Death is a Ruby Light

by Paul Kenyon

  "A couple of hours."

  "That'll keep them busy. We'd better move out. I want us to be in the Khingan's foothills by dawn."

  There was a dispute of some kind over one of the Chinese bodies. She saw one of the Yakuts gesticulating, his voice raised in argument. The other man wasn't a Mongol: it was Tom Sumo. He was shaking his head stubbornly, unbuttoning the dead soldier's quilted jacket.

  "What's going on, Tommy?" Penelope said. "You're not a souvenir hunter."

  "This fellow's just about my size," Sumo said. "I want his uniform and identification papers. They might come in handy."

  She exchanged a few words in Russian with the Yakut. It turned out that all he wanted was the Chinese soldier's steel wristwatch. Sumo handed it over. The Yakut wandered off, a smile creasing his broad face.

  Wharton had finished setting the charges. They'd go off at dawn.

  The Baroness clapped her hands for attention. "Sjooda, sjooda! Bystryeje!" The Mongols looked resentful. She moved among them, prodding them. Alexey began pushing at them with a rifle butt. Omogoy, looking sullen, helped. Reluctantly, the Yakuts began moving out.

  The flashes and explosions continued to flicker in the sky to their right. They set off across the frozen river. The snow continued to fall, masking their footprints.

  * * *

  Major Sung stumbled through semidarkness toward the eerie red glow in the center of the underground chamber. The glow came from the molten ruby material bubbling in the gigantic rhodium crucible.

  As he drew closer, he could see Professor Thing leaning on the guard rail, looking down at the ruby magma. The flickering red light cast fingers across his long-jawed face and glittered in the lenses of his dark glasses. If Major Sung had been a Christian, the image might have occurred to him of a demon peering down into Hell. As it was, he thought of Chinese ghosts, remembering the Buddhist grandmother who faithfully burned ghost money in her iron cauldron each festival day so that the spirits down below would have money to spend.

  "Ah, Major Sung," the professor said in a voice like a gong. "I'll be with you in a moment. I'm doing something rather delicate."

  Sung climbed the catwalk. He could feel the heat from below. He almost choked from the alumina fumes.

  A strange phenomenon was taking place on the molten surface. A glowing ruby blob was rising slowly into the air, attracted by a rotating rod that retreated upward at a snail's pace. The blob was already six feet long and as big around as a man. It was roughly bullet shaped, clinging to the end of the rod with its rounded nose.

  Professor Thing adjusted a dial, and there was the hiss of escaping gas. The lavalike pool below glowed more brightly.

  "Hydrogen, oxygen, aluminum oxide," he murmured. "An adaptation of the Czochralski technique for growing crystals from seed. But nobody has ever before grown a ruby boule of this size."

  He craned a saurian neck forward and smiled at Sung like a steam shovel.

  "A remarkable achievement," Sung said uncomfortably. "You are a great scientist."

  "Science has nothing to do with it," Professor Thing said. "Science implies phenomena that can be duplicated. No one can duplicate my giant crystals — not even if I were to give them my precise chemical formulae, my exact thermocouple settings."

  "But, surely…"

  "The secret is empathy. I make myself a part of the crystal as it grows. I feel its hungers, feed it the elements it needs, understand its need for that extra fraction of a degree of heat."

  "But the computer…"

  "The computer is a useful idiot. I override it when I have to. Ah, Major, I see that I'm upsetting you. You're a practical man. You believe in what you can see, can touch. Perhaps it will comfort you to think of my talent for crystal-growing as a form of virtuosity on the subconscious level. Can a concert pianist explain how he moved each finger to play the thousands of notes of a Beethoven sonata? Can you explain how you know to move the electric needle a millimeter to one side to produce excruciating pain?" He gave a dusty laugh. "Yes, Major, I appreciate the fact that you're a virtuoso too."

  Major Sung lowered his eyes modestly. "I never studied anatomy. I work by instinct."

  "As I do. I'll tell you a secret, Major. I've carried an image of death in this skull of mine for many years. Death is a ruby light. And I, Major, am the chosen instrument of that fight."

