Thresholder

Three days came and went. There were no more altercations to speak of, and the days were largely filled with instruction. The Silver Fish temple was big on silence, and took gender segregation fairly seriously, which meant that there were only limited times when Perry could speak privately with Maya. Even if they had all the time in the world, she didn’t seem like she was willing to give up too much about herself or the worlds she’d been to.

Maya hadn’t wanted to leave the nanostuff with Perry overnight, which slowed the dialogue between their two armor systems considerably. After the second day, he had more or less given up hope that they would get anything fruitful out of it. On the third night, Maya had left the nanostuff with him, mostly as a last-ditch effort to get something working.

“I have achieved conversation, of a sort,” said Marchand on the morning of the fourth day.

“Wait, really?” asked Perry. He was still taking the armor off during the sitrep. “That’s great!”

“I would hold your proverbial horses, sir,” said Marchand. “While I have passed the IFF check of the ‘nanostuff’,” his voice dripped with disdain for the term, “it does not appear that being friendly to the native AI will allow me much in the way of reprogramming or a change in mission goals. While it has allowed some analysis of pseudocode, it has not given me access to any actual code, and it does appear that efforts have been made to ensure that self-replication is not just locked off, but programmatically impossible.”

“Shit,” said Perry. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

“Would you like me to lie to you, sir?” asked Marchand.

“No,” said Perry, sighing. “Any good news?”

“It does appear that the repair functions of the nanostuff could be used to fix some of the damage that I’ve sustained,” said Marchand. “Everything beyond the damaged microprocessors, in fact.”

Perry let out a sigh of relief. “Yes, finally.”

“Unfortunately, there are some costs associated with such an endeavor,” Marchand continued.

“Ugh,” said Perry. “Alright, lay it on me.”

“The nanostuff cannot self-replicate, sir,” said Marchand. “Yet the individual nanites are not impervious to destruction. Every operation that they undertake results in losses through attrition, as does the passage of time itself. The total mass of the nanostuff is approximately 4,431 grams. A full repair to all parts of me they are capable of fixing would cost on the order of a tenth of that mass.”

“What?” asked Perry. “That’s … I mean, that’s huge, that’s a serious problem.”

“Yes, quite sir, that’s why I framed it as bad news,” said Marchand.

“Alright, get it done,” said Perry.

“It would require direct authorization from Miss Singh, sir,” said Marchand. “Five grams of the nanostuff are inside her brain, capable of reading many of her thoughts. Such an expenditure would not be allowed without her.”

Perry shivered. “Nanostuff in the brain, reading your thoughts … yikes.” He imagined that it had a story behind it, if she knew about it. The nanostuff had been given to her as something like a bodyguard. “But why’s it so costly to repair the suit? She fixes her clothes with it.”

“Cotton is a different material from plastic, metal, and glass,” said Marchand.

“Yes, obviously,” said Perry. “I’m just trying to get a report from you in order to have a discussion about it with Maya. She’s been using the nanostuff for repair, defense, offense, all kinds of things, and she’s not going to want to part with it.”

“On the contrary sir,” said Marchand. “She parts with it every time she uses it, particularly when it coats her skin. I have been given logs from the nanites and there has been significant degradation of their mass over time.”

“She’s just … using it up for fixing clothes?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sir,” replied Marchand.

“Well, anyway, explain it to me like I flirted with going into physics or engineering. I had a college course or two under my belt five years ago,” said Perry.

“The primary material used in my construction was CoCrMo alloy with additional titanium and vanadium,” said Marchand. “Anything involving that material is essentially impossible to work with, sir, given the nanites have relatively limited energy available to them. I am still reviewing the data from our ‘conversation’, sir, but it appears that the nanites are made from a combination of materials which are far, far weaker: catoms and MOFs. Would you like an explanation of those terms?”

“No, it’s fine,” said Perry. “So the gaping hole in the chest, that’s just not going to be fixed?”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” said Marchand. “Other materials are easier to manipulate, but still require significant energy which the nanites can only provide by way of their death.”

“Alright,” said Perry. “Not great. Can you have them do the repairs that they can do without having to use up more of the mass?”

“I have already done so, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry took another look at the armor. It didn’t seem any better. But when he looked closer at the damaged arm, the interior of it seemed like something was different. It still wasn’t airtight, and it was a definite weak spot, but maybe it would serve its purpose.

