by Sam Abraham
“We were farmers, starving,” he said. “I had been in the Army as a younger man, so I signed up for security detail with the River Syndicate because I thought with the money I could pay for a maker and print clean food for my family. While I was on tour in the Ghost Lands, my little boy wasted away from lack of food. And when he died, my wife went to the top of Huangshan and threw herself from the rocks to join him.” The soldier’s stare grew dark. “The River Syndicate could have saved my wife and son. Instead, those careless bastards let my family die.”
Shen frowned. “Time is short,” he said. “Let’s get Yang and help him finish his work.”
Shen put a few items in a duffle-bag, including a holodrone and food rations, and led them to his jeep, their footsteps barely audible under the wild chirping of cicadas. The old Centrist drove them to the fence, where he flashed a badge at battledrones who asked no questions.
As they sped away, Li said, “You’re lucky, Xie, to avoid the prison camp. To have a second chance. Anything is better than the laogai.”
Xie gave her a curious glance. “Say that when you’ve lost someone you love,” he said. “The land cries out for justice. I would join any cause with a chance to kill wicked men.”
“Your real enemy isn’t the men,” Shen said. “They are just a symptom. If you kill a few men out here, more will come to take their place in a month. Your real enemy is the Ghost Lands themselves, the force leaving millions of the poor to starve. Logically, the best vengeance is a haven where mass starvation no longer threatens the countryside. Where the poor and meek become strong.”
Li looked at Xie, waiting for him to reply. But he said nothing, his gaze absorbed by the dark hills.
Chapter 16 – Yu (豫)
The Ancient Kings Made Music
A fat orange sun rose as Shen drove the jeep through the mountains, to where a lonely occuhive overlooked a thin pseudocity. Cicadas were still chirping.
When the three of them reached Yang’s flat, the professor was waiting. “It’s about time,” he said as the metal doors slid open.
Shen said, “We appreciate your patience. Are you ready to leave?”
Yang nodded. “Will you tell Eli Warner where we’re meeting him?”
Shen nodded and looked around. He pointed to his ears. The message was clear. Shadows were listening. “We should visit the surrounding countryside. Then we will have time for stories. Li Xuesheng, you are new here. Would you like to see the hill country? Your father will meet us out there too,” her teacher said with a grin. “He is very much looking forward to seeing you.”
The streets of Jingdezhen woke slowly as they drove away. This pseudocity, like others in the Ghost Lands, had ebbed as millions fled to the safety of the walled cites during the Great Nationalization. Now it was a backwater village thirsting for drops of technoluxury. Robots carrying drinking water - for municipal plumbing had long since been undependable - rambled past artisans loading oxen with clay. Wild dogs yipped at armored grocery tanks that sold small bites to anyone with money.
Yang drove his jeep slowly through the streets. As the professor pinged Eli and Zoe with instructions for where to meet, Li watched the desolate shell of a once-charming city. The life she had always dreamed of had evaporated faster than dew in the desert. They passed a park where, in an effort to maintain a semblance of a bygone era, River Syndicate militia protected young couples waltzing. Li watched women in sundresses and men in simple slacks dance in time like a slap in her face.
When they reached the artisan’s district, Shen looked around and said, “Now, where is our guide?” And he led them into the porcelain market, to the pavilion with blue stallion tapestries.
The bandit Sun was just where Li had left him, seated in his tent, twirling his coins upon a threadbare mat. He looked up as Shen approached him with the others. Shen gave Sun a broad smile and said cordially, “Good morning, sir. I was the gentleman who contacted you earlier about being our guide? We are very much looking forward to seeing the countryside.”
Now, Shen had indeed long ago arranged a deal with the bandit for safe quarter in the hills, far from the search perimeter of River Syndicate drones. But Sun raised his eyes at the size of the group with Shen. “You said nothing about so many,” he said, looking around suspiciously.
“I should not have to,” Shen said calmly, bearing his teeth. “I am paying you for the details to be irrelevant. Do you, or do you not, have a cozy hillside bungalow for my friends?”
“Perhaps,” Sun said. “I will let the Oracle decide.” The bandit threw his coins, and drew his lines. “The fourth line, unbroken,” he said, quoting the I Ching. “Let suspicions not enter his mind, and friends gather around him.” He considered the verse, gave a satisfied grunt, collected his coins and stood, beckoning the men guarding his tent. “Boys,” the bandit said, “These fools want to pay us to join our camp.”
“What’s the catch?” one said. “How do we know they’re not Centrist spies?”
“The Oracle has vouched for them,” Sun said, spitting on the ground. “If fate wishes to drop coins in our pocket, why should we argue?”
Shen allayed his misgivings about the superstitious bandit, and soon their jeep was following Sun and his men as they rode hydrocycles into the mountains. The bandit was true to his word. He took them several hours north, past the psuedocity of Anqing. Traces of civilization faded as they drove into the hills, past lonely agribots and ox-driven pushcarts, to a broad mesa saddled within a crown of mountains. Cutting the engine, the bandit Sun took a deep breath of alpine air. “Welcome home,” he said with a gap-toothed grin.
