The Second Wave (7 page)

All in all, the progress exceeded all
expectations. General Fatique was more than satisfied. The tickets
were activated, and in less than three weeks the new settlers would
arrive to start a new life; not just for themselves, but for
everyone. The second wavers got provided with jobs and homes, so
they could start setting up the next settlement and the first
infrastructures. Another year, Fatique mused as he strolled to the
conference room to meet the new mayor, perhaps fifteen months. Then
Alternearth was ready for a full colonization; and not a moment too
soon.

Fatique met with Heathcliff Rochester alone
today, without the assistance of Elizabeth Burke. The two men had
become friends over the last months, Fatique wanted to use this
last opportunity for a nice chat, before he sent Rochester to
Alternearth for good.

“All in all, my dear Heath, you’ll be
responsible for a total of two hundred forty-two people, including
children,” Fatique told him later, when he and Rochester had gone
through the plans together. The table in the conference room was
buried under layouts and maps and printed out lists of almost
everything, including the first timid weather forecasts.

Heath Rochester was a round, intelligent man
of fifty-two. He had pulled not a few strings to be appointed mayor
of the second wave. A primary school teacher by profession, he had
worked as headmaster for the last years; and although the step from
headmaster to mayor was a huge one and didn’t come naturally, what
qualified him the most was his motivation. He was willing to do his
best, to sacrifice everything for this job, and, maybe even more
important, he knew about the questionable vanishing of the first
wave settlers, and would not give up searching for them. His
daughter and her family had been among them. Rochester had sworn to
find them, if it killed him. General Fatique was content to know he
had an ally in the other reality—someone who was just as anxious to
find out what happened than he was. He had the feeling, and
righteously so, that apart from Captain Eleven and himself, his
staff was more or less indifferent to the fate of the first wave
settlers. So long as everything worked out
this
time, and so
long as no more money was wasted, they didn’t particularly care
about collateral damage.

“You really managed,” Rochester rifled
through the maps in awe, “to build a complete village from scratch
in a little over a month!”

“Not a complete village. But the basic
structure stands.” Most of the individual houses stood, as did the
school, the labs, the hospital and parts of the canteen.

“The colonists will have to do the rest, I’m
afraid,” Fatique admitted. “But that’s what the workmen will be
there for. They’ll stay on location to help with that.” The
workpeople had barracks of their own. They were on a rotating
schedule, hired to stay for a season, then they would be relieved
by a new team.

“And no computers,” Rochester stated,
although it sounded more like a question than a statement.

Fatique shook his head, an apologetic
expression on his face, “Sorry, Heath. We just don’t have the
power, yet. I’m glad we got the basic electricity covered by a
couple of water generals. They’re here, by the way.”

From the chaotic clutter of paper, Fatique
fished what looked like a hastily drawn map of the compounds, and
pointed at a river not far from the colony. Rochester didn’t
correct him that it was water generators, not water generals.
Fatique suffered from Thripshaw’s disease, a rare genetic defect.
He didn’t notice it when he mixed up words, and usually his point
came across, so Rochester didn’t want to make his friend feel bad
for something he could do nothing about anyway.

“Don’t worry about them,” he added when he
saw Rochester’s doubtful look. “Simon Jones is an expert in that
kind of stuff. He handles all power issues, you can trust him.”

“What about the survivor you found? Did you
find out anything about her?”

Fatique gestured to one of the chairs, “You
might want to sit down for this one.”

Among the documents, he found a copy of
Eugenia Gust’s file. He handed it to Rochester, who began scanning
the report while he listened to the General.

“Eugenia is one of the original first wavers,
or so it appears. She doesn’t talk, but she eats solid food on her
own now and is allowed to move freely inside her hospital room.
You’ll have to ask Dr. Paige for the details, but it is clear that
she’s been on her own for a while before we found her. Maybe she
knows what happened, but for now at least she doesn’t share it with
us.”

“We should give her time. Whatever happened
must have been pretty traumatic.”

“And, for lack of a more eloquent
exploration, weird.”

