Chapter 31

Chapter 31: Night Boat on the White River

Grandmother’s Bridge cradled the boy and sang for a long time inside the ship.

Earth slipped from the porthole and did not return. The solar system, the Orion Arm, the Milky Way—gone. The ship nosed into the star-deep, into a region no human had ever named.

When the song at last unraveled, the statue-still boy and girl began to dissolve, and the ship shattered with them into a million shards, like a fistful of star-seed flung into the hollow ocean of space.

Zhao Meiyou and Qian Duoduo had watched it all. After a while, Zhao Meiyou said, “Looks like it’s over.”

Qian Duoduo grunted.

Zhao Meiyou patted his trouser pocket, itchy for a smoke. “Qian-ge, can you conjure me a box of Marlboros?”

Qian Duoduo snapped his fingers. A tray drifted up between them: McDonald’s fried chicken, salted cola, and a carton of Marlboros. Zhao Meiyou took a cigarette, set it between his lips, then turned, leaned in, and wrapped his arms around him.

Qian Duoduo stilled. His arms slid up Zhao Meiyou’s back and gave a light, steadying pat.

“No rush,” Qian Duoduo said. “We haven’t finished with Ruin 000, but go ahead and smoke.”

Zhao Meiyou knew that everything he was seeing now was only quantum residue inside a ruin, less interactive than a real-world holo game.

Ruin Law, article one: a ruin is not a dream.

He couldn’t say whether the realities projected in a ruin were ever truly real. In Ruin S45 he’d been shown the so-called truth of the Orion War; but as with that time he’d barreled through an endless loop yelling about ketchup, in these three thousand quantum-built worlds the line between sanity and madness is a razor—no, they eat each other alive, and the self tumbles into hell with them.

Think too much and you die. Common sense is the worst drag. Reason is the tripwire of madness. The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. All forms are illusion. If you want out of delirium, you act on instinct.

Instinct.

Compared to Diao Chan or headliner, both of whom wielded reason like a blade, Zhao Meiyou’s deepest motives were undeniably animal.

Love and hate, hunger and fury, folly and obsession—he did as his heart pleased.

Humans spend their lives trying to overcome instinct, to discipline the self; but in the face of the unknown, instinct is the strongest armor.

Like now. Zhao Meiyou realized his head wasn’t quite right. He turned to Qian Duoduo, eyes bright.

Qian Duoduo said, “…What?”

“Qian-ge,” Zhao Meiyou said solemnly, “can I kiss you?”

Qian Duoduo suddenly smiled, plucked the cigarette from his mouth, lit it for himself, took a drag, and then lunged, teeth closing on Zhao Meiyou’s lower lip.

The menthol capsule popped. Tongue and teeth slid. In that sharp wash of mint, they traded a mouthful of spicy secondhand smoke.

Nicotine steadied him. Zhao Meiyou looked around. The boy and girl were gone. Most of the ship had come apart, a wreck scoured down to its bones, the kind of husk that drifts a hundred years in the dark after the fuel runs dry.

He and Qian Duoduo were in the control room. Half the outer wall had cracked open. By rights, they should be in hard vacuum, yet neither of them struggled to breathe.

They sat on the broken edge, sharing fried chicken and salted cola. After Zhao Meiyou finished his cigarette, he said, “Qian-ge, when I left the Madam Butterfly ruin, I had a dream.”

Qian Duoduo hummed. “I remember.”

“I heard a song in that dream,” Zhao Meiyou said. “A melody I’d never heard.”

“It’s fine.” Qian Duoduo split the chicken and handed half over, then wiped his fingers on Zhao Meiyou’s tie. “Dreams are a ruin aftereffect too. You hear and see things you’ve never heard or seen. You’ll get used to it.”

“I thought so at first,” Zhao Meiyou said. “Until the artificial human boy beside Grandmother’s Bridge sang that same song—the exact same melody I’d heard in the dream.”

Qian Duoduo’s hands paused. “Which song?”

“Grandmother’s Bridge.”

In that dream of water, he wore some nameless robe and walked into deep mountains. In the lake he saw a thousand instruments; flower petals fountained from organ pipes and played a lost music.

