Rhapsody For The Tempest (The Braintrust Book 3)

by Marc Stiegler

  A Russian voice shouted from beyond the glare. “You are a most difficult woman to find when you’re trying not to be found, did you know that?” demanded Vasily. “Here, let’s get you on board before you freeze to death.”

  She had just closed the cockpit door against the wind when her phone sang, “Hey now, you’re an All-Star.” Jam whipped out the phone. “Dash, are you crazy? You know they can trace this call.”

  Dash’s voice sounded soothing. “Don’t worry Jam. I helped Matt put up a new cell phone satellite network. You’re talking directly to a cell tower on a satellite. They don’t even know.”

  Jam breathed a sigh of relief. “Good enough.”

  “So, where are you, so I can send someone to rescue you?”

  Jam paused, confused. “Wait. You didn’t send Vasily?”

  “Vasily?”

  “Yes, he just found me and picked me up. We’re heading back to China now.”

  “Vasily? The same Vasily who…” Dash’s voice faded as her consternation mounted.

  Well, this was complicated. “I’m afraid so, Dash. That Vasily.”

  Vasily decided at that moment to complicate things further. “Dr. Dash, nice to hear your voice again. Let me apologize once more for…what happened…in the past.”

  Silence on the phone greeted this apology.

  Jam tried to reassemble the pieces of the conversation. “Vasily was very helpful protecting Gleb’s family, it turns out.”

  Dash digested this for a moment. “Alexei?”

  Jam had better news on that, sort of. “He’s dead.”

  Vasily chortled. “You should have seen Jam shoot him down. It was a remarkable display of…uh…”

  Jam put her hand over her face, wishing Vasily were less helpful, contemplating shooting him now. No good; he was piloting the copter. “It seems Vasily has had a change of heart. Sort of like, you know—”

  Dash finished the sentence. “Dmitri.” Dash sighed so loudly Jam could hear it. “So I didn’t have to persuade Matt and Ben and Amanda and Colin to spend billions of dollars after all.”

  Jam didn’t fully understand this, but she knew the right answer. “I’m so sorry, Dash.”

  Dash chuckled. “Well, it is a good investment anyway. At least we will all get rich. Or richer, as the case may be.”

  Jam stared at her phone. “That’s the spirit. Look on the bright side.”

  After they broke the connection, Vasily voiced his personal worries. “What are you going to do with me now? Send me back to Dmitri?”

  Jam looked at him like he belonged in a zoo. “You’re kidding, right? You belong to me now.”

  After a moment, Vasily nodded. “Yes, I guess I do.”

  Silence engulfed the cockpit. Eventually, however, Vasily asked wonderingly, “She spent a billion dollars to get a phone call through to you?”

  Jam shrugged. “It’s Dash.”

  9

  Cradle of Civilization

  Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

  —P.J. O’Rourke

  Jam spent the first few days back in China reveling in being warm again. They meandered across the countryside, hopping by copter hither and yon to meet the successful Accel test-takers, moving by truck in a drunkard’s walk that nonetheless had a specific destination as its goal.

  Jam was dozing, half-listening to the sound of gravel crunch under their wheels, when Julissa spoke doubtfully about approaching their destination. “I think we’re coming up on Baotong. It’s hard to tell. There’s no welcome sign, and not even a dot on a map unless you want to count the GPlex satellite view that no one near here has ever seen and doesn’t recognize so they can’t tell us if this and that are the same.”

  Jam opened her eyes.

  A village of shanties lay before them. She peered at them. At first glance they looked run down. But as she continued to study them odd little details caught her eye, suggesting they might be in better shape than apparent.

  This was the place Ping had demanded she find—long ago it seemed. She’d done as Ping asked, interrogating people in the other villages as they passed through. Most had never heard of Baotong, but the ones who had invariably gave her a pensive assessment before saying in a low voice, “Yes, you should probably go there” when Jam asked. Very strange.

