Red Dust Part 6

Lee laughed. The trick wouldn't work twice.Pemba frowned, stuck the knitting needle inside the sleeve of his robes, pulled out Dorje's silver wand. He pointed it at Lee, who felt an icy worm squirm in the pit of his stomach.--One thing I can't stand, Miriam remarked, is fighting at my own funeral. Unless I'm the one doing the fighting.Monkey's drumming suddenly s.h.i.+fted tempo, from a slow soft tapping to a more insistent rhythm. He uttered a series of soft yelps, then a humming noise. It was a tune the King of the Cats sometimes played: "Sympathy for the Devil."Suddenly, everything seemed to go into slow motion. The viruses had built lines of communication to Lee's muscles and to his senses that worked at the speed of light, not sound: now he was using them. He plucked the silver wand from Pemba's hand and threw it away, and ran full tilt at the altar.The two old monks turned, b.l.o.o.d.y hatchets raised. Lee easily dodged Dorje's graceful slow swipe and slammed the heel of his palm into the monk's nose, smas.h.i.+ng it flat and driving bone fragments into his brain. Nangpa's hatchet came down as Lee swung Dorje's body around: the hatchet clopped into its back. Monkey's drum bounced off Nangpa's head with a hollow thud. The monk staggered and dropped the hatchet into the ruin of Miriam's dismembered corpse.Lee hesitated, and Nangpa grabbed the hatchet in a wild swing that nearly eviscerated Lee. Things were back to normal speed again. Monkey was shaking his s.h.a.ggy head, poking a long forefinger in his ear.A burning pain pierced Lee's shoulder: he yelled when Pemba pulled out the knitting needle. Black shadows flapped overhead as Pemba stabbed at Lee again. Lee managed to kick Pemba in the knee and the monk fell down.Strong wings beat about Lee; there were ravens everywhere, settling on the altar, on Miriam's corpse, on Dorje's sprawled body. Nangpa was crawling over the rocky ground RED DUST.

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towards the cave, a raven flapping at his neck and pecking at his shaven scalp.--Kill them! Kill them all! Quickly! Quickly, Lee! Something's going wrong...Lee pulled up a flat rock and staggered across to Nangpa.

The monk's pale shrivelled face turned to look at Lee, who felt a spasm of physical revulsion. He dropped the rock to the ground instead of on to Nangpa's head, pushed the old monk over with the toe of his boot. Nangpa fell slowly, instages, curling up like a shrivelled spider.--Do it Lee! Do it now!"I'm not what you want me to be!"The cry came from somewhere deep inside Lee. It had been building all his life, all the time he had been indebted to his great-grandfather. It was the store of all the shame and loss of face, its fragile membrane of deference, self-effacement, a misguided sense of duty, finally broken.

"I'm not what you want..."--BUT YOU ARE, YOUNG HAN.The voice came from the same place inside his head as had Miriam's.--YOUR FRIEND WAS SUBTLE, BUT NOT SUBTLE ENOUGH.Monkey shuddered and stiffened on the other side of the altar. His face was locked in a rictus snarl. Something was looking through his eyes, looking at Lee. Something that spoke to Lee inside his head.--HOW INTERESTING THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY IS. YOU WILL.

MAKE A FINE SERVANT, EVEN BETTER THAN THE HOMINID SERIES.

PERHAPS THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL THESE.

YEARS, ALL THESE CENTURIES.Lee ran.He made the stairs at the back of the cave, fell around a whole turn, picked himself up and heard Monkey's feet slapping above him and ran on down, banging from side to side.

He was halfway across the dusty hall when he dared look back, saw Monkey loping after him and ran on, pus.h.i.+ng prayer wheels out of his way, raising clouds of red dust. His breath burned in his throat.

96.PAUL J. MCAULEY.--YES, YOUNG HAN. YES. COME TO ME. COME TO ME.

A dozen low doors led off the far end of the chamber. Lee chose one and turned right and left at random as he ran down the narrow branching corridor. Or so he thought. For the corridor ended in a darkened room and Lee ran straight through it into the Great Hall.