Rochester raised an eyebrow and Fatique
explained what wasn’t in the file, “It appears that over a period
of four months, Eugenia aged twenty years.”

“Great Jupiter!”

“You can say that again. I’m strongly relying
on you to lift the girl’s secret, Heath.” As an afterthought he
added, “Don’t let Captain Eleven make you nervous, by the way. As
chief protector, it is her job to view Eugenia as a potential
threat.”

Rochester chuckled. He liked Emily, she was a
pleasant person; but she tended to overreact occasionally.

* * * *

Celem, the man John waited for in the
brouhaha of the bazaar, already knew of John’s presence before the
old woman, a messenger with many contacts, came to him. Celem had
eyes all over the city these days. A necessary luxury, seeing that
he had none anymore; eyes, that was.

John was mildly astonished but not shocked to
find the once great pick-pocket in a narrow house at the end of a
dodgy road. The man, once even taller than John, sat on a shabby
rug on the floor, a glass of tea in his hand, a samovar in reach. A
dirty cloth protected others from seeing the maimed holes where his
eyes used to be.

“Yahya,” he rasped fondly. “Found your way
back to the great metropolis, have you? Sit down, sit down.”

“I’d reply that it was good to see you,
Celem, but I’d just be lying to a cripple; and that’s bad taste,
even for someone like me.”

Celem laughed heartily. “It is you, then,
indeed. I was told you had returned, but one can never be certain,
can one? Tea, Yahya, I insist.”

John found a glass and poured both of them
from the thick, black liquid. He drank all of it, then washed down
the bitter aftertaste with a piece of candied ginger from a
jar.

“I heard you were looking for a man about a
donkey.” Celem sounded honestly amused. “You have been out of the
loop for a long time, hm?”

“What is it now?”

“You don’t ask to see a man about a donkey
anymore, the police know all about it; now you ask to see a
grandmother about a chicken.”

“How very low key.”

Celem either didn’t hear the sarcasm in
John’s voice, or ignored it. “Yes. We must be careful. Now, Yahya,
what brings you here, if not the pleasure of seeing the one man who
stole less from you than other people and is therefore, by
definition, your bosom friend?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Celem,” John
muttered. The ginger tasted good, more than that—the spicy, syrupy
tang brought back fond memories of afternoons spent in tea houses,
a water-pipe on the table, a temple dancer in his lap. In this
moment, however short, he realized he missed it, had missed it for
quite some time. Which in turn made him wonder what else from his
past lives he missed. He was about to break his very own first
rule, to never dwell on the things left behind, and thus was
grateful he was not alone, but in a business meeting of sorts.

He pressed the ticket, a tiny green diode
indicated it was active, into Celem’s hand. “I need a buyer for
this. It’s a ticket for the second wave program.”

Celem gave a wolf whistle. “You are not
kidding? Has it been activated?”

His fingers flew effortlessly over the small
gadget, feeling for every nook and bump. John had no doubt that
after this thorough inspection, the other man knew the ticket
better than he did.

“It has been indeed,” he confirmed. “I need a
client quickly; I think the ticket expires in a few weeks.”

With a resolute shake of the head, Celem
shoved it away from him.

“What?” John demanded, more than a little
annoyed. Coming here for nothing had not been his plan.

“Impossible. Not in a few weeks. It’ll never
be ready.”

Confused, John inspected the ticket for what
felt like the hundredth time since it had come into his possession.
What possibly needed to be done with it that would take up a lot of
time?

“Why?” he wanted to know.

“Are you stupid?”

“Celem!”

“Okay!” Celem gave the world-weary sigh of
someone who wanted to make more profit. “Has it at least been
hacked already?”

“Why would it need to be hacked?”

“You
are
stupid, then.”

“Tell me I’m stupid one more time, Celem, and
I’ll shoot you. Don’t strain my patience.”

