Nevertheless, he was drawn to his friends despite himself. Was it only luck that kept him from being betrayed? Or was it his true nature that allowed him relationships in which both men became more vulnerable and committed? He was capable of tenderness, which went against their rough, boyish ways. It humiliated Jia that his
yin
was so strong, but the pull he felt was irresistible. The sex was good. The love was better. Jia had also seen that it was often the most reckless affairs that led one man or the other to anonymously report his partner. Jia was safer for committing to his boyfriends. All of them held each other’s fates in their hands, and yet it tended to be those who felt the most self-disgust who became the cruelest, destroying their lovers.
In ancient China there had been little or no bias against homosexual relationships. As long as a man fulfilled his duties as a husband and a father, what he did elsewhere was ignored. That attitude changed during the Cultural Revolution. The Communist Party targeted homosexuals as deviants and a threat to their ideal society. Openly gay men were jailed, even executed.
This persecution began to relax again in the twenty-first century. Sodomy was decriminalized, homosexuality removed from a list of mental disorders—but the Party and the military continued to hold onto the conservative views of the Revolution.
The machine plague brought the worst of that era crashing back again. There wasn’t enough room in the mountains for everyone. Many of China’s minorities were gone. The subtle racism of the Han had become a survival mechanism, blatant and merciless. The Communist Party resurrected all of the old prejudices, cutting away anyone who was suspect.
Jia was not an activist. Even before the apocalypse, he would never have worked against his country. For one thing, it seemed futile. He wasn’t a coward. He was smart enough to see how forcefully the river flowed. All he wanted was to belong. He owed them his success. On some level, Jia also knew that the best way to save himself was to become indispensable. The Party overlooked small crimes if a man proved loyal and hard-working. Jia recognized the irony. He was willing to give everything of himself for China precisely because China did not want all of him, only his stamina and cleverness.
He was also aware that a prominent role in coordinating the nanotech would expose him to great scrutiny. The MSS must have interviewed everyone who’d ever served with him. Many of those men were dead, but what if the MSS uncovered a former lover? What if they spoke to someone who suspected? For weeks, Jia worried at being found out. He did not want to forfeit his chance, and yet it occurred to him that perhaps they did know. They must know.
The mind plague was a gamble. The attack was launched without the knowledge of their own people precisely because it might not work. Jia had been told the nanotech was untested except for a few limited trials, so the job required not only a senior officer but also a man whose obedience was propped up by extreme fear and ambition. He was the ideal fit. If anything went wrong, they could discard him effortlessly, casting him as an over-reaching upstart and a homosexual as well. There would be no defense. Jia would be held up as a failure, and then shot.
General Zheng said, “The
governor is not a fool. He’s correct that our forces are unready.”
“Sir,” Jia said, “everything is exactly to plan.”
Zheng turned to study their display screens again. “This is nanotech,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“What does it do?”
“Our people taught it to hunt out the basic structure of the human brain, sir. From there, it attacks the frontal lobes of the cerebrum.”
“So it kills.”
“No, sir. It’s a bloodless weapon. I didn’t mean to imply that it destroys the tissue. The nanotech simply gloms onto the synaptic clefts in the areas affecting time sense and memory. Right now, the Americans are badly confused.”
There was a high failure rate, of course. By clogging millions of the brain’s receptors, impeding the electrochemical impulses that normally jumped between the synapses, the mind plague not only left its victims witless and agitated. People varied too much. Sometimes the nanotech caused permanent injury.
Zheng said, “What if the wind changes or if it reaches as far as mainland China?”
“We’re immune, sir.”
“Your machine is that sensitive to racial genetics?”
“No, sir. We were given a vaccine in our health injections, sir.”
There was no difference between Oriental and Occidental brains. The mind plague would have attacked them all without a cousin nanotech to ward it off.
Three weeks ago, Jia had been among the first who received the hypodermic shots of fluid purported to be rich in nutrients. The order to launch the plague had waited only until everyone in the People’s Republic quietly received the same shots. The MSS also made certain to allow black marketeers to sell small amounts of it across their borders with the Russians, both in Asia and here in California. Those cases had been altered to have the vaccine to the mind plague removed, of course, because they knew the Russian spy agencies would sell their analysis of the serum to the Europeans as part of their own double-dealings with the enemy. The Russians believed the shots were merely another of China’s heavy-handed medical programs, a soup of B vitamins intended to help their mal nourished armies.
“I see,” Zheng said. “The Americans would have noticed us mobilizing if we were prepared to march in behind the nanotech. Or they might have intercepted our communications if the plan was widespread.”
“Yes, sir.” Jia was relieved. By reaching the facts himself, Zheng allowed him to say more without costing face. It was a delicate situation. Zheng must feel wildly uneasy receiving orders from a young colonel, which is why he’d sided first with Governor Shao. Jia needed to restore their normal relationship as fast as possible. “You have my loyalty, sir. My role was only to begin the attacks. You reacted more quickly than anyone expected,” Jia explained, and that was true. “I’m sure there are confirmations waiting for you even now.”
“Who are you reporting to?” Zheng asked.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Is it General Qin?”
“I swear I don’t know, sir.”
“And yet your operation extends through dozens of air and ground units in addition to our nanotech labs. I want your control codes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who are your contacts? Are they MSS?”
“Yes, sir. Sixth Department, sir. Colonels Feng and Pan have been my go-betweens.”
Huojin interrupted. “Colonel? The first transports are in the air, sir.”
“Stick to the plan. Take the capital,” Jia said.
Their border troops and Elite Forces were always on standby, so Jia had been able to mobilize two companies of paratroopers without being concerned that it might alert the Americans. Soon the entire PLA would be on the move, rolling through the deserts and taking to the sky.
