Red Dust Part 2

and dry sawgra.s.s and clumps of p.r.i.c.kly pear. The wind had picked up, a constant howl that whirled dust around the three men and the bact.Lee slipped on goggles and tied his red kerchief over nose and mouth. Overhead the sun had blurred to a grainy glare in the blowing dust, dim as evening. Dust filtered through the slipseals of Lee's boots and clothing, and mixed with his sweat to form a gritty slime that uncomfortably lubricated armpits and crotch. Xiao Bing lurched past, his shape half erased by red haze, muttering, "I'm not remembering this.

I'm not remembering this."It was not the main storm, only a minor vortex that skipped before its leading edge just as a child will outrun its parent. Still, it was getting so bad that the three might have abandoned the search if they had not found the parachute.Guoquiang saw it first; Lee and Xiao Bing were walking bent over by the wind, heads tucked down. Their leader let out a whoop and when they looked up he pointed dramatically to where a white shape rose and fell some way ahead in the murk.It was the braking parachute of the anarchist craft, caught around a spire of stone: a banner of fine white seamless stuff thinner than high-grade silk but so tough nothing they had would cut it, not even Guoquiang's broad-bladed knife. Xiao Bing took a sniff from his tube and walked round and round it. It could easily have covered the largest breeder pond in the s.h.i.t-cycling sheds, but when it had been folded up (which was not easy to do in the wind), it packed smaller than a bedroll.They set off again, moving quickly now. Guoquiang had drawn his pistol and given Xiao Bing his hunting rifle. Lee supposed that he would have to use rocks as weapons against the ku li, or set the bact on them. Fear was a fine tremor he couldn't quite suppress, mixed with growing excitement, the thrill of the chase that even the bact seemed to catch--it galumphed along behind Lee in an undignified trot as he and the others leaped and ran through blowing curtains of 26.PAUL J. MCAULEY.red dust and bounded up a steep rise that was notched at its crest by a blackened scar.

A raw, deep grove stretched away down the gentle reverse slope, fading into the red haze. Shapes moved slowly and ponderously in the murk down there, like carp at the bottom of a breeder pond.

Guoquiang forced the others to lie down. The shapes were the horses of the ku li, he said, and then he swore that he saw a man moving amongst them. Lee saw no such thing, but Guoquiang was up on one knee. He aimed his pistol down the slope and fired: the narrow beam was diffused by the dust into a violent glare that momentarily filled the little valley from edge to edge.

Something screamed, high and inhuman. Guoquiang fired again. He was on his feet now. Lee jumped up, planning to pull him down, but then Guoquiang was running, charging downslope with Xiao Bing right behind him. Lee ran too; he had seen that the shadows in the dust had vanished, and was suddenly scared that he would be ridden down by ku li bandits if he stayed on the ridge.

Lee lost the other two in swirling dust, then saw shadows running back towards him. He had a moment to realise that the shadows were too big to be human, and then the animals were upon him, bellowing with fear as they scrambled up the slope.

Lee dodged a black-tipped horn, its span wide as his outstretched arms, and something struck him from behind. He tumbled through dust and flying rocks, landed hard and covered his head with his hands, curled into a ball. He couldn't make himself small enough. A hoof slammed down centimeters from iis face; he felt rather than saw one of the huge beasts gather itself and leap over him.

Then there was only wind and dust. Lee uncurled and picked himself up, tested one leg and then the other. Down-slope, Guoquiang and Xiao Bing were standing over a slumped shape. It wasn't a man, or even a horse, but a long-horned s.h.a.ggy-coated yak.

Guoquiang's shot had burned away half its belly. Its mat RED DUST 27.

ted coat smouldered around the wound. It rolled a brown-veined eye at Lee as he took Guoquiang's broad-bladed knife and slit its throat: the gush of hot blood splashed his boots."You're bleeding," Xiao Bing said. He cupped Lee's face with one hand, lifted a corner of Lee's kerchief and dabbed at his wounds. Lee saw his face reflected in the silver caps over Xiao Bing's pupils; there was a long shallow gash on his forehead, a couple of nicks on the ridge of his cheekbones.

