Red Dust Part 17

"We all are that. Or I hope so."

Redd said, "Maybe some day you'll explain all of what's going down." He wore a black and red checked scarf over his mouth and long nose against the dusty wind. The captain262.

RED DUST.

263.

of The Black Dragon was there, too. His hunting rifle was slung over his shoulder; its octagonal barrel stuck straight up a meter above his black felt hat."I'm happy to see you," Lee said, "but if I'm not mistaken shouldn't you be with your s.h.i.+p?""She's standing ready by the elevator cradle," Captain Tsa-tar said. "Our back door, if we need it.""When we need it," Redd said, "and that's soon. Soldier is organizing some of the skimmer crews." He laughed.

"Mostly lecturing them about their moral duty.""The people must understand the nature of the revolution,''

Captain Tsatar said. "Once they understand, they will join it gladly and fully.""Let's hope so," Redd said."We maintained a deep radar watch all night," the corporal said. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he was unshaven.

"Just before I came to wake you two blips lit up, three hundred klicks out and closing fast. We're moving everyone into position, and the elevators have been started up." He gave a fierce grin. "It's always nice to think there's a back door, but I doubt we'll have time to use this one."They started off towards the main square. Redd told Lee what had happened in the night. Less than half of Ichun's citizens had stayed to defend their homes. The rest, and the children and old men and women, had been transported down to the Plain of Heaven aboard commandeered skimmers."There was a deal of trouble over that," Redd said, "and Soldier had to break a few heads. You'd think the crews would be grateful to be allowed on their way."Captain Tsatar said mildly, "You understand little about sailors' pride."Redd laughed. "Soldier said it was what? The reaction of the Little Owners to loss of their only means of oppressing the people.""Soldier's a good man," Captain Tsatar said, "but sometimes he tends to favor theory over practice."

264.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.Redd whispered to Lee, "I wanted Chen Yao to go too.

She wouldn't, of course."Chen Yao said, "My place is with Wei Lee. And although his place is not here, he seems to have made up his mind to stay.""I can't run away from this, Yao."Chen Yao was more angry and more scared than she wanted anyone to know. Perhaps only Lee saw the effort she put into controlling her voice when she said coldly, "You can't save the world a town at a time, either."The corporal said, "Had to put a couple of armed people aboard each skimmer, to make sure refugees weren't thrown overboard at the first opportunity.""That's good," Lee said. He hadn't thought of that, and it suddenly seemed to him that there was so much he hadn't thought of. He was the center of a thousand unravelling threads. It was an exciting, scary thought, and kicked in adrenalin as they came out into the big square.Ichun's main avenue ran straight across the middle, blocked where it entered the square by a sagging web of tanglewire strung between the buildings on either side. Or between their remaining walls, for the buildings had been gutted, holes blown completely through them, flat roofs caved in. That side of the square faced east, and early sunlight poured down the fire lanes, burning on the red banners which flew from every available point. Every sc.r.a.p of red cloth in Ichun must have been commandeered; even the big ginkgoes were decked in red.Trucks had been parked in a semicircle bowed away from the main avenue's entrance into the square. Fifty or sixty people lounged behind this makes.h.i.+ft barricade. Most were civilians, and many still wore masks, which lent them a gay carnival air at odds with the grim expressions of the few soldiers amongst them.The corporal explained to Lee that most of his men were on the perimeter roofs, and Captain Tsatar made his excuses and left for his own sniper's position. He was halfway across the square when two culvers burst out of the air low above RED DUST.

265.

the buildings, shadows against the bright morning sun.

Their wings made a thunderous pulse; Lee saw their belly guns winking but didn't hear them fire. Lines of dust walked across the square. A ginkgo flew into splinters and then a truck blew apart, scattering bodies and parts of bodies amongst flame and terrific noise.There was a ragged fusillade from the survivors, but the culvers had already pa.s.sed out of range. Captain Tsatar had dropped to the ground. Now he picked himself up, dusted his loose trousers, and trotted across the square into the shadowy arcade of a building on the far side. The corporal put on a padded helmet and spoke urgently into its microphone, holding the foam pad against his throat with a finger.Chen Yao was looking up at the sky. "Here they come again," she said.Two black specks in the pink sky: their bulbous bodies and flexing circular wings jumping into clear focus as Lee's sight reflexively amplified. Dawn light burned off their canopies.

