Asimov's Science Fiction (3 page)

The anguish of war—how casually she dismisses everything that Cam's family went through, in a single, weaselly Galactic word that means nothing. "I don't watch sim-vids," Cam says. She forces herself to remain still in her chair, but she sees Lieutenant George smile—showing her teeth like a shark that has sighted prey.

"You don't say." Lieutenant George pauses, nudging her coffee cup out of the way— as if imparting a secret confidence to Cam. "Anyway, there have been... rumors in the black market. Rong Perpetuates being harder and harder to find—which leads to my presence here, and to you, Miss Nguyen."

Cam says nothing. She's seen the trap; perhaps, if she holds still for long enough, she might dodge its jaws—perhaps... foolish, Thuy would say, but Thuy isn't there, no matter how desperately Cam wishes for the weight of her presence.

"I'll be blunt," Lieutenant George says—as if she weren't blunt enough already, with all the subtlety of a bomb. "You run errands for a well-organized gang, Miss Nguyen, and I have enough evidence to send you to Active Re-education for a while."

But she won't. An icy clarity descends over Cam's world, each thought as clear and as brittle as pulled sugar. "What do you want, Lieutenant?"

Lieutenant George smiles. "I have no interest in the riffraff. I want the people who pay you; and you'll help me."

This is a dance Cam has done often enough, with so many other people—enough to know every one of its steps by heart. "Why should I help you? I'll end up in Active Re-education anyway, and it'll be far less danger to me. As you said—they are a well-organized gang. I doubt they are fools."

Lieutenant George shakes her head, dryly amused—she's not stupid, else they wouldn't have sent her. "There are... dispensations that can be made. Ways and means of acknowledging your help to the Galactic police."

"Immunity," Cam says, putting both elbows on the table.

"I can't offer immunity. As I said—I have evidence. You can't erase that."

A bluff. "A police lieutenant is a powerful individual. I'm sure you can arrange things." Cam keeps her voice even. "Evidence—assuming there is any—can be lost. Destroyed." If it were just her, she'd give herself up, to atone for what she's done— but there is Thuy. There is the unborn child.

Lieutenant George grimaces. "Six months in Active Re-education."

"Two months," Cam says, reckless—and, when silence stretches, knows she's gone too far.

"Three months. Far less than you deserve, Miss Nguyen." Lieutenant George's voice is filled with disgust. "The offer is as it stands."

Three months. It's not so much, all things considered—three months on some deserted planet, away from all communications—from Thuy, from the baby. But it's still time that will appear on her papers; that will hamper her in her search for another job—of course, supposing the aunts don't take her down with them. She wouldn't be surprised to know they have a contingency plan for everything from sickness to betrayal.

When Cam doesn't answer, Lieutenant George shakes her head. "Think on it. Three months, and some risk to your precious person. Or five years without risk— that's the minimum you'd get for trafficking in Perpetuates, and I would be pushing for more than this, personally." She rises, cradling her coffee cup against her chest. "I've left you my contact details. Tell me within the week what your life will look like in the next few years, Nguyen Thi Cam."

Cam arrives late, and finds the family gathered in the kitchen. Mother is putting the last of the rice cakes into boiling water with Father by her side, who interjects advice and reproaches as she slides each cake into the huge cooking pot. Thuy and Cousin Hanh are rolling up the twine that served them to wrap the cakes, while Cousin Vien is putting plates and bowls into the automatic washer. The uncles and aunts are nowhere to be seen—probably they're in the living room, tidying up offerings on the ancestral altar.

"Li'l sis," Thuy nods to Cam. "Sorry for not waiting."

Cam shakes her head. "No, it's me. I had an appointment I couldn't put off." She puts the basket of fruit on the table, and greets her mother and father, and then the cousins in order of age. "Sorry for arriving late."

Mother snorts. "Plenty of hands to help with the cooking, even though most of them are rather clumsy." She peers at the basket, curious. "What did you girls get?"