--WELCOME, said the voice in Lee's head.

The canopy had been reset above the statue of Yamantanka the Terrible. Lee s.n.a.t.c.hed a pole from it again as he ran down the aisle.

Monkey loped out from shadows to one side of the great golden Buddha. He pressed his palms together, then hurled himself at Lee. Before Lee could raise his weapon he was crushed and lifted up, his face pressed into the coa.r.s.e pelt that covered Monkey's barrel chest. Lee got a hand under Monkey's chin and pushed. They fell backwards against one of the yak-b.u.t.ter candle oceans. The bowl tipped, splas.h.i.+ng molten b.u.t.ter and flaming wicks. Monkey sprang up, screaming and chattering, brus.h.i.+ng at the little flames that clung to his pelt.

Drenched in hot b.u.t.ter, his clothes smouldering, Lee saw his chance. He only had a moment, and knew he must not make a mistake.

--YOU CANNOT HURT ME WITH THAT SILLY LITTLE WEAPON,.

YOUNG HAN.

Lee swung the pole.

The ancient wood was as hard as iron. It rang against the cylinder which housed the undead corpse of Master Norbhu.

Gla.s.s starred and the shock s.h.i.+vered the pole to flinders.

Lee stepped back, raised his foot, and kicked at the starred gla.s.s. It broke.

Fluid spurted and the corpse sagged in its net of fine wires. Connections broke in brief constellations of snapping sparks. Overhead, all the electric lights went out. Perhaps only a chance current or a final spasm raised the corpse's chicken-claw hand, but Lee thought it was something more.

Like everything in the lamasery, the corpse had been a slave to the true master, the ancient computer which Miriam had RED DUST.

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tried to subvert. Miriam had been wrong to suggest that the old master of the lamasery had lost all but his limbic functions.

Something had remained: he had scratched at the gla.s.s, begged to be set free. And Lee had freed him, and now Miriam was truly dead.Monkey lay on the floor, red pelt pulled into slick points by clotting b.u.t.ter, singed to the hide in half a dozen patches.

Lee helped him to his feet, and the simian servant came up with docile grace. Lee found a b.u.t.ter lamp and had Monkey lead him to the dead, dark kitchens. He took what he needed, then found his way back up to the surface.

Twenty-one.pemba was waiting in the shadows in the cave at the head of the stairwell, but ,Lee had half expected that.

He grabbed the old monk s arm and twisted it until the hatchet clattered to the rocks. He let it lie there; he'd had enough of weapons.Pemba sat down heavily. He was bleeding from nose and ears, and two b.l.o.o.d.y tears streaked his cheeks. Monkey had to help him walk. Nangpa was dead. He had been under the thrall of the computer longer than Pemba, and the shock of the broken connection had been too great. His body lay near that of Dorje; ravens had already pecked out their eyes and tongues.Lee did not entirely trust Pemba, but he could not leave him for the ravens. He and Monkey took turns helping the half-comatose monk along, but progress was slow. They were only halfway down the narrow green valley that dropped away from the tabletop plateau when night fell.Lee lit a fire, as he had been about to do when the monks had come upon him. Monkey vanished, came back with half a dozen ice mice and a russet-pelted rock hare, and a handful of dark, odorous wild garlic bulbs. He lay the corpses and the garlic on a flat stone and shuffled backwards, sat in a half-squat at the edge of the dancing firelight. Two pinp.r.i.c.ks of reflected fire shone beneath his heavy brow; his flat wide nostrils snuffled as he watched Lee skin and clean the hare.

The hare's carca.s.s took a long time to roast and came out 98.RED DUST.

99.half-raw, half-burnt. But, taking alternate bites of meat and pungent garlic bulbs, Lee could have eaten ten times his share.Monkey tried to feed Pemba, but the monk wouldn't eat.

His eyes were filmed with white. His cheeks had sunken and the lines around his eyes had deepened, like cracks in drying mud. The skin of his hand, when Lee took it to feel his pulse, was dry and cold, loose over brittle bones. His pulse was a rapid feeble flutter.The computer had done more than rewire his brain, Lee thought. It had kept all the monks alive long past their natural span. He wondered just how old Pemba really was. He had talked of snow, but except at the poles, where no one lived, snow had not fallen on Mars for at least two centuries.

