DeVore considered that a moment, then gave a curt, decisive nod. “Okay. 1 take it that you alone know of this.”
“Schenck knows nothing.”
“Good. Nor should he. The Governor’s a reliable enough man when it comes to matters Martian, but he’s little time for the bigger picture. And as for taking on Tolonen . . .” He gave a strange, brief laugh. “Well, I’m glad you’re back, Will. You’ll stay with me, I hope?” “I’d be honored and delighted.”
“Good.” DeVore smiled, then turned, hearing movement on the terrace. It was Schenck, his formal robes replaced now by a loose-fitting velvet pau. The Governor smiled broadly and hailed them.
“Will you have a drink before you go, Howard? And you, Will?” They went across, joining Schenck in a toast, congratulating him once more, their laughter filling the air inside the dome. Outside, beyond the circle of light, soldiers patrolled the frosted perimeter, their pressure suits gleaming in the frigid darkness, the great, blue-white circle of Chung Kuo high above them in the Martian sky. The night was almost over. It would be dawn in three hours.
tien men k’ou city never slept. An hour before dawn its warrens and corridors buzzed with activity. In the south quadrant workers from the giant HoloGen complex, their pale ochre overalls distinctive, were coming off shift, their replacements shuffling past them, bleary eyed in the half dark. In the eastern levels prostitutes— common men hu in creased ersilks, stinking of cheap perfume—stood in doorways calling out to any drunken reveler who passed, while in cluttered dens close by small knots of gamblers, young Han, their dark hair cut stubble-short in traditional Martian style, crouched excitedly over the roll and tumble of dice. In the markets of west and central, traders busied themselves, buying fresh produce from the Tharsis farmlands or setting up their stalls, while at the spaceport, on the northeastern side of the City, one of the great interplanetary cruisers was being readied for flight, the maintenance crew like darkly carapaced insects scuttling across its giant fuselage. Stem-faced Colony guards, helmeted, black chevrons on their blood-red uniforms, paced the affluent upper levels beneath the crater’s lip, stopping to move on a drunk or check on the movements of one of the juvenile gangs that thrived in the teeming lower-east and rode the lifts from Deep to Lip. Last but not least were the outworld tourists, who could be found wandering in the upper levels near the spaceport, taking their fill of Mars before returning to the bleak, claustrophobic austerity of their homeworlds.
One such traveler, a small, neat-looking man with dark, fine hair and soft brown eyes, stopped amid the bustle of Chang An Avenue and looked up, studying the sign over the doorway to his right. Against a dark red background a black dragon coiled sinuously and exhaled a cloud of smoke from its sharply fanged jaws, its barbed tail lashing out. Fierce eyed, it stared down at him, as if daring him to enter. Beneath the moving image, flashed almost subliminally at him, were two pictograms, reinforcing the visual. Hei lung, they read. Black Dragon. Smiling, deciding he could take an hour out before he met up with his brothers again, he went across and placed his hand flat against the entry pad, looking up into the camera.
As the outer door hissed back, he caught the sharp, sweet scents of alcohol and tobacco. And other things. Things he could only guess at. Quickly, before the outer door closed and the inner lock sprang open, he took two twenty-^uan bills from his wallet and palmed them, then slipped the pouch into his right boot, patting it once to check it didn’t show. His uncle had been robbed once in such a place, up in Chi Shan City, in the north. The poor man had lost ten thousand yuan and had returned home empty handed, the ore extractor he had come to buy unpurchased, a year’s profit for the family lost in a moment’s recklessness. The traveler nodded to himself, remembering the shame his uncle had suffered, and how, for months afterward, a cloud had fallen over the whole family. He had only been eight, yet that time—with its communal feeling of shame and disappointment, and despair at effort unrewarded—was etched vividly in his memory. While he understood—and shared—his uncle’s curiosity, he was determined that no one would ever say that he, Ikuro Ishida, had been as careless.
The outer door hissed shut, the latches clicking into place. At once the inner doors irised open, the strange, intoxicating scent of the place—that same scent he had caught the faintest trace of a moment before—hitting him like the rush of a drug.
