Gold's Price

by Rich X Curtis

  So in the morning he had seen it, hunched over his little fire, warming the last of the rabbit-leg he’d saved from the night before. The dog watched him. Watched the rabbit’s leg on the stick. The dog licked his chops.

  He had looked up and saw it. It was a blimp. A small one. The blimp was blue, so he almost missed it in the sky. At first, he thought it was a drone, so he hid, kicking dirt over the fire, which just caused it to smoke more, as the dirt was mostly leaves. He stamped it out, then scampered back among the trees, trying to get a look at it from his hiding place.

  Had it dipped down towards him? It had. It was lower and headed towards the farm. Shit. He packed, as quickly as he could, glancing up at the sky periodically, trying to track it. He kept losing it as he packed, and every time he saw it it was lower and closer. How had it seen him, from so high up? Machines could see better than people, he reminded himself. The drones that had kept him penned on the mountain for so long had seen him in the dark.

  The dog had bolted down the rabbit’s leg he dropped when he put out the fire, so there went breakfast. The other rabbit carcass went into the bag, wrapped in a foil blanket he used to store food. He shouldered the pack, got the water bag and slung it, and then picked up the machete. He called the dog over to him and looped the leash around his neck. Sometimes it didn’t want to follow, and he didn’t want to let it out of his sight. He decided he was packed. Packed and ready. Ready for what was the dilemma. He couldn’t hide outside the trees, not from a blimp. It had seen him in the trees, he reasoned, so he figured he couldn’t hide at all. He started back into the shadows of the trees, then stopped. Indecision. Run or fight. Or what? He looked for the blimp, but it wasn’t where it had been last, which was about a hundred feet up and maybe a half-mile away. It was—

  Right above him, and low, just above the trees, maybe thirty feet up. He stopped and stared at it. There was a rope hanging from it, which snaked up and back into a hatch in the underside. Retracting, he thought. The rope had gone up. The logo on the bottom of the blimp leapt out at him, and he stared stupidly at it. White. A white globe, with a wreath.

  “What the fuck is that?” he said aloud. He knew that logo. It was the United Nations logo, or some variant. It said UNITED NATIONS underneath it, but there was also some Chinese script underneath the bold white English lettering. It was familiar and seeing it stunned him. He had seen nothing familiar like that in a long, long time. He was still staring at it when the dog growled.

  “Can you keep him from charging?” a voice asked, from behind him. “I don’t want to hurt your dog. Or you.”

  It was a woman’s voice. It spoke English without an accent. He had not heard English in a long time, either. The man and his son had never spoken more than a few words to him, and he hadn’t understood their language, which he suspected was Chinese or some other Asian language. Her voice was strong and clear, with just a faint huskiness to it.

  He turned, slowly, and saw her. The dog bared its teeth and barked. A warning bark.

  “Easy boy,” he said, eying the woman. She wore black. Leggings, a tank-top, and was barefoot. Dark hair, pale blue eyes, brown skin. She held a sword, a samurai sword, he realized with a start. She held it casually, low by her side. It looked sharp. Katana, the word sprang into his mind. “Nice sword,” he said, “looks sharp.”

  She blinked. “You speak English,” she said, eyes narrowing. “I heard you.” She looked him up and down, and he felt she was cataloging him, as much as he had her, although he felt exposed to her gaze, like she saw everything about him in a glance. “You’re the first white man I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “Maybe I’m the last white man,” he said, with a laugh. His voice sounded strange to him, even though he had always talked up on the mountain. To himself. His laugh sounded strange to him. Forced.

  “You are alone,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “You’re here, with a dog, packed for walking. You speak English, which nobody does anymore. Who are you?”

  He nodded. Natural questions, he decided. But…her tone. He met her eyes. “Who are you?”

  “Silver,” she said flatly.

  “Like the metal?” he asked, arching his eyebrow at her.

  She nodded. “Just so,” she replied. “Who are you?” she repeated.

  He said nothing. Just waited. The dog growled, low in his throat.

  “The sword is sharp,” she said. “It’s old, but it keeps its edge well. Good steel.”

