Deadly Memory (Living Memory Book 2), page 10
Any hope Kit had that Mai had somehow resisted their attack vanished when she spoke. “I am honored by the love and support with which the Thai people have welcomed me. Many have asked when I will take a husband. I am now pleased to announce my engagement to Zhang Hai, the son of the Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China.” She held out a graceful hand. A young man wearing a white suit with a peony in his lapel stepped out of the crowd and took it. She smiled warmly at him and held up his hand between them. “May the love we have for each other represent the love that the great countries of China and Thailand hold for each other. May our personal union begin a new era of cooperation and friendship with our big brother China as equals and allies.”
Kit groaned inwardly. It was a prepared speech, one she had clearly been forced to recite. Had she even met Zhang Hai before today? The Chinese chamberlain told Kit to smile and applaud, and so he did. Everyone applauded as the cameras swept the room. How many of them did so willingly, in ignorance of the coup, and how many because they were under the sway of the Chinese?
He gritted his teeth through his smile. For weeks now, he and Mai and Arinya had dominated others into doing their will, and only now did he remember what it felt like to be in someone else’s control. How could he have been so foolish? The Chinese had talked their way through security as easily as Mai had done to the Red Wa in Tachileik. But it was too late to fix it now. There was no going back.
The peony in the chamberlain’s lapel reeked; clearly it was the source of the domination chemical. At some level, deep in his mind, Kit wanted to snatch it from him, but when it came to actually doing so, he was completely incapable. He was under the man’s sway, which meant submitting to his desires, even without explicit instructions. The Chinese spy hadn’t specifically commanded Kit not to steal his flower, but he was still too under his control to bring himself to do it.
The press conference over, bodyguards surrounded Mai, blocking her from view. The Chinese took control. Quietly, they moved through the crowd, murmuring for people to step back. The colonel put a hand on Mai’s shoulder, and before Kit could do anything about it, her bodyguards had whisked her away, with the Chinese following close behind.
Kit caught a glimpse of her, arm in arm with Zhang Hai, as they exited the throne room. He wondered if he’d ever see her again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She found Paula in her office and told her about her conversation with Charlie.
“You told him he was the only one left?”
“I had to. He pretty much asked me directly.” She didn’t mention that she had specifically taught him the vocabulary needed to ask the question.
Paula tapped a pen on her desk. “I would have preferred to keep that from him as long as possible, but I guess it can’t be helped. I hope it doesn’t affect him too profoundly. I don’t want him slipping into a depression and not eating or anything.”
“Honestly, I think he had already guessed. Though the length of time surprised him. He didn’t understand we were natives here. He thought we were aliens from another planet.”
“Huh. I guess that’s a logical guess, from his perspective. It’s what I’d guess if I woke up surrounded by intelligent creatures I’d never seen before with technology I never thought possible.”
Samira also told Paula about seeing Kit on the news. “I’m going to head out early and try to contact him,” she said. “I’ve been here late so many nights anyway; it would be good to spend some time with Beth and Wallace.”
“Go,” Paula said, barely looking up from her computer screen. “Though anything you get out of your Thai friend seems like information Everson would be interested in.”
Samira made a face. “Yes, I guess he would. Sorry for making a scene in here with him. Are you doing okay?”
“Yes, yes,” Paula said, waving away her concern. “I’m doing fine. Frustrated, but fine. I’m trying to understand how these hibernation chambers could have worked. Did you know that there are frogs that freeze solid every winter? Their hearts stop beating, their blood doesn’t flow, their cells can’t communicate with each other. For all practical purposes, they're dead, but when spring comes, they thaw and hop away.”
“Maniraptors don’t hibernate, though,” Samira said.
“No, it’s not a natural ability. It must have been technological, and it must have been an extraordinary technology to have preserved life for so long. I’ve been studying the muck we found Charlie encased in, and it has some incredible insulation properties, among other things. But the very fact that Charlie’s here suggests that life itself isn’t dependent on motion or heat or a continuous source of energy to persist, because he would have had none of those things. The technology doesn’t seem dependent on raptor physiology at all. Which suggests that, if we knew how to do it, we could freeze a human being solid and then bring them back to life again.”
Samira tapped her lip. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“What, that life can be that resilient?”
“No, what I don’t understand is their level of technology. From everything we’ve seen in their memories, this is a pre-industrial society. There are no cities, no factories, no vehicles, no burning of fossil fuels. They farm and herd animals, but not much more. How could a civilization like that develop a biomedical technology so much superior to ours?”
“They had more technology than you think,” Paula said. “I’ve been studying those memories longer than you have. Did you notice that music-making device?”
Samira considered. “I vaguely remember something like that.”
“It was ordinary for them, so they didn’t pay much attention to it. But it was an organic device—a living machine. It wasn’t anything that evolved naturally. They grew it somehow, or genetically modified another organism to create it. Think of the Ductwork—I think that was organic as well, or had organic parts. I’ve been hoping to uncover some kind of memory of how such things were made, but so far, they’ve only appeared on the outskirts.”
