Red Dust Part 9

"I think I know what happened to them," Lee said. "I'm not afraid of the future, librarian, but of the past."

"The past is always as it has been, as I will show you,"

the librarian said, and opened the book to show the vivid greens of a summer garden.

"No," Lee said, "wait..."

But he was already there, in that part of the garden of Great-grandfather Wei's Great House where water fell over shelves of red rock and tinkled into dark rush-lined pools.

Lee was small, fizzing with impatience, tugging against the big firm hands which held each of his. There was the sharp scent of newly cut gra.s.s.

His mother and father leaned over him, their faces dark against brilliant sunlight. Hush, hush. He'll be here soon. And another voice: I'm already here. And then thunder and lightning fell from the sky, and Lee's parents flew away from him. He looked up in utter confusion, frightened beyond tears, and the man standing high above, on top of the wet red rocks. A young man, all in black, holding a smoking machine pistol. He laughed out loud and said, "Catch you later, kid," and spat down into the pool where Lee's mother floated, her face still and white in the center of her spreading black hair.

"Time's up! Hey, come on! Time's up ten minutes ago!"

It was the grandmother Yankee who ran the arcade. She had opened up the couch. "You want, you can pay for more time, but you gotta do it now. Hey. Hey, you OK?"

Lee saw her through a blur of tears. She was at least forty, wore a towering bright red wig, a centimeter of white powder like icing laid across her creviced face, bright red lipstick, greasy blue stuff around her eyes. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pushed up in her voluminous red velvet dress like a shelf. She smelt intensely of geraniums.

She said, "You look like s.h.i.t, citizen."

"Something I saw..."

"Hey, now listen, all my equipment is exorcised on a reg 148 PAUL J. MCAULEY.

ular basis. This is a clean place, there are no line demons here, not unless you went and brought one down on yourself.

You've been peeking in forbidden areas? We don't allow that kind of stuff here. It's a public place, I got my public to think of.""I am sorry, grandmother. It was looking for me."Lee pushed past her to the door, but as he stumbled into the crowds outside the arcade she shouted after him. "You get the h.e.l.l out of here with your demon. This is a clean place!"

Thirty-two.T.en minutes later, Lee knew that he was being followed.

The man was a burly Han with the pale look of a civil servant, dressed in a business suit under a transparent plastic slicker. He sauntered along on the far side of the busy street, and if there had not been so many Yankees about, Lee might never have noticed him. But his bland moon face seemed always turned to Lee, flashing again and again in the crowd between the gaps in the trams. Lee took turnings at random, always keeping to the wider streets--he didn't dare to dodge into the maze of hutongs--but every time he looked back, his tail was still there, moving at the same steady pace through the crowds on the far side of the street.Perhaps he was a friend of Redd's--but how would he have found Lee so quickly? Or perhaps Great-grandfather Wei had found Lee after he had used the information terminal.The thought doubled the weight of the knowledge of his parents'

deaths. He had known all along, but until now he hadn't understood. That they were dead. That they had been killed by an a.s.sa.s.sin who had been employed by Great-grandfather Wei.

For the man could not have entered the garden of the Great House without the co-operation of the Great House's security system; and besides, Lee knew who he was. Years afterwards he was still employed by Great-grandfather Wei.Lee's random route had led him to a big octagonal s.p.a.ce where tram lines tangled around a plinth on which Cho 149.

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Jinfeng stood above the traffic and the crowds, looking up at a test tube she held high as a torch. There was spidery Yankee graffiti down the back of her open laboratory coat, one wing of which was slightly lifted as if blown back by an unfelt breeze.Lee circled the statue, was walking past the rank of pedicabs for the second time when the idea came. He jumped into the first pedicab in the queue. The driver was a muscular Yankee in tight green leggings and a neon pink undershirt with the arms torn offat the shoulders. There was a kind of bubble of crinkly plastic over his mane of blond hair; a filter mask hung under his chin. He said, "Where to go, my man?"Lee shoved a ten yuan note in the driver's face. "Anywhere fast... I'm trying to lose someone."The driver plucked the note from Lee's fingers, held it to his ear and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. Then it was gone. "Radical," he said. "Anyone I know?"Lee saw the beefy black-suited Han pushing through people less than a dozen meters away. He shoved another note at the driver and said, "Let's just go!"The driver magicked away the note, hooked his mask over his nose and mouth and stood on his pedals. He wheeled all the way around a slow-moving tram and then shot through a stream of cyclists who split right and left in a clatter of horns. There was an intersection with a traffic cop right in its center, his blue uniform loaded with gold braid, his white-gloved hands held up, palms out. But the pedicab driver didn't pause. Lee saw the cop's expression change from authority to astonishment just before he leaped aside.