They rushed forward faster than the thunder of their wings. Neither Redd nor the corporal made a move to cover, and so Lee stood his ground, too. Redd put an arm around Chen Yao, but she pulled away from him without taking her gaze from the swooping culvers. It came to Lee that most acts of heroism simply spring from embarra.s.sment.As the culvers skimmed towards the tops of the trees around the Governor's house, a brilliant light shot up from the roof of one of the buildings that bordered the square.

For an instant, Lee thought it was a strike from the culvers'

weapons, but then the right-hand culver blew apart, and Lee realized that the light had been a one-shot laser. Disintegrating parts, most on fire, fell in slow trajectories as the other culver stood on its nose in midair, clapped its wings above its canopy, and dropped below the cliff."Well," the corporal said with gloomy satisfaction, "now they know we defected." He paused, his head c.o.c.ked. He was listening to the speaker in his helmet. He said, "Oh, they know, all right. Come on."Redd and Lee trotted alongside him, and little Chen Yao 266.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.

had to run to match their pace. She said, "I hear a distant thunder."

"Cavalry," the corporal said. "This way."

They entered the shade of one of the arcades that lined the square, and cantered up a winding stair lit by sunlight at every other turn from narrow glazed windows. The gla.s.s had been milkily pitted by centuries of winter sandstorms.

A reflexed groove was worn into the middle of each stone step. Lee couldn't stop noticing details all of a sudden. Every moment was suddenly significant.

The stair ended in an open trapdoor. Lee stepped on to the flat roof, where the morning breeze seemed colder and stronger than in the square, the sunlight rawer. Raw gold pouring from the sun's tiny disc, gleaming on the solar panels which, like flowers, had turned towards it, silhouetting soldiers who squatted behind the low parapet bordering the roof.

The corporal offered Lee a pair of fieldgla.s.ses, but Lee shook his head and asked, "Where?"

The corporal pointed.

Virus-enhanced sight brought into sudden focus a line of mounted soldiers stretched across the barren red landscape.

The sun was at their backs as their lithe mounts moved forward at--an inset in Lee's sight blinked a figure formed of black bacilli-like rods--at a steady forty kph.

"Like machines," Chen Yao said.

Lee said, "But they're still people."

"No," the corporal said, "the young lady is correct. This is a crack cavalry unit, and all the soldiers and their mounts will be hardwired for maximum coordination."

Soldiers on the roof and on the roofs either side were firing deliberate single shots.

Little puffs of dust were fountaining up here and there before and behind the line. A warhorse reared up, toppling its rider as it snapped with fanged jaws at a red rose smashed into its scaly flank. A rider slumped sideways, shattered head pumping blood across his mount's withers, and it charged forward wildly, the corpse of its rider flopping like a badly RED DUST.

267.

used puppet. But the line continued to move steadily forward."They'll charge any moment," the corporal said. Lee looked around, but the corporal was speaking into his microphone.

"Keep the fire rate steady when they do. It's a tactic to panic us. Don't let them."Lee found that he was holding his breath. Someone used a one-shot laser and two cavalry soldiers and their mounts vanished in a flare of burning sand. The rest of the line came on inexorably. The corporal said something urgently in his microphone, but Lee didn't hear it: in that moment the charge started.Warhorses leaped forward as one, leaving behind a rising line of dust. Lee's motion sensor read-out blurred, stabilized around two hundred kph. In three breaths the cavalry halved the distance between their line and the edge of Ichun; in the next they started to fire, knocking huge chunks of masonry from outlying buildings. Lee saw several riders stand in their saddles, whirling slings which loosed hornet swarms of micromissiles. Something discharged a swathe of coherent light which burned a roof clean of soldiers three buildings to the left. There was a rising haze of dust and smoke; the riders vanished into it.Lee and the soldiers ran to the other side of the roof just in time to see the last of the cavalry clear the tanglewire barricades with a meter to spare. Warhorses scattered across the square as they charged after fleeing civilians. One grabbed a woman directly below Lee's vantage point, worried her and tossed her aside, a b.l.o.o.d.y bundle. The corporal was shouting wildly, his microphone hanging from his throat. A last rider cleared the barricades; a shaven-headed woman dressed in seamless black leather.Lee recognized her at the same moment her face turned to him. She wore sungla.s.ses that masked half her face, but Lee knew that she had seen him, and he ran for the stairs, instantly kicking into hypermode.

