Crucible

by Nancy Kress

  But he was Chinese.

  Why had the Furs helped Wong escape? What other motive could they have except exchange for arms? But how could that deal ever even have come about, given that when the dissidents had set fire to Mira during the evacuation drill, it had been Nan Frayne and her Furs that had stopped them?

  None of it made any sense.

  She needed to talk to Nan Frayne, which was probably impossible. Also to Michael Lin and Julian, and not by comlink. Lin first.

  But the thought of seeing Julian, even with this to unload on him, made her blood run faster. Shameful, to think of such pleasure in the midst of such trouble. But she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to help it.

  But Michael Lin first.

  On his narrow bed in Alex’s apartment, Jake dreamed.

  He lay awake in his childhood bedroom, his brother, Donnie snoring softly beside him. The white curtains his mother had hung so carefully over the grimy windows blew in the night breeze, echoing Donnie’s breathing: in, out, in, out. The room, never complet dark even though it faced the brick wall of a halfbombed building, bulged with gray lumps: his clothing thrown on the floor, Donnie’s, a chair with one busted back slat. Nothing in the room shone as white as the curtains, backlit by the violent city. Jake watched them intently: in, out, in, out. It was Donnie’s breathing, it was his own, it was his mother laboring in the next room with the baby that would kill her. In, out, the curtains blew. In, out, in, out.

  Someone else moved around the room.

  “Cal?” Jake quavered. Cal Johnson was his latest nurse, a hulking, sweet-tempered kid whom, Jake suddenly remembered, he told to go out for the night. Cal had started a romance with a sexy Chinese girl he’d met in the park.

  “It’s not Cal,” said a female voice. “But don’t worry, Mr. Holman, you are in no danger. No one will hurt you. However, you are coming quietly with us. Please don’t make this difficult.”

  He couldn’t see anything in Greentrees’ damn darkness. This wasn’t a violent, always lighted city, there were no gray lumpy chairs, white curtains backlit and blowing in, out, in …

  Careful hands pressed tape over Jake’s mouth and eyes. More movement in the darkness and he felt himself lifted in strong arms. Cal, he thought with a wash of hope, but knew it wasn’t Cal. Jake tried to struggle but his own feeble attempts embarrassed him enough to stop. God, he hated being old!

  He was carried outside; he could tell from the sudden scented breeze. Then placed into a rover. But rovers were open vehicles, surely someone would see… Hands gently forced him to lie flat on the floor. He began to count, trying to gauge how long the ride took, how fast the rover was going.

  All of which proved unnecessary because when he was again carried inside and the tapes removed, he knew immediately where he was. Jake had been lowered onto an old armchair padded with blankets. Cots stood against narrow stone walls, beside neat supplies of food and medical equipment in plastic crates sealed tight against predators. His end point cave for a Mira City evacuation.

  “I’m sorry if that trip was uncomfortable,” the feminine voice said and he focused on her, a slight figure eerily lit by a single powertorch.

  “I know you. You’re Star Chu. Zongming Chu’s granddaughter.”

  “Yes. I run Chu Corporation.”

  One of the few expanding businesses owned by Chinese, Alex had told Jake. All young people, smart and ambitious, making their way by offering third-generation luxuries like alcohol, fireworks, perfume, candles, soaps. Alex had spoken of Star Chu with admiration.

  Jake peered at her more closely. In her twenties, slender, very pretty, with short black hair and red mouth. Dressed in a no-nonsense Threadmore, but there was a bracelet of shining green stones on her wrist and a tiny Cheyenne tattoo on her cheek.

  “Why am I here, Star Chu?”

  She wiped a thread of drool from his mouth.

  “Don’t do that.” She wasn’t Alex.

  “All right. I’m sorry. You’re here because there are some things you need to know, and Alex Cutler needs to know. We can’t get to her because of her Terran bodyguard. So we’re telling you and you can tell her. Believe me, Mr. Holman, I wouldn’t have brought you here if the situation weren’t so desperate.”

  Desperate. Fear pierced him. “Where’s Cal?”

  “We haven’t hurt him. He’s out with Rose Li, just as he told you, having a very good time. She’ll keep him out for the whole night.”

