The New Voices of Science Fiction Page 39

  “Which way?”

  Zhang Lei needn’t have asked. The water buffalo turned onto the road and trundled uphill. Before long, the slope gentled. Houses lined the road, with gardens and rice paddies behind. The road ended at a circular courtyard patterned with dark and light stones and half-bounded by a stream. At the far end, a footbridge arched over the water, leading to more houses beyond.

  The animal’s tail switched back and forth. It trotted toward the water, splayed hooves clopping on the courtyard’s patterned surface. A hygiene sweeper darted out of its path. At the stream’s edge, where the courtyard’s stone patterns gave way to large, dark slabs, the water buffalo paused, lowered its head, and stepped into the water.

  A man called out from one of the houses across the bridge. Jen Dang shouted a reply. No word balloon appeared.

  Jen Dang offered the lead rope to Zhang Lei.

  “He’ll stay in the water. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  Zhang Lei leaned on the bridge railings, flipping the rope to keep it from tangling in the animal’s horns as it luxuriated in the water below. The stream wasn’t deep, only a meter or so, but the beast lay on its side and rolled, keeping its white beard, eyes, and horns above water.

  When Jen Dang returned, the water buffalo was scratching its long, drooping ear on a half-submerged rock. Zhang Lei kept the rope.

  “It’s fun,” he said. “Best part of my day, too.”

  The farmer sauntered across the courtyard and joined a pair of friends working in the shade of a mulberry tree.

  Zhang Lei composed a series of canvases. The water buffalo with its eyelids lowered in pleasure, lips parted to reveal a gleaming row of bottom teeth. Three women in bright blue blouses weaving in an open workshop, their silver torques flashing. A man in deep indigo embroidered with pink and silver diamonds, sorting through a table piled with feathers. Jen Dang leaning on a low stone wall, deep in conversation with two friends using gleaming axes to chop lengths of bamboo. A white-haired woman in an apron stirring a barrel of viscous liquid with a wooden paddle. A battery of pink-cheeked, scrubbed children racing across the courtyard as a golden pheasant stalked in the opposite direction. A row of cabbages beside the road. Herbs clinging to a slate outcropping. A dragonfly skipping over the water. The tallest peak puncturing the western horizon like a fang on the underjaw of a huge beast.

  Aesthetically pleasing, peaceful, picturesque. But all communities had tensions and contradictions. Only a Miao could identify the deeper meaning in these scenes. Only a great artist could paint the picturesque and make it important. He wasn’t Miao and he was no great artist. Could he capture the water buffalo’s expression of ecstasy as it pawed the water? Not likely. But he could paint the mountain. Nothing more banal than another mountain view. But he loved that unnamed peak. He’d loved Mons Hadley, too.

  Jen Dang waved. A word balloon blossomed over his head: Let’s go.

  He jiggled the rope. The water buffalo ignored him. He flapped it, then gave the gentlest of tugs. The buffalo snorted and heaved itself out of the water. It stood there dripping for a moment, then its skin shivered. It lowered its head, shaking its great bulk and coating Zhang Lei in a local rainstorm.

  Zhang Lei wiped his face on his sleeve. The men were still laughing when he joined them. Nothing more fun than watching a rookie fall on his ass.

  Jen Dang was still chatting. Zhang Lei waited nearby, in the shade of a house. Along the wall was a metal cage much like the one behind the guest house. A rooster stalked back and forth, its face, comb, and wattle bright red, its bare breast and scraggly back caked with clean, healing sores. It stared at Zhang Lei with a malevolent orange eye, lifted one fiercely taloned yellow leg, and flipped its water dish.

  “Stupid bird,” Zhang Lei muttered.

  Around the corner was another cage, another rooster in similar condition, its comb sliced in dangling pieces. When it screamed—raucous, belligerent—the other bird answered. Zhang Lei knew an exchange of challenges when he heard it.

  “Are these fighting cocks?” he asked when Jen Dang joined him.

  “You don’t have them on Luna?” he answered.

  Shit, whispered Marta. Tell him you’re from the Sol Belt. You’ve never been to Luna.

  Why don’t you hit my disable button again? Load me on a cargo float and stick me in a hole somewhere? Or better yet—a cage. Evict one of the birds and get me my own dish of water.

