by Sam Abraham
“It breaks my heart to say this,” Xie said, “but we do not know when Communion will be next.”
The old man groaned despondently. “How shall I last? Where will I sleep?”
“I will make sure you have quarters,” Xie said, suddenly filled with compassion. He scratched around his eye patch, which he did these days when lost in thought, and an idea struck him. “Also, I will see about a doctor for you, to help ease your pain.”
So it was that Xie’s couriers brought a physician to the tower he had taken for his headquarters. When the doctor arrived, Xie closed the sacred text that he was reading, and led him to a room with holos of maps draping the walls. There, the old man lay on a futon, groaning in discomfort. “Well,” Xie said, “can you help him?”
“I will need to do a full work up,” the doctor said. “How do you intend to pay?”
“Cash and precious metal ingot.”
Raising an eyebrow, the doctor retrieved holobeads with tractates of medical knowledge, as well as a self-sterilizing fingerprick. He took a drop of the old man’s blood and passed it through a cylinder, running lab tests at the patient’s bedside. Uploading the patient’s sequenced panomics profile from his sample analyzer, he traced the paths of differential diagnosis. Then the physician pulled a cube from his satchel, flipped open a panel, and handed the old man a small yellow pill. The old man ate it gratefully, and within minutes, his discomfort dissolved. He opened his eyes and smiled.
“Thank you, doctor,” the old man said. “And you too, Captain, for taking pity on your elders.”
Xie smiled. “If we talk about the righteousness of the meek but do nothing for them, what would that make us? Are you well enough to return to the room we arranged for you?”
“Yes, I think so,” the old man said. A warrior in white helped the old man out of Xie’s suite. Another man arrived with a stack of pink bank notes and two glinting yellow balls that he handed to the doctor. The doctor put the cash in his satchel and examined the shiny baubles in his palm, assessing their weight.
“Should I assume this is gold?” he asked Xie.
Xie nodded. “What did you give him?”
The doctor shrugged. “Just something to relieve the pain. Your friend has autoimmune vascularitis. I’m terribly sorry. I can’t be sure how damaged his organs are without more tests. You should know his time is short, even with the best medicine.”
Xie nodded, not sure what to feel. “Something for his pain is enough.”
The doctor nodded. “Let me know if you change your mind.” Then he looked at Xie, as if seeing him for the first time. “How did you hurt your eye?”
Xie involuntarily touched his bandages. “Defending the Lady in the Moon,” he said.
The doctor nodded again. “I know of a good ophthalmic surgeon who can set you up with a clean implant. It won’t be quite like it used to be, but you’ll see color and shape again. If you want.”
Xie imagined being whole again, and asked, “Will he take gold?”
It took three days to arrange the operation in a hospital downtown. As police continued to comb Nanjing, arresting anyone they thought might be connected with the recent demonstration, a local banker agreed to take the ingot and transfer the funds to a surgeon, on the condition that the case be treated anonymously. It was not the first time.
When Xie lay down on the operating table, a woman leaned over him with a breathing tube. The last sound the One-Eyed Captain heard before slipping into a dreamless void was the high-pitched whir of grinding metal.
Chapter 39 - Jian (蹇)
The King’s Servant
Shen looked down onto the courtyard at the swirling nest of refugees that was the City of Heaven on Earth. Rumors had spread: southwest of Nanjing, in the Ghost Lands, was a place where people no longer needed food to survive. Whole families had migrated from the west, from as far as the Centrist outposts of Chengdu and Chongqing, to be saved. Only once they had risked their lives on the journey did they realize that for every transformed Jade warrior, there were five more like them, hungry and waiting restlessly for Communion.
“I like the new addition, Xie,” Shen said, pointing to his eye as the Captain entered his suite. “Bad enough you used gold from the treasury, when it’s taken a small fortune to pay off the Jiangsu security forces to ignore us. But to have it look so inhuman? Has anyone shown you what you look like?” The bandit Sun was there too, and laughed.
