We Had Flags (Toxic World Book 3) (11 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Holy. Shit.

Do I call the guards? Is she an assassin sent by the ship to kill me?

The guards will have taken any weapons, but what if she’s some Kung-Fu master? She could break me in half before the guards get through the door.

Rationality broke through his initial panic.

If she wanted to kill me she would have skipped the sob story and gone straight for my throat.

The Doctor took a deep breath. She was still staring at him, a tearful, defiant stare.

What’s with her attitude? Does she think I’m a racist or something?

He realized she was waiting for him to speak.

“So…Chinese, eh? But you grew up here, yes?”

“My ancestors came here in the nineteenth century to build the railroad. We’ve lived here ever since.”

The Doctor let out a breath of relief. “Oh, so you’re not really Chinese then.”

Her glare almost made him call the guards again.

“Yes. I. Am.”

He paused, thinking over his next words carefully. As he did, he edged towards the door. Just in case. “Did you know the ship was coming? Is that why you came so late in the season, so you could meet it?”

Yu-jin shook her head. “No, I was just as surprised as everyone else. I went down to the beach and saw you trying to talk with them.”

A sudden hope leapt up in him. “Wait! Can you speak to them?”

“That’s why I came here. You need an interpreter. I heard them talking among themselves. They want to trade, but when your guards almost shot them they thought you were being paranoid. Now they’re unsure what to do.”

The Doctor thought of their second attempt at communication that morning. Only the interpreter and a few sailors had come ashore, not the officer. That African used his broken English and kept talking about what sounded like trade terms, but no one was sure and no one wanted to risk trusting him. The conversation had broken down into frustrated silence and the newcomers had returned to their ship.

“So why do you want to help?” The Doctor asked, trying to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

“I’m trying to stop World War Four.”

“Well, there is that. But what else do you want?”

Yu-jin wiped her eyes. “We making a deal then?”

Like I have a fucking choice?

“Looks like we are. But I have some more questions first. First off, how can you know Chinese if you grew up here?”

“Mandarin, actually. There are several Chinese languages. Good thing they weren’t Cantonese or I wouldn’t be able to speak to them. My parents taught me.”

“And they’re…”

Yu-jin looked like she was about to cry again. She sat heavily on the examination table. “My whole family spoke it. I was the youngest, at least the youngest to make it to adulthood. My grandparents lived in Southaven, one of the last of the city-states.”

The Doctor nodded, feeling a tug of nostalgia. “I remember it. We set up a clinic there when I was still an intern.”

We. Me and Lucas.

Yu-jin went on. “Chinese people could live there. It was one of the only places that would still take us if you could prove your ancestors had been born in one of the old Republics. Conditions were bad, of course, but we could live. Then there was a coup and that general, I can’t remember his name…”

“General Paulson,” he said. The name tasted like ash.

Yu-jin frowned, “Yeah, General Paulson. He took over and almost got kicked out by a popular rebellion. He needed public support so we became scapegoats.”

An old sadness rose up within him.

You weren’t the only scapegoats.

“There was a big riot and a bunch of us got killed. The rest were kicked out with only the clothes on their backs. My grandparents were just teenagers then. They lit out into the countryside and survived as best they could. My family have been scavengers ever since.”

“And you’ve never told anyone you’re Chinese?”

Yu-jin shook her head. “How could I?”

There followed a long silence. At last Yu-jin broke it. “So I’ll be your interpreter. As long as you’re not planning to attack them or betray them, I’ll help you. In trade I want enough flour to get me and my boyfriend through the winter, and I want something else.”

The Doctor studied her. She was no longer the trembling, weeping patient of a few minutes before, so shaken he had assumed she had been the victim of a crime.

“What’s that?”

She looked him in the eye.

“I want you declare full equality for any Chinese born on this continent.”

The Doctor felt offended. “Everyone is equal in New City and the Burbs. We established that right from the beginning. We founded New City to get away from the mistakes of the past.”

“Then why is ‘Chink’ not considered hate speech?”

The Doctor paused. “Well, because hate speech has to be used on someone, and we never knew there were Chinese among us. Wait, are there more of you?”

Yu-jin said nothing. Her silence was all the confirmation he needed.

He let out a long, slow breath. This was going to be a bad day.

“How many of them are there?”

“How many of
us
are there? I’m not sure. We hide.”

“But you know of others.”

More silence.

“Ms. Song, I really think I should know this.”

Yu-jin shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. It’s their decision if they want to come out.”

The Doctor winced.
Come out.

“So do we have a deal?” the scavenger asked.

The Doctor spread his hands. Did he really have a choice?

“We have a deal.”

They shook hands. Hers was cold and slick with sweat. He looked into her eyes and saw she was terrified. He felt a sudden urge to grab her tight and comfort her.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he blurted out.

Yu-jin tried to make a cocky smile. “I can take care of myself.”

Oh, I’ve heard that one before. A long, long time ago.

Soldiers storming through a peaceful protest…a battered body left in a ditch…a sign on his door…climbing over the city wall in the dead of night…

“Are you all right?”

Yu-jin’s voice came through his thoughts, sounding a million miles away.

He found he was leaning against the examination table. Yu-jin had a hand on his shoulder.

“You looked like you were about to faint. Do you need to sit down?” she asked.

Buck up. Do the job. They need you.

