Invasion: Alaska

overhauling it. Once it is ready, I am sending you two back to Dead Horse.”

“What about my contract?” Paul asked. He felt numb, defeated once more.

“You broke your word. I can terminate your contract at anytime, and it is my will to do so now.”

Paul stared into those pitiless eyes. He wanted to be angry. He wanted to get up and do something. Cheri had sounded desperate over the phone. She and Mikey needed the money.

“Listen…” Paul said, searching for the right words. He’d never been good at this and he felt so numb, so defeated. He didn’t know how to kiss butt and he didn’t want to start with some French-Canadian Algonquian. He turned away from those knowing eyes. “Listen,” he said roughly. “I… ah, fought against you once, right.”

“I have said as much. You were a worthy foe.”

“Yeah, I’m glad to hear it.” Paul shook his head without looking at the Algonquian. This was so demeaning. “That isn’t what I wanted to say. I…I have a wife and kid back home.”

“The records say you are divorced,” Red Cloud told him, as he indicted the computer.

“Right, right, that’s right,” Paul said. “But I’m helping her make payments, make rent. My boy—”

“Mike Kavanagh,” Red Cloud said.

“I call him Mikey,” Paul said. “He needs… he needs—damnit! This is hard for me. I don’t know the right words. I’m too quick with my fists sometimes. My temper hasn’t been any good since Quebec. I don’t know how—” Paul’s lips firmed and he glared at Red Cloud. “I’m asking for another chance. I’m not asking because I deserve it. I probably don’t. I know I’m trouble, but let me work here until I can send them money. They really need it. I don’t care about myself, but, but… do you have any kids?”

“The Marines killed them during the war,” Red Cloud said.

Paul noted the hard eyes, the mask-like features. Red Cloud reminded him of the Wild West photographs of Geronimo and Sitting Bull.

“I’m sorry they died,” Paul said.

Red Cloud just stared at him.

“That’s it then, huh?”

“You will work until the plane is ready. You will check the outer perimeter ice or you will not eat.”

The anger left Paul. Had Marines really slain Red Cloud’s kids? War sucks. Sometimes life wasn’t that great either. He’d lost another job and he was stuck up here so he couldn’t even try to get another one, no matter how rotten it was. How was Cheri supposed to make rent? What would Mikey think about his dad now?

Paul stood up. “I get it, and I don’t blame you.”

“Go,” Red Cloud said. “Your presence wearies me, and I am already too tired.”

Paul realized he’d been screwed from the start. Stuck in the North Pole with a Marine-hating Algonquian for a boss—it couldn’t get any worse than that.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Anna Chen arrived in her West Wing cubicle exhausted. She’d been up until four in the morning, reading the latest CIA reports and comparing them with her own sources of information concerning the People’s Republic of China.

Something had caught her eye yesterday, making sleep nearly impossible as she kept churning over what it meant. It was a speech by the Agricultural Minister, Jian Hong. He had spoken in Tiananmen Square for the Tea Ceremony commemorating the dead lost during Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland. Two things intrigued her about the event. One, the ailing Chairman had appeared on stage with the Agricultural Minister. Anna had spent two hours examining every photo and recording she could showing the Chairman during the Tea Ceremony. He seldom appeared in public these days, and reports of his failing health were rampant. On stage, he’d sat very straight, as if it were difficult for him to do so. During Jian Hong’s speech, the Chairman had sat even straighter. The old man’s eyes had seemed to shine during one part of the speech especially. That was the second thing that had intrigued Anna: the Agricultural Minister’s commentary on Cheng Ho.

She was familiar with the Chinese eunuch. During the Ming Dynasty of Renaissance times, Cheng Ho had often been referred to as the Admiral of the Triple Treasure or the Three-Jewel Eunuch. He first set out on his voyages during the reign of Ming Emperor Yung Lo. The seven grand expeditions occurred from 1405 to 1422. During the same time, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal was sending his ships inching down the west coast of Africa in tiny caravels.

With his fleet, Cheng Ho sailed beyond the China Sea and around the Indian Ocean. He reached the east coast of Africa and voyaged as far as the tip of the Dark Continent. Unlike Prince Henry’s small flotillas with their leaky ships, Cheng Ho possessed monstrous vessels. The largest, the Treasure Ship, boasted nine masts and had been four hundred and forty-four feet long, with a beam of one hundred and eighty feet. It had airtight bulkheads to prevent leakage or fire from spreading, and a gigantic rudder.

The grandest expedition had employed thirty-seven thousand soldiers, scholars and sailors, and had been composed of three hundred and seventeen ships. It had also been uniquely Chinese in outlook. These expeditions hadn’t sailed in conquest, but in peace, displaying the splendor and power of the new Ming Dynasty. It had shown the greatness of the Middle Kingdom—China considered itself as the center of the world. Cheng Ho had also gathered curios for the emperor and his court and had given gifts of massive proportion to those he’d visited. His generosity had shown the greatness of China, and that it needed nothing from the outer reaches of the world. The most excellent of the curios taken back to Beijing had been a giraffe from Africa.

In Chinese belief of that time, when Heaven smiled on the Emperor because of his excellent rule, it radiated cosmic forces of good will. This surplus energy helped create creatures like dragons and k’i- lin. The k’i-lin, a type of Chinese unicorn, had the body of a deer and the tail of an ox. It only ate herbs and harmed no living creature. To the Chinese, the giraffe they discovered in the Bengal king’s zoo fit this description. Cheng Ho had soon learned that the giraffe was called a girin in its native country. To his ear and those around him that had sounded very much like k’i-lin, confirming his belief that Heaven smiled on China. When they brought the giraffe back to China, people were amazed, and they agreed that this was a sign of Heaven’s favor and showed the goodness of the Middle Kingdom.

These voyages were a marvel, and they’d shown that China had possessed superior technology as compared to Europe at the time. However, there had been political forces at work that had strangled the naval expeditions.

The two forces vying for power were the emperor’s eunuchs, or courtiers, and the mandarins, the bureaucrats that ran the country. The eunuchs, or castrati, had gained their power because of their nearness to the emperor. No one but eunuchs or the emperor and his sons were allowed in the palace among the emperor’s many wives and concubines. Therefore, the eunuchs not only intimately understood what interested the emperor, but they could whisper suggestions to him whenever they wanted. Over time, this had led to their political rise.

During the voyages, the eunuchs were in the assent. Gradually, however, the mandarins regained their customary control. In 1433, the emperor—under mandarin guidance—issued the first of many edicts that enforced the Grand Withdrawal.

Chinese reclusiveness was an old story. It stemmed from the belief that China was the Middle Kingdom and that it needed nothing from the outer barbaric world. The Great Wall of China was a symptom of this. So was the Great Withdrawal, as the edicts inflicted increasingly savage punishments on Chinese who ventured aboard. These edicts also imposed a marine withdrawal, and soon it was a crime to build a ship with more than one mast.

China lost its chance to discover Europe and stamp its civilization on the world. Instead, the grasping Europeans “discovered” China. That had partly happened because China had withdrawn from its own greatness. It had also happened because the Europeans had desired a thousand new things like pepper, silk and tea wherever they could get it. It had pulled the Europeans to all corners of the world.

Jian Hong had spoken about these things in Tiananmen Square. He’d bewailed the lost chance of bringing peace and civilization to a barbaric world during Cheng Ho’s time. He’d spoken about China’s present greatness and how she owed it to herself to make sure the Middle Kingdom didn’t abandon its own welfare because of the barbarism practiced elsewhere. China must spread its civilization everywhere in these dangerous nuclear times. Fortunately, China had the Chairman to guide them through the treacherous waters of this glacial era. If others