Fifty-four.

'I' ee's body moved faster than his thoughts. Reflex took:.

L him to the top of the stairs before he remembered what Redd had said on The Black Dragon. He swerved andleaped between two soldiers straight over the parapet,s.n.a.t.c.hing a rifle from one of them as he went.He landed on the clay tiles which roofed the arcade that ran the length of the building and let himself roll over theedge. The ground came up so slowly he could turn in mid !.

air and like a cat land crouching on feet and hands. He dida backflip into the arcade's shadow, and an instant later thepaving where he'd landed exploded in stone chips.Lee ran for cover, storing upside-down glimpses of thesquare: warhorses circling left and right around burningtrucks; a tree hit by a stream of gunfire and shuddering intoflinders of wood and leaves; a legless man crawling across thewide avenue, leaving a trail of blood. He reached the shelter ofa stone pillar, looked left, right. Warhorses moving slow as mo la.s.ses. Each leaf and splinter distinct as it fell. The dying manslumping by degrees.A riderless warhorse trotting across the square had to behers. Lee's sight went momentarily infrared as he gatheredhimself, a snapshot in luminous greens that he stored as heran the length of the arcade and drew gunfire; he reversed,and quick tiny things sang viciously where he would havebeen.Lee made himself as small as possible behind another pil- 268.

RED DUST.

269.lar. Every muscle trembled. His skin was on fire as it radiated spent energy. His grip had dented the aluminum stock of the stub-barrelled rifle. But his heart pumped smooth and slow; he wasn't even out of breath. The viruses had rebuilt his muscles to take care of oxygen debt.It took a microsecond to match the infra-red glimpse of the square with triangulation of the gunfire aimed at him: there she was, burning bright on the far side of the square, firing from the hip as she ran for the trucks burning in the center of the square. She was wired for speed, too.Lee gathered himself and ran out into smoky morning light. He dodged and weaved amongst the cavalry with dreamlike ease. He caught the slow-moving arm of a rider as she started to raise her sling, pulled her down and left her behind. Saw dust spurts tracking towards a civilian woman who lay clasping her bleeding leg, and knocked her out of the way. All the time turning his head, snapping in and out of infra-red, short rifle flicking back and forth.But the heat of the burning trucks hid the mercenary's bright trace.Half the cavalry had broken from circling the square and were moving towards the broad avenue that led to the Governor's house. Lee took a breath and ran after them, winding in and out of their hurtling bodies.He had time to see everything clearly: the lather of foam flying from their red, fanged mouths; their rolling yellow eyes aflame like lamps; the motion of muscles under their spotted hides; the intent expressions of their crouching riders.

A warhorse snapped at Lee, but he easily dodged the lazy s.n.a.t.c.h of its jaws and vaulted up behind its rider and ripped out the cables which connected his headpiece to the skin-tight fighting suit. The rider went into tetanic spasm and Lee reached down, gripped the man's right leg, and tipped him out of the narrow saddle. The warhorse bucked violently; Lee sang calming words to it. A dozen strides later, just as the riders around him were beginning to react to what had happened, he jumped down, safe on the far side of the square.

