Ai Thi guesses the unsaid words. “Because of the appeaser? A little, but not much.” It’s not like being pregnant. The appeaser is small, and will never grow within her: they have already had their children, the next generation of appeasers raised in tanks for implantation in the next generation of trainees.
They eat the first fried dough piece in silence, not quite sure what to say to each other. Ai Thi doesn’t know why Hoa came back. She says, finally, “I saw you take the rice cakes. You have a family?”
Hoa looks at her for a while. “I thought you knew everything.”
Ai Thi laughs. “I wish. But no. I’m not the Census Office.”
“A toddler,” Hoa says. “Three years old.”
“Mine is older,” Ai Thi says, with a sigh. “Thirteen years old and all opinions.” She’s not sure why she says, “I almost never see her. Duty.”
Hoa laughs, a little sadly. It doesn’t sound strained or forced, though the atmosphere is still tense. “You’re different.”
“From other harmonisers?” Ai Thi shrugs, and finally speaks the truth. “I was where you are, once. Working in a restaurant in the daytime, and cleaning the corridors at night. Starving myself to feed my child.”
Hoa is staring at her. “That’s why you became a harmoniser? For money?” There is … an edge to her voice, a hint of disapproval that’s not meant to exist. Captain Giang is right. The fabric of society is fraying.
“Because I had nowhere else to go,” Ai Thi says, simply. “Because … because I listened to the voice of the Everlasting Emperor, and he gave me a second chance.”
“You’ve never seen him,” Hoa says. A question, a challenge.
“Once,” Ai Thi says. She doesn’t need to close her eyes to remember. She was standing at the back of the harmonisers’ ranks, and even from there she felt the radiance of his presence, wave after wave of warmth filling her, the world wavering and bending until it was all she could do not to fall on her knees. “He was everything they say he was, and more.”
Hoa is silent, for a while. “Faith,” she says, and her voice is full of wonder. “I thought—” she shakes her head. “I suppose it takes a lot, to get implanted. May I—” Her hand reaches out, resting close to Ai Thi’s torso.
Ai Thi nods. Hoa’s fingers rest on her gut, pressing down, lightly. The appeaser gurgles within her—kicks towards Hoa, who withdraws as if burnt. The appeaser’s disappointment burns in Ai Thi like acid, spreading outwards through the only channel they know how to use.
Before the Everlasting Emperor, all citizens are weighed equally: the only thing that matters is their loyalty.
Hoa takes one, two steps backwards, her face twisting as the full blast of emotions hits her. “What—”
“They’re hurt,” Ai Thi says. “Because you think they’re less than human.”
Hoa opens her mouth. She’s going to say that of course they’re not human, that they’re just an alien parasite, and all the insults Ai Thi has had hurled at her by dissidents. Ai Thi cuts her off before she can speak, “They’re lonely. Always lonely. That’s the price they pay for service to the Everlasting Emperor.”
Hoa closes her mouth. Her face goes through contortions. “I’m sorry.” And she kneels, hand held out, making it clear that it’s not to Ai Thi she’s apologising.
Warmth spreading through Ai Thi—the appeaser. They like her.
Hoa reaches out, holds out a piece of dough again. “Hungry?” she asks.
Ai Thi eats it. It feels sweeter than honey as it slides down her throat, the appeaser’s approval a small sun within her, spreading to all her limbs—an odd, unsettling, but welcome feeling.
At length, Hoa speaks, again. “So they’re starving you, too.”
Ai Thi shakes her head. “I don’t understand—”
“Of love and kin and warmth.” Hoa’s voice is sad. “Hollowing you out, and leaving nothing but words.”
Ai Thi wants to say something about wisdom, about the Everlasting Emperor, about necessary sacrifices, but the words seem to shrivel in her mouth. Hoa’s burning eyes hold her—the same desperate need she saw in them, back when she almost arrested her, except that it’s … pity?
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be doing this to yourself,” Hoa says again, and it is pity. Compassion. She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t see how much the Everlasting Emperor keeps Ai Thi going, doesn’t understand how much the words mean, how they keep the world together—except that Dieu Kiem is growing up without her, and all that Ai Thi can remember is the appeaser’s desperate, lonely hunger, a bottomless well that nothing can ever fill …
She’s up, and running away from the park before she can think, heedless to Hoa’s calls. She only stops when she gets to her room, breathing hard and feeling as though the air she inhales never reaches her burning lungs.
The Everlasting Emperor has always been, and will always be. The Empire is as long-lasting as the stars in the heavens. As long as the bonds between mother and daughter, between brother and brother endure, then it, too, shall.
There’s a noise outside like the roar of the sea. Ai Thi wakes up, and the sound swells to fill her entire universe. “Mother? Mother?”
Dieu Kiem, through her implants. “Child. How did you—”
Her daughter’s voice is tight, on the verge of panic. “Hacked your coms. That’s not the point. Mother, you need to move. They say there are riots all over the station. “
What—how? Ai Thi fumbles, trying to find something solid—she rubs a hand on her guts, feeling the reassuring mass of the appeaser within her. “Child? Child?”
Dieu Kiem’s voice comes in fast, words jumbled together. “The Everlasting Emperor ordered the closure of half the granaries across all quadrants. An enforcer shot someone, and then—”
“Closure. Why? For the war effort?” Ai Thi asks, but there’s no answer. Nothing but silence on the coms now, but the roar is still there, and she knows it’s that of
