Lessons in Birdwatching

I

Fukuyama has defected. This does not matter. It is so insignificant that his enemy won’t even know about it for months. He is just a man who has realized that he is being used, his requests for assistance ignored, his findings denied. A scientist lost in politics.

He had wanted to warn the others, show them the marks on his skin, describe the tremors in his mind. He knew he would sound mad and feared that he was.

He’d also considered, in a brief and humorless moment, whether he ought to pack his pillow. Does the resistance have decent mattresses? That is how he thinks of them, ‘the resistance’. He is yet to find out exactly what they are resisting.

He only knows for certain that it has infected him. Whatever it is. Whatever it infects people for. A disease of the bone, a sickness of the mind. He is sure that he can hear it. As if it is talking to him, inhabiting him in a purposeful, deliberate way. A new facial tic, getting worse. He cannot tell whether its attention feels like punishment or love. He will damn well find out.

He stands now with his feet on either side of his suitcase, waiting. The city feels haunted. Electricity pulses through neon, unaffected by the mood.

The resistance, if that is what they are, have sent the foulest of them to collect him. She is instantly recognizable. The sight of her empties the streets. Curtains twitching, hands searching for each other in the dark, a squeeze to communicate their unspeakable fear. A desperation to fall asleep, as if rest could be an alibi.

She does not need the machete. Its handle bounces in her palm as she hits it against the bridge. A metallic echo. Don’t hold theatrics against her, they don’t let her out very often. She does not need the machete but she has brought it anyway because she really, really wants to use it. She watches the shadows, willing the others to try to stop her, give her an excuse to attack. They won’t, which is a bad thing. She is running out of restraint.

He can smell the terror in his sweat and knows that she can, too. Her face half concealed in an orange strobe. A frenetic energy about him which she recognizes and does not like. His fingers clicking soundlessly at the end of a limp arm. Her eye focuses on it and he stops, had not known that he was doing it.

Sorry.

He winces at the song of her laughter before it gets lost in the fog.

II

Achira sat on the windowsill of an octagonal pagoda. It was hastily made with concrete and steel, painted yellow. Barbs of twisting metal escaped its symmetry here and there; angular, without pattern. Accidental, uncorrected flaws. Achira used one of these to hang her shoes to dry. The slow, soft sound of the Crysthian Empire’s official language staccatoed from the room in front of her. It is an alien tongue on this planet, but it is welcome nonetheless. Coveted, even, by its native inhabitants.

Achira was shouting, laughing. Enough of a smile in her voice to suggest humour, enough of an edge beside it to betray the effort of suppressed anger.

This is not how we’ve been playing, Jasef. She held the corpse of a coffee mug to the light of their kitchen and the two men sitting beneath it. And I say you lose this round.

What are you talking about? The man named Jasef responded.

Jasef, don’t be a git. The other made a pained beckoning motion to Achira as he interrupted. You’re gonna make the game boring if you’re playing them rules.

Exactly. It’s supposed to be a break. Fun. She acquiesced to the gesture, came away from the drop which made him nervous, and took her seat at the table.

You’re not seriously blaming me for your inability to adapt to the native way of thinking? Jasef.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. The larger man pressed his tongue to the vaporiser implant in his mouth, expelling a cloud of gently narcotic smoke. Even the most casual of observers would know that the smoker believes himself to be in charge.

Achira placed the shattered vessel in front of him. He excavated a handwritten note from the mug’s remains with calloused, healing fingers.

Not Jasef, it read.

The game is disarmingly simple. Each of the five who inhabit this concrete hut will take it in turns to commit a micro-crime, leaving behind a note revealing the identity of the criminal when they do. A stolen shoe, a stained counter, a broken mug. All its discoverer has to do is find evidence other than the confession, than the mere fact of blame, to confirm its truth. A parody of the service they provide for the alien people whose planet this is.

Jasef thinks, he said, faux conspiratorially, to Achira, that he is the only one of us that understands the task that we perform every day. Imagine how horrible it must have been growing up with this kid. Think on him counting to three over and over again as loud as he possibly could and wondering why nobody wants him playing hopscotch.

