Thresholder

Maya came to his room with him, which Perry wasn’t entirely thrilled with. He was, after all, still naked and trying not to feel the burning shame from that, nor the intense vulnerability, and he caught her looking him over more than once in a way that he thought probably would have gotten him in trouble if the genders had been reversed. He felt better once he was in his small room with his Teaguewater underwear on.

“The needle doesn’t actually mend clothes,” said Maya as she sat down cross-legged on the floor. “Nanostuff can though. It’s brick-dumb but smart enough for this.”

“I’m fine,” said Perry.

“I’d hope you’re fine,” said Maya. “Otherwise you’re not cut out for this life. For what it’s worth, you didn’t deserve it.” She set the black nanostuff to work, trying to manipulate it into fixing the places where it had ripped.

“I probably did, by their standards,” said Perry. “I wasn’t taking the sparring match seriously. I haven’t fought out of the suit in a long time, and didn’t realize just how much stronger and faster the wolf thing had made me. I wasn’t being a dick about it, but I can see how it would come across like that, letting someone wail on you because you know there’s nothing they can do to hurt you. I held him up by his foot like a baby because, I don’t know, I could.”

“Not how you’re supposed to hold babies, actually, just in case it comes up.” She sighed. “You’re giving them a lot of credit,” said Maya. She’d successfully had the nanostuff sew two edges together, and it was very unclear how. Were they manipulating the fibers on a nanometer level? “They’re vicious people. They’re warriors, a whole temple full of soldiers or soldiers-in-training, only they don’t have a kingdom to fight for, nothing and no one to rein them in. Pretty much what you’d expect. But we’re here until they help us transition.”

“I’m not sure how many more beatings like that I could take,” said Perry. He thought about his silent vow to murder a man.

“I’m staying here, with or without you,” said Maya. “Unless a better opportunity comes along. We don’t know how they’re going to transition us. It’s dangerous, they said.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. He let out a breath. “Well, hopefully we’re both stronger a week from now.” He slipped on the helmet. “Marchand, I’d like you to meet Maya, Maya, this is Marchand.”

“Hello?” asked Maya. She was looking at the helmet, which had only gotten up to a pitiful twenty-eight percent battery, even though it had been most of a day.

“It’s a pleasure to be formally introduced,” said Marchand.

“March, on her arm is a bracer made of extremely high tech nanostuff,” said Perry. “I need you to interface with it and open it up, disable whatever protocols are in place that stop it from …” He trailed off. “Hold on one sec. Maya, how safe is this?”

“Disabling self-replication?” she asked. “Uh … safeish?”

“I was about to tell March to do it, and it sounded insane,” said Perry. “The worst case scenario is that this whole ringworld gets turned into nanostuff. Right?”

“It’s been responding to my needs and keeping my stuff repaired,” said Maya. “I’ve been depending on it for like … six worlds.”

“Counting this one?” asked Perry.

“I kicked your ass with it, so yeah, this one,” said Maya. “In fact, however your robot disabled it was as close as I’ve come to a malfunction.”

“So five worlds,” said Perry. “You’ve had it for what, two years at the most?”

“Around two years, yeah,” said Maya.

“They locked away the ability for a reason,” said Perry.

“They were assholes,” said Maya. “End-statism was a scourge. Realism was a scourge. I was in the weeds, but I really did hate the guys who made this stuff. Imagine having the tech to stitch up injuries and just not using it because you believe that people were meant to live with pain. Imagine being that vile.”

Perry thought about that. “But they did have the tech, which means that the higher ups probably did use it, right?”

“Right,” said Maya.

“Assholes,” Perry agreed.

“Well now I’m glad I didn’t kill you,” said Maya. “Anyway, seems like your AI probably isn’t going to crack open this thing.” She lifted her bracer and pointed at it. “Just see whether he can make some headway.”

“March, try to communicate with the bracer,” said Perry. “It’s got blocks preventing it from doing some of its most impressive tricks. See if you can get a toehold.”

“I will endeavor to do my best, sir,” said Marchand.

The whole thing seemed hopeless, even if it would be supremely beneficial to both of them. March was a sophisticated AI, at least in the best of times, but asking him to communicate with an unknown technology developed using completely different programming languages and paradigms seemed like a very tall ask.

While March was working, throwing up some logs onto the HUD, the arcshadow came. Perry had gotten his armor on just in time, mostly in silence.

