The New Voices of Science Fiction Page 37

  Okay.

  Two weeks. Fine. He’d keep doing what she said, within reason. Drinking water, yes. Slowing the bike down, no. He wasn’t going to toil up the mountain like some slack-ass oldster.

  Wasn’t long before he regretted that decision. The nausea wouldn’t be denied any longer. He shifted on the bike’s saddle and hung his head over the edge of the guideway. His mouth prickled with saliva until his guts heaved, forcing what was left of his luxurious, hand-cooked Danzhai lunch—black fungus, eggplant, cucumbers, and garlic with pepper, pepper, and more pepper—up, out, and over into the green gulch below. The nausea eased.

  When he got to the Paizuo landing stage, the guideway came to a dead end. He couldn’t believe it. Just a ground-level platform with a bike rack on one side and a battery of cargo floats on the other. Zhang Lei had never even seen a landing stage with only one connection, not even in the bowels of Luna’s smallest hab. Everywhere was interconnected. Not Paizuo, apparently.

  He hooked his bike on the rack, shouldered his duffle bag, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, flicking away a few stray pepper seeds. His lips burned.

  I said you’d puke, Marta whispered. No visual this time, only a disembodied voice. Bet you feel like shit.

  Yeah, but you look like shit.

  It was the traditional Lunar reply. Marta laughed.

  Don’t pull that lip here, okay? You’re a guest. Be polite.

  He shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other. Nobody seemed to be watching, aside from Marta. Behind the trees, a few brown houses climbed the side of the mountain. Where was the village? A few people were visible through the trees, but otherwise, Paizuo was a wilderness—a noisy wilderness. Wind in the leaves, birds chirping, and buzzing—something coming up behind him.

  Zhang Lei spun, fists raised. A cargo conveyor zipped up the guideway. It slid its payload onto a float and slotted itself into place on the underside of the landing stage. The float slowly meandered up a leafy path.

  A hospitality fake showed him the way to the guest house, where he stumbled to his room, fell on top of the bed, and slept fourteen hours straight. If someone had wanted to kill him then, they easily could have. He wouldn’t have cared.

  The other three artists in the guest house were pampered oldsters from high-status habs. They made a big show of acting casual, but Zhang Lei caught each of them exchanging meaningful looks. They were probably pinging his ID to ogle his disable button, marveling at the label under it that said KILLER—FAIR GAME, and discussing him in whispers.

  During lunch, Zhang Lei ignored them. Instead of joining their conversation, he watched a hygiene bot polish the floor.

  “The wood bothered me at first,” said Prajapati, gesturing with a beringed hand at the guest house’s wooden walls, floor, and ceiling. She looked soft, her dark skin plush with fat and burnished with moisturizers. Her metadata identified her as a sculptor from Bangladesh Hell. “But organic materials are actually quite hygienic, if treated properly.”

  “I don’t like the dirt,” said Paul, an ancient watercolorist from Mars. “It’s everywhere outside.”

  “It’s not dirt, it’s soil,” said the sculptor. She picked a morsel of flesh out of the bubbling pot of fish soup in the middle of the table.

  “People from the outplanet diaspora forget that soil is life,” said Han Song, a 2D photographer from Beijing Hive.

  “Yes, we’ve all been told that a thousand times,” replied the watercolorist with a smile. “Earth thinks very well of itself. But I have to say, I like Paizuo. The Miao traditional lifestyle is extremely appealing.”

  A woman shuffled into the dining room, bearing plates of egg dumplings and sweet millet cake. The oldsters smiled and thanked her profusely. The woman wore a wide silver torque around her neck, hung with tiny bells and charms. They tinkled as she arranged the dishes. She was slender, but the profile of her abdomen showed a huge tumor under her colorful tunic.

  “What a waste of billable hours,” the watercolorist said once the chef was gone. “Couldn’t they task a bot with the kitchen-to-table supply chain? I know tradition is important to the Miao, but the human ability to carry plates is hardly going to die out.”

  The chef had tagged the food with detailed nutritional notes, and it said millet was good for digestive upset. After vomiting his Danzhai lunch yesterday, he couldn’t face more peppers. But the millet cake was good—honey-sweet and crunchy. The egg dumplings were delicious, too. He could eat the whole plate.

