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“You can’t send me back,” Liu Xichun said. He could hear his voice trembling, the Dixing accent coming through in the way he normally suppressed no matter what. It didn’t matter now. “Please. Not now. Not yet.”
“You know you have given me no choice.” The Envoy spoke in Dixinghua; probably just the fact that Liu Xichun was sticking to Haixinghua was another item in the column of his sins, but he couldn’t make his mind switch languages.
“You can’t!” Feeling like an idiot from an old drama, Liu Xichun fell to his knees, braced his fists on the ground. “Lord Envoy, I’m begging you, please, not yet! Do you want to compound my crimes by making them pointless?”
There was a long pause while Liu Xichun wondered if he should press his forehead to the ground as well. His pride militated against it, but this was a stupid time to be worrying about pride.
“Explain,” said the Envoy at last, three harsh syllables.
Liu Xichun sucked in a long breath, let his accent do whatever it wanted, and went for it. “The experiment would have taken years otherwise—it’s a very, very slow process. That’s the point, it’s so slow nobody cares about it when they build anything, but people live in slow time, there are still going to be people living in those buildings five years or ten years or fifty years from now, and it’s going to matter when the materials give way too soon!” He gulped for breath. “So I—just localized—I made it happen. I sped up the time, just there, not outside my lab, I swear! I wanted to show them results now, so they can fix it before it’s too late.”
Silence.
“Lord Envoy, you don’t know Haixing! You can’t just tell them—the city council, the big building firms, the architects—they don’t care, they won’t listen. You’ve got to have documented results. If I go to them saying, I am a Dragon City University lecturer in materials science and my experiments have found that the materials in your design are—”
“Enough,” said the Envoy, and Liu Xichun bit his tongue and shut himself up. He risked a glance upward, trying to read hope or despair out of the stark jawline and the light eyes behind the black mask, and could see nothing he understood. Looking at the Envoy made him feel like a Haixingren.
“Reproducibility,” said the Envoy, and Liu Xichun choked on air.
“What?” he wheezed, half thinking it was some Dixinghua word he’d forgotten or never known.
“Your experiments will be quickly discredited when they are found not to be reproducible within the same time span. Did you have no plans to address this point?”
Liu Xichun felt suddenly as if he was back in his M1 year, finding out that grad school was far less forgiving than undergraduate classes. (Or back in fifth grade, dazzled by the unfamiliar light everywhere and the incomprehensible Haixing accents, homesick and overwhelmed but also excited.) He pulled himself together. “Ultra-small-scale experimentation enabling faster progress, use of concentrated reagents—I am a scientist, you know! I have a whole list of explanations ready.”
And the Envoy smiled.
Liu Xichun tried not to let his jaw fall open. The Black-Cloaked Envoy smiling shouldn’t be a thing that could happen, but there it was: the neat mouth turned up just a little at the corners, faint crinkles showing around those startling eyes. Liu Xichun collected his breathing and tried not to smile back like a complete idiot.
“Lecturer Liu Xichun,” the Envoy said, equal weight on every character. “Never use your power outside your lab. Never use your power in the presence of any other person, Haixingren or not. Never tell anyone what you are.” The smile had faded. “Finish your experiment and present your results. Then call for me and I will come. I will make my decision then.” He paused for what seemed like forever, while Liu Xichun blinked away light-headedness and tried to assimilate what he was being told.
The Envoy said at last, “Dixing is in need of scientists too, you know.”
“But the University,” Liu Xichun mumbled.
“I know,” said the Envoy, and he did know, it was there in his voice—and the way he’d known about reproducible experiments, and—
Liu Xichun shook his head hard, and got carefully to his feet. The Envoy’s robes, perfect as if carved out of obsidian, made him feel a little ridiculous in his jeans and his old Dragon City University Materials Science Dragon Boat Team T-shirt. “From one scientist to another,” he said, experimentally, “I give you my word I’ll do as you’ve said.”
The Black-Cloaked Envoy gazed steadily at him for another long timeless moment—and Liu Xichun knew from time. “From one Dixingren scientist to another,” the Envoy said, “I accept it.”