“Is the dog thing going to be a problem?” asked Maya as the shadow swept across the room.

“So long as I stay in my tin can when the sun goes down, no,” said Perry.

“Except the sun wasn’t down when you turned and bit the hand off that guy,” said Maya. “Which makes me think that maybe it will be a problem if you get beaten down enough.”

“It wasn’t that,” said Perry. “It was the moonlight. The way it was described to me, the transformation happens because of moonlight, and the only reason it doesn’t happen in the day is because the sunlight counteracts it.”

“So you’re going to transform whenever someone uses moonlight powers on you,” said Maya. “Which is a huge problem. Perry, they’re Moon Gate, moon worshipers or whatever, lunar techniques.”

“I don’t even think that it should work like that,” said Perry. “There are three moons here, and moonlight as a concept is just … nonsense.”

The arcshadow passed, and Perry began taking off the armor again.

“What do you mean moonlight is nonsense?” asked Maya. “It’s pretty clearly not.”

“The moon reflects sunlight,” said Perry. “Maybe you could argue that werewolves are vulnerable to a single specific wavelength of light or something, and that’s specifically the wavelength that you get from the moon, but … as a coherent concept, ‘moonlight’ breaks down.”

“The worlds aren’t wholly separate,” said Maya. “My wizard friend said that. They’re not siloed, they overlap with each other, and the magic you see in one place might end up having interactions with the magic in another place.”

“That’s happened with you?” asked Perry.

Maya nodded and held up her sword. “This started out magical, and one of the gods of a different world reached in and enhanced the magic in it.”

“You met a … god?” asked Perry.

“Hell yeah I did,” said Maya. “I met a few, actually. Mostly bastards, in that place. I got made an avatar of the God of the Sea, could swim like lightning and drown anyone who got in my way. But that world was a loss, and the god stripped my power right before I was about to limp through the portal.”

“Ouch,” said Perry. “But at least it wasn’t a good power.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I mentioned that I could drown people?” asked Maya. “All I had to do was bring a pitcher with me, throw water on them, and have them drowned in two minutes. I would have stomped through more than a few worlds with that one.”

“It wouldn’t have worked on me,” said Perry as he slipped out of the boots.

“Eh, no,” said Maya. “Guess not.”

“And it obviously didn’t work on the guy you were fighting,” said Perry.

“He had a counter for it,” said Maya. She folded her arms.

“We always get a power?” asked Perry. “Every world, unless you lose?”

“Always,” said Maya. “It’s part of the spell.”

“I’m not a huge believer in the spell, just FYI,” said Perry. “For your information,” he clarified.

“Right, well, my wizard knew a lot, and he was incredibly smart, and so far nothing he’s said has been wrong,” she said with a shrug. “Powers don’t always get taken back though, he said. Power is like … the payment for thresholders, I guess, and if they fail, which they can, it’s not a condition that the power gets removed, it’s more that there’s no guarantee that the power is going to stick.”

“And there is a guarantee if you win?” asked Perry. “From who?”

“From who-the-fuck-knows,” said Maya. “From the spell.”

“But it’s one spell,” said Perry. “With two sides?”

“With infinity sides,” said Maya.

“No, I mean, for any given conflict, there are always two sides?”

“I guess so,” said Maya. “My wizard was working from very little information, and while he had some multiversal theories before that, I was the first chance he had to really dig into it.”

“We’ll have to dig into this later,” said Perry, rubbing his face. “You don’t happen to have hundreds of hours of high-def videos of him explaining everything to you, along with scans of hundreds of books, do you?”

“I came to this world practically nude,” said Maya. “Not even a suitcase, just the clothes on my back. I’d kill for a pocket computer. I had one, when I started, but it didn’t survive seven worlds.”

“We should get back to training,” said Perry. “The arcshadow is over, and I want to see how the school gets on after that whole thing. You’ll leave your bracer here?”

Maya looked at the black shell around her arm. “I guess.” She looked up at Perry. “I’m only telling you this because I like you, but if you try to wear it, it’ll inject itself into your veins and liquify you from the inside out.”

“What?” asked Perry. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that anyway, as a deterrent? Or tell me that because you’re supposedly my ally?”

“An ally who tries to steal my shit would deserve death,” said Maya. “And the kill function is only for people who try to steal it. I can’t kill people with it in other ways, except when it’s in sword mode, and I can only get it to do that half the time.”