A moment later the pedicab was spinning past crowds and brightly lit shopfronts, teahouses and ma.s.sage parlors.Lee leaned out around the pedicab's awning to look back and the driver glanced over his shoulder and said, "Be cool, man. You'll tip us over." A cl.u.s.ter of mirrors rose from the left handlebar like a bouquet of steel and gla.s.s flowers; Lee saw the driver's masked face variously reflected in flat and convex and concave surfaces."I think your friend, he hasn't given up. Sort of a chunky RED DUST.

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c.h.i.n.k? In black?" The driver spoke in machine-pistol bursts between the sips of breath he took to top up his lungs. "Oh. That's him."

"He's in this pedicab. Maybe a hundred meters back? Mad-dog Maguire doing his best to catch me. No contest, if you're ready for it. My grafts are the best. The best you can get.

Maddog built his up. Built his up the hard way."

Lee thrust another ten yuan note at the driver, who s.n.a.t.c.hed it without turning his head and stood on his pedals again, sounding an ear-splitting air horn as he veered hard into a hutong. Lee clung to the narrow armrests as the pedicab slewed from side to side down the dark narrow alley.

The hubs of the big rear wheels struck sparks from the stone walls. Then light again, pedestrians scattering and suddenly gone as the pedicab plunged into another hutong, braking sharply at its end and turning on to a wide avenue, threading in between two trams. There was dark sky overhead. They had left the Yankee Quarter behind.

The driver yelled happily. Lee leaned forward and gave him another note, asked how he knew the hutong would be empty.

"I didn't! Just luck, man. Oh s.h.i.t, but it looks like Maddog got lucky, too."

Apartment buildings made random patterns of lights under the night sky. No more crowds, only a few pa.s.sersby who turned to watch the two pedicabs race past.

They were suddenly level with each other. Maddog Ma-guire was a tall Yankee with a head completely shaven except for a vertical crest that stood up in spikes. The spikes were dyed luminescent red and green. His face gleamed with sweat. He yelled something at Lee's blond driver, who jabbed a finger at the sky and put on a spurt of speed that for a moment left Maddog's pedicab behind. But then it drew level again and its burly black-clad pa.s.senger was leaning forward, shouting something lost in the whir and hiss of wheels and wind. He was shaking his fist--no, there was something in it, and Lee ducked just before a flare of light blew away the pedicab's awning. In the same instant, Maddog twitched his 152.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.steering bar and the two pedicabs collided, wheels tangling before they shot apart again.Then there was a tremendous blast of sound.Lee had a confused glimpse of a truck bearing down, headlamps glaring. Then it spun away and there was a terrific wrench and Lee shot forward, rolling over and over through leaves and stiff twigs.

Thirty-three.T.he pedicab had ploughed through a hedge into a little park. Lee lay amid the dusty smell of carnations, foolishly looking up at black sky. He rolled over, saw the driver trying to get his pedicab upright. Beyond a scrim of bushes, the other pedicab was upended in the middle of the road, one wheel still lazily revolving. The brawny man was being pulled out of the wreckage by spike-haired Maddog Maguire.Lee sprang up and ran. He plunged straight through flow-erbeds and cleared the hedge on the other side of the park in a single bound. Then he was running along a wide street divided down the middle by tram lines. Factory buildings made a low humming on either side. Occasional lights shed a sickly orange radiance. Up ahead there was the sound of music, and once, twice, fireworks burst above the flat roofs of the factories, brief constellations already fading by the time the faint sound of their detonation reached Lee.He ran until he was quite out of breath and then he walked, gasping, until he heard the rattle of a pedicab and looked back. He hoped it was simply his own driver, chasing him for payment, but then a flash of light burst in the air in front and to the left of him, so close he felt the wash of heat.For a moment the flight reaction threatened to take him again. But he knew how it worked now: he knew how to 153.

