Ким Робинсон - Red Moon

Bo and Dhu and all their men were looking completely unimpressed by Ta Shu’s argument. But a little time had passed.

“One moment,” John Semple said, glancing at his wrist. “Hold on, please.”

Then they were all shoved violently to the floor as the American base blasted off into space.

Normally at the moment of takeoff everyone would be lying down strapped into cushioned launch chairs, because old-fashioned chemical launches from the surface of the moon were very abrupt affairs. One-sixth of a g meant launch rockets exploding downward from the bottom of a spacecraft made it leap quite suddenly into space, as was now made evident by the fact they were all knocked to the floor by the hard lurch and subsequent powerful acceleration. Ta Shu thumped to his knees, then sat down and didn’t even try to rise. All the other people in the room fell over one way or another, and one of the men standing against the wall fired his Taser pistol, on purpose or by accident, hitting one of his fellows, who grunted and spasmed across the floor kicking people and furniture. For a moment all was chaos and noise; loudest of all was Bo, who had crashed to his knees shouting “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

John Semple had been prepared for the launch, Ta Shu presumed, and therefore had had time to grab a table. Holding himself upright, he stared down at Bo and said, “Put down your weapons. We’re headed for the American base at the north pole, guided there by an automatic pilot that you don’t know how to alter. Anything you do now to try to redirect or impede this craft could get us all killed. So put down your weapons and talk like civilized people.”

“Civilized people!” Bo cried. “You are protecting a criminal who is attacking the Chinese state! There will be trouble from this, big trouble!”

“That remains to be seen,” John Semple said. “For now, please tell your men here to stand down. That one appears to be hurt, and this guy’s been tasered by his own teammates. Let’s all sit down. It’s safer that way. Do any of your people have medical experience? No? We have a couple first responders on board. They can help your men if you want.”

Bo and Dhu and their men retreated to a corner and muttered among themselves in Chinese. Ta Shu couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he noticed Qi cocking an ear in their direction as she sat on a chair holding her belly up against the strain. He wondered if she could hear them, but in a way it didn’t matter; when they landed at the north pole they would be surrounded by Americans, also by an international community that included only one small Chinese consular office. Things were going to be resolved outside this flying room, and the people here were going to have to live with it one way or another. Bo and Dhu were smart enough to recognize that, presumably.

“Lean to the side,” Ta Shu suggested to them, hoping they recognized Mao’s old injunction.

He shifted across the floor to sit by Fred and Qi. The flight to the north pole would take an hour or so, and for the time being there was nothing to do but wait.

“What happened to you two after I left?” he asked the two of them in English. “Why did you leave Fang Fei’s place on the far side?”

Qi shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about it. Fred said, “She didn’t like it. She wanted to talk to some friends back on Earth, she said. And she thought that place was just a prison dressed up as a classical Chinese theme park.”

“A refuge,” Ta Shu suggested again.

“I know, that’s what you said, but she didn’t like it. Then these helium three prospectors said they could get us out and take us to the near side, where she could get a message to Earth. So that’s what we did.”

“And then?”

Fred regarded Qi, who was sitting with her eyes now shut, faking sleep. “We got to the edge between near side and far side.”

“The libration zone.”

“Yes. Then she used a laser comms device to get a message back to Earth. After that the prospectors needed to refuel their rover, so we went to the nearest station to do that, and as soon as we got there they arrested us. Then after a while you showed up, and you know the rest.”

“This keeps happening,” Ta Shu observed.

“I noticed,” Fred replied, looking at Ta Shu a little suspiciously. “I don’t like the look of these people, they seem familiar somehow, but I can’t place them. Who are they? Why do they want her so bad?”

“I was told they were working for an old student of mine who is very high in the government.”

“But if this student of yours is helping you, they should be helping us, right?”

“I don’t know if it’s that simple.”

Fred sighed. “Nothing is ever simple when it comes to you guys.”

“Very true. So, there’s nothing else that happened to you two?”

Fred frowned. “Qi used that mobile quantum key device you gave her when we came here this time, and she had a conversation with someone over it.”

“I see,” Ta Shu said, though he didn’t. “I wonder who that was. Do you still have the device?”

“No. These guys took it from us when they arrested us.”

“Maybe we can get it back.”

John Semple came over to sit by them.

“Sorry about this,” he said. “I didn’t have any other way to deal with the situation.”

“That’s all right,” Ta Shu said. “We’ll get where we are going eventually.”

“And where is that?”

“I don’t know.” Ta Shu thought it over. “China, eventually. At least for me. Always China.”

“It seems like things are pretty crazy there right now.”

“I know. I was in Beijing when the first demonstration started.”

“They’ve gotten bigger since then.”

“That’s hard to believe. I’m surprised they haven’t shut down access to the whole province.”

“How would they do that?”

“Trains, airports, roads. They all can be closed.”

“They have been. The crowds are still coming. The Seventh Ring, they’re calling it. Something like twenty or thirty million people, no one really knows. The best estimates are being made by satellite. People keep coming to the nearest stations that are still open, then they get off and walk. It’s becoming a humanitarian crisis, in terms of food and water and toilets.”

“They’ll cope,” Ta Shu said. “They always do.”

“But what if they don’t?”

Ta Shu thought about the idea of something being called the Seventh Ring. Seven was so often the completion of a pattern. “Something will happen. What are they demanding, again?”

“No one is quite sure. Reform of the hukou system. Transparency. Rule of law. Stuff like that.”

“The Party won’t let those happen. Those are Western ideas.”

“Are you sure?” John said. “Because there’s a lot of Chinese who seem to want them.”

“They want something.”

“Well, but what? What do you think it is?”

“Representation.”

“What do you mean?”

“They want the Party to be theirs. They want the Party to represent them, to be working for them. That’s the way it used to be. That’s the way it started.”

John Semple laughed. “We all want that! We’ve lost that in America too. All this stuff in China, it’s happening in America too. We’re having simultaneous crises.”

“Maybe it’s the same crisis. Maybe we’ve all lost it, everywhere. Lost it to the invisible hand. The tong that hides everywhere in plain sight.”

“Maybe so.”

John and Ta Shu stared at each other.

“Can you see if these people brought along a comms device with them?” Ta Shu asked. “It’s one of those quantum key things, very heavy for its size.”