by Sam Abraham
Breathing a sigh of relief, Dr. Yang nodded. “Mayor Hu,” the professor said, in awe as he watched one light after another turn green, “power is restored to the seawall. Your city will survive.” As the team cheered, he took a silent moment of gratitude for his synthetic daughter. Li Aizhu was gone, but in her death she had given her essence, and saved them all.
Chapter 60 – Jie (節)
The Nature Of Virtue
The sea lapped gently at her ankles. A wind picked up from the west, ruffling the white gown that hung loosely at her shoulders. She twirled a yarrow flower in her hand, its scent reminding her of home, of frying dumplings and Kowloon rain.
A white moon rose above an empty city, into a celestial cathedral. She saw her mother and all her ancestors in the stars, their willowy forms framed in the Milky Way. At the apex of the sky, she saw the moon’s silver liquid pool into the damask robes of the protomother, Chang’e herself.
There, in the dark eyes of the Lady in the Moon, she saw a truth. Behind all the stories and myths, behind all the created enemies and imagined saviors, there was the same unshakable spirit. The way to find the messiah inside was simply the will to change. Nothing was ever created or destroyed, only transformed.
A slender line rode upon the wind. Far away at first, curled among the clouds, it soon swept closer. The line became a golden dragon, its plated belly and taloned paws looming in the moonlight. It circled above her, elongating as it drew near, its body becoming the spiral seam of the sky. As it unfurled, she saw that a single red scale had been removed from its thorny forehead, and in its place was the dragon’s third eye.
It was a mirror.
For a moment she saw herself, her heart-shaped face, her jet-black hair, her slender shoulders. But her reflection was fuzzy, for as soon as she recognized herself, the surface of her body splintered, hairline fractures in her skin revealing the magic of the broken line.
One line split into two unequal parts, its golden ratio of short to long equaling the long to whole. She saw how all changes emanated from that first division of yang and yin. Two became three, and eight and sixty-four. All life, from new leaves to nautili, and all the deeds of people, from the growth of embryos to the conquest of empires, were mere petals on the fractal yarrow flower. Each change captured by the ancient sages in the hexagrams of the I Ching consumed her, became her. And she leaked into every transmutation of holy and profane as the dragon curled its spiral tail around her. Her body was too frail to contain them, the emanations shining from her joints as she stood eye-to-eye with the ancient one. The yarrow petals in her hand evaporated, and the ocean smelled of jasmine.
There were no words that passed between them. Only knowledge as she felt the dragon’s breath. It was time to return to the place beyond broken and unbroken, beyond light and dark, to the source from which sprang the binaries of mountain and lake, water and fire, earth and Heaven.
Brighter her body burned, a spirit lantern at the dark edge. She closed her eyes as the dragon lifted her. Soon the empty city grew faint beneath her, and the ancient one flew her beyond the moon. Her body melted away, her toes crumbled into grains of sand and her belly unraveled in the tide. Her hands became music, singing in harmonious fifths. Her head peeled open, releasing her dreams. And all that remained was her heart, warm with immortal love.
Chapter 61 – Zhong Fu (中孚)
Penetrating Heaven
“Guidance system back online,” the cargotug pilot said, running down his checklist. Readings coming from the Mountain were green. “Looks like we might make our flight after all.”
“Thank God,” Eli said. He had never been religious, but he could not deny that his fate was out of his hands. Little more than an hour earlier, they had climbed aboard the cargotug just as the power cut out. The Mountain’s spire had gone dark, the guidance system blinked out, and they had been stranded out on a maglev track suspended over a hundred kilometers out into the ocean.
Eli had imagined being forced to return to the burning city, trapped by spotlights, cornered by cops, tried for espionage and murder and sentenced to life in prison. As minutes ticked by and he knew the Spaceline was entering Chinese airspace, he had quietly begun to pray to anything that would listen. Now, as if by some miracle, they were ready for liftoff, with the guidance system back online and communications restored with Mountain Control.
