When Zhang Lei got back to the studio, the other three artists were upstairs. He shoved the sofa aside. The painting leaned against the wall, facing out, a layer of breathable sealant protecting the drying oil paint. He was sure he’d turned it to face the wall, but apparently not. It didn’t really matter. He wanted it gone.
He sprayed the canvas with another layer of sealant, trying not to look at the thick wet bloody gleam on the arena’s ice. He wrapped it in two layers of black polymer sheeting, and requested a cargo wrap to meet him at the guideway landing stage.
When he got there, the area was packed with Miao arriving on sliders and bikes, whole families crowded onto multi-seat units, laughing and talking. He edged his way to the cargo drop, slid the cargo wrap around it, addressed it to Marta, and shoved the painting inside the conveyor. Done. He’d never have to think about it again.
The Miao were on holiday. Women wore their blue blouses with short skirts trailing with long, flapping ribbons, or ankle-length red and blue dresses. All the women’s clothing was dense with colorful embroidery and tinkling with silver, and all wore their silver torques. The younger women pierced their topknots with flowers. Mothers and grandmothers layered their torques with necklaces, and wore tall silver headdresses crowned with slender, curving horns. Silver everywhere—charms in the shape of flowers, bells, fish, and butterflies dangled from their jewelry, sleeves, sashes, and hems.
They were, in a word, gorgeous. Happy-laughing, leading children, carrying babies, holding hands with their friends, and among them, men of all ages in embroidered black, blue, and indigo. The men were also happy, also laughing, also embracing their friends, helping their children and elders. But the young women—ah. They caught his eye.
Zhang Lei retreated to the side of a corn patch, capturing compositions while watching the steady flow of arrivals. Some pinged for mobility assistance, and rode float chairs up the road, but most walked. Some eschewed the road, and ran uphill toward the guest house, making for the steep shortcut up the ridge. Zhang Lei followed.
Paul, Prajapati, and Han Song watched from the studio porch. Zhang Lei joined them.
“Jen Dla told me we can go watch the festival after supper,” Prajapati said. “It’s called Setting Free Your Daughter, or something like that.”
“Setting them free from what?” asked Han Song.
Six young women ran toward them, through Jen Dla’s cabbage patch.
“Family control, I would imagine,” Paul answered.
The girls didn’t even glance up. At home, he never had to work to get a girl’s attention—nobody on the team did. Unless coach called a ban for training reasons, sex was on offer everywhere he looked. Here, he might as well be invisible. But then, he hadn’t exactly been making himself available. If the girls were being set free, and he was in the right place at the right time, maybe one of them would land in his lap. All he had to do was get them to notice him.
“I’m going to the festival,” Zhang Lei said.
“I’ll go too,” said Han Song. “I haven’t done enough exploring.”
“We’ll all go,” said Prajapati. Paul nodded.
After Jen Dla served them an early supper, Zhang Lei led the oldsters up the winding road to the village center. They admired the views from every switchback as if they hadn’t already had a week to explore, and examined every clump of flowers as if Paizuo wasn’t one big flower garden. Guests from the other studios joined them, which made the whole group even slower.
Zhang Lei was tempted to leave them all behind, run to the village center and see if the girls had been set free yet. He jogged up a few switchbacks, and then thought the better of it. Even the most adventurous girl would flee from a lone man bearing a disable button labeled KILLER. If he wanted someone to take a chance on trusting him, he’d better stick with the group.
Zhang Lei sat on a boulder at the side of the road and waited for the oldsters to catch up. They weren’t bad people. All three were kind and clever in their own ways. And patient. He’d been unfriendly but they hadn’t taken offence.
“We should really walk faster,” Prajapati told the other two when they caught up. “We don’t want Zhang Lei to miss his chance with the girls.”
Zhang Lei grinned. “I could ping you a cargo float.”
She laughed and took his arm.
The roadside floating lights winked on, turning their route into a tunnel of light snaking up the mountainside. When they got to the village center, night had fallen. The courtyard was lit with flaming torches and in the middle of the crowd, a bonfire blazed, sending up a column of sparks to search the sky. Faces flickered with shadows. Silver glinted and gleamed. Laughter pealed. A singer wailed.