And how old had Dorje and Nangpa been?"I'm sorry, young Master," Pemba said, startling Lee, who told him to rest. But Pemba wanted to tell his story. "I left the mountains because I killed a man, and I became a roving cowboy and killed another. I sought to become a monk to cleanse myself of blood-debt before the wheel of my life turned, but the G.o.ds saw to my punishment. I was on my way to the capital when I rested in this little valley, and was taken by Dorje and Nangpa. Master Norbhu had just died.

Long before then the Kailas lamasery had been abandoned by all but its computer, and what had once served the community of the lamasery now gathered a community to itself, at first to save the lamasery, but later to save itself. It became the master, but without heart, without Buddhism. It was a spider, brooding in its web, its poison working in its bound victims to keep them neither dead nor alive. Our hearts darkened, our eyes were its eyes, our minds its mind. When my people came, young Master, Mars was a wilderness of rock and dust, without breath or heart. My people made it breathe; my people gave it life. Every rock and stone is holy, for they have been changed by the quickening of the world.

The heart of my people, their soul and their lifeblood, is Buddhism. It sustained them through the hard years when Mars turned green, and only one child in ten lived. But when 100.PAUL J. MCAULEY.

the deserts flowered and the Han came to take what they claimed to be theirs, my people lost heart, and the monks of many lamaseries lost discipline, and abandoned their places. Still, they said that one day the Lord of Light, the Buddha of the Future, the Maitreya Buddha, would step out on to the face of Mars. I had forgotten that, until now."It took Pemba a long time to say this, and when he had finished he did not speak again, but turned his face to the shadows beyond the ring of firelight.Monkey left a charred haunch by Pemba, like an offering, and swallowed the ice mice one by one, skins and all, like furry grapes. Lee shook out the cloth he had taken, a gorgeous brocade which had been the cloak of a snake-haired demon, wrapped himself in it, pulled down the hood of his chuba, and fell asleep.It was very easy to sleep, and there were no dreams.

Twenty-two.H.e woke at first light. A faint frost mantled the brocade cloak and frost tipped every blade of gra.s.s in the little . meadow. The sound that had woken him was Monkey slapping earth with his big bare feet, making a keening sound as he rocked Pemba.The old monk was dead. His dry, shrunken corpse could have been dead a hundred years. As Lee gently took the body from Monkey, the shoulder of the valley fell away from the face of the sun and the air was filled with light.Lee helped Monkey cover the body with rocks, and covered the rocks with sandy soil and strips of turf. Jackals would dig it out before long, but the gesture was entirely human. Monkey stamped down the turves and made obeisance to his dead master, and then he and Lee set off down the valley.

101.

Twenty-three.M.onkey loped ahead of Lee in ever widening circles that day. They climbed the domed hill that blocked .the entrance of the hidden valley, and headed north into the chaotic terrain beyond.This was the land which had fed the huge river which had carved the Red Valley in lost ages before man had come to Mars. Confined aquifers, sealed above by thick, permanent ice, sealed below by self-compaction, had built up high pressures which had at last burst forth in head zones. As melt.w.a.ter discharged in vast torrents, the land above the aquifers had slumped and collapsed, a self-perpetuating process that had ended only when the hydraulic gradient had been reduced.

If Mars was to live, the floods must come again.Lee and Monkey trekked through a maze of long dry valleys that lay between low hills which ran in irregular shoals in every compa.s.s direction. Dry scrub grew on the flanks of the hills. Creosote bush and scrub oak; twisted desert pine with papery bark and a salting of live leaf buds like vivid green sparks; tarweed, chaparral pea, jumping cactus, cheat gra.s.s. The valleys were jumbled mazes of huge boulders, or parched tongues of alkaline salt flats broken only by tufts of soldier gra.s.s.A thin cold wind knifed across the valleys. Monkey did not seem to notice it, but Lee was glad of the chuba he had taken, a gown with wide sleeves made of heavy brown wool.

