Qualia again, or else the afterlife. No advancement in technology has ever been able to weigh a soul, measure out the existence of psychopomps or paradise: to the finest medical sensor, all concludes when the flesh ends—the last neuron fired, the last cardiac movement. This ambiguity, this lack of answer, is one reason Recadat holds on to what many would call superstition. She believes.
A sky the searing white of desert climates. Water below, up to her ankles, the surface of it mirror-perfect save where she’s tarnished it. She makes not ripples but a marbling effect, as though she brings with her an impurity, a gradual infection. Oil-slick strands, iridescent as a curse.
She is not surprised when she blinks and Vishrava is there. Not as Zerjic, not as Thannarat. As xerself, the tall golden body with pearl hair that resembles no human and has never meant to: an image of zhenren perfection, machine elegance. Xe draws toward her and stops when she retreats. “Recadat.”
“Yes.” She doesn’t at once respond, I won’t forgive you . She thinks of the child proxy in that little bed. Sympathies for demons. Or—for a certain innocence; maybe in xer own way Vishrava was locked inside a single moment, indurated within the shell of xer history. She remembers hearing, likely from Doctor Orfea, that AIs differ from humans in a crucial way. That if their core parameters are modified enough, then they are no longer the same AI. To hold on to a consistency of self, the machine must reject change and growth. A soul fossilized in amber.
“I loved you,” says the creature that was her captor. Might still be. “I thought that would suffice. That for you it would soothe every ache—that love is the root of all human requirements. That’s what the tactician taught me.”
“Chun Hyang loved me.” Recadat watches the marbling under her feet spread, the contagion in acceleration. “Or would probably claim to, at any rate. They wanted to turn me into something I wasn’t. They succeeded. You would have, too, if I’d stayed with you; if I’d said yes. And I—I didn’t want to be a vessel for what you’re looking for.”
Xe folds xer gleaming hands on xer stomach. “But you did. You wanted to leave behind Septet. You wanted to discard your mistakes. I could have remade you. You would have belonged, you would have been freed from decision. In every way I’d have cherished and honored you.”
Whether machines can feel sorrow or remorse she would never know. But they do want, she’s sure of that finally. She wants to keep talking, to exhume and understand the core of Vishrava that brought xer to pick human after human to replace that tactician; that brought xer to this. Yet what would be the point. She’d never understand, not completely, and what xe has done to her overtakes the explanations, the excuses. “What’s going to happen to the Garden?”
Vishrava blinks, expressionless. “Even as we speak it is crumbling. Ravana and Mahiravanan are gone, because they had no time to prepare for it. The tactician . . . ” Xe glances over xer shoulder, as though xe could locate the ghost there. “She was dying, toward the end. Had I the ability to make haruspices then, I’d have made her one. I would have given her eternity. To me you were the second chance.”
“I never loved—” But she can’t quite complete the thought, the words. It wouldn’t be true.
Xer smile tells her that xe knows. “The Mandate will never relent. It’ll come after you and your allies until you are dust.”
“Not like I’d expect any less.” Recadat finds herself holding a rose apple, the one in peacock shades, vivid and sheened with dew. She tosses it to the warden, who nimbly catches it. “This is goodbye, Vishrava.”
And then, to her surprise, she comes to consciousness.
She tries to lift her head and discovers that she can’t. What she can do is see—her vision is not perfect; there is an astigmatic halo to everything. The ceiling. Light fixtures. A petal in her peripheral vision.
“Khun Recadat.” A voice like rivers in winter. “I’m going to bring your bed up.”
The bed hums as it levers to a reclining position. She’s in a small infirmary lined with only two other medical cradles. A lone vase sits by the nightstand, occupied by a lone magnolia that’s too perfect and oversized to be natural. She blinks again, but the halos remain. A neck brace presses against her chin. Pain is another galaxy, impossibly distant; anesthetics hold her in a pleasant, dreamlike embrace. “Looks like I’m alive.”