  I might have to do that. Listen kid, it’s never been more important for you to be discreet.

  Why? Are they coming for me?

  Silence.

  They are, aren’t they? Answer me.

  A Lunite team tracked you to the Danzhai roadhouse, but don’t worry. We’ve got people on the ground, planting rumors to lure them to Guiyang. Even if they don’t take the bait, Danzhai County has lots of towns and villages. You’re still safe.

  “I’m from the Sol Belt,” he told Jen Dang. “I’ve never been to Luna.”

  The farmer didn’t look convinced.

  Zhang Lei’s hand stole up to his throat. Under his jaw, where his pulse pounded, the hard mass of the noose waited to choke off his life.

  When Zhang Lei got back to the studio, the other three artists were upstairs. He shoved the sofa aside. The painting leaned against the wall, facing out, a layer of breathable sealant protecting the drying oil paint. He was sure he’d turned it to face the wall, but apparently not. It didn’t really matter. He wanted it gone.

  He sprayed the canvas with another layer of sealant, trying not to look at the thick wet bloody gleam on the arena’s ice. He wrapped it in two layers of black polymer sheeting, and requested a cargo wrap to meet him at the guideway landing stage.

  When he got there, the area was packed with Miao arriving on sliders and bikes, whole families crowded onto multi-seat units, laughing and talking. He edged his way to the cargo drop, slid the cargo wrap around it, addressed it to Marta, and shoved the painting inside the conveyor. Done. He’d never have to think about it again.

  The Miao were on holiday. Women wore their blue blouses with short skirts trailing with long, flapping ribbons, or ankle-length red and blue dresses. All the women’s clothing was dense with colorful embroidery and tinkling with silver, and all wore their silver torques. The younger women pierced their top-knots with flowers. Mothers and grandmothers layered their torques with necklaces, and wore tall silver headdresses crowned with slender, curving horns. Silver everywhere—charms in the shape of flowers, bells, fish, and butterflies dangled from their jewelry, sleeves, sashes, and hems.

  They were, in a word, gorgeous. Happy, laughing, leading children, carrying babies, holding hands with their friends, and among them, men of all ages in embroidered black, blue, and indigo. The men were also happy, also laughing, also embracing their friends, helping their children and elders. But the young women—ah. They caught his eye.

  Zhang Lei retreated to the side of a corn patch, capturing compositions while watching the steady flow of arrivals. Some pinged for mobility assistance, and rode float chairs up the road, but most walked. Some eschewed the road, and ran uphill toward the guest house, making for the steep shortcut up the ridge. Zhang Lei followed.

  Paul, Prajapati, and Han Song watched from the studio porch. Zhang Lei joined them.

  “Jen Dla told me we can go watch the festival after supper,” Prajapati said. “It’s called Setting Free Your Daughter, or something like that.”

  “Setting them free from what?” asked Han Song.

  Six young women ran toward them, through Jen Dla’s cabbage patch.

  “Family control, I would imagine,” Paul answered.

  The girls didn’t even glance up. At home, he never had to work to get a girl’s attention—nobody on the team did. Unless Coach called a ban for training reasons, sex was on offer everywhere he looked. Here, he might as well be invisible. But then, he hadn’t exactly been making himself available. If the girls were being set free, and he was in the right place a
t the right time, maybe one of them would land in his lap. All he had to do was get them to notice him.

  “I’m going to the festival,” Zhang Lei said.

  “I’ll go too,” said Han Song. “I haven’t done enough exploring.”

  “We’ll all go,” said Prajapati. Paul nodded.

  After Jen Dla served them an early supper, Zhang Lei led the oldsters up the winding road to the village center. They admired the views from every switchback as if they hadn’t already had a week to explore, and examined every clump of flowers as if Paizuo wasn’t one big flower garden. Guests from the other studios joined them, which made the whole group even slower.

  Zhang Lei was tempted to leave them all behind, run to the village center, and see if the girls had been set free yet. He jogged up a few switchbacks, and then thought the better of it. Even the most adventurous girl would flee from a lone man bearing a disable button labeled KILLER. If he wanted someone to take a chance on trusting him, he’d better stick with the group.

