A Grey Moon Over China

by Day, Thomas, A.

  Yet no degree of desperation on the part of the Europeans really explained why they had brought such weapons with them, and why they had used one without provocation the minute they were through the tunnel. Clearly they hadn’t meant to use them all against us, not at that time anyway, because they had sent just the one armed ship and one crewed escort ship while the rest of their fleet raced by.

  But whatever their reasons, they had to be stopped.

  I turned to Bolton and worked against the pain to open my mouth.

  “We need to talk to survivors,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “my very thought.” He didn’t move, but looked around a little blankly, nearly as stunned as the rest of us. Finally he brought his microphone into position and wiggled a switch on his armrest, and blew into the mike. Sound roared from the speakers.

  “Stand down, all stations. We will hold in pattern at one-quarter G. Roscoe, assemble boarding parties if you would, please. Fully armed. Take three of the shuttles, with torches for the locks. We need at least one English-speaking prisoner in good health. The others are to be neither harmed nor rescued. Ms. Pham—I assume you are still on 30-deck—you may accompany Mr. Throckmorton’s party if you wish, but you are not to interfere.”

  He got up and leaned down next to his communications officer. I got up, too, then waited for the dizziness to pass. We were going to need to break out the acceleration suits, the ones with the hydraulic cuffs that stemmed the flow of blood.

  “Torres,” said Bolton. He beckoned me over. “It was One-Fox they hit. I’m sorry.”

  I looked at him for a moment, then all at once remembered the column of strange light and the disintegrating ships. And the fact that people had died.

  “Captain Keller,” he said. “Thirteen others. Including some friends of yours, I believe. Delgado.”

  Ramón and Elena Delgado. Yes, the little entomologist, and the woman who drew children’s books and illustrated our manuals for us. And Teresa and Ana, their daughters.

  “God help us,” I said, and ran a hand across my face. “And one of your ships? Is that what happened?”

  “I’m afraid so—Seven-Three. Sixteen people, plus Jamie Peterson in your shuttle. All soldiers, at least. No families.”

  I shook my head, bewildered, not really grasping what had happened. Twenty-four hours ago I’d been in Charlie Peters’ quarters, counting the hours till escape, completely absorbed with my own, small concerns.

  Sometime later I pushed into the tiny head and tried to scrub the blood from the stubble on my chin, thinking all the while about little Teresa Delgado. When I rinsed my mouth I only spat more blood, so I gave it up and turned to the business of emptying my bladder in the tiny space with so little weight. It felt as though something had torn inside—I tried not to bite through my tongue a second time.

  “They’re back.” Someone pounded on the door to the head. The pressure changed and the walls clanged as the shuttle docked. Down on the lower commons deck, Polaski stood to one side, while Bolton stood in the center with his hands behind his back, facing the airlock as it sucked open.

  Commandos stepped briskly through and moved aside, making room for a very tall man who stooped to make it through. He was propelled from behind by Pham, who dug him repeatedly in the kidneys. There was high color back in her cheeks. Her eyes flashed. She looked sleek again, alive.

  The man she drove before her towered over us, though he was no more than nineteen or twenty. He had wavy blond hair and boyish good looks, and turned his head from side to side, looking frightened and eager to please at the same time, as though hoping for some kind word. His hands were tied behind him.

  When he was a few steps into the room Bolton made a gesture, and Pham pulled him to a stop.

  “So, who are you?” said Bolton, his tone conversational. The man’s lips worked themselves into an anxious smile, and his eyes darted from side to side.

  “Margyl,” he said. “Dieter Margyl.” His accent was Dutch, or Flemish.

  Bolton nodded thoughtfully. “You understand, Dieter, that you are far from any international court, and that your friends are not coming back.” As he spoke, he drew his knife from its ankle scabbard. The man licked his lips, while Pham fidgeted impatiently.

  “We would like to know,” said Bolton, straightening with the knife, “why you attacked our vessels.”

