A Grey Moon Over China (11 page)

Patel walked a few steps away. “You should, young man.” He turned back and looked at Bolton from under heavy brows, then gazed around at his audience. “Allow me to explain.” He seemed to savor the idea of explaining anything to anyone, and took his time before starting.

“Well,” he said at last. “My colleague here tells me that you are planning to present the world with an item for which it will pay any amount of money. You are then intending, as the Americans say, to take the money and run.”

His voice rose at the end of each sentence, followed by a quick bob of his head.

“Now, I am sure we all agree that one or two things are not as they should be in our poor world, but I have nevertheless some small sympathy for it, and I do not wish to see it come to harm.

“So. What you may not realize, in your haste, is that you are about to introduce a powerful drug into the arm of a most fragile patient. It is my intention to keep that patient from expiring.

“I will also”—he smiled broadly—“offer you your only chance of success.” His eyebrows rose and fell as he watched each of us in turn.

“Mr. Patel,” I said, “I’m not sure why you’re here. We don’t, in any case, mean the world any harm. We only mean to leave.”

“Ah!” His eyes flashed, then relaxed again. “No. I do wish you much success, my boy. And, if the truth were known, I rather hope to come along. But please do not think the time will come when you have all at once left your world behind. We are none of us so innocent. No, my young friend, the answers to whatever suffering this world has caused are still here, however much more suffering that is likely to bring. But enough! My business is the orderly theft of the world’s riches.”

Bolton glanced at me. “I thought that’s what you meant to avoid.”

“Ah-hah. I said only that I wished to avoid killing the patient while we operate, Mr. Bolton. No, I have come with a proposal to put to Mr. Torres. And to Mr. Polaski as well? One wonders. In any case, it is this: I will arrange for you to engage the world’s industry to your ends, if you will provide for others to follow. You must also leave your little secret behind.” He looked solemn for a moment, then burst into a laugh, very pleased with himself. I felt sick at hearing an outsider talk so cavalierly about what we’d tried so hard to keep private.

“Perhaps,” said Bolton. “But as Mr. Torres has said, we’re still not certain how you’ve come to be here. Or why.”

“Ah-hah. Yes. Well, I will tell you. You see, as intelligent as my colleague here is, she still chooses to tell me things.” He swung his head to look at her. “And when she told me of this little adventure of hers, I left her no choice but to bring me along.” For the first time since he’d arrived, his face was still and his eyes were hard as he looked at her.

Miller returned the gaze for a moment, unperturbed, then broke it off and took a step toward her plane. “I’m afraid I need to rest,” she said. “And then Katherine and I need to begin finding some very expensive equipment. So if you’ll excuse us, I need to get my bags. Perhaps we can join you later.”

“Ms. Miller,” I said. She stopped. “I have a question. You told Ms. Chan you were coming to work on EI, and whatever your reasons, you seem to have left us little choice in the matter. But I don’t believe you can
work without code and data from China Lake. So we need to know if you plan to open a connection from here to the mainland. It’s not a good idea.”

In response she sank down to rest on her heels and opened her case, which she then turned toward me. Fitted neatly inside were fully thirty of the now-familiar, dull silver petabyte memory blocks.

“You see!” said Patel, beaming and nodding. “She is so efficient. That is why I let her take such good care of me!”

Miller closed her case and walked away with Chan. Patel watched them go, then leaned closer and said, “You will want to watch that one, my young colleagues. That is a woman whose only real friends, I’m afraid, are the ones she builds with her own hands.”

P
atel said nothing more about himself or his odd companion, but did ask to be shown around the caverns. The elevators to the lower caverns weren’t ready, so Bolton brought up the electric cart for a tour of the airfield. Patel had a hard time getting himself into the front seat next to Bolton, and his big face worked hard with the effort. But when he was in he smiled and banged a crutch against the floor.

“Good, good!”

Bolton glanced at him as he drove. “What’s your impression of the island, Mr. Patel? Miller said it wasn’t what you expected.”

“True. Yes, it is very impressive. Brutal, but impressive.” He turned around and surprised me by patting my knee. “I am sorry if I was harsh with you, young man. But I do not think you should hope for more than you have.”

He turned back and pointed out the front. “I should like to see the view from that very big window there, if it’s not too dark. I understand we are very high in the air?”

“You didn’t see it as you came in?”

“Ah.” He peered at a passing laser battery. “Actually, no. We heard over the radio what the gentleman in the other aircraft expected us to do, and just at that moment I remembered a book I very much wanted to finish. Hello!” he shouted to a passing soldier. “How are you?”

He turned to me again in the back. “Tell me where you are from.”

“Piedras Negras. In Coahuila.”

“Oh.
El desierto vacío
.”

“Sí.”

“My little Spanish. I am sorry.” I didn’t know if he was sorry for his Spanish or the desert.

“No one is left,” he said. “The desert moved too quickly, and no one is left. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“You had family there?”

“A mother and a sister.”

“Ah-hah.”

We came to the edge of the world. The cart’s front wheels rested close to the lip of the opening, a knife’s edge that ran to the sides and then up and across the top where it became lost in the evening’s gloom.

No one left in Coahuila? I was stunned. What had happened to Graciela, and to my mother? All those years I’d tried not to remember them, tried not to remember that I’d walked away, leaving them to look for their husband and father by themselves . . . to find him sideways on the wires, a foolish marionette with his pants torn, his shirt pulled up around his chest . . .

