The Winter War (7 page)

‘Oh… Thank you, Councillor,’
Gillian replied, taking the stick and frowning at it.

‘Ten credits says it’s from
Ape,’ Aneka said.

‘Probably,’ Gillian agreed.

‘I believe you are all scheduled
to travel to the Eastern City today,’ Harper said.

‘We’re leaving in… just over an
hour,’ Aneka replied.

Harper nodded. ‘It’s not a long
trip, about forty minutes. One of the Councillors will be waiting
to receive you, Wei Lin.’

‘Is that a Chinese name?’ Ella
asked.

‘I believe so.’

‘Huh.’ Ella looked at Aneka. ‘It
does have a sound like Rimmic.’

High-speed Train Between Prime and
Eastern Cities.

There were no windows on the train, but
from what Aneka understood, the view was not exactly spectacular.
They were rocketing down an evacuated, nanofibre reinforced
Plascrete tunnel. There were no lights out there and it was all
pretty boring. The VIP carriage on the train was, however, very
comfortable and came with computer terminals and workstations, and
big, comfortable chairs if you just wanted to sit and chat.

Gillian used the time to view
the message she had received from Harriamon. Bashford sat in his
chair, near Gillian, but not watching what she was doing. He was
being very attentive having been left with a lot of guilt over the
way he had behaved immediately after Yrimtan had thrown him in with
Gillian. Gillian had tried saying she forgave him, she had tried
talking to him about it, and now she was hoping he would just get
over it.

Ella was also over her addiction
to the neurostim effect; Aneka was thankful for that. However, the
girl had been left with a higher libido than ever, which Aneka was
hoping would wear off eventually. As it was, Ella was disappointed
that there was not a little more privacy since she would have liked
to have had sex on a supersonic, underground train.

‘Well,’ Gillian said as she
emerged from the headset she had been using, ‘it was from Ape.’ Ape
Gibbons was her ex-partner, the father of her son, David, who
everyone called Monkey for obvious reasons. Ape was the captain of
a battleship and they had last seen him in Harriamon’s orbital
naval base. ‘Basically there was an “I’m glad you’re alive” message
which I’m to pass on to David. There was also a message for all of
us regarding re-entering Harriamon space. Apparently there have
been three more attacks on ships in the system. So far, whenever
they get there they find a wreck and no sign of the attacker.’

‘Nothing?’ Bashford said,
frowning.

‘Nothing at all. They used a
rather inadvisable warp manoeuvre to get to the last one within
forty minutes of receiving the distress call. Still nothing. The
press are running with various stories, including the Xinti and the
Ghost Fleet, of course.’

‘Getting there that quickly
there should have been something. Nothing I know of could get out
of sensor range that quickly. Something with that sort of
acceleration has a big emission signature.’

Gillian shrugged slightly.
‘Xinti reactionless drives don’t, and they had very effective
stealth systems.’

‘And the Ghost Fleet would just
vanish where they came from,’ Ella put in.

‘Except,’ Aneka said, ‘that the
attacks don’t fit the profile for the Ghost Fleet, do they? These
ships are destroyed; the Ghost Fleet disables the ship, kills the
crew in various horrible ways, and then leaves, taking a few people
when they go. And I don’t believe it’s the Xinti. I don’t think
it’s their style either.’

‘Currently it’s a mystery,’
Gillian said, ‘but Ape said we should be careful when we go home
and avoid letting anyone know exactly when we will arrive. He
thinks we could be a prime target.’

Aneka shrugged. ‘We should be
used to that by now.’

‘We should,’ Gillian replied,
‘but I, for one, will never get comfortable with the idea that
someone wants to kill me.’

Eastern City.

Wei Lin was a petite oriental woman who
managed to convey considerable authority despite being shorter than
Ella and Gillian. She came with the full ‘beautiful Chinese girl’
package, including waist-length, jet-black hair and dark brown
eyes, and she stood on the platform waiting for them with her hands
clasped demurely in front of her. There were also four Enforcers
behind her who snapped to attention as soon as Aneka stepped off
the train.

‘Greetings,’ she said in
perfect, unaccented English, ‘and welcome to the City of the East.
I am Councillor Wei Lin and I will be happy to be your guide
through our glorious city.’

