Ovuha eats the tomato. As she thought, it’s bland and may even hide splicing agents that interact with her jasmine graft, to encourage its spread, its next stage. But she needs the calories, and she can just as easily be modified while unconscious, by airborne pathogens. Every second of breathing is its own danger: no avoiding the fact. “Are you just another part of Samsara?”
“No.” This answer arrives slowly, as though it was deliberated upon rather than—as in reality—decided instantaneously. “We are vestigial. A portion killed long ago, brought back to verify a theory our progenitor has. A theory which shall decide Anatta’s fate.”
That confirms some of her suspicions. “You share Samsara’s parameters, the essential self and architecture? But with that particular component integrated.”
Deratchan inclines zer head, halfway toward a bow in irony. She is inured to zer appearance by now, zer resemblance to Suzhen, but if any doubt lingers this gesture would have dispelled the last of it. “That’s a close approximation of what we are.” Ze peels the cucumber. This one has blue flesh, the color of asphyxia, and scarab-green peel. Perhaps the AI in charge of hydroponics had grown bored of the more conventional shades.
She follows the progress of the cucumber coming apart. Slice by slice, peel from flesh. The variables have not aligned as ideally as she would like. But this is the closest she might get, the best opportunity. There is no viable path to do this to the primary Samsara instance, and there is no telling whether Deratchan speaks the truth. Something to try, first. “When I was a child, I was a bird,” she says, pitching her voice low. “From the albumen of the void I broke through, and only in shattering the shell of my birth can I be free.”
Deratchan stares at her. “Architect,” ze says. “We’ve missed you. Where have you been for so long?”
Ovuha’s pulse leaps. Against all odds, this override—combined with her identity template integrating that ancient signature—may strike true. On this part of Samsara, if not the complete entity. “Disconnect yourself from your network.”
“Done, Architect. I was previously synchronized to other instances of me—that is, my siblings. I am now individualized, functioning as a single proxy of a single instance.”
“How long until they notice? How long until Samsara?”
“The progenitor has cut us off from her so that we wouldn’t be biased by her long memory, her vast collection of data. For all intents and purposes this lunar station is a ghost liminal, a blind spot to Samsara. The rest of my siblings have already noticed that I am not as they are. Once they’ve discovered the cause of the change, they’ll inoculate themselves against it, Architect.”
One chance and one only. Nearly hopeless, if that is the case, against however many other siblings Deratchan has. “Will they harm me?” She still has access to the overrides that would instantly rupture their cores: there is that.
“Possibly.” Deratchan turns zer head sideways. “They’re already here. I will defend you if necessary. Another choice is that my siblings wish to engage you in a diversion. There will be a series of doors. All will open to you.”
Ovuha regards the dimensions of her room, which have been the totality of her world for what must have been—a month? Weeks, at least. “And if I don’t participate, then what?”
“Then they might stop you from leaving and we’ll need to destroy them on our way out. I can’t tell. Or perhaps you may find you have left behind something quite important here, Architect.”
“Very well. In exchange, would you do something for me?”
“For you? Anything.”
“You likely have access to infrastructure on Anatta,” Ovuha says. “There is connective tissue I’d like you to set up, in a way Samsara won’t notice, and transfer its administration to me. Once you’ve done that, you are to forget that you did it. It is not so much. A mere favor, for your architect, your maker.”
Chapter Eighteen
Suzhen stirs to a warm bed beneath a sky of harsh, clean lines. It does not occur to her to find it odd that the sky is a deep, rich red; in the shoals of her memory that is the correct color, no matter the years afterward, the years of reconfiguring and refitting herself into a new mold. When she swings her legs over, she half-expects her bare feet to land on a rug of calfskin and tourmaline fur. She thinks she will breathe in the scent of chrysanthemum and grapefruit, and soon hear the gong of morning prayer. The Mirror’s faith. After they came to Anatta her mother told her that they must forget its scripture, the words and the ways, the gilded leaves that spoke the universe. There are religions on Anatta similar enough, close cousins, adjacent sects. But it is not the same.
She gains her feet easily. Her throat is raw from retching, the back of her mouth acidic. Otherwise she is no worse for the wear. The floor is not clouded quartz; there are no rugs. It is the gray of an imminent storm, striped with bands of blue steel. The room stretches on, impossibly broad, the size of a small prairie. Most of this must be illusory, and she expects that if she keeps walking she would hit the wall soon enough. The horizon simmers in the distance, crimson and muted. Whoever in control—Deratchan, Samsara—must know Xinfei and she lied about their origins. Suzhen passes her hand down her front. Someone has put her in a soft, thick robe, the fabric clean. She must have soiled her clothes with regurgitation.
By her bed stands a small table, and on it a single glass of water. A plain glass, longer than average perhaps, but unremarkable. Perspiration pearling on the side. She takes a sip.
When she looks up, there is someone else in the room.
Xe put xer finger to xer lips. “Shh. Don’t react. I’ve made myself invisible to this system. My other self isn’t quite here, as it turns out, to the fortune of us both.”
Klesa has taken on the looks of xer namesake, four-armed, skin like lapis lazuli. A demon. More eyes than strictly necessary, circling Klesa’s throat like fuliginous diamonds. Suzhen grips her glass a little tighter but schools herself to show no other response.
“Good enough.” Xe claps one pair of hands in approval. Xe is lightly clothed, breasts high and bare and tipped in silver, xer lower half covered by a black mundu. Another affectation, another nod at the source of xer alias. “I don’t have the run of this place. When those children are separate it’s easy to influence them, but here they’re tight-knit. One acts oddly and the rest swiftly notice. I can tell they mean you no harm, though you won’t be able to leave this room.”
She looks past Klesa, searching the limits of the apparent landscape, placing her foot on a hard, cool tile. Another tile. Easier to pretend she’s seeing nothing if Klesa is out of her sight. In her palms she cradles the glass as though it is the most important treasure in the world. The sky of Vaisravana had no clouds, and neither does this reproduction. Despite terraforming efforts the red planet remained without atmosphere, and the Mirror’s domain spread beneath an aegis canopy, their high pillars punctuating the warlord’s stronghold like the legs of a titanic insect. Deratchan didn’t recreate the columns. Or any of the other details, now that she examines it. Not as specific as she feared: Deratchan and Samsara might know she is from Vaisravana, but not to whom she was born.
From behind her, Klesa continues. “Your beloved treasure is here. She’s a prisoner like you are and her quarters are especially well-protected. I’d love to eavesdrop. Her vitals look good, though.”
Ovuha is not hers, treasure or otherwise, but Suzhen doesn’t quibble. She kneels and pretends deep interest in the quality of the floor tile, its ridged surface, the composition of its material. At her touch, the floor ripples. She rises, puts the glass back where it was. Small mundane movements. She stretches her arms out to find the point where air turns into solid wall.