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RED DUST.

103.He wrapped the hood close around his head, for all the world like the dead monks he had left behind.The silences of the desert landscape of Mars, hardly touched by the skim of life, helped cleanse him of guilt. He was learning to control his rewired nervous system, and the King of the Cats and his music was clear and close as he walked.That night, Lee took shelter in the weathered skull of an archiosaur. One of Cho Jinfeng's failed experiments had been the creation of animals that under Mars's low gravity had grown bigger than any creature that had ever lived on the Earth. But the archiosaurs had not been able to adapt to the changing climate of Mars. Ice mice and other small mammals had feasted on their eggs, and within a century they had died out.The skull was half sunken in sand, tilted sideways like a bony galleon beached on a dry seabed. It had been etched by sandstorms and stained by iron oxides. Gra.s.ses made a mohican crest along the top of the cranium. Lee camped in the half-buried circle of an eye socket. He piled a bed of dry gra.s.ses in the channel which had held the optic nerve and built a fire of juniper wood so dry and old it was almost fossilized, built it so high that sparks flew into the starry sky like birthing galaxies.Monkey sat at the edge of the fire's flickering shadows; that night he brought no food. Once or twice when Lee looked up Monkey was gone, but the next time Lee looked he was there again as if he had never been away.But in the morning Monkey was gone for good. Lee performed t'ai chi exercises to rid himself of the frosty stiffness of the night, trampling the warm ashes of his fire as he made the slow, flowing forms.As he walked that day he kept glimpsing Monkey's rufous body at the edge of his vision, far off and moving fast. But when he looked it was nothing but a kit fox, or a tuft of frost-burned soldier gra.s.s, or the flash of sunlight against some far chiselled cliff face.All that day, Lee walked with a diminis.h.i.+ng sense of Mon- 104.

PAUL J. McAULEY key's company, and when he made camp that night he knew he was alone at last. Except for the sound of the King, and the myriad viruses that coursed through his blood, each a word waiting to be spoken.

Twenty-four.T.he yak had fallen down a scree slope into a deep little creva.s.se. As Lee watched, it scrambled halfway up the slope, hoofs striking sparks, until it could climb no more. It stood s.h.i.+vering as its legs slid apart on loose stones, and then it rolled back down and bounced to its feet. It trotted up and down at the bottom of the gully, then tried the slope again, and again stopped halfway up and rolled back down to the bottom.It was close to sunset, that time when the flying moons were brighter than the sun, and the temperature was falling fast. Lee glimpsed a shape lurking amongst boulders on the other side of the gully, took a stone and lofted it, saw a dire-wolf slink away from the clatter. Come nightfall, the yak would have its throat torn out; by morning, nothing would be left but b.l.o.o.d.y bones.The yak tossed its head and looked at Lee with mournful eyes, as if fully aware of its fate. It had a s.h.a.ggy coat of black hair down to its knees, wide forward-curving horns, a long face with a white stripe down the muzzle. There was a big bra.s.s ring through its nose, and red ribbons plaited into the bush of its long tail.Lee eased off his pack, untied the length of rope that belted his chuba, and crabbed his way down the scree slope.When he reached the bottom of the slope the yak cantered forward and tried to knock him over so it could gore him with its sharp-tipped horns. But after he slipped the rope 105.

106.

PAUL J. McAJLE through its nose ring it became docile, and he was able to lead it straight up the scree slope, pulling hard whenever it stopped.Lee stumbled over the edge out of breath, and as he turned to haul the yak the last few meters, something launched itself from shadows beneath a tumble of boulders.