  He removed his dark glasses and turned his bone-white face toward Sung. The ruby egg he affected in the empty socket gleamed in the ruddy light. It had been grown, Sung knew, in the Czochralski vat, part of the leftover material from the first giant laser rod. The professor had carved and polished it himself. It was some kind of a fetish for him. He believed it gave him some kind of mystic connection with the ruby rod and its deadly light. The man was balmy.

  Aloud, he said mildly: "And why have you started to grow another giant ruby rod, Professor?"

  Professor Thing replaced the dark glasses. "Peking has authorized the construction of an entire line of laser installations along our borders. A new Great Wall When war comes, we will be invulnerable to both Russian and American missiles."

  Sung was impressed. The cost would be fantastic. It would take half of the country's entire supply of electricity to power them. The professor's prestige must have been enormously enhanced by his last success against the Russian spaceship. He already had the absolute authority of an ancient warlord in this remote province. Now, that authority was bound to be expanded. And he, Sung, would benefit. His fortunes were bound to Professor Thing's. Perhaps the fate that had sent him to this isolated arena in the Khingan Mountains had been a lucky one after all.

  "Yes," he said. "That bears on what I came to tell you. There's been another border incident. Almost due north of here, at the closest border crossing point."

  "The Russians fired missiles, I suppose, and killed a few hundred peasants? What has this to do with me? We're out of range of their mobile rocket launchers."

  "It was more than rockets. A detachment of our soldiers on an island in the Amur was slaughtered. If a border crossing was made, we wouldn't know it. There was a heavy snowfall."

  "You worry too much, Major. If the Russians ran true to form, they scurried back to their own side after the slaughter. They're not so insane as to send an expedition this deep into China."

  "It's my business to worry," Sung said stubbornly. "That's what Peking sent me here for."

  Professor Thing was already losing interest. He adjusted a setting on the console. "Even those poor wandering nomads you enjoy tormenting don't climb this high into the mountains. Your men generally scoop them up miles away, on the lower slopes."

  "All the same, I've ordered a unit of the People's Liberation Army to sweep the area north of here. And I'm tightening up my own security around this mountain."

  "What will you do with these mythical Russians if you catch them?"

  A familiar warmth flooded Major Sung's body. It had nothing to do with the molten pool below. "I've devised a new form of… entertainment. I'll need your technical assistance. It will be a good test of your ruby light." He smiled ingratiatingly. "You'll see your image of death at firsthand instead of experiencing it in the abstract, a hundred miles out in space."

  Professor Thing straightened up. His seven and a half feet towered over Sung. He looked down, burying his long pale hands in the crimson Mandarin sleeves. "Ah, my dear Major," he said mockingly, "I see that our last conversation converted you. I told you, if you remember, that light is a more powerful instrument than all your knives and electric probes."

  "We shall see, Professor. First we have to catch some Russians."

  13

  Penelope skidded to a stop at the bottom of the decline and rested on her ski poles, waiting for the others to catch up with her. Ahead, the going was rougher: an uphill climb of humps and ridges, punctuated here and there by a few skeletal trees.

  She wriggled out of the heavy pack and opened a pocket on the side. She twisted her poles to unlock them and telesc
oped them into eight-inch cylinders. The lightweight teflon-coated skis had a line of catches on the top surface. She twisted them and pushed the skis into foot-long staves that fit in the pocket. She deflated the plastic boots with their Spademan bindings and stuffed them in after the folded skis.

  Inga careened into the hollow beside her, sending up plumes of powdery snow. She looked inquiringly at the Baroness.

  "Snowshoes from here on," Penelope said. Inga nodded and began telescoping her own skis and poles.

  Sergei was next; he'd been staying close to Inga all morning. He leaned on his poles and looked with undisguised envy at the folding plastic skis.

  "You Americans are provided with fantastic equipment," he said. "The GRU shopped in Switzerland for ours."

  "Space-age technology," Penelope said. "These were designed for use on the moon, back when they thought the moon might be covered with a kind of slippery dust."

  "You are serious?"

  "Yes."

  She put on the folding snowshoes: featherweight aluminum frames and cobwebby plastic mesh that opened like a paper flower and locked into rigid ovals.

  "Those were made for Mars, I suppose?"