“You are talking about trivialities,” Xie said halfheartedly, remembering the mirror the surgeon had given him when the bandages came off. He remembered seeing the dark biotissue with microprocessors hooked into his optic nerve, and thinking with horror that his new eye looked like an obsidian marble. “We have more important issues. People are already starting to forget the grace of Lady Li because we ran out of-” he was about to say longshui, then remembered to wonder how much the others knew. “—Of Communion wafers.”
Shen frowned. “We created this enemy, it plays by our rules. Just give them a placebo.”
“You mean lie about the body of Chang’e?” Xie said, aghast. It was bad enough they were disguising a vaccine in holy clothes. To then counterfeit the treatment made Xie feel defiled in his bones.
Shen shrugged. “This is what the Jade need to stay together. Call your doctor friend and get him to give you more painkillers. Add in an appetite suppressant while we’re at it.”
“That won’t last forever,” Xie said, “and you know it.”
Shen smiled. “Brother Sun, prepare a Communion ceremony for a week from tonight. Xie, make sure Sun has what he needs.” Then he turned to look again on the sprawl of white tents, which was starting to look less like some Utopian shrine and more like a shantytown spreading its tentacles.
Xie cleared his throat and said, “Lady Li put me in charge, Shen, and I’m ord—“
“You’re what?” Shen snapped. “You don’t give me orders, you fucking gigolo.”
Xie frowned and left the tower, seeing he would not convince Shen with words. He wandered the grounds of the encampment, looking at the dirty faces of people in white tunics, huddled between the tenements. Some stared back, recognizing the One-Eyed Captain, the consort of the Lady in the Moon. Surely, they assumed, he knew when they would again have Communion.
As he looked at them, his new cybernetic eye made them appear to glow inside, as the implant picked up the infrared light of their heat. He could not tell them that that the last of the longshui had been used, that they were lost if Li never returned with more. All he could think about was the old man, thankful for relief. And when pilgrims came to him with pleas and uncomfortable questions, he could only bring himself to tell them a story about how Chang’e would favor an eight-sided camp, for it reminded her of the eight trigrams of the I Ching. Frustrated that he could not do more, he thought he heard the messiah inside guiding him, not with trumpets, but in quiet inklings of compassion. But he was not sure.
At the end of the week, Xie led a few men to where a snaking waterway was fed by the Yangzi. A water taxi had deposited two people upon the riverbank. One was the doctor who had treated the old man. The other, Xie was surprised to see, was Jia Anmei, Cultural Minister of the River Syndicate.
He studied Anmei and said, “I thought you were at the Holy Lake, with Dr. Yang?”
If Anmei was disturbed by Xie’s new cybernetic eye, she did not show it. Instead, she simply accepted his scarred face. “It was an enlightening visit,” she said. “Li Aizhu would be interested to hear my impression of her hospitality, if I would have the honor of an audience.”
“Lady Li is meditating and currently unavailable,” Xie said darkly.
“Is that so?” Anmei said, raising her eyebrows theatrically. “Then perhaps I might talk with Shen? I have some information that may interest him.”
Instead of replying, Xie only turned to the doctor, and said, “What did you bring?”
The doctor shrugged. “Codeine for the pain. Phentermine for the hunger.
More than enough for an army.” He rubbed his chin and inspected Xie’s face. “Healing well, I see. How is it working?”
Xie’s cybernetic eye revealed the orange glow of heat radiating from the doctor’s heart. “Well enough,” he said. “Come with me, both of you.”
The One-Eyed Captain led them back into the housing district, where he told his sergeants to take the doctor to his penthouse and prepare the sacrament. Anmei saw the collage of dirty tents and hungry pilgrims that the City of Heaven on Earth had become, and said, “Your following has grown, Captain, despite the absence of Li Aizhu. How is the health of your community?”