Amusement curves Doctor Orfea’s mouth. The woman is dressed in crisp grays and deep blue, the pendant Recadat remembers seeing at her throat. “On account of my specialization in cybernetics and this ship standing by to evacuate you from the Garden of Atonement. I had to work fast once Operative Zerjic carried you here. I was able to save your brain and when we get to a real hospital, I’ll put you in regenerative therapy. My outlook on your mobility is optimistic. Your vision will take longest to recover, faster if you agree to replacing your optic nerves with implants.”
“I’ll wait.” She has gone through life with only the bare minimum—neural stacks and sensors, musculoskeletal augments, the usual anti-agathic renewals. Not out of any intentional principle, but it’s become a habit to prefer her own flesh over silicon and nanite nodes.
“As you like—I don’t push patients. How are you feeling?”
“Not much.” For a minute Recadat stares at nothing. “Is that it, then? The Garden’s gone? The wardens too?”
“Yes. The isotoxal virus succeeded admirably, and from what I’ve been told the network activity from there is completely extinguished. As for the inmates, we’ve sent out a beacon. A friendly organization will take over, to transport them somewhere safe and relatively humane. Or the Mandate itself will pick them up, who can tell. Mahakala is not a charity and neither am I.” The doctor tucks her hair behind her ear. “There’s only so much room in a person for compassion.”
A reminder to put herself first, not that Recadat needs one. “Zerjic,” she says.
“The operative is well, other than the hand. I’m messaging em that you’re ready to see em.”
“I’m not . . . ”
But the door is already folding aside to admit Zerjic, and Orfea retreats from the infirmary, giving Recadat a nod.
Zerjic has changed into clean clothes, a shirt to match the cobalt in eir hair, black trousers belted by a coil of platinum snake. Eir broken hand is submerged in a sealant cast, held in place by a sling.
She searches for something to say and settles on, “Your hand.”
“Has gone through worse. I’m happy it’s not the one with the implant; that thing’s so artisanal.” Ey extends a stool from the bulkhead. Despite the injury ey is at ease, composed—in eir element. Faint iridescence dusts eir cheekbones, drawing the eye and keeping it there. “I’m more worried about you.”
“Most likely I’ll be fine. The doctor had her fun giving me the gory details.”
“An iceberg of a woman,” ey murmurs.
“Your type?” Recadat keeps her tone light.
Zerjic raises an eyebrow. “Not in the least. I prefer my women more warm-blooded. My relationship with her is strictly professional, though she does go above and beyond. On paper she’s a free agent we hired, for exorbitant fees at that. In practice, she’s gotten far more entangled than you’d expect of any mercenary.”
“Are you finally going to tell me why Mahakala came up with this to begin with?”
“Technically classified. But after everything—” Zerjic makes a brief gesture. “You deserve to have the full picture. And you were on Septet. The game there serves many purposes, like conflict resolution between different AIs, sometimes as a judicial matter. The primary objective is a rehearsal for AIs who wish to infiltrate human society, or who wish to pass themselves off as humans by taking control of lobotomized bodies. The why is complicated, in and of itself it’s not adversarial, and many individual AIs are probably just curious. But we have reason to believe a faction of them want to do more, turn the experiment into hostile action. We developed a countermeasure, and by nature of what it is, it had to be stress-tested in the real world, so to speak. Not like we could’ve made our own sapient AIs to run it against.”
“Is Mahakala going to be targeted? Specifically.”
“Possibly. But we have always had a particular agenda when it comes to machines and my warlord’s been preparing for this. Benzaiten in Autumn, our AI benefactor, has provided us with compelling evidence to act. And of course we couldn’t have developed the virus without xer.” Ey pauses. “We’d be in the Mandate’s crosshair eventually; might as well control when and how.”
