The old man was looking amused by her. That would almost certainly piss her off, but he didn’t need Fred to tell him that. He didn’t mind annoying her, Fred guessed.
Then he looked at Fred. It was a tiger’s look, calmly assessing a smaller animal, something like a deer or a rabbit. He asked something.
Do you understand us? Are translation glass helping?
“Yes,” Fred said. “They help a lot, thank you.”
Fang Fei assessed Fred a little more.
“I can speak English maybe,” he said with a slight British accent, not that different from Qi’s. “I might remember a little.”
“I don’t want to impose,” Fred said, glancing at Qi to try to see what she thought of this. “The glasses are giving me a rough idea of what you are saying, and you may want to keep speaking your language together.”
“Rough idea,” Fang Fei said in English, then a Chinese word, souzhuyi, that Fred’s glasses scripted as bad idea.
The man is not important, Qi said, according to Fred’s glasses. What is important is why you are doing this.
Doing what?
Building this China Dream. Keeping us here.
I love China. And I heard you were in trouble. Kidnapped. Traveling with foreign man accused of murder of magistrate. Yes? Big trouble it seemed. Nightmare. You have many enemies. Chan’s princess daughter in trouble. Pregnant even. Who is disrespectful father?
No one.
No one? Surprising. Does not usually happen that way. I suppose China is the father.
No.
This red exchange, crawling across the bottom of Fred’s glasses, was causing him to hold his breath. He had to consciously breathe as he watched the two of them fence. He had to look at them to help him understand. Qi’s face had gone blank, but her cheeks were giving her away with their usual furious blush. Both of them had a basilisk stare that was rather awesome to witness. Tiger to tiger, facing off. Fred focused on his breathing.
What do you want? she said.
I want peace.
I don’t care about peace. I want justice.
For you and your friend?
For the billion.
For the billion to have justice, whole world must have justice.
Yes.
The old man shrugged. An old dream, he said. China dream. A just world.
Maybe so.
We must make it together. Bring it into this world.
Qi said, You can join me if you want.
Fang Fei almost smiled at that. His eyes smiled, Fred thought.
I am happy to join you, he said.
Qi stared at him. She saw the same almost smile Fred did, a look in Fang Fei’s tiger eye that perhaps she didn’t like.
Then she began to grill him about people Fred didn’t know, What about Peng, what about Deng, on and on it went. Sometimes Fred’s glasses seemed to be translating some of the names into their English meanings, not recognizing them as names. Between not knowing who people were and being confronted with names or phrases like lotus blossom or victory in battle or construct the nation, he couldn’t quite follow what the two were saying. They were going fast, parry-riposte-parry-riposte, causing his glasses to fall into some kind of algorithmic aphasia, it seemed, making the red scroll a semi-translated mush of homonyms or mishearings:
Save communism geese fly south.
No. Red heart maze runner.
There will be fish every year.
Black-haired algae.
What about elliptical, what about construct the nation, what about glorious homeland?
At this Qi slapped the table, and Fred read on anxiously; happily it clarified a bit:
The Party works for the Party! Not for China! Only the Party!
Do you think so? Fang Fei inquired. Fred could see he was genuinely curious. What about your father? Is he like that?
Qi scowled at the mention of her father. How would I know what he is like? she said bitterly. I am only his daughter.
Daughters know. My daughters know me.
Do they? Do they know you are here now?
Yes, of course. They pester me with their knowing. Do this, do that.
But you do what you want.
He shook his head. I do what they want.
Then he actually smiled, a rather horrifying crack-faced leer. But genuine. Maybe I am like Party and they are like China. I try to help them take care of them. They yell at me and tell me what to do. Then I try to do it.
That is not how China works, Qi said. Or maybe you are right like this. Daughters yell at father and father still does exactly what he wants. The Party is like that. It works for itself.
It wants both. It works for itself and it works for China.
But when it has to choose, it works for itself. If a time came when abolishing the Party were best for China, the Party would not do it.
Our constitution says we run ourselves by way of the Party. I am a member of the Party, and so are you.
No I am not. I am only daughter of Party. I never joined.
Really?
Really.
No wonder your father is mad at you. Why not join Party?
I hate the Party. I want laws. That is what I mean when I say justice. The rule of law.
Fang Fei nodded. Do not hold breath on that.
What?
He repeated it in English: “Don’t hold your breath! Isn’t that how you say it?” he asked, looking at Fred. “If wish for something unlikely?”
“Yes,” Fred said.
Qi said, “I am holding my breath.”
Again Fang Fei nodded. He cracked another awful smile. “Cutting off nose to spite face?” he suggested. “Another good saying. Almost Chinese, it is so good.”
“English has lots of good sayings,” Fred protested.
Fang Fei nodded without assent. “Seems possible.”
Why are you helping us? Qi demanded.
Fang Fei stared at her.
Are you helping us? she said. You are not helping us. Are you. You are Party.
No I am helping you. You were in trouble.
“We have to go,” Qi said to Fred.
You are free to go of course, said Fang Fei to her.
