Making History

by Rick Wilber

  “They frightened me, Prince Tuan and the others. They said your reforms were destroying the country. They said the Japanese were using you. They said the dwarf-bandits were plotting to kill us all. They said if I didn’t come out of retirement, we would be destroyed.”

  “The Japanese modernized their country,” Kuang Hsu speaks unwillingly. His eyes rise to gaze into the past, at his own dead hopes, “I asked for advice from Ito, who had written their constitution. That was all. There was no danger to anyone.”

  “The Japanese had just killed the Korean Empress! I was afraid they would kill me next!” The old woman clutches at the Emperors hand. “I was old and afraid!” she says. “I betrayed you. Please forgive me for everything.”

  He turns to her and raises a hand to her cheek. His own eyes glitter with tears. “I understand, mother,” he says. “Please don’t cry.”

  “What can we do?”

  He sighs again and turns away. “Ito told me that I could accomplish nothing as long as I was in the Forbidden City. That I could never truly be an Emperor with the eunuchs and the princes and the court in the way. Well - now the Forbidden City is no more. The eunuchs’ power is gone, and there is no court. There are only a few of the princes left, and only one of those is important.”

  He wipes tears from his eyes with his sleeve, and the Empress sees cold determination cross his face. “I will wait,” he says. “But when the opportunity comes, I will act. I must act.”

  The royal column continues its flight. There seems no purpose in its peregrinations, and the Empress of the West cannot tell if they are running away from something, or toward something else. Possibly they are doing both at once.

  Apparently the Falling Star Giants have better things to do than pursue. Exhausted and with nowhere else to go, the royal family ends up in the governor’s mansion in the provincial capital of Taiyuan. The courtyard is spattered with blood because the governor, Yu Hsien, had dozens of Christian missionaries killed here, along with their wives and children. Their eyeless foreign heads now decorate the city walls.

  One afternoon the Empress looks out the window, and sees Pu Chun practicing martial arts in the court. In his hands is a bloodstained beheading sword given him by Governor Yu.

  She never looks out the window again.

  All messages from the east are of death and unimaginable suffering. Cities destroyed, armies wiped out, entire populations fleeing before the attackers in routs as directionless as that of the court.

  There is no news whatever from the rest of the world. Apparently all the Foreign Devils have been afflicted by Foreign Devils of their own.

  And then, in the Hour of the Rooster, word comes that Prince Jung Lu has arrived and requests an audience, and the Empress feels her heart leap. She had never permitted herself to hope, not once she heard of the total destruction of Peking.

  At once she convenes a Family Council.

  The horrors of war have clearly affected Jung Lu. He walks into the imperial presence with a weary tread, and painfully gets on his knees to perform the required kowtows.

  “This worthless old man begs to report to the Throne that the Falling Star Giants are all dead.”

  There is a long, stunned silence. The Emperor, flushed with sudden excitement, tries to speak but trips over his own tongue.

  Joy floods Tzu Hsi’s heart. “How did this occur?” she asks. “Did we defeat them in battle?”

  “They were not defeated,” Jung Lu says. “I do not know how they died. Perhaps it was a disease. I stayed only to confirm the reports personally, and then I rode here at once with all the soldiers I could raise. Five thousand Manchu bannermen await the Imperial command outside the city walls.”

  The Empress strokes one of her lion dogs while she makes a careful calculation. Jung Lu’s five thousand bannermen considerably outnumber Prince Tuan’s remaining Tiger-Hunt Marksmen, but Tuan’s men have modern weapons and the bannermen do not. And these bannermen are not likely to be brave, as they probably survived the Falling Star Giants only by fleeing at the very rumor of their arrival.

  She sees the relieved smile on Prince Tuan’s face. “Heaven is just!” he says.

  All turn at a noise from the Emperor. Kuang Hsu’s hands clutch the arms of his chair, and his face twists with the effort to speak. Then he gasps and has an orgasm.

  An hour ago he was a ghost-Emperor, nothing he did mattered, and he spoke freely. Now that he is the Son of Heaven again, his stammer and his nervous condition have returned.

