Emergency Transmission

by Sean McLachlan

  Wei poked his head in the room. “He’s awake.”

  Yu-jin got up and helped her pregnant friend to rise. Quietly they filed out of the room and down a sort hallway to a dark, snug little room in the back. Yao Yong-jun, the family patriarch, lay propped up on the bed, a small tray of food sitting untouched on a nightstand beside him.

  “How are you feeling, father?” Xinxin asked, kneeling down beside the bed.

  The old man smiled and stroked her hair. “I’m more concerned with how you are feeling.”

  Xinxin grinned. “He’s kicking more.”

  Yong-jun smiled back. “Or she.”

  “It’s a boy. I know it.”

  “I don’t know how women do it, but they always seem to be right about that,” Yong-jun said and turned to Yu-jin, fixing her with watery eyes. “How go the preparations?”

  “We set up everything last night. Roy and some volunteers are putting on the finishing touches. Reg—, I mean The Doctor is coming with some guards and we’re going to meet a delegation from the boat on the beach. They’ll be the guests of honor.”

  Yong-jun nodded seriously. “Even confined to this bed I can feel the tension in the air.”

  “It will be all right,” Xinxin reassured him.

  Yong-jun smiled at his daughter again. “Whatever happens, remember that you are doing the right thing. It’s the best path for our community, and especially that grandson of mine. Just be careful.”

  “Yes, father,” Xinxin replied.

  “And don’t even think of leaving me here to miss all the fun. Get a couple of strong men to help Wei and Da-bin carry me to Roy’s place.”

  “All right,” Yu-jin said.

  “And make sure they are Anglo.”

  Yu-jin paused for a second and then understood. She nodded.

  “It’s time for me to go,” Yu-jin said. “I have to meet the ship.”

  “I wish I could go with you,” Xinxin said, rubbing her belly.

  “So do I,” Yong-jun croaked. “Good luck.”

  Twenty minutes later she stood with Reginald and the most trusted of his bodyguards on the beach, watching a launch from the Chinese freighter coming in. Every sailor was armed. Everyone on shore was armed too, from the guards around Reginald to the mob of Burbs residents that had been pushed back to the dunes and ringed with more of the mayor’s bodyguards. The only people who weren’t armed were herself and Pablo, who was jumping up and down with anticipation at seeing his friend again.

  Weapons everywhere, Yu-jin thought glumly. Some party.

  At the prow of the boat sat Captain Wang and Hong-gi. When the boy spotted Pablo on the shore he gave an eager wave. The captain said something to him and Hong-gi stopped and sat up straight, almost at attention.

  Yu-jin rolled her eyes. Things were tense enough without some exaggerated Chinese formality. She’d noticed that the people on the ship were a lot more formal than the Chinese she had known while living in the wildlands and Burbs. Of course they lived in a city state, so they’d kept more of the old ways.

  The motorboat beached on the sand. Pablo sprinted for it.

  “Pablo, wait!” Yu-jin called out.

  “Let him go,” Reginald said. Yu-jin looked at him with surprise. Was that a trace of a smile on his face?

  Pablo made it to the edge of the water just as the sailors were getting ready to hop out and drag the boat to shore. Hong-gi pressed between them and jumped into the water to greet his friend, getting his sailor’s suit wet in the process. Captain Wang didn’t look too pleased about that, but smiled as the two friends embraced.

  “Let’s go,” Reginald said, making for the water. “Sling your guns and keep them slung unless I give the order.”

  Captain Wang, when he saw what the New City guards were doing, ordered his sailors to do the same.

  Yu-jin started translating a greeting from Reginald to Captain Wang, adding a formal welcome for New Year. While the captain kept a calm demeanor, his eyes strayed to the mob in the dunes.

  Good thing he can’t understand what they’re shouting. Yu-jin tried to block that out herself. She’d heard it all before.

  The captain had another reason to be tense. He and Reginald had been discussing the problem with the derrick for the past couple of days and had come to no solution. They didn’t have the manpower or the materials to fix the hole. All the pleasantries and parties in the world weren’t going to change that.

  Yu-jin focused on the problem right in front of her. They moved up through the dunes, Yu-jin translating between the captain and Reginald, as she kept an eye on the mob several hundred meters away. She could hear them jeering the usual slurs. Hong-gi looked nervously in the mob’s direction. Pablo held his hand.

  She didn’t dare look at Reginald. The mayor of New City had griped to his assistants constantly about the dangers of this celebration, but had never said a cross word to her. He knew the party was the right thing to do, and saved his bile for those who wouldn’t fight back.

  And why didn’t they fight back? Clyde, Roy, Marcus, and all the rest deferred to him so much. Even when they were defying him they were looking for his approval. They held him in awe, and that ended up hurting him. She’d never met someone so alone. When the last of her family had died she had thought no one could be more alone than her, but at least she had people once, and had friends and something approaching a family once again. He had never had that and never will. He needed her.

