Horizons

FIVE

AHNI LEANED BACK AGAINST THE PADDED SEAT AS THE skimmer-jet circled down to land just offshore from the Huang Family compound. Security had already swept the skimmer and cleared it to land, but she knew that a couple of defensive lasers tarrgeted it. Just in case. The red tile roofs of the large rectangular commpound gleamed bright amongst the lush green of the tropical forest that surrounded the compound on three sides. On the fourth side, white sand and rocks offered swimming and the tide pools of her youth.

The skimmer touched down and settled into the long low swells with barely a jar, drifting precisely up to the family dock. The sun roof had polarized to cast some shade, but it was open to the hot, humid Taiwan air. Ahni hopped out, offered the pilot a cash card. The woman refused with a bow, climbed back into the craft and touched it to life as Security hurried out to meet her. The hard-eyed Captain offered a welcoming bow, greetings, and a careful observation of the skimmer.

Ahni returned the woman’s greeting absently, her eyes on the pale brick walls of the compound. Built in the classic old-northern courtyard style, the family apartments, roofed with the traditional red tiles, enclosed a central garden. No weather canopy kept out the rain or heat, by her mother’s decree. This time of day and season, sun poured into the courtyard, turning the still air beneath the leaves of bananas and bamboo and carefully pruned plum trees steamy hot and rich with the smells of home. Ahni drew a deep breath, reaching for calm.

Beyond the family compound beach grasses carpeted the low shore with emerald. Here and there, remains of ancient Buddhist gravesites poked above the tall grass, red tile roofs and pink and cream facades, ornate, sheltered alters where families had once gathered to leave gifts on appropriate dates.

Many of them had been abandoned, but the Huang family paid to keep the walls freshly painted and the roof tiles repaired.

Here, along the sweep of coast dominated by the family commpound, time seemed to have stopped centuries ago. A small fishing village occupied the end of the perfect half -moon bay, an ancient concrete dock jutting out into the water on its jetty, dozens of its small blue and white boats clustered along tie-ups, bare chested men tossing handwoven and plastic baskets of silvery fish and crabs up onto the dock itself, children in shorts and thongs running and shouting dogs fighting with the gulls for scraps. The sloped temple roof of the fish market was white with gulls and a dragon kite sailed overhead. But solar or clean-fusion powered the boats now and you could safely eat the shellfish from the bay. The fish in those baskets were counted and the harvest carefully controlled. At night, a hundred public cleaners scoured the old dock. The oceans were healthy again, and that had taken a planet-wide cooperation, spearheaded by the aggressive Gaiist Movement.

Taking a deep breath, Ahni turned away from the view, calming her breathing, gathering her awareness to a fine point. “Are my parents in residence?” she asked Security.

“Your mother.” The woman bowed. “Your honored father will return later today.” She ushered Ahni through the arched main gate and into the steamy courtyard.

Ahni bowed her head in thanks, walked down the narrow path thick with blossoms to her mother’s private sitting room, the scent of jasmine heavy in the air. She ducked beneath a bower twined with the glossy green leaves and white sprays of jasmine flowers, paused and picked a sprig.

White. The color of death.

The wooden shutters had been folded back from the broad windows, and a tiny bird hopped up onto the sill from the room within before fluttering away. Even in typhoon season, her mother rarely activated the weather screen or closed the shutters unless a storm threatened to come directly onshore. Now the faintest of breezes stirred the intricately knotted hangings of linen thread and carved jade beads that hung as a screen in the open windows. Ahni slipped off her sandals and ducked through the strands of silk and carved jade that curtained the door, the stony clack of the jades an echo of childhood.

Her mother stood at her loom, knotting an intricate tracery of fine silk thread and jade beads in shades of pink and white and palest green. Her simple sheath of polished cotton in a creamy tan contrasted with her tawny skin. Behind her, a vid window shimmered with constantly changing images of ocean and beach above the polished stone slab scattered with unfinished pieces of jade and the laser carving tools she used. Framed panels of antique fabric, intricate piece work in rich colors that had once been a treasured family heirloom passed from mother to daughter, perhaps a tunic or a wedding coat, hung on the walls. Intent on her weaving, her mother’ face might have been carved from golden jade by a master crafter, her high cheekbones shadowing the strong lines of her face. Her long dark hair, untouched by gray, hung in a thick tail to the middle of her back, caught at the nape of her neck by a strip of green silk.

