Red Dust Part 13

"My G.o.dhead tells me that it is superst.i.tion. No one can know the future, for the fabric of the universes blurs into a myriad possibilities from moment to moment. Yet it is true that we are going to Tiger Mountain. I want to believe that you cured the woman, that you will save the world. I want to believe that the deed will be so great that it echoes up 200.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.and down the corridors of time. If those ancient prognosticators caught those echoes, then we have already won.""The monkey held the world," Lee said, "yet the tree held the monkey. I wonder what it means?""The point of those symbols is that they mean many things. Too many things, perhaps. Why have you stopped?"The street had opened on to a big square with white three-or four-story houses around it and a central fountain, its basin dry as a bone. It was the Square of Two Thousand Martyrs, and Lee recognized Hawk's house straight away, because a pair of yak horns was mounted over its gate.

Forty-two.T.he wrought-iron gate was twice as high as Lee, with scenes of herding life cunningly woven into its bars.

At his touch, the lock clicked and the gate swung back.

Lee, followed by Chen Yao, walked through the archway into a courtyard where a small fountain played, a bubbling pulse of water that rose and trickled down a cone of s.h.i.+ngled tiles.

Lee bathed his gas-burned face. The water stung like liquid fire before it soothed him."I don't think this is a good idea," Chen Yao said nervously, looking around at the courtyard.Geraniums grew thickly in large earthenware pots. Their bright red blooms seemed to float in the gloom, and filled the courtyard with their dusty scent. Balconies rose up four storeys to a gla.s.s ceiling; banners hung down from their bal.u.s.trades like tongues."He owes me money," Lee said. "We'll need it.""We need to get out of the city. First we cure the sick, and then we become beggars. At this rate I'll be an oldwoman by the time we reach Tiger Mountain.""Hush. Listen."A woman was singing somewhere, a song in a language Lee had never heard before. She was singing her heart out, drowning in waves of orchestration. It wasn't rock'n'roll, yet it pulled at Lee's heart all the same.Light shone from an open door on the far side of the courtyard.

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That was where the music came from.

The room beyond the door was high-ceilinged, wood-panelled.

Thick carpets lapped the floor, m.u.f.fled Lee's footsteps.

The light came from a big lamp behind a couch where Hawk lay, propped by cus.h.i.+ons as he sipped smoke from a water pipe. The room smelt of a voluptuous combination of sweet hash smoke and crme de menthe.

"Come in, Lee," Hawk said. He seemed not at all surprised, and not at all drugged. "Sit down. I'm pleased to see you."

He made a languid gesture. Narrow cones of light dropped from high above, spotlighting two stools. The music faded to a whisper.

Lee said boldly, "I came to get the money I was owed."

"Oh, all in good time," Hawk said.

"My friend and I, we're setting off on a journey."

"I know. That's why I asked you to sit, because I want to talk to you about it. That was quite a show you put on."

"Oh. You know about that."

"Every commercial channel was showing looped tapes of it before they were pulled off the air by The Little Bird's vigilantes." Hawk laughed. "Wei Lee, I shall tell you why the government troops didn't fight back after your.., performance.

They were all wired up, and The Little Bird pulled their plugs. He hit the command center. Only the officers were left. How does it feel, to have started a revolution?"

"Perhaps I've ended one."

"Perhaps... but The Little Bird is neither a Sky Roader nor a conservationist. No, he's an isolationist: Mars for the Martians. He has no power base amongst the Ten Thousand Years, only popular support, and soon enough he'll be destroyed by the conchies, just as they destroyed the Sky Road-ers.

You know, I met The Little Bird many years ago. His eidolon, of course, not him personally, but the eidolon was real enough, not those projections favored by the rest of the Ten Thousand Years. A great shambling thing, steel and chrome and black rubber roughly in the shape of a man's skeleton, with The Little Bird's face bobbing in a television RED DUST.

203.set up where its head should be. They say the eidolon has ripped apart a hundred or more people, enemies of The Little Bird and those servants who failed him. He is a first-generation Martian, the last. They say his body is a garden of cancers, shrivelled like a bad apple, the result of radiation exposure from the Long Crossing. But you are still standing.

Please sit. You are my guests, after all. I'll be thought a bad host."Lee sat, but Chen Yao stood behind him. Her head was exactly level with his.Hawk looked at her. "I don't know your young friend.

