Red Dust by Paul J. McAuley

Author:Paul J. McAuley [McAuley, Paul J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

42

The wrought-iron gate was twice as high as Lee, with scenes of herding life cunningly woven into its bars. At his touch, the lock clicked and the gate swung back. Lee, followed by Chen Yao, walked through the archway into a courtyard where a small fountain played, a bubbling pulse of water that rose and trickled down a cone of shingled tiles. Lee bathed his gas-burned face. The water stung like liquid fire before it soothed him.

‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Chen Yao said nervously, looking around at the courtyard.

Geraniums grew thickly in large earthenware pots. Their bright red blooms seemed to float in the gloom, and filled the courtyard with their dusty scent. Balconies rose up four storeys to a glass ceiling; banners hung down from their balustrades like tongues.

‘He owes me money,’ Lee said. ‘We’ll need it.’

‘We need to get out of the city. First we cure the sick, and then we become beggars. At this rate I’ll be an old woman by the time we reach Tiger Mountain.’

‘Hush. Listen.’

A woman was singing somewhere, a song in a language Lee had never heard before. She was singing her heart out, drowning in waves of orchestration. It wasn’t rock’n’roll, yet it pulled at Lee’s heart all the same.

Light shone from an open door on the far side of the courtyard.

That was where the music came from.

The room beyond the door was high-ceilinged, wood-panelled. Thick carpets lapped the floor, muffled Lee’s footsteps. The light came from a big lamp behind a couch where Hawk lay, propped by cushions as he sipped smoke from a water pipe. The room smelt of a voluptuous combination of sweet hash smoke and crème de menthe.

‘Come in, Lee,’ Hawk said. He seemed not at all surprised, and not at all drugged. ‘Sit down. I’m pleased to see you.’

He made a languid gesture. Narrow cones of light dropped from high above, spotlighting two stools. The music faded to a whisper.

Lee said boldly, ‘I came to get the money I was owed.’

‘Oh, all in good time,’ Hawk said.

‘My friend and I, we’re setting off on a journey.’

‘I know. That’s why I asked you to sit, because I want to talk to you about it. That was quite a show you put on.’

‘Oh. You know about that.’

‘Every commercial channel was showing looped tapes of it before they were pulled off the air by The Little Bird’s vigilantes.’

Hawk laughed. ‘Wei Lee, I shall tell you why the government troops didn’t fight back after your … performance. They were all wired up, and The Little Bird pulled their plugs. He hit the command centre. Only the officers were left. How does it feel, to have started a revolution?’

‘Perhaps I’ve ended one.’

‘Perhaps … but The Little Bird is neither a Sky Roader nor a conservationist. No, he’s an isolationist: Mars for the Martians. He has no power base amongst the Ten Thousand Years, only popular support, and soon enough he’ll be destroyed by the conchies, just as they destroyed the Sky Roaders.

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