“I don’t know when I last smelled something burning,” said Han Song.
“Is that what the stench is?” asked Paul.
“Wood smoke is the most beautiful scent,” said Prajapati. “Primal.”
Most of the guests stayed on the courtyard’s edge. They joined a group under the mulberry tree, a gender-free triad of performance artists from Cusco Hab. Zhang Lei had seen them around the village. They always looked like they were in a meeting—heads down, conferring, arguing, making notes.
“Have the daughters been set free yet?” Han Song quipped. “Asking for a friend.”
The triad laughed.
“Apparently it’s only one daughter, and no, the ceremony hasn’t begun yet,” said Aiko, the tallest of the three.
“Just one girl?” Zhang Lei said. “Then what’s the point?”
“Shakespeare! One performer, one night only. The complete works.” Aiko was obviously joking but their face was perfectly sober.
Prajapati grinned. “Don’t tease the boy.”
Another pair of artists joined them, a cellist from Zurich and an opera singer from Hokkaido. They seemed to know more about the festival than anyone else.
“We won’t catch much of the performance unless the girl throws the switch on her translation balloon,” the cellist said in a low voice. “The one last year didn’t.”
“Someone told me they translate in Kala, for the tourists visiting from Danzhai Wanda Village,” said Aiko.
“Paizuo is more traditional than Kala. Which is why we come here.” The cellist shaded her eyes against the torches’ flare and scanned the crowd.
“It’s better they don’t translate,” the opera singer said. “What the girl says won’t make sense if you don’t know the context. It’s more meaningful to watch the reactions of the Miao.”
With so many people in the square, Zhang Lei could only catch glimpses of the action. He put his viewcatcher on full extension, sent it a meter overhead, and switched its mode to low lux. Much better. The musicians were at the far end of the courtyard, near the bridge, playing drums and tall, upright bamboo flutes. The singer stood with them, wearing her silver headdress like a crown. Jen Dang and his family didn’t seem to be around. But he spotted the girl—the one who was being set free. She was alone. No friends, no fussing parents, no little siblings hanging on her arms.
She wore hoops of silver chain around her torque, a blue blouse and short black skirt embroidered with butterflies, and a woven sash around her waist. A deep red flower pierced her topknot. Her hands rested at her sides. She didn’t pick at her nails or play with her jewelry like Lunite girls. She looked prepared, like a goalie in a crease, waiting for the game to begin.
He zoomed in on her face. His age or a little younger. Pretty, like all the Miao girls. Tough, too. What would a girl like her think of him?
Not much, he suspected.
The music stopped, the crowd hushed. The girl’s lips thinned in concentration. She stepped toward the bonfire and the circle of elders welcomed her into their arms. No drums this time, no bamboo flutes, no practiced wail from a powerful throat. The elders sang softly, their song a hum in the night, drowning under the buzz of the cicadas and crickets.
Near the artists at the back of the crowd stood a mother with a baby clutched to her
chest. She wore little silver, and looked upset.
“Poor thing,” said Prajapati.
The woman scowled at her and made a hushing motion.
Zhang Lei waited for something to happen, some reason why the Miao were paying such close attention. The girl wasn’t doing anything, just standing in the circle of softly singing elders, eyes closed, face tight with concentration. Maybe nothing would happen—that was the point? Perhaps it was a test of her patience. It certainly was a test of his.
As he was considering sneaking away, the girl began singing along. Her voice was high, with an eerie overtone that pierced the sky. She sang higher and higher, drowning out the elders’ voices. The Miao were rapt, breathless. When she spoke—loud as if amplified—the crowd exhaled a collective sigh of wonder.
“No translation balloon,” Aiko breathed. “Damn.”
Zhang Lei expected the crying mother to turn and scold them again, but she was pushing through the crowd, sobbing and holding her baby out like an offering.
“Must be her dead husband,” said the cellist, quietly. “You see? They set the girl’s soul free to visit the spirits, and now she’s bringing messages back.”
“Messages?” said Zhang Lei. “What kind of messages?”
