A Grey Moon Over China (32 page)

Up on the stage, the wolf had stepped on one of the cat’s feet, and now with a shriek and a hiss the cat spun around and sank a claw into the costumed wolf’s face. The claw stuck. Faithful to the script, however, the wolf went on with its attacks on the bird, flinging the stuck cat from side to side. The cat panicked and howled at full lung, and in a flurry of wolf’s fur tried to claw its way onto the wolf’s back for better purchase. The other cat—the drone with the cat’s part, anyway—inched its way forward toward the center of the stage, sensing its understudy’s imminent demise.

“On the other hand,” said Peters, “look at that lovely, lovely child. How sweet and innocent can a creature be, I ask you? Not like the wolf at all, yet everyone’s model of perfect innocence. I think of young Kipper, you know, a boy—a man, really—just filled,
filled
by his own feelings, and not an ounce of wit about him. Everything Polaski is not.”

“So what about Hesse? Wolves are innocent? Or children are innocent?”

“Oh, no, neither one. Or at least, once one has learned sin, one can never regain that simple sort of innocence. Never again shed one’s own feelings, you see.”

The cat had made it up onto the wolf, but because one claw was still stuck in the wolf’s face, it ended up perched on the wolf’s nose—facing backwards into its big rolling eyes. The cat’s ears went back and it hissed and tried to back away, while nearby Chan shook her head and hid her face behind a
hand. The actors playing the hunters and grandfather took their cues and tried to assemble into the grand procession into the forest. The real cat, still clinging backwards to the wolf’s face, hissed and spat into the wolf’s ear and urinated on its nose, while the wolf pirouetted on its six legs. Taking its unexpected opportunity, the bird now shifted its attack to the cat, and the other cat, the drone-cat, snuck into line, only to stumble into the coil of rope and tangle all six of its legs.

Peters gestured at the stage and leaned closer. “What Hesse said, you see, was that the way to innocence leads on, not back—not back to the wolf or the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.”

He stood up to applaud. “Into the jungle, you see.”

S
o, Eddie, what’s this about unidentified ships approaching from the asteroids?”

“Chan thinks you need a rest, Charlie.”

“Aye, I know she does, poor lass. Here, this way.” He turned into a rough alleyway between black buildings, and scuffed at the gravel as we walked. I felt another change of subject coming. “She’s the one who should be resting, you know—never takes a minute for herself. It’s a fine thing, her worrying over me. But my, with those children—the
wonder
in their eyes, Eddie. Did you know—”

“She thinks you won’t admit the planet’s hard on you, Charlie. She says it gives you a millstone, a cross to carry.” I plunged all the way in. “You like to think you’re carrying the weight of some holy design, Charlie, even though it’s killing you.”

“Oh, dear, she shouldn’t have.”

I thought I’d gone too far, but in fact Peters was paying me no attention at all. He was shaking his head and muttering and lumbering away.

We’d come out of the alley and into Trinity Square, now a dreary expanse of black gravel relieved only by litter and a few weaving soldiers. The lowering sun shone through the dome to cast a grid of shadows across the bleak scene, breathing a dim life into misty rays of light that cut through the dust.

Peters was flickering in and out of the beams of light and kicking up new swirls of dust behind him, crunching across the gravel toward a tiny figure wedged into a dim corner among the farthest shadows. Seeing only that a figure lay there and that Peters was intent upon reaching it, I knew it had to be Pham—passed out and left behind among the litter and the rest of the drunks.

It was indeed Pham, easily identified by the giant gun strapped to one thigh and by the clothing. She had taken to wearing a skin-tight black body
suit with nothing over it, or, as far as anyone could tell, under it. It made her look even tinier and sleeker—and deadlier: not like someone passed out and collapsed in a squalid stupor, but like a spider hiding in a shadowed corner, ready to slip out and sting enemies that passed.

Peters kicked aside a blunt-looking air-syringe that lay in the dirt next to her. It was a scene of black on black in the shadows: her sleek suit with its dull sheen of dust; her close-cropped hair and high cheekbones and slack lips pressed against the dirt; her gun twisted around and pushed into the ground under her narrow waist, the barrel filled with sand and gravel. Peters leaned down.

