Kristin abandoned any pretense of toughness the moment they exited the Queens Grill and stepped into the passageway. She made certain that the pistol’s safety was engaged before stashing it in the pocket of her coveralls.
“I’m really sorry that you had to experience any of this,” she said while leading the way aft. “I know that you must think we’re crazy, but there really is a purpose to our madness, Ricky.”
Ricky grunted skeptically. “There’s no excuse for coldblooded murder.”
Kristin had been expecting this attitude, and she tried her best to plead their case. “What you view as murder, we look upon as unfortunate casualties of war. You see, we’re currently in the midst of an armed struggle; a fight for survival, that’s as important to us as the Civil War was to your ancestors in preserving your country.”
As they reached the landing, Kristin hit a button to summon the elevator. They entered the lift, and as they headed down to Two Deck, she continued.
“Don’t get me wrong, Ricky. I’m not trying to justify the bloodshed that you witnessed back there. What I would like to do is give you an inkling of what’s motivating us. The cell that’s carrying out this operation may be but a few dozen strong, yet the movement we represent counts its loyal members by the hundreds of millions. Do you know much about the history of modern China, Ricky?”
“I know enough,” he retorted icily, still hesitant to be drawn into a civil conversation.
“Then I’m sure you know who Chairman Mao was,” she said, noting the continued distrust in Ricky’s eyes. “No one was more instrumental in the birth of the People’s Republic than Mao Tsetung. Almost by himself, the Chairman single-handedly freed our country from decades of slavery, pestilence, and war.
“I’m proud to say that my paternal grandfather was one of Mao’s closest advisors, who personally accompanied the Chairman during the infamous Long March. In fact, it was on October 14, 1934, that grandfather left his childhood home in Kiangsi Province to join Mao and a hundred thousand others on a desperate retreat from encroaching Kuomintang Nationalist forces under Chiang Kaishek.” Kristin continued her tale as the lift reached Two Deck, where they continued on foot to the Security Room. “In the first three weeks of the Long March, nearly twenty five thousand would die in combat.
Grandfather received a severe wound to his leg at this time, during an attack on a Nationalist blockhouse. From that point on, it was a painful struggle for him to keep up with the rest of the dwindling Red Chinese Army. Grandmother always said that it was the force of his convictions alone that saw him through all three hundred and sixty-eight days of the march. He covered over eight thousand miles altogether, through deserts, swamps, snow-covered mountains, and fast-moving river gorges.
“Mao was forced to abandon three of his children during the course of this epic journey. He also had a brother who was killed and his wife injured, along the way to their final stop in the loess caves of Shensi Province.”
They found the door to the Security Room wide open. Kristin led the way inside to the inner room that was dominated by a wall of video monitors.
She made certain that Ricky was comfortably seated behind the keyboard of a console before giving him a quick demonstration of the system’s capabilities. She was able to isolate one of the cameras in the ship’s Bridge. She then used the mouse to pan the lens of the camera from one side of the darkened control room to the other, and even managed to get a close-up of one of the officers updating a navigation chart.
Ricky couldn’t help but be impressed with the system, and he voluntarily took hold of the mouse to move the camera himself. “Do you mean to say that you’ve got video coverage of this entire ship?” he asked while manipulating the mouse to get a close-up of the beard-stub bled face of the navigator.
“I believe so,” she answered. “Though I don’t think it’s possible to spy on individual staterooms. Max was the real expert on this system.
He was teaching me how to use it, right before he was killed.”
Ricky experimented with the keyboard, and learned that different cameras could be isolated by hitting various combinations of letters and numbers. By depressing the key marked F1, he was able to access a view of the ship’s engine control room on the center video monitor.
Randomly hitting F8 caused the screen beside it to fill with a shot of the QE2’s Bakery. Ricky used the mouse to catch two Chinese sentries helping themselves to a tray filled with chocolate eclairs.
Kristin could see that Ricky was hooked, and as he continued his experimentation, she went on with her story. “In 1949, after twenty-two years on the run in the rural interior, Grandfather was one of the lucky patriots at Mao’s side as he triumphantly entered Beijing.
As survivors of the Long March, they felt they could meet any challenge, including that of creating a new nation.
“My father came into the world one year later, shortly after Grandfather fell in love with a feisty political writer from Nanjing.
The countryside was still filled with roving bands of Nationalist bandits in those early days of the Republic. While on a mission to Lanzhou, Grandfather was captured by such a band. The Kuomintang scum recognized him as one of Mao’s advisors, and a mock trial was convened, with Grandfather labeled a traitor. He was beheaded that same evening, his body tossed on the side of the road to be devoured by wild dogs.
“When Grandmother heard of this tragedy, she was forced to make the difficult decision to leave China and move to San Francisco with her brother’s family. Even though Father grew up in California, his uncle’s household instilled in him the utter importance of an independent, self-sustaining China, free from corrupt Western influences. Frequent trips back to mainland China allowed him to establish relations with a powerful group of Communists who shared his concerns. It was this group of patriots who introduced him to the movement to which we currently belong.
“The reason for our present actions are solely prompted by Li Chen’s illegal power grab after Deng Xiaoping’s death. Entry into the G-7 would mean the end of China as we now know it, making all of the sacrifices that Grandfather, Mao, and the rest of the Red patriots were forced to make be totally in vain.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” returned Ricky as diplomatically as possible. He didn’t want to agree with her actions nor did he want to condemn, either of which might turn her more harshly against him. Still, he couldn’t just let all these excuses go unanswered. That wasn’t how his father had raised him.
Kristin was relieved to hear that Ricky had been paying attention to her, and she attempted to draw him out further. “What do you mean by that?”
Ricky replied while filling a single screen with a live video shot of the Midships Lobby, the darkened Theater, the Beauty Salon, and a carpeted Penthouse passageway. “What I’m trying to say, Kristin, is that it’s time for China to take its rightful place in the twenty-first century. And you’re not going to do this by running away like scared children who are afraid to grow up. China has nothing to fear from the world community. Change is frightening by its very nature. And for your country to reach its full potential, you must put your fears aside, and work with the other nations to make this planet a better place for all of us.”
This spirited discourse generated a smattering of applause from the room’s doorway. This was where Dennis Liu was standing, an amused grin on his face.
“Well said, comrade,” reflected Liu, as he stopped clapping. “Though I must admit that your political outlook of the world is naive at best.
What do you know of class struggle and a people’s desire for real freedom? Your pampered upbringing has limited your sight and clouded your soul that’s been stripped of its vibrance by the cancerous sameness of Western consumerism.