Weird World War: China, page 4
“They got here fine,” Erskine said. “Graves couldn’t make anything of them so he forwarded them on to London. It seems they were at a loss, too, and I guess they sent it on to”—he nodded to the three strangers—“Mr. Collins here.”
“You’re boffins?” Breyer said doubtfully, looking again at the men.
The eldest of the three said, “Not exactly, but people in our Department of State had us tasked to look into the matter when they got a notion of what was going on.”
“Wish to hell I had a notion,” Breyer said. “Which I do not.”
The eldest stranger exchanged glances with the colleague who’d been smoking. That man shrugged and said to Breyer, “We’ve gotten reports that the Soviets and Chinese Communists have been working together on time travel. The appearance here of a cave hyena suggests that their trials are more advanced than we’d dreamed. The military implications are obvious.”
The other two Americans nodded in agreement, but Beyer shook his head and said, “I don’t see anything obvious about it. Are you worried about the Commies invading America with hyenas? They’re nasty critters, I grant you, but a .405 solves one just fine.”
“Mr. Breyer,” said the eldest American, “this appears to have been a very large hyena. But a principle that could undetectably move and deliver a five-hundred-pound hyena to another time would probably do the same with any similar payload.”
“If the appearance of the ancient hyena was not a hoax,” said the man who’d been smoking, “and you have convinced us that it’s no hoax, Mr. Breyer. It’s a weapon that can potentially penetrate any of our defenses.”
“I see,” said Breyer. “Then are you done with me?”
“We’ll ask you to guide us around the site of the incident,” said Collins. “A year after the event there probably won’t be much to learn, but we can at least hope to get an inkling of how the Russians and Chinese are accomplishing this.”
“Sure, I’ll introduce you to people,” Breyer said. He thought of the big cats, man-eaters, that were his regular quarry. Cunning, stealthy, and able to strike down a man or woman with no warning.
Compared to a tiger or leopard, a bomb twice the size of a man could strike down a whole city. And if it didn’t really exist in the present time until it went off, everyone in the world would have to feel the way Breyer did when he knew that a tiger was stalking him in the darkness. It was a terrible feeling and there was no way out for anyone.
Until the bomb went off.
EMPTY YOUR CUP, OR DRY IT?
Nick Mamatas
The fourth master of the Supreme Ultimate Fist was actually not terrible, not for an old man who had never sparred in his life. He didn’t flinch or freeze at the jab-cross combo, had decent enough balance and almost stuffed the takedown, got in a nice straight left of his own, and even had wits sufficient to try some small joint manipulation on Pappas’s right wrist on the way down to the canvas. The fourth master of the Supreme Ultimate Fist even left the ring under his own power, and without shouted excuses to his disciples or whispered complaints to the referee. Or even with the help of a stretcher, as the second master had.
“You good?” Davidson asked Pappas in the corner as he wiped the fighter down. There wasn’t much sweat. Pappas looked up at Davidson and saw himself, all bulbous nose and stretched Joker lips in the chrome convexity of Davidson’s 180-degree Vcord eyewear.
“How many more?” Pappas asked by way of answer. “I want lunch. Beating up these tai chi guys is making me hungry, and not for Henan cuisine.”
“Looks like two more, of the last four we had signed up, are willing to take their chances,” Davidson said. “One guy just slipped out the back, and another made a show of looking at his phone, waving goodbye to everyone, and taking off.”
“Getting some good footage, Mr. Hoplologist?” Pappas asked.
“Yeah, but not a lot,” Davidson said, smirking.
“Should I go easy on this next one, let him get in a free hit or two?”
“Absolutely not,” said Davidson.
The referee called for both fighters to leave their corners and meet in the middle of the ring.
Pappas’s stomach turned at the sight of the carp, complete with head and tail, resting roasted on a bed of noodles no thicker than angel hair, on the plate in front of Davidson. The restaurant had a version of American food too—a big if oddly spiced hamburger patty with sweet dipping sauce, rice, and bitter melon. Pappas got the pork chops too. Davidson wasn’t looking at his food. He still wore his recorders, which looked like a pair of shiny ice-cream scoopers atop his eyes, and was reviewing the footage, first wincing, then chuckling.