“Go where?” Fred asked.
Again that ugly smile from the old man, which made Fred realize, too late as usual, that he needed to stay out of this conversation. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll go wherever you want. But here we are now.”
“Be quiet,” she suggested.
“Okay,” he contradicted. “I’ll leave you to it. But I do like this place.”
To keep himself from diving deeper into trouble, he got up, almost fell over, and pronged unsteadily across the pavilion, over to the low wall that overlooked the lake. Carefully he sat on the wall’s broad top. The water lapped against what looked like concrete, and through the water he could see that the bottom also appeared to be concrete, painted jade green at the lakeshore, cobalt blue farther out. Or maybe it was just the bottom of the lava tube, scooped out and then painted. Fred sat on the wall and looked around. It looked very much like a Tang or Ming diorama in a museum or a theme park. The Disneyland in Hong Kong would presumably have just such an area in it, featuring Princess Mulan no doubt. He looked back at Qi and Fang, smiling to think of it. Definitely not something to mention around Qi.
Out on the water, a little armada of white swans was led by a black swan. Maybe Qi was her people’s black swan. Or maybe she thought she was. Fred wasn’t sure. What others thought was always hard to ascertain; he didn’t even know what he thought, most of the time. In this case he didn’t know the language, the culture, or the political situation. With a sinking feeling it occurred to him that this was only a particular case of a general situation. What did he know about anything?
Shadows of the pseudo clouds made dark circles on the lake. On the far bank a gang of monkeys were begging a fisherman for a handout.
Suddenly Qi plopped down next to him, holding her belly in both hands.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said.
“Where are we going to go?” he objected. “We were in trouble. We kept getting caught.”
“I know. But China is big. If we hadn’t left our apartment on Lamma, we wouldn’t have gotten caught.”
“I’m not so sure. Didn’t you say there were people waiting outside our door? If we hadn’t left when we did, they would have caught us then, maybe. Anyway we did leave. Why don’t you like this place?”
“I don’t trust him. We’re locked up here, and there are people on the outside who know we’re here. It’s a kind of jail.”
“He said we could go if we wanted.”
“I don’t believe him.”
“Do you think he’s working with your father?”
“I don’t know. He’s not working with my people, that I do know. And my people need me.”
“No one is indispensable,” Fred said, though he wasn’t sure about that. “Why don’t you just stay here at least until your baby is born, make sure that happens safely, and then you can think about it.”
She shook her head. “That’ll just give him another hostage.”
“He already has all of us. You don’t want to be on the run when your time comes. And the due date is coming soon, right?”
She shot him a glance full of distrust. She didn’t like it that he knew her due date. As if he was going to forget it now. He wasn’t sure if she thought he was stupid or just forgetful. But she was the one who was forgetful; she kept forgetting what he was like, it seemed, and then he popped back into her awareness and again she had to figure out what kind of creature he was.
He sighed and she said, “What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m not really here.”
It was her turn to sigh. “Shut up,” she complained. “I don’t need you moaning and groaning right now.”
Fred stopped talking. Across the lake the monkeys were carefully rolling a bicycle into the water.
Ta Shu churned his pedal boat back in to the little marina, got out and stepped over to them, lofting unsteadily in the g. He came over to Qi and Fred without his usual smile, which was so unusual that Fred realized he had never seen Ta Shu’s face without that smile. Something must have happened.
Indeed it had:
“Sorry to have to leave you,” he said as soon as he joined them. “I’ve gotten news that my mother is sick, and I need to get to her as soon as I can. I’m the only family she has left.”
“You must go then,” Qi said.
Fred saw she would have done the same if it were her father who was sick. All that talk of what her father had done and not done as a politician would have gone by the board. Fred considered his parents: would he go to them if they fell ill? Yes, he would. If he could.
Now Ta Shu was saying, “Fang Fei got the news to me, and he is helping me leave fast. With luck I will rejoin you here. If not, I’ll see you again elsewhere.”
“We’ll probably be here,” Qi said darkly. “I don’t think Mr. Fang is going to let us leave.”
Ta Shu was startled to hear this. “Why do you think that? Did he tell you that?”
“No, he said we were free to leave.”
“He said we had nowhere else to go,” Fred added.
“That’s how people always put it,” Qi said bitterly. “You’re safest here, they say. I’ve been hearing that my whole life.”
“In this case he may be right,” Ta Shu said. “There’s a struggle going on right now. It’s more than the usual infighting.”
“It’s way more than that!” Qi exclaimed. “It’s a fight for China itself!”
Ta Shu regarded her as he thought it over. “Maybe. But if that’s the case, even worse for you. You are a princeling during a war of succession. That’s a dangerous thing to be.”
“I’m more than a princeling,” she told him. “I’m Sun Yat-sen. I’m Mao on the Long March.”
Startled by this, Ta Shu stared at her and then said, “Worse yet! I hope it’s not true, for your sake and for China’s. I don’t think we can take a civil war right now. There are too many other problems.”
“Those other problems are what is forcing this to happen.”