He'd be remembered this way for ever."We still must find the anarchists' craft," Guoquiang said impatiently.Lee said, "Please don't mistake it for a yak, Guoquiang. I could not survive the excitement."They did not have far to search. The gouged track led them right to the place where the s.p.a.cecraft was half buried at the end of the scar it had torn into the ground, crumpled against a rocky outcrop as big as Number Eight Field Dome.

The s.p.a.cecraft was far smaller than Lee had imagined, a sculpted aerodynamic wedge that, even crumpled against adamantine slabs of red rock, looked as if the wind could at any moment send it skimming into the dust-filled sky.The reflections of the three cadres swam up in the mirror-smooth silver skin, distorted by the flare of its curves. A section had flipped off to reveal a c.o.c.kpit, snug as a holster.

Dry foam shrunken on the contoured couch was already silted with dust. A little panel of controls winked and blinked with indicator lights, labelled not with neat ideograms but marks like cl.u.s.ters of skulls and bones.Not a virus-built robot drone after all. It had carried a pa.s.senger.It was Xiao Bing who found the b.l.o.o.d.y handprint smeared on the s.p.a.cecraft's mirrored hull. But any footprints had been smothered by dust or trampled by panicked yaks or blown away on the wind. The three cast around for almost an hour, spiraling away from the wrecked craft across the floor of the ancient crater, and found nothing.Lee made his way back through whirling dust to the outcrop and the wrecked craft, wondering where the anarchist 28.PAUL J. McAULEY could have run to. If he hadn't been picked up by Guoquiang's ku li hors.e.m.e.n-- but then they would have blown up the s.p.a.cecraft, destroyed the evidence. He hunkered down near the s.p.a.cecraft with his back against a boulder at the foot of the outcrop, out of the worst of the blowing dust.

Better shelter inside, of course, but he didn't dare set a foot in the c.o.c.kpit.

Think like an anarchist.

You are wounded, fallen in enemy territory. You must hide, but you can't go too far because your friends might, come for you.

It came to him in the sudden way that sideways logic always does, and he was so sure that he was right that he almost went to look for the pilot there and then. But he had long ago learned the virtues of patience, and he hunkered down and waited for the others to return.

At last Xiao Bing stumbled through blowing curtains of dust and flopped down beside Lee. "We had no luck either,"

he said.

Guoquiang arrived a few minutes later. He pulled his kerchief away from his face and spat an oyster of rusty phlegm.

He said: "At least we looked. I see your dedication is consistent, Wei Lee."

"But, Guoquiang, I don't need to search. I know where the pilot is hiding." Lee pointed, and Guoquiang looked at the tumbled boulders which formed a rough stair up the side of the outcrop. And then he laughed.

The top of the outcrop sloped like a pitched roof, riddled with eroded sinkholes and split down the middle by a deep narrow crevice. Wind howled around the three as they quartered this maze; dust slithered around them like whipped snakes.

It was Xiao Bing who found the anarchist. She lay in the crooked shelter of the crevice, her slim figure curled in a foetal ball and cased within a wedge of clear paste. Her entire body was covered with a silvery film, with a transparent strip across her round and startlingly blue eyes. She stared up RED DUST.

29.

through paste at the three cadres and Lee had a flash of what she saw: three inscrutable masked faces, peering over a lip of rock.Guoquiang kneeled and reached down to touch the paste.

It had a kind of skin which dimpled under his fingers, then gave as he pushed harder. He started to scoop up handfuls of the stuff, and Xiao Bing joined him. The pilot stirred. Her mouth seemed to be working under the silvery film.Lee was struck with sudden foreboding. He said, "I don't think we should do this."Guoquiang took no notice. He sc.r.a.ped paste from the pilot's silver-filmed face, then drew his pistol and told Xiao Bing to pull the film off."Maybe it's better if we get help," Xiao Bing said uncertainly."He's right," Wei Lee said."Think anyone will find us in this storm? Already radio will be knocked out. Just do it, Bing."Xiao Bing did it. The pilot gasped, then began to choke.