“So you think tech development can take more than one path. That maybe they didn’t discover iron smelting or electricity, but they discovered ways to play with genetics that we’ve never even considered.”
“I think their tech is driven by their physical biology, just like their numbering system is,” Paula said. “What we discover or invent is affected by what we need or what we’re looking for. Their communication through the sense of smell meant they needed to store and recreate smells, which may have pushed them toward an earlier understanding of chemistry and biology. Their physical bodies, their place in the food chain, what they needed to survive: all of that drove them down a different technological path, one unrecognizable to us.”
“I could ask Charlie,” Samira said. “He’s getting a lot better at speaking, and he’s incredibly smart. I bet he’d understand what I was asking.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“I have a feeling we’re going to be learning new things from Charlie for a long time,” Samira said.
Paula gave a short laugh. “No kidding.”
“Which is why we should have the whole world working on it.”
Paula closed her eyes and sighed. “I know your feelings on that already. Now go home. Give Wallace a peanut butter cracker for me.”
“I’ll do that,” Samira said.
For once, Samira was ready to leave the facility before Beth. She waited while Beth wrote a few more lines of code in R. What was the deal with naming computer languages after single letters, anyway? Samira had never been much good at programming, but Beth had taken to it in grad school. She could process huge amounts of data and spit out graphs and statistical insights that would have taken Samira hours of fighting with Excel.
When she finished, they drove back to their apartment. With Beth at the wheel, Samira watched the world slide by out the passenger window, a rare view of sunlight.
“I keep asking myself if I’m doing the right thing,” Samira said. “Charlie’s basically a prisoner there. It’s wrong. He should be in a wide-open space somewhere, able to live his life the way he chooses. This is basically Area 51, and we’re the people hiding the aliens.”
“I know, Sami. We’ve been over and over this. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I could tell people.”
“Then you’d be in jail, and Charlie would still be in the same place. And even if you could get him out and everyone knew, it might not make his life better. Instead of just being used by the CIA, there would be a big fight over who gets to use him. He still wouldn’t be left alone to make his own choices. You can’t fix this, Samira.”
Samira slumped further down in her seat. “I know. I just can’t be okay with it.”
The moment they walked into their apartment, Wallace began squawking for attention. With all the hours she worked, he wasn’t getting the love he needed, which made Samira feel guilty. She was feeling guilty about a lot of things lately, which she hated. She’d much rather feel angry. Give her a good fight any day over this helpless inaction.
She scratched Wallace’s neck, reaching under the feathers, and nuzzled him affectionately. She gave him a peanut butter cracker. “That’s from Paula,” she said.
After Wallace was settled, she pulled out her phone and found Kit’s number. Speaking of feeling guilty. How could she not have tried to call Kit before this, at least to see if he was still alive? The answer, of course, was that she hadn’t wanted to know. It had been bad enough to be part of a military raid that had stolen fossils right out from under his nose. She hadn’t wanted to think about the possibility that the raid had also killed her friend. The best case was that he would be alive and simply hate her for what she’d done. So she hadn’t called.
She stared at his number for a long time, trying to work up the nerve.
“Just do it,” Beth said. “Stop torturing yourself.”
Samira held out the phone. “You want to make the call?”
“Not really.”
“Fine.” She huffed out a breath. “Here goes nothing.”
She pressed the button and held the phone up to her ear. She heard a staticky ring, then another, and another. She counted to ten. No answer. She hung up the phone, feeling a combined sense of relief that he hadn’t answered and annoyance that the task was now still hanging over her.
Instead, she searched the internet, looking for news about Thailand. She found a lot of stuff about the new queen, a longtime activist against sex trafficking who had risen to power on a wave of popular affection. Despite her time in Thailand, Samira still had trouble understanding Thai politics. How much power did the royal family actually have compared to the military or the national assembly? It had been a military coup that had thrown them out of Thailand, but now Queen Sirindhorn had taken control, apparently with the support of a major crime syndicate. Which didn’t make much sense for an anti-crime activist. It was all so confusing.
She also found news about the queen’s engagement to a young Chinese man, the son of one of the top leaders in the PRC. Samira guessed that wasn’t good news for Everson and his friends in the CIA, but the internet seemed much more interested in whether he was cute enough for her, what she would wear at their wedding, and why he was so fond of wearing pink flowers in his lapels. Samira didn’t care about any of that. She wanted to know about Kit.
She found very little. She found him in the background of a few pictures, and one paragraph toward the bottom of an article mentioned that he’d been named Science Minister. Good for him. He’d always wanted to expand the role of science in his country. Maybe now he could make those dreams come true.
Maybe he’d even forgive her for invading his country with American special forces, stealing his fossils, and blowing up their dig site. Though when she put it that way, probably not.