  Poor Cal, thinking it was love.

  Star continued, “There’s someone here to see you. We’re bringing him in.”

  To Jake’s surprise, the young Chinese brought to him was bound hand and foot. Two Anglos walked on either side, one of then carrying a gun. Where had he gotten a gun? They were strictly controlled by Mira Corp.

  The bound man had wild black hair and a surly expression. He glared at Jake. Would kill me if he were loose, Jake realized. He didn’t recognize the captive.

  “This is Yenmo Kang… I mean, Kang Yenmo. He’s one of the three dissidents that Julian Martin abducted from Hope of Heaven.”

  That Julian abducted? Jake glanced scornfully at Star Chu, but she was staring at Kang. Her small red mouth pursed and her eye sneered. She hated Kang… or else she was a better actor than even Duncan Martin.

  Star continued, “The Hope of Heaven dissidents have not gone far away, Mr. Holman. Most are hiding just a few miles from Mira, scattered in small pockets. They contacted me because my cousin is with them. She’s always been … that doesn’t matter. Chu Corporation is not in agreement with violence. But I said I would listen to her, partly because she’s family and partly because the situation in Chinese Mira has gotten so bad. After I listened to her, I listened to Kang, and now you will listen, too.” She looked at Kang with marked dislike.

  Kang said, “I talk to you only out of a desire for justice. You are all despicable. You, Star Chu, are a traitor to your people, a tool wielded by the Anglos and Arabs for their own riches. You, Jake Holman, are a worn-out exploiter who can never outlive the destruction you’ve caused. Hope of Heaven is trying to restore dignity and pride to the Chinese on Greentrees, and we will do whatever is necessary!”

  Jake said, his voice stronger than he’d dared hope, “Forget the rhetoric, Kang. I heard it a hundred years ago in a hundred different languages. What do you have to say that’s new?”

  “This,” Kang said, black eyes blazing. “Wong Yat-Shing, Wu Po, and I did not escape from Hope of Heaven with the help of wild Furs, as all you Anglo-Arabs seem to believe. We were abducted by Julian Martin’s soldiers. And they would have killed us if we hadn’t killed them first.”

  Jake said scornfully, “Do you expect me to believe that three Greenie kids killed armed Terran soldiers? You’re not talking to another provincial, son. I’m from Terra.”

  Some of Kang’s disdain fell away. Abruptly he sat on a bare cot, facing Jake at eye level. His face glowed with sullen sincerity.

  “It didn’t happen that way. I’m going to start from the beginning, so you know it all. Julian Martin is trying to take over Mira City, and he used Hope of Heaven to do it.”

  “So you believe,” Jake said.

  “It’s true!” Kang said, and for just a moment Jake saw how young he really was. “When we attacked Mira during the first evacuation, the drill, Nan Frayne and her fucking Furs stopped us. That part’s true. But they only did it because Julian Martin stationed them there. His so-called scientists—and you should ask your own scientists, Mr. Holman, how much ’research’ those Terrans have actually shared since they got here—made contact with the wild Furs. That’s how the Frayne woman even knew there was an evacuation of Mira City. Fur spears work when nothing electronic will, so Martin posted them in Mira hoping we’d attack. Right after that you poor dupes all made him defense admin, didn’t you? He gained a lot of power from stopping us.”

  Jake said coldly, “There’s no way Nan Frayne would cooperate with Julian Martin. Let alone get wild Furs to
help Mira. They don’t give a fucking fart about us.”

  “But Nan Frayne cares about those Furs. In return for her help during the evacuation, Martin gave the Furs laser guns to use against the Cheyenne.”

  Jake stared.

  “That’s right, Holman. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it already. Furs are killing Cheyenne with laser guns, made by his Terrans at a secret place about thirty miles from Mira. I’ve seen it from a distance, anyway. Laser guns aren’t hard to make and the parts are easily available on the black market.”

  Black market. Of course Mira City was large enough to have a black market. Jake should have realized it long ago, would have realized it if he weren’t so feeble. He must tell Alex.