As the jade strings clacked and rattled behind her, Ahni’s moth stepped from behind her loom and came to greet her daughter, hands outstretched, dark eyes fathomless pools above her welcoming smile.

“You’re back. Daughter, I have missed you!” She hugged Ahni briefly and hard. “Tea?” She turned away, ushering Ahni to the end of the long room furnished in carved teakwood covered with hand woven raw silk cushions. An antique Ming teapot already steamed a tray with two cups and a wooden bowl of dried fish and nuts. A plain white bowl of salted plums accompanied the savory snacs and Ahni smiled.

Trust her mother to offer her favorite childhood treat. “A new project?” Ahni nodded at the half-finished hanging.

“An invitation from a London gallery.”

“I saw one of your hangings in the NYUp Arrival Hall,” Ahni said. “Your fame extends beyond the surface of the planet.”

“All women have woven, forever.”

The bitterness behind her mother’s words narrowed Ahni’s eyes, but her mother’s face betrayed no emotion as she handed Ahni a cup of tea, both hands cupping the fragile bowl. Ahni breathed the rising steam and saw Xai in that NYUp hotel room, offering her tea.

“I did not know that your father sent you in his place. It was his duty to risk himself. Not yours.”

Ahni reached for a salted plum. Fear lay beneath her mother’s anger. Why fear? “I could not do as he instructed,” she said carefully.

Her mother leaned forward and set her cup down very carefully on the teakwood table. “Tell me,” she said.

“Xai is… not dead.” Until this moment she had not been sure how much she would say and how much she would leave out. But under her mother’s steady gaze she recited the details of her encounter with her half-twin, her eyes fixed on the plum staining her fingertips red.

When she finished, her mother was silent. Angry but… not suprised. She already knew Xai lived, Ahni realized with a sense of shock.

“He has chosen his own path,” she said finally. Birds called and chirped in the quadrangle and somewhere, someone closed a door with a muted thump.

“What is going on here?” Ahni asked.

“Your father is drunk on DNA.” Hatred edged the words. “He is a smart man, but when his precious DNA is concerned, his brain turns to water and seeps from his pores. And he has created Xai in his own image. He had no use for you, or for any other child we might have. Your father and Xai deserve each other!” She rose, back rigidly straight. “You will not tell your father that his precious clone-self lives.”

”What?” Shocked, Ahni rose to her feet. “How can I not?”

“Xai has chosen to walk his own path.” Her mother stood straight, her head up. “I was a bed for him and nothing more. A breast. There is none of me in him. And I have watched your father lose clarity of sight.

Because of that strand of his DNA that I nurtured.” Her eyes gleamed, cold and polished as the jade stones she carved and wove. “I have groomed you to be your father’s heir. You are a better heir than his dream of immortality. You are his heir and we will make this so. You will not tell him. I did not give up my life to see him throwaway the family for the love of his own image.”

Ahni stood, her mind bruised by these cold-stone words.” Xai is not dead. Mother.”

“He has chosen to die to his father.” Her mother looked at her for the space of three heartbeats. Then, to Ahni’s horror, she fell to her knees. “I gave up my life.” She looked up at Ahni. “This” will make it a trade of value. If you do as I ask. Ahni, it is the right thing.”

Ahni looked down at the blue and white tea bowl in her hands, regarded the pale sheen of bone in her knuckles, and wondered that the eggshell-thin porcelain had not cracked. Very carefully she set the Ming bowl down on the carved table and fled her mother’ apartment.

Her feet carried her along the raked gravel of the path past the carefully maintained plantings, treading an automatic path. Whe she reached the path to her door, she hesitated, then turned instead to her brother’s rooms.