Li followed Sun into the camp, which was little more than a pathetic string of wooden lean-tos braced against rough granite. Men looked up from throwing dice near dying fires. She saw the hunger in their eyes.
It was time for answers, she knew. Here in the west they were far from Shen’s Centrists and Yang’s universities and all their seats of power. These were wild lands, and she felt beyond the grip of order. She wandered to the edge of the mesa to watch the sun set and cast florid hues over the mountains. The great cities appeared tiny, enveloped by the patchwork land, and from here all the games of man looked small. Even the sea was distant and invisible.
Part 2: Young Yang
Chapter 17 – Sui (隨)
The Western Mountain
Shen wasted no time in arranging the meet. The sun had barely set when the Centrist called his protégé to him. “Xiao Li,” he said, “Your father wishes to see you. Are you ready to meet him?”
She looked into the bandit camp’s bonfire, avoiding her teacher’s eyes. “I’ve disappointed you, Laoshi. Will my father be disappointed too?”
Shen shook his head. “You are more fragile than you should be, it is true. I blame the latency on your Hong Kong upbringing. You identify more with people than may be healthy. But the blood rules in the end.” Shen saw the questions in her eyes. “This is what you wanted, is it not? Trust me, your father has been looking forward to this meeting even more than you.”
Shen led Li south of their mountain hideout. As dusk fell, they saw a dimly lit factory in the valley. “You must go on alone from here,” Shen said. “I will meet you back at camp.”
Uncertain, Li went down into the valley. A hybrid met her and led her to the factory. She had never seen a hybrid in the field before, but recognized the Xinren model from her studies in the Complex. It was a Scout. The compound eyes in its bald head blinked yellow and caught the gloom. The creature opened its broad nostrils, tasting her scent. It smiled at her hungrily, showing rows of razor teeth.
The Scout escorted Li through the maze of the factory and into a glass room. Beyond several rows of tanks was a window and a man in a crisp gray suit. His smooth black hair framed a pale face with eyeglasses. As he stared at her, his hands clasped, Li saw that there was something wrong with his unfocused eyes, his unmoving legs. He was too calm, too flat. Then she saw the tiny grains of dust floating through him.
Sure enough, above him were four tiny drones, no bigger than fingernails, emitting light.
It was a holo.
“Come here,” the projection said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m your father. I apologize for not being able to meet you in person. Affairs of state, you understand.”
Li frowned, confused. “I thought you’d be older,” she said.
The projection smiled and said, “I am older than I look.” It nodded at the hybrid, and the beast left the room. “Shen tells me your programming remains intact,” the impeccably dressed shade said, “despite your years away. I have been looking forward to this moment for longer than you can guess.”
“Where have you been?”
“Searching for you. You were taken from me when you were very young.”
“By the man posing as my uncle?”
The hologram nodded. “He was an Army officer, caught selling secrets to the Xinkuomintang and other reactionary rebel cells. He escaped before he could face justice, and stole you as a bargaining chip before he fled the mainland. We didn’t know where you were until Shen found you a few months ago. I wanted to see you so badly. It was a mark of my sacrifice that I put you through the program instead.”
“Sacrifice?” Li said incredulously. “To what?”
“To the People,” the hologram said, as if it were obvious. “We have a mission for you.”
“Why are we meeting in a factory?” she said, tired of waiting. “When can I see where you live? Where is Mother?”
The hologram smiled wistfully. “I promise we’ll be together soon. We were in Shanghai for a while, when you were first born. Your mother and I moved when you were taken. We’ve been looking for you a long time, you know. I’ll join you in person when the time is right to go see her. I wish we could go now,” the holo sighed flatly, “but duty comes first in our family. I need your help to save the Ghost Lands.”
The holo beckoned towards the window, and Li reluctantly approached, watching the projection’s cold, unwrinkled eyes. She supposed its expression was meant to be nurturing. It looked not a day older than twenty-five. What duty could be more important than her and her mother? After all those years wishing for family, after all these years knowing her mother only as holobead playback, this was not the answer she had expected.
The holo sensed her hesitation. “I have great plans for you,” it said. “Your studies in the Complex were only the beginning. Soon you will become more powerful than you can imagine.”
“I don’t understand, Father,” she said, tasting the word with caution.
“Anhui Province seems so peaceful from here,” the holo said. “And yet, between famine and decay, it is on the brink of chaos. It is shameful what technocrats have done to the interior, pulling out services and infrastructure, renting it to the lowest bidder. No wonder people call it the Ghost Lands. Shanghai is practically a stone’s throw away, and yet it might as well be in another world.” The holo turned towards Li. “The land must be remade, child. Razed and rebuilt. We must destroy the River Syndicate, for they should never have been allowed to administer the hinterland. If we shame them publicly by releasing the chaos that is boiling under the surface, all will see that they are unfit to rule.”
“Why does it have to be us?” Li said, hardly believing her ears.