I do not see why, if you’re so brilliantly fluent at Apechi thinking, it could possibly bother you when we use their rules to play a game based on the same system!

No, I know you don’t, so listen instead of just doing the same fuck-annoying thing over and over. He took another drag. It’s a game, it’s supposed to be fun, not frustrating and weird.

Frustrating and weird. That’s what the perspicacious Peter Pïat-Elementov will have to say of this planet upon his return? A strange inflection pronounced on the surname. That is because surnames are unusual, a symptom of having descended from one of the champions of Crysth’s most recent internal spat. In most situations, the name Pïat-Elementov would be impressive. Among these few however it is flamboyant and vain. A reminder, perhaps, that some may have had to work harder than others to be here. You’ll have a fleet of awards celebrating your contribution to the sciences. I envy you.

Yeah, and I’ll fly it straight into your fat head, you self-righteous cunt.

Stop it, now, came the voice of a second woman with the unmistakable coastal accent of the imperial capital, there’ll be no cunts on a Tuesday. You’re spoiling what would be an otherwise lovely evening of wishing we were somewhere else.

She emerged through the trapdoor which separated their kitchen from the rest of the tower. Peter relaxed as she rose, relinquishing authority, softening. Her expression was passive, always so, eternally jaded in a face of flat, toneless color which spoke of a complexion long and suddenly deprived of light, food, joy. A trait they all shared. She straightened herself from the floor and dropped a bamboo crate of bottles onto the table.

How long you been listening? Achira.

The newcomer smiled and turned to look through the window at the vibrant mist of Apechi night. It may have been the psychological effect of that drawl, the coastal accent associated so perfectly with the most beautiful part of the capital, but she always carried something of the sea with her. Nothing wild, nothing remarkable, just the kinetic effect of volume which inserts a certain peace into silences everywhere. That is one of the reasons she was elevated to the rank she now occupies. Another is that her name is Wilhelmina Ming. It’s a meaningless surname, divorced from the culture it was taken from, chosen for covetous reasons by people who thought themselves masters of the new world. But she knows its power and so wears it in front of her like a shield. It cannot sneak up on her, it cannot be used against her. She hasn’t answered to anything else since she was a teenager; she is always and only Ming.

Any news where these came from? Peter handed Jasef a bottle of the imported ale with a conciliatory nod.

She shrugged.

Oh, you could have asked them for a news-paper, scolded Jasef. There is an odd pause in the middle of the portmanteau – he is not used to it. The panels which usually communicate news to the worlds various of Crysth have not been erected here despite a seemingly human population, Apech is not yet part of the empire. A burden lies heavy on the ‘yet’.

My meeting was… she wiggled her fingers in a motion which indicated complication, tedium, I hurried out.

Ah. Sorry. How come you didn’t take the train this morning? asked Peter, pulling a chair out beside him.

She sat. We didn’t meet at the embassy.

There was a silence at this, a silence in which three pairs of eyes flicked at the black fingerprint which dirtied the maroon of Ming’s lapel. Conspicuous in its apparent shabbiness, it made them strangely embarrassed to recall the identifying badges on their own formal uniforms – objects which brought them so much pride whenever out of the shadow of this lone, dirty mark. It outranks them by several orders of magnitude. They did not ask where she had been.

Listen, began Peter, turning the ruined mug to face Ming, Jasef has put the kibosh–

I have done nothing of the sort.

Kibosh on this round of pagoda detective. Look, he offered her the note, which she read but did not take, it isn’t true! It was him.

Ming shook her head slightly as she took this in. You know the rules.

Ha! Jasef.

Yes, but it’s not fun, is it? I don’t want to bring that into the house with me. This is Achira. If we do it like that in here too, I will lose my mind.

Agreed. Peter, disappointed that Ming had not sided with him. I like having some fucking proper logic up here.

You are being Crysth-centric. Jasef.

And? We are from Crysth, and they wish they were.

We are really not supposed to think like that, P. That is sort of the whole point of us being here. Achira’s tone was only a gentle scold. But I know what you mean.

You all know what I mean. A cloud of smoke eclipsed Peter’s sulk. We shouldn’t have to police ourselves all the time. Not when it’s just us.