“Leave her be, Charlie,” I said. “Let her kill herself her own way.”

He knelt down beside her and pulled the gun out from under her. It seemed like all he meant to do, but then he reached in under her arms.

“Charlie, you can’t pick her up, for Christ’s sake. Come on, you’ll kill yourself.” For a man of Peters’ size, just standing upright in the high gravity was like carrying an eighty-pound weight at home. To lift another human being was nearly impossible. Stealing his strength, too, was the thin air—it was kept at a painfully low pressure to keep from blowing off the domes.

“Oh, I’ll be all right now.” He sucked his breath in through his teeth and rolled Pham upright, then with a noise in his throat he snapped from his knees onto both feet and heaved her onto his shoulder, still crouching. “Can’t just leave her like a dog, you know. Someone’s got to look after her.” He paused to blow out his breath, then with a thrust of his thighs drove himself to his feet, boots slipping in the gravel and kicking up a new cloud of dust in the shadows. Peters’ cargo handling years were two decades behind him—for a man in his fifties it was a display of extraordinary strength.

I could hear his breathing as he steadied himself. The sound carried through the dry air and echoed back and forth in the corner between the walls. Finally he turned away from the black brick and trudged across the square, in and out of the light with his head down and Pham over his shoulder. Turning off the square by the probe’s assembly building, he reached the makeshift office I kept along the alley, then rolled Pham onto the sofa.

“Well! Some coffee if we might, there’s a fine idea. I’ll just straighten up a bit.” But behind his nonchalance he was tired. I checked Pham’s pulse, then sat down and watched Peters clean up.

It was a rough and lopsided little room, but the brick walls were painted with precious white paint, and I’d put in heaters and lights. On the wall above Pham was a painstakingly assembled photograph of the blue and green planet, Serenitas.

“Poor lass.” Peters poked through my hardcopy books while stealing glances at Pham.

“Charlie, she’s not ‘poor.’ She’s drugged to the gills.”

“Aye, I know, poor thing. Such a sweet girl, too, when she sleeps.” He settled into a chair to read.

“Charlie, you’re talking about a woman who’s said to be slaughtering civilians and carving her initials on her prisoners.”

“Aye, that’s a terrible business, I know. All this killing’s got to stop, Eddie. This little one here, you know, and Polaski and Anne Miller, and that snake of Satan himself, David Rosler . . . all of them.” He turned the page.

“Miller? Anne Miller’s sitting in the North Tower mixing bat’s dung and mumbling incantations for the drones to return. I wouldn’t say she’s killing anybody, Charlie.”

Peters shut the book and looked at me as though over reading glasses. “You aren’t listening to me, laddie. Polaski’s taken children and made machines out of them, and Anne’s taken machines and made humans out of them, and they’re both thinking that that’s all human beings are. And in their own little ways they’re filling up the worlds with the dead.”

Pham’s eyes were open. She was watching me without expression, the way she had so often through the years. I watched her back for a while, wondering at the depth of that look. Without moving a muscle, without shifting her eyes or blinking, it was nevertheless a seduction, a moist, hypnotic beckoning to something deep inside of me. Like a reptile rippling the surface of a muddy pond.

But there was something new in her face now. In the tension around her eyes and mouth there was a ghost of uncertainty, a shadow of weariness and pain. Vulnerability.

She pushed herself upright and sat forward on the sofa, working her head from side to side.

“Ah,” said Peters, “I see you’re awake. Come, rest, I’ll get you some water. How do you feel?” He turned and went off to rummage in a box while Pham ignored him, dropping her eyes to the floor with a flicker of irritation. “Here, here’s some water. It’ll make you feel much better.” He leaned down and held out a glass. Still she didn’t look up. “You know, Tuyet, when I was younger—”

With a flick of her wrist she knocked the glass out of his hand. “
Stop it!
” She jerked her head around to one side and stared into the corner, eyes blazing and jaw working under the skin, clearly holding herself in check.

