by Rob Mclean
“How long?” Zeke’s eyes now stared vacantly in front of him.
“That depends on you,” she said. She turned and walked out of the hall.
Once, outside she called a cab. In the ten minutes it took to arrive, no one came out looking for her.
Chapter 30
From her privileged position in the wings of the stage, Ling Zou proceedings with a detached perspective. She had seen this sort of theatre many times and had been part of it herself. She understood how it worked and so, normally it wouldn’t hold her interested, but today was to be something special.
She watched Captain Lau of the Chinese Public Security Bureau as she surveyed the ranks of prisoners that were marched into the assembly hall of the Women’s Re-education Facility.
They were mostly a shabby lot of worthless parasites, but it was the government’s hope that they would, one day be persuaded to accept the reforms asked of them for the good of the nation.
Despite the encouragement from the officers and their batons, some of the unruly troublemakers lagged behind the rest. She allowed herself a small tightening of her lips to express her disapproval. She doubted that their injuries were cause enough for their laziness. Didn’t they know it simply marked them for further re-education at a later date?
Today was to be a glorious day for the People’s Republic and for Captain Lau. Her small, rounded body filled her immaculately pressed uniform with little room to spare, but she saw her chest swell with pride. Until recently, the government had been criticized by the gweilo, the foreign devils, for the way it had dealt with the misguided, gullible sheep that had been tricked into believing in the foreign Gods.
She knew that the Captain had personally lead many raids on the banned, underground house churches where they worshipped their mythical deities. Long hours spent in surveillance of suspected citizens, along with information and confessions coaxed with the use of creative and elegant methods of torture had boosted her career. Her undying efforts had seen her promoted through the ranks and today, as captain, these useless pinyins would see for themselves how misguided their superstitions were.
There were only a few coughs from the masses of prisoners, standing shoulder to shoulder, as they were crammed into the hall. They formed a sea of black-haired humanity and were dutifully silent as they waited; a reflection of her officer’s iron discipline and the prisoner’s broken spirits.
From behind her lectern, on a raised platform at the front of the assembly, the Captain surveyed the orderly rows of captives. They all faced the giant flat-screen behind her, which was currently blank. With a nod to her sergeant, two prisoners were dragged onto the stage and made to stand behind her. One had to have help from her guards.
The crowd murmured dark whispers and some cried to see the state of these prisoners. Their faces were red and swollen from the beatings they had endured over the last week. They were missing fingernails and teeth, but had been deemed ready to share their confessions with their fellow inmates. As Ling could personally testify, the public show was seen as an essential part of their rehabilitation.
Captain Lau waited for the crowd to settle and for her officers to give her the signal that all was ready. Ling knew how much the Captain despised the deluded fools before her, and so knew that her display of patience would have made her ancestors proud.
The Captain took the microphone from the podium and walked slowly to the nearest prisoner. Guards held the prisoner upright, but her head lolled absently as she wavered on the edge of consciousness. The Captain had told her much about this captive during their time together. The prisoner was from the industrious Henan province where many Christian house churches had been broken up. It troubled her Captain that up until recently, they had an irritating habit of reappearing, like a recalcitrant rash.
The Captain leaned in close to the prisoner and softly asked, “Do you reject Jesus and all his works?”
“I do.” The prisoners rush to answer surprised Ling despite her apparent compliance. The Captain’s features momentarily hardened and Ling could tell that she had briefly considered striking the prisoner for the interruption, but today was a special day and she saw the Captain put on a magnanimous demeanor and let her continue.
“I do.” The prisoner broke into tears. Drool fell from her mouth, mixed with blood, through a gap where teeth had once been.
“Please, oh please, I do, I do.”
Gasps of shock were intermixed with groans of disappointment and admonishment from the audience. Some openly wept. They stifled their sobs when she turned to seek them out. The corner of her mouth curled up in a half smile. They knew that soon, they too would be up on stage, being asked to recant their own fanciful beliefs.
“Do you see that you have wasted your life, having been seduced by the words of a make-believe story?”
“I do. Yes, I do.” The words tumbled out of her mouth too quickly for the Captain’s liking. The woman’s head swayed about in its own state of semi-delirium.
“Do you pledge to work for the greater good of the church?”
“Yes,” she answered automatically. A hush fell over the crowd as they become aware of her mistake.
“Wait, no,” she cried as she too realized what she had said. “No, that isn’t what I meant to say.” She fell to her knees to beg, “No, please. Please, I was…”
The Captain raised her open hand for her to stop. “Forgive my little joke,” she said as she gently tilted the prisoner’s head back to look onto her battered face. “For today I am in high spirits, and besides, I thought you weren’t listening properly.”
“No, I wasn’t,” she quickly agreed.
She had humbled herself in front of her fellow pinyins and publicly renounced her beliefs. In their eyes she was no longer one of them. She was condemned to eternity in the fires of Hell. What nonsense, but to them it was important, although they had an irritating habit of forgiving each other. They would probably be likely to forgive even the torture that had inflicted upon them. Such foolishness, such weakness. It was a wonder their pathetic churches ever got any supporters. Still it was a good outcome and she was satisfied that her prisoner was on the road to becoming a less troublesome citizen. The Captain dismissed her with a wave to her captors. Then to the crowd, “You may celebrate the return of our comrade sister.”
