell me why you quit being a cop?”
Recadat’s facial muscles twitch. She smooths her fingers down her lapels. “Why all the quizzing?”
“We’ll be sharing living space for many months.”
“You said you had a Mahakala client.” The planet’s name tugs at her, an ache under the skin. She doesn’t have the faintest idea why: it is a place to which she has no connection. “Care to tell me more?”
“It was a routine job, nothing very interesting other than the heiress being outlandishly rich. Actually, speaking of cops—let me try something.”
Zerjic moves abruptly, shoving her up against a baobab trunk. She responds without thinking: stepping hard on eir foot, driving her elbow into eir solar plexus. Ey makes a noise and staggers back, narrowly avoiding the kick she aims at eir knees.
She holds herself still, breathing hard, more adrenaline than exertion. Her nerves sing. She wants to shatter bones; she wants to see the coils and wet excess of guts. But that brief contact has told her that Zerjic could have done more if ey meant to do damage. This was a test, a provocation. “What do you fucking want?”
Ey holds eir hands up, keeping eir distance. “I’m more curiosity than sense. And I wanted to see how someone who nearly killed an AI would react. If it is any consolation, I’m going to bruise and Vishrava is going to nail my hide to the wall.”
A prospect that does not seem to disturb Zerjic too much; again she wonders what constitutes disciplinary action here, from the wardens in general or Vishrava in particular. Lenient, Zerjic said. “Don’t do it again.” Her palm itches. She wishes she had a small knife on her. The brandished edge is always better than the promise of a fist, even if she can do damage with both just the same. But she’s suffered muscle atrophy in prison, and her augmentations are gone.
“I promise,” ey says. “I may not act it, but what you did hurt. Thought you’d gouge my eyes out.”
“What would the wardens have done?”
“Prevented anything fatal.” Zerjic shrugs. “I also thought it’d help demonstrate to you a little that Vishrava gives us a lot of freedom.”
To injure and test one another. Another layer to the AI’s little games. Recadat measures her breathing and instead catches a scent of Zerjic: faint spice and something more basal. Not sweat precisely, peculiarly appealing. “I’d like to be alone for a while. Explore the place.”
“Sure. You should have everything you need in your overlays to navigate the area.” A pause. “Including where not to go.”
To obey, to follow instructions precisely, to adhere to the rules both in spirit and letter. That did not keep her safe in the prison, but then her wardens there were not inclined to mercy. Chun Hyang’s Glaive was one of the prison’s patrons, and the AI left instructions for her sentence. She learned the precise significance, the exact definition, of what it means to experience a fate worse than death.
She remembers begging. For food, for water, for a cessation of pain; for clothing when it became too cold. She remembers screaming until her voice broke as they put her eye out, and then the wet noises of her mucus and tears and parched sobbing. The stink of her own piss and voided bowels. The eye was restored since—part of the doctrine of humane correction, the same as the Garden of Atonement’s, that a prisoner must remain whole in body. Not always the mind, but that is a component that reconstruction cradles and implants can’t heal and so it was never part of the requisites. Over and over she was carved open and unmade, and over and over they put her back together. All for the sin of attempting an AI’s true destruction, one of the gravest crimes as the Mandate accounts such things.
Panic scrabbles behind her ribs. She inhales and tries to slow it down. The first time she saw her body, naked in more ways than one after the forced excisions, she was nauseated: the gauntness, the thrust of her pelvic bones that seemed ready to pierce what little flesh she had left. And the scars, the innumerable scars, where her implants had been.
She climbs a long metal bridge. Railings extend as she steps on, high enough that she would have to make a concerted effort to climb them, at which point she doesn’t doubt one of the wardens will dispatch their proxies to bring her to safety. Or else there are drones hidden in the alcoves or tangles of liana vines, ready to prevent suicide attempts.
No one else is here. Recadat wonders how many inmates are in the Garden of Atonement. She is familiar with the logistics of holding facilities from the jailer’s end; it was unavoidable in public security. Three prisoners were brought here with her and though she never made their acquaintance—they were surveilled and isolated on that ship—she would be able to recognize their faces, based on a few brief glimpses. She has not yet seen them. She may spend her entire year without ever seeing those three. If they are still alive. First is the right to survive , Ravana said, but she does not trust even that. The time when machines could not lie was long past.
