Dean Koontz - Dragonfly

He wanted out of here. Badly. But to leave on his own, to go where the government had not sent him, would be disastrous. He would not be arrested, of course. He would not be beaten or publicly shamed. Rather, he would be ostracized by every Party coordinator in every town and district throughout China. He would be able to get no work at all and little if any subsidization. Then he would know real poverty, and he would beg to be given a place on a commune, any commune at all — even this hole north of Ssunan.

He shuddered.

He had not been born to this.

Chai Po-han was the eldest son of Chai Chen-tse, who was one of the most powerful men in the country. The elder Chai was director of the Central Office of Publications, which had total control over every form of print and broadcast media within the People's Republic of China. Chai Chen-tse was respected — and feared.

In his father's shadow Chai Po-han had moved through the highest strata of Chinese society. He had studied media theory and language in Peking and had been greatly honored when he was chosen as the student representative to the group of publishers that was sent to tour the United States during the first half of February, and then France during the latter half of the same month.

He could never have foreseen that the trip to the United States would be his downfall.

The trouble had begun just three days before his group had been scheduled to leave Washington for Paris. During dinner that evening Chai had become drowsy and slightly sick to his stomach. Soon after the dessert and coffee had been served, he asked to be excused from the table, and he returned to his hotel room. The tour had been full of conferences, lectures, expeditions to publishing houses and printing plants and television stations, receptions… His exhaustion was not remarkable — although he thought it was somewhat odd how suddenly and forcefully it had caught up with him. No sooner had he undressed and passed water and climbed into bed than he was fast asleep.

He had learned the next part of the story secondhand:

An hour later his roommate, Chou P'eng-fei, had been stricken by the same exhaustion and had returned to their room. According to Chou (liar of liars), Chai had not been in the room at that time. Surprised but not alarmed, Chou had gone to sleep. When he woke the following morning, Chou saw that Chai had returned and was asleep in the other bed. And then Chou realized that his roommate stank of whiskey. He thought of ignoring it, thought of helping to conceal Chai's reactionary behavior. But Chou (liar of liars) said that he quickly realized his duty was to Maoism and Chinese honor rather than to his friend. Shocked, Chou had gone immediately to see Liu Hsiang-kuo, who was the security chief for the tour group. Chou and Liu returned to the hotel room and woke Chai with some difficulty.

And the rest of it he remembered all too clearly:

He had been in an incredible state. He had slept in his clothes, which were soaked with perspiration. He reeked of whiskey. And worst of all, preposterous as it seemed, impossible as it seemed, he was sleeping with a pair of lacy women's panties, very Western panties, clutched in his hands.

He insisted that he had slept the night through, that he had not been out of the room, that he knew nothing of the whiskey or the panties.

Liu Hsiang-kuo said that it would be easier to believe the peace offerings of the worst war-mongering, running-dog imperialist who had ever lived than it would be for him to believe Chai's story of mysterious victimization and ultimate innocence. Liu Hsiang-kuo said that he would rather sleep with vipers and eat with tigers and live with scorpions than turn his back to Chai Po-han.

Chai Po-han said that apparently Liu Hsiang-kuo thought he was lying about all of this.

Liu Hsiang-kuo said this was exactly, wonderfully true.

For the remainder of their stay in the United States and for the entire two weeks they spent in France, Chai Po-han was watched closely. He was never allowed to go anywhere by himself for fear that female pawns of the capitalists would convert him into a mad, raging counterrevolutionary by cleverly manipulating his genitals. One could not guess what techniques these Western women knew — although one had surely heard the shocking stories. So Chai was informally but rigorously guarded. And on their return trip to Peking, when their aircraft stopped to refuel in Chungking, Chai Po-han was taken from his group and given orders to report to the Ssunan Commune forthwith so that, by associating with working peasants, he could be “reeducated in Maoist thought and purged of his counterrevolutionary and nonrevolutionary interests and weaknesses.”

He had been framed, and now that he'd had enough time to think about it, he knew why. His father was a great and much-respected man — but he had enemies just the same. The elder Chai was far too powerful for anyone to risk an overt attack on him. He knew too much about other high government officials to allow himself to be purged from the Party. He would not hesitate to use his knowledge to destroy anyone who attempted to usurp his authority. However, these faceless cowards might attempt to ruin Chai Chen-tse by discrediting his eldest and favorite son. That was the only explanation for these astounding events in Washington.

Soon after he had reported to the Ssunan Commune, Chai had sent word to his father that Chou P'eng-fei — and perhaps Liu Hsiang-kuo as well — had drugged him at dinner, soaked him with whiskey while he was unconscious, and placed a pair of Western women's decadently lacy underwear in his hands while he slept all unawares. Two weeks later a letter had arrived from the elder Chai, in which he assured his son that he had faith in him and knew he had been tricked; Chai Chen-tse also promised that his son would be ordered home from Ssunan before many weeks had passed. Relieved, Chai Po-han had waited for these new orders to come — had waited and waited and waited. Two days ago he had received another letter from his father, who assured him that he would soon be brought East from the wasteland of Kweichow. But he was no longer certain that his father could arrange it. And after six and a half months at Ssunan, he knew he would never again be happy living anywhere in the People's Republic, for his trust in Maoism and the dictatorship of the proletariat had been broken by too many fourteen-hour days of brutal, semi-enforced labor.

Now, beyond the discolored window glass, dawn had come while he stared at the River Wu and thought over his predicament. And now, outside of the commune director's quarters, the gong sounded which signaled the beginning of a new workday.

Behind Chai, the other men of this dormitory — a fraction of the comrades, both women and men, who lived at Ssunan — got to their feet and stretched. They rolled up their thin mattresses and bound them with cord and hung them from specially rigged poles so that — if a storm should come and rain should wash across the dormitory floor — their beds would not be prey to a capricious Nature. One by one, then in twos and threes, they dressed and went outside, heading toward the men's latrines. When he could not delay any longer, Chai Po-han had followed them.

From the latrines they filed to an open-air kitchen, where they were given two bowls each: one filled with rice and large chunks of stewed chicken, the other containing orange slices and pieces of hard yellow bread. Here and there young courting couples sat together to eat, although they maintained a respectable yard of open space between them. For the most part the peasants ate together, the students ate together, and a third group of nonstudent transferees from the cities ate in circles of their friends.