Wooden shutters closed the windows, painted a dull glossy red, the color of drying blood. She put her hand on the door, waited while it analyzed her biochemistry, skin texture, and vitals. It swang open and she walked into shadow. “Light,” she said and blinked, her eyes dazzled by the multiple broad spectrum lights that flooded the room with artificial sunlight. Where her mother let in the world, Xai preferred to create his own. Beyond thick glass, an aged, albino Ball Python reared a thick, pale head, it’s tongue flicking, disturbed by the light. In the huge herpetarium a half dozen snakes lived, thrived, and sometimes ate one another. The Ball Python had been his first and favorite, a gift on his fifth birthday. A rabbit nibbled on greens in one corner. She looked around at his neatly made bed, the holodesk in front of the near wall, the dustless perfection of every surface. She had not been in this room since the day she had heard the news. “Why?” she whispered. “What have you done to all of us?” But he had not done this, she realized in a moment of clarity. This path had been laid for him from the moment of his implantation. And her own path?

The python struck silently, thick coils wrapping the rabbit in a heartbeat. It shrieked once, high and shrill, then it’s eyes bulged as tightened and crimson blood burst from its quivering nose.

Ahni turned away.

Something was missing. She frowned, glancing around the spotless room. Something… She closed her eyes, calling up a vision of her brother’s room from the past.

The medallion.

She blinked, turning to stare at the space where it had hung above his bed, a small circle of silver, the highest academic award bestowed by Taiwan after its annual Exams. Their father had received it at the public ceremony in Tai Pei, had hung it beaming around Xai’s neck. It was the ultimate symbol of The Huang’s pride in his self-son. “Fan,” she said aloud. “Would you come here, please”

A handful of moments later, Fan Fujin appeared in the doorway, her broad Northern face apprehensive.

“Is something wrong Elder Sister?” she asked. A peripheral relative, she lived and worked as maid in the Huang compound. “I cleaned this room just this morning. Did I do a poor job?” She drew herself up, prepared to be affronted.

“It’s spotless. As usual.” Ahni shook her head. “Xai’s medallion is missing. I wonder when he took it down. Do you remember?”

Fan’s eyes flicked instantly to the wall, and she froze, her distress a sour smell on the afternoon air.

“I… It was here only this morning, Elder Sister.” Fan bowed deeply. Frightened. “Or perhaps I was not observant and failed to it was not in place.”

She reeked of fear now, and Ahni remembered that she had an only son in the top engineering school in Beijing, only there because he was a member in good standing of the Huang family. His future was assured upon his graduation. But if his mother was disgraced… She sighed. With the limits required in order to keep the planet clean and healthy, career choices were often restricted, and family connections counted. “Have the staff search for it,” she said. “If it is return promptly, I will not need to bring it to The Huang’s attention.”

“I… will make sure it is found.” The woman flushed darkly. She bowed so deeply she nearly fell, then fled the room, stepping quickly into her sandals at the threshold.

Who had taken it? This small theft threatened to destroy her self -control.

She left her brother’s rooms, cut across the end of the courty to her own room. The weather shield was on and the air inside was deliciously cool and arid after the thick moist heat of the courtyard. Ahni pushed through the carved latticework doors and into the spacious simplicity of her room. Handwoven rugs covered the tile floor and a vase of flowers stood on the low wooden table in the middle of the room.

Pale yellow lilies, she noted absently. Her favorite flowers. But they looked strange, as did the room. It is the right thing, her mother had said. I am a stranger here, she thought. I am a stranger to myself.

A bowl stood on a carved stand backed by a silk embroidery. She picked the bowl up, turned it over in her hands. It wasn’t the perfect curve of the Ming tea bowls in her mother’s rooms, but a bit lopsided.

The colors of the painted decoration–a simple mountain and village in browns and greens — was faded, as if mist shrouded the landscape.

Four thousand years ago, someone had shaped this piece on a primitive wheel, squatting perhaps beneath a rough shade-roof of poles and thatch. What had that long ago man thought about? The rains to come? A marriage, a birth? She ran her fingertips along the rim of the bowl and for a second felt the ghostly touch of his fingertips against hers as he shaped that rim. And Koi? She smoothed a tiny roughness where the glaze hadn’t fired perfectly. What would he feel if he touched this bowl? Anything?

