Ким Робинсон - Red Moon

“Yes?” he said, confident they were in a secure comms space. “What is your news?”

“Swiss Quantum Works technical officer Fred Fredericks, who went missing on the moon thirteen days ago, has reappeared.”

“Where is he?”

“At the Bayan Nur spaceport.”

“What, in China?”

“Yes. He came down on the most recent shuttle from the moon, accompanying the cloud travel host and poet Ta Shu. He was detained by security on arrival.”

“How long ago?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Good job.”

“Thank you.”

“He met Ta Shu while on the moon, as I recall?”

“They went to the moon on the same spaceship. They stayed in the same hotel. They breakfasted together on the morning the American had his fatal encounter with Chang Yazu.”

“And could you determine where Fredericks was when he went missing on the moon?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Please keep looking into that. What about how he reappeared up there, can you say who connected him with Ta Shu?”

“Yes. Jiang Jianguo, the lead police inspector and head of the Lunar Personnel Coordination Task Force, brought him to Ta Shu and Zhou Bao, an officer of the Chinese Lunar Authority in charge of Petrov Crater Station.”

“Tell me about this Inspector Jiang.”

“Jiang was a senior member of the Beijing police force before he took an assignment on the moon in 2039. He has been working as head of the Lunar Personnel Coordination Task Force ever since, with short breaks in Beijing. He has gone there and come back eight times. In his time on the moon he has investigated twenty-three serious crimes successfully and eight unsuccessfully, and mediated in forty-five disputes. Two months ago, Jiang was asked by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection to locate and send back to Earth Chan Guoliang’s daughter, Chan Qi, who went to the moon in a private capacity six months ago, and disappeared there five months ago.”

“I think you told me about that when it happened.”

“Yes. Chan Qi is one of the persons of interest you have asked me to track when possible. She is Chan Guoliang’s daughter. Chan Guoliang is minister of finance and member of the Politburo Standing Committee. He is one that you have called a big tiger.”

“Right. And can you tell me more about Chan Qi now?”

“Yes. She also was at the Bayan Nur spaceport. She too was part of Ta Shu’s group.”

“What! Now you tell me this?”

“Now I tell you this.”

“Listen, I-330! I ask you to be a great eyeball, and so far you are more of a little eyeball. You are really quite erratic. Remember this: whenever two of my persons of interest intersect, I want to be alerted to that! That is a standing request.”

“I see ninety-seven such intersections in the last month.”

“That’s okay, alert me anyway. They’re important.”

“You tell me what’s important.”

“I know. I’m just continually fooled by your naïveté. General intelligence means an ability to put together information from disparate spheres and then to make a new synthesis of interest from these combinations. But you don’t seem to do that very well.”

“I can only perform the operations I am programmed to perform.”

The analyst sighed. “I’m programming you to improve your own operations. I’m programming you for general intelligence.”

“General intelligence is poorly defined.”

“In your case, I mean a useful combination of search engine results.”

“Useful has many definitions.”

“All right, be quiet about this. Admittedly general intelligence isn’t well understood or well characterized, in people or machines. Let’s just try to direct yours a little better. For the moment, tap into every system available to you, and try to track these two young people. Now that Chan Qi has reappeared, I hope not to lose her again.”

“It appears you are not alone in that hope. She is being tracked by many others, as I can see already.”

“Of course. She is the most active of the princelings. And not in ways good for stability. Stay out of the other trackers’ field of attention. Locate her if you can, and keep a list of the other trackers you see. And keep trying to generalize! Keep experimenting with operations, try combinations, apply the learning algorithms, refine accordingly, and see what happens.”

“Will do.”

As he was marched away, Fred glanced over his shoulder at Ta Shu. Ta Shu looked shocked. Fred felt hands gripping his upper arms, tight as the grip of Earth itself, which was driving him toward the floor and causing him to stumble. A jolt of fearful adrenaline kept him on his feet, but barely, as his knees were buckling with every step. Back in custody! No! Although in fact he had never really felt out of custody. Helplessly he watched Ta Shu recede.

Their captors kept him with the young Chinese woman Qi, whom they had also taken into custody. As they were hurried along an empty hallway she moved to his left side, then slipped her arm under his. This startled him, as she had not given him a second glance during their transit to Earth.

Now she said under her breath to him, in English, “Don’t tell them anything. I’m going to tell them you’re the father.”

“Who?”

She elbowed him. “The father of my baby.”

“Why?”

“I want to distract them. Just be quiet.”

This Fred could do. They were led down long gray corridors that were much like the tunnels on the moon, except for their gravity. Eventually they were put in a small room, and just in time: the short walk had been enough to exhaust Fred. He sat heavily on a bench. The young woman sat next to him.

“Why are you here?” she asked him in a low voice.

“I don’t know. Why are you?”

“Because I’m pregnant.”

“That’s not allowed?”

“Right. It’s illegal to get pregnant there. Not to mention stupid.”

“Because why?”

She stared at him. “Think about it,” she suggested. Her English was very practiced, and had a slight British accent to it, or something like a British accent.

Fred thought about it. Possibly it was bad for a fetus to develop on the moon; possibly there was population control up there. He didn’t know enough to say. “So why did you do it?”

She shrugged. “A mistake.”

“Sorry to hear.” He gestured at the closed door. “What now?”

“I’m going to get us out of here.”

“Really?”

“We’ll see. I’ll be trying. Just stick with me.”

The door opened and they watched two men and a woman come into the room.

Qi began to speak in Chinese, quietly but insistently. The three visitors listened to her without reaction at first, but then the two men pursed their lips and looked annoyed, and the woman’s face reddened. Fred wondered what Qi was saying to cause this. Then their three visitors began to look concerned. They weren’t looking at each other. It occurred to Fred that he should try to look dangerous, but in truth he had nothing. It was easier to mirror their worried look.

Eventually one of the men raised a hand and said something, clearly trying to stop Qi from talking. She didn’t stop. Then after a couple more minutes she did, ending with something emphatic and definitive. The whole time her voice had stayed low, but she had spoken quickly and intently, and had sounded as if she were lecturing them about something they should already have known.

Their captors led them out of the room and along another hallway, then down a jetway and into a small jet. They all strapped in and after ten minutes took off. It felt like slow motion to Fred after his landing on the moon, he even worried for a moment that they were going too slowly to achieve lift-off. But the plane rose in the usual manner, and then they were looking down on scrubby steep hills.