Shine (4 page)

If Papa's eyes seemed to see everything at once, Xiao's were perpetually fixed on the very heart and core of whatever he regarded. Father and son shared in their intensity; the difference between them was a question of focus. He stared at me now, and he didn't blink.

I exhaled slowly. "You should know," I said, "that I am thinking very seriously about knocking you out and dragging you away."

He snorted. "Good luck. I have a thick skull."

I sat down beside my brother, turned on my own knife once more. We'd always been the kind of kids who used dangerous industrial tools for candles. "You'll never persuade Papa," I said. My mind raced to find the words that would persuade
Xiao
,
but part of me already knew that those words didn't exist.

"First and worst mistake I made," he said. "Took my message to the top. I thought I needed Father's permission, and I thought his permission would be enough. Stupid. I acted like this was some fucking hard state from the Profligate Times, some top-down institution. But that's backward, isn't it? I've got to start from the
bottom
. The people of Little Yunhe. I need your help, Yuen."

I could see where this was going, and I felt what Papa must have felt as he blasted into the sky. The awful exhilaration of a
physical law
, a lifelong gravity falling out from underneath you. I'd come to free Xiao on a high of instinct and adrenaline. But could I really join him in active sedition? Could I make that choice and stand behind it?

"First," I said, my voice shaking only a little, "you're going to have to explain some things. I saw your sim, and it was--it was beautiful. Really, truly beautiful. But I still don't understand your big plan. I don't understand how you could bring Yunhe back."

Again, he frowned. "Seriously? You don't understand?"

I shook my head. He explained the mad thing he meant to do.

We'd never known where Xiaohao went. How could we, unless he chose to tell us? Ecclesia was borderless, global, a network-nation that lived in the interstices. He was at graduate school (and living with his professor) in Chengdu when he ran; any trails he might have left behind were lost in the city's thick skein of lives. I imagined him in Mumbai, London, São Paulo. Anywhere, everywhere.

He did travel. From the Antarctic Settlements to the Ivory Coast. But in the years since Yunhe drowned in ash, he'd spent most of his time in one place: an Ecclesia installation in the remote heights of the Appalachian mountains. The facility had been established on the force of Xiaohao's research proposal: he wanted to invent a nanite soil that could reclaim regions flooded by coal waste. Ecclesia threw their full weight behind him, even secured secondary support from the United Nations.

The project was called Wise Earth.

His team experimented in coal-drowned towns with names like
Prosperity
and
Dante
. Places like Yunhe, where waste lakes had overflown or old mines had spilled out their guts. The first phase of the research was--at least according to Xiao--relatively straightforward, a matter of making each nanite convert the arsenic, lead, and thallium of an ash flood into yet another nanite.

The second phase was more complicated. His machines could eat lakes of poison, but all they left behind was gray mechanical goop. The nanites needed to be both efficient self-replicators and
functional molecules of soil
, true earth on which communities could rebuild. The problem was that soil isn't homogeneous. It's a messy, semi-random body of minerals and organics, solids and liquids and even gases; Xiao couldn't just map each nanite to some generalized recipe for soil.

Over the course of a long year, the Wise Earth team developed a replication algorithm wherein each nanite dynamically scanned existing mineral and carbon concentrations, compared it to a fixed ideal, and
transported
the element that was most lacking from a place where it was overabundant, all while negotiating the task with a million other nanites. It was a programmer's nightmare, and Xiao still wasn't satisfied. He wanted his earth to do more than reclaim; he wanted it to
enrich
. He altered the topsoil layer so that it could absorb, store, and route solar power. A portion of that energy would power the nanites' network functions once the initial rush of consumption was finished. The soil would be true soil, yes, but it would also serve as a massive solar power plant, communications hub, and computational substrate.

"It's a community seed," he said. "All you have to do is plant it."

I was silent for a long time. My heart pounded. I'd had no idea. No conception. This was even bigger than Yunhe. Did he understand that? How could he risk his life on just one town?

"Xiao," I said, "this is huge."

"Yes." He shrugged.

"We have to tell people. We--we have to tell them everything. Now."