“Two cameras have been fully repaired, and some of our power woes have been fixed, though the microfusion reactor is still in need of servicing once we return from the battlefield,” said Marchand. “Additionally, I was able to reconnect certain lines of communication to the distributed network, restoring some of my computation.”

“Oh,” said Perry. “I was thinking that you were sounding better.”

“Quite, sir,” said March. “I believe myself to be operating at roughly eighty percent of offline capacity at the moment.”

“But you’re saying that there’s no way for us to hold up our end of the bargain?” asked Perry. “No way for you to unlock some secret self-replication protocols?”

“I shall endeavor to find a solution, sir, but I do not believe that success is on the horizon,” said Marchand. “I have only convinced the nanites that we are friendly. They seem to have been programmed with the understanding that they would interface with foreign computer systems. I would not say that I have ‘hacked’ all that much, sir.”

“Alright,” said Perry. He allowed himself a sigh. “You know, I’m getting tired of sleeping in you.” He stretched out. The meager temple breakfast was ahead of him. He’d found himself hungry most days, and was trying to deal with it, because things were bad enough without him asking for seconds. The fact that he was almost a foot taller than Maya and got the same amount of food was like a popcorn kernel stuck in his teeth, an annoyance that got more annoying the longer it went on. “I’m off to get food, thank you for the good news.”

“It was mostly bad news, sir,” said Marchand.

“Any repairs at all are good news,” said Perry. “Even if we’re going to need to wait for a better world to get you ship-shape.”

Breakfast was tea, a single egg, and flavorless biscuits. Perry had been impressed by the food overall, maybe just in comparison to what was on offer in Teaguewater, he only wished that there were more of it, and more meat. He’d have killed for a continental breakfast, if only to gorge on some bacon and sausage. He ate the egg slowly, trying to let the taste linger on his tongue, but when he was finished he thought he could have eaten another dozen of them. They were soft-boiled and marinated in something sweet and salty, giving them a tan exterior.

Perry fumbled his way through the morning exercises, trying to keep his feet in the right place, the angle of his elbow correct enough that no one said anything. He felt like he was still making a poor show of it, but the other students, the ‘real’ students, had been at it for months and sometimes years. He tried not to feel too bad about his awkward incompetence.

The exercises led into sparring, and Perry felt a bit of relief when he was paired with Maya. There had been no repeat of that first day. He’d been careful when training with the other students, trying his best to use the techniques and styles he’d been taught, silent and stoic about every hit he took and every victory he’d won. They’d all been victories, of course. He was too strong, too fast, and had every advantage over these men and women aside from training. The training hadn’t been enough to close the gap.

“First time fighting each other since the big battle,” said Maya. “You without your suit, me without my armor.” She cocked her head to the side. “Wanna make it interesting?”

“We only use the Moon Gate techniques,” said Perry. “No other powers.”

“Duh,” said Maya. “I’ve been good.”

“Interesting how?” asked Perry.

“Bet on the outcome, best two of three,” said Maya.

Some of the other students spoke during sparring, rather than remaining totally silent, but he didn’t imagine their conversations were anything like this. The alienation from the other students was difficult, the language barrier impossible to get through. Perry knew only a handful of words, because no one was trying to teach him, and when he tried to use those words, it often ended in confusion, or in someone repeating the word back to him to correct his pronunciation. That had never helped.

“Stop focusing so much on them,” said Maya. “They’ll never like you, and they don’t matter.”

“Rude,” said Perry.

“The longest I’ve ever been in a world was six months,” said Maya. “Long enough to care about the people, not long enough that it was a gaping wound in my heart.” She got into a fighting stance, a passable impression of the one that they’d been learning, though Perry could instantly tell that it wasn’t up to snuff compared to the other students. He couldn’t have said what was wrong, exactly, but he knew from looking at it that it wasn’t what they’d been shown. “Maybe we end up caring about these people in the long run, however many weeks it takes for the other guy to show up. I don’t know. But in the end, we go off to other worlds, and we leave this one behind.”