  Marta pinged him.

  I thought you’d never wake up. Listen, don’t worry about the other guests, okay? We’ve had them investigated. They’re all nice, quiet, trustworthy people. They agreed not ask too many questions.

  He shoved another dumpling in his mouth. Zhang Lei knew he ought to be grateful but he wasn’t. The three oldsters were getting something out of the deal, too. They would be able to tell stories about him for the rest of their lives. I once shared accommodations with a murderer. Well, not a murderer, I suppose, not exactly, my dear, but a killer. No, I never asked him what happened but you should have seen the disable button on his ID. It said KILLER right under it. I couldn’t help but stare.

  Zhang Lei finished the dumplings and claimed the rest of the millet cake. He left the table, still chewing, and slammed the front door behind him.

  What did you tell them about me? he asked Marta.

  Not much. I said you weren’t responsible for what happened and we’re working to have the disable button removed.

  I was responsible, though.

  Zhang Lei, we’ve discussed this. Do you want to ping a peer counselor? Talk therapy is effective.

  No. I hate talking.

  The guest house was part of a trio of houses, fronted by a cabbage patch. Large birds—domestic poultry he guessed—pecked at the gravel walkway that led to the guest house’s kitchen door. Nearby, a huge horned mammal was tethered in the shade, along with a large caged bird that stalked back and forth and shrieked.

  Zhang Lei trudged toward a peak-roofed pavilion. The midday sun stood high over the valley, veiled by humid haze. Not at all hot, but in the unfamiliar atmosphere, sweat beaded on his scarred forearms.

  The pavilion overlooked the terraced fields descending the valley and the hazy fleet of mountains on the horizon. No blue sky today. He might as well be in a near-Sun-orbit greenhouse hab, deep in the eye of its dome, every sprout, bud, and bloom indexed and graphed. The locals probably used the same agricultural tech here. Each of the green-and-yellow plants in the terraces below was probably monitored by an agronomist up the mountain, watching microsensors buried in the soil and deploying mineral nutrition with pinpoint accuracy.

  Zhang Lei pinged one of the plants. Nothing came back, not even an access denial. He tried pinging one of the farmers working far below, then a nearby tree. Still nothing. Frantic, he flung pings across the valley.

  All of the Paizuo guest houses answered immediately. A map highlighted various routes up and down the valley. The guideway landing stage sent him the past two days of traffic history and offered average travel times to various down-slope destinations. A lazy stream of ID information flowed from the guest artists, thirty in total.

  Several hazard warnings floated over their targets: Watch for snakes. Beware of dog. Dangerous cliff. But no pings from the locals, or any of the crops, equipment, or businesses. Not even from the wooden hand truck upended over a pile of dirt at the side of the path. But no way this village ran everything data-free.

  His pings summoned the hospitality fake. It hovered at his elbow, head inclined with a gently inquiring look.

  “Why can’t I get a pingback from anything here?” he demanded.

  It gave Zhang Lei a generic smile. “Paizuo data streams are restricted to members of the Miao indigenous community.”

  “So I can’t find out anything?” His face grew hot with anger. Stuck here for weeks or more, totally ignorant, unable to learn anything or find out how the village worked.
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br />   The fake nodded. “I’ll be pleased to answer your questions if I’m able.”

  Zhang Lei wasn’t in the mood for crèche-level games. He slapped it down, hard. The fake misted away, immediately replaced by Marta in full length. She had her fists on her hips and didn’t look pleased.

  Feeling a little aggressive, Zhang Lei? You didn’t say two words to your fellow guests, and now you’re getting testy with a fake.

  I’m sorry, okay? Embarrassing. He should have controlled himself. I hate this place.

  No, you don’t. You’re out of your element. Nothing here is any threat to you. She grinned. Not unless you have a phobia of domestic animals.

  Hah, he grumbled.

  Go for a walk. Do a little sketching. Get familiar with the village. There’s lots to see, and it’s all gorgeous. There’s a reason why artists love Paizuo.

  Okay. He booted up his viewcatcher. Marta gave him an approving nod and dissolved.

