Red Dust Part 11

She said, "The fin grow fewer and fewer, for there are fewer and fewer fish for them to eat. Soon there will not be enough for the fishermen and the fin, and there will be war.

The fin know that, and that is why they saved your life, and allowed the other to drown."

Lee discovered that the closer he looked at something, the smaller his field of view became. He looked right into the texture of the netting that a fisherman was folding at the end of the long jetty, at the scars on the man's flexing knuckles. Just an extra step, that was all. He had it under control now.

He said, "These fin, they drowned the fellow that was following me?"

"They did not save him. It was action through inaction, for the greater good. Their viruses prevent them from killing men, which is why they fear war so much. But through inaction they can allow death if it is for the greater good."

178.

P^v J. McAtn.: "Do you know who he was? The man who tried to... kill me."

Chen Yao said seriously, "We think he was a demon. The Ten Thousand Years grow them. Many there are in the Army of the People's Mouths. An army within an army. They kill on order. He would want the viruses that have raised the G.o.dhead in you."

Lee said, "The viruses are real. I mean, they really are rewiring my nervous system."

"It's all real. You must accept it."

Lee asked, "How did you know I was coming here? I mean, you were expecting me."

"The G.o.ds drew you here. The way does not matter, as long as it is the right way." How serious she was, for one so young.., yet of course she was more than a young girl.

Like all the fisherfolk, she carried viruses which allowed partial personalities to be expressed in her, just as Lee carried fragments of Miriam. Lee remembered what Miriam had told him about her gene line, mercenaries licensed to kill for anarchist families whose members could not bear to leave the binding closures of their habitats. Was she a demon or an angel?

He realized it did not matter. He felt a strange calm lucidity.

Even if Miriam's fullerene viruses had rewired him to feel that way, even if they had snuffed his panic the way he might pinch out a candle flame, it still felt right. The con-chie missionaries claimed that the world was only an illusion: who was to say whether one thing was more real than another, whether light was stronger than darkness?

Lee felt Chen Yao's small hand in his. It was warm, and greasy with fried banana. The little crazy girl G.o.d said, "Whether she's a demon or an angel depends on who she serves, of course. She fell from Heaven, so I suppose she must be an angel."

"Earth is in Heaven too."

"Miriam says you have a lot to learn."

"Can you really speak to her?"

"Of course." Chen Yao was calmly matter of fact. "Viruses RED DUST.

179.

are everywhere here, because of the fin. They were infected with strains by Cho Jinfeng herself, and she gave us a translator strain so that we could speak to our helpmates. The viruses have changed since, and so we fisherfolk can become avatars for the fragments of G.o.dhead that have fallen amongst us. But they are incomplete, and you are not."

Lee remembered Miriam's claim that there had been many agents before her, that some survived as fragmentary infections in the descendants of their original contacts. He thought he knew what had caused the mutations in the translator viruses of the fisherfolk.

He said, "Where are you taking me, Chen Yao? You overestimate my powers if you believe that I can walk halfway around the world."

"There are people who will help us. They have been waiting a long time for people like you. The Sky Road was never completely destroyed."

"Miriam said that the ku li would help me. Is that who your friends are?"

"You ask too many questions," Chen Yao said. "Come on, it's this way."

"I have my own idea," Lee said. "You can come with me if you want, but I'm going there with or without you. It won't take too long to get what I'm owed."

"We don't need money."

"Of course we do. We're going out into the real world.

Trust me." He struck off down the narrow street down which he had run last night, and after a moment heard Chen Yao running to catch up with him.

"You'll be sorry," she said. Then, "Where are we going?"

"To the one man who can help me."

"Your great-grandfather is no friend!"

"I'm not thinking of him," Lee said.

So it was that Lee walked through the waking city two paces ahead of a cross young girl who carried a G.o.d st.i.tched into translator viruses inside her own genome. It was as if he walked at the head of a procession.