  A few moments later he speaks, his head turned away in embarrassment.

  “Tonight we will thank Heaven for its mercy and benevolence. Tomorrow, at the Hour of the Dragon, we will assemble again in celebration.” He looks at Pu Chun, who stands near Prince Tuan. “I have observed the Heir practice wushu in the courtyard. I hope the Heir will favor us with a demonstration of his martial prowess.”

  Prince Tuan flushes with pleasure. He and his son fall to their knees and kowtow.

  “We will obey the Imperial command with pleasure,” Tuan says.

  The Emperor turns his head away as he dismisses the company. At first the Empress thinks it is because he is shamed by his public orgasm, but then she sees the tight, merciless smile of triumph on the Emperor’s lips, and a cold finger touches the back of her neck.

  In the next hours the Empress of the West tries to smuggle a message to Jung Lu in hopes of seeing him privately, but the situation is so confusing that the messenger cannot find him. She decides to wait for a better time.

  With the morning the Hour of the Dragon arrives, and the Family Council convenes. The remaining Iron Hats cluster together in pride and triumph. It is clearly their hour - the Falling Star Giants have abdicated, as it were, and left the nation to the mercies of the Iron Hats. As if in recognition of this fact, the Emperor awards Prince Tuan the office of Grand Councillor in place of the late Kang I.

  Then Pu Chun is brought forward to perform wushu, and the Emperor calls the Imperial Guard into the room to watch. The imperial heir leaps about the room, shouting and waving the blood-encrusted sword given him by Governor Yu as he decapitates one imaginary Foreign Devil after another. The Empress has seen much better martial art in her time, but at the end of the performance, all are loud in their praise of the young heir, and the Emperor descends from his chair to congratulate him.

  Fighting his tongue - the Emperor seems unusually tense today - he turns to the heir and says, “I wonder if the Heir has learned a sword technique called The Dragon in Flight from Low to High?”

  Pu Chun is reluctant to admit that he is not a complete master of the sword, but with a bit of paternal prodding he admits that this technique seems to have escaped him.

  Kuang Hsu’s stammer is so bad he can barely get the words out. “Will the Heir permit me to teach?”

  “Your Majesty honors us beyond all description,” Prince Tuan says. Despite his lifelong ill health, the Emperor like every Manchu prince practiced wushu since he was a boy, and always received praise from his instructors.

  The Emperor turns to Prince Tuan, his face red with the struggle to speak. “May . . . I . . . have the honor . . . to use . . . the Shangfang Sword?”

  “The Son of Heaven does his unworthy servant too much honor!” Prince Tuan eagerly strips the long blade from its sheath and presents it on his knees to the Emperor.

  The Emperor strikes a martial pose, sword cocked, and Pu Chun imitates him. Watching from her chair, the Empress feels her heart stop. Terror fills her. She knows what is about to happen.

  The movement is too swift to follow, but the Shangfang Sword whistles as it hurtles through air, and its blade is sharp and true. Suddenly Prince Tuan’s head rolls across the floor. Blood fountains from the headless trunk.

  Fury blazes from Kuang Hsu’s eyes, and his body, unlike his tongue, has no stammer. His second strike crushes the skull of Tuan’s ally, Governor Yu. His third kills the president of the Board of Punishments, And his fourth - the Empress
cries out to stop, but is too late - the fourth blow strikes the neck of the boy heir, Pu Chun, who is so stunned by the unexpected death of his father that he doesn’t think to protect himself from the blade that kills him.

  “Protect the Emperor!” Jung Lu cries to his guardsmen. “Kill the traitors!

  Those Iron Hats still breathing are finished off by the Imperial Guard. And then the Guard rounds up the Iron Hats’ subordinate officers, and within minutes their heads are struck off.

  The Emperor dictates an order to open the city gates, and the order is signed with the Imperial Seal. Jung Lu’s loyal bannermen pour into the city and surround the throne with a wall of guns, swords, and spears.

  Only then does the Emperor notice the old woman, still frozen in fear, who sits on her throne clutching her whimpering lion dogs.