Ming nudged him with her foot and smiled benevolently at Achira, who hated it. Peter is right, but so is Jasef. There’s no need to fight.

There’s no need to fight. These are not friends. If they met before reaching this planet then it was only fleeting. A nod in the university’s spiraling gardens, a shared bottle of wine at an end of semester party. They belong to different imperial factions and will serve different emperors; their distance is by design.

They are each very brilliant in their own way, though. All have been chosen from round after round of examinations, applications, psychological assessments, years of uncertain striving. Here they are at their worst, flung far afield and told simply to produce. To create a worthwhile piece of work alone. Return to the university empty-handed or return ready to make their case for entrance into the highest levels of civil service.

The exile is designed to break them. They know this.

A Crysthian observer might wonder if these few are serving their time in the monstrous, lonely grimness of Lon Apech because they have much more to prove than the rest of their cohorts. The others can be imagined whiling away their own exiles on planets closer to home, on planets with beaches and gardens and magic and beauty. One might suppose that these five are here because they were at the bottom of their class, or that they are contrarians, or that they are out of their goddamn minds.

Yes. You’re right. I am sorry for the remark, Peter. Jasef’s apology happens only because it was Ming who suggested it.

No. Ming, Peter needs to be more careful with comments like that. You know they follow us; they are not the only ones being studied.

"Not here? Jasef. Surely?"

Ming shrugged and took a swig from her bottle.

They do do shit like that don’t they. Peter’s voice was a whisper. Speaking of which, has anybody seen Ar today?

What the hell do you mean ‘speaking of which’? Achira.

No no no. I mean, just, Apechi don’t like him, do they?

Achira relaxed. No, they certainly do not. They’re not a particular fan of me, either. She looked up at Ming. They like you, of course.

It’s my job to make them like me, All eyes to the fingerprint again. I’ll leave the ethics of it up to you.

Jasef and Peter shared a swift look of concern. Peter said, Ar, where’s Ar?

I’ll go see. Achira.

Beneath their pagoda, the city sank and stretched in a seething web of painted concrete. Always burning, always growing, the artificial slab of its ground floor hammered into reality some distance above the earth. Here and there walkways leeched between architecture like metal vines. The blinding glow and steam of industrial labor burst through gaps in its impossible floor. Vents formed geysers of screaming waste which mixed into a constant fog. The refracted neon glow from giant proclamations of sales or comfort, brought here as gifts by imperial scouts fought for supremacy without the sun’s arbitration. The star’s low altitude forced it to cast only disorientating shadows against the turmoil of design which was so jealously lifted from the surface. Lon Apech was a capital modelled on capitals, a patchwork of empty monuments.

Achira’s face reemerged above the waning iridescence of her uniform. He’s coming up for a drink.

Nice. Hey, Ar. Peter pulled the beers towards him to detach one for their fifth and final member.

This is Ar. He is not like the others.

Hello. Been writing? asked Jasef, turning to watch Ar’s unusually proportioned body unfold from the trapdoor.

Ar gave a half smile and tilted his head, trying to, the gesture said.

Tough luck. Jasef.

How’s yours going? Achira’s question was directed towards Jasef, who did not have the sense to be humble.

Excellently. Really excellently, in fact. The whole thing turned out serendipitously, my theories truly show their durability in a place like this. Especially since–

Good to hear, Achira said, but let’s not get into it, shall we? Ming’s had a rough day too by the sound of it.

Ar looked sympathetically to Ming, whose maroon jacket matched the color of his shirt. Same faction. She just rolled her eyes, whatever.

They quarrel and laugh, form temporary conversational allegiances and make the odd, futile attempt at sign language in Ar’s direction. He humours them, moving his hands in gestures which they pretend to understand. His pen and paper lie unused by his side. His difference makes them self-conscious, and they respond by patronizing him, reassuring him that they do consider him one of them. Sign language had been demoted from a requirement for entering the civil service to a higher-education elective within three years of the Muhr race’s achievement of human status. There had been too many complaints from failing students.

That night, Peter fell asleep with his head on Ming’s thigh. She lay still, watching his ceiling and waiting for the purring breaths of deep sleep to rumble through his chest before she moved him away. Outside, the tortured screams of a thousand caged birds were punctuated by laughter. She listened for a long time before shutting herself into her empty room.

