He glared back at her, stiff faced. "You think I don't know what he is? Sure he's trying to use us, but we can benefit from that. And what he said is far from nonsense. It's the truth, Em. You saw his setup. He needs us." ,-
She shook her head slowly, as if disappointed in him. "For a time, maybe. But as soon as he's wrung every advantage he can get from us, he'll discard us. He'll crunch us up in one hand and throw us aside. As for his 'weakness'—his 'inflexibility1—we saw only what he wanted us to see. I'd stake my life that there's more to that base than meets the eye. Much more. All that 'openness' he fed us was just so much crap. A mask, like everything else about our friend."
Gesell took a long breath. "I'm not so sure. But even if it is, we can still benefit from an alliance with him. All the better, perhaps, for knowing what he is. We'll be on our guard."
She laughed sourly. "You're naive, Bent Gesell, that's what you are. You think you can ride the tiger."
He bridled and started to snap back at her, then checked himself, shaking his head. "No, Em. I'm a realist. Realist enough to know that we can't keep on the way we've been going these last few years. You talk of cutting our own throats . . . well, there's no more certain way of doing that than by ignoring the opportunity to work with someone like Turner. Take the raid on Helmstadt, for instance. Dammit, Emily, but he was right! When would we ever have got the opportunity to attack a place like Helmstadt?"
"We'd have done it. Given time."
He laughed dismissively. "Given time . . ."
"No, Bent, you're wrong. Worse than that, you're impatient, and your impatience clouds your judgment. There's more at issue here than whether we grow as a movement or not. There's the question of what kind of movement we are. You can lie to yourself all you want, but working with someone like Turner makes us no better than he. No better than the Seven."
He snorted. "That's nonsense and you know it! What compromises have we had to make? None! Nor will we. You forget—if there's something we don't want to do, we simply won't do it."
"Like killing Jelka Tolonen, for instance?"
He shook his head irritably. "That makes good sense and you know it."
"Why! I thought it was our stated policy to target only those who are guilty of corruption or gross injustice?"
"And so it is. But what is Tolonen if not the very symbol of the system we're fighting against."
"But his daughter . . . ?"
He waved her objection aside. "It's a war, Emily. Us or them. And if working with Turner gives us a bit more muscle, then I'm all for it. That's not to say we have to go along with everything he wants. Far from it. But as long as it serves our cause, what harm is there in that?"
"What harm . . . ?"
"Besides, if you felt so strongly about this, why didn't you raise the matter in council when you had the chance. Why have it out with me? The decision was unanimous, after all."
She laughed sourly. "Was it? As I recall we didn't even have a vote on it. But that aside, I could see what the rest of you were thinking—even Mach. I could see the way all of your eyes lit up at the thought of attacking Helmstadt. At the thought of getting your hands on all those armaments."
"And now we have them. Surely that speaks for itself? And Turner was right about the publicity, too. Recruitment will be no problem after this. They'll flock in in droves."
She shook her head. "You miss my point. I ..."
She would have said more, would have pursued the matter, but at that moment there was an urgent knocking on the door. A moment later Mach came into the room. He stopped, looking from one to the other, sensing the tension in the air between them, then turned to face Gesell, his voice low and urgent.
"I have to speak to you, Bent. Something's come up. Something strange. It's . . ." He glanced at Emily. "Well, come. I'll show you."
She saw the way they excluded her and felt her stomach tighten with anger. The Ping Tiao was supposedly a brotherhood—a brotherhood! she laughed inwardly at the word—of equals. Yet for all their fine words about sexual equality, when it came to the crunch their breeding took over; and they had been bred into this fuck-awful system where men were like gods and women nothing She watched them go, then turned away, her anger turned to bitterness. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe Turner had done his work already as far as Bent Gesell was concerned; the germ of his thought already in Gesell's bloodstream, corrupting his thinking, silting up the once-strong current of his idealism, the disease spreading through the fabric of his moral being, transforming him, until he became little more than a pale shadow of Turner. She hoped not. She hoped against hope that it would turn out otherwise, but in her heart of hearts she knew it had begun. And nothing—nothing she nor any of them could do—could prevent it. Nothing but to say no right now, to refuse to take another step down this suicidal path. But even then it was probably too late. The damage was already done. To say no to Turner now would merely set the man against them.
She shivered, then went into the washroom and filled the bowl with cold water. While she washed her face, she ran things through her mind, trying to see how she had arrived at this point.
For her it had begun with her father. Mikhail Ascher had been a System man, a Junior Credit Agent, Second Grade, in the T'ang's Finance Ministry, the Hu Pu. Born in the Lows, he had worked hard, passing the exams, slowly making his way up the levels until, in his mid-thirties, he had settled in the Upper Mids, taking a Mid-Level bride. It was there that Emily had been born, into a world of order and stability. Whenever she thought of her father, she could see him as he was before it all happened, dressed in his powder-blue silks, the big square badge of office prominent on his chest, his face clean-shaven, his dark hair braided in the Han fashion. A distant, cautious, conservative man, he had seemed to her the paradigm of what their world was about, the very archetype of order. A strict New Confucian, he had instilled into her values that she still, to this day, held to be true. Values that—had he but known it—the world he believed in had abandoned long before he came into it.
She leaned back from the bowl, remembering. She had been nine years old. Back then, before the War, trade had been regular and credit rates relatively stable, but there were always minor fluctuations, tenths, even hundredths of a percentage point. It was one of those tiny fluctuations—a fluctuation of less than 0.05 of a percent—that her father was supposed to have "overlooked." It had seemed such a small thing when he had tried to explain it to her. Only much later, when she had found out the capital sum involved and worked out just how much it had cost the Hu Pu, did she understand the fuss that had been made. The Senior Credit Agent responsible for her father's section had neglected to pass on the rate change and to save his own position, had pointed the finger at her father, producing a spurious handwritten note to back up his claim. Her father had demanded a tribunal hearing, but the Senior Agent—a Han with important family connections—had pulled strings and the hearing had found in his favor. Her father had come home in a state of shock. He had been dismissed from the Hu Pu.
She could remember that day well, could recall how distraught her mother was, how bemused her father. That day his world fell apart about him. Friends abandoned him, refusing to take his calls. At the bank their credit was canceled. The next day the lease to their apartment was called in for "Potential Default." They fell.
Her father never recovered from the blow. Six months later he was dead, a mere shell of his former self. And between times they had found themselves demoted down the levels. Down and down, their fall seemingly unstoppable, until one day she woke and found herself in a shared apartment in Level, a child bawling on the other side of the thin curtain, the stench of the previous night's overcooked soypork making her want to retch.