He stood up straight, set his jaw. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just tired, and not as young as I used to be. When you missed the battle with the Righteous Horde you also missed seeing me get shot and catch influenza on the same day. Now that you’re on the team they’ll start whispering to you about it like a bunch of old hens. Clyde’s the worst with Marcus a close second. They think I’ll keel over any minute, but that’s not going to happen. I’m feeling better every day, and I don’t have time to sit down. Let me call in a few people and we’re going to plan strategy.”

With that he strode to the door and summoned the guard. Doing something always made him feel better. It was only after he sent for the others that he realized the full significance of his actions. For years he had assumed all the Chinese were dead, and now he had taken one into his inner circle. It was a move born of necessity, and also a gut reaction. Yu-jin could be trusted. He knew it. He didn’t worry about how he knew it because his gut had never betrayed him before.

His gut also told him that this wouldn’t sit well with everyone else in his little corner of civilization.

Half an hour later they sat around a table in The Doctor’s personal quarters. He didn’t like inviting people into the only spot of privacy he had, but he didn’t dare hold this meeting anywhere else. Clyde and Marcus were there, as well as Annette. She was a last-minute addition he didn’t really want. He had to admit, though, that he needed her. She said the Burbs were a flashpoint and despite all her faults she wasn’t prone to hysteria like Clyde. The appearance of the ship followed by the appearance of a Chinese woman at his side might just be the match to set off the kerosene.

He sat at the head of the table with Yu-jin fidgeting in the seat to his right. To his left sat Marcus spouting banalities about her boyfriend, who was some sort of artist or something. Annette sat quietly, studying each person in turn and looking at the scavenger with open curiosity.

Clyde studied Yu-jin with a quite different look—one of growing suspicion.

He’s guessed it. Clyde knows she wouldn’t be here unless she had some key information, and it’s not much of a leap to figure out she’s Chinese.

He noticed Clyde hadn’t taken off his sidearm. He felt something cold and unpleasant squirm in his gut.

The Doctor sat back in his chair and took a deep breath before speaking.

“The situation with the ship has changed. I’d like you to meet Song Yu-jin. We were having problems communicating before. Luckily, Ms. Song knows how to speak Chinese. So we’re—”

“And how does she know that?” Clyde interrupted, not taking his gaze off the scavenger.

Fucking hell, Clyde, are you going to make me say it?

“Well, she knows how to speak Chinese because she is Chinese.”

Clyde had his hands on the table. His right hand moved back a few inches, as if to go for his gun, and then stopped. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it.

The Doctor took a quick glance at the other two. Marcus looked shocked, while Annette seemed wary but not terribly surprised.

Perhaps in her scavenger days she came across bands of Chinese like the Song family? I’ll have to ask her about that.

He hurried to continue. “Yu-jin is not from the ship. She’s a scavenger. I remember her from last year, as does Marcus. She’s not a spy, and certainly not an assassin. She had me alone in the medical office and could have killed me easily.”

“Where’s your band?” Annette asked.

Yu-jin lowered her head. “It was just my family. I’m the last.”

Annette’s face darkened. “I see.”

Annette had settled here after the death of her husband. That would make her empathize, plus scavengers tended to stick together when they weren’t robbing and killing each other. Especially the women. Having Annette take Yu-jin’s side might just balance out Clyde, with Marcus a neutral middle.

But to his surprise it was Marcus who asked the first challenging question. “Your people from one of the old armies?”

“We’ve been here since 1867,” Yu-jin replied.

Clyde snorted. “Like there were any Chinese here back then.”

“It’s true, I’ve read about that,” Annette said.

“The Chinese put a lot of propaganda into our publications from the Old Times,” Clyde said. “You have to read between the lines.”

Yu-jin crossed her arms and frowned. “There was propaganda on both sides.”

Clyde returned the hard look. “See here, little missy, I’ve read a lot of intel from the Old Times and can show you proof of Chinese ownership of the media back then. You people twisted the news to make everything look good for you, garner sympathy, and…”

“Like the Jews,” Annette said.

Clyde turned to her. “Huh?”

“The Jews controlled everything, didn’t they?”

“What? No they didn’t. You calling me an anti-Semite or something? I didn’t even mention the Jews!”

Annette rolled right over him. “Oh, sorry, it was the Catholics, or was it the blacks? I can’t keep track. I read one book that claimed a secret cabal of Devil worshippers controlled everything. Another book said it was the environmentalists, who were these people who wanted to stop the world from getting poisoned. Imagine pointing the finger at them while the seas were dying! Every generation has its own group to Blame, and let me remind you that Blame is still a crime.”

Clyde snorted and turned away. The Doctor looked at Annette with new appreciation. He’d only recently learned she could read, and now it turned out she had done quite a bit of it.

“There was a war, Annette,” Marcus said.

“There have been plenty of wars. We just fought one against a group of Christians, and do you see me Blaming Christians? Oh, don’t give me that look! I know they twisted your faith. I’ve read the Bible too, in case you’re wondering.”

Clyde raised his hands in frustration. “So, what do we do? Let this stranger translate for us when we don’t even know what they might cook up together? Invite the Chinese into town?”

Annette sighed. “I’m not saying that. I know that ship out there could be the biggest danger the city has ever faced.”

“
Could
be?” Clyde said.

“Yes, could be. We couldn’t even talk to them. Now we can. All I’m saying is that we give negotiation a chance.”

Annette’s words were followed by silence. One by one, all of them turned to The Doctor, waiting to be told what to do as usual. He gave the Chinese scavenger a sympathetic look, feeling protective.