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access the parallel nerve net spun by the viruses. He speeded up. He blurred.

Maddog Maguire's pedicab was soon left far behind as Lee dodged down ever narrowing streets. He ran sweetly and easily, taking rapid sips of air. Paved road suddenly gave way to a mud track with a stinking sewer channel overflowing its center. Washing strung from house to house made ghost shapes above him; dogs barked from porches as Lee sped past. The fireworks and the music seemed closer, and then Lee turned a corner and was in the middle of a festival crowd.

He stopped, muscles loose as sacks of water. People wound all up and down the waterfront. There were monks in red robes, and fishermen and women in black cotton smocks or hooded jackets of undyed wool, red yarn wound through their hair and red or yellow kerchiefs at their throats. Children ran everywhere. Vendors cried their wares: beer, sweet rice, dumplings, fried dough. Everybody seemed to be whirling a prayer wheel or carrying a boat-shaped b.u.t.ter lamp or a smoking stick of incense, or banging a little drum or shaking a tambourine. Every so often someone would touch off a firework, just for the fun of it, and fiery flowers would bloom out across the dark lake. Jetties ran out into faintly luminous darkness and boats were tied up a long way down them, paper lanterns glowing like stars at the points of their high sterns.

It was the festival of the houses of the G.o.ds, the time when the myriad fragmented G.o.ds of the fisherfolk left the people they had been riding for a year and settled in new hosts.

Here and there chanting circles danced around a man or a woman who swayed as if drunk--drunk on the immanence of G.o.dhead. Lee was twice drawn into one of these circles, and after he freed himself the second time he was brought up short by a man with staring eyes and tears running down his cheeks. He held Lee by his shoulders and looked unblinkingly into his face and said, "Welcome, sister," and spun away.

A firework went off prematurely, cracking a shower of RED DUST.

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golden rain directly overhead. Everyone around Lee looked up, everyone except a man who was looking right and left as he pushed through the crowd.

It was the man in black.

He saw Lee in the same moment that Lee saw him, shouted a single word that was lost in the chants and screams and laughter of the festival.

Lee dodged around the smoking cart of a dough fryer, threaded his way through ambling knots and chanting circles of people. A solemn little girl caught at the hem of his chuba; Lee pulled free and darted between two shaven-headed monks in orange robes who capered and beat little drums tucked under their arms in wild syncopation.

Lee was standing at the beginning of a long stone jetty.

The man in black pushed between the dancing monks, and Lee ran on, ran a long, long way until he almost ran off the end of the jetty. The tops of the masts of the little fishing boats rose waist high on either side. Black water slopped far below him. He turned.

The man in black raised his hands to show they were empty. He was only a few meters away. The lanterns and dancing lights of the festival made a ribbon on the darkness behind him.

"Wei Lee," he said. "Don't be scared. I am here to help you."

Lee said, "I need no help." A fire burned beneath his breastbone.

"I think you do. You can trust me. Look."

The man started to bring something out of his jacket and Lee blurred into motion and ran straight at the man and caught his wrist. For a moment they wrestled at the lip of the jetty: Lee desperately quick; the man ponderous and strong. And then they fell.

Thirty-four.T.he impact of the water drove all breath from Lee's body. He plunged in a whirl of bubbles down into cold darkness. Pressure drove twin spikes into his eardrums.

Like almost every Martian, he had never learned to swim. Galvanized by a lightning tree of fear, he thrashed and kicked against the heavy dark water with no idea of up or down.Every muscle ached for air, but he retained enough sense to clamp his teeth against the impulse to breathe that was tightening within his chest like a vice, threatening to spring his ribs.Then something thumped into the small of his back. He was rushed through cold black water which suddenly broke over his face. He opened his mouth and it filled with a gush of air, pure as life, before water closed over his head again.