Would those millennia of lives matter to him at all? Would they even be real to him? Unbidden, Dane’s face appeared in her mind. They were his children, Koi’s people. She suddenly wished she could tell him everything that had happened here. He might see what was so hidden to her. He might understand her mother’s cold rage.

Feeling utterly alone, she stripped off her singlesuit, wrinkling her nose at the smell of travel. Dropping it into the split-willow basket in the corner she walked into her bath. The soaking pool at thee end of the room wisped steam into the air, screened from a thick planting of grass bamboo by lacquer latticework.

“Local winndows open,” she commanded and the rich green scent of the garden scent rolled over her as the weather shield shut off.

She stood under the wide shower head, the water washing away the grime and adrenaline sweat of the day, sluicing it across the ochre tiles. She sank into the soaking tub, closed her eyes with a sigh, not wanting to think about Xai, about her mother’s terrible, cold words. She heard the outer door open, the whisper of feet on the carpet… came halfway out of the water, muscles tensed before she recognized…

“Tania?” Ahni gasped, then laughed aloud as arms went around her neck, and a river of tawny hair smelling of coconut and ginger tumbled around her face.

“Boo!”

Just like… the old days. Ahni’s heart leapt at that English sylllable, but there was pain in that leap, too, and confusion as this moment and the last time this had happened overlapped, folding months and years between them. “What are you doing here?” She twisted around to smile up at Tania’s broad, unselected Dutch Indonesian face. “I didn’t know you were here! My mother didn’t tell me.” She used English because Tania had always been better with English than Mandarin and couldn’t handle Old Taiwan speech at all. “Did you quit the monastery?”

The words spilled from her heart, and the moment they emerged she regretted them. “I’m sorry.” Ahni looked away. “I–it was automatic. It’s just… I haven’t seen you in… years.”

“You know where I live.” Tania said the words with a determined lightness. “You’re still soapy.” And she shoved Ahni’s head under the water.

Ahni came up sputtering. “Ha. Even a Daughter of the Gaia can get wet!” She reached up and tumbled Tania into the pool, her shift ballooning around her, filled with trapped air as Ahni caught her on her hip so that she didn’t bruise herself on the pool’s edge. Tania laughed and tried to duck Ahni, got ducked herself and came up laughing, her fair hair plastered to her face, a wave of warm water sloshing over the edge of the pool, splattering like rain onto the grass bamboo beyond the screen, startling the small ground-scratching birds there. For an instant they were kids together again, wrestling breast to breast, the thin wet cotton of Tania’s shift the only barrier between them. Tania’s nipples, dark as her eyes, hardened beneath the thin gauze and for a moment, as her eyes met Ahni’s, her arms tightened around her, her belly and breasts hot against Ahni’s naked skin.

Ahni tensed, then turned away, Tania’s hands falling from her shoulders.

“I’ve missed you.” Tania sat back in the pool, pushing wet hair the color of old straw out of her eyes. “1

was sorry when you left to oversee the European concerns.”

“I’ve been back here to visit.” Ahni stepped out of the pool, water sheeting from her onto the tiles to drain away into the bamboo garden. “Did you come to see your father?”

“I came to see you,” Tania said softly. “Your mother told me. That you were in danger.”

“My mother?” Another newness here. Ahni reached for one of the soft cotton towels hanging on the wall. “I… am surprised.”

“Oh, we’re friends, Ahni.” Tania laughed as she stripped off her wet clothes and perched naked on the edge of the pool. “She knows I’m no threat, now. Did you kill him? The person who killed your brother?

The one your father sent you to kill?”

“No.” Something was wrong here. Ahni threw the towel onto the floor near the pool, crossed to the closet and pulled out two silk shifts, one blue, one sea green. She tossed the blue one to Tania who now stood arms akimbo beneath the blast of warm dry air from the dryer. “Xai’s not dead.” Her voice quivered in spite of her control as she pulled this shift over her head. “My mother… I don’t understand.”

“Tell me.” Tania’s arms went around her and this time, they offfered only comfort.

The words tumbled out. Xai. Her plea.

“You don’t see it, do you?” Tania murmured, her cheek against Ahni’s hair. “What your mother gave up?”