Sighing, she punched his name on her cell phone and tried to call him one last time.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kit ran. No one stopped him as he fled the palace grounds. Either the Chinese didn't control enough of the palace security yet, or despite his newly-minted rank, he was of no consequence. Neither powerful enough to imprison or kill, nor useful enough to enslave. He hadn’t seen Arinya again since she had disappeared behind closed doors with the queen, and he feared she was also captured and controlled, if not dead.
Out in the streets of Bangkok, he kept running, losing himself in the maze of the capital before anyone could notice he was gone and come after him. He wandered, anonymous in the crowds, relishing the aromas of motorcycle exhaust, fish sauce, and curry. Anything that didn’t smell like sweet petroleum.
Lines of street vendor carts selling meat skewers and noodle dishes of all varieties crowded the sidewalks, forcing foot traffic into a narrow walkway against the curb. He nearly tripped over a man with no legs lying prone on the pavement, banging a tin cup for alms. Kit poured a handful of ten-baht coins into the cup, even though he knew the money would likely go to the mafia who ran most of the city’s beggars. Perhaps with a little more time, Mai could have overturned the city’s organized crime as effectively as she had done with the Red Wa. Now they would never know.
A sharp smell set his pulse racing, but it was just a vendor cutting durian into slices to sell. He stalked on, no destination in mind. He felt like a coward. He had abandoned Mai and Arinya to little better than slavery. The thought gnawed at him. But what could he do about it? He had no more of the domination drug and no way to get it. He had no powerful friends, no influence. At this point, the best he could hope for was that the Americans would realize what was going on and force the Chinese to back off. He didn’t love the Americans any more than the Chinese, but sometimes the only way to fight a snake was with a bigger snake.
He had a little money in the bank, which he used to rent a tiny apartment in one of Bangkok’s many concrete block towers. He had no job and nothing to do, but he couldn’t just slink back to Nakhon Ratchasima as if nothing had ever happened, leaving Mai and Arinya to their fate. He took to hanging around outside the white wall that surrounded the palace grounds, watching people come and go, though of course he never saw Mai except on television.
She appeared regularly, beautiful in her queenly regalia, as elegant and composed as if she’d been born to the role. She never spoke plainly about Thailand’s problems, though, as she had done before. Instead, she delivered grand speeches that mostly praised Chinese actions and the benefits of a close alliance with China, their “big brother” on the world stage. They were transparently written for her, and even people who knew nothing about the domination drug must know she was a Chinese puppet.
A week later, the president of Taiwan got on international television and publicly invited China to enter the country and repatriate “Taiwan province,” despite having run on an anti-China election campaign. He told the American carrier group in the Taiwan Strait to leave their waters and not interfere. “The right hand of China has for too long been cut off,” he said. “It is the will of Taiwan that we be a unified China once again, in truth as well as name.” The news cut to riots in the streets of Taipei.
Kit watched, dumbly astonished but not really surprised. At this rate, China would control all of Southeast Asia and the western Pacific by year’s end. Perhaps they already did control it. Would Japan go next? All they had to do to conquer it was walk into Tokyo and start talking.
But where were they getting so much of the drug? Had they really found enough fossil locations to extract the liquid to maintain control of whole countries? He supposed it didn’t necessarily take much—the Taiwanese president’s invitation would be enough to send the PRC military, and probably muddied the diplomatic waters enough that the United States wouldn’t be able to intervene without an international backlash. But Mai had run out of their stores just trying to control a single country.
Kit bought a package of cotton balls from a drugstore and started wearing them stuffed in his nose. It was uncomfortable, and it made his tongue dry out from breathing only through his mouth, but it was worth it for the knowledge that he couldn’t be swayed.
He wondered how long it would be before someone noticed him loitering outside the palace every day, hiding among the tourists. There weren’t many tourists these days, with the airports still closed to foreigners for fear of the Julian virus. He took pictures with his phone like a tourist, but he took them of the people who went in and out and the license plates of the cars they drove. Suspicious behavior, if anyone was watching. Perhaps they did notice him but just didn’t consider him much of a threat.
The truth was, he wasn’t a threat. He scoured the pictures in his bare apartment at night, looking for the Chinese and learning their faces. It wasn’t easy to distinguish Thai citizens of Chinese ancestry from the Chinese agents themselves, but with enough online research, he could usually identify most of them.
But who was he kidding? Was he going to storm the palace and demand Mai’s release? Champion a resistance movement and organize a sting operation? Set up a sniper’s nest in a nearby building and pick off Chinese agents as they stepped out? It was ridiculous. He was powerless. He was only keeping busy to fool himself into thinking there was something he could do.
Just as he was about to leave for the day and go find some food, he spotted the colonel himself leaving on foot by a side gate. Kit hadn’t seen the man since that day in the throne room, but after a lot of research—mostly paging through old Chinese military enlistment records online—he had identified him. He really was a colonel, but in the People’s Liberation Army of China, not the Royal Thai Army. Colonel Feng Zhanwei had insinuated himself into the Thai armed forces, probably through old-fashioned tradecraft instead of chemical domination, or perhaps with the complicity of high-ranking Thais in the old regime.