“What about a nuclear response?” Zheng asked. “These bunkers aren’t hardened against their missiles.”
“No, sir, but we’re on American soil, and the plague is spreading like the wind itself. They’ll have no time to consider their options.”
The Americans would also be in the path of any fallout themselves. If they hit the West Coast, the normal west-to-east flow of the weather would carry the radioactivity over their own homes on the Continental Divide—and the old, implacable power of mutually assured destruction still held true.
“They can be certain our mainland would retaliate with missile launches of our own,” Jia said. “The expectation is the Americans will hesitate. Then the plague will have them.”
In all of history,
had there ever been a war that was decided in a few hours? Jia hadn’t accepted this task for the glory. His name was meant to be kept secret, yet he thrilled at the idea that someday he might be remembered among the greatest of Asia’s warlords, Khan, Sun Tzu, and China’s own heroes like Mao and Chiang Kai-shek.
The war in North America should have been theirs from the start. The Russians had been honed down to a cold-blooded war machine during their long fight in the Middle East, but the all-male invasion of the PLA had a deeper motivation.
They wanted to go home.
They wanted women.
North America could have satisfied both needs, becoming a second China. There had been thousands of prisoners taken in California, Arizona, and Colorado. For every female of age, this was less horrible than for the men. The People’s Liberation Army had been too hard-pressed to dedicate any troops to building shelters for their POWs, nor was there water to spare in the desert.
The labor camps killed many of the enemy combatants, but the females were spared. Most of them had been repatriated as part of the cease-fire, except for the
bù l zhì
few who chose to stay with their masters. Victory would have meant a thousand times as many concubines. If the Chinese armies won, they might have been complete, graced with
lizhide,
low-class wives and a giant work force of slaves to run their farms and factories. Even now, after the stalemate, hundreds of American women must have given birth to Chinese babies. Eventually the People’s Republic might claim the world through breeding out the other races. That would take generations and it would create new ethnic minorities, but Jia could see how they might establish their peace one pregnancy at a time.
The new plague was immediate. It was something in which Jia could participate wholeheartedly, and if the attacks went well he should be safer than ever, praised and accepted by the Ministry’s highest leaders.
He was unspeakably proud of his inclusion in the Sixth Department, which had only tightened its clutches on the Communist Party. The MSS would use their victory to cement their power, adding momentum to their bid to unify the Party beneath their own generals. With new leadership, they also intended to bring a change in direction. Originally, the People’s Republic had planned to evacuate their forces as agreed in the cease-fire. The reality was that much of Asia was eroded down to its bedrock like the American Midwest. Only the coastlines and the mountains were inhabitable. Mainland China was no more able to house and feed another hundred and fifty thousand soldiers than those men were capable of fending for themselves in occupied California.
The mind plague was the only answer for the troops who’d been left behind. They needed to take America or there they would die, because new orders were about to be unveiled along with the announcement of Jia’s attack.
They had been told never to come home.
7
Eight hundred miles from
Los Angeles, in the town of Jefferson, very little was as it seemed, either. Cam stood at the northern edge of their village with his head ringing, looking inward at the huts when his job was to watch the fences beyond their home. The wind crawled on his jacket hood, sinister and quiet. He tried to ignore it. He’d cinched his mask and goggles tightly across his face. His hands were thickened by old leather gloves. Duct tape sealed his wrists and the cuffs of his pants. Still, he felt exposed. The wind was like a voice at his back. It whispered against his armor, cold and persistent, defining every wrinkle in his sleeves and collar.
The night was absolute. The only light was from the stars—but the darkness was full of technology. Most of Jefferson’s homes were wired for electricity, even if they held only a few lightbulbs, and some of the men had brought out floodlamps, too, preparing to light up the perimeter until sunrise. They were far from helpless. The town boasted an M60 machine gun and a Russian Army rocket-propelled grenade launcher in addition to dozens of rifles, carbines, handguns, and military radios.
“This is One,” Greg said in Cam’s headset, beginning their status checks clockwise around the huts.
“Two,” a woman said.
“Three.”
The sound-off continued through eleven guard posts until it reached Cam at the northernmost point. “Twelve,” he said.
“Thirteen,” Bobbi added. Inside the first sealed hut, she continued to monitor their Harris radio as well as the local net on their headsets and walkie-talkies. For nearly an hour, they’d been confirming each other’s status every ten minutes. They were afraid they might have to turn on themselves again. Already there had been a burst of flashlights and yelling at Station Eight when David’s batteries failed and the people at Seven and Nine thought they’d have to shoot him.
One of their guards wore a painter’s dual cartridge respirator. Three others had flak jackets, which were useless against nanotech but might save their lives in combat. It had been decided. Jefferson was under quarantine. Even if outsiders looked like they were okay, even if they needed help, the guards intended to warn off or kill anyone else who walked out of the hills, defending their own families above all else. Cam was ready to take part in a slaughter if necessary, yet he’d convinced them to black out the town instead of powering up their small grid.
What if that old woman came here because she saw the fire?
he’d said. Cam would be a long time forgetting Tony’s wide-eyed face. The kid had seemed to
target
them, reeling around to focus on their shouting voices.
There were other ways to watch the darkness. They had two nightscopes in addition to the one they’d lost with Tony when it was contaminated like the boy, and their fences were still a decent early warning system.
Cam believed himself to be an honorable man. Since the war he’d become a public leader much like Allison, supporting her, learning from her, taking charge of Jefferson’s economy and politics because he thought he could help. Now a lot of that person was gone. The survivor was back, his instincts and old traumas winning out over the cool, more rational mind of the statesman.