  “Pay attention, Holman,” Kang said. “Don’t crash on me. After the evacuation drill, Hope of Heaven was watched night and day by Martin’s new army. There were guards on Wong, Wu, and me night and day. Do you really think primitive Furs could get us away from Martin? His own men abducted us and they used Fur weapons to kill those two deluded Anglo-Arab ’soldiers’ so it would look Furs did it. And right after that you bastards in Mira voted to give Martin unlimited military rule.”

  “If Martin’s Terrans had wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

  “We should be. That part was accident.” Something behind his eyes shuddered slightly, an involuntary fear that Jake sudden found convincing. “They got us out of Hope of Heaven walking and jammed us into a rover. All the Greenie soldiers were busy with their duties about the Fur ship coming in. The patrols were arranged so that nobody came near our house. I expected to die.

  “But the rover malfunctioned when the EMP was set off, and we were still in Hope of Heaven. They must have mistimed something. The Terrans couldn’t leave us in the dead rover, killed or no without somebody eventually investigating when the Fur attack was over. So they pulled us out and made us march towards river. Maybe they meant to let it carry our bodies away. Or maybi they were under orders to keep us alive in order to torture us for information.”

  Kang stopped and Jake saw him reliving it all: the weapons jammed against his head, the terrified forced march for the river.

  “We were lucky, though. Some people had refused to evacuate, someone in a house near the river saw what was happening, some true Chinese with honor and courage untouched by the corruption of Mira City. Three people ran out armed with anything: poles and garden hoes that were electronically inoperative and kitchen pans. Pans.”

  Kang turned his head away briefly before resuming.

  “The two Terrans weren’t affected at all by the things thrown at them, of course. The Terrans turned and shot all three of them. A man, a woman, and a teenage girl. While the Terrans were briefly turned away, we jumped one of them. None of the Terrans expected us to attack—they have contempt for Greenies as fighters. So he wasn’t prepared and we were lucky and killed him. Another one shot Wu. Wu’s body turned into a shield for Wong and me, just long enough to get another Terran down. I wrestled with her for her gun, and I got it, and I killed her. The last Terran would have shot us both except that another Chinese had crept out of a house and he had a gun, too. The Terran swung around to shoot him and they killed each other. Then Wong and I ran.”

  Jake said nothing.

  “I don’t know what happened to any of the bodies. I guess Martin disposed of them all. Hope of Heaven was attacked by that mob from Mira because of the two Greenie kids Martin killed with spears, so it would have been easy to keep the Chinese deaths from Shanti and Cutler. Not that they’d have cared.”

  Star Chu said to Jake, “There’s more, Mr. Holman. I have another source of information, another cousin. We Chinese are just as interrelated as the Cutlers, you know.”

  “I know,” Jake said. He fought off dizziness.

  “My cousin came to me weeks ago to tell me something. I didn’t believe her then. She’s old,” Star said, and in the girl’s voice Jake heard that the old were unbelievable, fanciful. “Also, sometimes not too … but I believe her now. She said…” The girl clenched her fists.

  “Go on,” Jake said.

  “She said that during the first evacuation, the drill, she didn’t leave Mira City. Most Chinese did leave, you know, the first time. We obeyed orders. But a lot stayed the second time. My old cousin hid in her wei. That’s a kind of extra tiny room sprayed into foamcast to hide in, often with hidden slits to see indoors and out by means of mirrors.”

  “A priest’s hole,” Jake said.

  “A what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “She was in there during the evac drill. She lived next door to Lau-Wah Mah. When the city was deserted, she saw a Terran carry out Mah’s body, wrapped in a blanket or rug. He dropped it. La Wah was a big man for a Chinese, and I guess Martin could only spare one person for this. The rug opened. An arm was torn off the body and the… the place between his legs all bloody.”

  Kang said, not without satisfaction, “The traitor had been tured.”

  “He was a good man!” Star cried. She slapped Kang across mouth. He lunged up but she shoved him back into the chair. Bound hand and foot, there was nothing he could do but sneer.

  Star said to Jake, “I didn’t believe my cousin then, like I told you. I thought that after Mah was found missing, she made up the story to get attention. She’s like that. But after I heard from this piece of slime here… Mr. Holman, most

  Chinese in Mira City are not with the dissidents. We know we aren’t treated as equals to Anglos or Arabs, but we have our own lives and our own businesses and we hope that in future generations we can change things. We do not believe in violence.