“Should we get some booze?” he asked. “Baijiu?”
“Is that the stuff that tastes like Sterno?”
“It’s rice vodka,” said Davidson.
“So yes,” said Pappas. “Too easy to hide poison in a drink that already tastes like death.”
“You have the palate of a child,” said Davidson. “Fists of a God, but otherwise, you are an overgrown toddler. And nobody is going to poison us. You’re a viral hit.”
“It’s easy to score knockouts against old men with no footwork and no head movement,” Pappas said. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about the morning’s bouts anymore. He filled his mouth with beef to have an excuse.
“We learned something, though,” Davidson said.
“That kung fu is bullshit? That tai chi especially is bullshit, even for kung fu? We knew that already,” said Pappas. “Masters were getting knocked out by amateur kickboxers even in the days of YouTube and the free web.”
“We learned something other than that,” Davidson said, his attention still on what was playing out on the inside of the shining globes attached to his face. He hadn’t even touched his carp. “You know what they say: sometimes you have to empty your cup—embrace the beginner mindset.”
Noise and movement erupted from one of the large round tables just behind Pappas, and as one all the men seated there sat up straight. The fourth master, surrounded by his students, raised his glass and said something celebratory that the translation earbud couldn’t quite pick up thanks to the hyperlocal dialect, the drunken slurring of the words, and the master’s fat lip and loose tooth. The disciples applauded and nodded and smiled at Pappas. Pappas smiled and nodded back and lifted his bottle of Coke. A waitress quickly and subtly swooped past and left two small glasses of baijiu on the table.
“They won’t think you’re tough if you don’t drink it,” said Davidson. “Of course, if you do drink it, they’ll think you like it and send more.”
“Of course I’m tough. I kicked all their asses. Supreme Ultimate my ass.”
“You beat up a bunch of seventy-five-year-old men. And that guy, Andy Chen, gifted you a little mouse. You didn’t even knock him out,” said Davidson.
“Andy!” said Pappas.
“Yeah, Steve,” said Davidson. “You don’t run around calling yourself Soterios, do you?”
Pappas shrugged, shoulders rolling like boulders, then he snatched up the little glass, gestured toward Andy Chen, barked, “Yamas!” and emptied the baijiu in a gulp.
The old woman, who referred to herself only as “Mrs. Chen,” had a kind of wiry strength, agricultural strength, in her thin limbs, which she was happy to show off, even smiling as Davidson recorded her the next morning. Her teenage grandkids and several nephews and nieces were watching. She sure could swing the guandao, which probably weighed fifteen pounds, said weight unevenly distributed thanks to the thick curved blade on one end. Davidson wouldn’t want to be the foot soldier on the wrong side of a mounted Mrs. Chen, that’s for sure.
“My yiayia could do the same, if she practiced,” Pappas said. “She used to dance around with a broomstick. She loved Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.”
“It takes a lot of gongfu to have gongfu,” Mrs. Chen said sharply as she completed the steps of the form. Mrs. Chen’s English was just fine. Pappas screwed up his face and peered at Davidson, who kept his own gaze on Mrs. Chen.
“How long have you been training, if I may inquire?” he asked.
“Not so long as my brothers,” she said. “Maybe I was eleven when I started. My brothers, they start at six, but they play, we all play, with sticks and copying the hand forms, very early. Two, three.”
Mrs. Chen offered a fist in palm salute and excused herself, balanced the guandao on her shoulder, and strolled casually down the paved road. She was the last Chen of the day. The bit of field where various village residents had demonstrated their weapons and hand forms, their pushing-hands drills and two-person sets, was well destroyed, all mud and footprints.
“I’d like to see that old lady against a jarhead with a pugil stick,” said Pappas.
“Will it also be an old lady Marine?” asked Davidson.