Inside was a big, sprawling bar with two, maybe three, dozen tables and, on the far side, a big half-moon-shaped counter. There was a faint murmur of conversation, the background chatter of a ViewScreen in the right-hand corner, but the bar was almost empty. There were a dozen people at most, scattered here and there among the tables. He made his way across and took one of the high stools beside the bar, placing one of the twenties on the counter in front of him, as he’d seen others do. At once the barman came across. “A maotai, please,” he said casually, as if it was what he ordered every day.
The barman nodded, went away, returned with a bowl of the rich, red sorghum-based liquor, and placed it before him, not touching the twenty. “Thank you,” he said, speaking to the barman’s back, but already the man had forgotten him.
Ikuro looked about him, noting the tiny dance floor, the half-empty
tables, the big MedFac screen in the far corner, murmuring away unwatched,
and nodded inwardly. Despite the hour and the mere handful of people
scattered about the bar, it was just how he had pictured it. He sniffed
deeply, taking in the smell of the place; then, gripping the bowl with
both hands, he raised it to his lips and sipped, timidly at first, then
with more gusto as the rich, sweet taste of the sorghum flooded his
senses.
He set the bowl down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked at the timer inset into his wrist. It was eight minutes past five. Good. He would stay until six. Would sit here and relax and drink a bowl or two of this splendid maotai. After all, he deserved it. His brothers didn’t know yet, but he had struck a good deal for them this night. Had saved them days of haggling and thousands of yuan. It was only right that he should take an hour off to celebrate.
He looked about him again, savoring the feeling of being in a bar, on Mars, alone. It was like being in a trivee serial, or at the start of some strange adventure. Except that this was real. He could feel the solid roundness of the seat beneath him, taste the sorghum liquor on his tongue and in his throat, smell the rich blend of intoxicants in the air. And if he turned his head . . .
Ikuro stopped, noticing for the first time what he had missed on his first look around the bar.
The man was sitting on the far side of the counter, half in shadow, his face turned away. At first Ikuro thought he might have been mistaken, but as the man turned back he could see that he had been right. The man was masked—a facial prosthetic with hardflesh clips, attached to the bone beneath the jaw. Even from where he sat Ikuro could see that it was one of the cheaper makes—the kind that only someone very poor would wear—and wondered what had happened to him. As the man lifted the bowl to the thin, flexible mouthpiece, Ikuro noticed that the hand, too, was damaged, the pale flesh sheathed in a light polymer exoskeleton. Ikuro looked down, staring into the blood-red liquid, conscious of his own face staring back up at him. He had seen many accidents, many awful things. He had even seen men die, his eldest brother, Kitano, among them. Yet he had never become hardened to such things. Had never been able to switch off and externalize the pain he felt at others’ suffering. It was even why he was here, in a sense, sitting in a lowlife bar when he should have been safe in his room at the port, his brothers snoring in their beds close by, for unlike his brothers he wanted to know what it was like to live like this. Wanted to know how it felt. He glanced at the man again, then looked down, feeling an instinctive pity for him. He, too, wore a mask, only his was skin deep. His pass read “Han,” but he was not Han. Not he nor his eleven brothers, fourteen uncles, and innumerable cousins. A hundred and fifty years ago, when Tsao Ch’un had destroyed the home islands of Japan, they had been out there already, in the circuit of Jupiter, mining the Trojan asteroids. The news, when it had finally reached them, had come as a body blow. Yet they had understood at once. They had become Han, reinventing themselves, taking on a protective coloration. But deep down, beneath the mask, they were still what they were—what they’d always been. Japanese. Ikuro picked up his bowl again, sipping from it, then, hearing the hiss of the outer lock, turned and looked across. A moment later the inner door dilated and four men—Hung Mao, dressed uniformly in pale ochre one-pieces—came through. They were halfway across the floor when one of them—a thickset man with short-cropped blond hair—noticed Ikuro and put an arm out, stopping his friends. There was a moment’s fierce whispering and then they came on again.