Qian Duoduo blinked, then suddenly reached for Zhao Meiyou’s belt. Zhao Meiyou lifted his hands fast, crushed out his cigarette on the console. “Qian-ge, what are you doing?”

“I’m worried you’re showing a dissolving tendency,” Qian Duoduo said. “Once an archaeologist’s consciousness fuses with the quantum domain, a ruin will externalize scenes from his memory.”

“Not necessarily.” Zhao Meiyou took stock of his mental state. He felt fine—no urge to sprint around naked in ketchup, no impulse to call a brother “Mom,” he loved Qian Duoduo—yep, all perfectly normal.

“Safer to deepen the link.” Qian Duoduo straddled him, loosened his hair tie. His long hair fell, silk pooling and draping over them both. He pressed his forehead to Zhao Meiyou’s. “Feel me.”

Ever since Ruin S86, they had never once managed this particular business under anything like normal conditions. Being hunted. Pseudopregnant. Fleeing an endless loop. The only halfway civilized time was in the tub at headliner’s safe house; the goldfish Qian Duoduo had bought all died, the faux-sun lamp shed pale light like white mites, and in that electrode-laced bath they turned the room upside down while headliner kicked the door outside; later, cleaning up, headliner just stared at him and shook his head, a look beyond words: Zhao Meiyou, you really are something.

Zhao Meiyou agreed. Whether it was making love in deep space or winning Qian Duoduo himself, he felt pretty badass. He hadn’t known many archaeologists, but without exception they treated Qian Duoduo with respect or wariness, as if he were some spotless jade outside the mortal world. Only Zhao Meiyou knew that Qian Duoduo could be wild. He had a wicked streak in bed; sometimes halfway through he would borrow Zhao Meiyou’s ability and turn himself female, his tailored suit straining over new curves.

Cool virtue and vicious glamour, pale divinity and a shameless streak.

Bodies folded together, drunk on each other. Under desire ruled by absolute instinct, both reason and madness ceased to exist. What remained was a simple, radiant warmth, like the sun itself.

He didn’t know how long it lasted. Qian Duoduo lit a cigarette, still a little breathless. “…You should be fine.”

“I am fine, Qian-ge.” Zhao Meiyou took the cigarette from his mouth. A belated thought hit him: that whole “bodily link to assess your mental state” line—was it just an excuse?

A bit much, but in light of how his lover went from zero to holy-war when he snapped, not impossible.

Zhao Meiyou weighed it. He had the guilty heart, not the guts. He decided to sit on the thought forever.

Bare-legged, Qian Duoduo paced the gutted control room, thinking. “This cockpit wouldn’t have survived for no reason. It’s probably our cue to go deeper into the ruin.”

Since entering Ruin 000, aside from that inexplicable museum and a love-and-grief that spanned years, nothing life-or-death had happened. Zhao Meiyou had been briefly trapped in a ketchup loop, but to Qian Duoduo that was nothing, at most a little funny, and less dangerous than some S-class ruins.

Yet Ruin 000 had the highest classification for a reason.

Which meant the real danger hadn’t arrived.

Qian Duoduo circled the control room, gaze settling on the console. The ship’s main body had disassembled; the console should have been dead. Yet the screen still shimmered blue.

He stepped up, studied the panel, hesitated, and pressed a few keys.

As his fingers moved, Zhao Meiyou realized that the stars outside were moving too.

What?

“Don’t talk to me.” Qian Duoduo had noticed the anomaly as well. His focus tightened, as if something invisible were channeling quantum into his brainwaves and pulling his hands over the keys. Outside, the stars began to shift and turn, tiny points of light being guided, flickering as they gathered around the hull, coalescing into a vast river.

That flowing river poured over them. The ship was wrapped in it. From Zhao Meiyou’s vantage, four liquid walls rose around them and stretched away at both ends, like corridors of mercury without end—

The liquid took a set. Silver stopped moving. Like what?

Like mirrors.

A long corridor of mirrors.

Zhao Meiyou felt a jolt of recognition. Of course—a mirror corridor. Since he’d become an archaeologist, nearly every ruin had offered one. In Ruin A173 he’d passed through a mirrored hall to the ruin’s rim. In Ruin S45, deep under Ideal City, the metro car had turned into a mirror gallery while in motion. In Ruin S86, a mirrored hall had led them to a changing room…

And the Rum Tunnel.