“So if you leave it somewhere another thresholder thinks they can steal it …” said Perry.

“Yup,” said Maya. “I haven’t pulled it off yet, unfortunately. The kill count of the nanostuff is extremely low, it’s mostly defensive.”

“Kill count as in … not thresholders?” asked Perry.

“We’ll talk later,” said Maya, nodding slightly. “We need to make sure we’re not late. I’ve got a feeling they frown upon that here.” She handed him his repaired clothes, which were good as new. Better than new, even, which spoke to the nanostuff having at least a little bit of a brain as they rewove fibers together. Them having a brain was both good news and bad news.

Perry got dressed, then looked at March. “I’m leaving you here,” said Perry. “Recharge, try to talk to the nanostuff, don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.”

“You are a paragon of wisdom, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry walked with Maya across the temple grounds. There was a wet spot where the blood from the fight had been mopped up. Luo Yanhua was standing there with her arms folded, and she gave them a nod as they approached.

“What’s the agenda looking like?” asked Maya. “More training? More sparring?”

“The students have been taken down the mountain,” said Luo Yanhua. “It has been decided that I would train the two of you in the ways of civic responsibility while they practice their movement.”

“I want to practice movement,” said Perry.

“We missed lunch,” said Maya.

“Lunch is late today, upon the return of the others, well after the arcshadow.” She looked at Perry. “After the sparring match today, it has become apparent that there are wide gaps in your knowledge which cannot be filled in the usual ways,” said Luo Yanhua. “The masters will meet to discuss forcible transition, but in the meantime, there are certain rules which must be set forth in achingly plain terms.”

“This had better not be like a corpo meeting,” said Maya.

Perry looked at her. She smiled at him. She had said she’d been to seven worlds, and he had made an informal list, trying to map them against what he knew. She was being cagey, probably because she didn’t trust him, but they were bridging the gap.

“You should, by rights, be initiates,” said Luo Yanhua. “You would spend months being shown the work of the temple, making meals, hauling water, mending clothes, speaking only when spoken to, watching the students go about their business, and then, eventually, you would be evaluated by someone of the second sphere. We would converse about what we had seen, and then you would be told to leave and never return, or you would join us as a proper student, a disciple.”

“And we didn’t do our unpaid internship,” said Maya.

“It would be best for you to speak plainly,” said Luo Yanhua. “It will help to prevent misunderstandings between us.”

“An initiate puts in work,” said Perry. “They’re paying in, basically, in the hopes that they get a coveted role as a student. But there are limited slots, and everyone involved knows that, so if someone isn’t the right fit or … whatever, then they’ve just toiled away for basically nothing.”

“It’s exploitative,” said Maya.

“Labor is virtuous duty,” said Luo Yanhua. She held up a hand to forestall further conversation on the matter. “Of the two of you, Perry is more suited to the temple. On the first day we met, he demonstrated that he did not shirk duty. Yet it is more than duty that finds a person a place in Moon Gate. The world consists of many spheres, including those beyond the grand ones that separate us. In the writing of Li Xuezhong, he cites the family as the smallest of these binding obligations. This place is another of them, a fabric of people and their place within the world.”

“So … three estates sort of thing?” asked Perry. He was given blank looks. “It’s the Ancien Régime, the division of people into nobility, clergy, and peasants. You’re saying that there are spheres, and then there are things that aren’t spheres but are also important. Family, workplaces, monastic orders, clubs, organizations, civic stuff.”

“It is greater than that,” said Luo Yanhua. “It is all encompassing. These shapes are fractal, internal, expansive, the largest and the smallest, the start and the end of all things.”

“Ecosystems,” said Perry. “Political systems. Social networks, ecological systems, biological systems, economic systems. The interconnectedness of all things, and the role of the individual within intersectional systems. Water feeds the roots of the tree, the animals hide in its shade, it soaks up light from the sun … it’s this one concept, everywhere.”

“The wolf knows much,” said Luo Yanhua. She had a faint smile on her face.

“Yeah, I know stuff too,” said Maya. “But all you’re saying is that if we want to be here, whether here is this temple, this sect, this kingdom, or this world, we need to follow the rules.”

“You need to know your place within the metaphorical spheres,” said Luo Yanhua.

Perry understood, more or less. It was a wiggly way of looking at things, and he thought that it probably broke down the more you thought about it.

“Or we’ll get beaten up,” said Maya.

