Red Moon

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  She didn’t bother to reply.

  They got into traffic, slowed down. Fred looked out the window. He had traveled on business to Beijing three times, but that was no help now in determining whether they were there or not.

  “What did you say to them?”

  “I told them how much trouble they were headed for.”

  “And so?”

  “I think they might be getting rid of us.”

  “Getting rid of us? That sounds bad.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Should we jump out?” They were stopped in traffic at the moment.

  “We’re locked in.”

  “So you think this guy will let us go?”

  “The van will do it, but yes. I think he’s just along to make sure everything goes okay.”

  Fred shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  “Yes.”

  An hour of stop-and-go traffic. Then one sign had English words on it under the big Chinese characters: SECOND RING ROAD. They crossed this broad boulevard. Qi began talking to their conductor.

  Finally they stopped. The conductor said something, the door locks thunked.

  “Come on,” Qi said.

  “What’s happening?” Fred said.

  “Just come on.”

  They got out of the van and walked across the road, then over a small old stone bridge that spanned a narrow canal, which ran in a stone-sided cleft deep below street level. On the sidewalk paralleling the canal, a crowd strolled in the chill starry night. Qi looked into each of the glass walls fronting the clubs set back from the road. Small bands inside these clubs played music to tightly packed crowds. These venues alternated with restaurants that were stuffed with patrons focused on hot pots and talk. Qi kept Fred on the restaurant side of her, ducking her head down. There were security cameras over most of the doorways. Fred saw there were more such little black boxes hanging like fruit from the branches of the gnarled old trees overhanging the sidewalk.

  “Where can we go?” he said uneasily.

  “There’s a waffle shop I know,” she said.

  “Won’t the cameras there recognize you?”

  “They run a fake feed into their camera.”

  “How do they get away with that?”

  “Gifts. There are people who go there who don’t want to be seen, and people who will take gifts to keep them not seen.”

  “How near is it?”

  “Just around the corner here.”

  “Good. So look, what happened back there? Why did they let us go?”

  “They were scared.” She laughed grimly. “There’s no one who wants to be caught in possession of me. They would pay too high a price. That’s what I told those people. I reminded them what would happen to them if they were the ones who had me when my father’s people located me.” Her look turned dark, Fred shuddered to see it. He understood suddenly that this was a person from a different world. Then she glanced at him and laughed again. “No one likes to think some old Ming torturer might grab their family and take them away.”

  “Could that happen?”

  “What, do you think torture doesn’t happen? Aren’t you an American?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She stared at him. “I guess I mean that you’re good at ignoring it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Obviously not.”

  “But I saw that you scared them.”

  “Easy to do. No one wants to cross my father.”

  “He’s powerful?”

  “Yes. And it’s not just him. Although he is used to getting his way. But his security team, and the whole security apparatus at the top, they’re dangerous people.”

  “Is that why you went to the moon?”

  “I wanted to get some distance, yes. And I did. While I was there I slipped away from my security too. That was a lot harder than getting away from these people who just had us.”

  “You’re good at getting away?”

  “Pretty good. Lots of practice, anyway.”

  “How come?”

  “I was brought up in a Swiss prison.”

  “A Swiss prison?” Fred repeated, startled.

  “A boarding school,” she explained, looking amused at his literal-mindedness. “Very secure.”

  “And yet you got out.”

  “Three times.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Well, I was caught twice.”

  “I guess it must be hard to get away these days,” Fred ventured. “Like now. There are cameras everywhere.”

  “But their pictures go different places. The system is balkanized.”

  “What if these cameras send our pictures to the wrong place?”

  “They don’t work as well at night. Only the ones that check your gait, so change your usual stride.”

  “How long can that work?”

  “Not long. But we have some friends to help us.”

  “Us?” Fred asked. “You’re helping me?”

  She stopped, so he did too. He watched the sidewalk as she regarded him. “Jiang told me what happened to you,” she said. “You were used to kill someone, from what he said. So if the people who used you for that get hold of you again, they’ll probably kill you.”

  “But I don’t remember anything.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  “Could you—could you get me to the American embassy?”

  “That’s where they’ll have people looking for you. And there are people looking for me too. They know I was with you when we were released, so they’ll keep your embassy watched.”

  “I could get there on my own?” Fred suggested.

  “Could you?”

  He looked around uncertainly. She laughed shortly at the look on his face.

  “No,” she said. “I would have to take you there. But I need to hide. So if you want to go off on your own, fine. Do it. But if you stick with me, I can hide you. That will keep you away from the people looking for you, and if my friends can get it sorted out, I mean who was using you, that would help you. And it might even help me. It might give me some leverage.”

  “But I don’t remember anything!”

  She sighed. “They don’t know that. Come on, think it through.”

  “Leverage for what?” Fred asked, trying to catch up.

  “Just leverage. There are fights going on where some leverage could help. Meanwhile I’m offering to hide you! So come on, if you’re coming.”

