“I have to go,” I said. “Business, you understand. But I have some news that may be of interest to you.”
“Oh?” he said eagerly. “Tell me.”
“I’ve invested heavily in Sony, and through negotiation I’ve arranged for one of your old companies-Intertech of Hanoi-to be placed in charge of overseeing the virtual environment. I would expect you’re soon going to see some changes in your particular part of Heaven.”
He seemed nonplussed, then a look of alarm dawned on his face. “What are you going to do?”
“Me? Not a thing.” I smiled, and the act of smiling weakened my emotional restraint-a business skill I had not yet perfected-and let anger roughen my voice. “It’s much more agreeable to have your dirty work handled by others, don’t you think?”
On occasion, Tan and I manage to rekindle an intimacy that reminds us of the days when we first were lovers, but these occasions never last for long, and our relationship is plagued by the lapses into neutrality or-worse- indifference that tend to plague any two people who have spent ten years in each other’s company. In our case these lapses are often accompanied by bouts of self-destructive behavior. It seems we’re punishing ourselves for having experienced what we consider an undeserved happiness. Even our most honest infidelities are inclined to be of the degrading sort. I understand this. The beach at Vung Tau, once the foundation of our union, has been replaced by a night on Yen Phu Street in Binh Khoi, and no edifice built upon such imperfect stone could be other than cracked and deficient. Nonetheless, we both realize that whatever our portion of contentment in this world, we are fated to seek it together.
From time to time, I receive a communication from Vang. He does not look well, and his tone is always desperate, cajoling. I tell myself that I should relent and restore him to the afterlife for which he contracted; but I am not highly motivated in that regard. If there truly is something that dies when one ascends to Heaven, I fear it has already died in me, and I blame Vang for this.
Seven years after my talk with Vang, Tan and I attended a performance of the circus in the village of Loc Noi. There was a new James Bond Cochise, Kai and Kim had become pretty teenagers, both Tranh and Mei were thinner, but otherwise things were much the same. We sat in the main tent after the show and reminisced. The troupe-Mei in particular-were unnerved by my bodyguards, but all in all, it was a pleasant reunion.
After a while I excused myself and went to see the major. He was huddled in his tent, visible by the weird flickerings in his eyes…though as my vision adapted to the dark, I was able to make out the cowled shape of his head against the canvas backdrop. Tranh had told me he did not expect the major to live much longer, and now that I was close to him, I found that his infirmity was palpable, I could hear it in his labored breath. I asked if he knew who I was, and he replied without inflection, as he had so many years before, “Philip.” I’d hoped that he would be more forthcoming, because I still felt akin to him, related through the cryptic character of our separate histories, and I thought that he might once have sensed that kinship, that he’d had some diffuse knowledge of the choices I confronted, and had designed the story of Firebase Ruby for my benefit, shaping it as a cautionary tale-one I’d failed to heed. But perhaps I’d read too much into what was sheer coincidence. I touched his hand, and his breath caught, then shuddered forth, heavy as a sob. All that remained for him were a few stories, a few hours in the light. I tried to think of something I could do to ease his last days, but I knew death was the only mercy that could mend him.
Mei invited Tan and me to spend the night in the trailer-for old times’ sake, she said-and we were of no mind to refuse. We both yearned for those old times, despite neither of us believing that we could recapture them. Watching Tan prepare for bed, it seemed to me that she had grown too vivid for the drab surroundings, her beauty become too cultivated and too lush. But when she slipped in beside me, when we began to make love on that creaky bunk, the years fell away and she felt like a girl in my arms, tremulous and new to such customs, and I was newly awakened to her charms. She drifted off to sleep afterward with her head on my chest, and as I lay there trying to quiet my breath so not to wake her, it came to me that future and past were joined in the darkness that enclosed us, two black rivers flowing together, and I understood that while the circus would go its own way in the morning and we would go ours, those rivers, too, were forever joined-we shared a confluence and a wandering course, and a moment proof against the world’s denial, and we would always be a troupe, Kim and Kai, Mei and Tranh, Tan and I, and the major…that living ghost who, like myself, was the figment of a tragic past he never knew, or-if, indeed, he knew it-with which he could never come to terms. It was a bond that could not save us, from either our enemies or ourselves, but it held out a hope of simple glory, a promise truer than Heaven. Illusory or not, all our wars would continue until their cause was long-forgotten under the banner of Radiant Green Star.
Great Wall of Mars Alastair Reynolds
You realize you might die down there,” said Warren.
Nevil Clavain looked into his brother’s one good eye; the one the Conjoiners had left him with after the battle of Tharsis Bulge. “Yes, I know,” he said. “But if there’s another war, we might all die. I’d rather take that risk, if there’s a chance for peace.”
Warren shook his head, slowly and patiently. “No matter how many times we’ve been over this, you just don’t seem to get it, do you? There can’t ever be any kind of peace while they’re still down there. That’s what you don’t understand, Nevil. The only long-term solution here is…” he trailed off.
“Go on,” Clavain goaded. “Say it. Genocide.”
Warren might have been about to answer when there was a bustle of activity down the docking tube, at the far end from the waiting spacecraft. Through the door Clavain saw a throng of media people, then someone gliding through them, fielding questions with only the curtest of answers. That was Sandra Voi, the Demarchist woman who would be coming with him to Mars.
“It’s not genocide when they’re just a faction, not an ethnically distinct race,” Warren said, before Voi was within earshot.
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know. Prudence?”
Voi approached. She bore herself stiffly, her face a mask of quiet resignation. Her ship had only just docked from Circum-Jove, after a three-week transit at maximum burn. During that time the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the current crisis had steadily deteriorated.
“Welcome to Deimos,” Warren said.
“Marshalls,” she said, addressing both of them. “I wish the circumstances were better. Let’s get straight to business. Warren; how long do you think we have to find a solution?”
“Not long. If Galiana maintains the pattern she’s been following for the last six months, we’re due another escape attempt in…” Warren glanced at a readout buried in his cuff. “About three days. If she does try and get another shuttle off Mars, we’ll really have no option but to escalate.”
They all knew what that would mean: a military strike against the Conjoiner nest.
“You’ve tolerated her attempts so far,” Voi said. “And each time you’ve successfully destroyed her ship with all the people in it. The net risk of a successful break out hasn’t increased. So why retaliate now?”
“It’s very simple. After each violation we issued Galiana with a stronger warning than the one before. Our last