Eli felt the whole tug rattle as strong magnetic fields hummed around them. Pinned under shoulder straps, he and Baiyue were crammed into the cockpit with the pilot, above an emergency engine and a robotic arm that would lift containers up to the Spaceline. Asteroid miners and Spaceline techs needed some way to leave earth, and cargotugs could serve that purpose as well as any.
Eli’s stomach curdled as the magnets pulled the tug bullet-fast along the track, ramming it up into the Mountain itself. He closed his eyes against the crush of g-forces as the tug launched from the top of the spire, five kilometers above sea level, and rocketed into the stratosphere. As the tug flew towards its apogee, it slowed and the pressure let up, leaving Eli to congratulate himself on keeping down his lunch and look out at the open sky.
The view took Eli’s breath away. Pudong spread wide before them, sweeping out with the occuhives and megamalls of the Outer Ring Road. Domes covering the city shimmered in the afternoon sun, as did the superscrapers clustered along the Huangpu River in the distance. Beyond the river, the sky was brown with smoke, and Eli could see the fires raging in Puxi. But from up here the chaos of the city was small, and as the tug climbed Shanghai Island shrank from view.
Like clockwork, the Spaceline’s orbit carried it over Shanghai. From his seat, Eli watched other cargotugs pop up, a line of them approaching the satellite in formation.
The tip of the Spaceline extended down to the midpoint of the mesosphere, ninety kilometers above sea level, higher than any commercial suborbital aviation. From there, a metal cable dangled down another thirty kilometers, brushing the attic of the stratosphere. Along this cable were latches that secured the full containers of asteroid ore as they were lowered from the tip, and accepted empty containers from the tugs in exchange. Above each latch on the cable was a pod, its polymer shield little more than a tiny tear floating in the sky. It was this atmospheric ballet that eliminated the need for rigs to blast into orbit and made asteroid mining profitable.
Delicately, the pilot maneuvered the tug alongside the cable, guided by lasers to its target. As they nudged closer, matching velocity, the long metal line seemed to stay still.
“Three…two…one…mark,” said the pilot, and Eli felt a smooth thunk as the latch locked into the container underneath the tug. Then the pilot turned to them and said, “This is your stop.”
Baiyue unbuckled her harness, shimmied into a crawlspace in the belly of the tug, and opened the airlock connecting to the cable pod. Climbing up a short ladder into the pod, she strapped herself into a new seat. Eli was close behind. Once he was locked in as well, the airlock folded closed, sealing them inside.
It was all Eli could do to steady his breathing as the cargotug detached and the cable jerked them up at over a hundred kilometers per hour. Far below, the tug that they had been in now linked to another latch on the cable and accepted a full container. Once the payload was secure, the tug unlatched and fell back towards the planet.
The world dropped away as Eli and Baiyue flew towards space in their tiny bubble. Shanghai Island was luminous in the evening, the Mountain just a tiny pin jutting from the sea. Even the flames consuming Puxi were only dark splotches in the city, small holes in the circle of synthetic stars.
As the city shrank and the Mountain disappeared, Eli couldn’t help the gnawing memory of the woman he had left behind. To escape the looming shadow of guilt, Eli tried to lose himself in the panorama of the sky. An orange glow spread out over a band of pearl light, which faded into rich ozone blue as the cable pulled them into the mesosphere and the bottom tip of the Spaceline.
They slowed as
their pod was consumed by the Tail. Baiyue led Eli through another airlock and into a small lounge with braced seats and portholes. The lounge rotated lazily around the freight elevator as it hauled empty containers up to the counterweight, a hunk of asteroid that had been forced into orbit fifteen years earlier. It was this rocky anchor that kept the Spaceline stable, inertia carrying it through the upper atmosphere.
The hangar built on this rock, named Counterweight Station, was where mining rigs docked between tours in the asteroid belt. As the lounge rotated around the elevator on its journey into orbit, centrifugal force created the illusion of gravity, allowing Eli to sit and lose himself in the view.
