“Maybe,” Zhou said. “But why does she want Qi?”
“I don’t know. She said that Qi was messing up her plans for reform by initiating the demonstrations back home, which will then cause a crackdown from the rightists, which will make the reforms more difficult.”
“Sounds plausible. But aren’t Peng and Qi’s father both candidates to become the next president, at this very congress?”
“Yes, so I understand. If you think a woman really has a chance.”
Zhou shrugged. “I’ve heard it said that Peng could do it. And that’s partly because she’s been so tough and effective. So, think about it: if you had the daughter of your rival in custody, it might help you, if a moment came where someone had to concede.”
Ta Shu sighed. “It doesn’t seem like her.”
“Nevertheless. People who might become president probably don’t ever seem much like their previous selves.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Ta Shu said, pondering it unhappily.
“We all present a persona to other people. Some have a wide range of personas. A real cast of characters.”
Ta Shu sighed. His cast had always been extremely smalclass="underline" just him. There was his cloud persona, of course, and there was the poet; but these had tended to be just him. Possibly his imagination was deficient in that regard. Although he did tend to try to encourage other people by pretending he was always happy. That was called cheerfulness. Maybe it was part of him, maybe it was a persona. “So what do you suggest?”
Zhou sat there thinking about it. “Ah,” he said, and gestured forward; the horizon was now pricked by a brilliant blue light, like a shard of glowing lapis lazuli. This blue wafer grew to left and right, then stabilized: Earth. The merest fingernail clipping on the white horizon, a slim crescent of blue so intense it looked radioactive, wedged there between the black and the white.
“I don’t know what to suggest,” Zhou confessed. “To me it looks like you have some secret police tailing you, waiting to arrest the very person you are trying to meet and keep from getting arrested. So maybe you shouldn’t meet her.”
“That’s fine by me, but what should I do instead to try and help her?”
Zhou thought about it as they watched the Earth creep upward. Slow as it was compared to moonrise on Earth, a matter of hours rather than minutes, the movement was still happening, as a creeping creep of blue.
So far from home. Vivid blue, the color of water, the color of breath. The cosmic yin-yang symbol enveloping that blue line was by contrast so obviously dead. They were looking from death toward life, like ghosts trying to figure out what they should have done when they were in the world.
Zhou finally said, “I just don’t know. You could slip away from these people and join your young friends in hiding, but then your ability to act would be constrained.”
“Being out here hasn’t seemed to have stopped Qi from acting.”
“You don’t know that. Could be she only got off that single message. Could be she would do a lot more if she were in Beijing. But in any case, on the other hand you could stay away from her, maybe lead your minders around by the nose, wait for an opportunity to do something to help her from the side.”
“I’m guessing I should do that.”
“Maybe so. The thing is, these two agents are not going to be able to hunt for her by themselves. There’s only a limited number of rooms on the moon, but people hiding her could move her and her friend around, staying in front of the hunt. And there are quite a few hidden spaces too. Much more hidden than Fang Fei’s China Dream.”
“What if Bo and Dhu get help from the authorities at the south pole?”
“If that happened, they might find her. If they had the right people helping. But Jiang Jianguo won’t help them, that I am sure of. The main thing is, can you find out who these guys are really working for?”
“I don’t know. What about you? Could you find out?”
“I don’t know. My first move would be to ask Jianguo for help.”
Slowly, slowly, the blue paring of Earth crept up over the white wall of the horizon. Time itself seemed slowed, congealed to a syrup they were caught in. Flies in amber; ghosts outside the world. Ta Shu pondered his options.
“Poem pair?” Zhou suggested.
“Oh dear,” Ta Shu protested.
“Come on,” Zhou Bao said. “One must keep a sense of propriety. Are we literati or not? Are we alive or not?”
“I’m not sure,” Ta Shu admitted. “I feel like a ghost.”
“I am sure,” Zhou said. “We are alive. And even ghosts write poetry.”
“Do they? I never heard that.”
“They do. Give it a try.”
Ta Shu sighed, pondered his wrist. Without thought, without volition, his fingers tapped out keys for ideograms. The pause in their conversation was no longer than their usual silences, and yet suddenly looking up at him was a poem:
He showed his wrist to Zhou Bao, who read it and smiled. “Very good. Very true. Here’s mine.”
Ta Shu said, “We are both sounding kind of worried, my friend.”
“And why not. Come on, let’s get back. There’s nothing more to say right now, and I’m worried I’ll miss messages from the Peaks. I’ve sent out some encrypted inquiries, and even that is looking suspicious now.”
“Sure, let’s get back.”
Zhou drove the rover in a circle on the mesa and they returned to the station. The midday sunlight was so bright that even the shadows were white, blasted by photons ricocheting sideways into any shaded place. Everything was white, with faint lines and gradations making what little texture there was. The wheel tracks on the road shimmered as they proceeded like mirages in a desert. When they approached the station’s garage outer door, Zhou clicked on the radio and announced they were coming in.
“Glad you’re back,” the lock keeper said. “Those cops that came here with Ta Shu found Chan Qi and arrested her.”
They rushed inside, Zhou taking the lead. Ta Shu found again that his ability to hurry in lunar gravity was severely limited. Loping after Zhou he flew immediately into the ceiling, shouted in dismay, landed on his feet several meters along, grabbed the handrail on the wall to keep from falling, stopped himself. Started again with a hand-over-hand motion, like a sailor on the flooded deck of a ship. Zhou had never slowed, and Ta Shu hurried after him around a corner and was startled to find him coming right back at him, hunched over in his rapid big-headed shuffle. Ta Shu got out of Zhou’s way, turned around and followed him again, guessing he had gone first to his office and was now headed to wherever Qi and Fred might be, but now with a small pistol in hand. He was talking fast into his wristpad, so that the gun, which Ta Shu hoped and assumed was a Taser pistol, was pointed at the ceiling. Again Zhou was much faster than Ta Shu, and as the station’s hallways were filled with right-angle turns, he hustled quickly out of Ta Shu’s sight, and Ta Shu had to hurry as best he could after him, following a blue line on the floor which he hoped indicated the way Zhou had taken.