Guoquiang jumped into the crevice behind her, knee deep in paste, pulled her into a sitting position, put his two fists in the V below her ribcage, jerked.The pilot coughed out about a litre of white fluid, drew a shuddering breath. Her face was shiny black, with a bubble of red blood blown from one nostril. She did not have teeth, but seamless ridges of white plastic.Lee thought that he'd seen her before, but he couldn't remember where. She looked back at Lee, and when she spoke it was so unbelievable that Lee didn't at first register its meaning. For she had spoken in the Common Language, a weak unravelling whisper almost lost to the howl of the wind."So you've found me."Lee dropped to his knees at the edge of the crevice and bent close to her, but she suddenly slumped back against Guoquiang, who shouted triumphantly, "You see, Wei Lee, it is my story after all!""Our story, I hope," Xiao Bing said.

30.PAUL J. MCAULEY.

"Of course! We must get her down. The bact will carry her."

"It really might be better if we sent for help," Lee said.

"She's hurt. That paste was some kind of coc.o.o.n, perhaps.

Look, there is a cylinder under her hip--I guess it generated the paste."

Guoquiang sneered. "Of course, Wei Lee, you are an expert in the ways of the Sky Road."

Lee said, "She didn't come up here to die. She's expecting help."

Xiao Bing said, "The ku li. I can't die, Guoquiang, not yet."

"Then we'd better hurry," Guoquiang said. He handed Xiao Bing his pistol and got his hands under the pilot's shoulders, but when he tried to pull her to her feet, she shuddered and squirmed like a landed fish.

Lee said, "Leave her alone, you fool." Xiao Bing clutched at his arm. The pilot said something, a hoa.r.s.e whisper. Guoquiang bent to catch her words.

The pilot smiled, and spat blood into his face.

Guoquiang swore and kicked at her, and Lee threw an armlock around his neck and heaved. He had wrestled him halfway out of the crevice before Guoquiang managed to jam a hard elbow under his ribcage. Lee sat down hard. A moment later Guoquiang was straddling his chest and yelling in his face, calling him a filthy communistic Sky Roader traitor, while Xiao Bing hopped around in an agony of nerves and pleaded for them both to stop.

And above everything was a growing roar, louder than the roaring in Lee's head. Dust suddenly blew in every direction at once; a shadow crossed the sun. Guoquiang looked up; so did Lee. The black belly of a culver was falling towards them.

The Army of the People's Mouths had found the crashed s.p.a.cecraft at last.

Six.A.n area of low pressure had swung in from the north-est.

It displaced the constant winds from the Great alley that usually dominated weather systems in the region, and funnelled freezing air from the dry northern plains, settling in for what the people of the Bitter Waters danwei called a Ten Day Blow.The culvers of the Army of the People's Mouths were grounded by dust. The troops were stabled in the danwei's half-derelict Number Three Recreation Hall; the anarchist pilot was incarcerated in the gaol's only cell, where she was undergoing treatment for her injuries. No one in the danwei or the army's search party was of sufficient rank to interrogate her, so she had to be kept alive until the storm blew itself out and she could be flown to the capital.Meanwhile, wind drove billowing sheets of dust across the wide fields of rugged dwarf wheat and around the domes over the rice fields. Dust silted the irrigation ca.n.a.ls, turned day to perpetual glowering twilight. The solar power station, a faceted paG.o.da of black gla.s.s at the centre of the danwei, was shut down. The electricity supply to dormitories and accommodation modules was rationed to three hours in the evening.And wind dashed itself against the linked structures of the danwei itself, howling and rattling and spraying dust through every crevice. Red dust swirled in shafts of light, coated every surface with a gritty patina, worked between 31.