  Zhang Lei sat on a boulder at the side of the road and waited for the oldsters to catch up. They weren’t bad people. All three were kind and clever in their own ways. And patient. He’d been unfriendly but they hadn’t taken offence.

  “We should really walk faster,” Prajapati told the other two when they caught up. “We don’t want Zhang Lei to miss his chance with the girls.”

  Zhang Lei grinned. “I could ping you a cargo float.”

  She laughed and took his arm.

  The roadside floating lights winked on, turning their route into a tunnel of light snaking up the mountainside. When they got to the village center, night had fallen. The courtyard was lit with flaming torches and in the middle of the crowd, a bonfire blazed, sending up a column of sparks to search the sky. Faces flickered with shadows. Silver glinted and gleamed. Laughter pealed. A singer wailed.

  “I don’t know when I last smelled something burning,” said Han Song.

  “Is that what the stench is?” asked Paul.

  “Wood smoke is the most beautiful scent,” said Prajapati. “Primal.”

  Most of the guests stayed on the courtyard’s edge. They joined a group under the mulberry tree, a gender-free triad of performance artists from Cusco Hab. Zhang Lei had seen them around the village. They always looked like they were in a meeting—heads down, conferring, arguing, making notes.

  “Have the daughters been set free yet?” Han Song quipped. “Asking for a friend.”

  The triad laughed.

  “Apparently it’s only one daughter, and no, the ceremony hasn’t begun yet,” said Aiko, the tallest of the three.

  “Just one girl?” Zhang Lei said. “Then what’s the point?”

  “Shakespeare! One performer, one night only. The complete works.” Aiko was obviously joking but their face was perfectly sober.

  Prajapati grinned. “Don’t tease the boy.”

  Another pair of artists joined them, a cellist from Zurich and an opera singer from Hokkaido. They seemed to know more about the festival than anyone else.

  “We won’t catch much of the performance unless the girl throws the switch on her translation balloon,” the cellist said in a low voice. “The one last year didn’t.”

  “Someone told me they translate in Kala, for the tourists visiting from Danzhai Wanda Village,” said Aiko.

  “Paizuo is more traditional than Kala. Which is why we come here.” The cellist shaded her eyes against the torches’ flare and scanned the crowd.

  “It’s better they don’t translate,” the opera singer said. “What the girl says won’t make sense if you don’t know the context. It’s more meaningful to watch the reactions of the Miao.”

  With so many people in the square, Zhang Lei could only catch glimpses of the action. He put his viewcatcher on full extension, sent it a meter overhead and switched its mode to low lux. Much better. The musicians were at the far end of the courtyard, near the bridge, playing drums and tall, upright bamboo flutes. The singer stood with them, wearing her silver headdress like a crown. Jen Dang and his family didn’t seem to be around. But he spotted the girl—the one who was being set free. She was alone. No friends, no fussing parents, no little siblings hanging on her arms.

  She wore hoops of silver chain around her torque, a blue blouse and short black skirt embroidered with butterflies, and a woven sash around her waist. A deep red flower pierced her top-knot. Her hands rested at her sides. She didn’t pick at her nails or play with her jewelry like Lunite girls. She looked prepared, like a goalie in a crease, waiting for the game to begin.

  He zoomed in on her face. His age or a little younger. Pretty, like all the Miao girls. Tough, too. What would a girl like her think of him?

  Not much, he suspected.

  The music stopped, the crowd hushed. The girl’s lips thinned in concentration. She stepped toward the bonfire and the circle of elders welcomed her into their arms. No drums this time, no bamboo flutes, no practiced wail from a powerful throat. The elders sang softly, their song a hum in the night, drowning under the buzz of the cicadas and crickets.

  Near the artists at the back of the crowd stood a mother with a baby clutched to her chest. She wore little silver, and looked upset.

  “Poor thing,” said Prajapati.

  The woman scowled at her and made a hushing motion.

  Zhang Lei waited for something to happen, some reason why the Miao were paying such close attention. The girl wasn’t doing anything, just standing in the circle of softly singing elders, eyes closed, face tight with concentration. Maybe nothing would happen—that was the point? Perhaps it was a test of her patience. It certainly was a test of his.