  Kuang Hsu approaches, and the Empress shrinks from the blood that soaks his dragon-embroidered robes.

  “I am sorry, mother, that you had to watch this,” he says.

  The Empress manages to find words within the cloud of terror that fills her mind.

  “It was necessary,” she says.

  “The Foreign Devils have been destroyed,” the Emperor says, “and so have the Falling Star Giants. The Righteous Harmony Fists are no more, and neither are the Iron Hats. Now there is much suffering and toss of life, but China has survived such catastrophes before.”

  The Empress looks at the blood-spattered dragons on the Emperor’s robes. “The Dragon has flown from Low to High,” she says.

  “Yes.” The Emperor looks at the Shangfang Sword, still in his hand. “The Falling Star Giants have landed all over the world,” he says. “For many years the Foreign Devils will be busy with their own affairs. While they are thus occupied we will take control of our own ports, our own laws, the railroads, industries, and telegraphs. By the time they are ready to deal with us again, the Middle Kingdom will be strong and united, and on its way to being as modern as any nation in the world.”

  Kuang Hsu looks up at the Empress of the West.

  “Will you help me, mother?” he asks. “There will be need of reform - not just for a Hundred Days, but for all time. And I promise you-” His eyes harden, and for a moment she sees a dragon there, the animal that according to legend lives in every Emperor, and which has slumbered in Kuang Hsu till now. “I promise you that you will be safe. No one will be in a position to harm you.”

  “I am old,” the Empress says, “but I will help however I can.” She strokes the head of her lion dog. Her heart overflows. Tears of relief sting her eyes. “May the Hour of the Dragon last ten thousand years,” she says.

  “Ten thousand years!” the guards chorus, and to the cheers the Emperor walks across the blood-stained floor to the throne that awaits him.

  Rich Larson has emerged in recent years as one of the best and most prolific new writers in science fiction. He has had more than 100 stories published to date in magazines like Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Clarkesworld, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Tor.com. His debut novel, Annex (Orbit), came out in 2018, as did his debut short-story collection, Tomorrow Factory (Talos, 2018). While an undergraduate at the University of Alberta, he won the 2014 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing and appeared five other times among the finalists for that award during his undergraduate years, with more finalist placements than any other college writer in the award’s twenty-five-year history. In this story, Larson weighs the future and the past as he considers one of history’s most cold-blooded killers.

  It’s cold, but Victor keeps waiting. They’ll be coming out soon. He moves the snap pistol to his other hand and the wintry metal bites. There is nothing warm in Mauthausen. The packed dirt streets are frosted. The air is chilled. The people are frozen in their own way, if Victor thinks about it. Sometimes they look more like a photograph than. . . .

  The butcher shop opens with a slink of steam and light. The assassins emerge, squabbling about directions. One of them is suitably Austrian-looking, with plastered blonde hair and well-synthesized clothes. The other is not. His muddy post-racial melanin stands out sharply against the pallid villagers. A handgun winks in and out of view with the motion of his untucked shirt. Victor doesn’t recognize the model. He supposes it is a few years ahead of his time.

  Time. He needs to ensure the Quo.

  “Grüss Gott,” Victor says, rounding the corner of the alley after them. They both whirl. They have frantic eyes, unsteady. They are terrified and elated all at once by what they have come to do. There is a hunger and a purpose shining in their beautiful irises. Neither of them speak German.

  “Get lost, you fucking bum,” one of them mutters, waving Victor off.

  “We must be close,” the other one says. “Oh, God, we can do it. We’ll actually do it.”

  Victor has to wonder again how so many have slipped through. Bribery, for the most part. Social conscience could be another factor. Some officials might not try their hardest to prevent an illegal rewind if they secretly sympathize with the cause.

  “As unlicensed rewinders in a restricted time and area, you are in violation of the Quo.” He didn’t mean to mention the Quo. That slips out unbidden. There is a section and subsection he should have snarled at them instead.