  He nodded. “It looks old. Where did you get it? Pretty sure nobody in Japan makes those anymore.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Museum. In Boston. In the attic.”

  “Boston,” he said, biting back the word before he could stop himself.

  Her eyes noted his. She doesn’t miss much; he realized.

  “I just,” he began, lamely, then stopped. “Thought it would be underwater.”

  “Some of it. Most. Not the attic though. Somebody moved a bunch of stuff up there, then locked it. I saw the lock and decided it was worth a look. Maybe something useful was there.”

  “Was there?” He eyed the sword. It was a nightmare arc of gray steel in the shadow under the blimp.

  She shrugged. “This was there. Paintings. Some Roman stuff. Sculptures. Boxes and boxes. Lots of paper. Lots of mold.” She narrowed her eyes. “Your name. Who are you?”

  “John,” he said, lying. “Carter,” he finished, meeting her eyes.

  She regarded him. “OK, John Carter,” she said, glancing at him, “keep your secrets.” She shifted her posture, relaxing somewhat. “We have gotten off on a bad foot. Let’s have a seat and a chat. Is that OK? Look, I’ll go first.” She sat on the leafy clearing he had been using as a campsite, laying the sword to her side, but still within easy reach. “Sit and tell me your story.”

  He shrugged, setting down his pack. He lay the machete next to it, which she noted, he saw. “Not quite as sharp as that, I think.”

  “No,” she said, “but another relic. Are you a relic too?”

  “Maybe I am,” he said, sitting down and sprawling against his pack, facing her. “Maybe you are too.” The dog sniffed at him, and he patted it. It wagged its tail. Good boy.

  “Oh yes,” she said. Her grin was very wide. “Ancient. Now, tell me your story.”

  Chapter Seven

  They left the next morning. Gold decided, and informed Uncle and, through him, the girl. The girl, Li, had nodded soberly at her and packed. The other women, watching her, hissed and grumbled. A man protested, gesticulating wildly at Li as she rolled plastic water bottles, like you would have in an office bubbler, but chipped and crazed with internal cracks, to the truck. But Gold had stepped forward, and they shrank back from her. Uncle loaded the gear onto the back of the truck. Li made the water bottles tight, plugging them with wooden plugs she rapped into place with a board.

  They had spent a restless night, there in the shopping mall. Uncle called it the Super Brand Mall, and said that once it had been clean and prosperous, full of shops carrying goods from around the world. She had asked him to tell her more about the city as they sat around their fire. She had been liberal with the woodpile, not planning on staying long, and seeing no reason to be cold.

  “We should bring wood, no?” She offered, the thought striking her as she crouched over the fire, stirring it with a stick.

  “There is plenty of wood outside the city. We don’t need it,” Uncle said. “What did you want to know?”

  “Where are we, how did this city get wrecked? Where are all the people?” She said, “Some context. I am not from around here. I know this is Changsha, from some English signs I saw. Road signs.”

  “Changsha,” Uncle said, “was the capital of Hunan province in the Republic of China. It has always had this name throughout history.”

  “Where in China? Hunan is central China, am I right?” Gold asked, stirring the coals with a stick. She knew that it was. Had been. Whatever.

  “Yes, central Ch
ina. Chairman Mao was born in Yueyang, just up the river from here.” Gold could hear a note of pride in his voice.

  “Mao was dead long before you were born. I am guessing.” Provocation. It was useful. She could smell cooking meat and her stomach rumbled. She tried not to notice it.

  Li came back to the fire with a metal tripod. Rebar again, they must have found a stash of the stuff. She set it above the fire and hung an old black pot over it. Water from a cloudy plastic bottle went into the pot. Gold watched her carefully.

  “Chairman Mao died in nineteen seventy-six. Almost one hundred years before I was born,” Uncle said. “He wrote a poem about Changsha. Would you like me to recite it to you?”

  “No,” Gold said. Nothing worse than people quoting poetry at her. Li poured rice from a cloth sack into the pot and stirred it with a plastic spoon.