  The prisoner’s eyes widened in astonishment.

  “But, I think,” he said, “to make so you cannot stop us, yes?” He was watching the knife.

  Pham snorted in derision, yet the man’s answer had caught my attention.

  “Stop you from what?” said Bolton. “Go on.”

  Margyl was beginning to panic. “I think you make fun of me, yes? You would stop us from landing, and—”

  The knife shot out, only at the last minute flicking aside to cut open his breast pocket. He strangled on his own shout, then stood with his eyes tightly shut, taking short, hard breaths. A sour smell filtered into the room.

  Bolton sliced open the rest of Margyl’s pockets, finding them empty except for a radiation badge that clinked against the deck and spun to a stop. Bolton stepped back.

  “Stop you from landing, and what? By all means, continue.”

  “From going on to the next projection machine,” said Margyl. His pale face quivered. When no one answered, he opened his eyes to steal a glance around the room.

  “I am not understanding,” he said. “Please. You try to keep everyone from leaving Earth, then you do not tell the truth what your robots find, and now you ask—”

  Pham moved too fast to follow. For a moment I thought she’d fallen to the deck, grabbing Bolton’s arm for support, but then I saw that she was still on her feet, crouching, and that she had Bolton’s knife in her hand, and that her right foot was coming up toward the prisoner Margyl. With all of her strength she came up, her heel striking home between his legs with an awful sound and lifting him off the deck. Even before he’d crumpled back to his side, she had a hold of his hair and was pushing his face down, landing with a knee in his kidneys and the knife against his throat.

  Margyl struggled for breath, drawing his knees up and vomiting. She pressed his face into it and leaned down.

  “Now,” she said, “Tell us.” The knife broke the skin.

  “I don’t . . . yes,” he gasped, still trying for a breath. “I try . . . okay.” His eyes rolled up to look at her. “Yes, I will tell you. Please, no, listen. When we begin to build ships, we know that you let us build them only because you need us to help you—” Pham’s knee pressed harder.

  “Please, it is true . . . we knew you would try to destroy all the ships, so that you would have everything for yourself here—we and the Chinese, we know this. Then you lie to everybody about what your robots find here. You say there is no place to live. Nothing, so for sure we have no place to go . . . just you. Now you hide from us Le Paradis, and you go there alone, and have that planet for yourself, too.”

  He began to shake. His eyes, white and glassy, turned away from Pham and rolled first one way and then the other, then finally chose mine to which to issue their plea. Blood trickled from around the knife. Pham leaned closer.

  “If we hide these things,” she said, “then how come you know them, hah?”

  “Please, there is informer. In your ships. He tells us everything—”

  With an almost convulsive force she drove her knee into his side. He screamed and the tendons stood out terribly in his neck. Sweat dripped from his chin and mixed with the blood and vomit around his face.

  “His name,” she said.

  Bolton gave a sigh at that moment, and straightened. “We know his name,” he said.

  Pham ignored him and twisted the knife harder. “Tell us his name,” she said.

  “I swear, please. We do not know his name. We have never known his name. Always we call him ‘the Chinaman’ . . .”

  Then all at once I understood. How could we have missed it, I won
dered. All of us had missed it, except Bolton. Chih-Hsien Chien, our Chinese guest. Watched over by Bolton’s troops, on Bolton’s ship. All the while feeding the Europeans lie after lie, to whatever unfathomable end.

  Pham took a long, slow breath, then jerked suddenly, as though from a spasm. She stood up.

  I had turned away by then, but I began to hear an odd, swishing sound, like a bellows being pumped. I looked back at Pham, then down, not understanding at first the pool of red swirling around her feet.

  My stomach turned. Dieter Margyl’s throat had been cut from one side to the other, the wound gaping open in a hideous leer. His eyes were empty and wide, staring directly into mine.