Far-ranging intergalactic politics are beyond Recadat. She considers her next words—picking at scabs—but goes ahead regardless. “At the start you wouldn’t have cared whether I lived or died.”
“Yes. But only when you were nameless and faceless. After I’d met you—” Zerjic busies eir hand, needlessly arranging the lone magnolia, turning it this way and that. “I wanted to help you heal.”
Not to own her, not to change or remake her. She could not articulate this difference before Vishrava faded. Now it is obvious.
At her lack of response, ey goes on, as though to fill the quiet with chatter—as though ey is capable of being nervous. “My entire assignment lasted years, come to think. Unless the Mandate comes after us right this minute, I’m taking a nice long leave. Can’t go off-world, considering, but a vacation is a vacation. Besides, I’ve missed home. I’m going to find a nice lake and lie in the grass and do virtually nothing for a month.”
Recadat draws one of her legs up and discovers that her lower limbs are perfectly functional—only her right arm is paralyzed. Temporary, though it’s disconcerting all the same. Her left hand is weak, the fingers tremulous. Her root nerves must be in a state. “What about me?”
“What about—you’re free to go where you like, Recadat. Deficit Control might take issue with it, but I’m going to vouch for you. You can leave Mahakala as long as you burn your tracks to us. We’ll even make sure you have the funds. If Deficit Control doesn’t, I’ll give you my salary. They owe me a lot of backpay.”
She wishes she could fiddle with her robe, but her good hand is in the open, and tucking it away so she can fidget like a child is liable to undermine what she has to say. Her eyes turn to Zerjic’s hand on the vase. The long, strong hand that she suddenly wants to grip and mark as hers. “I meant, where do I fit into your plans, if I can stay on Mahakala?”
Eir fingers still on the vase. Clench. “In what way?”
Recadat braces herself. “You said you’d stay with me always. Or as long as I want you to.”
“You were dying. I wasn’t sure either of us would survive.” Zerjic lets go of the vase’s glass throat. “Now that we’re both sober and not pumped full of adrenaline, I don’t think I’m what you want. Not exactly. And that’s fine, I . . . ”
“Kiss me.” She makes it a command.
Ey plucks the magnolia from the preservative gel and holds the flower against her jawline, cradling her face, angling the petals to her mouth. Through them ey kisses her, this barrier of silken ivory, this line of ambiguity: a non-answer to her question. Though she can hardly move her head she maneuvers until one petal is out of the way and she can catch eir lower lip between her teeth. She sucks; she bites. When ey draws back from her, ey is wide-eyed, breathless.
“So you can be very sure.” Recadat inhales the scent of magnolia, of Zerjic. “I may not be completely well, but I do know what I want. I’ve always known. And I’m a selfish woman.”
Ey nuzzles eir nose against her cheek. “I’m not your Thannarat.”
“No,” she says. “But you’re mine. That’s the important part.”
Zerjic’s mouth flashes into a grin, all teeth. “Awfully confident, aren’t you?”
She is not, but when eir arm goes around her it is firm and warm. “Reasonably confident. Since I did so much work for it, I think I deserve the best of what Mahakala has to offer. The absolute crown jewel. The finest dish.”
“Even I am not cocky enough to call myself that, but I’ll defer to your judgment.” This time ey pecks her on the brow, the nose, and finally her lips. Ey slips the magnolia into her palm, so that both of them have their hands wrapped around its stem. “Let me tell you about my vacation plans. What I actually chose for my career path when I was sixteen. Why I went into this line of work. And you have to tell me yours, since I didn’t get to know you properly either. Deal?”
Little by little, they’ll interweave the threads of their lives. Little by little, they’ll reveal themselves to one another, trading intimacies that begin small and flourish over the years. Recadat knows it will take time. She knows ey may always doubt whether ey comes second to Thannarat’s ghost. And she will never be without her scars.
But she also knows herself, after so long: Zerjic is everything she wants. She intends to give em every proof.
“Deal,” she says and kisses em again.