When the Rum Tunnel switched ruins at high speed, it plunged into a wormhole-like space: light drifting like the reflections of a hall of mirrors.

How exactly had the Rum Tunnel been built?

Across so many ruins, what did “mirror corridor” mean?

While Zhao Meiyou’s mind raced, Qian Duoduo lifted his hands from the keys. Zhao Meiyou was just about to ask if he had it when the mirror corridor boomed—and both of them heard a whistle.

A train’s whistle as it pulled into a station.

Zhao Meiyou didn’t think. He stepped forward, yanked Qian Duoduo behind him, and was immediately slapped in the face by the wind of an oncoming car.

Inside this world of mercury walls, a train really did arrive.

A steam train, old as an elegy. You could hear the chimney’s whistle as it ran. Inside, rows of benches upholstered in green velvet; a low table by the aisle; on a white cloth, a vase of blooming camellias.

In construction and decor, it was identical to the train in the Rum Tunnel.

Zhao Meiyou moved his lips, eyes asking: Qian-ge—do we board?

Qian Duoduo flicked a cigarette into the car. It clicked softly against the floor. Nothing else happened.

He pressed his mouth in a line, then nodded. “Board.”

They took a bench. The whistle blew. The train pulled out.

They flew down the mirror corridor, the world on both sides smearing to silver. Qian Duoduo was thinking. After a moment he said, “I built the Rum Tunnel with a handful of archaeologists’ abilities—‘splicing,’ ‘warping,’ and ‘acceleration.’ Splicing stitches disparate ruins together. Warping lays the tunnel. Acceleration shortens the quantum time-flow between them.”

“How’d you come up with it?” Zhao Meiyou asked.

“From the Classic of Mountains and Seas,” Qian Duoduo said. “I got a fragment of a chapter that recorded a deceased archaeologist’s design. The schematics were tacked on in the appendices.”

Before Zhao Meiyou could reply, he added, “…The fragment came to me through the Megalopolis government.”

Which left a lot of room for someone to play games.

Even whether that “deceased archaeologist” had ever existed was now in doubt.

Qian Duoduo understood that too. He let out a breath you could barely hear.

His long hair was lifting in the breeze. Zhao Meiyou watched for a moment, then brushed it back for him. “Don’t drive yourself into a corner, Qian-ge.”

“I don’t plan exits,” Qian Duoduo said, looking up at him. “Not before I met you.”

“Then here’s your way out.” Zhao Meiyou grinned. “I doubt this thing is going to chug until we die of old age. Let’s see where it stops.”

“How do you know it won’t run forever?”

Zhao Meiyou had no grand ambitions, wanted little from life, and fate had paid him back a hundredfold already. No mountain of knives or sea of fire ahead could scare him now.

“If it runs to the end of time, so be it.” He wore his favorite devil-may-care smirk. “We’ll call it a lovers’ pact.”

That would be perfect, actually.

Whether it was a shame or a mercy, for once Zhao Meiyou called it. After a long run, the train began to slow, and finally stopped.

The door opened on a platform like any platform in the world. Neither of them scented danger. They stepped down. The tunnel’s exit wasn’t far, a point of white light.

“Come on, Qian-ge.” Zhao Meiyou took Qian Duoduo’s hand, lazy as if they were off on a picnic.

They walked toward the exit. The white light closed over them, and Zhao Meiyou heard bells—

An old bell, slow and rolling.

Voices, too.

Outside lay a vast open ground crowded with people, most of them in suits, in archaeologists’ uniforms. In their eyes: varying degrees of confusion. Some whispered together. Some looked around. Someone napped against a companion’s shoulder. Another sat down, unworried, and pulled an accordion into a lazy waltz.

Zhao Meiyou looked farther. They stood before an ancient city gate; not far off rose a clocktower. People were streaming out of the tunnel in waves. It seemed each toll of the bell meant another train had pulled in. Zhao Meiyou’s gaze snagged—he’d spotted headliner.

“Zhao Meiyou?” Liu Qijue saw him too. He strode over and dropped his voice. “What the hell? Weren’t you two in 000?”