‘Good… evening, I think,’ Aneka
said, since the little speech had mostly been addressed at her.
‘I’m Aneka Jansen, this is Doctor Gillian Gilroy, Ella Narrows, and
Leo Bashford. Doctor Gilroy and Miss Narrows are here to study your
culture and history. Mister Bashford and I are just the hired
help.’

Wei Lin’s composure slipped a
little, but she rallied quickly. ‘Of course.’ Her attention shifted
to Gillian.

‘Aneka is rather more than
“hired help,”’ Gillian pointed out. ‘She’s our advisor on the way
things were on pre-war Earth.’ She gave Bashford a quick grin.
‘Bash is just here because he looks pretty though.’

Wei Lin smiled; at least she had
a sense of humour. ‘Councillor Harper indicated that you would like
to see the city and one of our surface facilities, but it is early
evening here and I would suggest that you spend some time with our
archives tonight and proceed with your tour tomorrow. We have
prepared a meal of locally produced ingredients which we can serve
whenever you wish, and Councillor Harper suggested that we put you
up in Manu Dei’s suite aboveground.’ She glanced toward Aneka as
she added the last; she had obviously met Yrimtan at least once,
and that probably meant she was fairly high ranking.

‘I’m not her,’ Aneka said
flatly. ‘We were… related, but we’re very different people.’

The Councillor nodded. ‘You
appear to have a better sense of humour. Let us get you settled in.
We have historical information going back to the foundation of the
city, and more anecdotal material from before that. I believe you
will find it most informative.’

‘I’m sure we will,’ Gillian
said.

10
^th
September.

It was after midnight local time, but
no one was tired; the eight-hour time shift was throwing their body
clocks out. Gillian was still working her way through the
historical database, particularly the pre-foundation material which
she seemed to be finding very interesting. Bashford was supplying
her with drinks and, as he put it, looking pretty for her. Ella’s
main work would be done in the morning when they had people to talk
to. She had gone over some of the more modern data on population
density, health, and lifespans, but now she was standing beside
Aneka at one of the large windows in their bedroom looking out over
the buildings below and the bay stretching out beyond them.

‘This was mainland Hong Kong,’
Aneka said, her voice soft so as not to disturb the mood. The
lights were out in the room and there was very little light coming
up from below. They were maybe two hundred metres above ground
level. ‘It was a huge, thriving city in my time. Kind of the
meeting place between East and West. Now they have one tower block
and we’re in it.’

‘Were you ever here,
before?’

‘Once. For about… six hours. We
had a stop off and I took the time to look around. That was mainly
on the island though. It was… vibrant, I guess. Lots of people,
lots of activity.’

‘There’s still some activity
down there.’

‘Huh… Seriously, that’s a slow
Sunday in a sleepy town in Iowa in comparison.’

‘Right. I don’t know what Iowa
was, but I get the picture.’

‘Well, the other city is
somewhere in that region. Maybe you’ll get to see it.’

‘Maybe. Harper said that the
Western City didn’t have much to offer. He said that continent was
the worst hit. They’ve had geological disasters on top of the
bombing. The west coast got hit with some huge tidal wave about a
decade after the war. The east coast was carpet-bombed with kinetic
impactors as well as some strategic nukes.’

‘I guess North America was a
primary target.’

‘Uh-huh.’ There was a second of
silence and then, ‘I should get some sleep, but I’m not tired.’

Aneka chuckled. ‘Is that a
hint?’

‘More of a suggestion.’

