Ким Робинсон - Red Moon

“We were just visiting them.”

“I know.”

Another look shared by Ta Shu and Zhou. Jiang’s Faraday cage growled in their stomachs, adding a little wire of dread to their deliberations.

“So Fred would become my assistant?” Ta Shu said.

“Right. He’ll be in the records as having come with you. And so will a young woman we have in our charge, whom we also want to send home as fast as possible.”

“Wait, who’s that?”

“It’s just someone we want off the moon. Better you don’t know who she is. These two will join you on tonight’s launch home as your crew, and back you go. There’s a bit of a need to hurry, because these launch rails are fixed on the land, and each one is only pointed toward Earth for a few days a month. The one I want to use is about to lose its launch window, and the next one won’t align for a week or so, so we need to work fast. You take them back, then in Beijing we’ll hand them both upstairs and be done with it. And you can come back up here as soon as you want. Very next launch, if you want.”

“If they’ll let me,” Ta Shu said. “Could be elements down there will be unhappy with me taking sides like this.”

“I think you fly above that level, as I said.”

“Above the Politburo?”

Jiang cracked a little smile. “All but the standing committee, yes.”

“Actually I do know someone on the standing committee,” Ta Shu said. “Secretary Peng Ling was a student of mine, back in the day.”

Jiang and Zhou eyed each other: friends with a big tiger! “So there you go,” Jiang said. “It’s like I said. You’ll fly above this.”

Ta Shu thought it over. “Okay, I’ll do it. I like this American.”

“Thanks. We de-chipped him and gave him a wristpad with an ID that has him traveling as your assistant. In Beijing we’ll have people there to take care of him. It’s only up here that I feel we’re a little undermanned.” Jiang grimaced. “I used to think of myself as the top cop in this place, but those times are gone. Someone is messing with my district.”

“Okay,” Ta Shu said. “I’ll help.” He said to Zhou Bao, “I hope I’ll be back soon.”

“Me too,” Zhou said. He looked at Jiang. “Why is the young woman being included in this, again?”

Jiang shrugged. “Thing are getting so uncertain, we want her out of here. She’s a princeling. And she’s pregnant.”

“How could that be!” Zhou exclaimed.

“What?” Ta Shu asked, puzzled. “No sex on the moon?”

“No getting pregnant,” Zhou explained. “It’s against the rules.”

“Not to mention common sense,” Jiang added.

“Because?”

“Because no one’s ever done it. So no one knows how it would go. It might be okay, but just as a precaution, contraception is mandatory for women here. This woman could get arrested, but it would be better if we get her down to Earth as soon as possible.”

“What will happen to her then?” Ta Shu asked.

“She’ll be banned from ever coming to the moon again.”

“What about the man involved? Assuming it’s not a case of artificial insemination.”

“Same penalty. They’ll do a DNA test on the fetus and then track down the perpetrator.”

“So you’re sending her with us?”

“Yes, if it’s all right with you. She’ll be the rest of Ta Shu’s film crew. They’ll look more like a real crew, and we’ll solve two problems at once.” He gestured. “Here they come.”

A small group approached, Fred among them. When Fred saw Ta Shu he jumped a little, startled; then he extended a hand as if reaching for help. He moved unsteadily, and looked scared.

The woman with them was young and slight, clearly pregnant, her face red-eyed but otherwise a fierce mask. Broad cheeks, fine features. A hawklike look, wild and unfriendly. She gave Ta Shu a single glance, looked away. She withdrew into herself; she was not there for anyone to see.

“Time to go,” Jiang said. “We’ll see you through security.”

“What about my stuff?” Ta Shu asked.

“We gathered and packed it for you.”

Zhou Bao snorted. “Somehow I think this consultation was a little pro forma.”

“It’s all right,” Ta Shu said. He wasn’t sure it was, but he wanted to reassure Zhou, and even Jiang. The man seemed sincere to him.

Jiang led them all to the subway that ran out to the spaceport. They got in an empty car and it slid out of the complex and across the gray surface.

Ta Shu looked out the tram window curiously, wondering if he would ever return to this strange world, so light underfoot, so monochrome to the eye. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. Cutting the trip short had actually occurred to him once or twice during the last few nights, the idea coming to him out of some feeling of oppression hard to define. This was a colorless, lifeless place. An anti-Earth. Feng shui had no purchase here, all its systems of analysis were baffled. That very aspect made it interesting in some ways, and one strand of his ambivalence was definitely a desire to stay. Now that had to mean a desire to come back.

The tram entered the spaceport and stopped at a platform empty but for a trio of men. These men were known to Inspector Jiang, who spoke briefly with them. Then they all went together to the end of the subway room and passed through a double lock to a larger chamber with but one platform. This was the loading end of a launch rail like the one Ta Shu’s spaceship had landed on. A spaceship here filled the chamber almost to its roof, lying on its side ready for takeoff.

Before they could enter the craft there was a scanning arch they had to pass through, manned by men in uniforms. Ta Shu looked for red on the uniforms and saw nothing; all the splashes of color were white and gold. Of course Red Spear was a secret organization, so this meant nothing: they would not be wearing a badge. If Jiang was right, there very well might be Red Spear agents among these guards. And the young woman with them, so distinctive, clearly pregnant—surely she was a magnet for extra inspections? Neither face recognition technology nor the human eye would ever mistake her for anyone else.

No doubt Fred and the woman herself were thinking much the same thing, and they stood there nervously behind Zhou Bao as Jiang spoke to the men at the scanner. Then they walked through it one at a time, enduring the stares of the men manning the gateway. Retinal scanners were held to their eyes, and Ta Shu wondered if the records being using to judge Fred and the woman had been tampered with, in effect changing the past to affect the present: a nice trick. Either that or the guards were in on the operation.

Then with a wave to Zhou the little group was into the spaceship, moving carefully in a passenger area and strapping themselves into plush seats. None of them spoke; it wasn’t obvious that they were free from surveillance, and now Jiang and Zhou were no longer with them to explain their situation. Their friends’ parting expressions had suggested silence would be best. Best now just to eye each other, and wait to speak until they were more sure of what was going on. And there wasn’t much to say anyway. They all reached this same conclusion, shrugged at each other, and waited to endure the acceleration into space, and then the flight home.

“We’ll face forward on takeoff,” Ta Shu said casually in English, filling the silence with something innocuous. “The taikonauts call it eyeballs in. It’s much better for the body than eyeballs out.”

“It’s only three g’s,” the young woman said dismissively. “People can stand a lot more than that.” Her English was polished.

“Yes,” Ta Shu said. He liked her voice, low and unruffled. She wasn’t to be judged or shamed by this expulsion from the moon, her tone of voice said.