Ким Робинсон - Red Moon

“Yin-yang,” Ta Shu noted, gesturing at the view with a curve of his hand.

“Yes,” Zhou said. “And soon Earth will rise and break the pattern, as it always does.” Zhou consulted his wrist. “Twelve minutes or so, in fact.”

“I look forward to that. So,” Ta Shu said, “what’s going on? Can we speak freely in this car?”

“Yes. It’s my own private office, you might say, and I’ve had it thoroughly privatized. As to what’s going on, I was hoping you would tell me!”

Ta Shu nodded. “From my side, these two were sicced on me by Peng, or so they said. I can’t be sure what they’re up to, but they have me in hand, and they mentioned her name, and had a recorded message for me from her. She’s my patron and she wants my help, so I have to go with what she gives me. I thought she was on my side, or I was on her side, but now I don’t even know what I mean by that. For sure she’s in a dogfight at the Party congress, I know that.”

“Of course. Are they really from national security?”

“I don’t know. Dhu is government, Bo is a Party cadre, or so they say. A team, as in the old days.”

“So it seems.”

“What about you? Have you found our young wanderers?”

“Yes. Which is to say, they found me. I’m trying to hide them, to keep them out of worse trouble, but to do that I’m holding them. Chan Qi doesn’t like that.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’d be very happy to give them over to you, but what will you do with them?”

“We can’t do it with Bo and Dhu around. Tell me how you found them.”

“They came into the station needing fuel and food. They were traveling with a couple of helium three prospectors, so-called, and had driven cross-country from Fang Fei’s place on the far side.”

“Could you send them out again with these prospectors?”

“Yes, they want to do that, but it’s hard to stay hidden in those cars.”

“Doesn’t Chan Qi understand that?”

“The prospectors think they are better at hiding than they really are, apparently. And I guess she believes them.”

“I’m surprised she would be that naïve.”

“The moon makes people moony. We are all lunatics up here, hoping that the world has gone away.”

“I was hoping that myself,” Ta Shu admitted.

“Because here you are.”

“But even on Earth I hope that.”

“Actually, I think it’s easier on Earth than here. Hiding, I mean. Maybe even fooling yourself. Earth is crowded and fragmented. The noise-to-signal ratio is stupendous, so you can get in the noise and hide.”

“So should we try to get these two back to Earth again?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know which would be better. A lot of people down there will be after her.”

“But here too.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. Once you’ve been up here awhile, you don’t want to collaborate with Earth as much. There’s a lot of noncompliance up here. Once you click into it, you find it’s a pretty big network. If these two had only stayed in Fang Fei’s compound, for instance, they might have been fine. Fang doesn’t tolerate interference with his places.”

“Could we send them back there?” Ta Shu wondered.

“Maybe. But Peng knows they were there, right?”

“She sent them there in the first place.”

“So that would be walking back into her clutches.”

“Her clutches might be better than some other people’s clutches. I am still assuming she is the good guy here.”

“Maybe,” Zhou said. “But why does she want Qi?”

“I don’t know. She said that Qi was messing up her plans for reform by initiating the demonstrations back home, which will then cause a crackdown from the rightists, which will make the reforms more difficult.”

“Sounds plausible. But aren’t Peng and Qi’s father both candidates to become the next president, at this very congress?”

“Yes, so I understand. If you think a woman really has a chance.”

Zhou shrugged. “I’ve heard it said that Peng could do it. And that’s partly because she’s been so tough and effective. So, think about it: if you had the daughter of your rival in custody, it might help you, if a moment came where someone had to concede.”

Ta Shu sighed. “It doesn’t seem like her.”

“Nevertheless. People who might become president probably don’t ever seem much like their previous selves.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Ta Shu said, pondering it unhappily.

“We all present a persona to other people. Some have a wide range of personas. A real cast of characters.”

Ta Shu sighed. His cast had always been extremely small: just him. There was his cloud persona, of course, and there was the poet; but these had tended to be just him. Possibly his imagination was deficient in that regard. Although he did tend to try to encourage other people by pretending he was always happy. That was called cheerfulness. Maybe it was part of him, maybe it was a persona. “So what do you suggest?”

Zhou sat there thinking about it. “Ah,” he said, and gestured forward; the horizon was now pricked by a brilliant blue light, like a shard of glowing lapis lazuli. This blue wafer grew to left and right, then stabilized: Earth. The merest fingernail clipping on the white horizon, a slim crescent of blue so intense it looked radioactive, wedged there between the black and the white.

“I don’t know what to suggest,” Zhou confessed. “To me it looks like you have some secret police tailing you, waiting to arrest the very person you are trying to meet and keep from getting arrested. So maybe you shouldn’t meet her.”

“That’s fine by me, but what should I do instead to try and help her?”

Zhou thought about it as they watched the Earth creep upward. Slow as it was compared to moonrise on Earth, a matter of hours rather than minutes, the movement was still happening, as a creeping creep of blue.

So far from home. Vivid blue, the color of water, the color of breath. The cosmic yin-yang symbol enveloping that blue line was by contrast so obviously dead. They were looking from death toward life, like ghosts trying to figure out what they should have done when they were in the world.

Zhou finally said, “I just don’t know. You could slip away from these people and join your young friends in hiding, but then your ability to act would be constrained.”

“Being out here hasn’t seemed to have stopped Qi from acting.”

“You don’t know that. Could be she only got off that single message. Could be she would do a lot more if she were in Beijing. But in any case, on the other hand you could stay away from her, maybe lead your minders around by the nose, wait for an opportunity to do something to help her from the side.”

“I’m guessing I should do that.”

“Maybe so. The thing is, these two agents are not going to be able to hunt for her by themselves. There’s only a limited number of rooms on the moon, but people hiding her could move her and her friend around, staying in front of the hunt. And there are quite a few hidden spaces too. Much more hidden than Fang Fei’s China Dream.”

“What if Bo and Dhu get help from the authorities at the south pole?”

“If that happened, they might find her. If they had the right people helping. But Jiang Jianguo won’t help them, that I am sure of. The main thing is, can you find out who these guys are really working for?”

“I don’t know. What about you? Could you find out?”

“I don’t know. My first move would be to ask Jianguo for help.”

Slowly, slowly, the blue paring of Earth crept up over the white wall of the horizon. Time itself seemed slowed, congealed to a syrup they were caught in. Flies in amber; ghosts outside the world. Ta Shu pondered his options.