270.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.He looked right and left, infra-red sight piercing rolling dust clouds. A riderless warhorse charged at him, and Lee swerved aside.Then he was smashed to the ground.Mary Makepeace Gaia, hanging from the warhorse's harness on his blind side, had dropped in pa.s.sing and then leaped. Lee reacted by reflex. The viruses took over. His body made the pa.s.s of the Startled Locust and he was two meters away. The mercenary was climbing to her feet and fire was burning his shoulder where she'd cut him.She had lost her sungla.s.ses; a ball of black metal moved in her st.i.tched eyesocket. Lee's rifle lay on the ground at her feet. She kicked it aside, raised her knife.Lee a.s.sumed the posture of the Angry Crane, left foot tucked behind right knee, arms half raised, elbows out like wings.The mercenary laughed and threw away her knife. Then she was upon him.They whirled and kicked amongst warhorses rearing in slow-motion panic. Lee vaulted clear across one to escape Mary Makepeace Gaia's attack and landed in a weaving crouch, the sharp pain of splintered ribs dying away as viruses damped nerves. The edge of his right hand stung where he'd caught the side of her head.She came at him again, but this time Lee ran forward to meet her. They flew past each other, legs scissoring out in a complex ballet. His right foot caught her under her armpit, but she grasped his ankle and twisted. He fell sprawling in dust, rolled from the slow-motion plunging of a warhorse and felt a wind and rolled again so that the mercenary's kick merely bruised his hip instead of breaking his spine.Lee jumped up in a half-squat, right ankle rubbery and feeling as if it had been dipped in ice, ice wrapping his ribs, his hip, a line of ice down his back from the cut, his s.h.i.+rt stuck to him with blood and dust.The mercenary came at him again. Lee dodged amongst the stamping legs of two warhorses as she whirled through the Springing Tiger, the Striking Snake, the Striking Mantis, RED DUST.

271.the Striking Spider. Lee's body countered in a whirl of armsand legs; striking att.i.tudes at blinding speed, they whirledthrough the dust and smoke and carnage in the square, leap .

ing burning trucks, dodging wreckage each flung at theother, dodging bullets. Both sides were firing on them--fortunately, no one thought to wave a laser across thesquare. Twice Lee grabbed weapons from the hapless cavalry,and twice the mercenary knocked them from his hands. Hewas slowly being forced back towards the tanglewire barri cade at the far end of the square.The mercenary feinted left then right as he tried to breakaway. And then she paused. Lee watched her, back in theposture of the Angry Crane but with right foot tucked upbehind left knee. Sweat was just breaking out across hisfevered skin."Not bad for a beginner," the mercenary said. And thenhe was on his back, looking up at her with the pink skybeyond. The iron taste of dust parched his throat."Now you're mine," she said.That was when Chen Yao jumped on her back.Lee rolled away, smashed down a soldier and took his rifle.Mary Makepeace Gaia laughed. She held Chen Yao out infront of her by an arm and a leg. She shouted a single word.It rolled and rattled around the square."Yield!"The rifle hummed and s.h.i.+fted in Lee's hands as it trackedthe mercenary. He said, "So you need me alive.""Yield! I'll spare the little girl."

Lee dropped the rifle and spread his hands. The next mo ment he was on his back again. Mary Makepeace Gaia grinneddown at him and punched him three times, and he couldn't=.

breath, couldn't move, and everything dropped back to normal=.

speed.

"I only need a little piece of you alive," the mercenary'.

said."Spare the girl. You promised." The words were squeezedfrom the vise of his chest."I lied. You get to watch her die. Then I do you."

272.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.And then the mercenary was knocked sprawling. She sprang to her feet and was knocked down again, her right arm shattered. The third shot struck the ground by her head and spun away end for end. Lee glimpsed the captain of The Black Dragon standing at the edge of the arcade's roof, his long rifle poised. The mercenary saw him too, and blurred into hypermode.Lee scooped up Chen Yao and ran for his life.

Fifty-five.

T he Governor's house was aflame from end to end. Cav alry charged around the ruined garden, shooting intothe flames. One rode straight at Lee and he went into''.

hypermode again. With Chen Yao in his arms, he ran downa street lined with gutted shops. At the far end a barricade'.

of crates, furniture and doors had been wedged together. WuLin vaulted its top and sped down the street, meeting Leejust as he slowed down.The surviving leaders of the uprising were making their last stand beyond the barricade, around the elevators downto the Plain of Heaven. Lee watched as a dragon in chainsgaped its jaws wide to swallow The Black Dragon herself,upraised dispersers and masts and all. Links rattled by, eachas thick as Lee's thigh. The sound of draining water mixedwith distant gunfire and the shrill shriek of steam as thecradle closed around The Black Dragon.Redd took Chen Yao from Lee's arms. She was uncon scious, with bruises beginning to show on her forehead andneck. The cowboy was streaked with soot, and one side ofhis face was scorched as red as dust.=.