  Fred felt the Earth’s gravity bearing down on him. He was confused, he didn’t know what to think. His tendency to think of the world as a potentiality state awaiting the wave collapse of a decision now mocked him. Yes, the world was a fog of probabilities, yes, one could only learn partial truths by making decisions about what to do. Now it was time to make a decision.

  “Where are we going again?”

  “First a waffle shop.”

  “Which is where?”

  She didn’t even give him a look, being busy glancing around the street. She clutched his hand and pulled him along like a recalcitrant child. Past rows of bars and restaurants, down a dark alley—a hutong, Fred guessed, an old-style Beijing residential alley, which was only wide enough for one small car, if that. Low roofs of gray tile upcurved at the beam ends—everything mossy, dusty, ancient. Big red doorways with giant iron knobs on them, all recessed into the walls fronting the alley. No obvious cameras here, though of course tiny cameras could be tucked anywhere, and probably were.

  They emerged from the hutong onto another broad busy highway. A sea of trucks and cars passed before them, all humming quietly on their own, and only en masse creating a buzz like a vast refrigerator, or a beehive. Articulated buses had dedicated lanes of their own, they were like subways on the land. It was amazing to see bike riders out in the middle of this traffic trundling stubbornly along. Qi led Fred between two buildings, then across a street as wide as two American highways, after waiting a long time for a pedestrian light. After that down
another narrow street, Fred trying to lengthen his stride as Qi had suggested. It made him clumsy, she tugged on his hand. The heavy gravity, or his recent poisoning, or some combination of the two, was really hammering him.

  Finally she pulled him into a two-story glass-fronted restaurant; it had a big open interior, with a small balcony at the back overlooking everything. The tall airy space was crowded with old chandeliers hanging at different levels, most of them ornate crystal antiquated things, but also a few big wooden rings, black glass mobiles, and dusty faceted mirror balls. All of them hanging in the air together made for a weird kind of magnificence.

  Qi said something to the young woman at the front, who looked shocked and then hurried to the back. Qi led Fred up broad glass stairs to the balcony, where she sat them at a long table. Everyone in the restaurant could look up and see them, and this exposure caused Fred to look at people even less than usual. Qi ordered from a waitress, and when waffles came for both of them, she poured green syrup over hers and ate. Fred had his with maple syrup and whipped cream, feeling suddenly famished. He tried to think and failed.

  “Do you feel the gravity?” he asked her.

  She nodded, swallowed. “It’s pretty bad,” she allowed.

  The table they were sitting at was long and communal. After about half an hour, a young couple sat down next to them. Qi ignored them and kept eating. Then she began to talk to them in Chinese, as if introducing herself, and they chatted for a while, as if about inconsequential things. Just a matter of being polite to tablemates. Possibly it was a Beijing custom, Fred thought. Despite the crowds everywhere, people seemed friendly. Was this a Beijing thing, or China in general? Strangers just talking to each other out of the blue, it was kind of amazing.

  On the other hand, Fred suddenly saw that the people Qi was conversing with, though acting like strangers, were actually quivering a little. Suddenly he saw their nervous exhilaration. They glanced at Qi in sidelong flickers, as if to look at her too long might burn their retinas. What did it mean? Who was she?

  The young couple took off their wristpads. One of them held a wristpad up to Fred’s face and took a picture, it looked like, and then plugged it into a small box in her jacket pocket. After that she slid both wristpads across the table to Qi, who scooped them up and put them in the pocket of her jacket. Abruptly she got up and said something, then led Fred down through the cloud of chandeliers and back onto the street. They left without paying, as far as Fred could tell. He asked Qi about that as they hurried down another crowded sidewalk, and impatiently she shook her head. “My friends will pay,” she said.

  “So those were friends?”

  “Yes. They’re arranging our train trip.”

  “Train trip?”

  “I told you. We need to get to a good hiding place.”

  “Why weren’t they scared to be around you, like the people you talked into letting us go?”

  “Maybe they were.”

  “So why did they help you?”

  “We’re part of a group. We work together.” She looked at him curiously. “Don’t you work with other people?”

  “Yes?”

  He had to think about that as he followed her down the sidewalk, under broad dusty trees. His employers gave him things to ponder and tasks to attempt, and he did what he could. They took his efforts and gave him more things to try. He brainstormed with colleagues and commented on their work, and occasionally he was sent out to activate a quantum phone, mostly when all the other facilitators were busy, but he could do it and he did. So was that what she meant by working with other people? He wasn’t sure.

  Again it was crowded on the streets, though by now it was late at night, the moon gleaming between clouds wafting in from the west. It was impossible to believe they had been up there on that white ball just a few days before. Now its light shone on a broad pedestrian mall of some kind, filled with couples and small knots of families, people out on a nice summer evening. They came to a curving canal, where moonlight lay in a squiggling line over black water.

  “This used to be part of the Second Ring Road,” Qi said as they hurried by the canal. “Before it was a road it was a river, connecting to the great canal. Now this part is a canal again.”

  “It looks good.”