They walked down wide streets shaded by the two 180 PAUL J. MCAULEY.

hundred-meter-high canopies of dusty ginkgoes. Trams glided amongst flocks of bicycling commuters, but Lee and Chert Yao had no money for trams, not even the least coin for a mouthful of freshly squeezed orange or mango juice that vendors dipped from plastic canisters with steel cups which they meticulously wiped after each customer.

Chert Yao said, "You really are going the wrong way."

Lee told Chen Yao that she could not rely on the charity of her wors.h.i.+ppers.

"They are not wors.h.i.+ppers," Chen Yao said. "I wonder if you understand anything you've been told, Wei Lee."

"Perhaps you are right. But Tiger Mountain is five thousand kilometers away and there is a man in the city who owes me money."

"We do not need it!"

They stared at each other, while pa.s.sers-by moved around them. Lee said, "Tell me everything, Chen Yao."

Chen Yao turned her face sideways to his. "I told you before that you ask too many questions."

"You haven't been told very much. It's all right. I don't know much either. We're two of a kind."

Chen Yao pouted, entirely her age now.

"We'll visit this man, and then we'll find your friends."

"You don't know anything," Chen Yao said again. "I know this city, a little.

It won't take long."

Maps of the city came down inside his head, settling through each other. One was written by the viruses, the other patched from his own memories. He was walking down North Avenue, with apartment houses on one side and the long low white houses of the half-lifers set in a narrow parkland on the other. North Avenue led all the way to the First House of the Emperor, but soon he would be able to cut across the Park of the Central Sea and find Hawk's house. He didn't need viruses to tell him that.

But as they walked on Lee rediscovered what he had long ago forgotten, that walking in a city is far more wearying than walking the untamed landscape. There was no way to establish the rhythm of long strides which ate up territory, RED DUST.

181.

for every few meters there was a fresh distraction: a fat s.h.i.+rt less man standing in a doorway, smoking a cheroot withsuch an air of beneficent satisfaction that Lee could believethat he was the real owner of the city, enjoying watching itwake around him; a policeman with white gloves directingtraffic at an intersection, blowing furiously on his silverwhistle at swarms of oblivious cyclists; beggars sitting in arow under a flowering hedge, displaying various mutilationsand disfigurements; a man laboriously pedalling along atsnail's pace, towing a trailer which carried a square crate astall as Lee; a tram so laden with pa.s.sengers--hanging fromits windows, along its running boards, crowded on to its roofand even clinging to the wedge of its crash-catcher--that itlooked like a heap of people skimming along with no visiblemeans of support.The tram went slowly because there were so many peoplespilling from the wide sidewalks into the road. Somethingbegan to knot itself in Lee's chest. He knew that this wasno ordinary rush-hour crowd even before he reached theborder of the Park of the Central Sea, and saw the soldiers.Some were lined along the park's edge. Many moreroamed the dusty gra.s.s and the perimeter of the big lake,the third biggest body of open water on Mars. Vehicles wereparked everywhere. A culver flapped up from Jade Island, inthe center of the lake. All around Lee and Chen Yao, peoplehooted and jeered.

The soldiers watched impa.s.sively. Despite the density of!1.

the crowd, no one used the sidewalk that ran along the bor der of the park because the soldiers stood on the other sideI.

of it. They were dressed in black leather, carried transparentplastic s.h.i.+elds as tall as themselves. Their faces were masked; .

the masks had bulbous goggles, and complex fairings that swept back and grew into the soldiers' skulls. Things flew out of the crowd at the soldiers--bottles, stones, even the occasional shoe--but the soldiers moved only to deflect missiles with their s.h.i.+elds. The crowd roared when red paint splashed across one soldier's s.h.i.+eld.

Chen Yao tugged at Lee's hand. "You see! You see!"

182.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.

She was close to tears, and that, more than the soldiers or the mob they faced, was what scared Lee."You should have followed me!" Chert Yao wailed.

"Let's get off the street," Lee said, and took her hand.