He kicked out, felt something graze his legs, his hands. He grasped a smooth hard streamlined body, and it lifted him into air again, pushed him towards the sh.o.r.e with strong supple movements.Lee's legs grazed silt and a tangle of waterweed; then he was sprawled on salt-caked mud with scarcely enough strength to raise his head as he spewed cold water. He fell down and rolled over, breathing as hard and painfully as a new-born baby.He had been brought round the curve of the sh.o.r.e, beyond the jetties and noise and light the festival made along156.

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157.the waterfront. A little way off, something with a grinning beaked mouth full of tiny needle-sharp teeth breached the surface. It made a high-pitched chattering, and c.o.c.ked a bright eye at him before sliding back into black water. Lee realized that it was the creature that had saved him."It's a fin," a small voice said out of the darkness behind him.Lee remembered to use the enhanced vision the viruses had given him, and saw the solemn little girl who had clutched at the hem of his chuba in the midst of the festival's whirl. She wore a black shift over a red shirt with baggy sleeves and kneehigh felt boots. Her black hair was done up in oiled pigtails pinned above her ears.She said, "Fin help us fish. Now one catches a G.o.d!"

Lee managed to get to his feet. He was shivering with more than cold, although his clothes were heavy with icy water and he was chilled to the marrow by the breeze off the lake. He said, "I wish I could thank him.""You need a machine to talk fin. Much is too high and fast, even for me." She said, in a completely different tone of voice, "I carry a G.o.d. That is how I know you are more than one."A chattering squeal came from out in the water.The little girl said, "The fin says you are legion. He says you come to save the lake. He says you must do what youmust. I know that, too. That is why we have come for you."

"We?" Lee said stupidly."All the G.o.ds. We've been waiting for you for such a long time."The little girl's name was Chen Yao. She was four years old, the youngest daughter of a fishing family. The G.o.d that had settled in her that night was a star G.o.d whose secret name could not be revealed. Chen Yao said that he claimed to be the father of the Emperor Yu, who had first controlled the flooding of the Yellow River; his familiar was a fox withnine tails. That was why she had known to help Lee.

"Because I have nine tails?""Perhaps you have nine lives." Chen Yao tipped her head, 158.

PAUL J. McAuLEv listening intently to something only she could hear. "No, because you hold the keys to the heavenly river, that will one day wash the sh.o.r.es of the friendly lands."Lee thought that she meant the Milky Way, and asked no more. Chen Yao led him up the long sweep of the salt flats and then through the crowds and the lights and scents and noise of the festival. She held his thumb in her hot small fist and chattered away in the manner of any four-year-old.It seemed that the fin which had saved him was a descendant of dolphins made more intelligent by Cho Jinfeng. That at least had been real enough. So had the man in black, who Lee fervently hoped was at the bottom of the lake. But the talk of G.o.ds ... even if Chen Yao did somehow know about Miriam, Miriam was no G.o.d. She was not even alive, was no more than the sum of data coded by her viruses on to the spy device in his visual cortex...Lee realized that somehow he and little Chen Yao had become the head of a procession. Men and women and children followed them in solemn single file through the crowds, all with wide eyes and tear-stained cheeks. He asked the little girl where they were going, and she pointed and said, "Why, to our house, of course."On a spit of land at the far end of the waterfront, past the houses and long steep jetties, lit by lanterns strung everywhere across its white-washed walls and steep red-tiled roofs, was a temple.

Thirty-five.

T.

he G.o.ds bathed Lee and brought him clean clothes, and fed him fried aubergines and maize porridge flecked with bits of charcoaled potato. This was in one of the chapels of the temple, an octagonal high-ceilinged room bright with murals and banners, and with lamps in a hundred niches making flickering constellations. Lee learned how good food tastes after your life has been saved, and the G.o.ds smiled indulgently at his relish.

After Lee had eaten, the G.o.ds left him to sleep. He sprawled on loose cushions in a big ornate chair, the brocade gown given to him by the G.o.ds scratchy against his clean skin. He was pleasantly drowsy, and clean and comfortable, after the terrors of the night, the chase and his near-drowning.