From a fis.h.i.+ng family, by those clothes."Lee started to explain, but Hawk held up a hand. "I know about the wretches that fisherfolk call avatars of the G.o.dhead, when it's nothing but a rash of viruses caught from their fishy helpmates. Viruses that babble away inside them mindlessly. It is not true insight."Chen Yao said with contempt, "You only think you know."

"Child, I've forgotten more than you will ever learn. Wei Lee, the city is a place full of traps for the unwary. But at least you seem to have lost Redd. A good herder, but an untrustworthy man."Lee said humbly, "I owe him my life."It seemed he owed his life to many people. To Great-grandfather Wei and to Guoquiang, and to Miriam, and the fin, and little Chen Yao. When had it ever been his?Hawk laughed. "The Yankees don't understand face debts, Wei Lee. Do you know the music I was listening to when you came in?"Lee confessed that he didn't."It was written by an Italian, a kind of proto-Yankee. An addiction of mine, Capitalist Western opera. It is even older than your King of the Cats and his rock'n'roll. One of my trail bosses introduced it to me when I was still as wet behind the ears as you--in the old days cowboys sang arias to the yaks, not Hank Williams. This particular opera was written by the perfect master of the form, Giacomo Puccini. It tells of the cruelty of a princess of the Imperial city of Old 204.

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Beijing, who will marry any man of royal blood who can answer three riddles set by her. But although she has had many suitors, all have failed and have been beheaded, for the Princess believes that to take the life of any man who desires her is to avenge the dishonor suffered by an ancestress ravished and killed by barbarous Tartars centuries before.

But it is a prince of the Tartars who solves the riddles and who convinces her, through love, to end her revenge. A silly little tale, eh, Wei Lee, although of course it is beautifully told. It says almost nothing about the human condition, but volumes about Yankee misunderstanding of the Han."

"Does it tell you anything about how we misunderstand the Yankees?"

"They are a violent, romantic people. They have no concept of history, yet seek personal eternity in all they do. That is why they failed so gloriously to conquer our world, for they never can unite, never can quench their reckless individuality.''

"And yet we failed, too."

"Everything fails. Against the great cycle of the universe, even the fundamental units of matter fail. All herders know that Mars is dying. Year after year, the ranges shrink, the herds grow smaller. I'm an old man, Wei Lee. I've seen it myself I know that we have had our season."

"The ku li would say that it is only spring, perhaps. The dry season before the rains of summer."

"The ku li are a paper tiger, a convenient illusion which provides an excuse to subject the population to the rigours and restrictions of a permanent war economy. There is no revolution, except in the minds of a few misguided Martians.

We herders live half the year on the high ranges, and yet we see none of the fabled army of the ku li. The anarchists drop subversive literature, but only we profit."

Chen Yao said, "Ask him how he profits, Wei Lee."

Hawk's smile was like a small animal awakening within his neatly combed, silky white beard. He said, "I am many things, Wei Lee. I am Hawk, herd master. And I am also RED DUST.

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Yamyang Norbu, a citizen and householder who must support a wife and eight children and fifteen grandchildren, not to mention platoons of lazy in-laws and their relatives. Many people are more than one thing, or even two. It is the way of people. You of all people must know this.""He hides something from you," Chert Yao said."The wharfs breed liars faster than they breed rats," Hawk said sharply. "Be quiet, little girl."One of Lee's virus gifts was the ability to see in the far red end of the spectrum. It happened unconsciously. He saw Hawk's face bleed into a green mask, with bright patches pulsing on cheeks and forehead. Then he realised that Chen Yao was holding his hand. She said, "Blood always betrays."There was a sound outside. Lee's hearing suddenly selectively intensified. It filtered noise in Hawk's study, the breathing of the three people, their heartbeats. Hawk said something but Lee didn't hear it. He was listening to the electric purr of a motor, voices, the rattle as the gate swung open to admit two people.Something seized Lee from inside. He whirled and smashed a gla.s.s-fronted cabinet with his elbow, with finger and thumb plucked a long spike from the shards. He knocked Hawk back as the old man started to rise, pinned his arms and shoved the makes.h.i.+ft gla.s.s dagger into the folds of skin under his white beard. Lee's hearing was back to normal. Hawk started to speak, and Lee let the gla.s.s slicehis throat a little, so blood ran into his raw silk unders.h.i.+rt.