“Every kind. Instructions. Admonitions. Warnings. Blessings. What kind of messages would you send from beyond if you could?”
“I don’t know, maybe something the girl could easily guess?” said Han Song.
“Hush,” said Prajapati. “This is serious.”
It was serious. Zhang Lei didn’t even have to look up to know the new moon was watching him, the lights of its habs inscribed like a curse on the sunless black disc punched through the middle of the Milky Way.
• • • •
On Luna, hockey was a blood sport. Lunar hockey was played at one-sixth gravity on a curved surface, with a Stefoff field to keep the puck low and snap players back to the ice. One of the major defensive moves was to disable the other team’s players. Clubbing with weighted carbon fiber hockey sticks resulted in a penalty, though all referees were selectively blind. Slashing with skate blades, however, was a power move. An overdominant team could cut their way through their opponents’ starting lineup, into the benched players and fourth-rates, and by the end of the fourth quarter stage an assault on an undefended goalie.
Deaths were rare. Heads, legs, torsos, and groins were armored. Arms and throats were not. Medical bots hovered over the ice, ready to swoop in for first response, but rookies from the crèches quickly picked up scars, even playing in the recreational leagues. Anyone who remained unscarred was either a goalie or a coward.
Zhang Lei’s crèche manager had tried to do right by him, direct his talents so he’d have choices when he left the crèche. She nurtured his talent for drawing and painting as much as possible. But she was practical, too. Luna had far more professional hockey teams than artist collectives. All her children were on skates as soon as they could walk.
With powerful legs and a low center of gravity, Zhang Lei could take a hit and keep his speed. He could jump, spin, and kick. He could slice an opposing defenseman’s brachial artery, drag his stick through the spurting blood, and spray the goalie as he slid the puck into the net. The fans loved him for it. His teammates too.
It made him a target, though. He spent more time on the bench than anyone else on the team, healing wounds on his forearms. No matter. The downtime gave him the opportunity to perfect the rarest of plays—jump and spin high enough to slice a blade through an opponent’s throat. He practiced it, talked about it, drew cartoons of it. He gave up goals attempting it, which got him a faceful of spittle whenever Coach chewed him out.
Then finally he did it.
Dorgon wasn’t even Zhang Lei’s favorite proposed target. He was just a young, heavy-duty defenseman with a loud mouth who wasn’t scared of Zhang Lei’s flying blades.
He should have been.
Dorgon bled out in ten seconds. The medbot wrapped him in a life support bubble and attempted a transfusion right there on the ice, but stumbled over the thick scars on the defenseman’s arms. When it searched for alternate access, Dorgon’s coach was too busy screaming at Zhang Lei to flip the master toggle on his player’s armor.
Whose fault was it, then, that Dorgon died?
“Your fault, Zhang Lei,” the Miao girl said. “You opened a mouth in my throat and my whole life came pouring out.”
She pointed to him, standing under the mulberry tree with the other guests. Heads turned. He should have ran but he was frozen, breathless as if in a vacuum. He might have collapsed without the tree trunk behind him.
Marta? he whispered. Help.
No answer. Prajapati grabbed his arm.
“Ignore her, it’s a trick,” she said. And then louder: “That’s not funny.”
The crowd parted to allow the girl a clear sight of him.
“There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t follow. I’m inside your mattress when you sleep. Behind the door of your room, inside the closet. When you painted the Sklad arena, who do you think put the blood on the canvas? It was me.”
She raised her fists and swung them toward him, as if shooting a puck with a phantom hockey stick.
“You’re fair game.”
The girl’s head snapped back. She coughed once, and began speaking her native language again. The crowd turned away.
Marta? Answer me.
Prajapati tugged on his sleeve. “It’s late. Walk me home. We’ll take the shortcut.”
She took his arm again, pretending to need it for balance on the rocky path, but in truth she was holding him up. Han Song and Paul trailed behind, talking in low voices.
Marta? Marta!
She answered before they got to top of the ridge.
Sorry, kid. I was in a closed-session meeting. Total privacy veil.
Are they coming for me?
What? No. Is there a problem in Paizuo?