“What has she given up?” Ahni pushed away, wiped tears with her forearm. “She’s one of the best-known artists on the planet.”

“She gave up power, Ahni.” Tania stroked Ahni’s hair back from her face. “Before she married your father, she was nearly his equal in the families. But after…” Tania shrugged. “The Huang has a very traditional Chinese ideal of ‘wife.’ Do you really think artistic success would outweigh loss of her power?”

Ahni recalled her mother’s bitter words. “I never considered it,” she said slowly. “She never seemed… unhappy. How did you find all this out?”

Tania laughed and shook her drying hair back from her face. “I wanted to find a reason for blackmail,” she said. “To punish her for coming between us. Instead, I found a woman I could admire. She anderstands our goals, Ahni.”

Our. The Gaiists.

Ahni sighed and ran both hands through her cropped hair. “Let’s not go there.”

“We’re changing things, Ahni. Us. The Gaiists.” Tania came up behind her, put her hands on Ahni’s shoulders. “You don’t hear about it in the media because we don’t want you to hear about it. But we are.

What is your father doing but making money? I know you think we’re a bunch of ostriches with our heads in the sand but that’s just because we don’t draw attention on what we are doing. We–our planet came close to the edge a couple of generations ago. The sea was dying, the land was dying. And now we pat ourselves on the back about how much progress we’ve made, but it’s not enough. We still pay attention to our human wants first. She must come first, the Mother who gave us birth.”

Tania drew a slow deep breath, her nipples brushing Ahni’s shoulder blades. “Humanity hasn’t really evolved. We came down from the trees as apes and our technology froze us as a species, even as it made us comfortable. We have stopped, Ahni. We are a dead end. If we want to move beyond that, we need to be in balance with our Mother. We help the process along, help Her, one small act at a time. The oceans are coming to health again and the animals are coming back. Bird watchers have reported loons in Canada, and lions walk the savannah in Africa. They were extinct, Ahni. With Her power we brought them back to life. Six years ago, when I left for the monastery, you almost came along. Do you remember that?”

But not because I believed. Ahni looked away. Because I loved you.

Fanatic. It was so easy to dismiss her, but Ahni thought of Dane, the fervor behind his words when he spoke of Koi’s people. “So what should I do, Tania?” Ahni closed her eyes. “What do I say to my mother?”

“Xai chose his path.” Tania’s breath tickled her ear. “Let him walk it. Become your father’s heir. You will be a better leader for the families than he is. You will give your mother back the life she gave up for you.”

Ahni shivered as Tania’s lips brushed her neck. “Don’t,” she whispered. Shivered again as Tania’s tongue traced the corner of her jaw. “That’s over, Tania.” She stepped from beneath Tania’s hands.

“Ahni? Daughter, are you there?” Her mother’s voice. Urgent.

Tania sprang back, was examining the antique bowl as her mother appeared in the doorway.

“Your father has arrived.” In the wash of moonlight and floods tuned to simulate moonlight, her face looked taut and expectant. “He flew directly back when he… was informed of your arrival. Tania, please excuse us? This is a family matter.”

“Of course.” Tania bowed and a look passed between the two women.

“At least you had time to wash and dress.” Her mother took her arm and escorted Ahni along the paths of river-polished stones.

To Ahni’s surprise, a dinner waited, not in his private dining chamber, but in the banquet hall, normally reserved for visits and special occasions. Her father waited, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted back to study a scroll from tlle Forest of Stone Tablets in Xi’an, a hand rubbing from one of the stone texts kept there, blackkened with ink, a chiseled archive of the evolution of Chinese writting over thousands of years. History, she thought. What would we be without its weight? Thought again of Koi.

Ahni studied her father’s rigid shoulders, seeing Xai in the curves and planes of his flesh, aware of her mother’s tension.

“Your daughter is here,” her mother murmured.

Ahni bowed.

He returned her formal greeting briskly. At his nod, one of the house servants began to carry food to the table. “We’ll eat,” he said, and it was a command.

