Ким Робинсон - Red Moon

“Do they work for Peng Ling?” Ta Shu asked anxiously.

Inspector Jiang’s voice sounded surprised. “No! At least not that I know of. My informant in China says they are with the Central National Security Commission, which is a secret unit of the Ministry of State Security. That connects them more obviously to Minister Huyou.”

Ta Shu heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Ginger regarded him for a while. “You still can’t be sure, you know.”

“I know.” He shrugged unhappily. “I’m going to try to believe it.”

“Who wanted Chang dead?” Valerie said to Ginger’s wristpad. “Why was he killed?”

Inspector Jiang replied, “We think it was because of the private communications device that Mr. Fredericks was delivering to him. Chang made the order himself with Swiss Quantum Works. My informant in the Great Firewall told us this, and told us also that the other device was to be delivered to Minister Peng Ling.”

Valerie looked at Ta Shu and saw that he did not seem to catch the implication of this. “So,” she said, “presumably Chang was working with Peng. So killing him isn’t something Peng would have wanted to do.”

“Ah,” Ta Shu said.

“That seems right,” Jiang added. “Also, I’ve been tracing Chang’s employment history back, and ten years ago he worked for Huyou when Huyou was governor of Shaanxi Province. There is an ongoing corruption investigation of that period that has come very close to Huyou himself, and if Chang knew anything about that, he might have been able to convey to Peng and the discipline inspection commission some damaging evidence against Huyou, right when they are in a fight for the succession. So there’s another reason Huyou might have wanted Chang silenced.”

Ginger nodded. “Let’s take that as determinative. It’s circumstantial but that’s all we’re going to get, and enough for now. Thanks for this news, Jianguo! I may have to slip past my boss Mr. Houston to get Bo and Dhu shipped to you, because I don’t trust Houston to do the right thing after what just happened here. But I can manage that. Bo and Dhu are incapacitated right now, because Ta Shu here shot them with a Taser.”

“Congratulations!” Inspector Jiang said.

“So we’ll try to put them in a rocket and pop them down to you while Mr. Houston is still out of the loop.”

“Thank you for that! I will be very happy to lock those two up.”

Ginger said goodbye, tapped her pad. “We need John Semple for this one,” she said to Valerie. “I’ve pinged him.” Then she gave instructions to someone to collect Bo and Dhu and all their men and put them on a rocket south.

John Semple called Ginger back. “What’s up?”

“Your colleague Ms. Tong here has taken it on herself to free Chan Qi and Fred Fredericks, and I’ve taken it on myself to have those two Chinese agents and their men put on a flight back to the south pole. Inspector Jiang wants to arrest them for murder.”

“Good to hear!” John said. “What about Houston?”

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. He could have all of us arrested, if he decided we’ve been acting on our own initiative in collusion with Chinese elements. Which we have.”

“So do you want to go to the south pole too?”

Ginger laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Don’t you think we could work around him here?”

“I’m not sure. You tell me.”

Ginger thought about it for a while. “What about heading out to the free crater for a while?” she said. “The comms there are as good as anywhere.”

“Good idea. Let me come over there right now, we can go together.”

“Please.”

“I’ll be right there. Hey, Valerie!”

“Yes?” Valerie said.

“Good job!”

“Thanks.”

Ginger regarded her two visitors. “Let’s see if this works. It would be nice if we could help solve the mess down on Earth too.”

Valerie said, “Did we really solve anything up here? Sounds like we’re on the run.”

“John will help us with that part. If both John and I tell the security people here to ignore Houston, they’ll probably do it. He’s a fingie.”

“A fingie?”

“A fucking new guy. A political appointment, and a fool, just between us. And no one here will try to snatch us out of the free crater. So we can work out of there until things settle down. The people out there will love it. They’ve got a beast of a computer they’ve been itching to put to work on something like this.”

Ta Shu said, “If I could succeed in getting in touch with Peng Ling, and if we’re sure she’s the one to back, then maybe we can put her in contact with Chan Qi somehow. Then they might come to an understanding, and balance the forces down there.”

“All right,” Ginger said. “Let’s get over to the free crater. From what John tells me,” she said to Valerie, “you’ll be happy to go back there.”

“Yes,” Valerie said.

The flight to the free crater came together quickly; despite their air of assurance, both Ginger and John Semple were working fast. Once off the launchpad, they flew south, of course—no one on this station ever seemed to tire of that joke. Ginger and John took turns on the hopper’s radio, communicating with colleagues at both lunar poles and also back on Earth. John got Valerie set up on a line to the White House, and she sent a message alerting them to the possibility of a new back channel to the highest levels in Beijing. When their hopper dropped onto the little crater starring the rim of the bigger crater, Ta Shu stared down curiously at the dome covering it. “What’s this?” he said.

“This is our fulcrum,” John Semple said with a smile. They all looked at him, and he said, “Give me a lever and I’ll move the world, right? So you need a fulcrum.”

He laughed happily. The hopper drifted onto the landing pad by the dome, with a sound that from inside the craft sounded like a gas stove. When they were down they bounced through a jetway into the receiving area on the rim and went to the overlook. Ta Shu gazed down in wonder at the space filled with its lines and hanging floors, plinths and balloons. “It reminds me of that restaurant in Beijing where I met Peng Ling.”

Valerie didn’t know what to make of that. Spotting Anna Kanina, she waved her over. “This is Anna,” she said to Ta Shu. “She’s a Russian astronomer and diplomat. She can tell you more about this place.”

“Do we jump to get down there?” Ta Shu asked Anna, pointing at some people far below who were flying from one platform to another.

“Yes,” Anna told him, “but not now. Come over to this table, we have the necessary links ready. White House for Ms. Tong, and some people in Beijing who say they work with Peng Ling. We’d like your help confirming that, if you can. Then also we have Fang Fei on a direct line.”

“Direct?” Ta Shu asked.

Anna said, “His new toy. It’s a neutrino telegraph. It has a very low bit rate because it’s so hard to detect neutrinos, but his people have a way to send a real flood of them, and the ice flooring this crater is just enough to catch a signal strength that is about the equal of the first telegraphs. So he keeps his messages brief.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble for a telegraph,” John Semple observed.

Anna nodded. “Just a toy, at least for now. The real power here is the quantum computer, down there in that building you see in the ice. That thing is a monster.”

“Strong AI?” Ta Shu asked.

“I don’t know what you mean by that, but definitely a lot of AI. Not strong in the philosophical sense, but, you know—fast. Yottaflops fast.”

“Yottaflops,” Ta Shu repeated. “I like that word. That means very fast?”