The ascent stabilizes her. In the prison there was no gym, barely any space to stretch her legs. Now she can walk, refamiliarize herself with the small alchemies of the sartorius muscle, the minor miracles that enable motor functions. Things she took for granted and which, she later learned, should have been treasured and cherished all along.
The air here is so clean. Recycled, it would have to be, but filtered so well that it doesn’t smell stale. She runs her fingers along the railing but finds she can leave no marks—oleophobic glass. Likely difficult to break as well. Her overlays are no longer connected to sensors that’d let her view and analyze the material composition of a wall, a piece of furniture; her perception is now one of guesswork, trial-and-error, where she used to understand the world with a machine’s intuition and accuracy. Now her overlays inform her no further than what’s in front of her nose, conveying only data that the Garden of Atonement allots her: oxygen levels, her position in the permitted areas of the facility, how to reach her warden Vishrava.
Her hand curls and uncurls compulsively. She appreciates that she has fine control again, thumbs and forefinger and index finger operational once more. She pinches a wisteria, twists it off, and crumples the dew-glazed petals in her palm. Up and up she goes, her respiration running ragged as she finds her limits, but she pushes on. Little by little she shall regain her strength.
When she reaches the highest platform, she nearly collapses. Sweat streaks down her spine, gathers under her breasts and the backs of her knees. She wipes at her face and inhales deeply the fragrance of flowers and her own salt. It is no accomplishment at all, in the grand schemes of things. But it is victory of a sort, and she will take that where she finds it.
From the platform she watches the water, the soft air currents that move through the wisterias and clematises. She doesn’t think of anything: there is purity in this, in physical exhaustion so thorough it leaves the mind blank. It is a good vantage point. She can observe without being seen, if any inmate enters or passes by.
Footsteps from the ramp opposite her. Odd. If someone is there, she should have seen them while she climbed. Recadat straightens and peers through the translucent railing, but the railing on the other end is frosted and even higher than hers: what she can see is a dark-skinned, bulky figure in black. Too short to be any of the wardens, too tall to be Zerjic. The figure is still, scrutinizing her back, though from their side they can’t possibly discern much of her either.
A spark of recognition. She goes cold. Then she starts moving down the ramp, which obliges by extending across the baobab’s parameter, budding into a bridge as she runs. Not fast enough. By the time she reaches the other side, she is doubled over with exertion, nearly gagging. The person is gone. There are only fallen clematises on the ground, crushed flat: as tender as bruised skin.
Dinner is quiet; Recadat eats to be filled, this time, to ensure she will not be hungry even if she’s denied her next meal. Zerjic looks amused. Ceres looks disdainful at her table manners. Vishrava is absent, physically at least. They all know the wardens may surveil them at any and all times.
She finishes her portion of spring rolls and wipes her fingers on a serviette. “What are we supposed to do after dinner?” Before food she meant to ask Zerjic about the figure she saw in the solarium, but to inquire that much is dangerous. She can admit to nothing.
“Not much.” Ey pushes eir plate of spring rolls toward her, the same way ey might with a child or a pet ey wishes to spoil. An apology for what ey did in the solarium, perhaps. “This is your first day, so make the best of it. Tomorrow there will be prayers and instructions in moral clarity, classes that’ll get you technical certifications or academic skills if you need any for when you venture out in the universe. Gym sessions. Nothing strenuous. This is a healing place.”
“This is a healing place,” Ceres echoes, mocking. “Zerjic is such an obedient little convert. You and I know better, don’t you, Recadat?”
Recadat takes the spring rolls, savoring the scent of sesame oil and seasoned chicken. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ey may brag about eir checkered past, but ey is domesticated.” Ceres lifts her glass of wine and smiles over its rim. “I’ve been here longer. There are things I want to find out about the Garden of Atonement, and there are things I know Zerjic doesn’t. You strike me as someone who’s cognizant that all of this has a price, that the AIs aren’t doing this out of charity or even in pursuit of some lofty moral goals—AIs don’t have morals. What profit are they getting out of it? Are we the goods and if so what currency are we being traded for, and how?”