Celem, knowing John never made empty threats,
immediately got a grip. He stopped laughing and sat up straight, or
at least what he thought was straight. Every ticket was
personalized, issued to a certain individual who was rendered
useful to the colony. If one wanted to use another person’s ticket,
it had to be hacked by someone with advanced technical skills and a
good personal computerHa, to alter the information it contained. It
was like faking an ID, only in reverse.

“Basically, you have to convince the computer
that the person the ticket was originally issued to is now someone
else, and I know of no one skilled enough to do that.”

Ah, at least that was familiar territory.
John poured them another glass of tea. “And how much bling will it
take for you to remember that you
do
know someone?”

“Yahya, you insult me in my own house. Me, a
poor, blind man! Shame on you and on your offspring; may they be
numerous and carry on your shame for many generations. I don’t
trade in bling anymore. Nobody does now.”

“Then what do you trade in, poor, blind
man?”

“Stories are the new bling. They have high
market value these days. Can’t get arrested for possessing too many
stories.” He leaned forwards, voice lowered conspiratorially. “Tell
me a tale I haven’t heard before, and I may remember the name of a
very skilled computer genius, who happens to live in this wonderful
city.”

It was an odd request, but one John could, as
it happened, fulfill. And so, to get the name of a computer hacker,
he told Celem a story he had heard many years ago in Tianjin, about
Meng Jiang Nu, the woman whose tears brought down the Great Wall of
China.

* * * *

Embolimon: The Legend of Meng Jiang Nu

Once upon a time in China, there lived two
married couples next to each other: The couple Meng and the couple
Jiang. They were all four of them very old and had never been
blessed with the gift of children, so all they had was each
other.

In the Mengs' garden grew beautiful gourd
vines. One summer, one of the plants spread its vines right over
into the garden of the Jiangs, where it bore one large gourd. The
rest of the vines stayed barren, so the two families decided to
split the gourd in half, as it was big enough for all of them to
eat from its meat.

They gathered around the table, but when old
man Meng cut the rind, they were surprised to find a baby girl
inside the vegetable. And since both couples wanted nothing more
than a child, they decided to raise her together.

The baby girl grew up to be a beautiful,
mild-mannered woman, who was known as Meng Jiang Nu, or Lady Meng
Jiang. So beautiful was she, that many men wanted to marry her. But
Meng Jiang didn’t even look at them twice, for every night she fell
asleep and had the same dream: in it, she saw a stranger, the man
she would love, she knew, although the dream never revealed his
face. One time the Gods spoke to her and told her that she must
only love the one man who would catch a glimpse of her uncovered
skin in the sunlight before he saw her face.

At that time, the emperor Quin Shihuang
started erecting the Great Wall. Many men died building it, so the
emperor was always on the lookout for young, strong men who could
work for him. He continually sent out his armies to go even to the
remotest villages to get every man strong enough to join the work
forces.

It so happened that one of the men the
emperor’s soldiers intended to catch was a young scholar named Fan
Xiliang. He ran away from the soldiers, out of the city, over
fields, and through smaller and smaller villages, until he came to
the village where the families Meng and Jiang resided. It was the
last village before the mountains. There was nowhere else to
run.

Fan Xiliang darted into the garden of the
last house, which was the garden of the family Jiang, and hid under
the large leaves of a gourd vine just next to a small pond, hoping
and praying the soldiers would give up the search for him.

On that day, Meng Jiang Nu went into the
gardens to catch butterflies. There were many butterflies around
that day, every one more beautiful than the one before it. But
while Meng Jiang skipped and jumped about, her fan slipped out of
her hand and fell into the pond.

Meng Jiang knelt down at the brim of the
small pool and, after making sure that no one was watching, she
rolled up the sleeve of one arm to retrieve the fan out of the
water.

When Fan Xiliang saw her tender skin in the
sunlight, but nothing more of the person this delicate arm must
belong to, a longing sigh escaped his lips. Thus he gave away his
position.

Meng Jiang, startled at first, told the
stranger to come out of hiding. But when she laid eyes on him, and
he on her, she recognized in him the man from her dreams, and she
fell in love with him passionately.