“People have come from as far as Shaanxi and Yunnan,” Xie said, wanting his words to bite but instead betraying his fatigue. “They have heard the stories and ask us to heal them.”
Anmei shook her head and said, “Food prices are the highest they have ever been.” She watched a group of old women with starving children hold their distended bellies. “Can the Jade not feed its people? Surely you must have assets from the cities that your movement has taken.”
Xie said, “What is it you want from me?”
“The truth,” she said, crossing her arms. “There are rumors that there is more than codeine and phentermine in your sacrament. If you aren’t feeding these people, what are you giving them?”
The captain considered the woman’s inner glow. “Hope,” he said. “We’re giving them hope.”
When they reached the penthouse headquarters, Xie announced their visitors. “Brother Shen,” Xie said, “Jia Anmei, emissary from Wuhu, is here to see you.”
Sun was there too, and, seeing the woman he had imprisoned, was white with shock that she had escaped and feared that she would betray him. He pointed his staff at Anmei and bellowed, “This woman is a spy. She proposed to me in secret that we destroy the Jade.”
“And you,” Anmei said, standing tall, “tortured Dr. Yang and imprisoned him before you abandoned the Holy Lake to come here and seduce the seat of power.”
“Lies!” Sun shouted, and lifted his staff to strike Anmei. She cried out and held her hands up, waiting for the blow. But as Sun swung his staff, Captain Xie caught it in midair, twisted it from Sun’s grasp and pushed the bandit to the ground.
“You forget yourself, Brother Sun,” Xie said coldly, looking down on his quarry. “Jia Anmei is a true believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Do not treat her as if she were a common heretic.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Anmei said breathlessly. The cyclopean soldier was the last person she had expected to defend her or her faith. But his gallantry forced her to look at him again. She saw his handsome face, marred by sacrifice, and felt a new curiosity about his misguided belief.
But curiosity had to wait. Anmei felt the eyes of her Guoanbu puppet masters, the State Security Ministry. She turned to Shen and asked, “Now, Brother Shen, what is longshui?”
At her words, Shen’s face grew dark, and he said, “Xie, Sun, leave us,” his glare leaving no room for argument. “Go prepare for tonight’s ritual.”
Xie excused himself. He remembered his promise to the Lady Li, to keep the Jade together, and felt a wave of guilt that he was keeping secrets from others. For Li had told him of longshui, and had convinced him that others were not ready to know the truth of its origin. But he wondered whether Shen would be as faithful to Li as he was, and found himself afraid for her.
Not wishing to dwell on his fear, he focused on compassion instead. He sent people to purchase a maker, though it depleted the treasury, and circulated a message throughout the City of Heaven on Earth that all who wished to come and eat should join him at sunset.
In the evening, Jade warriors who had previously taken Communion surrounded the square, satiated and strong. Rice was printed and set in giant plates on long tables for the mob of new arrivals, the starving pilgrims who had never eaten longshui. And when the new penitents came and ate, and the plates were emptied, more rice was printed, and still more, until tens of thousands had eaten their fill.
The Jade elite sat on the wooden dais overlooking the courtyard. Shen and Sun were in the center, drinking whisky and taking gifts on behalf of Jade families. To their left sat Xie, the doctor, and Jia Anmei. Those on the stage were served delicacies that the common tables were not, barbecued meat and roast duck and fresh vegetables purchased from restaurants that Sun had selected personally. Each time a new dish was served, Xie looked at Anmei to see if she would like it. But she refused every dish, except the rice.
His guilt overpowering, Xie made a show of passing a platter of duck to her. “Have you tried the eight gifts duck?” he said. “It is the best south of Tianjin.”
Jia smiled warmly. “I’m sure it is delicious. But no thank you.”
“Won’t you try a little?”
“Perhaps,” she replied, “when it is served to all.”
Xie gave her an inquisitive look. “How was your talk with Shen?”
Anmei shrugged. “He said Yang’s experiments are too advanced for his understanding. You should ask to see the gift I brought him, so you know that he has nothing to hide.”