“Daughter,” the holo said gently, “we are blessed to be a family of vision and status, but such gifts do not come freely. My father was from a small village, and through our ascendance we never forgot our roots. When your mother and I saw what the Centrists were doing to our own people, we had to act. Come, see what we are building.”
Beyond the window the dark land grew light, as if dawn had come early. Li knew it was only another holo, but she became enrapt as the view zoomed in, showing healthy farmers, tan and ageless, working with agribots to plant lush gardens. Shining silos rose from green hills, and drones built cables from the silos to nearby villages, where children laughed in sunshine. The harmony between technology and humanity in the western farmland seduced her sense of purpose.
“This is what the land should be,” the holo of her father said as the window faded and the land became dark again. “Good people immune from starvation, empowered by local, clean energy. This is what I once proposed to the highest circles of Centrist power.” The holo shook his head. “They laughed at me, called me a crazy dreamer. Much more practical, they said, to consolidate the populace in cities, license the countryside to mercenaries. They saw my vision and chose the Ghost Lands instead. No, if we are to build a better world, we must take fate into our own hands. That is why we gave you, our only daughter, enhanced gifts. You, more than any soldier or hybrid, can thrive in the Ghost Lands and have the power to transform it for millions.”
The idea of transforming the land with her parents, of being honored as a hero, was the essence of Li's oldest hope. She sank into the promise that she was, in fact, truly special. “This is too much,” she whispered, overwhelmed. “Where would we even start?”
“You will release a virus into the countryside,” the holo said.
“I don’t understand. How would a virus—“
The image smiled. “Shen will give you the details. Talk to no one about this, other than him.” Drawing close, the holo bathed her it its absence of warmth. “Remember, first the River Syndicate must be humiliated. Your mother and I will meet you in the pseuodocity of Ma’anshan, at the edge of River Syndicate territory, in three months’ time.”
Only then did it hit Li that there was something off about the holo of her father. It was not in his expression, for that did not change. But the hologram just stared at her, refreshing every few seconds, as if the mind behind it was waiting. “What?” she asked.
The hologram smiled coldly. “You haven’t asked me my name.”
Li laughed, amazed. “No I suppose not,” she said. “What is it?”
“Call me Lao,” the holo said. “Good luck, daughter. Make your mother and me proud.”
With that, the projection wavered and vanished. The hybrid returned, and escorted her into the field beyond the factory, where Li felt her dreams rising from the dawn dew.
Chapter 18 - Gu (蠱)
Wind Blows Low On The Mountain
Li reached camp as the morning wove itself into the mountains. While the others were sleeping, she went to where Shen sat, in a shallow cave, to find respite from the mosquitos. Small candles cast her teacher’s shadow on the stone wall. He was already awake, sitting cross-legged, his hands in his dusty lap as he studied her. She sat with him as candlelight danced across their faces.
“How did it go?” Shen said finally.
She looked inspired, and troubled, as she recounted her father’s instructions. “He spoke about a virus. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes. As do you, more than you know,” Shen said.
“Are we really going to expose innocent people to disease?” Li asked, conflicted. She wanted to please her father, and be worthy of his trust. But she also imagined burning in Hell, and she wondered whether that’s what happened to people unleashing plague on unsuspecting souls, whether they believed in Hell or not.
“It’s not a disease,” Shen said, “It’s a vector.”
“A what?”
Shen chuckled. “I was right about you being enhanced, wasn’t I?” He waited for her to see the truth, to awaken her hidden misgivings. “You did not believe me at first, but I was right. Yang showed you his power plant, correct? The one using longshui for energy mining?”
“I saw it light up a canyon.”
“Longshui is a platform technology, you see, with three applications. Clean energy is the first. Your special talents are the second application. This virus is the third. It is highly virulent once it invades the bloodstream, but it is not airborne. Not contagious. And not destructive. Infecting people with it would be the greatest kindness you could do them.”
Then it all came together. “The tents? Yang’s experiment?”
“But Yang was already using the virus in the tents. Why do you need me?”
Shen smiled. “Originally, your father worked with Dr. Yang to distribute the virus as a vaccine. It was an utter failure. People became suspicious of the treatment after the Centrists and the River Syndicate actively moved to stop its distribution, and demonized it in media, calling our vaccine a poison. We should have suspected such vile tactics. After all, the Ghost Lands ceases to be a deterrent for troublemakers if famine is not deadly. It becomes a breeding ground for trouble if technology can transform the banished proletariat so that they no longer need fear the bourgeoisie.”
She thought of the story Xie told her the night they left the tents. “That is why my father wants to discredit the River Syndicate?” she said.
Shen nodded again. “These are potent secrets, Xuesheng. Be careful about telling those who are not ready, especially Xie. He is a good man, but I have kept the truth from him. His wife and son might still be alive if they had been treated with longshui. Even after the negative propaganda, once there is news of a famine vaccine, we will face a stampede of desperate people. And if the Centrists learn what we are doing while the River Syndicate appears viable, we will be in danger. Some people in power have invested political capital to create the Ghost Lands, and they will do anything to preserve credibility.”
“How can we help people if we can’t tell them what we have?”