Zhang Lei groaned. Prajapati looked at him sharply. Worry lines creased her plump face.
They know who I am. What I did.
Who knows?
Everyone. And all their relatives. From all over. Dorgon told them.
That’s impossible.
He grabbed his viewcatcher, pinched off the last ten minutes of data, and fired it to her.
Watch this.
The path descending the ridge was treacherous, lit by nothing but stars. If he’d been alone, Zhang Lei would have ran down the ridge. If he fell and broke his neck, he deserved it. But the oldsters needed his help.
He took Prajapati’s hand—warm, dry, strong—and used the fill flash on his viewcatcher to light each step while Han Song shone the brighter light from his camera down the trail. The two oldster men helped steady each other, Paul’s hand on the photographer’s shoulder. When Han Song slipped, Paul caught him by the elbow.
Yeah, okay, Marta whispered. Someone figured out who you are and told the girl. I’ll talk to the security team. Don’t do anything stupid, okay? We’re on this.
When they got to the studio, Paul fetched a bottle of whiskey from his room. He poured four glasses and handed the largest one to Zhang Lei.
“I found the news feed from Luna a couple days ago,” Paul said. “But I didn’t tell anyone.”
“I found the painting,” said Prajapati. “I wasn’t looking for it, but the sofa was in the wrong place. I showed it to Paul and Han Song. It’s effective work, Zhang Lei. Palpable anguish.”
“If you want to keep something private,” said Han Song, “don’t put it in the common areas.”
“None of us told anyone,” Prajapati added.
“So, how did the story get to the Miao girl?” Paul asked. The other two oldsters shook their heads.
“Jen Dla?” Han Song ventured.
“I’ll ask her in the morning.” Prajapati patted Zhang Lei’s knee. “Try to get some sleep.”
The whiskey burned Zhang Lei’s throat and filled his sinuses with the
scent of bonfire. What kind of messages would you send from beyond if you could? Vengeance. Dorgon had watched and waited for his opportunity. The news would travel fast. Brawler teams were searching the county for him.
Zhang Lei poured the rest of the whiskey down his throat.
“When they come for me, keep hitting my disable button,” he said.
The three oldsters exchanged confused looks. A whirring sweeper bot bumped Zhang Lei’s foot. He nudged it away with his toe and headed for the stairs.
Don’t be so dramatic, Marta whispered.
“When who comes for you?” Prajapati asked.
“Let them do whatever they want to me,” he said. “Don’t put yourself in danger. But if you can, keep knocking me out. Please.”
Marta sighed. Honestly.
You, too. Keep hitting the button. Whatever they do to me, I don’t want to know about it.
He climbed the stairs two at a time. If his life was about to be crushed under the boots of a Lunite brawler gang, there was only one thing he wanted to do.
• • • •
The scarred face of the new moon glared through the high windows of the communal studio. Zhang Lei chose the largest of his prepared canvases and flipped through his viewcatcher compositions. The water buffalo lying in the stream. Jen Dang catching a fish. Ripening rice terraces under golden mist. Jen Dla carrying a pot of sour fish soup, a lock of hair stuck to the sweat of her brow.
The fighting cocks in their cages, separated by the corner of a house, their torn flesh healing only to be sliced open another day.
He flipped the canvas to rest on the long side and projected the composition on its surface. How to make the three-dimensionality of the scene clear in two dimensions—that was the main problem. Each cock knew the other was just out of sight. If they could get free, they would fight to the death.
It’s in their nature, he whispered.
What nature? Marta asked. Oh, I see. Are you going to paint all night?
I’ll paint for the rest of my life.
Okay, ping me if there’s a problem.
First, he drafted with a light pencil, adjusting the composition. The corner of the house dividing the canvas into thirds, with one caged brawler directly in front of the viewer and the other around the corner. It was a difficult compositional problem—he had to rub out the draft several times and start again. Then he began a base layer in grays, very lean and thin. What the old masters called en grisaille. Solve the painting problems in monochrome before even thinking about color. The texture of the wooden walls of the house, the figures of the birds filling the canvas with belligerence. It took all night.
The Long List Anthology Volume 5 Page 24
