He hummed. He shrugged.
"People are bad," Ziyi said. "Always remember that."
A few days later she went into town. She needed more food and fuel, and took with her a few of the treasures the man had found. Sergey Polzin was at the recycling plant, and fingered through the stuff she’d brought. Superconductor slivers. A variety of tinker toys, hard little nuggets that changed shape when manipulated. A hand-sized sheet of the variety of plastic in which faint images came and went… It was not one-tenth of what the man had found for her—she’d buried the rest out in the forest—but she knew that she had made a mistake, knew she’d been greedy and foolish.
She tried her best to seem unconcerned as Sergey counted the silvers of superconducting plastic three times. "You’ve been having much luck, recently," he said, at last.
"The storm must have broken open a cache, somewhere out to sea," she said.
"Odd that no one else has been finding so much stuff."
"If we knew everything about the factory, Sergey Polzin, we would all be rich."
Sergey’s smile was full of gold. "I hear you have some help. A guest worker." Besnik had talked about her visitor. Of course he had.
Ziyi trotted out her lie.
"Bring him into town next time," Sergey said. "I’ll show him around."
A few days later, Ziyi saw someone watching the compound from the edge of the forest. A flash of sunlight on a lens, a shadowy figure that faded into the shadows under the trees when she walked towards him. Ziyi ran, heard an engine start, saw a red pickup bucket out of the trees and speed off down the track.
She’d only had a glimpse of the intruder, but she was certain that it was the manager of the recycling plant.
She walked back to the compound. The man was facing the sun, naked, arms outstretched. Ziyi managed to get him to put on his clothes, but it was impossible to make him understand that he had to leave. Drive him into the forest, let him go? Yes, and sasquatch or wargs would eat him, or he’d find his way to some prospector’s cabin and knock on the door…
She walked him down to the beach, but he followed her back to the cabin. In the end she locked him in the shed.
Early in the afternoon, Sergey Polzin’s yellow Humvee came bumping down the track, followed by a UN Range Rover. Ziyi tried to be polite and cheerful, but Sergey walked straight past her, walked into the cabin, walked back out.
"Where is he?"
"My friend’s son? He went back to the capital. What’s wrong?" Ziyi said to the UN policewoman.
"It’s a routine check," the policewoman, Aavert Enger, said.
"Do you have a warrant?"
"You’re hiding dangerous technology," Sergey said. "We don’t need a warrant."
"I am hiding nothing."
"There has been a report," Aavert Enger said.
Ziyi told her it was a misunderstanding, said that she’d had a visitor, yes, but he had left.
"I would know if someone came visiting from the capital," Sergey said. He was puffed up with self-righteousness. "I also know he was here today. I have a photograph that proves it. And I looked him up on the net, just like you did. You should have erased your cache, by the way. Tony Michaels, missing for two years. Believed killed by bandits. And now he’s living here."
"If I could talk to him I am sure we can clear this up," Aavert Enger said.
"He isn’t here."
But it was no good. Soon enough, Sergey found the shed was locked and ordered Ziyi to hand over the keys. She refused. Sergey said he’d shoot off the padlock; the policewoman told him that there was no need for melodrama, and used a master key.
Jung and Cheung started to bark as Sergey led the man out. "Tony Michaels," he said to the policewoman. "The dead man Tony Michaels."
Ziyi said, "Look, Sergey Polzin, I’ll be straight with you. I don’t know who he really is or where he came from. He helps me on the beach. He helps me find things. All the good stuff I brought in, that was because of him. Don’t spoil a good thing. Let me use him to find more stuff. You can take a share. For the good of the town. The school you want to build, the water treatment plant in a year, two years, we’ll have enough to pay for them…"
But Sergey wasn’t listening. He’d seen the man’s eyes. "You see?" he said to Aavert Enger. "You see?"
"He is a person," Ziyi said. "Like you and me. He has a wife. He has children."
"And did you tell them you had found him?" Sergey said. "No, of course not. Because he is a dead man. No, not even that. He is a replica of a dead man, spun out in the factory somewhere."
"It is best we take him to town. Make him safe," the policewoman said. The man was looking at Ziyi.
"How much?" Ziyi said to the policewoman. "How much did he offer you?"
"This isn’t about money," Sergey said. "It’s about the safety of the town."
"Yes. And the profit you’ll make, selling him."
Ziyi was shaking. When Sergey started to pull the man towards the vehicles, she tried to get in his way. Sergey shoved at her, she fell down, and suddenly everything happened at once. The dogs, Jung and Cheung, ran at Sergey. He pushed the man away and fumbled for his pistol. Jung clamped his jaws around Sergey’s wrist and started to shake him. Sergey sat down hard and Jung held on and Cheung darted in and seized his ankle. Sergey screaming while the dogs pulled in different directions, and Ziyi rolled to her feet and reached into the tangle of man and dogs and plucked up Sergey’s pistol and snapped off the safety and turned to the policewoman and told her put up her hands.
"I am not armed," Aavert Enger said. "Do not be foolish, Ziyi." Sergey was screaming at her, telling her to call off her dogs. "It’s good advice," Ziyi told the policewoman, "but it is too late."
The pistol was heavy, slightly greasy. The safety was off. The hammer cocked when she pressed lightly on the trigger.
The man was looking at her.
"I’m sorry," she said, and shot him.
The man’s head snapped back and he lost his footing and fell in the mud, kicking and spasming. Ziyi stepped up to him and shot him twice more, and he stopped moving.
Ziyi called off the dogs, told Aavert Enger to sit down and put her hands on her head. Sergey was holding his arm. Blood seeped around his fingers. He was cursing her, but she paid him no attention.
The man was as light as a child, but she was out of breath by the time she had dragged him to her jeep. Sergey had left the keys in the ignition of his Humvee.
Ziyi threw them towards the forest as hard as she could, shot out one of the tyres of Aavert Enger’s Range Rover, loaded the man into the back of the jeep. Jung and Cheung jumped in, and she drove off.
Ziyi had to stop once, and threw up, and drove the rest of the way with half her attention on the rear-view mirror. When she reached the spot where the road train had been ambushed, she cradled the man in her arms and carried him through the trees. The two dogs followed. When she reached the edge of the cliff her pulse was hammering in her head and she had to sit down. The man lay beside her. His head was blown open, showing layers of filmy plastics. Although his face was untouched you would not mistake him for a sleeper.
After a little while, when she was pretty certain she wasn’t going to have a heart attack, she knelt beside him, and closed his eyes, and with a convulsive movement pitched him over the edge. She didn’t look to see where he fell. She threw Sergey’s pistol after him, and sat down to wait.
She didn’t look around when the dogs began to bark. Aavert Enger said, "Where is he?"
"In the same place as Sergey’s pistol."
Aavert Enger sat beside her. "You know I must arrest you, Ziyi."
"Of course ."
"Actually, I am not sure what you’ll be charged with. I’m not sure if we will charge you with anything. Sergey will want his day in court, but perhaps I can talk him out of it."