“Punishment comes in many forms,” said Luo Yanhua. “In this case, punishment was direct. Perry did not honor the teachings of the sect, and Zhang Lingxiu did not act with the grace and composure expected of the second sphere. His actions were tainted with pride and anger.”

“So,” said Perry. “In one case, this was Lingxiu taking it upon himself to correct what he saw as bad behavior. But in the other case, I was transformed against my will, and the injury that Lingxiu received had no intent behind it.” When he was a wolf, he didn’t really think like that.

Maya snorted. “The universe manifested it. If you behave badly, either someone will see and put you in your place, or you’ll just suffer misfortune, cosmically.”

“Yes,” nodded Luo Yanhua. “The impudent girl speaks as though this is ridiculous, though I do not know why.” She didn’t seem offended by the impudence.

“I am perfectly willing to accept that’s how it works here,” said Maya. “I will zip my lip from here on out.” She mimed locking her mouth with a key, then mimed throwing the key away. The throw was as though she was chucking a basketball toward the net, and she looked at the air, waiting to see whether her imaginary shot would make it, then pumped her fist when it landed in the imaginary basket.

“I’m just confused about what’s metaphorical, literal, enacted through the hand of the heavens … there are superstitions in my world about life being as you describe,” said Perry. “But we believe them to be only that. It seems to us that life is manifestly unfair, that evil deeds go unpunished.”

“That’s why we’re thresholders,” said Maya. “We get to punish evil deeds.”

“You are not to do that here,” said Luo Yanhua with a sage nod.

“Alright, well hear me out —” began Maya.

“We understand,” said Perry, holding up a hand. At least Maya seemed to be enjoying herself. “But in terms of how it all works … that man I fought, from the Grouse Kingdom, he was somehow stained by what happened there. That made him easier to fight. But it was …” He thought about the phrasing, and for a moment just stood there with his mouth half-open, thinking of how he could get at the question he wanted. “If we measured his speed, would we find it slower after his bout of banditry?”

Luo Yanhua considered this. “A slower swing, a duller sword, less awareness of his surroundings. But why should you measure?”

“So we would know,” said Perry. “So we could have some metric to judge these things by.”

“And you would make your decisions based on these metrics?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“Yes,” said Perry. “Absolutely, if the alternative is that I have no idea whether I’m going to get stronger or weaker.”

“The man you fought was weakened not only by his own bad character,” said Luo Yanhua. She folded her delicate fingers in front of her. “He was weakened by the kingdom itself, to which he was tethered.”

“Tethered,” said Perry. “Which is … what, exactly?”

“These — estates, you called them?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“Sure,” said Perry. “I think there are lots of similar concepts though.”

“We are a part of many places,” said Luo Yanhua. “For those of the first sphere, there is an unawareness to their time and place, to their connections. To those of the second sphere, it is a decision, made with deliberation, and the consequences of those places we choose to be a part of can be considerable.”

“Ah,” said Perry. “Meaning this ‘tethering’ gains you power?”

“Mmm,” said Luo Yanhua. “You entwine your fate with that of what you have tethered.”

“Wait,” said Maya. “So when Perry was giving insult to Moon Gate Silver Fish Temple, he wasn’t just insulting the people who live and work here, the martial scholars, he was depriving them of power?”

“In some sense, yes,” said Luo Yanhua, nodding. “It is difficult to say how much an unanswered slight might impact the temple or the sect. A single time, especially when it was done in error, through no ill intent, does perhaps not invite the downfall of our reputation. Yet if such lenience becomes a habit, erosion is sure to follow.”

Maya gave Perry a look, as if to say ‘this is nuts’. He didn’t think that it was particularly nuts, just kind of stupid. It made more sense to him that they would take honor seriously if there were some actual stakes involved with it. Seraphinus had been all about honor in all kinds of ways, even when it seemed to go directly against the best interests of everyone involved. He could almost respect beating down a know-nothing initiate if it meant preserving the literal strength of the temple. Almost.

Yet if he tried to take the principle to its logical conclusions, he felt more and more confused about how the world actually worked. The implication was that for the first sphere, these concepts were essentially immaterial. But for the second sphere, allegiance, honor, loyalty, and civic virtue bled into the material.

“Going back to the man from the Grouse Kingdom,” said Perry. “He was … tethered to it?”

“Almost certainly, yes,” said Luo Yanhua.

“And when it fell, he couldn’t untether?” asked Perry.