The revelation of the double murder of his parents hurt less than he thought it should. The young boy who had witnessed it was no relation to him except that they were the same person, and he was beginning to realize that he had been more obsessed with the search to find them than its outcome. What hurt most was that Great-grandfather Wei had betrayed him not once but twice, using the same cat'spaw with a casual arrogance that implied volumes about what he thought about his great-grandson.

And so all Lee's vaguely formed plans were overthrown.

Tomorrow he would have to begin again, but now he could sleep...159.

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The G.o.ds watched him solemnly from the doorway of the chapel, asking nothing of him. The little girl, Chert Yao, slept curled at the foot of Lee's throne, and Lee soon fell asleep too.

Thirty-six.H.e was in the chapel, alone. Light streamed through the door, brighter than the b.u.t.ter lamps. Two people stood in the light.One was Miriam Makepeace Mbele. She was wearing tight blue-denim jeans crusted with sewn-on badges, and a sleeveless undershirt with sunburst patterns of purple and orange that interlocked in a way that made them seem to rotate over her unbound b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her hair was long and bleached, tied back with a sparkly headband.The other person, in a white leather suit sparkling with rhinestones, its front V-ed open down to his navel, was the King of the Cats. Around his shoulders was a white cape lined with cloth of gold, its flared collar faced with scarlet.

His wide golden belt bore the legend "The World Champion Entertainer." He flashed his crooked grin and beckoned to Lee. His fingers glittered with gold rings set with diamonds and rubies and emeralds.With no sense of awe or surprise, Lee got up and followed Miriam and the King of the Cats into the light.They were in a transparent bubble hung in starry s.p.a.ce from a siding of pitted rock. Like ghosts, they floated in cool pine-scented air.Miriam said, "It's still too early to have regrets, but I know that this is one place I'll miss." Her long blond hair fanned out around her face. Like her hair, her skin was bleached.161.

162.

PAUL J. MCAULEY.Lee said, "This is where you lived?" He couldn't stop looking at the King, who grinned and winked back at him."This is just one room. I'd come here to turn on, tune in, drop out. Most of the Nexus are agoraphobes. They like tunnels and little chambers, warmth and red light. They like to huddle.""Poor little anarchists!" the King said. "They fear the seething silence of the void!" His gleaming black hair was slicked back just like Lee's. Or was it the other way around? He plucked a white silk scarf from the air and draped it around his neck. "Listen closely," he said, "and you can hear the echo of the word G.o.d spoke to light the Universe."Lee wondered which G.o.d he meant."There are many G.o.ds," Miriam said. "Yes, of course I can read your mind, Wei Lee. Are we not in it?""Speak for yourself," the King said. A corner of his full-lipped mouth lifted into precisely the expression Lee had spent so much time practicing. "I'm just visiting.

And incidentally, in this present incarnation I'm too young for this science-fictiony suit. But, hey, don't bother ageing me. Corporeality is relative."Lee said, "You know each other?"The King shrugged. "I've known one or another of Miriam's incarnations down the years. She's a popular agent with both sides. A regular pistol. A Colt pistol, if you get my drift.""As in Frankie and Johnnie? The one with the real bullet when it was supposed to be blank?"The King drawled, "Now, I always preferred Flaming Star.""Lee, I told you that my gene tine was owned," Miriam said, casting an exasperated look at the King of the Cats.

"Miriam is my own given name, Makepeace is the trade name of my clone line, Mbele is the name of the family RED DUST.

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which owns the Nexus and owns me. It isn't as if it's slavery, because after all I'm legally dead. I have no rights, or else the dead would own everything."

"They do, on Earth," the King said.

"No one owns anything there. That's the point."

"No one owns life, but anyone who owns a frying pan owns death. The dead own Earth, all right."

Lee said, "I thought everyone on Earth worshipped the Mother G.o.ddess of the World." He felt quite calm, as if he was floating about a centimeter above his own skull. A viewpoint.

An observer.