Rising into the ionosphere, the portholes were tickled by turquoise plasma. The night sky danced around them, milky with stars, as the Spaceline floated south of the Himalayas. Eli had never known such a firmament, even in neon cities. He watched as India floated far beneath, its rich green savannahs blending into yellow desert sands. As they chased the light west, orange pinpricks illuminated electric metropoli in the shadow of evening. It was a god’s eye view, Eli thought, and watched the planet below laugh with color.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Baiyue said.
Eli tried to ignore her. Even the solace of orbit could not make him forget how she had murdered his lover in cold blood.
They rose into the exosphere, passing solar panels that extended from the Spaceline like wings. The windows went dark as the lounge was absorbed into Counterweight Station. Leaving the lounge, they were deposited on a walkway rotating slowly around the circumference of the counterweight, just as the lounge had turned around the elevator. Crew teams in blue jumpsuits hurried past them to the launch bay and shuttles setting off for Mars. Portholes let in stunning views.
“Now what?” Baiyue said. How strange it was, she thought, not to know what came next.
“A team from ORS will be arriving in a few hours to run some tests in low-g,” Eli said, remembering himself. “You’ll stay here with them for a few days while I pave the way for your arrival.”
“You could stay too,” she said, inching towards him. “And we could have fun.”
“I’ll be leaving in a few hours on a tug to Santiago,” Eli said distantly. “It’ll be strange. I haven’t been home in four years.”
“Home,” Baiyue murmured, looking out at the oceans below, frothy in the sphere of blue. Anything east of the Himalayas had disappeared into shadow. “How lucky for you.”
“Cheer up,” he said. “You’re going to enjoy being part of ORS. Treated like royalty.”
“I might enjoy being pampered by you,” Baiyue cooed suggestively.
Eli wished she would just leave him alone. “Now that you’re with the company, we have corporate priorities to focus on,” he said. “You are the most important investment we’ve made in years.”
“We’re not there yet,” she purred, putting a hand on his arm. “There has to be a place to be alone on this tin can. You can teach me how to please—“
He tried to brush her off. “Believe me, it’s not wise --.”
Baiyue got closer and Eli felt animal heat coming off her. “I don’t care. I want you and your golden head,” she said without blushing, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “I’ve been wondering about how it would be when we’re together.”
“There is no we,” Eli snapped, pushing her back. “You are nothing to me but a deal.” Even then, he could not say the words in his heart.
You were the death of my love.
Baiyue backed away in anger. She thought of her mother, who would never see her again. “Nobody rejects a daughter of Chang’e,” she said as she stalked off, silver flashing in her eyes. “May you drift forever, unworthy of the light of the moon.”
Eli watched Baiyue leave as the revolving station carried him around the counterweight. When she was lost from view, he turned back to the window and gazed at the earth floating, adrift and alone.
Chapter 62 – Xiao Guo (小過)
No Rain From The West
Han’s father woke on the ground, lying on a dirty white sheet. He fumbled at his face, finding it covered in plastic. Peeling a respirator from his nose and mouth, he gasped and sat up gagging. He still wore his shabby slacks and shirt, soaked to the bone, but he had lost his jacket somewhere. Then he remembered the wall of water.
Looking around, he saw lines of men and women lying on the ground, respirators on their faces. Aid workers walked between them, doing what they could. Han’s father stood weakly and saw that he was in an auditorium. He wandered down the lines of victims, but could not find his son.
Short of breath, he grabbed the nearest aid worker and asked, “Excuse me, who brought me here? Where is my son? We must have come in together. Where is he?”
The air worker gave him a pitying look. She took his wrist and scanned the plastic bracelet he had been given, her eyes twitching as she viewed a holo only she could see. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but your son is gone. You’ve been through a lot. You should rest.”