Perry followed her lead and got ready to fight. It was the Silver Fish Stance, a foundational technique of Moon Gate, so low level that it was barely even a technique. Supposedly it was reminiscent of the undulating movements of a silver fish swimming through water, but Perry wasn’t quite buying that. It seemed more similar to Tai Chi to him, though his knowledge of martial arts was limited to watching MMA matches a few times with friends. He’d looked it up on Gratbook, obviously, but the history of martial arts was different. There was no judo, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Krav Maga, and those were just the ones that Perry could actually remember from his world. Gratbook was also pretty light on the practical aspects of any of them.

Maya went for a strike first, and Perry brought his arm up in defense, as they’d been shown. She smacked him anyway, not pulling back, and he winced with pain.

“You hit hard,” said Perry.

“Duh,” said Maya. “You already knew that.”

“No powers though?” he asked.

“There are some powers that just become who you are,” she shrugged. “Things I can’t exactly turn off. Same goes for you, wolf-boy.”

She came at him again, this time with a kick that was meant to flow from the shifting of the stance, a basic attack that looked natural when the master did it but awkward for everyone else. Maya’s wasn’t up to par, and Perry blocked with his leg, again as they’d been shown.

“Maybe it’s the armor that’s been holding you back,” said Maya. “I hear it’s a coward’s tool.”

Perry went on the attack, trying the Lunar Wave, a punch that was supposed to be preceded by an upward motion of the fist before striking out. It went against Perry’s instincts, and felt like it worked against the mechanics of the arm, but he’d seen how people of the second sphere fought, and was willing to put his full effort into these weird techniques if it meant that he could have a fraction of their power.

Maya tried to do the block they’d been shown, but she didn’t quite meet him, and he ended up punching her in the tit.

“Ah,” she said, wincing. “Well, you just made a mistake, because now it’s serious.”

“It was supposed to be serious this entire time,” said Perry. He worried that they had been talking too much, not following up successful strikes, but the other students sparred like this sometimes, trading hits, never allowing the other person a chance, exactly, but not fighting with the battle fever of an actual life-or-death situation.

“No bet then?” asked Maya.

“No bet,” said Perry. “If you want something from me, you’ll have to ask, like a normal person.”

He’d been cautious, watching what the other students were doing, trying to follow their leads, keeping his head down. He had four fingers and a thumb somewhere in his guts, and that was more than enough excitement for him until they found the other thresholder.

Maya punched him when he was glancing. She was doing a recognizable Shattered Moonlight, a punch that wasn’t quite a punch, and it smarted, though that was more because she was strong than because she’d done it right. When Perry stumbled back, she came at him with a kick, swinging her leg high for Heavenly Silence Kick, but he was so much taller than her that it struck against his chest rather than his head.

He was tempted to grapple her, to force her to the ground where he could beat on her, but that wasn’t how things were done at Moon Gate, at least not so far as Perry had seen. Their style included throws but no grappling, nothing done down on the flagstones, and no attacks against opponents who were down. Even when the sparring was more serious, they let each other get up. Kicking someone when they were down seemed like it was an invaluable technique to Perry, something that should be practiced, but maybe civic karma prohibited it, or this was just more honor stuff.

If someone was trying to kill Perry, he would have absolutely no compunctions about stomping on their head as soon as they were downed. Ideally though, he’d have his sword, and end them that way. Conversely, it would have been nice to learn some things about how to survive if he’d been downed, but if they taught that at Moon Gate, they hadn’t gotten to that part of the curriculum yet.

Maya was playing by the rules, and waited for him to get to his feet.

“You know, I’m thinking that we’re kind of screwed when the other guy shows up,” said Maya. “We need strategies, leverage, and for you to not be so shit.”

“I was distracted,” said Perry. “Plus two of my three powers aren’t with me right now, and the third isn’t fit for primetime if there are innocents around.”

“Innocents,” said Maya with a roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, innocents,” said Perry.

“Soldiers in training,” said Maya. “Guys who would do the same thing that Lingxiu did without a second thought.”

“I wish we could talk to them,” said Perry.

“We can,” said Maya. “Just transition to second sphere, learn how to bend language to your will, and that’s all it takes.”

She kicked at him, almost lazily, and Perry unleashed the tension that had been building in him as they circled each other. His own kick was faster, more decisive, and with his weight behind it, the Silver Fish. His bare foot landed before hers, hitting her inner thigh, which knocked her down on her ass. She scowled at him and popped back up to her feet.

