Red Dust Part 10

On the Earth, if all water was frozen at the poles, it would soon melt under its own weight and fill the oceans again. Here on Mars there's not enough water. The balance has to be tipped. The original terraforming was on the right track, but it didn't push the balance far enough. We will, if we can.""It's a hard rain that's gonna fall," the King crooned. He added, "First ice, then fire.""Fire, and then rain. A seeding, and a harvest. Forty days and forty nights, Lee. The first installment of a flood that 166.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.will fill the dry seabeds for ever. Thousands may die, so that unborn billions will live. Otherwise all will die, now and for ever, and Mars will be what it once was."

"This is the Sky Roader path," Lee said. "But the balance requires an average depth of five hundred meters in the seas.

No one can move that amount of water, and even if they could it would kill everyone on Mars when it fell from the sky. Even the Ten Thousand Years didn't try to drop water on Mars, but melt what was already there. Mars needs heat, not water..."

The King said, "You're good, kid. They did a good job on you. Now we're done talking, let's just show you."

"First of all he has to understand..."

The King smiled and snapped his fingers. Miriam made a frustrated sound and spun away from him. Outside the blister, the stars were dimming as if behind a rising mist. Then Lee understood that another scene was bleeding through the starscape: a segment of Jupiter's banded globe, frozen bands of salmon and yellow and white feathering off into complex scrolls.

It hung there for a moment before rising up with terrific speed, although Lee felt no hint of acceleration in the weightless volume of the strange room. They were falling through clouds twenty kilometers deep. Opalescent light streaked all around. It was like being inside a pearl.

Then cloud vanished, and they were floating above a vast brick-red plain--a cloud deck from which great thunderheads boiled up to form improbable mountain ranges of inverted fiat-topped wedges. They formed rough parallel lines that dwindled to the horizon, three thousand kilometers away.

Something small glittered at the same height as the viewing blister, brilliant in the pinkish twilight. The blister swept towards it, and Lee saw that it was like a tinsel pine tree, its size impossible to estimate. In the clear atmosphere it could have been ten meters high and right RED DUST.

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next to the blister, or a kilometer tall and a hundred kilometers away.

The King of the Cats saluted the thing's slow rotations.

Miriam said, "You're such a show off."

The King put on a pair of dark gla.s.ses with chunky metal frames. The earpieces had square cutouts in them. "A showman is just exactly what I am," he said, c.o.c.king a hip and doing a kind of slow swivel about its axis. "I thought the kid should know where I'm coming from."

Lee said, "That's where you live?"

The King said, "Kind of."

"There are thousands of them," Miriam said.

"The mean optimal value is twenty-five thousand two hundred fifty-three. 'Course, it varies by about eight per cent. This is a dangerous environment. Accidents happen all the time..."

Miriam told Lee, "This is one of the descendants of a self-replicating probe the Europeans dropped six hundred years ago to map Jupiter. It replicated all right, and at some time it achieved consciousness. Its owners downloaded a suite of simulated personalities to stabilize it, let it tap into a data bank. He's one of the results. A partial, one part of a consensual hive-mind holographically stored in twenty-five thousand parallel processors."

"It isn't quite like that," the King said, with a self-satisfied smirk. "We're more like a continually reiterated Cantor Set.

You're not even in our dust, Miriam."

Lee turned in mid-air to watch the tinselly construct dwindle against the mountainous clouds. The blister was picking up speed; all of a sudden, the construct vanished to a speck, winked out. Luminous arcs radiated away from the blister, shock waves in the dense atmosphere. Dark red mountain ranges fell away. The blister arrowed through a swirl of vaporous islands, shot into a vast canyon in the upper clouds. Then clouds dropped away, turned into a smog-colored river mixing in great swirls with rivers on either side. The sky was black, and then stars came out. And bisecting the starry sky was a faint interrupted line, flecks 168.

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of curdled light tracing a narrow band that grew less distinct as it grew nearer."That," the King said, "is the beginning of your new world sea, all packaged for delivery."It was Jupiter's ring.

Thirty-seven.T.he blister matched orbits with the ring's jostling lanes: millions of dirty ice nuggets, ma.s.sing from the size of a dust speck to a small mountain, shepherded by the inner moons into a series of arcs that forever poured around Jupiter's equator.Fullerene viruses had been at work on every nugget of ice more than a tonne in ma.s.s. Each had been fitted with a one-shot smart booster that would take it out of orbit and send it falling towards Mars. Lazy skimming pa.s.ses through the atmosphere would fragment and melt the bolides; their water would rain down, seeded with viruses. Viruses that would soak up sunlight and burrow into the permafrost and melt it with billions of pinchfusion processes. Viruses that would float into the high reaches of the atmosphere to manufacture a c.o.c.ktail of chlorofluorocarbons that would absorb across the thermal infra-red spectrum and warm the world.