“Transient connection has little weight,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Can’t you just say ‘no, he couldn’t’?” asked Maya. “I mean, would that be so hard?”

Privately, Perry agreed.

“It is a complicated thing, what we of the second sphere do,” said Luo Yanhua. “It is not the way of the second sphere to teach those of the first sphere, lest they think they know our business.”

“But the plan is for us to become second sphere, right?” asked Maya. “So we’re going to need to know this sooner than later. And no one wants us tethered to the wrong thing, however the fuck that works.”

“You are not of this kingdom,” said Luo Yanhua. “You would find it difficult to tether to this land, or the Great Arc, given you are outsiders. But yes, if this is the path before you, you must think of what will be demanded from you, and what you have to offer. If you stay with Moon Gate as inner disciples, you will need to mold yourself to this place.”

Perry didn’t like the sound of this.

“Can we talk about the elephant in the room?” asked Maya. “You tricked us.”

“Tricked you?” asked Luo Yanhua. There was no guilt nor surprise nor other emotion in her voice. She’d have made a good lawyer, or a good master criminal.

“Yeah, you offered food, shelter, clothes, invited us to come train with you, and really it was a way of tethering us to you, getting us on the inside where you could, just as an example, beat the stuffing out of my henchman.” Maya had a vicious smile sometimes.

“Sidekick, not henchman, remember,” said Perry.

“Yeah, I know, but henchman sounds better,” said Maya. “You have a henching quality about you.”

“We have been forthright in wanting you here to ensure that your personal matters do not spill out into the Seven Rivers Kingdom,” said Luo Yanhua. “You have been forthright in your desire to transition to the second sphere. I can see your perspective and how you might see trickery, but I am telling you those details you were unaware of.”

“You hold power over students though,” said Perry. “Which we now are. And the separation between spheres … it matters less than it did. Anything that we do reflects on the temple now, which means that you can take issue with it in ways that you couldn’t before, and that includes aggression.”

“I would be careful in your accusations,” said Luo Yanhua.

“I’m not making any accusations,” said Perry, holding up a hand. “Only trying to understand.”

Maya grunted.

“The other students will be back from their hike soon,” said Luo Yanhua. “I hope that this conversation has been instructive to you.”

“It has, thank you,” said Perry. “We’ll do our best to find our place here, and reward your hospitality.”

“Yeah,” said Maya. “We don’t want to bite the hand that feeds us.”

Perry winced, but Luo Yanhua showed no reaction to the joke, instead sweeping off to go elsewhere and do whatever it was the second sphere people did while everyone else was training.

The other students came up the mountain path, each of them carrying two large jugs of water hanging from a wooden pole that rested on their shoulders. They filed wordlessly into the bathhouse, and the question of where the water had come from was answered. It was a hellish amount of labor to have a warm bath every day, and Perry hadn’t appreciated it in the slightest.

“She could have at least had the good grace to look smug about it,” said Maya. “It was a trap, a way of getting us under their thumb.”

“You think the whole thing was planned?” asked Perry.

“I think even the beating was planned, a way of putting us in our place,” said Maya. “Only you weren’t supposed to turn into a wolf and bite that guy’s hand off.”

“I think it’s just people, acting how they act,” said Perry. “I doubt they were discussing abuse of the celestial mechanics in private. That seems like it would go against their principles.”

Maya was giving him a look. “Get ready for some more hazing, that’s all I have to say.” She steeled herself. “And we need to make plans for an exit strategy.”

“Lower your voice,” said Perry. “I’m assuming that superb senses are part of the package.”

“Later then,” Maya nodded. “Let’s just get through the day.”

Lunch was a brief affair, food served in bowls, just rice with pickled vegetables and a few fresh ones. There was a single sliver of meat, and Perry watched the other students eat. They savored the meat, having it separate from the rest, or taking small bites of it to go with the rice. It was chicken, something pounded and then marinated, and he tried to follow along with what everyone else was doing.

He was distracted though, as unbelievably, Lingxiu had come out of the temple and was eating lunch with them. He was missing half his hand, but it didn’t look nearly as bad as it should have. The stump was angry and red, but scabbed over. It looked like an injury that had happened a week ago, not a few hours. His face was calm and impassive, though he was using chopsticks with his off-hand, and didn’t show quite the same grace.

Perry hoped that the man wouldn’t be a problem anymore, but he had a strong suspicion that this was only the beginning.