But when he tried to zig-zag through the crowd to the far side of the avenue he was caught in a swirling current of people that carried him in one direction and Chert Yao in another. Lee fought free and had to dodge a crowded tram that continuously rang its bell as it crept through in the middle of the crowd which swept Lee past the park and spilled out into the wide s.p.a.ce of the Square of Heavenly Peace.It seemed that half the population of the city was already there. People streamed across the wide s.p.a.ce towards the high white walls of the First House of the Emperor. They cl.u.s.tered thickly around the Front Gate, which in normal times would be open to allow entry of pet.i.tioners to the Halls of Requite Interface. But the gate was closed; it had been closed ever since the Emperor had fallen silent, and now its black and white mandala and its twenty-meter-high arch was spattered with red paint. People spilled past it on either side, under the overhang of the wall, which arched above them like a wave frozen in the moment of breaking.

Posters and painted slogans covered the lower third of the wall. Holographs projected luminous ladders of characters above the heads of the crowd, a hundred different variations on the call for truth. Vendors were out and about, crying their wares, and a cl.u.s.ter of makes.h.i.+ft tents was pitched at one corner of the square.Lee caught the arm of a man, excused himself and asked what had happened. The man smiled in confusion and pointed to the sky and hurried away. An old woman shouted at Lee, "The Emperor, young man! The sky radio says that the Emperor is dead!"Lee remembered to switch on the radio which the viruses had built inside his head but there was only a dizzy swoop of static. At the same moment Lee heard someone call out his name.

RED DUST.

183."Wei Lee! Wei Lee!"Xiao Bing ran towards him, silver eyes flas.h.i.+ng in his white face. Elsewhere, a ragged shout went up from people still crowding into the square."The soldiers! The soldiers are coming! The soldiers!"

Fort R.ank after rank of soldiers marched into the Square of Heavenly Peace, fanning out either side of the avenue to form an arrowhead that pointed across the crowded square to the Front Gate. An officer in a black silver-belted bodysuit rose into the air, feet pointed like an angel in those early Yankee paintings before the rules of perspective were formulated. His black bubble helmet flared in the morning light which flooded above the heads of the crowd and burned salt-white on the blank walls of the government buildings behind the soldiers' formation.Lee gasped at this miracle. Xiao Bing shrugged and said, "There are superconducting coils woven in his suit. He'll be hovering over a honeycomb magnet--sort of like a flying carpet in reverse, the carpet stays on the ground, you fly. If we could induce flux in that guy we'd degauss his coils and see how he flew without them.""You haven't changed," Lee said. "Always some pragmaticexplanation for something no one else can understand."

Xiao Bing said, "It's only been three weeks, Lee."

"Has it? That's amazing."The officer's amplified voice clattered across the Square of Heavenly Peace, rebounding from the buildings on three of its sides, the upswept wall on its fourth."It is time to leave the square," the officer said. "All citizens should leave the square so that the Army of the People's Mouths can implement their tasks."184.

RED DUST.

185.A kind of formless murmur went up from the crowds as the echoes of the officer's voice died away. "Now we'll see,"

Xiao Bing said with grim satisfaction. He took Lee's arm and began to steer him through the crush."I'm glad to see you," Lee said. He vividly remembered the bombardment of the agricultural dome, the explosions and the sudden rush of the storm. He had thought his two friends dead. "I'm glad to see you escaped the soldiers. And Guoquiang? He is here?""He could be with the troops surrounding us, for all I know. He joined up, Wei Lee!""All that talk about the glory of serving the Emperor in the Orbital Defense Corps... so Guoquiang was a true idealist.''"As for escaping the soldiers, we jumped in the rice paddies and when the shooting stopped we stayed there. We had on our masks because of the dust storm, and so we could lie completely underwater and quench our infra-red signatures.