I’d wanted to pull the shirt back down. I always remembered that, wanting to see him dressed properly. But I’d walked away, leaving my mother and Graciela to see where the barbs had cut into his face, where the bullets had torn open his side, shattered his arm . . .

I gripped the seat to fight off vertigo. Looking straight up was like seeing the universe sliced in two—half lit by the stars, the other half a shadowy grey inside the cavern. We were balanced on a line that divided the world.

Outside the cavern there was nothing. It was as if sky surrounded us on every side, above and below.

Then three thousand feet down, barely visible in the pale light, the great rock shelf sloped away toward the water. We were above a haze layer, looking out at the stars that floated in the deep blue over the horizon.

Patel leaned forward, looking down at the shelf.

“That is where we will leave from?”

“Yes.”

He looked for a long time, then dropped back in his seat and watched the sky. We sat for a few minutes with our own thoughts, then he said, “And that is where we are going. Yes?”

“Out there someplace,” I said. “Yes.”

He let out a long sigh, sputtering with his lips, then sat for another few minutes with his hands across his belly.

“So. It is like we are on the top of Mount Nebo.”

We didn’t answer, not understanding.

“ ‘Moses went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo, and there the Lord showed him the Promised Land.’ ”

Bolton nodded and after a minute restarted the cart. We made the trip
back in silence, then parked by Miller’s plane on the brightly lit apron. Bolton and I got out.

Thwack-thwack. Thwack-thwack. Thwack-thwack.
A lamp flared in the roof closer to the entrance, then another and another in rapid succession until a full mile of the cavern was lit. We stared down the runways.

Nothing. All across the two hundred acres of apron, people were getting to their feet to watch, then pointing.

A tiny aircraft entered the light. It was flying in a slip, one wing low and the nose cocked the other way. Security troops picked up guns and started out onto the apron to meet it.

The plane settled and the low wheel finally touched. Still the plane failed to straighten. Instead it pivoted on the wheel, then its strut snapped and the wing dug into the runway. The plane spun toward Miller’s Navy tail-fan, then skidded under its wing and snagged the gear, bringing the larger plane down on top of it. Fire crews broke into a run.

A smack came from the little plane and a door panel flew out. A tiny figure followed, scrambling as fast as she could—no more than a girl, from a distance, with short black hair and delicate, South East Asian features.

Her accent matched. She spun around and shouted in a shrill voice.

“No-good-for-nothing piece-of-shit airplane! What kind of junk you do for me, hah?” She kicked it as hard as she could and another panel caved in. She spat on it.

A woman from the fire crew reached out to get her away from the wreckage. Almost too fast to see, the girl whipped around and knocked the woman’s arm down, sending her to her knees. The girl then put her hands on her hips and rocked up and down on her toes as she looked around the apron. Guns trained and steadied.

“So who in charge here, hah?” she shouted. She saw the three of us and started across.

She walked like a cat, scarcely touching the ground. Her eyes seemed unnaturally bright and moved rapidly from side to side, flicking from face to face, and every now and then up to the guns.

Polaski stood across the apron, watching from the shadows.

Patel spoke quietly from the cart next to us. “My goodness. There is a fire burning in that one, isn’t there?” He shook his head slowly as if giving this careful thought. “A dangerous thing, such a fire, don’t you think?”

She was very young. She had a finely-drawn, pretty face and a tiny body tight with energy. Her eyes were narrow and she took short, deep breaths, nostrils flaring.

She stopped in front of Bolton, opting, apparently, for the best semblance of a uniform.

“So. I am here to join with you.” She rocked up and down again on the balls of her feet.

“I see,” said Bolton.

“Yes. I will show your soldiers to fight.” Her eyes flashed and she bounced on her toes and looked at each of us in turn.

“Perhaps we don’t need to fight,” said Bolton, folding his arms across his chest.

“Hah! Everyplace you need to fight! Always you need. I help you.”

“I think not.” He nodded briefly to the troops moving around to the sides.

“Hah! I think you are afraid to fight, Mister. I think maybe you are too pretty to fight. I think maybe your pecker’s too small, hah?” She turned to look at Patel. “Hi, fat man.” She turned further and looked at me. It was all I could do not to look away.

“Who
are
you?” I said.

“My name is Tuyet, Mister Torres. Tuyet Pham.”

I
t would be thirty years before I learned how she came to know my name.

Polaski insisted she stay, and put her to work right away with the troops. The security people objected, but when they looked to me for a decision I said nothing.

I was fascinated by her. I was fascinated the way we are fascinated by an almost-familiar scent in the air, a tune heard somewhere before, the peculiar cast of winter morning’s light slipping in across the warming fires in the stockyards. She was familiar, somehow. Expected. And, as strange as it seemed, I couldn’t imagine going on without her.

She was in my dreams that first night. Kip stood to one side of her in the dream, while to the other stood a big, sturdy man with the face of Madhu Patel but no crutches. Anne Miller watched from the shadows. Pham stood with her hands on her hips and her feet apart, wearing a frustratingly sheer gown and laughing. It was like a dream I’d had many times before, of standing naked in a circle of people, but this was the first time any of them had had faces.