"Don't kill him, Miriam," Chen Yao said.Lee knew what possessed him, then. Chert Yao had woken her. She was all around him, yet at no point did she touch him. She was there, but he couldn't speak to her.Chen Yao closed the door and turned, quite self-possessed.

She said, "Who did you sell us to, old man?"Lee eased the knife-edged gla.s.s from Hawk's throat. He had cut his own palm slightly. His blood mingled with Hawk's and ran down his arm inside his s.h.i.+rtsleeve."I apologize, Wei Lee," Hawk said, "but business is business.

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is why I invited you here. When I saw you on television, I knew how important you were. Not just some waif possessed by fragments, but something else..."Lee said into Hawk's ear, "You always meant to sell me, but you couldn't do it with Redd around. You got rid of him, and waited for me to come to you."Chen Yao said, "Tell us how to leave safely, old man."

Hawk said calmly, "You could try the servants' quarters.

Through the panelled door behind me, down the corridor to the end. There is no one in the house but me; I sent everyone to the mountains at the turn of the year, when the fighting in the city began. You are very quick, Lee, but if I chose to fight I do not think you could best me.""Then I am glad you choose not to fight," Lee said. He released the pressure on Hawk's arms and dropped the gla.s.s dagger.At that moment the door behind Chen Yao burst open.

Two people sprang into the room. Both were armed with stubby laser rifles. Both were dressed in s.h.i.+ny black one-piece impact suits. One was the Colonel who had sent Lee out into the storm with Miriam, back at the Bitter Waters danwei. The other, impossibly, was Miriam herself.

Forty-three.A.sleek car waited outside the gate of Hawk's house, its tear-drop body shaped from a single sheet of polarized gla.s.s. From the outside, it was a dense reflective black; from the inside, perfectly transparent. As the car sped to the station, scattering bicyclists and weaving around slow-moving trams, its half-dozen swivel chairs seemed to float above the rus.h.i.+ng roadway with no visible means of support.The Colonel and the woman who looked exactly like Miriam Makepeace Mbele sat opposite Chen Yao and Wei Lee with their laser rifles not exactly pointed at them but with att.i.tudes that suggested that it was just as well they didn't have to be."She's not really Miriam," Chen Yao whispered.

"I know," Lee whispered back.

"Quiet," the Colonel said.It was the first thing he had said since ordering the vehicle to move off. The woman hadn't spoken a word so far.

Her s.h.i.+ny black suit was moulded to her slim body with embarra.s.sing closeness. Her eyes were hidden behind tinted gla.s.ses that every so often filmed over: video-shades. Her face was Miriam's, and like Miriam her hair was cut close to her shapely skull, but her skin was not as richly black as Miriam's, more the color of a tea brick. An old, crescent-shaped scar seamed her left temple. Lee remembered that Miriam had told him that she had many sisters, all drawn from the same gene line, mercenaries who were bought and 2O7.

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sold before birth, who took the name of their owners.

He said to the Colonel, amazed that he could keep his voice level, "What is your friend's name?"

"The resemblance is astonis.h.i.+ng, isn't it? She's Mary Makepeace Doe. A freelance. Please, Mr Wei, no more questions.

I don't have the authority to answer them."

"Who does? My great-grandfather?"

The Colonel, Great-grandfather Wei's cat's-paw, shrugged.

He looked embarra.s.sed.

Lee couldn't stop himself. He said, "Him or some other Ten Thousand Years. I know you killed my parents, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

I don't even know your name."

"I have worked for your great-grandfather for a long time," the Colonel said calmly.

Anger burned through Lee's blood. Not because the Colonel had admitted guilt by not denying Lee's accusation, but because it didn't seem to matter to him.

Mary Makepeace Doe hardly seemed to move, but suddenly her rifle was pointed at Lee's left eye. He jerked back and the rifle followed, although the mercenary wasn't even looking at him.

The Colonel said, "I don't know anything about your parents, Wei Lee. I've done many things for your great-grandfather."

"You've killed for him."

"You are still angry at me for what happened last time we met. I understand. But look at it this way: if I hadn't...

helped you, you wouldn't be where you are now."