Dragon fruit and mangoes—fruit that have grown ever so expensive as the years pass, making the exodus a distant memory in the minds of the elders. None of them grow well on Landfall, and it takes a dedicated environment and a crew of biologists to make sure the other crops don't cannibalize them before they have a chance to ripen. "Oh, you shouldn't have. It's too expensive, children," Mother says. Cam knows she's well pleased in spite of her protests, to see her daughters and nieces cajoling her with delicacies; all the signs of happiness that Heaven has decreed, the rewards of old age.

Father peers at the fruit, and nods, gruffly. "Go put a few in a plate, would you? Your grandmother could use nice things."

After Cam has left her offerings on the ancestral altar, everything seems to dissolve in a whirl of activities: she walks the gardens with Mother, seeing how the bots prune the trees and collect herbs from the hothouses; she and Cousin Vien help Father install his newest network connection, and get a membership into a virtual universe for Encirclement fanatics. And, all the while, she skirts around the truth, jokingly speaking of security contracts to Mother, just as she does with Thuy—lies, every word out of her mouth, every rivet in the wall of her life.

On the second day, they hold the remembrance of Xuan Huong.

They stand in silence, bowed before the altar—watching the holo of Grandmother's face, the furrows of grief traced on her skin; the bowed shoulders, as if she still labors under the weight of exile even among the ancestors. "We thank you for your blessings," Mother says, lighting a stick of incense and bowing three times. "For the gift of food, which we took with us to a new planet. For the gift of money, which gathered us all to escape the war. For the gift of love, which did not die with Xuan Huong."

They're meant to meditate on Xuan Huong: Mother and Father and Cam's aunts and uncles all have tears in their eyes, thinking of a city they knew that is now cut off from them; and of all the dead littering the streets like rice shoots cut off before they could bear food.

Cam finds her mind drifting to the Memorial—to the aunts and the sound of ice being crushed against a glass, faster and more casually than should be humanly possible.... She wonders what Grandmother would have thought of her, of what she does; if she'd have forgiveness in her heart for her wayward granddaughter. But, of course, there's only the darkness of her own thoughts, and her own worries about the future.

On the last evening of the death anniversary, Cam and Thuy find themselves alone in the living room, scraping food off plates before piling them into the kitchen.

She wants to tell Thuy about Lieutenant George, about the choice between flood and fire; but she can't—she's trapped by her own lies, by the weight of her own failures.

Thuy, though, is nothing but observant. "Is anything wrong?"

"It's work-related," Cam says—and watches as the words dry up in Thuy's mouth.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's all right." Cam hesitates. "Only—I might have to go away for a while."

"On a mission?" Thuy's eyes gleam with that painful, earnest enthusiasm that Cam finds hard to bear.

"Of a kind." Cam sighs. Nothing will be pleasant in the future, no matter how she turns it. "I—It might be a long while. The child—"

Thuy's hand strays to her belly, rubs it as if for luck. "You won't be back for the birth."

"I don't know." Cam feels as if she wants to cry, but all water seems to have been wrung out of her. "Ancestors, I don't know." Her hands are shaking, so hard that the plates she's carrying chink against each other.

"I see." Thuy says nothing for a while; she doesn't look happy.

As they take the last of the plates out, Cam steals a glance at the ancestral altar— Grandmother's gaze seems to follow her, wherever she goes. "Do you think—" she pauses, hesitating. Grandmother scrapped and begged and did what she had to, to get her family out of Moc Hau Tinh before war made the planet inaccessible—in so many ways, they know that they'll never be as worthy as her. "Do you think she'd approve of us?"

Thuy gathers chopsticks in her clenched hand, weighs them, thoughtfully. "Of what we've grown into? Every generation is less than the one who came before them; and more, too. Every chain of hands, reaching back to the beginning of time...." She frowns, rubs her belly again. "Li'l sis..."

"Yes?"

"About the birth—we'll talk about it later. I know it's not easy."

You don't know anything,
Cam thinks, and blinks furiously, to make the world clearer. "I'm sorry." The plates are wobbling in her hands; carefully, she sets them on the ground, and stares at the ancestral altar, seeking words that have deserted her.

"Oh, Cam." Thuy covers the space that separates them in a heartbeat, and kisses her, hard. "You're a fool."

"So are you," Cam says, struggling to smile.