His nod was absurdly casual.
Sure, why not?
"Do you have some kind of town forum or feed?" he asked. "Some way to talk to everyone in Little Yunhe at once?"

"No." I stood up. "No, Xiaohao, no. You're thinking too small. This--" I waved the knife and struggled for words. "This is huge. If we get you out of here, can you do the thing? Plant the seed?"

"The replicator key is in my wi-mo."

"And your wi-mo is somewhere in Papa's house. Okay." The gears fell into place and began to turn. I paced a tight circuit around the cell, called up a notepad on my eyelid. "We can do this. I think we can do this. But it can't just be a Little Yunhe thing. Do you understand? There aren't that many people here, and many of them don't like or trust you."

Xiao scowled. "Good to hear."

"No, listen. It doesn't matter. There's an entire city of refugees out there. Not all of them have tents to sleep in, and even those of us with flats are worried. The accumulators are rusting. Boats need repair, fish are thin in the water. We need to invite
everyone
, Xiao, and make the place a colony of the city. A place where anyone can work and build a home. We send crops and power back here, sell any surplus to the cities nearby. And once Yunhe's built, we take your replicator key and start again somewhere else. Maybe fill in some waste lakes with land, stop another flood before it happens."

My brother's smile was wry. "That's what Ecclesia was afraid I'd do."

"What do you mean?"

"Give away the soil. They wanted to monetize it. Or use it for leverage."

"And you'll oppose them?"

"Fuck, I might as well." He grinned. "They're already pissed off."

We drew up our declaration with a kind of intense mechanical efficiency, quibbling only once or twice over phrasings. We did not make promises. We were not grandiloquent. We told the people of the make-do city--
my
people---that an opportunity had arisen, and we explained it as thoroughly and accurately as we could. We said that we didn't mean to abandon the city, but to bolster it. We said that our huts and boats and accumulators needed repair, and that a revived Yunhe would give us the resources we needed.

The soil wouldn't solve all of our problems. There would only be so much energy, so much food, so much space. There would still be hard labor, and hardship, and sickness. But the earth of Yunhe could check the entropy, afford us new ways and means.

The earth of Yunhe could hold us back from the edge.

Finally, we asked people to join us, to save us, to assemble outside of the
Patient Whale
. That plea was the hardest thing to write, and the most crucial, and we agonized over the wording. It didn't matter how many people we intrigued with our soil-seed; if no one showed up, our plan was worthless. We tried to acknowledge the dangers of assembly without making the act seem revolutionary, and asked those unwilling or unable to show their faces to leave anonymous comments of support on our post.

Comments, of course, were unlikely to save us.

Xiao used the wi-mo I'd received from Little Wuxie to record a video of me reading the declaration. I had enough credibility throughout the city that my image could lend weight to the message; besides, vids always got more attention than text. When we were finished, Xiaohao and I shared a wary, weary glance. My hands were clammy, and part of me wanted to collapse on the cell floor. The other part was so hyperactive that I doubted I'd sleep for days, no matter how our little sedition ended.

Xiao nodded, and I uploaded both the transcript and the video, tagged so that they would appear on every feed in the city of broken places.

And then we waited.

We sat in silence, refreshing our feeds. We'd turned off our knives, and the bulb in the corridor had given out, so the cell was lit only by the moon-white light of the Wuxie wi-mo. We watched the video's viewership slowly, slowly rise. Every minute that passed without a comment felt like a punch to the gut. The cell was sweltering, but I felt cold.

This was it. The endgame. Either our plan worked, or I went down with Xiaohao. Would Papa really execute both of his children? Could he really keep so cool, so consistent? I worried the question until it was raw, tried to imagine what answer Papa would give if I asked him point blank.

Finally, Xiao broke the silence. "What would Mother think?" he murmured.

When was the last time I'd thought about our mother? Papa never talked about her, and Xiao had been gone for so long. "I don't know," I said. "Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I think I remember her. And then I realize that I'm thinking of some old vid or picture."