“This is a tourist trap, like Shaolin Temple,” said Pappas as he gestured in the distance at the brutalist architecture dominating the low landscape that was once farmland and dirt. “There are more white people filling these kwoons than there are at Bautista Air Base. And they’re all hippies, or nerds!”
“Hippies! Where did you learn the word hippies?”
“My grandpa who ran a fruit stand in San Francisco had to deal with them,” said Pappas. “They were shoplifters . . . Oh, that reminds me, check this out.” Pappas slipped off the stone bench he’d been sitting on then walked gingerly onto the muddied patch of ground where Mrs. Chen and her retinue had just been. “The zeibekiko!”
Pappas raised and outstretched his arms, almost like a man on a cross, and snapped his fingers, once, twice, again. He stepped, grapevined his right foot behind his left, bent his knees slightly, started to sway a bit, and then started to dance. First shuffling, then hopping, then kicking up a leg and smacking his foot. “Opa!” he cried. “Tornado kick!” Then he bent his legs, put a palm on the floor, and kicked up. “Dog-style groundfighting! Not enough for ya, Mr. D?”
Davidson stared on, or at least it looked like he did, as his huge chrome goggles sat unblinking atop his face, a bit like a very large fly contemplating an unclean kitchen.
“This one’s the hapasiko,” Pappas explained. “A literal military number, and a dance for a secret guild of butchers. Check out the footwork, imagine ten men marching abreast.” If there were significant choreological differences between the zeibekiko and the hapasiko, the motion-analysis programs embedded in Davidson’s goggles were certainly cataloging them. Pappas declaimed as he danced: “Sneak a step, leg trip and throw, diagonal throw—see, just like all these tai chi forms!” He stopped, laughed, and spit on the ground. “You’re not a hoplologist, you’re like an anthropologist for traditional Chinese aerobics routines. You can find ‘martial arts’ moves in any weird little dance. You’d be better off filming mosh pits, if you want to see some fighting skill.”
“You’re a good dancer,” said Davidson. “Didn’t know you were into ethnic folk dance. I’m amazed you aren’t married.”
“My grandmother made me join the church dance group when I was a kid. You know, Greek grandmothers are—”
“Settle down, Zorba,” said Davidson. “You’re going to go viral again, the bad way.” Pappas glanced around. The kids who had been watching Mrs. Chen were back, and they all had their smartphones out and trained on him.
“Hey,” one of the kids called out in English. He wasn’t even the biggest of them; he wore his teen body awkwardly, like his first-ever suit and tie. “Is this where the challenge matches are, or the breakdancing?” He punctuated his joke with a little poppin’ and lockin’ as two others beatboxed boots-n-cats, boots-n-cats. Pappas stood up. The kids whooped. Pappas walked toward them. The kids switched to Chinese and moved into a semicircular formation around Pappas.
Davidson called out, “They’re kids!” to Pappas, but reached up to his eyewear and depressed the record button anyway. “It’s still their country,” he told Pappas. “They didn’t sign waivers. They’re also recording this. Use your head.”
Use your head meant something in particular. Feint right, dive left, ankle pick, drive head into opponent thigh for takedown. Pappas exploded at the kid, had him over his shoulders in half a second, in the dirt in another. Then Davidson lost track of Pappas, as the other kids dove atop him. One girl held what looked like a pretty sharp rock in her hand.
Davidson’s war had been pretty short. Like most of the Coalition forces in the Yellow River Valley, at first it seemed easy. One town after another had offered minimal resistance, and the drones putatively controlled by Beijing had gone into business for themselves, sometimes harrying the invaders, and sometimes practically paving roads for the 14th Infantry Regiment, to which Davidson was informally attached. He’d been a debt-draftee thanks to foolishly getting a master’s degree from Princeton and signing up with the sort of transnational private military company that doesn’t have a website, or a logo, to pay off his loans. In peacetime, and it was never peacetime, the firm fancied itself an AI-enhanced think tank, and for whatever reason the algorithm had decided that Davidson would get a lot of thinking done in China, driving a truck full of telecommunications equipment.