  But did she need him? Yes, she felt safe and relaxed around him despite his moods. And she learned so much from him. Would she ever have used a computer if it wasn’t for him, or seen photos of the Chinese moon base? She only wished their friendship could be free of politics, but she didn’t have that luxury. Like everyone else, she had to come to Reginald asking for things. She had to burden him with her problems and the problems of her community. The fact that it was necessary and that he wanted to help didn’t make it feel any better. She was wearing him down as much as anyone else.

  They passed through the dunes and onto the farmland beyond. This close to the sea the land was poor. Luckily the weather had held out for the past couple of days and it didn’t stink anymore. Yu-jin sent up a thanks to God for giving good weather for New Year’s.

  They soon left the mob behind and approached town. Yu-jin took a deep breath. Now came the real test.

  She had chosen a route that would take them through the thinnest and most open part of the Burbs to get as quickly as possible to the main avenue leading to $87,953. As they came to the first outlying tents and shacks, Sheriff Annette Cruz met them. With a curt nod to their distinguished guests that was almost as rude as ignoring them completely, she said, “All clear. I’ve told Reverend Wallace that if he and his followers made an appearance today I’d arrest them for incitement. Jackson Andrews and a couple of deputies are at his church making sure he doesn’t leave.”

  “Is incitement a crime in the Burbs now?” Reginald asked.

  “Well, I can let them run free if that’s what you prefer,” Annette told him.

  “It’s your slum, not mine,” Reginald grumbled.

  “Then I get to make the laws. I’m considering a general ordinance against being an asshole.”

  Yu-jin cut in. “Thank you for your help, Annette. We’re sure you’re doing the best that you can and we’re grateful for it.”

  Annette turned to her. “Happy New Year.”

  While it came out with her usual gruff tone, it sounded sincere.

  “Thanks. We’ll save some extra desserts for you and your deputies.”

  Annette gave a lopsided grin. “I hope you got a lot of desserts, because I have a hell of a lot of deputies today.”

  And she did. As they passed through the Burbs, with Annette taking the lead, they saw deputies with rifles and shotguns at each intersection and at each place that sold liquor. The streets were quiet. Of the few people out and about, some stared curiously at the entourage, a few glared, and a few, a very few, smiled and w
aved. One guy even attempted to say something in what sounded like Mandarin.

  “What did he say?” one of the sailors asked.

  “I think he was trying to say Happy New Year,” Yu-jin said. Or maybe “fuck you” in some other language.

  “Happy New Year to you too!” the sailor called out to him in Mandarin. That got a confused look and an uncertain wave.

  “Didn’t know you were giving language lessons,” Reginald said.

  “I’m not. I guess someone else taught him.”

  “How are the guests doing?” Annette asked. “They look a bit tense.”

  “So do we, but they know this is important,” Yu-jin said.

  They made it to the main avenue without incident, and took the guests through an arch the Chinese community had created. It was a metal scaffolding covered with red cloth painted with expressions of good luck in gold lettering. Yu-jin smiled with pride. It was a good copy of an arch she’d seen in one of the old magazines her relatives on the ship had given her. A perfect way to greet their overseas guests to a New Year’s celebration.

  The effect was somewhat ruined by a pair of Reginald’s guards with assault rifles and full Kevlar protecting it from vandalism, but Captain Wang was far too practical a man to be insulted by that.

  Yu-jin couldn’t believe it, but within five minutes of passing through the arch they stood in $87,953 toasting their honored guests. Chinese music played on the loudspeaker, dozens of red lanterns hung from the roof, and an assembly of New City and Burbs residents were eating Chinese food and shaking hands with the sailors. There must have been two hundred locals there, and while that was only about a twentieth of the population, everyone looked like they were having a good time.

  More people drifted in, attracted no doubt by the smells of all the food. “Nothing like free food to draw a crowd,” Roy said as he slung drinks behind the bar. Yu-jin smiled.

  Her heart warmed further when she noticed that a bunch of Pablo’s friends had come along. They were listening with wide eyes and open mouths as Hong-gi told them about his new duties aboard the freighter, and how he was learning to use the radio and the navigational equipment and had even been allowed on deck to turn the boat once when they needed to change heading.

  “It’s going great,” Xinxin told her as she ladled out wonton soup for some hungry-looking scavengers. “Father looks happier than he has in months.”

  Yao Yong-jun sat in a padded chair in a corner with a plate full of food sitting untouched in front of him. He didn’t seem to notice the food was there; he was too busy watching the party with eyes brimming with happy tears.

  Yu-jin had almost convinced herself the day would go without a hitch until the sounds of an angry mob outside snapped her back to reality.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  David knew he’d be needed.

  For the past few days, he’d been preaching God’s word in the marketplace, telling all who would listen a simple message of acceptance, tolerance, and the chance at redemption.

  At least he hoped it was God’s word. The religion of his parents had been a vague hope for a better world in the hereafter. While his mother and father had always said that God loved everyone equally, there had been no talk of that ideal being practiced in the real world. The world was too hard and dangerous for that. After he had joined the Righteous Horde, religion had been all about those who had been chosen and those who had to be wiped out. There was hope in the Pure One’s preaching, but it was the bitter promise that only after killing everyone outside the cult would the world be made clean again.