“Yeah.” Zhao Meiyou tipped his head at Qian Duoduo. “Then a train showed up halfway. We got off and wound up here. You?”

“I was in A173, just wandering,” headliner said. “A train showed up on me, too.”

Qian Duoduo stood with his eyes closed. “I’m hearing the same from others. Almost identical. A train inside the ruin.”

“This ever happen before?” Zhao Meiyou asked.

“No way,” headliner said. First time for him as well.

They quickly ran into more familiar faces: the civil servant from that party, the twins, the youth with the oxygen tank, the man in the wheelchair with an IV drip. All equally at sea. “Why would archaeologists from different ruins end up in one place?”

This wasn’t some planned convocation. The cautious had already put on their masks.

Qian Duoduo swept the crowd. “Just about every archaeologist is here.”

A thread of unease curled through Zhao Meiyou. If so—where was Diao Chan?

Before he could move, someone shouted from the crowd: “It’s Qian Duoduo!”

“And Young Master Liu!”

Unless you’re among kindred spirits, archaeologists don’t often show their faces. Now a hundred eyes swung to Qian Duoduo and Liu Qijue. “Mr. Qian,” an old man asked, stepping forward, “do you know what’s happening?”

“Don’t step up,” Qian Duoduo murmured to Zhao Meiyou. “Let me.”

The crowd’s factions were cleanly drawn. Zhao Meiyou’s glance counted close to two hundred. That was probably the whole archaeologist population in Megalopolis. They clustered in groups, large and small. Aside from the leaders, almost all wore masks.

Headliner stood next to Zhao Meiyou, hands in his pockets, looking like ten million bucks and bored with it.

Qian Duoduo walked to the center and took out his cigarettes.

“We were all delivered by a train,” he said, meeting the old man’s eyes. “That’s all we know for now.”

“I’ve heard you’re on the government’s wanted list,” the old man said, doubtful. “Is that true?”

Headliner barked back, “And if it is? Who the hell wants to run errands for the government?”

There are plenty of madmen among archaeologists, but not one fool. No one knew where they were or which ruin this was. No one was about to pick a fight with Qian Duoduo now.

From Zhao Meiyou’s angle, the group leaders conferred briefly. Then the elder bowed to Qian Duoduo; the others followed suit.

Qian Duoduo started working the circle with his pack.

“What’s going on?” Zhao Meiyou nudged headliner.

“Your lover’s about to put on a show.” Headliner had seen this before. “Unwritten rule. When the unknown opens, Qian Duoduo takes point. Price is, everybody lends him their abilities.”

He snagged Zhao Meiyou’s sleeve. “Don’t go charging. Qian Duoduo’s ability is no joke. On him, it’s theater. On you, it’s suicide.”

“Easy for you to say,” Zhao Meiyou muttered. “He’s not your man.”

“Exactly because he’s yours,” headliner said lightly, “you should be the first to trust him.”

“…”

“You’ll have to learn to live with it.” He patted Zhao Meiyou’s shoulder. “Don’t be like me. I didn’t get it until Mister was gone.”

When Qian Duoduo had finished making his rounds—taking on every loan he needed—he started forward, then checked, doubled back as if to tell headliner something, and instead slipped him a cigarette.

“This is ‘Grafting,’” Qian Duoduo said quietly. “I’ve primed it.”

“Look at you,” headliner said, surprised and pleased. “Learning to value your life.”

If Qian Duoduo took damage too heavy to bear, that cigarette would let everyone here shoulder a share.

Zhao Meiyou reached to snatch it and got his hand slapped. “What’s your hurry? You got a death wish?”

In the real world, Zhao Meiyou would have been rolling up his sleeves by now. With his hands, he’d at least have left the guy breathing. But this was a ruin. He was new to the game, and headliner’s strength outstripped his by a galaxy; no chance to steal it.

And with the unknown yawning, this wasn’t the time to clip a friendly. Zhao Meiyou clicked his tongue and watched Qian Duoduo walk to the massive gate.

His fist clenched.

Qian Duoduo lifted a hand. He didn’t look like he used much force. The gate creaked and swung inward.

The bell pealed on.