Maybe it was a mistake—the whole war, of course, but also attempting to occupy the ancient capital of Kaifeng. The air base had been abandoned, the PLA refused to engage or retreat. Davidson filed some reports from his dashboard, suggesting that the war was going according to Mao’s old playbook: trade land for time. Who read it? Who knows?
Someone, perhaps the Chinese, perhaps the Coalition, maybe some mercs, or even just an inscrutable AI for which a Todestrieb subroutine was either a feature or a bug, decided to level Henan University’s Jinming campus, home of the engineering school and nanotechnology labs. It’s not even clear what was being stored there, nanobugs or a cache of e-bombs, but observers on both sides couldn’t help but notice that the smoke plume seemed more like a writhing mass of thick black tentacles, more like a slow gusher from an oil well, than soot and superheated air.
Forty-eight hours later, Davidson was affixing a bayonet to his rifle. Even had the truck still worked, the telecom equipment was just so much ballast, not even worth using as cover from enemy fire, had there been any enemy fire. Everything had been fried, on all sides, the radios, everyone’s personal Vcord lenses, and even the smartrifles that both sides had invested in so heavily. Smartrifles licensed and sold exclusively by the armorer wing of the international think tank, which also owned Davidson’s labor contract. Drones fell from the sky like poisoned birds. The nights were dark enough to see constellations, as though it were the twentieth century. Any bit of expendable fabric of color was repurposed to make signal flags. The PLA surged forward before trenches could be dug. Davidson got to experience the sort of battle not seen in centuries—soldiers on opposing sides lining up like a bunch of assholes and rushing across empty fields, armed with blades and spears and, almost comically, the occasional pistol or freshly unburied civilian rifle wielded by men running with arms extended and eyes squinted half shut, just hoping for the best.
The Chinese had all the advantages: they knew the terrain, enjoyed the universal support of the populace, had more experience fighting without the extended techno-umbilicus on which the Coalition force so depended, and they could fight hand to hand. The battle wasn’t quite like the old wuxia movies Davidson had watched as a kid, but only because movie fights last for more than a few seconds. There were plenty of sloppy fighters on the Chinese side, and a fair share of Coalition scrappers who did well, but a small phalanx of local spear wielders from the hinterlands of Henan Province penetrated Coalition lines with ease, and when the long weapons were snapped or blunted or lost, they took down soldiers twice their size with a mix of standing grappling and dirty boxing that Davidson had never before seen.
In truth, he didn’t see much of it that day either, but he felt it intensely enough when a Henan fighter grabbed his clavicle with his left hand and pulled him in all the better to eat a straight right corkscrew punch. Davidson’s last thought before losing consciousness was, I wish my Vcorder was working.
“This is your fault,” Pappas said, though his words were slurred thanks to a new gap in his teeth and a lip swollen to the size of a banana. He was lying on a cot in a small and shadowy room lit only by Davidson’s Vcorder projector aimed at a bare wall.
“Let’s watch it again,” Davidson said. “Good takedown—”
“You told me to. You set me up to fail,” Pappas said.
“So, you’re saying that your central nervous system listened to me instead of to you,” Davidson said.
“I should have stayed on my feet, lured the big guy out, and chin-checked him.”
“The big guy? You mean the fifteen-year-old?”
“He trains,” said Pappas. “I had to really go for it, just like you said to.”
“Yeah,” said Davidson, distracted. He was watching the footage as it rolled backward now—the kids leaping away from Pappas, Pappas crouched low and helping a teen boy to his feet, then standing up and jumping off the edge of the screen.
“All this demonstrates, Davidson, is that you shouldn’t call the shots. No pun intended.”
“No pun detected. You’re a hothead. China is still their country. You could have been arrested for attacking those kids. You’re lucky you got away with a concussion,” said Davidson.
“That’s me, Mister Lucky,” said Pappas. “Thanks for taking your time diving in to help, by the way. It’s good you let every single Chen child have their turn kicking me before breaking it up.”
“How are you feeling?” Davidson asked as he turned back to his projector. He put on some other footage, that of Pappas handling individual tai chi fighters handily. “This’ll make you feel better.”