  Up on the only hill within kilometers sat a nice house, a mansion by the standards of the village beneath. Jam muttered, “Somebody’s doing all right here.”

  Her eyes drifted on to the only part of the landscape with movement. She caught her breath. “Julissa, look at all the machines.”

  A large wheat field consumed much of the view between the village and the mansion. It was full of battered machines whirring, clanking, and jittering to and fro. Every one of them made her think of the remote control tiller Song had cobbled together. A gaggle of villagers stood to the side, apparently controlling the machines.

  Could she have come upon a village where they had another person like Song? Where they respected him for his unusual skills? Ping had been right. She definitely wanted to track down the inventor of those machines.

  Several of the villagers saw her and pointed. A tiny, ancient woman detached from the others and shuffled with surprising rapidity on an intercept course to catch her and Julissa on the edge of the village.

  Julissa rolled to a stop next to the elder. Jam hopped out and offered a short bow.

  The elder gave her a soft smile. “You may call me Nuan. You must be Ms. Jam, who is not here to lift the poor. We’ve been expecting you.” She nodded her head. “Let us go to my home, I can give you tea while we talk.”

  Jam opened the door. “May we give you a ride?”

  Nuan pursed her lips. “It is too hard to get in and out of these trucks. Let us walk.”

  Jam shut the door and caught up with Nuan, who was already shuffling down the dirt road. Julissa followed at a distance with the pickup.

  Jam asked, “How did you hear about me? Why were you expecting us?”

  Nuan laughed, a warm, gentle sound. “You kept asking people how to find us. We do not get out of the village often, but enough. More fundamentally, we’ve been expecting someone from the BrainTrust for several years now.”

  Jam almost tripped. “You have? Why?”

  “Reading about your ships, it was clear they have been a great success and would inevitably expand. But to expand, they would need more people.” She pointed to the field. “People who can build new things out of old ones.”

  They walked on in companionable silence to Nuan’s house, which sat near the edge of the village. Julissa parked the truck, and all three of them entered the home.

  Julissa gasped as they stepped over the threshold, but Jam was not surprised to find that the interior was a substantial step up from the dilapidated appearance of the village from the road. Every inch of the house was neat and clean. The furnishings, while old and battered, had been lovingly maintained. The floor was not dirt. Rather, it was covered in irregular yet beautifully mated flagstones, fitted together by a master worker of jigsaw puzzles.

  Nuan motioned them to the small table. A teapot warmed over a bricked-in fire pit full of embers. She brought the tea, then reached into a cupboard to bring down three teacups, each a different shape, each obviously old but well cared for.

  Julissa picked up her cup and studied it, her mouth open in amazement. “These cups must be a thousand years old.”

  Nuan poured the tea, chuckling. “Two thousand.”

  Now Jam stared at her in amazement. “Two-thousand-year-old teacups?” She lifted hers gingerly, expecting it to disintegrate at the slightest increase in pressure.

  Nuan sighed. “Let me tell you a story, handed down through generations by our ancestors.” She sat holding her cup in both hands and looked off into the distance. “As you may know, once upon a time the lands of China were ruled by numerous small warlords.”

  Julissa nodded. “The time of
the Warring States.”

  “Just so.” Nuan sipped her tea. “The internecine wars led to endless slaughter. All but the warlords and their generals suffered, including our people in Baotong. It was unacceptable.”

  She sighed. “Our people in this little village have always had unusual insight. We were thinkers, not doers, and we could outthink just about any problem—except for men with swords. So we decided the warring states had to be brought to heel, and a unified, civilized state needed to rise in their place.”

  Nuan rose suddenly in dismay. “I forgot the cookies!” After fussing for a couple of minutes in her pantry, she returned with a plate of almond cookies. “We scoured the states and identified the most empathic, most honorable of the young royalty—a child, really, thirteen years old when he became king—Ying Zheng of the state of Qin. We performed as his generals for war, his advisors for creating wealth, and his engineers for building his Wall. The result is generally referred to as the Qin Dynasty.”