The audience clapped mechanically, robot-like, but Ling could hear moans and wails of anguish from some of the audience as she was dragged off-stage still dribbling and snivelling.
The captain purposefully paced slowly to the next prisoner.
From her duskier Mongolian features, Ling marked her as the Muslim dissenter from the Xinjiang Uyghur region that the Captain had discussed with her earlier.
The prisoner held her large frame proudly and towered over the diminutive Captain. Her swollen, blackened eyes were closed, but her head followed the sounds of the captain’s footsteps. The prisoner stiffened as her tormentor approached.
Captain Lau’s voice was soft, but her question was amplified and carried to every ear in the room. “Do you renounce Allah and all his works and instead pledge to work for the greater good of the Chinese nation?”
“Qu si,” the words sounded like a gravelled grunt from the depths of her huge lungs, but they brought a stir of support from some of the crowd.
The Captain reached for her baton and had it half drawn before she reigned in her impulsiveness. The crowd had fallen silent. They expected violence. Normally she would have broken the woman’s skull for this impudence, but instead she grinned and sheathed her weapon. “You tell me to go to Hell, but how do you know that you aren’t already here?”
Last time they had spoken, in the Captain’s private rooms, she had shared with Ling the doubts she had for this particular prisoner.
In one of the dank isolation cells, the Uyghur had just had the small bones in her right hand crushed. Her useless hand still hung limply. She had been compliant then, but the Captain had thought a public denunciation wa
s still beyond her at this stage. No matter, Ling thought, the stupid beast of a woman will now get more time to experience whatever physical manifestations of Hell Captain Lau could devise before being re-presented next week.
The Uyghur obstinately said nothing. Captain Lau shook her head ruefully. “Disappointing,” was all she said as he dismissed the Muslim.
The prisoner tried to raise her fist in defiance, but it was twisted behind her back. She was briskly marched off-stage, back the way she had come, her face contorted with pain.
Ling had to admit to herself that the Uyghur showed admirable courage, but it was all foolish, there would be no respite. She knew the Captain would work relentlessly until that prisoner was re-educated or died.
The Captain shook her head and turned to Ling. Their eyes met and exchanged a confirmation of her earlier doubts. Despite that failure, the only emotion Captain Lau allowed herself to display itself when she turned back to the crowd was the pride she felt for her country. Ling knew it was one that the Captain felt was shared by hundreds of millions across the nation.
When the Captain was given the signal and was satisfied all was again back in order, she returned to the podium. A discreet curl lifted the corner of her thin lips when all eyes in the room fell upon her. Without preamble, she launched into her address.
“You have been gathered here today to witness a truly profound event in the history of our great nation.”
Every face in the room was turned to listen to her words. Ling could see that most wore the exhausted, defeated look of resignation, but here and there, defiant, wilful eyes hid behind masks of compliance. All averted their eyes from the Captain’s direct scrutiny.
All except one.
Youthful eyes blazed foolishly with a naked hatred that marred her plain fresh beauty. Ling couldn’t remember seeing her before. Had her sister or mother been killed or maimed by the Captain recently? She couldn’t remember; there had been so many. The girl had no bruises and no bloodstains on her clothes, so she must be new.
Ling saw the Captain’s smile widened when she saw the girl’s defiance. Ling knew her Captain would look forward to running her electrified baton over the young sensitive body. Unlike the Uyghur ox, this woman-child would soon be squealing for mercy. Her Captain would personally enjoy quickly breaking that defiant spirit. Forcing this foolish soft pinyin to renounce her worthless beliefs would be a pleasure compared with that Uyghur monster.
The Captain blinked and muttered to herself. She would be berating herself, Ling knew, for allowing herself to be distracted. Today’s events were far more important than her fantasies.
Forcing herself to dismiss the angry youth and her delicate, freshly flowering young body, she switched on the flat-screen. A pre-recorded official state sponsored telecast of the alien envoy’s visit to Beijing began to play.
A suavely groomed newsreader relayed the events of the day with footage of the envoy and his transport vessel in the background. The sound was muted and so the newsreader and his similarly immaculate co-hostess silently babbled animatedly while still conveying, through their serious expressions, the magnitude of the occasion.
“I will summarize,” Captain Lau said, “as time is precious for you.” Many of her officers grinned at hers little joke that she was having at the expense of the prisoners. Control of access to information was an important part of dominating the inmates.
“You may not be aware; as many of you have been away from the media…” there were more knowing grins from her officers, “that the emissary from the alien vessel had honoured the Chinese people with a visit.”
The screen showed the door of the alien floater dissolving into steps, heralding the emissary appearance. Long lines of Communist Party dignitaries were waiting on either side of a wide, red carpet. On the screen, the alien envoy appeared dressed in a plain, khaki green worker’s outfit, complete with a matching cap and flat shoes. All that was missing was the red star logo.