“You said it was serious,” said Perry, which was as close to an apology as he was going to offer.

She didn’t reply, and instead tried the Wavering Willow, but the mechanics of it were all wrong, and it landed against his left pec with all the force of a weak slap. When she moved back to get out of his reach, he tried the same move back on her, to much greater success. His hand stung, but she went backward, ending up in a heap on the ground, clutching her chest.

When she got to her feet, there was murder in her eyes, the last trace of goodwill and banter seeming to have evaporated. Perry halfway expected that she would use her powers, do something rash like blast him with light or summon her needle sword. From what she’d said, it was just a very specific form of telekinesis, not the semi-intelligent movement like his sword could do, but she kept it in a place where it could be drawn in a hurry, even when practicing ‘without’ their equipment. He knew precious little about her powers.

Instead of the outburst he’d feared, she put her anger and frustration into the sparring, channeling her power into the attacks they’d been shown, all attention that had been elsewhere now focused on attack and defense.

Perry held her as best he could, and they had a wordless fight for what felt like an eternity. It was a better form of sparring than he’d experienced before, a rush of stances and moves, connecting motions, that was more useful than the awkward sparring he’d done against the other students. She matched him in terms of power, easily, in spite of the difference in size, and she was faster than him, if only just. Against another thresholder, there might be all kinds of disadvantages he would face, and he tried to frame it in those terms, as though he wasn’t just trying in this particular style in order to fit in, but to gain something for future battles, real battles.

Li Xinyue came over to them and complimented them, repeating the compliment for the benefit of the students, along with some commentary that went untranslated. Perry was grateful for that. It was the first time anyone had given him words of encouragement.

When noon came, Perry retreated to his room after having grabbed a bowl of food from the dining room. It was a compromise, as he needed to be inside for the arcshadow.

To Perry’s surprise, Luo Yanhua was waiting for him in his room. That set him on edge, but March was still there, still seemingly unharmed. The AI had orders to be silent unless speaking directly to either Maya or Perry, and had strict orders to follow only those requests or commands that came from Perry.

“I need to get into the armor,” said Perry.

“Does that require your full attention?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“No,” said Perry. “But if it’s serious, then you might want to pick another time. I’ll be distracted.”

“I have only some questions,” said Luo Yanhua. “Matters of technique.”

“Go ahead,” said Perry. He set his bowl aside and began putting on the armor, something that he was getting plenty of practice with.

“Your food will grow cold,” said Luo Yanhua.

“I think that’s just how lunches will be for me,” said Perry. “I have to have the armor on during the arcshadow, and if that’s lunchtime, I can’t be eating.” It was possible to eat in the suit, but it required specially prepared liquid meals that had come in disposable pouches. Those were long, long gone. “I’ll hope for later lunches, I guess.”

“You would change during the arcshadow, without that armor?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“I don’t actually know,” said Perry. “I don’t know whether any of these three moons is full enough to trigger a transformation. But since there’s a risk, I have to be in the armor, which takes ten minutes to put on and another five to take off. I asked Shan Yin, and he said there’s no cellar, no place that can guarantee that I don’t have moonlight.” He was getting the boots on as he said this.

“We could test it,” said Luo Yanhua.

“I don’t want to maim anyone else,” said Perry. “I especially don’t want to injure one of the other students. They wouldn’t be able to stand a chance against me.”

“I am not the only one curious about your nature,” Luo Yanhua replied as Perry snapped the greaves into place. “Alone, I fear that your other form would be strong enough to injure me, especially if you are immune to moonlight, or primary form of offense. Together, I believe we could hold you back.”

“Or someone could get hurt,” said Perry with a sigh.

“You travel worlds, yes?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“I do,” Perry said. It felt like a trap.

“You will need to know what makes you transform,” said Luo Yanhua. “If you are a man who becomes a wolf rather than a wolf who has become a man, you will need to harness the beast within you, hold his anger in check.”

Perry frowned. “Now?”

“Tomorrow,” said Luo Yanhua. “Additionally, I would like to speak with you further, in confidence, during the quiet hours.”

Perry didn’t like that at all. “I don’t want to jeopardize my standing by doing something untoward. I was told — by you — that total silence was expected.”