  Victor has already scanned them for bombs, so he snaps a bullet into each of their foreheads. The shooting is very quiet. He covers the bodies with nanoweave, tucking sprawled limbs under the tarp with practiced motions. He can do disposal later, during the night.

  Victor leaves the alley an empty stretch of cold dirt to the eyes of passers-by. He’s returned them to the dust. That’s the Quo in its essence: some have to return, some have to stay.

  One in particular has to stay. It begins to snow, but the flakes don’t reach the ground.

  ***

  They come every so often, the rewinders. Every few months. He waits for them, like partners in a very slow dance, and eventually, after weeks of trudging through dirty Mauthausen and bundling wood for food, weeks of watching for new faces very carefully, they will appear.

  Victor is out on the street again, with the snap pistol hidden safely in his left pocket and now the rewinder’s handgun in his right. He’s passing through the square. The villagers used to seem like ghosts to him, but he understands better now. He’s the ghost.

  The hut is waiting for him on the outside of the village, a cramped thing where he either sleeps or masturbates. Dirt floor, wooden walls. Victor picks a nail out of the rotting door frame as he enters. He never bothers making repairs. The family will relocate again soon, hopefully closer to Linz. Mauthausen doesn’t suit him.

  Victor sleeps and has bad dreams. He wakes up when the night is sufficiently dark to move corpses.

  ***

  Someone else is in the alley. Victor doesn’t differentiate the crouched shape from the other weird shadows until it steps forward, pointing a weapon at him. He can’t see the face, so he looks down instead to where the nanoweave has been stripped away and discarded in the snow. The men he killed earlier in the evening are going blue and black, tangled crooked like mating insects.

  “English?” the man demands.

  “If you want,” Victor says. The voice sounds young. The stance seems competent.

  “This is your job, yes? You’re one of their monitors.” The rewinder is staying in the shadows.

  Victor wonders if he has been careless. Nobody should ever find the bodies, even with tracing equipment. But then, there have never been two attempts in such quick succession. Maybe the third rewinder has been here all along.

  “Empty your pockets,” the rewinder says.

  Victor reaches into his coat and pulls out the handgun. He unloads it and drops the dissembled weapon at his feet.

  “And the other. There’s weight in both.”

  Victor drops the snap pistol.

  “I’m going to kill you,” the rewinder says. �
�But first, I have to ask. I have to.”

  Victor is familiar with the question, though usually he hears it from a man or woman dying at his feet. He gives the same answer.

  “I’m maintaining the Quo,” he says simply.

  “That’s what they call it? That’s what they write on your memos?” The rewinder has a tremor in his voice. Disgust, maybe. He doesn’t understand.

  “That’s what I call it. Chronology has to be preserved. The cost doesn’t matter.” It feels good, surprisingly, to talk to someone in English. He has missed it.

  “Turn around,” the rewinder says. “I’ll walk you to the back of the alley.”

  Victor turns on his heel, waits. He feels the gun poke into his back, and then they walk. He finds himself looking at a dead brick wall. There’s soot on it.

  “What’s it like, now?” Victor asks.

  The rewinder doesn’t answer for a few beats. ”The same. We’ve broken time itself, and things are the same.” He makes an angry noise. “Your bosses make sure of that. But this year things change. 1894. Anything of note happening this year?”

  Victor’s hands are cold. He puts them in his pockets. ”Kate Chopin writes a short story. Coca Cola sells in bottles.” Victor stares into the brick. “Nothing here in Austria.”

  The muzzle of the gun jerks forward and he lets his head bob with it, like a puppet on a stick.

  “I think there will be, tonight,” the rewinder says.

  Victor still has a nail in his pocket. ”It’s going to be harder than you think,” he says. “You won’t like it.”

  “I’ve used this before,” the rewinder says.

  Victor rolls the nail with his thumb. ”Not me,” he says. “Him. He’s young.” He feels the man take a step back. Hesitate.

  “It’s easier to crush a snake egg than kill a cobra,” the rewinder says. “It’s more certain this way. And I can override any compulsion, social or biological, if it means preventing Auschwitz. Saving millions.”

  “There’s no certainty,” Victor says back. “That’s the point.”