Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 Read Free Page B

waiting for her: small and plump, with hair shining silver in the unfiltered sunlight. Her face is frozen in careful blankness, and she wears the white of mourners, with none of the markers for the family of the dead.
    “Welcome,” she says, curtly nodding to acknowledge Wen’s presence. “I am Ho Van Nhu.”
    “Grandmother’s friend,” Wen says.
    Nhu’s face twists in an odd expression. “You know my name?” She speaks perfect Galactic, with a very slight trace of an accent — heard only in the odd inflections she puts on her own name.
    Wen could lie; could say that Mother spoke of her often; but here, in this thin, cold air, she finds that she cannot lie — any more than one does not lie in the presence of the Honored Leader. “They teach us about you in school,” she says, blushing.
    Nhu snorts. “Not in good terms, I’d imagine. Come,” she says. “Let’s get you prepared.”
    There are people everywhere, in costumes Wen recognizes from her history lessons — oddly old-fashioned and formal, collars flaring in the San-Tay fashion, though the five panels of the dresses are those of the Mheng high court, in the days before the San-Tay’s arrival.
    Nhu pushes her way through the crowd, confident, until they reach a deserted room. She stands for a while in the center, eyes closed, and bots crawl out of the interstices, dragging vegetables and balls of rolled-up dough — black and featureless, their bodies gleaming like knife-blades, their legs moving on a rhythm like centipedes or spiders.
    Wen watches, halfway between fascination and horror, as they cut up the vegetables into small pieces — flatten the dough and fill up dumplings, and put them inside small steamer units that other bots have dragged up. Other bots are already cleaning up the counter, and there is a smell in the room — tea brewing in a corner. “I don’t — ” Wen starts. How can she eat any of that, knowing how it was prepared? She swallows, and forces herself to speak more civilly. “I should be with her.”
    Nhu shakes her head. Beads of sweat pearl on her face; but she seems to be gaining color as the bots withdraw, one by one — except that Wen can still see them, tucked away under the cupboards and the sink, like curled-up cockroaches. “This is the wake, and you’re already late for it. It won’t make any difference if you come in quarter of an hour later. And I would be a poor host if I didn’t offer you any food.”
    There are two cups of tea on the central table; Nhu pours from a teapot, and pushes one to Wen — who hesitates for a moment, and then takes it, fighting against a wave of nausea. Bots dragged out the pot; the tea leaves. Bots touched the liquid that she’s inhaling right now.
    “You look like your mother when she was younger,” Nhu says, sipping at the tea. “Like your grandmother, too.” Her voice is matter-of-fact; but Wen can feel the grief Nhu is struggling to contain. “You must have had a hard time, at school.”
    Wen thinks on it for a while. “I don’t think so,” she says. She’s had the usual bullying, the mockeries of her clumsiness, of her provincial accent. But nothing specifically directed at her ancestors. “They did not really care about who my grandmother was.” It’s the stuff of histories now; almost vanished — only the generation of the Honored Leader remembers what it was like, under the San-Tay.
    “I see,” Nhu says.
    An uncomfortable silence stretches, which Nhu makes no effort to break.
    Small bots float by, carrying a tray with the steamed dumplings — like the old vids, when the San-Tay would be receiving their friends at home. Except, of course, that the Mheng were doing the cutting-up and the cooking, in the depths of the kitchen.
    “They make you uncomfortable,” Nhu says.
    Wen grimaces. “I — we don’t have bots, on Felicity.”
    “I know. The remnants of the San-Tay — the technologies of servitude, which should better be forgotten and lost.”