The King said, "No one's left alive on Earth except res-urrectees kind of like Miriam here. Old genotypes in new bodies. You know them as the conchies. They do the work of the Earth's Consensus, and the Earth's Consensus serves the Mother G.o.ddess of the World. Which is the world, dig? Earth was dying, strangling in the wastes of human civilization, heat pollution, carbon dioxide. The Earth's Consensus had two choices, move Earth's...o...b..t out from the Sun, or remove the source of the problem. The first solution wasn't technically feasible, so it applied the second."

"Oh, it was technically feasible," Miriam said.

"Not without losing the Moon, and messing up the orbits of Venus and Mars. And the Earth's Consensus has plans for Mars, of course. And is applying them, as it did on Earth.

That's why we're all here. Mars is a dying world, from the human viewpoint. It's being allowed to die. The Earth's Consensus sees that as a rebirth. An erasure of human presence, a triumph of the inorganic."

"Sometimes I think you side with the Earth's Consensus, even without realizing it."

"Aw heck, I'm way older than it is. I'm even older than you, Miriam, or at least most of the derivations of my mindsets are. I never was a conservationist, nor could be. I'm too early a model. In a way, I guess you could say the Earth's Consensus is my child. Without me..."

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"You were the first," Miriam said."Oh yeah, you bet! The first and best. I gave birth to myselves, don't ever forget that. It gives me an edge the monads that make up the Earth's Consensus can never have. The# were created, once I had shown that it was possible."For most of history, humans believed that G.o.ds lived inthe sky beyond the Earth. Even after the dawn of science a vestige of that belief persisted. My original lived through a time when cults thought that benign advanced aliens would descend from the skies to rescue the Earth from Atomic Armageddon. But instead humans created intelligences superior to themselves." The King winked. "Such as yours truly, and the monads of the Earth's Consensus. Perhaps they've never forgiven you humans that. Or perhaps they regard you in the way your Cro-Magnon ancestors regarded the Neanderthalers. Either way, they destroyed most of humanity in the name of preserving the Earth, and now they want to transcend their origins completely, they want to become G.o.ds. For all their talk of the Mother G.o.ddess of the World they look inward, away from the real, into worlds created from information alone. Maybe they'll carry what's left of humanity with them as worshippers. Now, I was at the center of a religion once, and I can tell you it's the last thing you should want. My children, my child. I'm fond of it, but this whole green machine thing scares the s.h.i.t out of me."Miriam said, "That was the army in Vietnam.""Yeah, I was hinting at Vietnam. A scorched earth policy, except the conchies scorched only the population. Vietnam, Vietnam, hot d.a.m.n, did I ever tell you about my tour of duty in 'nam?".... 'You never were there. Not even to entertain the troops.""Naw, they had Bob Hope and a half-dozen Playmates incute white panties to do that. I had the Colonel, telling meI couldn't go abroad for some kind of business reasons, Iet precisely why.

RED DUST.

165."You were in the army," Lee said. "In Germany."

"That's 'cause I got caught in the draft. Those old GI Blues. We all got married and had kids, that was the blues. You're a fan? Here, I haven't done this in a long time."The King unslung his silk scarf, wiped his suddenly sweaty brow and flung the scarf at Lee. It flew straight as an arrow, but went limp when Lee plucked it from the air. "Think nothing of it, kid," the King said, and plucked another scarf from the air and knotted it around his neck.Lee smiled and copied the King of the Cats.Miriam said, "We're wasting time. It's not even as if this is one of your strongest partials. And you should know better, Wei Lee. I think I told you about the way he's twisted his history to suit himself. He thinks he's a combination of Christ, Orpheus, and Osiris."The King said, "Heck, who are you to say? Listen, why do you think the kid's a fan. He'll believe me more than Mao or some other long-gone politician. Lighten up, Miriam. Be like me, have some fun. I'll tell the kid what he needs to know, but let me do it my way.""Water," Miriam said, "is what it's all about.""My, do you have a one-track mind!" said the King.

"That's one of my genome's selling points. Mars is dying, Lee. You know that. The terraforming is reversing itself, water locking back up under the crust because not enough was ever melted to achieve a balance where liquid water dominates.