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

The princess dimples. “When the Alabaster Admiral calls, only the foolish choose not to hear. There’s a saying like that in some parts of the galaxy, quite fervently spoken too. Although I don’t think you’ve had dealings with us before?”

Again she imagines her hand closing around the princess’ neck. It is fragile—the jewelry is no protection—and she doubts Savita has been trained to do much more than defend herself in the most rudimentary manner. A little sparrow, easy to pulverize. “Indeed. This will be my first time here.”

Savita looks as if she might say something more, but in the end keeps it to herself. A pair of attendants join her once they exit into the corridor, two people in dark, plain kurtas. Stocky build, identical features. She spots more attendants as they pass into an opaque tram car: all the servants share the same face, the same frame. A few minor variations caused by scars, diet, physical activity.

Xuejiao’s gaze lingers on them as she pulses a message. Are they supposed to be clones, Admiral?

Yes. Anoushka eyes the back of Savita’s embroidered, glittering sari. Fair quality for this place. Unremarkable compared to metropolitan stations or wealthy planets. Queen Nirupa has been harder up than she thought. One phenotype assigned per category—very economical. These are the personal servants; the mechanics and cooks will have a different look. Dorsal deck ones have to appear pleasing to the eye, since they are public-facing. The ventral deck menials are much plainer, more . . . primitive.

Out of the tram, the interior is much less conventional than the docking bay and its adjacent corridors. There the walls are metal, the floor lined with ordinary alloy tiles one might find on any station or ship. Here the walls breathe and a faint vibration travels beneath Anoushka’s feet, the pulse of the great beast, as much a living thing as it is a ship. In place of lighting fixtures, there are bulbs of bioluminescence maintained by small curlicued organisms, leviathan symbiotes in shades of pale dawn. Particulate murals haze the air at half-solid settings, religious tableaus and iconography: Ganesha, scenes of heroes in chariots pulling bowstrings taut, many-armed demons scattering before them.

So little has changed. She never saw these particular corridors, this set of artworks. But the beast’s breath, its cardiac rhythm, those are as familiar to her as her own. She was much closer to the source, back then, the respiratory and digestive noises a roar in her ears rather than this tastefully muted hum.

“Queen Nirupa must be very pious,” Anoushka says, both to fill the quiet—her wife is primly silent—and to draw more out of this princess.

“My mother is as virtuous as a bhikkhuni. She actually spent several years ordained as one before her coronation.”

Her smile pulls taut. To Savita the expression would look immaculate, polite but free of emotion. “Allow me to introduce my companion. This is Xuejiao, my personal attendant.”

Xuejiao simpers, prettily and blankly.

The princess takes one look and wrinkles her nose: she perfectly recognizes the euphemism for what it is. “How many bedrooms will you require, Admiral?”

“Just one will do, Your Highness. I should hate to be a fussy guest.”

Their suite has a common area, one bathroom, and one bedroom. The floor has a give much deeper and softer than any carpeting, and when the princess is gone—letting them know the welcome reception is five hours hence—Xuejiao runs her hand along the walls, pressing her fingers into them as though she expects the material to rupture like a boil. “This is . . . fascinating.” She peers at the indentations she has made. “Very fleshy.”

“The leviathan doesn’t have nerve-endings in most places.” Anoushka lowers herself onto the common area’s largest chair. The furniture is lightly scaled, upholstery like soft suede. She puts her hand to the armrest but does not feel the pulse that she knows must be there: everything is either leviathan tissue or a symbiote. Once, she would have been able to tell. “Nor much of a brain, in fact; less intelligent than some plants. Have you taken care of the surveillance?”

“Always, Admiral.”

She double-checks, out of habit: to Nirupa, she and Xuejiao would appear to be unpacking their luggage. Would, shortly, appear to engage in carnal extravagance on the furniture, against the wall, and any other flat surface. On the link she shares with Xuejiao, she unfolds the dossier on Vishnu’s Leviathan and Queen Nirupa, collected by Benzaiten over the last five decades: there is something to be said for the thoroughness and patience of an AI. Xe has imaged most of the leviathan and collected data on its biology, internal topography, the number of servants and mechanics who staff each deck. The damaged areas within the leviathan were caused almost certainly by sabotage, the incident having been both too specific and too devastating to be mere accident or negligence on the engineering overseers’ part. It took out the leviathan’s ability to self-sustain: food labs, hydroponics, fungal cultures, livestock genomes. Benzaiten speculates that even the royal DNA bank was struck, meaning the next batch of descendants after Savita and her sister will have to be created from outsider genes. No doubt the queen has put aside funds for that, DNA that is not only phenotypically compatible but equivalent to hers in pedigree—some type of aristocracy or monarchy—and flawless across all parameters. Nirupa is a strong believer in inheritable intelligence, against evidence to the contrary.

Xuejiao whistles as she looks over the sabotage. “Who did the queen piss off?”

“It’s hard to say. They aren’t often in strife; hiding in lacunal space all the time helps. Whoever did this was aiming for something in particular, and likely not out of a personal grudge.” She pulls up Benzaiten’s log of the events, but while technically detailed, the AI did not include any speculation as to the saboteur’s motives. The downside of an AI ally, though she supposes the absence of bias is its own advantage. “Next, some extra intelligence on