good move. If things went badly, those could be his only defense. At this level of risk, the hazard wasn’t relegation to a menial job, but rather having one’s ashes scattered in the river.
“Ming?”
“Yes, Minister?”
“What did you think of the students in the square all those years ago?”
“I was only in school then myself, Minister, as you know.”
“Yes, but what did you think?”
“I thought they were reckless. The tallest tree is always the first to be cut down.” It was an ancient Chinese adage, and therefore a safe thing to say. Theirs was a culture that discouraged taking such action—but perversely, their culture also lionized those who’d had the courage to do so. As with every human tribe, the criterion was simple. If you succeeded, then you were a hero, to be remembered and admired. If you failed, nobody would remember you anyway, except, perhaps, as a negative example. And so safety lay always in the middle course, and in safety was life.
The students had been too young to know all that. Too young to accept the idea of death. The bravest soldiers were always the young ones, those spirits of great passions and beliefs, those who had not lived long enough to reflect on what shape the world took when it turned against you, those too foolish to know fear. For children, the unknown was something you spent almost all your time exploring and finding out. Somewhere along the line, you discovered that you’d learned all that was safe to learn, and that’s where most men stopped, except for the very few upon whom progress depended, the brave ones and the bold ones who walked with open eyes into the unknown, and humanity remembered those few who came back alive ...
... and soon enough forgot those who did not.
But it was the substance of history to remember those who did, and the substance of Fang’s society to remind them of those who didn’t. Such a strange dichotomy. What societies, he wondered, encourage people to seek out the unknown? How did they do? Did they thrive, or did they blunder about in the darkness and lose their substance in aimless, undirected wanderings? In China, everyone followed the words and thoughts of Marx, as modified by Mao, because he had boldly walked into the darkness and returned with revolution, and changed the path of his nation. But there things had stopped, because no one was willing to proceed beyond the regions Mao had explored and illuminated—and proclaimed to be all that China and the world in general needed to know about. Mao was like some sort of religious prophet, wasn’t he? Fang reflected.
... Hadn’t China just killed a couple of those?
“Thank you, Ming,” he told her, waiting there for his next order. He didn’t see her close the door as she went to her desk to transcribe the notes of this Politburo meeting.
Dear God,” Dr. Sears whispered at his desk. As usual, the SORGE document had been printed up on the DDO’s laser jet and handed over to him, and he’d walked back to his office to do the translation. Sometimes the documents were short enough to translate standing in front of her desk, but this one was pretty long. It was, in fact, going to take eight line-and-a-half-spaced pages off his laser printer. He took his time on this because of its content. He rechecked his translation. Suddenly he had doubts about his understanding of the Chinese language. He couldn’t afford to mistranslate or misrepresent this sort of thing. It was just too hot. All in all, he took two and a half hours, more than double what Mrs. Foley probably expected, before he walked back.
“What took so long?” MP asked when he returned.
“Mrs. Foley, this is hot.”
“How hot?”
“Magma,” Sears said, as he handed the folder across.
“Oh?” She took the pages and leaned back in her comfortable chair to read it over. SORGE, source SONGBIRD. Her eyes cataloged the heading, yesterday’s meeting of the Chinese Politburo. Then Sears saw it. Saw her eyes narrow as her hand reached for a butterscotch. Then her eyes shifted to him. “You weren’t kidding. Evaluation?”
“Ma’am, I can’t evaluate the accuracy of the source, but if this is for real, well, then we’re looking in on a process I’ve never seen before outside history books, and hearing words that nobody has ever heard in this building—not that I’ve ever heard about, anyway. I mean, every minister in their government is quoted there, and most of