“I have my own room,” said Luo Yanhua. “There is a door, which locks, and we will keep our voices low. It is permissible, but only because I have built goodwill.”

“And … why?” asked Perry. He had put on the chestpiece, the arms, and only had the helmet left. “Why not just discuss whatever needs to be discussed now?”

“Your position here is delicate,” said Luo Yanhua. “People will know that I invited you to my room during the quiet hours. It will be taken as a sign of my faith and trust in you, and the desire to have you settle in with the ways and means of this temple.”

“Ah,” said Perry. “Politics.”

“Not as such,” said Luo Yanhua. “But if that helps you to understand, all the better, so long as your understanding is not tainted by the poor comparison.”

Perry nodded, though he didn’t really follow. She had a way of speaking that still grated on him, but she was their primary point of contact, and the other teachers hadn’t really engaged him in conversation. He wasn’t even sure that she was a teacher, given that she hadn’t led any of the training and was an outer disciple rather than an inner disciple, a distinction that hadn’t been explained to him in plain terms.

He was going to ask, but Luo Yanhua slipped from the room, and Perry was left to his own devices — or device, rather, as he needed to finish getting the armor on.

There wasn’t much to do while the arcshadow passed. Marchand was an incomparable piece of software with all kinds of functions, and had been loaded up for the long haul through multiple worlds by a woman that Perry had really gotten along with … but it was a static collection. After so many months, he felt like he was looking at the home screen of Netflix, scrolling through a bunch of things that he’d either watched or decided not to watch, spending more time on the picking than the watching. And it was all so strange, of course, even those programs and movies that were meant to be timeless. There were a hundred references that he didn’t get, things he’d have to pause and ask March about. Some of them were pop culture, but many were deep culture, things that Perry was sure that he’d never have given a second thought to if he’d lived in Richter’s world.

So instead of looking through the catalog again, Perry spent the arcshadow doing his feeble attempts at spying.

They were feeble only in the sense that they had so far not borne fruit. Marchand had plenty of microphones, and Richter’s specialty had been in audio, which meant that the temple was under near-constant surveillance. Microphones were also not, by their nature, high power devices, so Perry had instructed March to capture all audio, packing it away into the vast hard drives — audio was not, by its nature, very difficult to store, especially after March had processed it.

The problem was that all this information was mundane and useless, not to mention that it was in the wrong language. The people of Silver Fish Temple didn’t speak all that often, but they did have private conversations, and March had been recording them all, mostly in the hopes that with a large enough corpus it would be possible to brute force translation. Marchand claimed to be not quite powerful enough to do that, and requested network access in order to get more computing power, but Perry was holding out hope that he could cajole the AI into doing it somehow, or at least building up a dictionary of terms, even if full, accurate translation was out of reach.

Marchand had recorded every conversation that Maya had with the second sphere people. He’d done this without being asked, and when Perry had realized it had happened, he felt a bit bad about it. He had chosen not to listen in, though the temptation was there, just in case Maya was planning to stab him in the back and stupid enough to discuss that with people they’d only just met. If this world ran on cosmic karma, it was possible that spying would have a penalty, and that was enough for him to think better of it. Besides, he didn’t think that he was cut out for spy games, not when he’d have to lie to his supposed ally’s face.

There were little dramas within the temple, and Marchand was keeping Perry informed of them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were a number of liaisons between the male and female students, usually carried out after the quiet time, when there was a small bit of freedom in the schedule. There weren’t that many places to go on top of their rock, and fewer still that offered privacy, but there were at least three couples regularly met, usually with soft voices and chaste kisses. Perry hadn’t prodded further than that.

Lingxiu was one to watch, in part because he’d become an instant enemy. Perry did listen to those conversations, but without knowing the language, he could hear only the overtones. Often Lingxiu would speak with anger, only for the other person in the conversation to speak calmly and cool him down. That this happened many times was a sign that Lingxiu wasn’t getting over it, which Perry thought was pretty fair. Mostly, Perry was glad that chomping down on some fingers wasn’t being held against him by anyone else, but it seemed as though that was because Lingxiu was seen as having stepped out of line.