  For a moment she paused and looked down at the water. “They’ve brought back some canals, anyway. It’s part of the Green Beijing movement. Liang Sicheng would be pleased. He fought for the canals and lost.”

  “It looks nice.”

  “It’s more than looks. When I was a child it was like being poisoned to live here. The air was black by day, white by night. You could chew it. You could feel it eating your eyes. Lots of people died from it. So they cleaned it up. It was a case of make a new China or die.”

  Fred looked at her face in the moonlight, trying to understand her expression: proud but melancholy? Bitter? Fred was never good at reading faces, but now under the weight of circumstances things were blurring in his head, and it was hopeless. “Why are you on the run again?” he said.

  “I want things,” she said.

  Okay, hopeless. Fred gave up. They stood by the wall for a long time, so long that eventually the moon shone down on them entirely from the west side of the branch that had been bisecting it.

  “We’re waiting for someone,” Fred guessed.

  “For the right train.”

  “A train to where?”

  She didn’t answer. He suppressed all his questions, tried to content himself with the sight of her. Part of the unexpected beauty of old Beijing at night. In his previous visits he had only ever been to the city outside the Sixth Ring Road, where high rises and industrial parks dominated. Now, with lit paper globes strung through the trees and reflecting off the still water, and a paper dragon draped along the stone dragon that topped the canal wall, it seemed as if he had been transported to a China out of legend.

  Qi was looking across the canal.

  “What’s wrong?” Fred said.

  “There’s a chaoyangqunzhong over there,” she said.

  “Is that police?”

  “No, just an ordinary person being a public security volunteer. They use an app on their wrists to make anonymous tips to the police.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell by the glasses they’re wearing. Here, hug me.”

  She moved against him and buried her head against his shoulder. Startled, he put his face in her hair, breathed it in. Faint scent of jasmine or some other flowery shampoo.

  “Will they know that you’ve spotted them,” he murmured in her hair, as if romantically. He could feel her breasts pressed into his chest, and her pregnant belly, and she had an arm up and over his shoulder and neck. He could feel her warmth.

  “I don’t know,” she said, voice muffled. “I’d like to get out of here, in the direction behind me. Turn so you’re on the canal side, and help me along.”

  She turned and Fred followed her instructions, bending over her and murmuring nothings. “Do you have a Western name?” he asked in a low voice. “A Western name you used at school or something?”

  “Charlotte,” she said.

  “Charlotte,” he said, and breathed it like a chant as they hurried along the canalside. He hunched over her as much as he could, and she watched where they were going, guided him away from people coming in their direction. When they got to the end of the canal they turned right, and when they were in a narrow dark street they picked up their pace, finally running to the next intersection, hand in hand. Again she led him, dragging him first right then left, finally into a winding street. Dim streetlights competed with the moon to make the darkest shadows.

  They came to a building so big it covered three or four blocks. “We have to wait,” Qi said, looking at her wristpad. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t think we were followed.”

  “You don’t know. I’m chipped, so we need to wait until my friends change that.”

  “Chang
e the chip?” he asked, confused.

  “Change the train station’s record of the chip.”

  Her scowl was enough to stop questions, at least for now. There was a look that flashed over her face from time to time that he found a little terrifying.

  The train station was the source of all kinds of noise: huge hisses and whooshes, also hums like those of a power plant. Under those, an oceanic slosh of voices; also bell tones frequently ringing. Finally Qi took his hand and strapped one of the wristpads she had gotten from her friends onto his wrist. “Time to go,” she said. “You’re with me, so I’ll do the talking.”

  “What if they ask me questions in English?”

  “Tell them you’re with me!” she said, and dragged him off.

  The train station was completely surrounded by other buildings, it seemed to Fred; trains were apparently arriving and departing underground. One new wing on the east end of the giant building displayed posters with pictures that suggested it was a hyperloop terminal. Qi confirmed this and added that they were very fast. She looked at his wristpad and told him his name was William Janney, then marched them to broad doors at the other end of the station, where they stood in the line going through a security checkpoint. Fred worried about the chip she had mentioned, embedded in her body somewhere. Was every Chinese person chipped, or was she special? He had heard once that the Chinese all had citizenship scores, like credit ratings but more comprehensive. He had never worried about that kind of thing himself, as he was a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide. No need to pry into a book that had no pages. But now it did. Fred gulped and stood behind her, looking down, feeling conspicuous. He didn’t like anything he couldn’t control, which of course meant there was a great deal he didn’t like, but this was unusually bad.

  Finally they came to the security gate and sailed through without a second glance from the guards manning it. On through a huge central hall of the station, a cathedral-like space of empty air ringed by four stacks of busy balcony malls. Qi pulled him past a wall of ticket booths, then past shops and kiosks selling everything travelers might want, then onto a platform at the far end of the building. There was a train waiting by this platform, and again they presented their wristpads. Qi said something to a conductor, a severe elderly woman, and then they were allowed to step up into the narrow hallway of the train.