  Julissa blinked herself out of her spellbound state. “But it didn’t last. The Qin Dynasty fell after Ying Zheng, renamed Qin Shi Huang—the First Emperor—died. What happened?”

  Nuan frowned. “We didn’t understand until it was too late, but as Britain’s Lord Acton observed thousands of years later, ‘Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Ying became obsessed, ironically enough, with a quest for the elixir for life—a quest on which you of the BrainTrust are finally making a little progress, millennia later.”

  She shrugged. “Anyway, his obsession destroyed him. And we knew we had made a terrible mistake. Just as we had assisted in the creation of the first Chinese Empire and its emperor, we then assisted in its destruction.”

  Julissa knew the rest of the history, of course. “But other dynasties rose. And fell.”

  Jam added shrewdly, “But they all left you alone.”

  Nuan gave her a beatific smile. “Exactly.” She stared at Jam, piercing her soul with her eyes. “The time has come to try again. We are ready to go with you.”

  Jam blinked. “Go with me?”

  Nuan did not quite laugh at her. “Yes. To the BrainTrust. Or rather, to the Fuxing.”

  Jam scrunched her face. “I can really only take a few people with exceptional qualifications.” She pointed out the window. “Like the person who built all the machines working your wheat field. Could you introduce me to him?”

  Nuan did laugh at this. “Ms. Jam, we all build machines like that.”

  Jam goggled, but recovered. “I’ll need to test everyone.”

  Nuan rose. “Of course. As expected.” She opened the door.

  A dozen villagers stood patiently in a line.

  Jam took a deep breath. “Well, this will be interesting.” She pulled out her cell phone and opened the Accel testing app.

  Julissa laughed gaily. “It certainly will be.” She fired up her cell as well.

  They started testing as more villagers wandered up. With two phones and each test taking less than fifteen minutes, they tested nine villagers in the first hour.

  They all qualified for full scholarships.

  After the second hour, Jam called a halt. “Enough! I believe you.” She laughed low in her throat. “Everyone’s going to the Fuxing.”

  Now villagers seemed to flow out of every corner of the village, cheering.

  As night fell, a middle-aged couple holding hands came up to Jam, who sat alone outside Nuan’s residence watching the stars come out. Julissa was inside, talking with Nuan as they spread Jam’s and Julissa’s sleeping bags on the floor.

  The woman spoke. “Good evening, Ms. Jam. It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

  Jam scooted over on the split log upon which she sat to make room for the couple. “It is beautiful, even though it reminds me a little of the place where I grew up.”

  The couple nodded as if they understood.

  Jam took a deep breath. “How may I help you?”

  The husband looked sorrowful; the woman, hopeful. She spoke of that hope. “We were wondering if you had ever met or heard of a young Chinese woman about your age, by the name of Liling. We thought she might be on the BrainTrust.”

  Jam shook her head. “I’m sorry. You have to understand, there are over a hundred thousand people on the BrainTrust.”

  The couple sat down. The woman took Jam’s hand, and the husband spoke. “Shu Shi, I told you it was a longshot.”

  The wife pursed her lips. “I was just so sure.” She drew a deep breath. “When our daughter was just ten years old, she was taken by the provincial governor to be one of his concubines. He was a horrific person, but his sister’s husband was in the Politburo.” She spoke as if that made it all understandable. “Less than a year later he died from an accidental fall from his second story bedroom window. Shortly after that, we received a bill from the government to pay for the bullet used to execute our daughter. They claimed Liling had committed treason.” Now tears glittered in her eyes.

  Her husband continued. “We didn’t really believe it. Her execution, that is, not the murder. Our daughter was the cleverest little girl in the entire village. It was easy enough to believe she’d killed the governor, but hard to believe she hadn’t gotten away. We gathered everyone in the village and calculated that there was a good chance—”

  “Seven chances in eleven,” the wife interrupted.