Maya was still pissed off with him after lunch, giving him the cold shoulder. That energy had been good when they were sparring, but it was less good while they were looking at the moons and meditating. She kept giving him dirty glances when they were supposed to be feeling the energy of the moonlight upon their skin. While Perry didn’t feel like he was getting a lot out of any of it, it certainly didn’t help that Maya seemed to take the sparring personally. Maybe it was because they were more or less evenly matched.

During the quiet hours, Perry left the temple. It was one of the few times that was allowed. He had his sword in hand, but left the armor behind, mostly because he’d seen too much of it recently. He did need to test it out and make sure that March’s fixes had been good ones, but freedom from the temple was more important. As for protection, his plan was to run away from anyone that looked at him funny.

He flew through the air, which he hadn’t done all that often sans armor. Whatever else there was to say about the Great Arc, the views were incomparable, and the natural splendor of the Green Snake Valley made him yearn to explore it. The giant rocks that stuck up from the wide valley were well-regarded by its people, and each of them did have either a temple like the Silver Fish Temple or at least a holy site that people would make pilgrimages to. Perry stayed well away from those, given that they were the most likely places for the second sphere people to show up.

The valley was home to two different sects, each of which operated under the authority of the kingdom, their fates tied with it. Moon Gate held the downriver portion, a larger area that led to an inland sea, while Worm Gate largely held the northern end of the valley. Maya thought it likely that the other thresholder would show up there, and Perry agreed. That would instantly put them on an oppositional footing, and Maya seemed to agree that thresholders often showed up on opposite sides of ongoing conflicts.

Perry thought he had the lay of the land pretty well, though he’d need to go out with Marchand some time and get a proper map, or possibly fly up the drone if that wouldn’t call too much attention to himself or somehow violate the rules of the temple. Green Snake Valley was long and winding, cultivated in many places by small farming communities but otherwise wild, bamboo and gnarled trees.

It was good to recenter himself. The temple life was already taking a toll on him.

When Perry returned to his room, Maya was waiting for him, a serious look on her face.

“We need to talk,” she said. She went into his room without another word.

Maya sat down on the bed in Perry’s room and looked up at him with a frown. “Sorry for being a jerk about sparring.”

“Oh,” said Perry. “Yeah, no problem. I hadn’t expected an apology.”

“That’s really not the way to approach an apology,” said Maya. “To say ‘oh, hey, you’re apologizing? You?’”

“I mean, I didn’t think it was anything to apologize over,” said Perry. “You get punched in the face, you get fired up about it, it’s no big deal. Thanks anyway though.”

“I’m new to the ally thing,” said Maya. “Actually, just really new to the ‘fighting an ally’ thing. Plus this whole place is making me feel impotent.”

“Second sphere blues?” asked Perry.

“We’re thresholders,” said Maya. “Putting people in their place is kind of our whole thing. There are very clearly people who are wildly out of line, and we are very clearly the ones meant to stop them. It’s clear cut. But here, we’re under the thumb of people we can’t hope to beat, and they’re terrible more often than not. The unpaid labor just for the hope of being a student here, the casual beatings, the superiority, it’s — not something that we can do anything about, at least not yet.”

“It grates,” said Perry.

“Yeah, damn right, it grates,” said Maya. “And sparring was … I don’t know, at least there I could punch someone and lay them out, and know that I was strong and powerful. So being on even footing with you didn’t feel great, I guess.”

“It’s fine,” said Perry. “I get it.”

“Thanks,” said Maya. She popped up off his bed. “And I’ve decided that I’m going to tell you about the other worlds. Mastermind to henchman. A monologue that will probably take us a couple days given how little time we’ve got to ourselves. But dinner is coming up, so I guess this is what you get.”

“I might have a solution for after lights out,” said Perry. He went over to Marchand and removed the earpiece, then handed it over to Maya. “It’s for communication. No need to press it or anything, March handles everything, just talk to him if you need to.”

Maya stared at the earpiece. “You had this the whole time? We could have been talking? I could have had access to your machine?”

“Yeah,” said Perry. He pointed at it. “But that earpiece is irreplaceable without a civilization that has some advanced plastics and microchips, along with a bunch of other things I don’t know about, so I’m very careful with it.”

“Fair,” said Maya, grudgingly. “Then tonight is the night.” She grinned at him. “Get ready for a story.”

He was going to listen intently, and try to find the time for his big ask.