But before they reached Mars, the bolides would have to evade the laser defenses of the Army of the People's Mouths.

These too had multiplied, and there were more than enough of them to deflect the long slow orbits of the bolides."Someone will have to disable the defense controls," Miriam said. "There are too many weapons to be destroyed, but there is only a single command system.""Problem is," the King added, "you can't just drop a big rock on it. We tried that, but y'all know the defenses can deal with rocks. It works on dust, too. We tried to dust Mars169.

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PAUL J. McAULEYwith viruses fifty years ago, but your Emperor was ahead of us. The defenses saturate s.p.a.ce around Mars with low-power low-frequency broadcasts that destroy uns.h.i.+elded viruses by inductive heating."

Miriam told Lee, "The defenses work too well. The con- chics persuaded your Emperor to design and build them, and he still controls them."

All of a sudden, the King held a pistol grip which flicked out a rod of crackling white light. "Star Wars," he said.

"Only their light sabres have an effective range of fifty thousand kilometers."

There was only one way to disable the defenses, and that was to destroy the command center, which the Army of the People's Mouths had built on the highest point of Mars, in the vast caldera of Tiger Mountain. Lee had come all the way to Xin Beijing, and now he was supposed to turn back and set out eastward. If he and Miriam had not been captured by the monks of the lost lamasery, they might already have completed their mission.

"Or perhaps not," the King said cheerfully. "Now you have the help of what's left of our other agents. At last they become useful."

Miriam had floated across to the bubble's curved transparent wall, clinging with splayed fingertips and watching the braided river of water-ice boulders eternally fall through its...o...b..t. She said, "I'm not the first agent sent down by the anarchists, but perhaps I will be the last. Many others failed; a few survive in a fragmentary way, as virus infections in the descendants of their contacts. As I survive in you."

"They've become G.o.ds," the King said.

"No," Miriam said, "or else that's what I've become. And I'm so much less than what I once was ..."

"Who's to say, babe," the King said. "After all, you walk in the kid the way the G.o.ds walk in their avatars. Oh, I've boosted you up for this, but don't underestimate yourself."

He turned his twisted smile on Lee. "You know what you have to do, kid?"

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"I know what you want me to do. I don't know how.

Please, can you tell me how I must do it?"

"That's the hard part," the King said. "It's hard because it's down to you, kid. You gotta understand that the Earth's Consensus can simulate me. It can foresee any strategy I can devise. I could randomise the choice..." he spun a thick silver coin through the air, which vanished in the same direction the light sabre had taken "... but I couldn't know if the conchies haven't devised contingencies for everything.

It is possible. But you're an unknown variable, kid. That's why we chose you."

"And your parents," Miriam said.

"He doesn't need to know that," Elvis said.

Lee looked at the King, at Miriam. He felt a vast deep urgent sadness. He said, "My great-grandfather had my parents killed. Why did he do that? What does he want from me?"

Miriam said, "You still think that it was a coincidence that I landed where I did? It was because you were there, Lee.

You're a link between us and your great-grandfather, part of a long-standing deal, but you're also something else. Something your great-grandfather doesn't know about. Your mother..."

"He killed my mother! My mother and my father! He shot them down..." Lee couldn't see clearly any more. He was crying. In microgravity, his tears formed fat blebs that clung to his eyelashes.

The King told Miriam, "Hush now. You'll destroy the random variables if he knows too much."

Miriam said in a small voice, "Then let me die."

"No," the King said. "Listen to me, Wei Lee. You'll take that little girl. Chen Yao? You take her with you, now. She is the avatar of something whose powers you'll need. You'll wake up now, but you'll remember. Remember all this."

"Wait!" Miriam said. "If I can't die I need to wake up with him. What I have is worse than death. I need more than flashes, fragments..."

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"It'll get better," the King of the Cats said. "Now wake up, Lee.""No! Wait! Tell me why my parents were killed! Tell me what happened to them when they were amba.s.sadors to the anarchists. Tell me...""Time past! Wake up!"

Thirty-eight.L.ee woke with a start, and almost fell out of the nest of pillows he had made on the throne-like chair. He found 'that he was wearing goggles, and stripped them off.

Weak morning light streamed through the narrow windows of the chapels, dimming the mult.i.tude of flickering b.u.t.ter-lamp flames.The vision was settling inside him, every detail vividly accessible.

He was not at the periphery of some plot of his great-grandfather's after all: he was at the center of something so vast that despite Miriam's long and tangled explanations he felt he had only glimpsed its edges.Lee clutched the heavy material of the brocade gown with both fists. He felt as if he was poised over a great black pit.

Because, despite the goggles that the G.o.ds had put on him while he slept, it could all be some terrible delusional system he had worked up, trying to rationalize what had happened to him. His loss of face at the Bitter Waters danwei, his fugitive life, the sudden desperate sad weight of the memory of the murder of his parents ...He had always loved the King of the Cats, had always hated the slow dying of Mars. And he had dreamed that the King had recruited him to save Mars... that crazy story about Jupiter's ring, about viruses that would melt water, fill the outer skies with microscopic greenhouse gas factories...He remembered everything so clearly! But now that he 173.