Xie frowned, for her words wormed their way into him. “I pray that you see the Jade as more than just Brothers Shen and Sun. There are thousands of good people who have seen their own divinity because of Li Aizhu. I hope you will get a chance to know them.”
She watched Xie’s dark, cybernetic eye twitch as he examined her. “Your people have faith, Captain. I’ll give you that. I have never seen anyone look forward to Communion as much as the Jade.”
Now Xie smiled, a guileless smile that was a tiny fragment of a former life escaping. “That’s because the revelation is real,” he said. “The Messiah has come again, awakened inside all of us.”
“Is it revelation?” she asked. “I was taught there was only one true revelation, to Jesus and his disciples and the saints. And there’s nothing in it about Chang’e being the elder sister of Christ. You seem like a good man, Captain, a righteous man. I wish you would come with me to an established Church. You should save yourself, come into the fold of the true teaching.”
He heard her words as a cold threat. “Or what?”
The physician put his hand on Xie’s arm. “I think what Anmei is trying to say, Captain, is that your Jade have put people on edge. If the stories are true, you have embarrassed the River Syndicate. The Centrists will not let that stand, and you cannot win forever. Come with us while there is still time.”
Now Xie smiled a condescending smile from a place deep and dark, a place of relenting. “Excuse me,” he said, seeing the fat moon above, “it is time for the ritual to begin.”
Xie descended into the courtyard from the dais, and watched with thousands as musicians and dancers came to the center of the great horde. They came in silk colored like the sea and the sun and the chrysanthemum, with fluttering flags, beating on drums. The women wore bangles over their eyes, the men in headbands and broad smiles. Xie smiled with them. He had invited them here, fed and paid them to sing songs from the cloud terraces of Hubei and the stone forest of Yunnan and the badlands of Ningxia, and for many pilgrims it was the first time they had seen the traditional dances since they had gone searching for the Lady in the Moon.
When it was over, the people called for more. Xie remembered how Li had begged him to keep the myth alive. The holoviews were on him, projecting his giant image on the wall of an occuhive. He held up his hand, and tried to ignore how well the projection captured his cybernetic eye.
“Is the Lady in the Moon not great?” he said. “She beseeches us to remember why we walk the path of revelation.” A cheer resounded, though it was not as loud as he had hoped. He had seen for weeks that the people here were beginning to forget, that new arrivals were desperate, for they had not yet known the light of Chang’e. And he could think of only one way to keep satisfied those who had never seen salvation, so that they would last until their Prophet returned. He would speak of his own heart.
“Lady Li may be far away, meditating in the sky, but I know she watches us. She whispers to me in my dreams. It pleases her that the rice we ate tonight was ours, bought with our victories. Follow me in living by her teaching, so that we are free of the bankers and mercenaries who have poisoned our land. As I have transformed, so will you, becoming warriors that feel no hunger, and we will make our Heaven on Earth a refuge in which we can feel the breath of God for ten thousand generations.”
Xie looked out at the throng of people who were waiting, bearing his sermon painfully. He prayed that his tales of paradise gave some hope, and in the same breath tried not to feel inadequate, betraying his people by asking them to subsist on empty air. He saw Jia Anmei looking at him intently.
“And now as a sign of our redemption,” he continued, “we will have Communion.” He bowed his head and the crowd cheered thunderously, for this is what they had come for. Sun and his white-robed priests walked among the Jade, passing out thousands of green wafers. The people took them delicately on outstretched palms, waiting for the blessing. None of them knew that unlike before, the wafers contained no longshui. The Elixir of Life had been replaced with common tranquilizers.
“Let this Communion be different,” Xie said, feeling a lump in his throat as the lies left his lips. “It is a prayer that the Lady in the Moon may find the wisdom she seeks. Place the body of Chang’e on your tongues and join me in blessing, and the Lady will come to all of us who know our own divinity.”