The yak bellowed in terror and made a run for it, tail in the air. Lee was dragged on his belly over hard stones until he remembered to let go of the rope. He got to his feet with blood in his eyes from a cut on the bridge of his nose. The dire-wolf growled a dozen meters away, a ruff of coa.r.s.e hair raised around its humped shoulders, its ears flat on its long skull. It must have sneaked around while Lee had been rescuing the yak, and must be desperate, too, to even think of attacking a man.Lee backed away, step by step. The dire-wolf followed, flowing like water. It favored its left front leg, which had probably been broken and healed badly. Lee threw a handful of stones, but the dire-wolf dodged each one and turned back towards Lee, its eyes like yellow lamps. It was between Lee and his pack, which was where he'd set the big broad-bladed kitchen knife when he'd unbelted his chuba.Then something cracked past his ear, and the dire-wolf'shead exploded.Lee turned so quickly he fell over. Atop a crater ridge a kilometer away, a pony and rider were silhouetted against the red sun. The pony reared on two legs, and then it was galloping down the ridge. Lee barely had time to find his knife before pony and rider were upon him in a cloud of red dust"How you doing?" said the cowboy.He leaned on the front grip of the high, square saddle ofhis bay pony. A short-barrelled rifle rested in the crook of his arm. With his free hand he pushed up the brim of his black felt hat: a lean dark weathered face, with bright blue eyes and a white smile, a week's growth of blond beard, long red-blond hair tied back with a leather thong. Despite the sunset chill, his leather vest was open down his hairy chest.

RED DUST.

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Lee carefully set down the knife and bowed, and started to express his thanks.

"No need for that," the cowboy said. "I'd hope you'd do the same for me." He was called Redd--it was not his real name, of course, but most who rode the dusty ranges had one reason or another to lose or forget their real names. He was helping ride a herd to the capital.

Lee introduced himself. "I also have business at the capital.''

"You want to try and ride that yak back along with me?

Maybe we can get you a real mount at the camp."

"Pardon me?"

"The yak you rescued," Redd said, with exaggerated patience.

"I do not think that would be very suitable. It is not my place to make a suggestion, but I notice that your saddle is very capacious..."

"Gee, do you Han always have to be so d.a.m.ned formal?"

Lee felt his face heat. He had been talking to Redd as a master talks to a servant, for Redd was a Yankee, and that was how he had been taught to treat Yankees. He said, "I'm sorry. It is not my place. But I admit your rifle makes me nervous."

"This little thing?" Redd raised the weapon over his head, spun it twice, and plunged it into the sheath that hung at his mount's withers. All this before Lee could draw a breath.

"Don't mind me," Redd said. "I've been out on the range so long I've forgotten any manners I might have had. You're heading for the capital, you say? Well, we're shorthanded since old Stinkfoot was trampled a week ago. There was this dust storm?"

Like every Yankee Lee had met, Redd had a habit of ending everything he said with a rising inflection, as if constantly unsure that his perception of the world was shared by anyone else. Well, it had been taken from them after all, and their failure turned into a victory, however temporary.

Lee said, "You offer me a job?"

"Take it or leave it. If you take it you can lead the yak 108.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.

back or ride it, it's all the same to me. You want to walk it's north by northwest, about three klicks or so?" Redd pointed, aslant the setting sun. "You do want to walk, I won't wait on you, but the yak'll know the way. Unless it falls into another gully. It's kind of dumb, even as yaks go."Lee didn't stop to consider how much choice he had. For you earned your keep in the high plains or you died, and although he could live off the land for a few weeks, he knew that he would grow weaker by the day, and that it would take more than a few weeks to walk to the capital.The yak hadn't run far, and was grazing on a patch of moss it had scrabbled up from the sandy soil. It let Lee get close enough to grab the rope which hung from its nose ring, and then it was easy. Lee put two fingers in the yak's sensitive nostrils and twisted hard, his shoulders against the beast's flank. It went down on its knees, and Lee jumped astride it, clinging behind the hump of muscle over its shoulders. The yak got up, puffing like an indignant dowager."Not bad," Redd said, and spat a squirt of brown saliva.

"Now let's see how you ride."