A few hundred years before this montage of humanity would come to occupy their pagoda, the Red faction of Crysth’s government had concluded the centuries long Data War with waves of destruction which ruptured the empire into four symbiotic sections, each of them with its own imperial figurehead: Red, Military, Green, Ethicist. It works.

All forms of private transport had been forbidden since the war. As a result, none of the planets under Crysth’s control could be reached by individuals not affiliated with or permitted by the transport ministry – a sprawling and irretraceable sector which had come to dominate the flow not only of people but of information over long distances. All of it strictly centralized. Nobody who knows how the systems work is allowed out of the central palaces unwatched. They are mutilated as reward for their skill, fitted with a prosthetic jaw which allows them to communicate directly with the machines they command.

The force of the law extends to the ground of each planet in Crysth’s protective, possessive grasp. Old ships, jets, cars – all collected and repurposed into metals for the development of railways and giant dirigibles to be distributed unfairly across Crysthian territories. Illegal vessels favoured by smugglers and the rich are still hunted with almost casual joy by Military captains in open space. Apech, having been discovered a mere forty years earlier, was not officially part of the empire. Nonetheless, its leaders had immediately fought each other for the right to obey Crysth’s laws.

This was unusual. Their fawning brought distrust. The fact that they appeared but did not behave human doubled it. There’s a magic in the air here, and Crysth has a certain paranoia regarding the strange, the unnatural, the unexpected. Space exploration will do that to you.

And so the only train on Apech, a gift from the empire, sped towards the city’s central station with a clutch of Crysthian cargo. They wore their formal uniforms, representing each of the four imperial factions between them. Two maroon Reds with a midnight-blue Military sitting between them. A sage lined with gold uniform for the Green opposite them, and a pearl-clad Ethicist by the window.

Graduate rings from every university but the highest gleamed on their fingers. They were not looking at each other.

The machine coughed billows of thick white smoke produced by burning oil as it went, a native addition to its sleek design which did nothing but mirror the images of trains in pre-rupture Crysth. Its quaint bile disappeared into the city’s fog as quickly as it spilled. The untamed demon which possessed the metal pulled it miserably along the track.

Do you think it will be a long one? Achira’s fingers pulled at the silver-pink threads which complicated the white of her Ethicist’s suit into a shade called pearl. The sentence was a question without the inflection of one, her voice too pained to rise.

"It shouldn’t be. Pretty clear cut, really fast. The accused is guilty. Actually guilty, yeah. A tama, Ming turned to the other woman as she sighed, but I’m going to have to call a commoner witness"

Oh, fuck me, Peter.

Can’t avoid it. Ming flipped open the binder on her lap. If we’re all extremely nice to him, he might make it out of there alive. They are following our lead, after all.

Pfft. Achira. Don’t say that. This is their design, not ours.

Has the poor twat had anything to do with them before? Peter.

Ming shook her head, eliciting a hissing intake of breath in response. It never went well when the aristocracy and their subjects mixed. For the latter, of course.

Will the ambassador or any of the embassy staff be along? Jasef, forcedly casual.

Ming looked up at him. I doubt it. A warning not to pry.

The train stopped after travelling a negligible distance, its machinations only necessary because of the bizarre topography of the city’s pedestrian routes; it would have taken them over an hour to travel the same distance by foot. Rain moistened their faces when they disembarked, a warm rain so fine that it was difficult to tell whether it was just the whirling fog congealing on their skin. Maybe it was. They all felt that it should be raining.

At the very center of the city, the triangle prow of Apech’s court leered towards them through the mist. Modelled after a photograph of a galleon long sunk on Earth’s northern shores, the Vasa’s concrete crust glittered with industrial perspiration, shimmering with colored light from the neon baubles arranged around the square. Palaces and towers faced it, each as much a hollow copy as the last, their interiors designed by minds who had never seen a Crysthian home to serve as the residences of the planet’s aristocracy. They were already onboard. Waiting.