"Oh. Then I must thank you for making me a refugee as well as an orphan."

The Colonel said in a quiet voice, "You are an important .

person, Wei Lee. What you carry is worth a great deal...

tell me, have you been troubled with strange dreams lately?"

"Only about your death."

The Colonel smiled. "You don't have to lie to me, Miriam.

Or perhaps it has not yet taken properly. No matter. Soon it will all be clear to you."

Lee looked away, although it was obvious that they knew RED DUST.

209.what had happened to him. After all, he had more or less told Hawk the whole story, in innocence.

The car weaved through dense traffic. Suddenly, Lee saw the high roof of the train station, curved like a white hill.

The car slowed, nosing through a crowd packed around a barrier of tanglewire loops stretched across the road.

The people were trying to flee the city. They carried parcels bundled in sheets, televisions, caged chickens, baskets of vegetables or fruit, bicycles, small industrial motors, bubblepacks of biochips, umbrellas, even furniture. Four men supported a double bed, one at each corner. Militia were letting people through one by one or pus.h.i.+ng them aside, seemingly at random. The air was dense with noise that struck through the car's one-way gla.s.s: women screaming at their children; children wailing with fright; men shouting at militia and militia shouting right back, shoving rifles in faces, slapping backs to push some through, chests to push others back. An old woman pleaded with a boy soldier with an a.s.sault rifle, crying and yelling and clinging to his arm, not even letting go when he struck her in the face.

The car slid to a halt in the middle of the crowd and its hatch snapped back: the noise doubled, trebled. The stink of sweat and fear was intense. Mary Makepeace Doe seized Lee's elbow with paralyzing force; he had to follow her through the hatch or lose his arm. He glanced back and saw the Colonel trying to lift Chert Yao out, saw the little girl kick him in the crotch.

And then Mary Makepeace Doe tugged and whirled Lee around, shoved him through the crowd to the gate, sweeping her stubby rifle back and forth to clear the way. The militia waved them through with hardly a glance, and then they were on the concourse.

It was scarcely less crowded or noisy than the road outside.

Mary Makepeace Doe grabbed a handful of Lee's hair, turned his head and said in his ear, "You wouldn't believe how much it cost to guarantee safe pa.s.sage out of the city.

Don't even think about trying to escape," and pushed him towards one of the trains before he could say anything.

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PAUI J. McAtny. vPeople were climbing into dusty carriages through windows as well as doors, climbing up on to the roofs. Pedlars were hawking food, and pa.s.sengers' hands reached starfish-wise through windows to exchange notes for dumplings or glutinous rice cakes. The pedlars' cries sang out above the crowd's roar; beneath it was the stentorian exhalations of the huge black fission-powered steam locomotives. Their exhaust plumes rose straight up into the girdered s.p.a.ce of the high roof like so many pillars.

Mary Makepeace Doe shouldered her way between two pedlars, used the stock of her rifle to dislodge a man who was using the door rail to climb to the roof, and dragged Lee up into the carriage. The corridor was packed with people squatting on the floor amongst their possessions and the compartments were filled with smug bourgeois. The mercenary picked a compartment at random, pulled back the concertina plastic part.i.tion, and told the startled bourgeois family inside to move on, she was commandeering the compartment.

Her voice: that was just like Miriam's. But her Common Language was flawless.

Lee wondered what it must have looked like to the bourgeois, this tall muscular video-shaded woman in skintight black dragging her b.l.o.o.d.y-handed captive. But they were responding to her tone of command, were all getting up, pulling their possessions together. Only one started to protest, a plump smooth-skinned man in an expensive jacket with a dozen little machines hanging from loops. The mercenary put her rifle in the man's face and told him it was a matter of security. He backed away with an amazingly broad smile and disappeared into the goggle-eyed peasants crowded outside.

Lee sat on a dusty plush seat. The mercenary pulled the door shut and slammed down the blinds against onlookers, then leaned at the window and shouted to the pedlars through the sliding strip at its top, throwing a handful of notes in exchange for beakers of tea and wafers of crispy fried bean paste.

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"Eat," she said to Lee, like Buddha to the gra.s.shopper.

Lee sipped hot tea, munched on the wafers. His throat was very dry. The mercenary told him that if he cooperated, everything would be fine, something Lee hardly believed for a moment.