Twenty-five.T.hey followed the trail left by the herd: tufts of soldier gra.s.s munched to the ground; dried pats spotting the trampled sand, big fierce black beetles already at work on them, scurrying this way and that with their loads of dung.Lee told Redd a little of his story, glossing over Miriam's part. He didn't want everyone to know that he was carrying a cargo of valuable fullerene viruses. Besides, he hadn't enough breath to tell even half of what had happened to him. The yak bounced him around even over level ground, of which there was not much, and his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were rhythmically hammered between the yak's ridged back and his own pelvis.Redd heard Lee out, then said, "I'd keep quiet, if I were you. Especially about the bit with the monks. Even if it's true...""I don't need to lie!""So you found a lamasery hidden since Mars was changed, with the original monks...""They were all really old, but I don't think any of them were original.""These guys, centuries old. They kill your friend, feed her mind into their computer, dismember her body. You kill two monks and the half-lifer and escape with the help of an ape-man.

The other monk disintegrates before your eyes as soon as you get out of the place."

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PAUL J. McAuLr."It wasn't exactly like that," Lee said.

Redd shrugged. "I'll be quiet."

"Good. Some of the guys are kind of religious."

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Even if he was a Yankee, Redd was like the cowboys Lee had seen in the markets of small danweis: compact, muscular, taciturn men who wouldn't haggle over the prices of the trinkets they sold.

You heard that they fought duels to the death, that they hunted runaways from the danweis for sport, that they were the sc.u.m of Mars.

Night fell, hard and sudden, but there was enough starlight for Lee's enhanced vision to show him a patchy infrared landscape of green light and deep shadows.

Clades of viruses, spinning through his blood, climbing his nerves. Turning him into something else. Into what Miriam had been, perhaps; and perhaps they'd make him as long-lived as his great-grandfather and the other Ten Thousand Years, although that was little comfort when he didn't know where his next meal was coming from.

At last Lee saw the glow of the cowboys' fire, small and fierce as a star fallen to the wide, wide surface of the world.

Yaks, their long faces like burning skulls in Lee's enhanced sight, were tethered by their nose rings to chains staked amongst heather and trampled gra.s.s. They snorted and stirred restlessly as Lee and Redd rode towards the fire at the centre of their concentric circles.

"This is it," Redd said.

Boxes and baskets of woven gra.s.s were scattered over the ground. There were a few rough shelters of tarpaulin or blankets draped over wicker frames. A black dog barked at Lee's mount; it was tied to a stake and wore a ruff of red wool.

As for the cowboys, there were a round dozen of them, all men, mostly wearing chubas over denim s.h.i.+rts and trousers.

They were all smaller than Lee, but he didn't doubt that any one of them could pull him limb from limb in a moment. Firelight showed faces seamed and tanned as hard RED DUST.

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as saddle leather, coa.r.s.e black hair greased back into braids tied with tags and coloured ribbons--the tags were chips of silicon circuitry.

Their leader was an old Tibetan who called himself Hawk.

While Redd told him how he had found Lee, Hawk took Lee's face in his h.o.r.n.y, cracked hands and held Lee's gaze with eyes like black bright currants sunk in the creased baked dough of his face. He had a big belly, and long white hair that straggled halfway down his back. After a long minute, he speared a pair of gla.s.ses from a breast pocket and strung them over his ears and nose. The lenses were little round mirrors, and they distortingly reflected Lee's face as Hawk peered at him.

Half the cowboys crowded up behind Hawk; the rest hadn't bothered to leave their places around the fire. One of the onlookers said, "You think we need this yellow-faced boy scout?"

"You be quiet, White Eye," Hawk said. "I'm thinking it over."

"They smell funny and Spock the critters," White Eye said.

He smiled at Lee. Half his teeth were missing; the rest were blackened stumps. His right eye was capped with the frost of a cataract--a common complaint amongst cowboys, who spent most of their lives out in the ultraviolet-drenched sunlight.

"Nothing personal you understand," he added.

"Steal too," someone else said.

"He'll ride with us," Hawk said, and put away his mirrored spectacles.

"Aw, Hawk..."

Hawk put an arm around Lee's shoulders. "He interests me. And we need a replacement for Stinkfoot, and you all know what they say about the Hah. We can trust him, you think, Redd?"

Redd shrugged.

Hawk told Lee, "You'll get a daily wage, let's call it twenty yuan. No share in profits, but you can hardly expect that."