  David preached a different doctrine, the one God should be practicing whether He was or not.

  Of course he endured plenty of mockery. Some people sneered at the very existence of God, or questioned how you could love your neighbor when your neighbor would steal everything you had given half a chance. David didn’t really have the answers to these rebukes, and so continued with his sermon, rolling over the naysayers with words about trust and love.

  The first day he had barely attracted any attention. By the third day when he showed up at the market he found a sizeable crowd waiting for him.

  The fourth day was Chinese New Year.

  He’d heard enough about what people thought of the Chinese and their festival to know he’d be needed in the marketplace all day.

  So as their strange music played from Roy’s bar and unusual smells wafted out of his kitchen, David spoke of the Chinese. He told half truths about how he had met Chinese scavengers in the wildlands and how they were just as good as anyone else. He told of Chu, a man from the Righteous Horde. He didn’t mention where he had met him, or the many atrocities the man had committed, but instead focused on the man’s piety and sense of loyalty. He talked of how, when they had gone hungry, Chu had shared with him his last little bit of grain.

  That was a true story, and David could tell it affected his audience. David swallowed the bitterness he felt at leaving so much of the story out.

  Did that count as a lie? Was it wrong to twist the truth to tell the truth?

  He wasn’t sure, but out of the corner of his vision, through the thin circle of listeners who had stopped to hear him, he saw the delegation from the ship, and he knew that a voice speaking of tolerance was needed now more than ever before.

  “They are people, my friends,” he said, nodding towards the little group of Chinese men wearing white uniforms, and the guards all around them. A Chinese woman was with them, not in uniform, and David recognized her as the woman who helped him at sea. “People just like you and I. Flawed people, people burdened with sin, but also people with goodness in them. They are no better and no worse than you or I. God sees all of us as equal, and to look at people any other way is a sin.”

  “Yeah, and some people sin more than others,” a black man said from the crowd. David knew what he meant. The white guy nodding in agreement next to him obviously did not.

  The words of David’s father came back to him. You just can’t trust white people.

  David paused. For a moment his words, which had flowed so easily in the past few days, failed him.

  Then he rallied.

  “Hate the sin, love the sinner. If some people sin more than others, it’s all the more reason to love them more. If you sin because someone sins against you, you only have yourself to blame.”

  A woman in the crowd wrote that down.

  David continued his sermon, even though the crowd’s attention had shifted to the Chinese heading for Roy’s bar. He saw a lot of hard faces in that crowd, so he spoke louder.

  “The freighter is a gift from God! It has brought two warring peoples together for a chance at redemption!”

  “I’d be happy if they figured out how to cap that damn well,” someone in the crowd muttered.

  David didn’t know what the man was talking about and didn’t want to interrupt his sermon to find out. He continued.

  “The Chinese are celebrating their new year. I say it can be a new year for all of us!”

  For another half hour he continued in a similar vein. Like in his previous sermon, he felt the words were not entirely his own. It gave him confidence. Maybe the Lord really was on his side. Maybe he really was a tool for His will.

  Don’t fool yourself, his doubts whispered to him. There is no God. After all you’ve gotten away with, do you really think there’s a pure-hearted judge up there? And even if there was, do you really think He loves you?

  David tamped those doubts down.

  “Even the greatest sinner is still loved!” he shouted, his voice cracking.

  It was at that moment the Reverend Wallace stomped down the road at the head of about thirty armed followers.

  “Enough!” the Reverend cried. “Enough of this travesty! Haven’t we suffered enough at the hands of these devils? Do we have to hear their music and eat their poisonous food too?”

  His followers spread out to form a rough line facing Roy’s bar. Most of the crowd who had be
en listening to David backed off. A couple of guards in front of the bar held their ground, while another ran inside.

  “The only devils here are the ones dividing us, my friend,” David said, giving him a level stare.

  The Reverend noticed him for the first time. “Oh, it’s you. I knew you’d be one of them.”

  David tensed. Had the Reverend guessed where he had come from?

  “What do you mean?” David asked.

  “A lover of the Chinese!”

  “God loves everyone. Shouldn’t we follow his example?”

  “He loves Godly people, not demons in human form.”

  “That’s Blame!” someone shouted.

  “No it isn’t, it’s the truth!” one of the Reverend’s followers shouted back.

  David glanced at the two guards in front of the bar. Would they do anything? They were outnumbered more than ten to one, and people kept gathering behind the Reverend’s crowd. David wasn’t armed. He’d taken to walking through the Burbs without a weapon, trying to follow his vow.

  “There’s no need for this, Reverend,” David said.

  “Oh yes there is! We have to root out the serpents in our midst.”

  The music inside had stopped. David heard movement behind him. The Reverend’s followers tensed.

  David dared a glance over his shoulder. Armed men and women issued out of the doorway and took up position facing the Reverend’s mob. David stood right between both lines. Everyone else backed away.

  Then Roy himself came out of the bar, along with the mayor and the Asian woman who had helped him out at sea.

  A flash of recognition sparked in her eyes when she looked at him.

  They did not have time to get reacquainted.

  “Drop your weapons and disperse this instant!” the mayor barked.