32.PAUL J. McAULEY sheets, ground between the teeth with every mouthful of food. Every touch of metal drew a sting of static electricity; dry, ionized air cracked lips, wore tempers to razor edges.The iron-rich dust blanketed radio reception too. The voice of the King of the Cats sounded faint and far behind a swirling squall of static. The King was preaching, something about the power of rock'n'roll burning through the universe at the speed of light or of life. What with the static and Xiao Bing's nervous prattle, Wei Lee could only make out s.n.a.t.c.hes of the King's sermon.The two cadres were walking along one of the runnels that connected the danwei's modules. It was night. Beyond the tunnel's transparent plastic walls dust ceaselessly poured and whirled past, dim ma.s.ses vaguely visible in the feeble strip lighting either side of the walkway. It gave Wei Lee a strange detached feeling to be safe inside a sleeve of warm stale air while the storm's rage was held in check by a centimeter width of plastic.Change is coming at forty-five revolutions a minute, the King said in Lee's ear. Or perhaps it was evolutions; static rattled across the King's words, and at the same moment Xiao Bing said everything was changed now, that Guoquiang had settled himself to change."He doesn't have to change a thing," Lee said. "In a year, this will be just another story in the danwei's history." As would he: he had already been dismissed, for bringing disgrace to the danwei. Guoquiang's father, a major shareholder, had been chairman of the special session of the council. It had been over in five minutes. Lee's humiliation would linger as long as the storm and then he would be gone, just as he'd dreamed two days ago on top of Number Eight Field Dome. Beware of wishes, he thought, you may get what you want."You're bitter, but you've every right after Li Mci denounced you in public.""Her parents put her up to it. I don't really blame her."

Lee couldn't admit to Xiao Bing how much Li Mei's behav- RED DUST.

33.for had hurt him. He said, "The scandal will die down and everything will be as it was. You'll see."

"But everything is changed," Xiao Bing said. The caps over his pupils were pewter in the dull light, his white hair and pale skin bruise-colored.

"You make this a mystery."

"Guoquiang wants to talk to you about it. I'll let him."

"You're a loyal friend, Xiao Bing. None of us deserve your loyalty."

"I've known Guoquiang all my life. He stopped the other kids beating me up. He liked me because I was smarter than he was, an unselfishness I appreciate more as I grow older.

He is a leader, always has been. He didn't have to take it upon himself to look out for a special, and he's always had to look out for me, because the other kids tried to get at him by getting at me. A small place like this... I hear that in the capital no one takes any notice of specials."

Lee thought of the child beggars in the Yankee Quarter; not all the deformities had been deliberately inflicted by their parents. He said, "You wouldn't be called a special in the capital, it's true. But surely your contract... The danwei has taken money for your..." he couldn't say death "... your sleep."

"Oh, once I have finished designing my little piece of Heaven, once I have remembered enough to make it real, I can die out of this world at any time. Here, or in the capital, it makes no difference. But right now, Guoquiang needs me."

"Perhaps it's as well, now I know how Bitter Waters treats its half-lifers."

"When you begin your translation into Heaven," Xiao Bing said serenely, "it only matters that your body is kept alive for as long as the transfer takes. How it is kept alive doesn't matter. It is just an emptying vessel. The conchies want us all dead, Wei Lee, one way or another. They'll wait for me."

Lee said, as they pushed through heavy strips at the runnel's end, "I wasn't thinking of the conchies. I was thinking 34.PAUL J. MCAULEY.

of the danwei, which will lose the bounty for your..."

"My death? That's what it is. I don't mind it."

The strips fell away. Warm moist air folded around Lee and Xiao Bing like a heavy cloak. Bright light struck through greenery, burned in water falling from shelf to shelf in the azolla cascades that zig-zagged around pools dense with water hyacinth. The sound of the storm and of the King's voice hushed at the same moment.

The rich smell of growing things and the sound of falling water struck a chord of unease deep inside Lee. There had been a bad time in a garden a long time ago. He had been no more than one or two. He was sure it had been something to do with his parents' disappearance, but could remember only his terror and the smell of cut gra.s.s.

"Over there," Xiao Bing said. "Come on, Wei Lee, you're dreaming again?

Guoquiang was tipping cakes of boiled leaf into the livestock pens. That was his punishment: work the s.h.i.t-cycling sheds until the Army of the People's Mouths left the danwei. He didn't seem to mind. He was whistling to the dogs, scolding them for not eating. The fat white hairless dogs padded up and down nervously, spooked by the storm.

Guoquiang emptied the woven basket with a sweeping toss, sniffed the air and said, "Is a waste line leaking?"

Lee took the radio from his ear. He said, "The domestic electricity supply is cut off before my shift ends. There is no water to wash. The others steal water from the half-lifers; I can't bring myself to do that. I'd have changed my clothes at least, but iao Bing was waiting for me."

