lived, somewhere across the sea?
Things weren't going much better for the rest of the Vinlanders in China, either. In the popular press, we were described as heathens and barbarians. They said we were savage, impure, full of strange lusts and foreign diseases. There were new decrees issued every year-no Chinese could marry a white, no white could own property, no white could take imperial examination -just to keep us in line.
Things reached a head ten years after the completion of Gold Mountain. The Council of Deliberative Officials enacted an Exclusion Decree that said no more Vinlanders could enter China. The wives and families of current resident laborers like me were barred from entry. All Vinlanders needed to be registered, and to carry our papers at all times. Only Vinlanders who were teachers, merchants, students, or diplomats would be permitted entry, and there were scarce few of those.
Then came the Driving Out, as the Vinlanders who had moved to the other regions of China were forced out, at the point of a sword or the barrel of a musket. There had been Ghost Towns in most large Chinese cities in the years after the Bridge of Heaven was completed, but after the Exclusion Decree, the only one left was in Nine Dragons.
Some Vinlanders formed partnerships of up to ten men, pooling their money to open businesses that would let them claim status as 'merchants.' They could then receive a certificate of legal residency, instead of being considered itinerant laborers. I tried to pool my money with a pair of brothers named Jefferson and their cousins, to open a dry goods store in Ghost Town, but in the end the ties of family proved stronger than any other obligation. The brothers, with the help of one of their cousins, falsified documents to cut me out of the partnership, swindling me of all my savings, and leaving me worse off than I'd been before. I was nearing fifty, and fit only for manual labor.
It has been more than thirty years since, nearly half of a Chinese cycle of years, and I'm still in virtually the same position as I was then. Since coming to work on Gold Mountain, I made two small fortunes, at least as far as Vinlanders are concerned, and lost them both. I've never since made near that much. Perhaps my heart hasn't been in it. Or two chances were all I had, in this lifetime, and having used them both my only choice is to wait until the next world, or the next life, whichever the case may be. My only regret, I suppose, is that I never married, but with so few Vinlander women in the country, I didn't have much choice. Too bad that Zhu Xan couldn't have waited, just a few minutes more, to take that leap from the Excelsior's balcony. Perhaps we could have been happy together. I think about her still, from time to time. And my brother, of course.
The Exclusion Decree was repealed, fifteen years after it was enacted, but the fact that Vinlanders can now emigrate to China with more ease means little to us old bachelors of Ghost Town. I will die without ever laying eyes on my homeland again. The world has passed us by. We wait. We will welcome Death when he comes.
In the vestibule, commuters bustled, waiting for the bell that would sound the arrival of the next gondola. Just beyond the doors, the electromagnetic rails ran straight up the side of the tower, climbing up past the clouds. To one side of the room stood a young woman of Vinlander extraction, and a very old white ghost.
Johnston Lien and McAllister James were on the island of Fragrant Harbor, standing in the departure lounge at the base station of Gold Mountain. The old man was nervous, his gaze darting about the room furtively, his arms tucked in close to his narrow chest. Lien had not told him why they'd come, only that she had a surprise for him. In the end, she had to promise McAllister another stack of copper coins before he'd leave his rented rooms, and only with them safely in hand would he agree to bestir himself.
Lien had stayed in Guangdong longer than she'd expected. She could have left the week before, after finishing her interview with McAllister, but after hearing his story, she felt there was one more thing she had to do.
She was reminded of her grandfather, to look at McAllister now. Her own grandfather might have been such a man, had he not married her grandmother, and raised a family, and opened a successful Vinlander restaurant in Guangdong during the years of the Exclusion Decree, and later moved north to serve his cuisine in the capital city, and once even served a distant cousin of the emperor himself, and died in bed surrounded by friends and family. Except for an ungrateful granddaughter, of course, who never considered what sacrifices her parents and grandparents might have made so that she could grow up in a China where she could take imperial examinations, and hold administrative office. Women couldn't yet own property, or remarry after the death of their husbands, but Lien was sure that was just a matter of time.
By the same token, had circumstances been other than they were, McAllister might have been her grandfather. He was of the right age, and background, and had it been he that met her grandmother, then things might have gone quite differently for him.
She had allowed her grandfather to slip from this life without taking the opportunity to say a final farewell, nor to thank him. Perhaps in doing some small favor for McAllister James, she could make amends to her grandfather's spirit. She'd had to pull strings at the Ministry of Celestial Excursion, and there was a regional administrator whom she now owed a significant favor, but Lien was convinced it was worth it. For McAllister's sake, for that of her grandfather, and for Lien herself. She felt calmer and more at peace at this moment than she had in years, anxious to see the look on the old man's face.
'Why we here?' the old man finally asked, in his broken Cantonese.
'You'll see,' Lien answered in English, laying a gentle hand on the old man's shoulder.
The departure bell chimed as the gondola approached, and the doors opened with a hissing outrush of air once the gondola was safely docked.
'Come along, Mister McAllister.' Lien took his withered hand in hers, and gently led him toward the open doors.
The old man's eyes darted from side to side, as he meekly followed behind.
'Where are we going?' he asked in English.
'You'll see.'
The gondola doors slid closed behind them, and Lien guided the old man to an open acceleration couch. There were a few dozen engineers, naval officers, and bureaucrats in the gondola with them, and a number of them cast sidelong glances at the old white man trembling in the corner, some with thinly disguised contempt.
The acceleration couch offered an unobstructed view of the observation ports on the opposite wall of the gondola. The old man looked to the window, confused, and it was not until the ground fell away, and he saw the rooftops of Fragrant Harbor spread out like an embroidered quilt at his feet, that he understood what was happening.
'No,' he said, his voice soft and far away. 'Too high. Too long ago. No.'
Lien took his hand in hers, and tried to soothe him.
'It will be alright, Mister McAllister. The Bridge of Heaven is perfectly safe.'
The view out the gondola window was now of the bay, and of the Nine Dragons Peninsula. To the north stretched Guangdong and the Chinese mainland, to the east and south the sapphire blue of the south China sea.
'Oh, no,' the old man said, squeezing his eyes shut tight. 'Too long.'
In moments, the gondola was ascending at speeds of 1,000 kilometers per hour, then 2,000 kph, then faster still. On either side of the passenger gondola, cargo loads traveling up and down the tether at speeds of over 39,000 kph rocketed by, exerting hundreds of thousands of gees on the cargoes they carried, enough to liquefy any passengers. At its leisurely top speed of 3,000 kph, still putting several gees of pressure on its occupants, it would take the passenger gondola just over twelve hours to reach Diamond Summit, the station in geosynchronous Earth orbit above Fragrant Harbor.
'No,' the old man said, shaking his head.
Lien was beside herself.
'I'm so sorry!' she said, squeezing McAllister's frail hand as hard as she dared. 'I'd thought to do something nice for you. I'd no idea you'd be so frightened.'
'No,' the old man whispered urgently.
'It will be alright,' Lien insisted. 'Once we get to the top, you'll see what I wanted to show you, and then we can return. Alright? Please forgive me, I didn't mean to cause you distress.'
The old man kept silent, his mouth drawn into a line, and turned his head away.
By the third hour, the old man would not speak to Lien, not even in response to direct questions. He just sat, his hands in white-knuckled grips on the straps of the couch, his gaze fixed on the curve of the horizon visible through the viewport.
