Shall Machines Divide the Earth, Benjanun Sriduangkaew [large screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Thannarat’s eyes widen and Recadat thinks that finally this is the moment, the point of mutual realization; that their history will fall into place and then they’ll open a path into the future together. She can see it in the deep umber of Thannarat’s irises, the slight parting of her mouth.

“I’ve always—” Cowardice blunts her. She tries again. “Thannarat, I’ve always . . . ”

The bathroom door swishes open. A woman leans in, her lavish mouth curved. “Detective, have we a guest? So rude that you didn’t introduce us. Please call me Daji, lovely stranger. I am Thannarat’s regalia.”

Recadat stares, rooted to the spot. The woman is voluptuous and short, her skin the flushed gold of sunrise roses, so perfect that it is at once evident she is artifice—that she cannot possibly be anything but an AI’s proxy. Hair like the tail of a black comet, threaded through with spheres of gold, a pointed vixen’s chin and small nose and enormous limpid eyes. Exactly the kind of woman Thannarat likes, tailor-made to her tastes. It dawns on Recadat that the lounge has been decorated around the regalia. An entire room, and the rest of the suite likely, configured to adorn Daji.

Her guts twist. Outwardly she returns the woman’s—the AI’s—pleasantries. But it is autopilot, and the way Daji and Thannarat touch each other confirm the truth. Thannarat’s hand on the regalia’s waist. Daji’s thumb stroking Thannarat’s bicep.

There’s never been a promise between Thannarat and Recadat, never a seed that did not fruit because the soil was fallow. There has only ever been false hope, a foolish delusion on her part.

Don’t you want her? Her lover’s voice pours into her ear like cool water. Don’t you want her, Recadat, like you want a beautiful butterfly? A specimen pinned under glass for your pleasure and perusal. All yours, always.

Chapter Five

Recadat leaves for her own room toward midnight. I almost ask her to stay, and know she would if I do. In the end I stop myself from saying anything, from indicating at all that I understood her. Instead I acted oblivious until she was gone; what else was there to do. Perhaps if I pretend I did not notice. Perhaps if I pretend that ten years ago I felt nothing for her. This way the cracks can be papered over.

To Daji I say, “I’m surprised you showed yourself to Recadat.”

“I like to mark my territory—it’s important for other women to know what is mine, and that I have the teeth to defend the fact. You know why she’s upset, don’t you?”

“I couldn’t possibly imagine why.”

She plays with one of the particulate grapes, pinching it between her fingers; juices run down her palm then disappear into nothing. “Oh, Detective, how did ever you survive without feminine intuition?”

“I’m a woman,” I say mildly, though I know what she means. There are women like me and Recadat, and there are women like Daji. The hard and the soft, the steel and the satin. “So what, according to your honed feminine intuition, got under Recadat’s skin?”

Her smirk is vulpine. “Haven’t you known her a long time? You should be able to answer that question.”

“We were colleagues and field partners, yes.”

“Tell me,” Daji says, “how you really felt about her all those years ago.”

I’ve never been in a position to feel interrogated; I do now. It’s not my habit to unburden myself, voluntarily or not. Thannarat, I’ve always . . . “Is it truly pertinent?”

“I’m particular. And I don’t share.”

So yielding in bed; so aggressive out of it. Were she any other woman, I’d have rebuked her, reminded her that I do not need her as much as she does me—that is the case for most of my casual relationships. “I was attracted to Recadat. I hid it well—I was not going to hurt my wife that way—and Recadat never noticed how I felt or pretended not to.”

“Or she returned your feelings.” Daji’s tone is carefully neutral. “But kept it to herself out of respect for your marriage.”

I know that, now; I can still feel Recadat’s fingers digging into my shirt. Holding on the way she’d hold onto a lifeline. Holding on the same way she did when I carried her out of that basement. I want to protect this, I remember thinking, because she was the only one I could save that terrible night.

“If you choose her,” my regalia goes on, “then I’ll not stand in the way of it. She’s important to you and now you have the liberty to pursue her. I’ll still fulfill my duties to you in the Divide.”

Here is a little piece of fiction I told myself: after Eurydice divorced me, I didn’t reach out to Recadat because by then, I’d taken on one client too many that belonged on the wrong side of the law. Contact with me—at that point a private investigator who consorted with criminals—would have jeopardized Recadat’s career. When I’m more honest with myself I know the truth is far less practical, far less altruistic. I didn’t want to come to her weak and broken by grief. I am the shield. I am the fortress. It is not in me to seek refuge in others. Pride stopped me from having what I had wanted for so long.

Ten years against a single second. Long nights at stakeouts and pre-dawn drinks in disreputable bars, against a woman who appeared to me as an exquisite corpse and upended my imagination.

“I’m not throwing you away.” Air passes into me like knives, but that soon eases. Decisions cannot be postponed forever. In the field it is reached on the brink of microseconds, the difference between being behind cover and having your skull riddled with bullets. “I won’t exchange you for what might be, when I already have what is.”

Daji takes my hand, holding it tight. “I’ll strive to be worthy of you. I’ll be your utmost, your lodestar, your weapon. Always I’ll submit to you, yield to you in