Zerjic gestures with eir blunt, elegant hand. “Ceres has a lot of conspiracy theories. That is one of her favorites. Incidentally the real reason Ceres has been here for close to two years now is because she has a fetish for AIs, and this is where she can be closest to them short of applying for tourist visas to Shenzhen Sphere.”
“Discernment is not a fetish, Zerjic, unless one is a fool.” The woman scoffs. “Two years are the hard limit, anyway, so I’ll be out of here soon enough. But in the meantime I’ll wring out all its secrets. I was Ravana’s when I first came here, but Vishrava took over my care.”
“What did he offer you?” And what did Vishrava, for that matter.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Ceres drains her glass of claret. “I’ll make you a deal. I can tell you everything I know about the Garden of Atonement. In exchange, when you get around to it—and I suspect that’s what xe picked you for—give me a record of what fucking Vishrava is like, a virtuality capture is best but footage will do. I’m academically interested.”
Recadat does not bother to look shocked; Zerjic has provoked her in one way, and Ceres has chosen another. “I have no intention of doing any such thing.”
To that Ceres merely laughs.
Curfew begins an hour after dinner—too short a period to explore the area or return to the solarium. She returns to her room: easy enough to pretend at docility for the time being.
Once she’s locked the door behind her, she strips and passes her hands over her sternum, down her abdomen where her skeleton presses against the thin sheath of skin, where she can feel individual vertebrochondral ribs like brittle wood. The anatomy of diminishment. One year. She may be able to regain some muscle and stamina. Neither will avail her against the wardens, but she wants to hold her own against other inmates: Zerjic has shown her she will require that. What’s been taken from her she will never have again, yet that doesn’t mean she needs to accept being a husk.
Vishrava promised media libraries. Recadat browses them, desultory, too restless to sleep yet. She finds a vast catalogue, media visual or textual in every category she’s heard of and several she hasn’t. Fiction and nonfiction. Brainless dramas, stark plays in monochrome, treatises on political systems. She can indulge herself the entire year in a single medium without repeating material.
She samples the dramas—office comedies grant a glimpse into a world exotic to her, if tedious and absurdist. Fantastical time-traveling adventures show her the prehistoric past, the time before spacefaring and terraforming. Several speculative documentaries on humanity’s origination planet, the great cradle whose name and location have been lost to time. Little by little she unwinds into the entertainments. An episode of the time-traveling adventure comes up where the protagonist is captured by an enemy agent, sedated and brought to a maximum-security prison. Her throat closes. This is nothing like what happened to her but all the same—the spectacle of a person lolling in restraints—hits too close to home. She shuts down the show.
Her gorge rises. Barely she reaches the bathroom in time to regurgitate everything she’s just eaten. The hot surge of digested food and acid, the contraction of what feels like her entire chest cavity, the collapse of what feels like her entire digestive system. She vomits and spits and hacks. Tears burn down her cheeks as she pants and folds onto the cold marble floor.
Her eyes squeeze shut. The alabaster and silver of the bathroom are suddenly too bright. The air reeks, though the sink is already cleaning itself, sucking and wiping away the filth of her body. Soon the ventilation will erase even the stench. She almost wishes it wouldn’t. Let the evidence of gross mortality remain.
A notification lets her know someone is at her door—Vishrava. She cleans her mouth and face as best she can before admitting the AI.
Vishrava looks more serpentine than when she last saw the warden, platinum scales winding up xer arms and ankles like dermal jewelry. A smattering along xer collarbones, in curlicues. Xe gives pause when xe sees her and then says, gently, “It’s sixteen degrees in here and you aren’t wearing anything.”
Recadat stares back. “So I am not.” She tries to make it sound intentional, not a result of her rushing out of the bathroom, too mindless and stricken to remember her nudity. Nor does she try to cover herself now.
“It may be wise for you to put something on.” Vishrava strides past her, fetches a long loose kurta, and holds it out. “If the wardrobe isn’t to your liking, you only need to tell me. Without acquiring pneumonia, for preference.”
“I can’t get pneumonia at sixteen degrees.” She puts the kurta on, perfunctory. The fabric is clean, redolent with orange blossom, and settles on her skin like clouds.