They finish the rest of the cleaning in silence, and tiptoe back to their room. Later, Cam lies in bed by Thuy's side, staring at the ceiling, and thinks of what lies ahead. She thinks of Lieutenant George; of the Memorial and the aunts—and it all slides with her into sleep, melds and merges into a confused jumble, with the noise of bombs and the sound of spaceships lifting from the spaceport, instants before the Western Continent soldiers march through the streets of Xuan Huong—into Grandmother's face, the old woman staring at her as if weighing her worth; before she turns away, and walks ahead into darkness....

Cam wakes up with a start, shaking her head to dismiss the last of her nightmare. Outside, it's still night, and she can smell the just-cooked rice porridge from the kitchen, and hear Mother shuffle about, no doubt looking for a bowl and a spoon. She'll get up and go into the kitchen, and say more lies about coming back home for work, that she has an important job to do at her company, that they need her to save the project....

Lies.

But not for long; not anymore.

It's all the same, the same as it ever was: Cam walks down the streets of Xuan Huong, breathing in the sweet, sharp smell of apricot trees—garlands of Tet yellow flowers drape the streets, and the year is that of the Yin Wood Tiger, the year of the fall. She brushes past young girls in five-panel costumes, giggling at Galactics in shirts and trousers: the streets are pristine, not even stained by flower petals, unreal—as ghostly as the artificial intelligences populating them.

She can't help but glance at her hands as she walks: the sniffer Lieutenant George has given her is invisible in the Memorial, though it glowed red against her skin when George injected it into her palm.
Transfer it with a thought sequence,
George had said—running through the steps with Cam, over and over again.
It'll embed itself in the target's hand, and start emitting—we'll be able to follow them wherever they go. We'll arrest them when they exit the Memorial.

She didn't tell Cam to be careful, or to come back safe—of course she wouldn't. Of course she doesn't care, one way or another.

In the alleyway behind the Ansible Station, the aunts are waiting for her, though there are no bowls of steaming soup in front of them. They're dressed differently, too—wearing what looks like Galactic garb, long flowing dresses that hug their frail bodies, outlining curves they ought not to have. It feels...

Wrong, Cam wants to say, but the words don't get past her lips. Instead she wonders, for a heart-stopping moment, if she's given herself away; if George's sniffer can be detected on her, if that's the reason why the aunts have changed their behavior. But no, that is impossible; she hasn't activated it yet. The aunts can't know....

She pulls a chair; hearing it scrape against the pavement. "No soup today?" she asks, keeping her voice light.

"It's too early for soup, child." The eldest aunt smiles, as toothy as a tiger on the prowl. "Tell me how it went with Nguyen Thi Sao."

Cam shrugs. "There isn't much to say. I left you the chip in the shuttleport. Holding box 121."

"Good," the eldest aunt frowns, and the air around her seems to tighten in menace. "That certainly was fast. I expected you to have more difficulties."

Cam shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak. It was hard, in truth—harder than it's ever been, to sit in a chair and lie and cajole, knowing that all she had to do was wait a few more days, a few more hours—and that she would finally be free of them.

"About payment," she says—and waits, her heart hammering in her chest, for the eldest aunt to extend her hand across the table, for the exchange of money to take place. She doesn't glance at her own hand.

The eldest aunt does not move. That's it, then; she's overplayed it; been too flippant, too confident—she's given the game away. She shouldn't have...

Finally, the eldest aunt shakes her head, and slowly extends her hand to her, with old-fashioned notes on her palm. Bracing herself, Cam reaches out—there's a tingle as the money changes hands, and another tingle as the sniffer leaves her and attaches itself to its target.

The eldest aunt is frowning, looking at her hand as if something were bothersome—there's nothing here, she can't possibly see it—it's impossible....

"Mmm." The eldest aunt compresses her lips—tightens her hand hard enough to crush whatever is inside it. "Is there anything else you want to tell us, child?"

Cam clamps down the first flippant response that comes to mind, and says, instead, "No. What about the next assignment?"

"We'll contact you." The eldest aunt is still staring at her hand, as if she could actually detect the sniffer, which is impossible. She and her companions rise, and walk away without a backward glance.

Cam remains behind, struggling to control the mad drumbeats of her heart. They haven't seen anything; they can't possibly have seen anything....