The camera panned the ranks of hand-picked people as they enthusiastically cheered. Their celebrations, expressing their sincere joy were carefully restrained so they maintained their pre-arranged positions. The envoy bowed and waved. He greeted the first of the many people present and appeared to speak, without any apparent difficulty, to all.
The scene then changed many times to show masses of Chinese citizens spontaneously celebrating in the streets of many different cities across the nation. Images of people in foreign cities also celebrating the peaceful arrival of the alien were also shown with the names captioned below. Stockholm, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Kyoto, Sydney, Warsaw, Hanoi. The list went on, but when it returned to the newsreaders, the screen froze.
“That was two days ago,” Captain Lau announced. Now, as the first nation to accept the visitor’s offer of friendship, we have been rewarded with the gift of a hover-disc.” A satisfied tight smile creased her stern face when she saw and heard the murmurs of surprise and dismay coming from the prisoners.
“In addition,” she paused while the room fell instantly silent, “the envoy has offered to take a selection of eight citizens on a goodwill visit to the moon.”
There were gasps and rumbles of disbelief. Lin could only imagine the sort of deals that had been negotiated amongst the party hierarchy to determine which fortunate eight citizens would be selected. The horse-trading, cajoling, threats and intimidation would have been intense.
The moon held little interest for Ling, but she knew her Captain would have loved to have been one of the chosen to go bounding across the lunar surface, but she also knew that, despite her untiring work for the nation, she too was not worthy. As a result of the responsible state sponsored ‘one child’ policy, she was the only daughter of a lowly, but honourable shop owner. Her parents would be proud, but she knew any dreams of walking on the moon were above her station. However, judging by the way the Captain was staring off into space, she could still dream…
A discreet cough from her lieutenant brought the Captain back to reality.
“Today, you are here to witness the first steps of our glorious Taikonauts on the moon.”
The screen came to life to show the pre-recorded ‘live’ coverage from the lunar excursion. Unlike the grainy, shadowy, black and white American footage of their landing decades ago, these images were in high definition colour. Admittedly, that made it looked even more like a Hollywood science fiction movie, but there was no doubt as to its authenticity.
Awed silence accompanied the Chinese astronauts as they stepped from the alien floater-transport. It was the same type that had carried the emissary between the mother-ship and his Earthly appointments.
Captain Lau explained to her audience that despite being simply a shuttle, it had made the journey in a matter of hours. The emissary had said that it had fallen up to the moon by manipulating gravity fields.
“The gravity technology is a gift from the alien emissary that was promised for those nations who have agreed to be a part of the Galactic society. It is in recognition of those who have moved beyond the superstitious belief in God and have rejected religion. A gift for those of us who are embracing the future.”
The crowd continued to watch with trepidation and dread as the taikonauts bounced across the lunar surface. They had chosen to land at the Apollo 11 site in the sea of Tranquillity, the same site as the first American landing.
Ling could see that the taikonauts were a mixture of government officials, as they were older and plumper than the trim, fit young citizens she had seen in the Shenzhou space programme. How they felt, having trained for years for such an occasion, only to be gazumped unceremoniously by party officialdom, she could only imagine.
Possibly because they weren’t trained military or maybe because they were overwhelmed by the occasion, she couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable with the childish way that her otherwise honourable countrymen cavorted about the lunar surface.
Some bounded about with long hops on alternating feet; others s
huffled along using both feet in a double hop motion. It wasn’t unlike the American astronauts decades before, but many pretended to be kangaroos or rabbits by holding their hands limply together in front as they hopped about.
She hoped that her Captain’s expression did not mirror her own distaste at how she found their antics. One picked up rocks and was clearly amazed by how far it could be thrown. He must have told his comrades about it, for soon many of the party officials were tossing rocks about like naughty school-boys.
She was pleased to see that there was at least one person who was behaving responsibly. She- for there were now, in these progressive times, females in the Chinese space programme and it would have to be a woman who was ignoring all the horseplay- was diligently collecting samples. She had ventured quite a distance from the landing site and could be seen in the background assiduously ignoring her colleague’s gambolling while she continued collecting a variety of moon rocks and taking photos.
There was not a sound from the prisoners as the telecast was played. No doubt they were, like her, amazed at the turn of events. With the sponsorship of a benevolent, technologically advanced galactic civilization, the future for like-minded mankind had been radically changed. All the Earthly limitations of resources, energy and population had, in a moment, been banished. The universe beckoned for those who chose to align themselves with the future. How could these fools cling to their flotsam of superstitious beliefs amidst this tsunami of reason?
Judging by the faces that stared at the lunar proceedings, many were thinking the same thing. She could see that it wouldn’t be long before her Captain’s job here would be finished. In a few months, a year at most, there would be no more of these religious fools. The pinyin house churches would fold from lack of followers and the government’s worthy efforts would have been truly vindicated.
Ling briefly wondered what her Captain would do then, and how her life would change because of that, but her thoughts were interrupted by the end of the pre-recorded telecast. It showed a triumphant group photo of the taikonauts clustered around and upon the American Lunar Lander.