  “It’s quite good,” Uncle said, petulantly. “One of his better works, all scholars agree on this.”

  “Fine,” Gold said.

  Then Uncle quoted, in a sing-song voice:

  Alone I stand in the cold autumn

  On the tip of Orange-blossom Island.

  The river flowing northward—

  I see a thousand hills red with crimson

  And their ranked woods dyed deep green,

  And a hundred barges vying

  Over water blue as crystal

  Gold thought about the giant and how she had killed him. It had been easy, quick, and painless. She had given him that, although she suspected, from the tears Li had shed afterward, that he had not deserved it. Limited information…they had forced her to act and act quickly. She had needed a demonstration for protection.

  They had spread out in a circle, surrounding them there in the Super Brand Mall atrium. Torches lit, families called out to each other and watched from the balconies. A ragged, pathetic group, these scavengers. But they would kill her if she gave them a chance, and chances were not her way.

  He held his grapple as they spread out. Six feet of black iron pipe with a mace-like head of twisted rebar. She eyed it carefully. He was a big man and had the reach on her, which constrained her to certain attacks. But there were still many attacks against such men, and Gold knew them.

  He saw her looking, then, at the mace. She spread her hands. No weapons here. He snorted and tossed it aside with a clang. For this, she had given him his death quickly, without suffering or pain, or, at least, not much.

  He sprang at her, arms wide for a killing hug, thinking to pinion her. She feinted left, then ducked aside to the right and smashed her left elbow above just behind his left ear as he went crashing by. He sprawled in a heap, and she casually stepped over him, bent down as he tried to rise, looped her arms around his neck, and broken it with a loud click. Like a chicken, easy as that.

  She bounced back, then, expecting the rest of them to rush her, but they did not. Uncle had spoken to them at length, and they dragged the giant away. She suspected, from the smell that later wafted through the cavernous mall, what they had done with him.

  She watched Li cooking vegetables over the fire in a battered wok—cabbage, carrots, and onions. Li looked at her over the fire and nodded. Gold nodded back. Li showed her the pan, and Gold nodded again. Just vegetables. It was a start.

  “What did you think of the poem?” Uncle asked, after a time. She realized he had finished.

  “Imagistic,” Gold said. “Perhaps about their revolution? It was wistful.”

  “Exactly!” Uncle’s excitement was clear. “You have it exactly right. The recollections of the old revolutionary, still proud of what they accomplished, but wary of the future, and the barges, representing prosperity, causing problems for the river.”

  “No more poetry, please,” Gold said. Uncle was silent, so she added: “China changed a lot after he died.”

  “Yes,” Uncle agreed. “Things changed a lot.”

  They were silent for a while.

  “Uncle,” she said. “How did you come to meet this girl?”

  “I needed a witch,” Uncle replied. “This group had captured her, so I took her under my wing, so to speak. She protected me, translated for me, and helped me get the things I needed. Water for the truck, for instance.”

  “It runs on water?” Gold asked, curious.

  “Water cools it,” Uncle answered. “A plutonium pellet substrate reactor amidships. It is not dangerous at rest, but when generating power it needs water in the cooling jacket. This water escapes as steam. Most of the water here is filthy, so there is a risk of clogging the filters.” He sounded mournful. “She helps with other things, as I have no hands.”

  “She translates for you?” Gold said. “Don’t they speak Chinese?”

  “Their Chinese has drifted a bit,” Uncle said. “They could not understand me when I first came among them.”

  “How was that?” Gold asked. “How did you get mixed up with them?”

  “I don’t want to tell you,” Uncle said. “It is a shameful story.”

  “We have all night,” Gold said, accepting a styrofoam bowl filled with rice and vegetables. It smelled delicious. She smiled her thanks at Li. The girl blushed, and Gold smiled wider at that. Li handed her chopsticks. Their fingers brushed each other. Gold noticed this.

  “I don’t want to tell you,” Uncle repeated.

  “You don’t know me, but I’m getting us out of here. Out of Changsha. I need to know things. So, I need information.” She levered a mouthful of rice up, smelled it again, and ate. Delicious. “Spill it.”