  True, Paizuo was beautiful. From the pavilion, mountains thick with trees stretched sharp and steep over the valley, where green and yellow terraced fields stepped up and down the lower slopes, punctuated by small groups of wooden houses under tall trees. He framed the composition in his viewcatcher. It was perfect, prechewed—the whole reason the pavilion had been built there in the first place. The fang-like form of the tallest mountain clutched in the spiral fist of the golden mean. Nice.

  Even though the view was pre-packaged, framing it in his viewcatcher was satisfying. And what a relief to be able to do it openly. Back on Luna, he had to be careful not to get caught using the viewcatcher, or he’d get smacked by one of his teammates or screamed at by his coach. Zhang Lei was allowed to draw cartoons and caricatures, but everything else was a distraction from training and a waste of time and focus.

  Total commitment to the game, that’s what all coaches demanded.

  “What do you love better, hockey or scribbling on little bits of paper?” Coach had demanded, and then smacked him on the back of the head when he hesitated.

  “Hockey,” he answered.

  “Right. Don’t forget it.”

  So he drew cartoons of his teammates, their rival teams, and stars from the premier leagues they all wanted to get drafted into. He got good. Fast. Accurate. In thirty seconds, he could toss off a sketch that got the whole team hooting. Coach liked it, said it was good for morale. But quick, sketchy work didn’t satisfy. Neither did the digital-canvas painting he snuck past Coach on occasion, but both were better than nothing.

  He padded down a trail to the first terrace, flipping his viewcatcher through its modes—thirds to notan to golden mean to phi grid—as he strode along the edge. The earthen berm bounding the terrace was less than a meter wide, and seemed to be made entirely of dirt. The next terrace was ten meters below on his left.

  He blacked out edges of the view, widened the margins until nothing was visible outside his constantly expanding and contracting search for a composition. He swept back and forth across the landscape. Then he slipped and fell. The viewcatcher framed a close-up of green plants in brown water.

  Zhang Lei lurched sideways, regaining his footing, the right leg of his pants wet to the knee and slimy with mud. He dismissed the viewcatcher and stared incredulously around him.

  The matrix of the terraces was liquid, not soil. Water and mud. He’d seen it glinting between the greenery, but he hadn’t realized it was water. And now he was covered in it.

  A fleeting thought—I’m going to die here—easily dismissed. All he had to do was watch where he put his feet as he explored.

  Paizuo wasn’t what Zhang Lei expected. The village wasn’t all one piece like ancient towns in crèche storybooks. It was spread thin, covering the whole valley, the houses clustered in groups under the trees and separated by fields and paddies. The Miao didn’t build on flat or even sloping land—those areas seemed dedicated to crops. Instead, they chose the precipitous and rocky landscape for their multi-level wooden homes. Each house stood on stilts over the canted landscape, the weight of the structures leaning back on the mountainside. Livestock sheltered in the shade beneath, some tethered or penned, some roaming free.

  Actual live animals, like the ones behind the guest house, and a lot of them. With humans living literally on top of them.

  A deep voice knocked Zhang Lei out of his thoughts. Unfamiliar syllables. When he turned to look, the translation word balloon hung over the man’s head:

  “Hello, can I help you?”

  No ID accessible, but the balloon was tagged with his name: Jen Dang. Not tall, but broad-shouldered and athletic, with skin deeply burnished by the sun and a wide, strong face. Old, but not an oldster.

  Zhang Lei switched on his translation app.

  “I arrived yesterday,” Zhang Lei said. “Trying to get used to everything.”

  Jen Dang scanned the balloon overhead.

  “Are the insects troubling you?”

  “Insects?” Zhang Lei frowned and scanned the ground. “I haven’t seen any yet.”

  “Right there.” Jen Dang pointed at one of the fluttering creatures he had no name for.

  “Oh, I thought insects lived on the ground. I’m from—” He almost said Luna but caught himself in time. “I’ve never been on Earth before. It’s different.”

  “Most of our guests use seers to help them identify plants and animals. Paizuo is a biodiversity preserve, with thousands of different species.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks.”