  I took a quick step back and made a sound at Bolton, but he only put his hands in his pockets and raised an eyebrow. Pham tossed down the knife. It landed next to Margyl, in the pool of blood still pumping from his throat.

  “I think we talk to Chien,” she said. Her feet made a splashing sound as she moved away. Bolton said nothing. I tore my eyes from the dead man to watch her go, seeing that the old sinuous grace had returned to her as she walked, rippling through her hips and her thighs. Her feet left smears of blood behind her. The boundless celebration of our purpose, I thought, however black its nature . . . I was fascinated, and revolted. And in some awful way, aroused.

  “34-deck,” said Bolton finally, turning to follow. The rest of us fell in behind him, the trance broken.

  But the sight that awaited us in Chih-Hsien’s quarters brought us no comfort, nor did it bring us any closer to the truth. He sat in his big acceleration chair, facing us with his head to one side, his tiny, frail body crushed by the acceleration. Whatever reasons he might have given us for his deadly manipulation of the Europeans, they had died with him.

  THIRTEEN

  The Lamb of God

  T

  he new dream came that night for the first time. It began with Ramon Delgado and his family, in a scene from Teresa’s third birthday party on the island. It was a great feast with drinking and two piñatas, all under a burning artificial sun in the subterranean air. The piñata for the children was a smiling burro, but for the adults there was a demon, a grotesque underworld golem with blunt horns and fangs, and deep, sunken eyes.

  The adults took their turns with the blindfold and the stick, swinging helplessly as the creature bobbed and swung out of range, turning on its rope and sweeping us with its gaze. Eventually only Pham and I were left, and the others stood in a circle and beckoned me in with the blindfold. But I held back, not being in the mood, and I told them no, go ahead, let Pham have her turn. But they beckoned anyway, and the demon watched and waited until finally I was angry and I said no, please, maybe it’s the drink but no, I’d rather not.

  So Pham took her turn. She took a swing with the stick, then threw it aside and reached for the creature with her bare hands. She embraced it tighter and tighter, and moved her body against it as though making love to it while the others whistled and cheered. The demon finally cracked, then crumbled, then vanished into pieces, leaving only the candies and nuts spilling to the ground.

  I remembered all of this in the dream, just as it really happened. But then, while the others cheered Pham and her conquest, I looked down at the ground, at a piece of the thing’s face, which was staring up at me with the eyes of Dieter Margyl.

  That was when the bad part of the dream began, the part that was to come back again and again. In it, I was trapped in an underground cavern from which a single passage led to freedom. But it led downward first, into the mountain, and I knew that somewhere along it that same demon waited, the one that Pham had embraced and dispelled, but from which I, to this day, held back.

  C

  han and I spent the next morning tracking the European ships. What they did was more disturbing than anything I could have imagined. My hopes of reaching Serenitas dimmed, and my fear of becoming trapped here in Holzstein’s System grew.

  Chan, who didn’t mind the thought of staying in Holzstein’s at all, brooded about the drones instead. The scientists and priests had conferred through the night and none had been able to suggest how, or why, the drones had vanished. They were sure that Miller knew, until they met with her in the morning and saw the depth of her own concern.

  “It scares me a little,” said Chan. “Anne thinks that they may have found something. Or seen something, and it made them leave. And now the Europeans with those weapons . . . I don’t know what’s happening anymore.” She put a hand on my arm. “I need you, Eddie. I need you to hold me like you used to.”

  But I’d scarcely heard her. I was thinking about the Europeans, about the worrisome new positions they were taking up. And about warfare, and years of endurance, and life on the great, empty black planet.

  Chan and I made love against the machines that afternoon, suddenly and urgently, with little concern for who might pass. She wrapped herself around me and pressed as hard as she could, making no sound as I gripped her tighter and tighter. I tried to touch every part of her at once and drive away the images of the dead, of Pham walking away from me, of the blood on the ground behind her. But I couldn’t.

  A

  n aide to Carolyn Dorczak called to say that their fleet had also been attacked and to ask for assistance in their future defense.