  “But since Mah was taken and then his body deliberately left out so that people would think Hope of Heaven did it, and since the dissidents tried to burn Mira, and since Mary Pesci and Shanab Mesbah were killed … I don’t think people like you know what it’s like to be Chinese in Mira City. People shun us now. They whisper. Our kids get taunted in school and sometimes beat up. Arabs and Anglos, except for Quakers, don’t buy from our little businesses. Chu Corporation has had sales fall fifty percent. And we Chinese are afraid of what’s to come. That mob marched only on Hope of Heaven, but Chinese Mira could be next.

  “And Julian Martin is causing it! That’s what you must see. This piece of shit here is at least right about that. Martin kills and manipulates in order to get power, and it’s worked. He controls Greentrees. You must tell Alex Cutler and Mayor Shanti.”

  Clearly this girl didn’t know that Alex was sleeping with Julian. “If you believe all this is true, Star, why don’t you tell her yourself?”

  “She’s watched by that Terran bodyguard. If any Chinese got near her… I don’t think I could get near her. But you live with her. And they’re not watching you.”

  Of course not, Jake thought. He was too old and ineffective to worry about, unless Julian or anybody else happened to want a bit of historical information. Otherwise Jake mostly slept and drooled and stayed indoors, away from everything, which is why he hadn’t even been aware of Mira’s thriving black market… but why had he been so easily swayed by Julian Martin?

  He was so tired.

  Star said, “Do you believe me, Mr. Holman? Do you believe Kang?”

  Jake said slowly, “I don’t know. You have no real proof.”

  She cried, “But why else would wild Furs have helped Mira during, the evacuation drill and then killed Mary Pesci and Shanab Mesbah during the real attack? Don’t you see how Julian Martin has done everything to get control of Greentrees?”

  “I need to think about all this, Star.” And then, with deliberate pathos, “I’m an old man and very tired.”

  She said at once, “Of course you’re tired. We’ll take you back now. And when you’ve thought about it, you’ll tell Alex Cutler. I know you’re still the sharpest and most experienced mind in Mira.”

  Irrationally warmed by her praise—this girl was pretty good at manipulation herself—Jake let the tape ag
ain be put over his mouth and eyes. He would never be able to identify the big man who had lifted him. He felt himself being laid carefully on the floor of the rover, but he didn’t feel the ride into Mira. By that time he was already asleep.

  20

  THE AVERY MOUNTAINS

  Karim blinked at his first view of the inflatable.

  From the outside it had appeared to be standard research-camp living quarters as he remembered them from fifty years ago: dull green, quick to erect, durable. Inside it was unrecognizable. The plastic walls and floor had all but disappeared under pelts and woven blankets. A small drum lay on its side, ornamented with feathers, Baskets held handmade tools and various dried foods: Somewhere outside someone was grilling meat; the smell made Karim’s empty stomach growl.

  Two braves sat in a corner, smoking. They rose quickly when the captives were brought in.

  “We found them in the upland meadow,” a captor said.

  “An odd place for love,” the oldest brave said. “And you didn’t let them put on their clothes?”

  “They weren’t doing sex. They had no clothes.”

  The elder frowned. He had bright red hair and, under his suntan and wrinkles, the trace of freckles. Most of the Cheyenne in the First Landing, Karim remembered Jake telling him, had not actually come from that ethnic group at all. They were people rich enough to afford space passage who nonetheless wanted to live like primitives. Their blood had been American, Irish, German, English, Italian, all the defunct countries of the UAF. A few had even been Chinese.

  None of this had made any sense to Karim. Without your place in the family, in the generations of the medina, how could you really know who you were?

  “Who are you?” the elder asked.

  “I am Karim Mahjoub and this is Lucy Lasky. Have you ever heard of us?”

  “No.”

  “We’re from the First Landing. We’ve been out in space,” Karim said desperately.

  Carefully the brave studied Karim, then Lucy. Finally he said, “They’re crazy. Put them with the others.”