  Her lips curved in a wicked smile. "No, Russia."

  His ruddy face became even redder. Then he laughed and slapped her on the back. "Ah, Coin, I can never tell when you Americans are joking. Well, America and Russia are comrades now. At least until we settle with those Chinese bastards."

  "At least until then."

  It was another quarter of an hour until the Yakuts caught up with them. They'd been amazingly agile on their handmade wooden skis, but they were still hauling sledges: two men on the forward ropes where they could flare outwards whenever the sledge threatened to overtake them, and a man holding on to a rear guide rope. All of the Yakuts had some kind of a long willow wand sticking up from their back packs like fishing poles. She waited while they put on their own snowshoes: birch frames laced with rawhide and decorated with beads.

  "Can your men get the sledges up there?" she asked Omogoy.

  "Yakut strong," he rumbled. He studied the slope. "Until tree line, maybe."

  "All right We'll have a proper camp tonight. After that it's mountain-climbing equipment and whatever we can carry on our backs."

  They struggled upward all day. There was a deceptive crust that held them, wearing snowshoes, but the sledge runners kept breaking through. Each time the Yakuts gathered around, hauling and pushing, until they got to a load-bearing surface. Penelope noticed that the Yakuts had thrown away quite a bit of the looted Chinese equipment — even one or two of the AK-47 machine guns.

  Twice they saw a Chinese spotter plane in the distance, and froze until it was gone. There was little chance they'd be noticed in their white parkas, here amidst the scrubby mountain vegetation, unless the plane flew directly overhead. But it made for a nervous few minutes each time.

  It was clear and cold — twenty below — but there was no wind to numb them and cause cases of frostbite. On the other hand, there'd be nothing to cover their tracks once they were past the trees. Penelope could only hope that the spotter planes would be staying away from the upper peaks.

  They broke for camp at nightfall, just within the last straggling trees. The reason for the antennalike wands carried by the Yakuts was soon made evident. Each man handed his rod to Omogoy, who bound them at the top. The bottoms were planted firmly in the snow, making a huge birdcage arrangement, a good twelve feet in diameter. Each Yakut produced a single piece of felt from his pack — a long triangle with thongs on either side. When the sections of felt were bound to the framework, a big domed tent stood there, a fight smoke curling from the hole at the top.

  "That's a yurt," Alexey said beside her. "They'll all crowd in there together tonight to keep each other warm. They've survived for centuries on the tundra that way. I'm not sure it doesn't work better than all our modern snow gear."

  "Are we going to keep one another warm tonight, darling?"

  "My sleeping bag's big enough for two."

  "I've got an aluminized tent that'll just fit over it."

  "It gets to forty or fifty below at night here."

  "That'll be no match for us, darling."

  There was a shot that echoed all through the surrounding slopes. Penelope dove for the sporting rifle leaning against her pack. Alexey already had unslung his own weapon. Around the camp, people had frozen: Wharton was on one knee, his automatic rifle ready, methodically scanning the landscape in a 360-degree circle. She could see Sergei, flat on his belly, sweeping his weapon in an arc. The stocky Russian had moved as swiftly as a striking snake; she could believe what Alexey had said about him.

  A few minutes later a grinning Yakut came into camp, his rifle in one hand and a huge white hare, swinging by its ears, in the other.

  "The bloody fool!" Penelope said.

  Alexey, his face dark with fury, went to speak to the man. Penelope sought out Omogoy. She pushed aside the Mongol guarding the entrance to the yurt and stooped through the flap. A greasy fire burned in a little brazier in the center. The floor was spread with furs. A couple of Mongols were sprawled around, getting drunk. She recognized the leather bottles containing fermented mare's milk, and the bottles of deadly grain alcohol.

  Omogoy was sitting cross-legged, stripped to the waist, a bronze goblet in his hand. She struck the goblet out of his hand and leaned over, her face close to his.

  "One of your men just fired a rifle," she said with cold anger. "Are you trying to bring the Chinese down on us?"

  He lurched to his feet, an animal whose instincts were to kill. She tensed to deliver a disabling blow. But it wasn't necessary. He regained control of himself and stood there, trembling with suppressed rage. The thick slabs of muscle on his torso heaved as he took a deep breath.

