Hannu Rajaniemi - The New Voices of Science Fiction

He pinged Marta, the social worker in Beijing Hive who’d orchestrated his escape from Luna seventy-two hours earlier. Forget Paizuo , he whispered as his bike coasted the guideway’s downslope. This is too weird.

Turn that bike back around or I’ll hit your disable button , Marta whispered back.

You wouldn’t.

He turned the bike’s acceleration to maximum.

I would. You can spend the next two weeks lying at the bottom of a gully while the tribunal decides what to do with you. Turn around.

No, I’m going back to the Danzhai roadhouse.

When she scowled, her whole face crumpled into a mass of wrinkles. She didn’t even look like a person anymore.

I’d do anything to keep you alive, kid, and I don’t even like you. She jabbed at him with an age-spotted finger, as if she could reach across the continent and poke him in the chest. Turn back around or I’ll do it.

He believed her. Nobody had hit his disable button since he’d left Luna, but Marta was an old ex-Lunite and that meant she was both tough and mean. Zhang Lei slowed his bike, rotated back to the guideway’s uphill track, and gave the acceleration dial a vicious twist.

You don’t like me? he asked.

Maybe a little. Marta flipped through the graphs of his biom. She had full access to that, too, and could check everything from his hormone levels to his sleep cycle. You’re getting dehydrated. Drink some water. And slow your bike. You’re going to make yourself puke.

I feel fine , he lied.

Marta rolled her eyes. Relax. You’ll love Paizuo. Nobody wants to kill you there.

She slapped the connection down, and the image of her elderly face was replaced by steep, verdant mountainside. Danzhai County was thick with an impossible greenness, in layers of bushes, trees, grasses, and herbs he had no name for.

Everything was unfamiliar here. He knew he was deep in southwestern China, but that was about all. He knew he was surrounded by mountains, with Danzhai’s transit hub behind him. It was a two-pad skip station, the smallest he’d ever seen, next to a narrow lake surrounded by hills, everything green but the sky—which actually was blue, like everyone always said about Earth—and the buildings. Those were large, brown, and open to the air as if atmospheric weather was nothing.

An atmosphere people could breathe. That was Earth’s one unique claim. Unlike Luna, or Venus, or Mars, or any of the built environments in the solar system, here in Danzhai and a few other places on Earth, humans lived every day exposed to weather. It was traditional, or something.

Weather was overrated, Zhang Lei decided. The afternoon was so humid, he’d sweated through his shirt. And the air wasn’t clean. Bits of fluff floated in it, and it smelled weird, too. Birds zipped through the air like hovertoys launched from tree limbs—were they even birds? He’d seen so few on Luna.

At least he was alone. A year ago, he would have hated not having anyone to goof around with or show off for. No coach, no team, no fans. Now he was grateful. Marta was watching out for him, always on the other end of a ping if anything went wrong. It was a relief not having to stay ultra-alert.

He pinged Marta.

How long do I have to stay in Paizuo?

Her face appeared again. She was shoveling noodles into her mouth with a pair of chopsticks. The sight of the food made his stomach heave.

At least two weeks. More if I can wrangle an extension. Ideally, I’d like you to stay until the tribunal decides your case.

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.”