But then she got to her feet and pushed a hand into his chest, forcing him to take a step back.

“Why you so
nice
all the time, hah? Why you bring me here, eh,
father!
” She spat the word and pushed past him, making her way unsteadily to the door and banging through it like a cat escaping into the street. Peters
looked down in confusion at the water on his hand, and for an unguarded moment he, too, seemed frail and uncertain.

I
caught a ride on a mining tractor to the landing dome on the horizon. The American Carolyn Dorczak was just emerging from a landing transfer trailer when I arrived, stepping down behind the man who was now her superior, the man who managed the big English-speaking colony at West Lowhead on the second planet. Bart Allerton.

Polaski had carefully assembled our most presentable troops for review, all wearing their heaviest equipment and standing ramrod straight. The visitors, by contrast, were already struggling in the high gravity, nearly twice that of their own planet.

Our troops were dwarfed by the off-worlders, who were dragging themselves along the rough dirt, coughing from the dust and squinting directly into the setting sun. No other lights had been turned on, giving the scene its intended brutal atmosphere, the cold air and the silence punctuated only by the coughing and the scraping of feet in the gravel. Polaski led the way, holding a swagger stick in his left hand and sweeping the other in lavish gestures, spelling out the troops’ advantages and extolling the third generation’s unparalleled prospects. Carolyn Dorczak slipped away from the entourage and walked tiredly over to stand next to me.

“Stop looking so serious, Ed—you look like you’ve got a lemon stuck in your throat. Don’t you ever have fun?”

“Hello, Commander. You look a little worn out yourself. What time is it for you?”

“Not ‘commander’ anymore, I’m afraid. Just ‘Carolyn.’ ” She pursed her lips. “Nighttime. You?”

“I don’t know. No one pays much attention to ship’s time anymore. The sunsets are thirty-three hours apart. Sorry about the charade.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” She rubbed her arms in the cold. “It’ll impress Bart.” She shifted her weight and looked around at the dome. Her pleasant face had changed little since her last visit, the intelligent brown eyes as always belying a pretense of agreeable inattention, the unruly hair still cut close to keep it in line. “So where’s our charming friend, Michael Bolton? The ladies were kind of hoping to say hello—he and his merry band have quite a reputation in the system, you know.”

“No, I didn’t. They’re all on R and R.”

“Shame.”

It wasn’t really true: Bolton was on one of H-v’s moons, negotiating with a group that claimed to have contacts among the Europeans.

Dorczak shrugged her coat closer around her and peered up at the top of the dome. “I know things, Ed.”

I didn’t answer her.

“I know that there are some very heavy ships inbound from the asteroids, and that you’re scanning them with everything you’ve got—which means you don’t know who they are. We also noticed that all your surface defenses are active. A little nervous, are you?”

“No one would try to attack us here, Carolyn.”

She nodded absently. “I also hear you’re going to try to send a probe in after your drones. Which means you don’t know what happened to them, either. For all your brave talk when we entered the system eleven years ago, you’ve never known.”

I was trying to think of an answer when an aide slipped a note into my hand. I read it and then handed it back, and whispered to the aide for a moment. She left, then a minute later reappeared at the edge of the dome and nodded to us. I turned to Dorczak.

“Well, I’ll tell you what. How’d you like to visit our command post while our ships stop and board those very unidentified vessels?”

“Entertaining thought. And?”

“And you tell me if there’s anyone else in the system who thinks we’re sending a probe.”

“Okay.”

I caught the aide’s eye and nodded toward a tractor sitting inside the nearest airlock. “Let’s slip out this way—Polaski would shit.”

We rode in the pressurized cab of the tractor while the aide next to us drove, farther and farther across the frozen black wastes and past the last of the ships and the last of the domes. The sun resting on the horizon dropped suddenly below it and winked out, leaving Dorczak to gasp and grope instinctively for a way to stop the tractor. It was suddenly so dark that we couldn’t see our own hands.