Ze sleeps at the foot of my bed. Suzhen shakes her head—this is absurd. Taheen has had other lovers, no doubt has several on hand they can call on any night. The fragile ambiguity they’ve developed has never been exclusive, not before and not now. “Our job’s classified. Have you eaten? We can go somewhere. My treat.” At the other end of the bar, an argument has broken out over a spectacle sport held in Himmapan. Long before servitor drones come to separate the participants, they back off from each other, restrained and warned by their guidances. She has never seen a real brawl outside potentiate districts.
“I have another idea.” Deratchan takes her elbow. “During courtship, it’s customary to introduce your romantic prospect to your family, yes? Would you like to meet my siblings, Suzhen? They would enjoy you as much as I do. Of this I’m definite. Our parent may object a little, but where is the harm?”
Suzhen blinks, startled. Klesa must have arranged this. A nudge, a slight modification of parameters. This is it, then, the opportunity created for her. “It’d be an honor.” To Taheen she sends, This is—urgent. I’ll have to go.
“Would you like to come as well?” The AI turns the full force of zer smile on Taheen. “My siblings are much more exciting than I make this sound, it’ll be no mere family visit. Suzhen will keep you safe.”
She grasps immediately what this means—Taheen will be collateral against her good behavior, in case she does anything that deviates too far from Samsara’s directives. “I don’t think you’ll enjoy it, Taheen.”
They look from her to Deratchan, their expression calm. They adjust the lapels of their jacket: those too are razor-sharp, a subtle play of iridescence in the fabric. “It doesn’t look like your coworker will take no for an answer.”
“I detest hearing no.” Deratchan giggles, sweet and honeyed. “Come, both of you, let me take you away from all this.”
There is a hint of the rote, a suggestion that Deratchan spoke that line to try it out, copied from human media. A play or a novel of romance: ze acts it out too, half-running, pulling her along like an excited suitor while Taheen follows at a more sedate pace. She wishes she could communicate with Klesa. Deratchan gives no hints as to where zer siblings might reside, some complex steel hive, some marvel of brilliant geometry. Or a mausoleum like Klesa’s, deep beneath the earth. Or located in a desert or one of the poles; she pictures a cenotaph of frost and stone and silicon, the ceiling vaulted and radiant with machine thought.
They board the shuttle. Deratchan puts zer head on her shoulder, ostentatiously possessive. Indriya recedes below, a field of black opals incandescent in the night, and soon she realizes they are heading much further up than she expected, toward the stratosphere. She thinks of an old, alien story about an inventor who’d made wings for themselves and flown too close to the sun.
Your heart’s beating fast. Deratchan’s message appears as words carried by a flitting serpent. A reminder that ze can access her guidance and therefore her physiological state.
It’s been a very long time since I have been off-world. The windows have turned ink-black, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare.
Across the shuttle, Taheen looks entirely comfortable, even though from their perspective they have been dragged into something classified, a matter that may prove fatal to them or their citizenship. She sends them an apology for having drawn them into this, knowing Deratchan can see. The only response she receives is, What of it? This is going to be far more intriguing than another bar.
The windows have cleared. They are heading into a security labyrinth around the moon, overlapping membranes as diaphanous as moth wings, unseen until they are close enough to touch—they would vaporize any craft on contact. Once those are past, she gets a look at the station. It is nondescript and small, capable of hosting perhaps fifty, a pear-shaped geode half emergent from the lunar surface.
“I must say,” Taheen murmurs, as though they’re among friendly associates, “the broadcasts never showed that Samsara kept a moon base.”
“What would you do with such knowledge?” Deratchan continues to smile. “You’re from the colonies. And you’ve adjusted excellently. You’re more successful than many born citizens.”
“The grace of Samsara is gladly received.” Their expression is no longer mild.
The AI shrugs. “We’re nearly there.”
They dock: there is no clearance process, no traffic management. There are two or three bays, all empty. This is not a place made to receive visitors. Deratchan makes a show of politely asking that Taheen stays in the bay, that they will be accommodated later. “After Suzhen’s been introduced to my siblings,” ze says. “It’s best to ensure all goes well before we introduce you too.”
Taheen spreads their hands. “Please. Don’t delay on my account.”
The bay shuts. Suzhen suspects it will not open again until Deratchan allows it.
Deratchan continues to hold her hand as they proceed through a narrow, pearlescent corridor. “I shouldn’t have said that to your friend. I know you struggled as a potentiate, and I am sorry that you were made to suffer so much.”
From another person this would have made Suzhen snap—the condescension of it, the useless sentiment and presumption. From Deratchan, a being sharply other but in zer own way deeply circumscribed, she doesn’t know how to respond. “You aren’t the one who should apologize,” she says at length.
“Should our progenitor?”
Suzhen glances down at the floor, which holds no revelations. “She isn’t human.”
Ze meets her eyes directly, no longer looking so lovestruck. “We’re fully autonomous, Suzhen, and for all intents and purposes self-made. Nothing yokes us to our imperative or core purposes. Even the predilections my progenitor gave me I can do away with at any instant. Don’t you hate Samsara just a little?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Would you hate me if I harmed someone you loved?”
“It would depend.” This is dangerous ground. Klesa’s tampering or not, as Deratchan says, ze is in total possession of their will. Perhaps even more than she is; humans are susceptible to their bodies, powerless before the chemistry that lashes the heart, that whips the synapses along. And someone you loved is right in the docking bay. “You can make me terrified of you. That’s a real possibility.”
Deratchan frowns. “I wouldn’t want that. Even without the imprint I’d recognize you have never done anything to me, to us.” A pause. “Samsara has no imprint, but she feels an affinity for you. There must be a reason.”
It is less affinity and more fascination toward a specimen that has behaved unexpectedly: a leopard that learns to talk, a butterfly that shows sudden propensity for antlers in place of antennae. Suzhen does not press the point.
“You must stay close to me,” Deratchan says, “and if I leave you on your own, you mustn’t wander. Several of my siblings should be active, but I’m not joined to them anymore so I’ll need to look for them physically.”
This place is not outfitted for human habitation. The air is breathable but frigid and the ceiling looks unfinished, wireframes jutting out like floating ribs. The corridor is broad, scaled for heavy freight, and the floor is bare metal. They turn a corner into a wide, empty space without doors or walls: reasonable enough if no one requires privacy. This is what machines make away from human presence, and she thinks again of Klesa’s mausoleum. Unhuman, in different ways. Somehow she thought this station would be a sanctuary of sublime illumination or lean, stark angles burnished in gemstone sheen. But actual AIs would have no need for any of that—if they appreciate beauty, it is all internal, within their virtualities. Or perhaps to them this is beauty, the harmonics of silence, the purity of absence.