“It doesn’t. I still have to know.”
“After I got beaten up, I was approached by a well-armed person who notified me that as a tenant in that building, I was vulnerable to any number of dangers. Petty theft, violence, mugging. All I had to do was to pay a small monthly fee and their colleagues would look out for me.” She puts down the pagoda, finished now, polished and chiseled to incredible detail. “People make hierarchies wherever they go, even in the smallest place possible. As a new variable I must be placed somewhere within this hierarchy and, scenting weakness, they determined that I belonged at the bottom.”
“You did not report this.”
“I’m sure I could have reported it as a misdemeanor, but that was no evidence this thug was the culprit. When it’s all been investigated, I’m sure they will find no hint as to the arsonist’s identity either.” Ovuha glides over to the steamer, checking the temperature, and puts in the tray of soup dumplings. “What colors do you like best? I went with the classic ones, but if you’d like them in blue or purple next time…”
“Ovuha,” Suzhen says.
“Yes, officer?” Ovuha’s expression is bland, even amused. “It’s just that I couldn’t take them very seriously. The menacing insinuations. The way that thug was tattooed so extravagantly. The suggestion they had friends in Interior Defense who’d overlook anything they did, though I’m sure that part’s not untrue. But it was all so uninspired.”
Suzhen is quiet for a moment. It occurs to her that what Ovuha owns may not be simple pride but stunning arrogance. The certainty that this—the methodical disassembling of personhood and origin, the systematic degradation of the self—is beneath her, that those who participate in it are so contemptible they do not register to Ovuha as real threats. “Even if you thought they were petty and ridiculous, the damage they inflicted was real. The burns on your arms are real.”
“They are. I could have died. It’s not that I’m nihilistic or fearless.” Ovuha adjusts the steamer’s heat and regards the rest of her dishes with a critical frown. Then she meets Suzhen’s eyes. “On Gurudah, I did not live without danger. We were lined up by the Comet’s soldiers and told at gunpoint to swear fealty. Such experiences inure you. All terror is real but some is realer than the rest. One desensitizes, and the mind defends itself in flawed ways.”
Heartrate normal, cortisol normal. Ovuha is displaying not even a single stress sign: this is discussed much as she would recount how she selected the best vegetable for her hydroponic orchard. “And what did you do, when you were held at gunpoint.” By Peace Guard infantry, by the Comet’s soldiers. Suzhen does not specify.
“I survived,” Ovuha says.
Taheen comes in their best, a sable-ice cocktail dress: long stalactite sleeves, the front a web of crisscrossed spicules, skin from the nape of their neck to base of their spine bare and dark. Snowflake lenses cover their eyes, bright dermal dots spread like a constellation between their breasts. When Ovuha appears to serve the food, Taheen takes on that look Suzhen knows well from having watched them flirt, pursue, and convince a beautiful stranger to join them in bed. (It is not a look they’ve ever applied to her, but what of that, she is at peace.)
“You are going to sit down and eat with us?” they say to Ovuha. “Do say yes.”
Ovuha gives Suzhen a quick, wry glance before making a gallant, foreign bow. From the waist, hand on her heart. “I’m pleased to say yes.”
Taheen is expansive in their conversation, effusive in their praise of Ovuha’s cooking without sounding false. They do not speak of current events—the vanquishing of warlords, the bombardment of Thorn territories—and instead let Ovuha take the lead. It is the first time Suzhen has seen Taheen take such interest in the ideal size of a chicken coop, which root vegetable is most suited for sculpting, or the merits of beef compared to pork stock in soup dumpling. Between all this, they send Suzhen a datasphere message. I’m going to ask her to work for me, just as you plotted, you sly fox. Are you sure you’re all right with it, though?
Suzhen eats her last dumpling, the skin ruby and precisely pleated, the insides deeply flavored. Exactly the right amount of sesame oil. She needs a job.
I mean that she’ll meet people, and unless I’m very wrong she is going to be in demand—though I intend to be the pioneer, the one who discovered, naturally. My point is, she’ll become independent. And I think you’re a caregiver, someone who needs a broken bird to nourish. I’ve never seen you this interested in anything or anyone.
The world of artists, where all must signify more profoundly than it seems, where every interpersonal tie is a dysfunctional affair waiting to happen, each component of the everyday a psychosomatic symptom. And perhaps it is, with her and Taheen, with whatever lies between them. Not with her and Ovuha. I don’t have a power fetish, Taheen. She is a project. I’m doing the labor for which the state pays me. “Ovuha, the honeyed pork’s especially good. Taheen might want the recipe, if you don’t mind sharing your culinary secrets.”
Ovuha looks from her to Taheen. “But naturally. I’d be happy to. It’s a boon to meet someone else interested in cooking.”
“Speaking of interest,” Taheen says brightly, “what do you think of fashion, Ovuha?”
“Like anyone else, I enjoy beautiful things.” Ovuha touches her disarticulated collar; its joints click, a short tune. “The clothes Suzhen kindly lent me are especially bewitching. They’re almost more like a painting than something to wear. This makes me the canvas, perhaps, or at best the frame.”
“Oh, clothes that aren’t being worn are—quite literally—two-dimensional, just fabric. It’s the wearer that completes the art.” They lean forward. “How would you like to work with me and put on all these beautiful things?”
Chapter Six
When Ovuha gazes into a mirror, what looks back is a stranger, a fact to which she has become inured. Still, the images of her that spread around Taheen’s gallery like scattered cards unsettle her slightly, an alienating, dissociative effect. Her doppelgangers strut, sashay, pose. Taheen is asking which form she likes best and adds, “Then you’ll have to practice that walk, that style. Atam will show you.”
Her fellow model, who has been studying her closely, not looking away even when Ovuha notices. A frank stare. It does not seem hostile, but it is also too intense for a newly met coworker. Appraising her for competition, possibly, though Taheen surely has a stable of models larger than two. “You’re giving me a great deal of leeway,” she says.
“Obviously. Making my models take on posture they don’t like or comportment that goes against their nature comes to stilted result. Although,” they add, “it helps that your posture is so supple. Not much that needs correcting, very trainable.”
Atam disappears to fetch more fabric samples and swatches at Taheen’s instruction. Ovuha studies her own images in the mirrors, these animated models of her, fast-moving and long-limbed. The limbs and torso belong to her and only the face is foreign, yet it is the face one focuses on. “You and Suzhen must have been friends for a long time.” The face, Ovuha thinks. Something about Taheen’s features trips a wire between the sheaves of her recollection, but without access to the implants she once had, she only has her own memory to rely on and that is not always a dependable quantity. “You wouldn’t have hired me if you didn’t regard her highly, whatever my posture.”