  “Seven chances in eleven that she had gotten away, and the bullet was just for show.”

  The mother now continued. “But of course she could not come back here. We did some more analysis and concluded there was a good chance—”

  Now the husband interrupted. “Four chances in seventeen.”

  “Four chances in seventeen, that if she were alive, she would have eventually found her way on to the BrainTrust.” She shrugged. “It’s just so hard to believe she’s dead. She was so alive; a skinny little thing but so energetic. Everyone always said she bounced around—”

  Now the husband and wife finished together, “Like a ping-pong ball.” They smiled at each other. “Ping, ping, ping.” They hugged, and the wife said, “We miss her so much.”

  Jam had listened to the story with frustrated sorrow until the story turned to table tennis. Electrified by the grand finale, Jam had trouble not shouting her suspicions. Instead she said softly, “I’ll make some inquiries. A skinny little thing, right? Super-fast? You know, she may have changed her name.”

  The husband nodded. “That would have been wise of her, all things considered.”

  Jam slipped into Nuan’s house, humming with delight.

  Nuan and Julissa both stared at her. Nuan said what they were both thinking. “You have a beautiful voice.”

  Jam looked into the distance, perhaps at something deep within herself. “So they say, when I have something really striking to sing about.” She turned back to Nuan, now serious. “Exactly how did you plan we’d move the whole village to the Fuxing? I don’t think you have enough trucks and cars to move everyone at once.”

  Nuan raised her eyebrows. “I was assuming you would figure that out.” She sighed. “It could be a little difficult. The mayor will not like it if we all leave.”

  Jam looked puzzled. “He’s not one of you?”

  Nuan chuckled. “He’s from Beijing. His second cousin’s wife has a first cousin on the Politburo.”

  Julissa asked, “He lives in the house on the hill, right?”

  Nuan nodded.

  Julissa growled. “Puffed-up bureaucrat.”

  Nuan nodded.

  Jam contemplated the situation. “I have no idea how to move everyone out of the village at once. Perhaps we can talk him into helping us.”

  Nuan shrugged. Julissa snorted.

  Jam straightened her back as if preparing to be assaulted by a great wave. “I’ll go up in the morning. See if I can make an arrangement with him.”

  Two pairs of skeptical eyes stared at her owlishly.

  Jam shook her head from side to side. �
��And I’ll see if anybody on the BrainTrust has an idea.” Dash had, after all, sent her the copters, which had proven quite useful once Jam figured out what to do with them.

  The mayor of Baotong rolled in his sleep. The peasants were required to rise and work the fields at the break of dawn. The mayor, however, did his best work—creative intellectual pursuits of diverse kinds as befitted his status—while dreaming. His work was too important to be disturbed by the coming of daybreak.

  As the sun neared high noon, the mayor lay in bed and contemplated getting up.

  A loud knock on his door interrupted his musings.

  What could the villagers want from him so early in the day?

  He dressed slowly; the peasants could wait. When he finished, he made his stately way down the steps to the entry. He had a snappish comment on his tongue as he opened the door, but he swallowed the attack when he saw the lovely young foreign woman standing there. An even younger Chinese woman, he’d guess an interpreter or some such, stood to her left. The local peasant leader Nuan stood to her right.

  The mayor harrumphed. “Yes? What do you want?”

  The foreigner bowed politely. “My name is Jam. I’ve come in search of particularly bright and enthusiastic people to join the BrainTrust on the Fuxing archipelago.”

  “Bright and enthusiastic? You’ll need to look somewhere besides Baotong. These people are lazy dogs.” He pointed out the picture window at the field. “Look at them all, standing around the edges, not one of them out in the field doing a proper day’s work. If this field didn’t produce the highest yields in the region, I’d send them all to the mines.”

  He glared at Nuan, hoping to get a reaction, but as usual she gave him no response. The old hag couldn’t even understand when she was being insulted. “We’re fortunate to have such fertile land, or they’d all starve.”