Beside the ship stands one of the few structures in the city which is not fashioned after Earth. A suggestion of a man, stories high. Peering eyeless onto the Vasa’s deck. His features are only vague, dreamlike. A different face from every angle, all of them formed from the memory of Farön Kis. poised to chase or to strike. A threat, a reminder of who and what had won Apech’s civil war.

The statue’s distorted physiognomy is also a reminder that the people who grew up on this planet see the world differently. Something afflicts them, shows them intrusions in time. It lets them play with it too. There is a volatility to their being that the Crysthian natives lack. It is this which brought Crysth here, on its endless search for unnatural things to destroy or to claim.

But the Vasa. It is huge, masts extending sixty meters high and equally as long, all of it formed from thick, glutinous concrete which gave it the appearance of a ship petrified, melted, impossible. No sails. Its masts are beacon of Apechi legislature and executioner’s weapon both. Symbol united with function, an aesthetic inversion of the hollow palaces in their shadow. They are thick with justice, teeming with death. The steel rods point insult to the sky’s eternal dusk with spiked tips, the three of them crowded even from this distance with figures at their base – human figures impaled and dead and dying and rotted. Here and there, clothing, the suggestion of flesh still clings to grey bone.

Lon Apech loves violence. It’s kind of its thing.

Today, as always, the hull was mobbed by a crowd of locals. Too important not to attend a court date, too lowly to dare touch the ship. They are a theatre troop costume box ensemble of people; copying Crysthian styles but with no idea as to the time or context of the fashions they mirror. A nurse’s uniform, a baseball helmet, spurred heels, suits of armor. A mysterious fondness for beads. They cheered and called in natively idiosyncracized Crysthian, thrilled to see the corporeal representatives of their integration into the empire arrive.

Ming led the way, always so – her cultivated apathy slashing a break in the crowd which the others, even Peter with his size and the deep blue garb of Military strength, were unable to mirror.

Here, on the haphazard strata of the capital’s artificial ground, fog hemming the crowd around the ship, one could forget what sinks beneath it. Crysth’s envoy barely sees the others, the born-doomed at work below. Lon Apech is a strange vacuum, hauntingly empty and yet filled with intangible things: light, mist, sound, cruelty. A population still recovering from the decimation of civil war.

You’re here, my friends! Perfect Crysthian from someone who has spoken this language his whole life but has never been to the place of its origin. Always slightly odd. The words came to them the moment they were all stood upon the reeking deck.

Ming and Ar were the only ones able to keep their faces neutral.

Distan, how are you? Ming clasped his hand.

Hello, hello, please, come up. His eyes met hers, something was unsaid. He nodded. She moved away.

Miré Distan invited the rest of them further onto the Vasa with a wave of his arm which he may have imagined was mayoral. He’s stocky, heavily scarred.

Peter, Jasef, he shook their hands in turn, smiled at the final two without extending a limb, welcome.

And with that, most of the aristocrats were mingling with the Crysthians, outnumbering them six to one and gabbling with jolly enthusiasm, trying not to jostle each other with eagerness to be close to Crysth. Ar was noticeably alarmed, his big eyes always flashing for signs of violence whenever someone approached, keeping close to Jasef whose much smaller frame did less to conceal Ar than did his simpering politeness. Peter was mostly ignoring the attention around him, looking instead to two figures who had not yet moved. A man and a woman, leaning against the door to the galleon’s interior.

Ming had gone directly to them. She had both of her hands between the woman’s, who was talking to her in fast, low excitement. There was a possessiveness in the hands, she twisted the rings on Ming’s fingers as confidently and comfortably as if they were on her own. The shade of her gown was like the maroon of Ming’s uniform. As like as she could get it, in fact. But Peter’s attention was focused on the man, who had not moved, who was still leaning quietly against the ship’s concrete. He behaves as if it is his. It is.

Hello, Peter. The words sent a rush of embarrassed anger around Peter’s head. He had not heard them, just seen them formed through the leaning man’s mouth.

Peter saw the mouth move into a smile, the eyes look at Ming, then back to himself. There is meaning in this. Or that is how it feels. The woman gave a wave of delight when she saw that Peter had noticed them. Ming nodded her goodbye.

Peter felt trapped. He could not ignore these two, and nor could he control himself well enough to have a truly civil conversation with them. But he had no choice but to try, and so