Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (e books free to read txt) 📗

grain, the yellow brilliant as pollen, is swept up. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really afraid of, Lady Numadesi? Be specific. You must remember that I’m a machine and do not deal in the vague.”

A curse may be spoken into being, triggered by breath, by acknowledgment of its arrival. She doesn’t remember where she heard that superstition or whether she has confused it with a different one concerning ghosts. “At the side of my lord,” she whispers in a voice gone to sand and bone-dust, “there is a traitor. And I let her—let em—go with the admiral.”

Chapter Five

On the recreation deck there is a projected skybox, a generation or two behind, five if one compares it to the cutting-edge. Once Anoushka would have looked up into this, and up and up, marveling and breathless and thinking it must be a divine miracle: so far beyond her experiences, so impossibly unreal. Even the trees—mostly organic—would have rooted her to the spot, astonishing her with the luster of their fruits, the sheen of their leaves and the complex whorls of their bark. The false ones, fiberglass branches and alloy trunks, would have overwhelmed her too. Back then anything could have turned her mute with wonder. Now she grasps their specifications, their technicalities, and they are merely mundane.

She finds the princess in a grove of fruit trees: lychees like tiny clenched hearts, jackfruits like green-yellow treasure boxes, and mangosteens in bruise-dark bunches. Savita’s attendants part and station themselves behind the princess, a phalanx. Two of them are security and have the birth privilege to be granted their own faces, even if neither is especially remarkable.

Anoushka approaches, holding Xuejiao’s leash slack and gleaming in her hand. “My apologies for keeping you waiting, Your Highness.”

“No apologies needed, Admiral. You have not only graced us with your presence; you also saved my mother’s life. A hero is to be accorded every courtesy.” Even so her expression is just slightly brittle.

The façade cracking. Anoushka doubts the princess has ever been made to wait like this in her life, save by her own mother. “Heroes are a fascinating concept. In some polities I’m hailed as one, while in others my name is cursed as a demon’s, synonymous with profanities. As an idea I find it quaint—but what do you think, princess? What’s your opinion on heroism?”

“When I was little, I wanted one of my own very much, I suppose. A hero. Doesn’t every child?”

She remembers what passed for her childhood, though she never had that: on decanting she was full-grown. “Indeed, Your Highness? From what did you need rescue?”

Savita colors. “Childhood wants are very silly things, Admiral. I probably wanted to be rescued from my etiquette lessons. Here, if you’d like to take a look. We grow as much of our own food as possible. Our bioengineers specialize in it—we have the advantage of not having to worry about parasites, the leviathan’s are biomechanical and live on the outside, not that they’d care to sample what is edible to humans . . . ”

The princess leads her to an enclosure where her sister keeps large cats: lynxes, leopards, panthers. All tranquilized, blanched of their wits and drained of their instincts. Anoushka sees the fineness of their pelts and could have appreciated them as accessories, as articles of clothing, but breeding them to keep drug-tamed for their entire lives is a squandering of resources. She knows precisely why Rajathi has been indulged like this—the princesses may have anything—but these animals could just as easily have been replicants.

Finally they stop at a blue, limpid lake. Waist-deep, Anoushka judges, the surface picturesque with lotuses and duckweeds. Another absurd waste, useful for nothing but ornament. Savita expounds on the complicated horticulture, bioengineering and simple gardening that go into the upkeep of this deck, this area.

Anoushka tugs on the leash, bringing Xuejiao closer. She winds the chain around her fist and runs her fingers down its lustrous length until she reaches the back of her wife’s neck. From there she lets her hand roam. Xuejiao arches.

The princess falters, trailing off.

“Do you have a good relationship with Princess Rajathi?” Anoushka asks as she idly strokes down Xuejiao’s spine. “I never had siblings, and growing up with a sister must be a different experience.” In truth she had plenty of fellow clones, but that was not the same—they were not familial, and even if they were none of the royalty would have recognized them as such.

“Oh, we get along. She is very dear to me. Naturally.”

She wonders what Savita would do if she were to strip Xuejiao and take her right here in the grass. That the princess is easily distracted when she toys with her lieutenant is blatant—Rajathi’s gossip might have some truth to it, beyond an effort to humiliate Savita. “It must be excellent to be in utter harmony despite what is at stake. In every army, officers would vie against one another—even lethally—for a chance at promotions. You’re blessed to have a sister content to assist you when you rise to your throne.”

To that Savita only laughs, a small uneasy sound. “I do have to watch for trouble regardless, Admiral. A perfect kingdom does not exist. There’s always the possibility of treason.”

Such as what led to the sabotage. “Indeed there is. One must balance vigilance and paranoia, isn’t that right, Your Highness? The burden of leaders everywhere.”

On the opposite shore of the lake, three servants are kneeling in the grass, trimming and planting new flowers. Red-and-yellow birds of paradise, magenta asters, crimson hibiscuses. Perfect specimens, no blossom marred by bugs or worms, the advantage of a closed ecosystem. Anoushka toggles on an optical assist, zooming in on each servant: the same face mirrored thrice and almost the same schooled expression.

From between a cover of bushes and graybeard moss, a supervisor—they don’t share the servants’ faces—emerges with a swan in their arms. The bird flaps its wings and lunges at its bearer; the person somehow avoids evisceration by long, sharp