Guoquiang, to his credit, was immediately contrite. "I am sorry, Wei Lee."

"It's all right. I've been around it so long that I can't smell it."

"I mean that my father is a proud man. He sees loss of face by the collective as a great blow to himself. So we are all punished. I am sorry that you have the worst of it."

Lee said, "How's your eye?"

"Sore," Guoquiang admitted. It was the left eye that Lee RED DUST.

35.had managed to hit with his elbow; the swollen flesh around it was fading from dark purple to green and yellow. Guoquiang added, "How are your ribs?"

"A]so sore."

Guoquiang laughed. "We were both very foolish."

Lee didn't have the heart to point out that if Guoquiang hadn't been so stubborn they would all be heroes, instead of being in disgrace for having deviated from the danwei's ideals of democratic collectivization, for having committed the mortal sin of self-aggrandizement. For having lost face in front of the soldiers of the Army of the People's Mouths.

He said, "I suppose we both made a mistake."

His own was to have tried to save the injured anarchist pilot from Guoquiang's impulsive misplaced sense of duty.

Two days afterwards, Lee couldn't understand why she mattered so much to him. Why she still did. Even thinking about her gave him a cloying sense of claustrophobia, as if he was with her in the isolation womb, masked and cathetered and IVed, surrounded by hostile aliens on an alien world, floating in a bubble of fluorocarbons...

The danwei had pried access from the Army of the People's Mouths, and a loop of the anarchist pilot (a long shot of her being hustled by two soldiers down a narrow brightly lit corridor; medium shots of her standing against a tiled wall, supported by the same two nervous men; a circling close-up of her inside the isolation womb, face masked, nakedness washed out in glare reflected from the womb's plastic skin) was continuously running on one of the public access channels. The danwei had sold it to the capital's media nets too, and it turned up on every news channel every hour on the hour.

Lee had watched it over and over, each time with the same fresh sense of fascinated horror. It was like watching a rape.

Guoquiang said, "My father insists that you formally recant your transgression before your contract is terminated.

I said if that was the case, so would I."

"He also volunteered me," Xiao Bing said. His eyes threw back flashing reflections when he smiled.

36.PAUL J. MCAULEY.

"My father didn't think anything of the idea, unfortunately.

But all the same, we will stand beside you for the struggle session. It is not your disgrace. It is ours."

Guoquiang looked so humble that Lee laughed. "Oh, I'll find another job, somewhere or other. And as for disgrace, it pa.s.ses sooner than you'd imagine. I'll move on, and forget about it. As a matter of fact, this isn't my first struggle session.''

"You know the world," Guoquiang said.

"Some of it."

"Teach me," Guoquiang said, with a fierceness that surprised Lee. His big hands crushed the basket to his chest.

"Teach me stuff. I need to learn. I want to make a difference.''

"I know very little."

"You have walked the world. I would be honored," Guoquiang said formally, "if you would share what you learned."

In that way their quarrel began to heal. They sat together at the gravel edge of a hyacinth pool, in the murmurous roar of recirculating pumps and aerator cascades. The cruel brilliance of the growth lights, tinted purple with near-UV, gave their skins a corpsedike cast. Guoquiang put on a pair of dark gla.s.ses, oval lenses not much bigger than his eyes.

Xiao Bing produced a stone bottle and three translucent porcelain thimbles which he filled to the brim.

Lee took one. The clear meniscus of brandy reflected an upside-down image of the grids of electric lights when he lifted it to his lips. It took a moment for the alcohol to burn through the sweetness; then he and Guoquiang and Xiao Bing were coughing and spluttering and clapping each other on the back.

After the second shot of brandy, Guoquiang was relaxed enough to ask about the story behind Lee's first struggle session. Lee told him that and more, and when his story was done the bottle was more than half empty and all three felt a warm glow of rekindled comradeship.

"I want to see the world," Guoquiang said, grandly and drunkenly. "I want to be out in it, I want to go where the RED DUST.

37.living outnumber the half-lifers. You know there are more than twice as many half-lifers than living here?"

"He looks after them," Xiao Bing said.