Different parts of Lee's body began to shudder at differentspeeds as he started to come down from the extended periodof hypermode. Time pa.s.sed in shuddering jerks. He was ly----.

ing on the ground, a sac fixed to his arm, pulsing glucose-saline into his bloodstream. Someone spoke to him, wentaway. Lee replayed it: Redd leaning over him, saying, Hold 273.

274.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.on in there Billy Lee, we're gonna get you out of here soon as we can. His muscles clenched and relaxed, rotating each joint of his legs and arms in turn. His fingers tapped staccato codes.Redd came back. Lee sat up, and almost fainted."Easy partner. Nothing to do now but run away. You might as well lie back."Lee peeled the drained sac from his arm, wiped the spotof venous blood that appeared when its proboscis pulled free.

"How bad is it?"Redd fanned himself with his hat. There was a singed holein its crown. He said, "They cut us in half. The garrison troops are holding their rooftop positions, but they're surrounded.

Whole town's on fire, and all we have are the elevators.''"The best we could hope," Lee said. He listened to the sound of explosions, coming closer like giant's footsteps."You were the last to get through," Redd said. "Chen Yaowill be OK. Hard-headed little girl. Soldier's dead--went to meet the cavalry charge head on. We..."That was when the water in the channel leading to the elevator caught fire.It went up all at once, flapping sheets of fire rising higher than the big cable drums atop the elevator head. Redd and Lee turned just in time to see Mary Makepeace Gaia leap through the flames. Lee jumped to his feet and almost fell down again. Someone grabbed his arm and said, "Let meuse your gift, brother."It was Wu Lin.Before Lee could say anything she kissed him and ran towards the mercenary, silhouetted against flapping flames.

She ran faster and faster, blurring into hypermode: the viruses had already adjusted her musculature and nervous system.The mercenary's right arm was strapped up, but whenshe went into hypermode it hardly seemed to matter. Sheand Wu Lin whirled around each other, but while Wu RED DUST.

275.Lin could match the mercenary's superhuman speed, she had only courage to wield against the other's honed technique.It wasn't enough. The mercenary broke Wu Lin's right arm, kicked her legs from under her, planted a boot on her throat. "Come to me!" the mercenary shouted. "Come to me, Wei Lee, and I swear I'll spare this one!"Lee screamed and started forward, but Redd hauled him around and Lee found that he was too weak to resist. He didn't see the mercenary's killing blow, but he felt it all the same, and shuddered and cried out as Redd lifted him up and tipped him over the elevator's railing on to the white-wood deck of The Black Dragon. Girders arched above the skimmer. Lee took a step forward and almost fell on his face. Redd helped him sit up, then unholstered his pistol."Let's see the b.i.t.c.h bite on one of these," he said.

"Give me a minute...""No time, Billy Lee! Chen Yao said you have to go on. I believe her. Think of us."And then he was gone, and the cradle which held The Black Dragon swung out over the edge. Elevator tracks scored parallel lines down the cliff face, dwindling down to the smooth surface of the Plain of Heaven. Water which spilled the joint of the big lock gates made a distinct falling noise amongst the noise of steam and clank of steam-driven machinery. Lee had trouble keeping things at right angles.

It was as if the world was trying to turn itself out. The air seemed packed with forms, huge and vague.Everything lurched as the elevator started down with ponderous smoothness. Girder work dropped away; huge chains made a rus.h.i.+ng sound as they moved up.For a long minute The Black Dragon dropped down towards the dust sea.Then the culver appeared beyond the bow of the cradled skimmer, matching its fall.Lee dragged himself to his feet, clutching at the rail, saw the pilot sitting in the bubble of its Cyclopean eye. Sailors 276.

PAUI J. McAuIE ran for weapons, but the culver shrugged its wings and shot upwards and something exploded far overhead. The Black Dragon lurched in its cradle and then everything was falling free.