He smiled sadly. "Yeah. I know. Wasn't really a question." He bit his lip and turned his attention back to the wi-mo. "She'd be just as pissed off as Father. Maybe moreso. They were two of a kind." He was only a few years older than me, but he claimed to remember so much more. Sometimes I suspected that Xiao had invented our mother. Sometimes I resented his stories.

"Grandfather," I said. "I think he'd be proud."

"Yeah? Seriously?"

I rested my hand on Xiao's. His skin was clammy. "He'd be proud and he'd be pleased. He always cared more about
his land
and
his family
than--you know. Whatever the rules are this week. You're bringing back the land, and you're doing it for the family. He'd be proud."

Xiao fixed his gaze pointedly on the wi-mo. For a fleeting moment, I thought I saw a warbling of moisture in his eye. "Thank you," he said. And then: "Oh shit."

"Oh shit?"

He showed me. Comments were pouring in now, ten at a time. Some were cynical, others supportive. Only a few were outright angry. Several of the supportive comments linked to another video, which showed indistinct figures gathering on a dock not far from the
Whale
.

Some of the figures were security officers.

"It's starting," said Xiao.

The new video was a not-so-subtle message:
we want a new Yunhe, we have muscle, and you can find us at this location.
The sight of the security officers was both heartening and sick-making. We had muscle, yes, but now guns were in play. In all my fervor, I hadn't quite realized that things might get very bloody very quickly. Or maybe I understood--it in a detached, academic sense--but it hadn't really occurred to me that our side might have guns too.

More videos followed. Similar declarations of support, and instructions for assembly. The vids rarely showed faces--just quick, shaky shots of gathered bodies and some semi-distinctive landmark. My stomach roiled. My shirt was soaked. We waited.

Finally, with no warning from the feeds, we heard footsteps on the stairs. More than one person, but not more than a handful. Xiao and I shared a glance. Neither of us turned on our knives. Three sets of boots cast echoes from the far end of the corridor.

And all at once, the knotty storm of anxiety in my chest resolved into a liquid cool. This was it. The waiting was over. Whatever was going to happen would happen. An idiot grin spread over my face; I squeezed Xiao's hand, and he looked at me as if I'd gone mad.

The three newcomers emerged into the light. Old Zhu walked with a slight limp, smiling a crooked smile. On either side of him was a security officer with an automatic rifle. I recognized one of the men from the Little Yunhe border guard. The squad leader. I gave him a small nod, which he returned. Zhu arched an eyebrow, smiled even wider, and then opened his mouth.

"There are some folks here to see you," he said.

Outside, an impossible thing stood on the dock: the largest gathering I'd ever seen. The city was always a sweaty press of bodies, of course, but this was a press with a purpose. People from every quarter--Administrators, elderly tentsquats, fishermen, gangly tattooed hoods--strained to see us as we emerged from the
Patient Whale
. Someone gave up a cheer as we appeared, and the cheer carried through the crowd. Again, Xiao and I shared a glance. I was still grinning. Xiao looked like someone had punched him in the gut.

We walked down the long ramp from the ship to the shore, and into the midst of our saviors. The crowd was eager but polite, standing back to make room, asking questions but not shouting or insisting. When it became clear that Xiao was too dumbfounded to speak, I raised my arms. The people around us hushed.

"Thank you," I said. "Thank you, so much. I will always remember this. I will never be able to thank you enough for what you've done.

"But I have to ask you to do one more brave thing."

There was, I told the crowd, one last person we needed to persuade. I gave them his name, and asked them to walk behind me. Then, with Xiao at my side, I started down the winding way between the tent quarter and the open market, up the hill and toward my father's house.

The people of the city followed.

We may have lost folks as we walked. We may have gained some, too. I didn't look back. Xiao leaned in and whispered, "Sweet shit, Yuen." After that, we were both silent.

I guessed that Papa would come to meet us, and I was right. As we rounded into the final approach toward the hut, we sighted Papa and a squad of hardsuits marching down the gravel path. I took a deep breath, bit my lip until I drew blood, and pulled the arc knife from my pocket. The security officers behind me rushed to my side, held their rifles at the ready. Pained expressions passed across their faces, but they raised their weapons and walked with me and did not waver.