  "Woman," he said, "this is a man's yurt. You have violated the kamlanye."

  "Bugger the kamlanye!" she said in Russian. "You've seen me fight."

  "It is true." He nodded. "You fight like a man. Better than a man. Very well. The man will be punished. There will be no more rifle shots."

  She turned to go. As she was bending to go through the flap, he said: "Amerikahnets man-woman!"

  She looked around.

  "The man who will be punished is Ellai. He is like my brother. I will not forget this."

  She pushed her way through the flap, into the cold air.

  The trial was held less than an hour later. The little knot of Americans and Russians sat silently on a knoll a hundred yards away, watching the action below. That was as close as anybody cared to get to the Yakuts.

  The scene was eerie in the brilliant moonlight. A couple of armed Yakuts led the accused man, Ellai, out of the yurt. He was stripped naked in the sub-zero cold. But he wouldn't freeze. Strenuous exertion would keep him warm, even overheat him, as long as there was no wind. The Yakuts often worked, played or hunted stripped to the waist; the only important thing was to get something warm on afterward, before the sweat could freeze.

  They formed the gauntlet on one side of the rope only, because there were fewer than a dozen of them to man it. But Ellai would have to run it twice.

  It was a simple form of justice. If he lived, he was innocent. If he died, he was guilty.

  Nobody had to feel bad about it afterward.

  Omogoy was sprinkling ashes or powder over Ellai's head while the two guards held his arms. They could hear some kind of Yakut ritual chant. Omogoy dipped his finger in a bowl and drew a dark circle around each of the naked man's eyes, then marked the hairless groin.

  "Is forbidden to strike him there," Sergei said to the Baroness. "Omogoy is being merciful. Giving him every chance to survive."

  Sergei wasn't laughing or joking now. The stocky Russian looked ill and unhappy. Penelope turned her head and looked at the girl, Tania. She was leaning forward avidly, a predatory expression on her doll-like face. She licked her lower lip with a small, pointed tongue. The muscleman, Foma, wa
tched impassively. Alexey was grim and silent. Her own people sat, tense and wary.

  Skytop leaned toward Penelope. "Just the way my granddaddy described it to me," he whispered. "I guess we did get it from these folks."

  Ellai put a bare foot on the rope stretched across the ground. At a signal, he began running. One foot accidentally touched the ground. Instantly one of the Yakuts clubbed him in the kidneys. He staggered. The other foot left the rope. Blows rained down on his naked body.

  Miraculously he regained the rope. He tottered another couple of yards. Then he lost his balance again. More clubs and rifle butts thudded into his body. Penelope could hear the blows, the grunts of effort, even at a distance.

  Ellai stumbled along the rope as fast as he could, not able to keep his feet on it with any consistency now. He reached the far end and collapsed into the snow.

  "He's home safe," Skytop said. "But now the poor bastard has to go back."

  The Yakuts gave Ellai a few minutes to recover. Omogoy knelt and gave him something to drink. Then, painfully, the battered man rose to his feet. One arm flapped uselessly at his side.

  "Broken arm," Skytop said. "He'll never make it."

  He got halfway across this time before he lost his footing. A rifle butt caught him in the ribs. He got back on the rope, then tottered. A club thudded into his scalp, dazing him. His feet searched for the rope, but the blood pouring down his face blinded him. While he swayed there, another rifle butt thwacked into his belly. He sank to his knees, and it was all over.

  Silvery in the moonlight, the fur-clad men crowded around him. Clubs rose and fell. It went on for a long time. One of the moonlit figures, flailing away as industriously as a farmer chopping weeds with a hoe, was Omogoy. When the Mongols finally stepped back and formed a respectful circle, the broken figure in the middle bore small resemblance to a man. The limbs were twisted at impossible angles. The body was too flat. The snow was covered with dark stains.

  There was some sort of ceremony then. There was a rising wail that sounded like a funeral chant. They wrapped Ellai's body in a fur and dumped it down a crevasse. They threw his rifle and equipment down after him, and a supply of what looked like foodstuffs. The last item looked like a skinned rabbit.