  Jen Dang fell silent. Zhang Lei could feel himself warming to the stranger. Lots of charisma and natural authority. He’d do well on Luna.

  “The food is really good here,” he said.

  A shadow of a smile crossed Jen Dang’s face.

  “Jen Dla is my daughter. She’s an experienced chef.”

  “I’m sorry,” Zhang Lei said, and the other man squinted at him. “I couldn’t help but notice she’s sick.” He gestured vaguely in the region of his stomach.

  Jen Dang shook his head. “You’re a guest. There are lots of things guests can’t understand. Would you like to see another?”

  Two large baskets lay under a tree. Jen Dang plucked them from the ground and led Zhang Lei down a tree-lined path, the slope so extreme the route soon turned into uneven stairs, cut into the dirt and haphazardly incised with slabs of rock. Mammals grazed on either side, standing nearly on their hind legs while cropping the ground cover.

  They descended five terrace levels before Zhang Lei’s thighs started getting hot. Stairs were a good workout, mostly cardio but some leg strength, and uneven steps were good balance training, too. For a moment he lost himself in the rhythm of their rapid descent. It was enjoyable. He could run the stairs in morning and evening before doing his squats and lunges—but then he remembered. He wasn’t an athlete anymore. And with the disable button on his ID labeling him a killer, nobody in Danzhai, Miao or guest, needed to wonder what he was training for, or if he was chasing someone.

  He slowed, letting the distance widen between himself and the farmer. If someone got worried and hit the button, he’d roll right down the mountain.

  Jen Dang shucked his shoes and rolled up his trouser legs as he waited for Zhang Lei at one of the lower terraces.

  “Many guests are squeamish of the rice paddies, but it’s only water and mud,” he said when Zhang Lei joined him. “And worms. Bugs of course. A few snakes. And fish.” He hefted the large basket. It was bottomless—an open, woven cylinder.

  “Not a problem.” Zhang Lei pulled off his shoes, but didn’t roll up his pant legs. One was still damp. The other might as well get wet, too.

  Jen Dang handed him the smaller basket and waded into the sodden paddy, bottomless basket clutched in both hands.

  “Step between the rice plants, never on them. Try not to stir up too much mud, or you can’t see the fish.”

  Jen Dang demonstrated, moving slowly and looking at the water through the basket. Zhang Lei followed. The mud was cool. It squel
ched through his toes.

  “Use the basket to shade the water’s surface,” the farmer said. “Look for movement. A flash of scales or the flick of a tail.”

  As Zhang Lei followed the farmer through the paddy, he took care to keep his feet away from the knee-high rice plants. Each one was topped by knobby spikes—the grain portion of the crop, he assumed. Some of the grain was coated with a milky substance, and some was turning yellow.

  Jen Dang plunged the bottomless basket in the water and said, “Come look.”

  A fish was trapped inside. Jen Dang reached into the water and flipped it into Zhang Lei’s basket. It struggled, thrashing.

  “That’s one, we need six. You catch the rest.”

  Zhang Lei made several tries before he trapped a fish large enough to meet Jen Dang’s standards. Catching the rest took a full hour. The sky cleared and turned Earth-blue. The older man betrayed no trace of impatience, even though it was a ridiculous expenditure of effort to procure basic foodstuffs when a nutritional extruder could feed hundreds of people an hour, with personalized flavor and texture profiles and optimal nutrition.

  When they finished, Zhang Lei’s eyes ached from squinting against the flare of sun on water. He wiped his fish-slick hands on his pants and followed the farmer up the stairs.

  “Why do you do this?” he asked.

  Jen Dang stopped and eyed the word balloon over Zhang Lei’s head.

  “Stubbornness. That’s what my wife says. She’s an orthopedic surgeon, takes care of all the Miao in Danzhai county. She won’t farm. Says her hands are meant for higher things. She loves to cook, though. She taught all our daughters.”

  “But why do manual labor when you could use bots?”

  “We use some, but we’re not dependent on them. If we don’t do the work, who will?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Then nobody will know how to do it. All traditional skills and knowledge will be lost, along with our language, stories, songs—everything that makes us Miao. We do it to survive.”

  “You could write it down.”