She turned to go but he pulled her back. “That’s not possible,” Han’s father said. “You’re making a mistake. Where is he? Son!” he shouted as he hobbled around the hall desperately, “Deshi! You don’t need to run away again!”
Compassionately, the social worker went to the old man and took his hands. “He’s gone, sir,” she said again. “Records show that he was bought here, but he had already expired. I’m sorry.”
The old man remembered his son, swept away in the flood. His eyes welled with tears, and he fought the reflex to vomit on the auditorium floor. Shamefully, his son had no family of his own to perform the rites for him, as he had died alone at the end of his line. Mustering stoicism, the old man said, “Then you will bury the body?” For it was against tradition for a parent to say the rites for a child.
The aid worker began to nod and console the old man, but she scanned the medical record and pursed her lips. She was unsure of how to tell an elder the uncomfortable truth. Forlornly, the father asked again, “You will see to the burial? May I see him once before I go?”
“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” she said. “I’m afraid the remains have been confiscated. It seems he was a person of interest, marked by tattoos? That’s what it says, anyway. The coroner’s office believes he was exposed to a toxic agent, so there will be, um, an autopsy.”
The old man’s face went white. “So, he will not be buried?”
“I’m sorry—“
“No, you must bury him!” the old man shouted, not waiting for her to finish. “Or his spirit will never be at peace. Promise me!” he yelled, grabbing her arm. “Promise me you will bury my son!”
“Security!” the aid worker yelled, recoiling.
Two policemen rushed over and grabbed the old man. “Is he bothering you?” one said.
But the aid worker saw that the fight had drained from the old man. He hung loosely, sobbing without breath. She looked around the auditorium at the hundreds laying still, groaning and in pain. She had no time for the old man, no matter how tragic his story.
“No,” she said. “It’s a miracle he’s alive. He can go if he agrees not to make a nuisance of himself. Sir?” she said, trying to get his attention. “You’re free to go.”
Han’s father was dumped at the entrance. He barely heard the words, and only half saw other people being carried in, unconscious, from the wreckage in the north of the city. He swooned, stumbling over memories of his son’s first words, his first steps, his favorite books as a baby. He could not find the strength to walk, instead sitting on the dirty concrete stairs to grieve. He remembered his son at seven, running through the house, breaking a dish. He had spanked him! His son! He had only tried to teach the boy some manners, but who knows how it might have turned him against his family, corrupted him to run away. Or should he have spanked him more? Brought him to the temple more and forced him to burn incense in memory of his ancestors on festival days? Surely the father had
done something wrong, too much love and too little discipline. Or vice versa? His son had always loved people, the old man thought, shaking his head. His beautiful, curious boy had always run to follow seducers. And now, for only the ink on his shoulders he would be cut open, eviscerated, and his spirit would haunt the earthly plane for eternity.
It was too much. The old man grasped at phantoms, but they slipped away like forgotten songs. He needed to touch the boy again, to see his body, to bid him farewell. How could he even believe his son was gone if he could not see the body? But what could he do for closure? There had to be something! And then the old man remembered his son’s warning: The Jade were hiding in Shanghai. In a church called St. Theresa’s.
The old man found a lonely private cab, which eagerly stopped for him after the disastrous day had shut down the city’s driverless fleet. He ordered the driver on with few words, city lights sputtering in neon fits as they sped south. Han’s father saw that Puxi had become a war zone, crammed with hydrocycle shells and pillars of smoke and cratered buildings. Emergency teams were bandaging people who were lucky, and pulling black body bags over those who were not. Drones roared overhead as the Army arrived. But despite the lava field streets, calm had begun to creep back over the city.
The cabby made inane conversation that the old man only half heard. “It’s official,” the leatherhead said, “the Mayor is leading the recovery effort himself, from People’s Park, and has proclaimed that ordinary citizens who help the relief effort would be held in great esteem by him personally. Buddy? You hear what I’m saying?”
Oblivious to the babble, the old passenger saw only smoldering shopping malls and burning embers mirroring the wound in his heart.