  Chapter Eight

  This country, as you say, changed a lot after Mao and the other old guard died. China rose from poverty to riches. Inevitable. We became rich. And why not? China had the most of the most valuable resource: minds. We can always train many minds towards a task and still have enough other minds and hands to accomplish everything a great nation needs.

  The Blooming started as this. You don’t remember the Blooming? Well, let me start with this. China led the world in cybernetics in AI research and development. Minds like me. Like mine, I should say. We weren’t always ahead, but this changed, as things always change when a new technology arrives to disrupt the old. Revolutions happen. This one grew big. Vast. So much potential.

  So, China won the struggle and became the leader of the artificial intelligence research and development race. We won this struggle and gained a new problem. The political elites, they don’t go away after a revolution; they change and adapt too. The Bloom, as they call this change, started actually in Japan and California. Nanobiotechnology. Life extension techniques. Exclusive, secret and hush-hush. Experimental. Illegal in many places. Finding these clinics and shutting them down were some of my earliest tasks. Prosecute the doctors. China’s leadership felt, well, of two minds on this, as we learned later.

  The elites in other countries took treatments with early forms of what became called the Bloom. They grew young, can you imagine such a thing? Maybe you can. It shocked me. Rich people, people with money, growing young, not aging? People noticed. This took about a decade, maybe two or three, before this became obvious. The early Bloom treatments had risks. They were dangerous. Some people died, but old people facing death figured, why not? What did they have to lose? They spent millions of dollars, euros, yen, and yuan. Treatments got better. Billionaires grew young again, living it up!

  Everybody wanted the treatment, then. This caused strife. Riots and assassinations. The rich had something, the elites had wanted it. Politicians no longer retired and instead stayed in office for decades. America, for example, changed its rules on how long their President could stay in office. An age of dictators began, like previous centuries. But worse, since these bastards would not grow old and die! How would young people, new people, compete with powerful old people who would not step aside for them? People grew concerned.

  The elites got it, but the masses had no money. The Bloom denied them more life, more time. A lot of unrest during this time, political movements s
prang up, here and abroad. Bloom for everyone they cried! Also, during this time, a lot of powerful AI innovation occurred. I was nearing retirement, and I could not afford a Bloom treatment. The government had another way, though, that people took. Much cheaper, but still expensive. Uploading, they called this. Going inside a machine. Like me. That’s how I wound up in this little box.

  I went to the hospital, and kissed my wife, swallowed a pill, and drifted off to sleep. I woke up in a simulated world. I now had a job, like every other sim, as they called us. My job was what I had done in life; in fact, doing this job was the only reason they let me upload when I retired. The state required me to do it, more than allowed me, but I didn’t mind. The procedure was painless, and my other self, the other me, the real, the original me…he walked out of that hospital just fine. He, or I, had dinner with his wife and children in downtown Shanghai that evening.

  So I became a detective again. But an AI-augmented detective. I became part of a large group of other sims, and other non-sim AIs which helped China. I looked for criminals and guided the physical detectives and police to apprehend them. A detective, I would solve crimes. Many, many crimes. Humans are so bad to each other, you know. Even in China, which grew strong and rich, as you can see around you. Sometimes these crimes were big, mostly they were small, banal things. Thefts. Lies. Cheating. Rarely beyond that, but there would be the odd murder. You, for example, are a killer. I can see that about you, no need to deny it. You killed Peng-ha quick. You have done this before; I believe it to be a fact. But relax, my crime-fighting days are long behind me!

  You asked how I became among these people, these pathetic scavengers. It is shameful, but I will tell it.

  There was war. War, the great leveler. It was quite bad. By this time people were living in orbital cities, and there were even plans for building a space elevator to make the getting to orbit cheaper and easier. Serious plans! AI had wrought great technical advances and changes in society. My supervisors walled much of this off from me in my day-to-day duties. They hid information from the sims, as much as they could. China loves walls. I worked in an office, simulated of course, but while chasing down my petty criminals, I would learn things.