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PAUL J. McAuL was awake Miriam had slipped away from him. More than ever Lee wanted her to appear to him: even her previous manifestations could have been nothing more than hallucinations.

Suppose the viruses hadn't transferred her partial personality after all, but had simply damaged his brain?

"I'm not mad," he whispered into the cus.h.i.+on under his cheek. "I won't be mad..."

The little girl, Chen Yao, was curled at the feet of the chair. Only two other G.o.ds remained: an old woman with white hair pulled back in a thick braid, and a stout young fellow in clean but worn work clothes. They both came forward and bowed to Lee, who jumped down at once, embarra.s.sed beyond all measure.

Chen Yao stretched, and said, "What's all this noise? Have you finished talking with your friends?"

Lee said slowly, "I was dreaming. Such a strange dream.

I remember it very clearly."

"Of course you do. You were supposed to remember it."

"You know what I dreamed?"

Chen Yao stretched again, and yawned with the quick unselfconscious reflex of a cat. She looked like any sleepy four-year-old, eyes puffy, hair scuffed up on one side in a roostertail. "I shared your vision," she said. "That is my attribute. I speak with those you carry, with the woman, and with the G.o.dhead."

Lee laughed. If Chen Yao knew, then perhaps it was all true after all! Or perhaps she was as crazy as he believed he might be. A poor crazy little girl wors.h.i.+pped by the fisherfolk as a G.o.d.

Chen Yao said, "Don't be silly. We contain fragments, but you are the avatar of the entire G.o.dhead. You are our saviour, Benefit of the People Lee."

"No," Lee said. "No, I don't know that I am."

The young fisherman bowed again, and said, "The child tells the truth, Master."

"Please! I'm no one's master! I'm not even master of my own life!"

The old woman said, "At seven, I set my heart on learning.

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At fifteen, I was firmly established. At twenty, I had no more doubts. At twenty-five, I knew the will of heaven. At thirty, I was ready to listen to it. At thirty-five, I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing what was right."

"Lao," Lee said, bowing to the old woman. "I am still young enough to have many doubts."

"But you know the will of heaven," Chen Yao said.

"I do?"

"Silly man," Chen Yao said. "Your vision explained everything, of course."

Lee thought that it explained everything or nothing. It was as complete and as fragile as a bubble.

Chen Yao clapped her hands with a curious mixture of childish excitement and hauteur. "Now come on," she said, "we must start our journey! We must go to join our friends!"

Thirty-nine.heG.o.ds returned Lee's chuba, s.h.i.+rt and black jeans.

TThey had been washed and dried and pressed. Lee. found that his money was gone from the b.u.t.ton-down pocket of his s.h.i.+rt, but he did not think that the G.o.ds had taken it. Perhaps it had been lost when the pedicab had crashed (so perhaps the driver had got his fare--and more), or perhaps when he had fallen into the lake.But on the waterfront, at least, lack of money wasn't a problem. Chen Yao simply went up to a street vendor, and the man smiled and handed them bananas sliced and fried in paper-thin envelopes of dough.Munching his breakfast, Lee allowed Chen Yao to lead him along the dockside. Things happened, one after the other, whether he willed them or not. So let them happen, this bright spring morning!Grainy white salt flats sloped away into gauzes of mist that lay low on the black water of the lake. Down at the ends of the kilometer-long jetties, fishermen were preparing their boats for the day's work. Their songs drifted small and clear in the bitter morning air. Oyster farms and kelp racks made rectangular patterns beyond the jetties. The sun still lay behind the worn rimwall mountains, but his light glowed the sky and rouged the mists. Fear was overhead, a tiny smudged crescent riding swiftly to greet the dawning sun.Lee stopped when he saw something break the water out beyond the longest jetty. His attention switched something 176.

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in his rebuilt eyes, and everything else flowed away from the suddenly magnified patch of water.

Lee clapped his hands over his face and fell to his knees.

After a few moments he cautiously opened his fingers. Chen Yao was looking at him. Her face was exactly level with his own. She said, "What did you see?"

"I thought I had something in my eye. It's gone now."

He allowed his eyes to do their zoom trick again, and saw the bulging heads of fins break the surface far out in the black lake: two, four, six of them. One rose chest deep in the water, beaked head bobb. ing. Perhaps it was the one which had saved his life. Lee got to his feet and raised his hand in salute.

"The lake shrinks year by year," Chen Yao said. Fried banana was smeared around her mouth. "Once it was twice as big, and where we walk was under water. These are the new docks."

"I know," Lee said, but Chen Yao wasn't paying attention to him. She was watching the sweep of water beyond the dry salt flats and the ends of the jetties.