Fifty-six.T.he first time Lee woke, it was night.He was. on his back. His face was masked, and he was peering through little round lenses, looking straight up at the stars. Overlays came and went--sighting lines, vectors, navigational algorithms. Certain stars were bracketed, with figures cl.u.s.tered next to them. Presently he saw that these were moving counter to the great wheeling motion the world made as it continually sank eastward.In all that time he didn't think to move. At last the overlays blinked off and he faded into the vast starry night.The second time he woke, it was like a monitor warmingup.Sound first. The dreamy hiss of dust slipping past a hull, the crackle and hum of dispersers like the white noise of an old-fas.h.i.+oned radio tuned between stations. The creak of rigging, and the metallic crinkling of the sail.A mask was clamped over his face, feeding him air with a rattling hiss. Lee opened his eyes, peered through the mask's round lenses.It was day, crisply warm with the sun a shade off vertical.

He lay in the craft's padded c.o.c.kpit, sheltered by the narrow wedge of shadow cast by the perspective-narrowed triangle of the silvery sail. With three pairs of dispersers slung out on either side--red dust dipping around their black pods, which crackled and spat with induced static--the little craft looked something like a water-skating insect. A water-skater 277.

278.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.with a sail on its back and a stabilizing fin in its belly, and a lost lonely homunculus riding it.

Lee sat up. A voice said, "Well, it's about time, Master. Do we feel at all like talking?"

A stalk rose from a control housing. It terminated in a cl.u.s.ter of sensors, like a machined orchid.

"Or perhaps we're just the strong and silent type," the computer said. Its voice, neither male nor female, was informed by a querulous inflection.

Lee said, "Where are we?" His voice sounded strangely intimate inside the mask.

All around, from close horizon to close horizon, stretched a sea of red dust. The little craft--it was a skimmer's gig--was running with the wind. Gently swelling waves marched across the surface of the dust, each precisely the same shape and height as the next, defined by a narrow line of shadow at its near side. Even as Lee watched, dazed and confused, logy with the weight of consciousness, the sun reached noon. Shadow lines vanished across the bowl of the dust sea. Wave tops were oscillating streaks of slightly brighter red across the glowing red surface, making dizzying moire patterns. A faint spume fumed into the air from each wave crest. Although a transparent s.h.i.+eld curved around the padded c.o.c.kpit where he sat, he could feel wind-blown dust stinging his hands.

The computer gave universal grid coordinates. Lee supposed that his rewiring could translate that into an aereo-graphical position, but he didn't want to call on any of his new talents right now. Virus-stored memory was a pregnant weight in his head, and he didn't think he could stand instantaneous apprehension of the terrible moments after the culver had stooped upon The Black Dragon in its descending elevator cradle He said to the computer, "Make sense of that for me." "We are sailing east by northeast, towards the strait which links the Plain of Heaven with the Plain of the Garden of Eternal Bliss. We've been sailing two days four hours, and estimated time of arrival is in eight days, fifteen hours."

RED DUST.

279.

"Where are we heading?"

"I'd prefer one question at a time. My processing ware isn't all I would like."

Lee said, "I'm sorry," and felt foolish. This was only a machine, after all. He said, "It doesn't matter. I know where we're going."

"Am I speaking to the woman now?"

"You're speaking to me. There is someone else aboard?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking," the computer said, and then Lee remembered Miriam Makepeace Mbele.

The computer said, in a crabby pedantic tone, "I think that it really would be better if I explained..."

"You are taking me to Tiger Mountain."

"Lucky guess."

"Not at all. Is there a way of closing up this c.o.c.kpit?"

"Fresh air is good for you."

"If that means that you can do it, then please do it." The mask was irritatingly hot and close against his face, but if he took it off he'd choke in the dust-filled air.

The transparent canopy slid up around him like the calyx of a flower. There was a rush of air, and he started to fumble with the straps of his mask.

"Please be patient," the computer said. "It is necessary to change and filter the air."

Lee waited.

"It is safe now, but please don't do this too often," the computer said. "My resources are finite."

Once he had taken off the mask, Lee vigorously scratched the weals left by its seals under his chin, around the line of his jaw, at his hairline. The computer said, "I can fix something to eat. My cookery sub-routines are very adept. Pigeon in plum sauce, perhaps, or..."

"Please be quiet. I want to think."

"You've been living on unrefined pap for the last two days," the computer said. "I was only thinking of your health." It sounded offended.