  As he was considering sneaking away, the girl began singing along. Her voice was high, with an eerie overtone that the pierced the sky. She sang higher and higher, drowning out the elders’ voices. The Miao were rapt, breathless. When she spoke—loud as if amplified—the crowd exhaled a collective sigh of wonder.

  “No translation balloon,” Aiko breathed. “Damn.”

  Zhang Lei expected the crying mother to turn and scold them again, but she was pushing through the crowd, sobbing and holding her baby out like an offering.

  “Must be her dead husband,” said the cellist, quietly. “You see? They set the girl’s soul free to visit the spirits, and now she’s bringing messages back.”

  “Messages?” said Zhang Lei. “What kind of messages?”

  “Every kind. Instructions. Admonitions. Warnings. Blessings. What kind of messages would you send from beyond if you could?”

  “I don’t know, maybe something the girl could easily guess?” said Han Song.

  “Hush,” said Prajapati. “This is serious.”

  It was serious. Zhang Lei didn’t even have to look up to know the new moon was watching him, the lights of its habs inscribed like a curse on the sunless black disc punched through the middle of the Milky Way.

  On Luna, hockey was a blood sport. Lunar hockey was played at one-sixth gravity on a curved surface, with a Stefoff field to keep the puck low and snap players back to the ice. One of the major defensive moves was to disable the other team’s players. Clubbing with weighted carbon fiber hockey sticks resulted in a penalty, though all referees were selectively blind. Slashing with skate blades, however, was a power move. An over-dominant team could cut their way through their opponents’ starting lineup, into the benched players and fourth-rates, and by the end of the fourth quarter stage an assault on an undefended goalie.

  Deaths were rare. Heads, legs, torsos, and groins were armored. Arms and throats were not. Medical bots hovered over the ice, ready to swoop in for first response, but rookies from the crèches quickly picked up scars, even playing in the recreational leagues. Anyone who remained unscarred was either a goalie or a coward.

  Zhang Lei’s crèche manager had tried to do right by him, direct his talents so he’d have choices when he left the crèche. She nurtured his talent for drawing and painting as much as possible. But
she was practical, too. Luna had far more professional hockey teams than artist collectives. All her children were on skates as soon as they could walk.

  With powerful legs and a low center of gravity, Zhang Lei could take a hit and keep his speed. He could jump, spin, and kick. He could slice an opposing defenseman’s brachial artery, drag his stick through the spurting blood, and spray the goalie as he slid the puck into the net. The fans loved him for it. His teammates too.

  It made him a target, though. He spent more time on the bench than anyone else on the team, healing wounds on his forearms. No matter. The down time gave him the opportunity to perfect the rarest of plays—jump and spin high enough to slice a blade through an opponent’s throat. He practiced it, talked about it, drew cartoons of it. He gave up goals attempting it, which got him a faceful of spittle whenever Coach chewed him out.

  Then finally he did it.

  Dorgon wasn’t even Zhang Lei’s favorite proposed target. He was just a young, heavy-duty defenseman with a loud mouth who wasn’t scared of Zhang Lei’s flying blades.

  He should have been.

  Dorgon bled out in ten seconds. The med bot wrapped him in a life support bubble and attempted a transfusion right there on the ice, but stumbled over the thick scars on the defenseman’s arms. When it searched for alternate access, Dorgon’s coach was too busy screaming at Zhang Lei to flip the master toggle on his player’s armor.

  Whose fault was it, then, that Dorgon died?

  “Your fault, Zhang Lei,” the Miao girl said. “You opened a mouth in my throat and my whole life came pouring out.”

  She pointed to him, standing under the mulberry tree with the other guests. Heads turned. He should have run but he was frozen, breathless as if in a vacuum. He might have collapsed without the tree trunk behind him.

  Marta? he whispered. Help.

  No answer. Prajapati grabbed his arm.

  “Ignore her, it’s a trick,” she said. And then louder: “That’s not funny.”

  The crowd parted to allow the girl a clear sight of him.

  “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t follow. I’m inside your mattress when you sleep. Behind the door of your room, inside the closet. When you painted the Sklad arena, who do you think put the blood on the canvas? It was me.”