“I was being hyperbolic. Nevertheless you’re likely to get sick.” Vishrava cocks her head. “I won’t pretend I’m here by coincidence—I noticed you were in distress. And Zerjic will be disciplined.”
No attempt at denying that prisoners are under constant surveillance. “I’ll be—” Fine. No. She will not be. “I’m not always like this. I was not like this.” There was barely anything in the entertainment episode, no graphic demonstration: her time in prison should not rise in her like a tide of bile.
“I would have blocked any content I thought might have disturbed you, but I suspect you wouldn’t appreciate being coddled.” Vishrava sits on the bed, light undulating along xer scales in odd, warped patterns. A match for the white ophidian strands of xer hair. “I’m certified to give treatment in several formats—counseling, exposure therapy, long-term welfare improvement.”
“I didn’t realize AIs could get certified in those.” Recadat tugs at the kurta, pulling the sleeves down unnecessarily. She resists the urge to wrap her arms around herself. “Why would you bother?”
“Chun Hyang must have given you the impression that most machines regard humans with contempt and cruelty.” More softly xe adds, “I am not Chun Hyang’s Glaive.”
She does not want to talk about Chun Hyang; she does not want to think about it, save to fantasize about its core blistering and charring to cinders. She was so close. She could have touched the warm shell of it. “If I don’t improve to your satisfaction within the year, what’s going to happen?”
“By then, if you want to leave you will be able to, no strings attached. If you wish to stay another year, that’ll be fine too. Your choice will be respected.” Vishrava pats the mattress. “I don’t think I will convince you tonight of my intentions, but in practical terms I’d rather you get some sleep than I win the argument.”
Recadat unclenches her hands. Spite will guide her, she decides, stronger than resolve or any of the virtues preached by the monks at home. “Fine. I’ll get in bed.”
“I don’t believe you will be able to rest without sedatives, after everything. I’ve had experience providing sleep therapy. Having something warm and solid can help.” The AI holds out xer hand. “Why not try it? Should I fail to be of use, I’ll leave after ten minutes.”
She stares at the proxy, at the physical presence of it: the rounded golden shoulders mantled in serpent-seeming, the waspish waist and high breasts. Nothing about xer looks clinical. “If you insist.”
“I insist. I won’t touch you any more than a hospital cradle would.”
Hospital cradles are not shaped like this, Recadat could say, and Vishrava must have a proxy lying around that looks less human. Or xe could simply summon a comparable drone. But she is worn out, knows how threadbare she has become, and Vishrava is right that she needs the sleep. In the prison she got so little of it, deprivation being the point, to keep her weak and hollowed-out and witless. Sleep is a treasure, a prized resource, and she doesn’t intend to be precious about it. She climbs into the bed and turns her back to Vishrava, keeping a good distance between them.
She fantasizes, as she sometimes did when she had the luxury of a bed (though in the prison none was ever this wide, this comfortable), about her life from before. Ayothaya prior to the invasion, her work in public security—work that was just and which she believed in, a partner she could trust at her back and for whom she nursed a secret infatuation. Harmless, at that point. Then came the graveyard world and the Mandate’s game in which she competed to obtain her heart’s desire—and lost.
Every ligament in her turns rigid when Vishrava’s arm falls on her waist. “You said you weren’t going to touch me.”
“Not any more than a hospital cradle. I’m going to move a little closer to you. Is that all right?”
Recadat nearly says no. Defiance pushes her to say, “Yes.” Because why should she be afraid of this—why should she be so abject, so despicable to herself. Chun Hyang was years ago and she will not fall into an AI’s thrall again, be manipulated into that cocktail of lust and terror. Instead she must separate her cowering animal part from the rest of her, and show it no pity.
Vishrava pulls her close, tucking her against those soft breasts, that soft waist. They are astonishingly lifelike; she wonders why the AI bothers to have them rather than keeping xer proxy featureless, a map of minimalism. It is what she would have done—to be a creature that admits no vulnerability, to be anonymous and numinous. An instrument of pure will and might.
The thought lulls her to sleep, though by the time she wakes Vishrava is gone, xer side of the bed as smooth and uncreased as though Recadat slept alone the entire night.