The kitchen had done a very good job on short notice, Ahni thought absently. She nibbled at the small dishes of bamboo tips with sauce, fresh green soy beans, and tiny fried fish with chilis. It wasn’t banquet fare, but the steamed fish sliced artistically and layered with thin squares of fried bean curd, and the dish of braised pork with white fungus were special for a family dinner. Ahni, starvving an hour ago, picked at her food, her appetite vanished. Her mother ate calmly, she noticed, her eyes fixed on her food. The meal ended with clear lotus seed soup, seasoned lightly with sugar. It was only then that he pushed his bowl away, drank some tea, and faced his daughter. “Have you fulfilled the task 1 gave you?”

Ahni looked down at her tea cup, aware of her mother’s attention like a prodding fingernail in her back.

“I did not kill my brother’s killer,” she said carefully.

“And yet you returned.” His palm slammed down on the table. “You have turned your back on our family honor. You are worthhless. Less than worthless.”

His rage would have stunned her, only days ago. She had seen, felt, that same rage as her brother flung his cup across the orbital hotel room. Anger scalded her. My mother is right, she thought. This is between you and Xai. She had not decided about what she would and would not say. She decided now, pressed her lips together and bowed her head.

“I have not prepared you adequately.” Her father’s voice shook with anger. “This is my failing. But I will make amends for this lack on my part. I am posting you to our southern station.” The Huang rose to his feet, staring down at her. “You will leave for our main factory ship, The Soo Li, in the morning. I will contact our manager there. You will replace him to oversee the krill harvest. He will reeturn on the flight that brings you there.”

Ahni studied his face, struck again by the feeling that she was a stranger here, an outsider, meeting these people for the first time.

Punishment, she thought. And humiliation. The krill fleet was a mainstay of the Huang Family fishing business. For him to send her, a novice, to manage the operation and remove the experienced manager at the same stroke, ensured failure on her part. And a siggnificant injury to the family income if she failed spectacularly.

“May I be excused to go prepare?” she murmured in formal Mandarin.

At her father’s curt nod, she rose from the table and left the bannquet hall, passing the carefully averted gaze of the servant who was bringing in a plate of fresh melon, on the way out.

Tania waited at the door to her chamber, her face expectant. “I am sent to ruin our krill fishery,” she said.

“Don’t worry.” Tania put an arm around her. “He is angry and needed to hurt someone. Your mother will change his mind when he calms down.” She smiled. “She has had a lot of practice at that, remember?”

Ahni dropped onto the low couch with its embroidered silk cushions. “Tania, I need time… to think.”

“I understand. You are exhausted.” Tania leaned down to kiss the top of Ahni’s head lightly. “Sleep well, and don’t worry.”

Ahni listened to her steps fade. She could read Tania, Easily. And she had read… triumph. A battle won? What war is this? she thought. She was a player, like it or not. She remembered the nested boxes her grandmother had had. Each time you opened one, you found a smaller one inside. And the battlefield for this war seemed to be NYUp. What would Xai destroy before it played out? You are right, Dane, she thought bitterly. We brought a war up to your world. “I do not know enough to play your role, Mother,” she whispered.

Ahni stood. “Room, video record,” she said. A silvery chime told her that the room was recording.

“Honored father.” She bowed. “Before I gratefully undertake the task you have set me, your lowly daughter, I must fulfill my duty. To fail in this would be to further fail the Huang family honor. I will return when I have carried out that duty. Room, end record. Email to The Huang at 9 AM local time tomorrow.”

Tania’s wet clothes lay tangled on the floor beside the pool. Automatically, Ahni picked them up.

Something metallic clattered on the tiles. Ahni picked it up. Xai’s medallion. She stared at the silver oval inscribed with her brother’s success. How had Tania entered Xai’s room?

And why take this?

Frowning, she pocketed it, less certain than before of what lay behind this day’s events. “Security,” she murmured over her private link. “I want a skimmer at the service dock immediately. Private departure.”

Security affirmed. Only The Huang himself would be able to access the log to determine when she had left and how. If she was a player in this war, so be it. She would not play from the sidelines. The battlefield lay in NYUp. This was her war, too, even if she had no idea whose side she was on, or what the sides were.