  It was David Rosler who took the call. He then conferred with Polaski, and only afterwards was I informed. I left our ship to pay Rosler a visit.

  I descended from the nose hatch of his ship and smelled stale air and rotting food. Lights filtered up from his MI deck, then an angry shout and a moment later a sight that held me motionless. I let the lift carry me on past without a word, not knowing what else to do.

  Rosler had a sheaf of papers in one hand, while with the other he gripped Pham’s hair and pressed her down into the console with all his strength, grinding her face into the switches. His voice was contemptuous.

  “You’d probably enjoy it, anyway, you little bitch . . .”

  Hurt him, I thought. The idea came from nowhere, unbidden. You’re faster than he is. For all I detested Pham, in that instant Rosler seemed insufferable by comparison, and I wanted to see him hurt.

  “Hi,” came a small voice.

  Glistening metalwork was arrayed in front of me—I’d gotten off on the lower industrial deck, with its manufacturing MI and metal-working machines. Work lamps glared from the ceiling, throwing deep shadows into the deck’s perimeter.

  A boy’s face moved in and out of the shadows. He was running a cloth back and forth across the shaft of a turret lathe, watching me solemnly out of blue eyes in a freckled face.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He stopped. “You looking for the sick lady?”

  “I don’t think so. Who’s the sick lady?”

  “The one who’s always fighting with Captain Rosler.” He took up his polishing again. “She threw up on the grinder this afternoon. I had to clean it up.”

  “I’m sorry. Are you the only one here?”

  “Yes. Everyone else is out on the couplings.”

  “But not you?”

  “Nah.” He snapped the shaft cover into place and spun the lugs with a flick of his wrist. He was no more than eight years old, but worked with the skill of an experienced machinist. He avoided my gaze.

  “I’m an LTT,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  He cocked his head. “You making fun of me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m a Low Thrust Tolerant. At two-point-two I start to breathe funny.” He came out from behind the lathe and pointed to a bench strewn with tools and rags. “That’s her piece over there.”

  “The sick lady’s?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  On the bench was a heavy gun, black and unfinished, unlike any I’d ever seen. The chamber had been taken from a light cannon, but a custom magazine, grip and barrel had been added to it. The barrel was ugly and heavy and a good ten inches long, with a bore nearly an inch in diameter. />
  “Pretty neat, huh?” said the boy, his blue eyes and delicate features brightening.

  “I suppose. What’s she going to use with it?”

  “Twenty millimeter fléchette rounds. Wait, I’ll show you.” He raced up the steps to the upper deck, then came down holding a brass-clad canister. “It holds four of ’em—more’n a thousand needles each.”

  It was a particularly nasty type of antipersonnel round, which at close quarters would take off a person’s entire torso. It was also heavy—at a full G her gun would weigh a good eight pounds, loaded.

  But now the boy had lost interest, and was pecking at a keyboard.

  “Where’d this shell come from?” I said, hefting the fléchette round.

  “Upper indy deck. There’s all kinds of stuff up there.”

  I started up the ladder to look. I didn’t remember that we’d put an armory on Rosler’s upper industrial deck.

  “Want to see something?” said the boy.

  “What’s that?”

  “I wrote a program for the machines. They don’t make anything, but they all go at once like they’re dancing. I did the order just right so it kind of makes music—you want to see?”

  “Later, okay? I’m pretty busy.”

  “Más tarde, Eduardo.” My father’s voice. “Estoy ocupado.”

  Side arms and rifles lined the upper deck, including a gutted 20mm cannon and a shoulder-portable laser. I walked over to an ammunition case standing open on the floor.

  “Hoping to find something you like?”

  Rosler stood on the top step behind me, wearing his black waiter’s pants and a soiled white shirt. Limp, black hair hung over his glasses, which were smeared with fingerprints. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the glint of the lights on his glasses.

  “Tell me what the Americans said, Rosler.”