The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

immerser seems to suggest to you is a neutral and impersonal pronoun, one that you instinctively know is wrong – it’s one only foreigners and outsiders would use in those circumstances. ‘Older sister,’ you repeat, finally, because you can’t think of anything else.

‘Agnes!’

Galen’s voice, calling from far away – for a brief moment the immerser seems to fail you again, because you know that you have many names, that Agnes is the one they gave you in Galactic school, the one neither Galen nor his friends can mangle when they pronounce it. You remember the Rong names your mother gave you on Longevity, the childhood endearments and your adult-style name.

Be-Nho, Be-Yeu. Thu – Autumn, like a memory of red maple leaves on a planet you never knew.

You pull away from the table, disguising the tremor in your hands.

*

Second Uncle was already waiting when Quy arrived; and so were the customers.

‘You’re late,’ Second Uncle sent on the private channel, though he made the comment half-heartedly, as if he’d expected it all along. As if he’d never really believed he could rely on her – that stung.

‘Let me introduce my niece, Quy, to you,’ Second Uncle said in Galactic to the man beside him.

‘Quy,’ the man said, his immerser perfectly taking up the nuances of her name in Rong. He was everything she’d expected – tall, with only a thin layer of avatar, a little something that narrowed his chin and eyes, and made his chest slightly larger. Cosmetic enhancements: he was good-looking for a Galactic, all things considered. He went on, in Galactic, ‘My name is Galen Santos. Pleased to meet you. This is my wife, Agnes.’

Agnes. Quy turned, and looked at the woman for the first time – and flinched. There was no one there, just a thick layer of avatar, so dense and so complex that she couldn’t even guess at the body hidden within.

‘Pleased to meet you.’ On a hunch, Quy bowed, from younger to elder, with both hands brought together – Rong-style, not Galactic – and saw a shudder run through Agnes’ body, barely perceptible, but Quy was observant, she always had been. Her immerser was screaming at her, telling her to hold out both hands, palms up, in the Galactic fashion. She tuned it out – she was still at the stage where she could tell the difference between her thoughts and the immerser’s thoughts.

Second Uncle was talking again – his own avatar was light, a paler version of him. ‘I understand you’re looking for a venue for a banquet.’

‘We are, yes.’ Galen pulled a chair to him, sank into it. They all followed suit, though not with the same fluid, arrogant ease. When Agnes sat, Quy saw her flinch, as though she’d just remembered something unpleasant. ‘We’ll be celebrating our fifth marriage anniversary, and we both felt we wanted to mark the occasion with something suitable.’

Second Uncle nodded. ‘I see,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘My congratulations to you.’

Galen nodded. ‘We thought…’ he paused, threw a glance at his wife that Quy couldn’t quite interpret – her immerser came up blank, but there was something oddly familiar about it, something she ought to have been able to name. ‘Something Rong,’ he said at last. ‘A large banquet for a hundred people, with the traditional dishes.’

Quy could almost feel Second Uncle’s satisfaction. A banquet of that size would be awful logistics, but it would keep the restaurant afloat for a year or more, if they could get the price right. But something was wrong – something…

‘What did you have in mind?’ Quy asked, not to Galen, but to his wife. The wife – Agnes, which probably wasn’t the name she’d been born with – who wore a thick avatar and didn’t seem to be answering or ever speaking up. An awful picture was coming together in Quy’s mind.

Agnes didn’t answer. Predictable.

Second Uncle took over, smoothing over the moment of awkwardness with expansive hand gestures. ‘The whole hog, yes?’ Second Uncle said. He rubbed his hands, an odd gesture that Quy had never seen from him – a Galactic expression of satisfaction. ‘Bitter Melon Soup, Dragon-Phoenix plates, Roast Pig, Jade Under the Mountain…’ He was citing all the traditional dishes for a wedding banquet, unsure of how far the foreigner wanted to take it. He left out the odder stuff, like Shark Fin or Sweet Red Bean Soup.

‘Yes, that’s what we would like. Wouldn’t we, darling?’ Galen’s wife neither moved nor spoke. Galen’s head turned towards her, and Quy caught his expression at last. She’d thought it would be contempt, or hatred, but no – it was anguish. He genuinely loved her, and he couldn’t understand what was going on.

Galactics. Couldn’t he recognize an immerser junkie when he saw one? But then Galactics, as Tam said, seldom had the problem – they didn’t put on the immersers for more than a few days on low settings, if they ever went that far. Most were flat-out convinced Galactic would get them anywhere.

Second Uncle and Galen were haggling, arguing prices and features – Second Uncle sounding more and more like a Galactic tourist as the conversation went on, more and more aggressive for lower and lower gains. Quy didn’t care anymore: she watched Agnes. Watched the impenetrable avatar – a red-headed woman in the latest style from Prime, with freckles on her skin and a hint of a star-tan on her face. But that wasn’t what she was inside, what the immerser had dug deep into.

Wasn’t who she was at all. Tam was right; all immersers should be taken apart, and did it matter if they exploded? They’d done enough harm as it was.

Quy wanted to get up, to tear away her own immerser, but she couldn’t, not in the middle of the negotiation. Instead, she rose, and walked closer to Agnes; the two men barely glanced at her, too busy agreeing on a price. ‘You’re not alone,’ she said in Rong, low enough that it didn’t carry.

Again,