“Save my dogs!” she orders. She can’t stand the idea of losing them again.
“Falling Star Giants seen from the city walls!” someone cries. There is no telling whether or not the report is true. Servingwomen dash heedlessly about the court, their gowns whipped by the strong west wind.
“Flee at once!” Prince Tuan shrieks. “The capital is lost!” He runs for his horse and gallops away. His son, screaming in terror, follows on foot, waving his arms.
The Emperor appears, a plain traveling cloak thrown over his shoulders. “Mother,” he says, “it is time to go.”
The Empress carries two of her favorite dogs to the litter. Her eunuchs hoist her to their shoulders, and the column begins to march for the Chienmen Gate. The western wind rattles the banners of the guard, but over the sound of the wind the Empress can hear a strange wailing sound, like a demon calling out to its mate. And then a wail from another direction as the mate answers.
“Faster!” someone calls, and the litter begins to jounce. The guardsmen’s armor rattles as they begin to jog. The Empress braces herself against the sides of the litter.
“Black smoke!” Another cry. “The Tail of the Meteor!”
Women scream as the escort breaks into a run. The Empress’s lion dogs whimper in fear. She clutches the curtains and peers anxiously past the curtains. The black smoke is plain to see, a tall column billowing out over the walls. As she watches, another rocket falls, trailing black.
But the strong west wind catches the top of the dark, billowing column and tears the smoke away, bearing it to the east.
As the column flees to safety, loess covers the city in a soft blanket of imperial yellow.
* * *
Much of the disorganized column, including most of the wagon train with its documents and treasure, is caught in the black smoke and never escapes the capital. Half the Tiger-Hunt Marksmen are dead or missing.
The terror and confusion make the Empress Dowager breathless, but it is the missing lion dogs that make her weep.
The column pauses north of the city at the Summer Palace only for a few hours, to beat some order into the chaos, then sets out into the teeth of the gale to Jehol on the Great Wall. In the distance the strange wailings of the Falling Star Giants are sometimes heard, but streamers of yellow dust conceal them.
By this time Prince Tuan has found his courage, his son, and his troops, the few thousand Tiger-Hunt Marksmen to have survived the fall of the capital. He calls a family conference in a requisitioned mansion, and issues edicts under the Imperial Seal calling for the extermination of all foreigners and Chinese Christians.
“Who will obey you?” the Emperor shouts at him. His hopelessness has made him fearless, has caused his stammer to disappear. “You have lost all China!”
“Heaven will not permit us to fail,” Tuan says.
“I command you to kill yourself!” cries the Emperor.
Tuan turns to the Emperor and laughs aloud. “Once again His Majesty makes a witticism!”
But as news trickles in over the next few days, Tuan’s belligerence turns sullen. A few survivors from a Peking suburb tell of the city’s being inundated by black smoke after a second attack. Tuan’s ally Prince Chuang is believed dead in the city, and old Kang I was found stone dead in his cart in Jehol, apparently having died unnoticed in the evacuation. Tuan’s great ally General Tung has been killed along with his entire army. And his brother Duke Lan, after losing his entire division of Tiger-Hunt Marksmen to the Fire of the Meteor, committed suicide by drinking poison. There is no word from any of the great cities where meteors were known to have landed. No messages have come from Jung Lu, and he is believed dead.
“West!” Prince Tuan orders. His son, Pu Chun, stands by his side. “We will go west!”
“Kill yourself!” cries the Emperor. Pu Chun laughs.
“Somebody just farted,” he sneers.
It is the Hour of the Horse, and the hot noon sun shortens tempers. The Dowager Empress holds her favorite lion dog for comfort. The dog whimpers, sensing the tension in the room.
“We will move tomorrow,” Tuan says, and casts a cold look over his shoulder as he marches away from the imperial presence.
Kuang Hsu slumps defeated in his chair. The old lady rises, the lion dog still in her arms, and slowly walks to her nephew’s side. Tears spill from her eyes onto his brocade sleeve.
“Please forgive me,” she says.
“Don’t cry, Mother,” he says. “it isn’t your fault that Foreign Devils have learned to ride meteors.”
“I don’t mean that,” the Empress says. “I mean two years ago, during the Hundred Days’ Reform.”
“Ahh,” the Emperor sighs. He turns away. “Let us not speak of it.”
“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 Emperor’s 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 T’ai-yüan. 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 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 routes 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 sile
nce. 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 loss 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 bloodstained floor to the throne that awaits him.
IN THE MSOB
Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter made his first sale to Interzone in 1987, and since then has become one of that magazine’s most frequent contributors, as well as making sales to SF Age, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Zenith, New Worlds, and elsewhere; his stories have appeared previously in our Eleventh and Twelfth Annual Collections. His first novel, Raft, was released in 1991 to wide and enth
usiastic response, and was rapidly followed by other well-received novels such as Timelike Infinity, Ring, Anti-Ice, Flux, and the H. G. Wells pastiche—a sequel to The Time Machine—The Time Ships, which won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. His most recent book, Voyage, is an alternate-history novel dealing with a space program that gets us to Mars in a much more timely fashion than the real one has.
Like many of his colleagues who are also engaged in revitalizing the “hard-science” story here in the 1990s (Greg Egan comes to mind, as do people like Paul J. McAuley, Michael Swanwick, Iain M. Banks, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Brian Stableford, Gregory Benford, Ian McDonald, Gwyneth Jones, Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear, Geoff Ryman, and a number of others), Baxter often works on the Cutting Edge of science, but he usually succeeds in balancing conceptualization with storytelling, and rarely loses sight of the human side of the equation.
All of which is true of the harrowing little story that follows, which paints an unforgettable picture of a man wrestling with the ghosts of the past—and, worse, with the ghosts of the present as well.
“Get moving, you old bastard.” Bart went around the room, his white jacket already stained by some yellow fluid, and he de-opaqued the windows with brisk slaps.
It took him a while to figure out where he was. It often did nowadays. So he just lay there. He’d been in the same position all night, and he could feel how his body had worn a groove in the mattress. He wondered if Bart had ever seen Psycho. “I thought—” His mouth was dry, and he ran his tongue over his wrinkled gums. “You know, for a minute I thought I was back there. Like before.”
Bart was just clattering around at the bedside cabinet, pulling out clothes, and looking for his stuff: a hand towel, soap, medication, swabs. Bart never met your eyes, and he never watched out for the creases on your pants.
“My father was there.” Actually he didn’t know what in hell his father was doing up there. “The sunlight was real strong. And the ground was a kind of gentle brown, depending on which way you looked. Autumn colors. It looked like a beach, come to think of it.” He smiled. “Yeah, a beach.” That was it. His dream had muddled up the memories, and he’d been simultaneously thirty-nine years old, and a little kid on a beach, running toward his father.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection Page 95