Unsealing her suit, Aneka said,
‘Well I guess this time I can take it.’

~~~

The main difference between the two
cities seemed to be the far larger building above ground on the
eastern one. It gave easier access to surface dwellers, so that was
convenient.

The houses were all built of
wood, but Wei Lin assured them that they were a combination of
ancient building techniques and modern technology. Not one building
had ever succumbed to an earthquake since the city had been built.
Aneka looked up at the tower they had slept at the top of and
wondered whether it had the same resilience.

The two couples split up, Wei
Lin going with Gillian and Bashford, and a new interpreter being
supplied for Aneka and Ella. She was a surface dweller, Chan Mei,
tall and slim with a mix of features that suggested some occidental
parentage. For one thing she had strawberry-blonde hair which was
not exactly common in oriental people. She was dressed in a very
pretty, Chinese-style dress, and Aneka got the impression it was
brand new and had been given to her just so she could be as
presentable as possible to the visitors. Importantly she spoke
perfect English with a slight accent, and Mandarin which the locals
spoke.

The other thing Chan Mei knew
was where all the old people with interesting stories to tell
lived. Ella sat and listened carefully to all of them, and then the
translation from Chan Mei, and slowly began to smile as they went
along. Aneka’s universal translation software was puzzling its way
through the language as they went, but it was apparent that Ella
was getting more than a few words.

‘It really is a lot like
Rimmic,’ she said as they walked from one house to another. ‘I’m
not getting everything, but I could possibly get by here.’

‘Sorry,’ Chan Mei said, ‘what is
“Rimmic”?’

‘It’s one of the languages we
use where I come from. Aneka told me it sounded like your Mandarin,
and it does. I’m no linguist, but I’d say it’s derived from it.
Simplified a bit, maybe. Some of the usual vowel shifts and changes
you’d expect over a thousand years of divergence, but very
similar.’

‘So, you can understand what is
being said to you?’

‘Not enough to dispense with
your services,’ Ella replied, smiling. She got a very bright smile
back in return. Aneka wondered what they were paying the girl to do
this job.

‘I am glad of that, and I think
you will find this next man most interesting, and far harder to
understand. He is over one hundred years old. The Citizens below
are treating him with some of their best medicines to maintain his
health because he is such a great source of knowledge passed down
by word of mouth.’

They stopped in front of a small
gate in a fence, Chan Mei putting her hand on the catch. ‘He is
very old, and must stay in bed much of the time even with the
medicines. Also, he tends to be… uh, huài xīnyǎn de?’

‘Irascible?’ Ella suggested.

‘Yes! Please be patient with
him. His name is Chan Nianzu.’ She pushed the gate open and started
into the garden beyond.

‘A relative?’ Aneka asked.

‘My great-grandfather, though
everyone in the family calls him “Grandfather.”’

The garden was beautifully
maintained, with a couple of rhododendron bushes and a lot of
carefully mown grass. There was even a small carp pond, though it
appeared to have no fish in it; maybe that was a little too much
for the family to afford. The house behind it was two stories high
and built a little like a pagoda with a wide, open front porch on
which was sitting a woman in her sixties or seventies who smiled at
them as Chan Mei escorted them past and in.

Chan Nianzu occupied a room on
the ground floor with a window which overlooked the garden, though
whether he ever got to look out of it was another matter. He was
sitting up in bed with a bank of pillows propping up his back and
head. He looked every bit of his hundred plus years, completed with
wrinkled, yellowing skin replete with liver spots and an entirely
bald pate. He peered at the three women entering his room with
watery eyes, and then remembered the glasses hung around his neck
on a cord.

‘Zhèxiē yóukè nǐ dāyìngle, sūnnǚ
ma?’ He had a strong voice still, the accent rendering his words
virtually indecipherable even to Aneka’s software. There was an
exchange of rapid Mandarin. Aneka heard her name and Ella’s in
there and figured they had been introduced. Then the old man said,
‘It is a… pleasure to meet you.’ His accent was thick, but he could
obviously speak some English.

Ella gave him her brightest
smile. ‘Sher shou omen de ronshing.’

He blinked at her, frowned, and
then there was another exchange of Mandarin and Chan Mei said,
‘Grandfather says that the honour is his, and that your Mandarin
sounds strange. I explained that you spoke a language
like
Mandarin, and he says that your “Rimmic” must come from the time
before the Demon War when the People went to the stars.’

‘I would very much like to hear
about that,’ Ella replied.

Chan Nianzu looked rather
pleased that she did. He waved them into chairs, making sure that
Ella sat nearest to him. Chan Mei sat opposite them and he started
speaking as though he was very used to recounting tales of the long
past. With his great-granddaughter translating, they got the
story.

‘Long ago,’ Chan Mei said, ‘this
land was called China, a land with a long history, going back
thousands of years. You understand that this is half-legend he is
telling us? It was passed down through
many
generations.
China was ruled by kings and emperors, but always there was the
Bureaucracy making sure everything ran smoothly, and eventually the
last of the emperors died and the Bureaucracy ruled the land for
the People.’