Besides, the soldiers weren't looking for us, but for you and the anarchist pilot. When night came we stole two horses and slipped away and they didn't even know we'd been there. We rode as far as Dragon Spring Junction and then we caught a train. Guoquiang had just enough money for the trip, and as soon as we reached the city he joined up. He wanted me to join too, but that was never my idea of a life. Besides, could you see a silver-eyed white-haired pale-skinned albino in that black leather uniform?""It would be rather elegant." Lee had to lean in close to Xiao Bing; half the crowd were chanting for the Emperor, the rest were shouting "Down with the Gang of Six!" over and over and over. Lee said, "And you're still here. Still in the world. You're not yet one of the half-lifers.""Oh, Heaven can wait. I fell in with some interesting people.

You see the Big Character posters on the walls? They are the fifty-six calls for the devolution of power to the individual. We put up most of them in the night, when the King of the Cats started talking about the death of the Emperor. I help keep the projectors working to put our slogans in the air."

186.

PAUL J. McAut,r "How did you find the ku li?"

Xiao Bing laughed--it was lost in the crowd's roar. He leaned close and said, "They aren't the ku li. They're far more radical than that, you'll see. And they found me, Lee.

They find those who can help them, and in turn they help us. There's a soup kitchen down near the railway station. I got talking to one of the comrades, and he took me to one of the meetings. Now I come here every day to help to educate the pet.i.tioners who come to speak with the Emperor."

"But surely the Emperor speaks with no one."

"That's true, but there are always those who for some reason or another believe that only the Emperor can help them. Some have been here ever since the Emperor fell si-lent--I'm sure you have seen the tents in the west corner of the square. We come here to educate those who still think the Emperor can help them. In a way, I suppose we--my friends and I--are also pet.i.tioning the Emperor. I'd like you to meet my friends, Wei Lee."

"I think that would be interesting."

"By the way, what happened to the pilot?"

"She... died. She died, Xiao Bing. A long way from here."

"How strange! She fell from the sky and touched all our lives, and now she is gone and we are changed."

"That's truer than you think."

The crowd was densest by the wall. Xiao Bing used his sharp elbows to push through the people who were reading the posters and slogans. The officer of the Army of the People's Mouths had floated higher, bobbing in the morning breeze like a tethered balloon. When his amplified voice repeated the warning, it was half drowned by the shouts and jeers of the crowd.

"This is our day!" Xiao Bing said happily, and pulled Lee on, all the way across the square to steps which swept up to the high narrow doors of the House of the Names of the Populace. Somewhere in there, Lee thought, the librarian Xiao Bing had written for him was still haunting the dim, booklined corridors of the data base. But what would the RED DUST.

187.

librarian search for now, now that the truth of his parents'

a.s.sa.s.sination had been found?

A dozen young men had commandeered the sheltered alcove at the top of the steps in front of the closed stainless steel doors. Half were Yankees, and all were dressed in loose, mostly black clothes. Some were distributing printed leaflets to pa.s.sers-by; others were unpacking all kinds of electronic equipment from canvas carry-ails, stuff which had the raw edges of homemade experimental units.

Xiao Bing introduced Lee to a plump young man named Lao San. He had a s.h.i.+ning round face and hair slickly swept back and an excitable aggressive air. He said, "What have you brought us, Xiao Bing?"

"Wei Lee worked in my danwei," Xiao Bing said.

Lao San said impatiently, "Doesn't matter where he comes from. Is he hip to technology?"

Lee said, "I am only an agronomist technician. All this is very intimidating to me."

Lao San jabbed a forefinger in Lee's chest, such an astonis.h.i.+ng lapse of manners that it paralyzed Lee. "Forget that humble self-effacing s.h.i.+t! A new order is rising, and the old ways have had their day! From the Darwinian point of view, they're useful as a kind of social lubricant regulating the behavior of the population, but there will be no need of that once everybody's position in society is self-determined. If you're going to help the PSLM you'd better be straight about what you can do."

"But I don't even know what you're trying to do," Lee said.

"We're here to change reality," Lao San said grandly. He snapped a thin gla.s.s tube, stuck one half under his own nose, the other under Lee's. Lee recoiled from the sharp whiff of solvent, and Lao San laughed. "You've got to change yourself before you can change the future."