“Well, even so …” He floundered, seeming thoroughly spooked by this turn in the conversation. “Even if so, maybe this cave must be your cave of Yunnan. Wait here patiently, like Mao did in Yunnan, until a real opportunity presents itself. Or, failing that, at least until I return. If it pleases you.”
“It does not please me.”
Ta Shu shrugged. “I have to go home.”
“I know that.”
He regarded her for a while. Fred saw he was checking out of this exchange, his mind going elsewhere. Finally he said, “When I’m free to return, I’ll come and see if you are still here or not.”
He turned and strode purposefully toward the wall road, doing his best not to bounce too much. Fred hurried to follow him, which caused him to make yet another inadvertent launch, followed by a brief flight through the sky; he had to spin his arms backward and twist his legs forward to land on his feet, just a short distance behind Ta Shu. The old man heard him and turned. Again Fred was struck by the absence of his usual smile.
“I’ll stay with her,” Fred said. “Her baby is due in a few weeks, so I’m hoping she’ll stay here till then. It seems like that might work.”
“I hope so. We’ll stay in touch. Fang will pass messages along.”
There was a car waiting in a little parking lot, under a grove of what looked like sycamore trees. A driver sat at its wheel.
“Good luck,” Fred said helplessly. “I’ll be thinking of you.”
“Thank you.” He was already gone.
AI 9
xue liang
Sharp Eyes
Alert,” said the voice of Little Eyeball.
“One moment,” said the analyst. He made sure he was alone and his room secure. “Okay, Little Eyeball. Tell me.”
“You instructed me to alert you when troop movements around Beijing showed substantial changes in pattern or number, and now they have.”
“Bring them up on a map, please.”
“Done.”
The analyst regarded the map. It looked like the great city’s Seventh Ring Road was being set up as some kind of perimeter. That was a big perimeter, but then again not as big as the entire city, which would mean almost the entire province. Although Jing-Jin-Ji was also going to be defended, it appeared, and that was most of Hebei Province. No, something was coming. Or at least someone thought something was coming. If he could see it by way of Little Eyeball, then other parts of the security apparatus certainly were aware of it. Whatever it was.
“Give me travel numbers, also denials of travel and route cancellations, please. Numbers of arrests nationwide. All recent changes of that sort. Again, show them on a map.”
After a pause of a second: “Done.”
He regarded the map, scrolled around, zoomed in and out. “Waa sai,” he said, gulping. Arrests were up by 183 percent over the previous month. “Someone is preparing to cope with a movement as big as the New Year’s travel. This year that was three times larger than the number of Muslims who made the hajj to Mecca.”
“There are many people in China,” Little Eyeball observed.
“Yes. Good hunt for causes. Now, recall the chaos that always occurs in the interregnum between dynasties. Recall the era of the Warring States, or the White Lotus rebellion, or the long disruption between the end of the Qing and 1949.”
“Recall the Cultural Revolution,” Little Eyeball suggested.
“Yes, good on similarity,” the analyst said, pleased. He had continued to program Little Eyeball intensively, and it seemed that this work was finally getting some traction. Its sentences were unevenly perceptive, but often it seemed like it was doing more than just searching and sorting in the databases; something like deduction, association, analysis ….“The Cultural Revolution was not as bloody as those earlie
r ones,” he instructed, “but it was like them in that we Chinese turned on ourselves. No one knew what was right or wrong, or how that would change the next day. No one knew what to do or not to do.”
“So you have said.”
“China was never the same after that, I think. We lost our socialist bearings, and became just another powerful country. Big but not different. And it was the difference that mattered. Now we are just a big gear in a larger machine.”
“You once said Deng had no choice but to join the world.”
“True. He was making the best of the situation that Mao and the Gang of Four left him.”
“That was long ago.”
“True. But now a time of trouble has come again, it looks like. The tigers are fighting, and the people don’t like it.”
“Perhaps the authorities will stop all trains.”
“Even if they do that, people can walk. The billion are within walking distance of Beijing, if they want to go.”
“The number of people who could do that would be approximately three hundred million, depending on how you define walking distance.”
“Three hundred million will seem like a billion, let me assure you! There would be no stopping a crowd like that.”
“What can the authorities do in the face of such momentum? I wonder what will happen.”
“Me too, my curious little AI. Good for you for thinking to ask a question. I’m not sure what they could do. It’s a big crowd. And if it could be choreographed! That’s what I’m thinking about. You must help me with that. We must try to change this movement from a march to a dance. From revolt to phase change. From bloodshed to singing. This is what we have to try for.”
“People would have to know about this try in order to change. A plan known to participants is what distinguishes dance from riot.”
“Very well put, and a good point too. And very possibly our acquaintance Chan Qi is in a position to spread the plan. I suspect that is her role in all this.”
“You can contact her and tell her.”
The analyst nodded and went to the corner of his office where a stack of Unicaster 3000s stood. He picked up the one paired with Chan Qi’s, brought it to his workbench, turned it on, tapped a call, sent it to her.
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