Wake

Chapter 18

Zhang Bo, the Minister of Communications, fidgeted as he waited to be admitted to the president’s office. The president’s beautiful young secretary doubtless knew His Excellency’s mood this morning, but she never gave anything away; she wouldn’t have lasted in her job if she did. A life-size terra-cotta warrior brought here from Xian stood vigil in the antechamber; its face was as unchanging as the secretary’s.

At last, responding to some signal he couldn’t see, she rose, opened the door to the president’s office, and gestured for Zhang to enter.

The president was down at the far end, wearing a blue business suit. He was standing behind his desk, his back to Zhang, looking out the giant window. Not for the first time Zhang thought the president’s shoulders were awfully narrow to support all the weight they had to carry.

“Your Excellency?”

“You’ve come to exhort me,” the president said, without turning around.

“Again.”

The minister tipped his head slightly. “My apologies, but…”

“The firewall is back to full strength, is it not? You’ve plugged the leaks, haven’t you?”

Zhang tugged nervously at his small mustache. “Yes, yes, and I apologize for those. The hackers are … resourceful.”

The president turned around. There was a lotus blossom pinned to his lapel.

“My officials are supposed to be even more resourceful.”

“Again, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

“And the perpetrators?”

“We’re on their trail.” Zhang paused then decided this was as good an opening as he was going to get. “But, regardless, you can’t leave the Changcheng Strategy in effect forever.”

The president raised his thin eyebrows; his eyes, behind the wire-frame glasses, were red and tired. “Can’t?”

“Forgive me, forgive me. Of course, you can do anything — but … but this curtailing of international telephony, this leaving the Great Firewall up — it’s … less wise than most of your actions.”

The president tilted his head, as if amused by Zhang’s attempt to be politic.

“I’m listening.”

“The bodies are disposed of, the plague contained. The emergency has passed.”

“After 9/11, the US president seized extraordinary powers … and never gave them back.”

Zhang looked down at the lush carpeting, a red design shot through with gold.

“Yes, but…”

Incense hung in the air. “But what? Our people want this thing called democracy, but it is an illusion; they chase a ghost. It exists nowhere, really.”

“The epidemic is over, Your Excellency. Surely now—”

The president’s voice was soft, reflective. He sat down in his red leather chair and motioned for Zhang to take a chair on the other side of the wide cherrywood desk. “There are contagions other than viruses,” the president said. “We are better off without our people having access to so many…” He paused, perhaps seeking a word, and then, nodding with satisfaction after finding it, he went on: “foreign ideas.”

“Granted,” Zhang said, “but…” And then he closed his mouth.

The president held up a hand; his cufflinks were polished jade spheres. “You think I wish to hear only positive things from my advisors? And so you tread as if on eggshells.”

“Your Excellency…”

“I have advisors who model our society’s future, did you know that?

Statisticians, demographers, historians. They tell me the People’s Republic is doomed.”

“Excellency!”

The president shrugged his narrow shoulders. “China will endure, of course — a quarter of humanity. But the Communist Party? They tell me its days are numbered.”

Zhang said nothing.

“There are those among my advisors who think the Party has perhaps a decade left. The optimists give it until 2050.”

“But why?”

The president gestured to the side window, through which the small lake was visible. “Outside influence. The people see an alternative elsewhere that they believe will give them power and a voice, and they crave that. They think…”

He smiled, but it seemed more sad than amused. “They think the grass is greener on the other side of the Great Wall.” He shook his head. “But are the Russians better off now with their capitalism and their democracy? They were the first in space, they led the world in so much! And their literature, their music! But now it’s a land of pestilence and poverty, of disease and early death — you would not want to visit it, trust me. Yet it’s what our people desire. They see it and, like a child reaching out to touch a hot stove, they can’t help but want to grasp it.”

Zhang nodded, but didn’t trust his voice. Behind the president, through the big window, he could see the red tile rooftops of the Forbidden City and the perpetually silver-gray sky.

“My advisors made a fundamental error in their assumptions, though,” said the president.

“Excellency?”

“They assumed that the outside influences would always be able to get in. But Sun Tzu said, ‘It is of first importance to keep one’s own state intact,’ and I intend to do that.”

Zhang was quiet for a time, then: “The Changcheng Strategy was intended only as an emergency measure, Excellency. The emergency has passed. The economic concerns…”

The president looked sad. “Money,” he said. “Even for the Communist Party, it always comes down to money, doesn’t it?”

Zhang lifted his hands slightly, palms open.

And at last the president nodded. “All right. All right. Restore communications; let the outside flood in again.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency. As always, you’ve made the right decision.”

The president took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Have I?” he said.

Zhang let the question hang in the air, floating with the incense.

Caitlin could always tell when they were pulling into her school’s parking lot: there was a large speed bump immediately after the right turn that made her mother’s Prius do a body-jolting up-and-down.

“I know you won’t need it,” her mom said, as she swung the car into the drop-off area near the main doors, “but good luck on the math test.”

Caitlin smiled. When she’d been twelve, her cousin Megan had given her a Barbie doll that exclaimed, in a frustrated voice, “Math is hard.” Mattel had made that model for only a short time before a public outcry had forced them to recall it, but her cousin had found one for her at a garage sale; they used to have a blast making fun of it. Caitlin knew Barbie was an impossible physical role model for girls — she’d worked out that if Barbie were life size, her measurements would be 46-19-32 — and the idea that girls might find math hard was equally ridiculous.

“Thanks, Mom.” Caitlin grabbed her white cane and computer bag, got out of the car, and walked to the school’s front door, but she was dragging her feet, she knew. Oh, she liked school well enough, but how … how mundane it seemed, compared to the wonders of the night before.

“Hey, Cait!” Bashira’s voice.

“Hey, Bash,” Caitlin said, smiling — but wondering, yet again, what her friend looked like.

Caitlin knew Bashira would be holding out her elbow just so, and she took hold of it so Bash could lead as they maneuvered down the crowded hallway. “All ready for the test?”

“Sine 2A equals 2 sine A cosine A,” said Caitlin, by way of an answer. They came to a stairwell — sounds echoed differently in there — and headed up the two half-flights of stairs.

“Good morning, everyone,” said Mr. Heidegger, their math teacher, once they entered the classroom. Caitlin had only Bashira’s description of him to go by:

“Tall, skinny, with a face like his wife squeezed it tight between her thighs.” Bashira loved saying risqué things, but she’d had no actual experience of such matters; her family was devoutly Muslim and would arrange a marriage for her. Caitlin wasn’t sure what she thought about that process, but at least Bashira would end up with someone. Caitlin often worried that she’d never find a nice guy who liked math and hockey and could deal well with her … situation. Yes, now that she was in Canada, meeting boys who liked hockey would be easy, but as for the other two…

“Please stand,” said a female voice over the public-address system, “for the national anthem.”

There wasn’t nearly as much pomp and circumstance in Canada, which was fine in Caitlin’s book. Pledging allegiance to a flag she couldn’t see had always bothered her. Oh, she knew the American flag had stars and stripes: they’d felt embroidered flags at the School for the Blind. But the synonym for the flag — the old red, white, and blue — had been utterly meaningless to her until, well, until yesterday. She couldn’t wait until she had a chance to sneak a peek at the Web again.

After “O Canada,” the test was distributed. The other students got paper copies, but Mr. Heidegger simply handed Caitlin a USB memory key with the test on it. She was skilled at Nemeth, the Braille coding system for math, and her dad had taught her LaTeX, the computerized typesetting standard used by scientists and many blind people who had to work with equations.

She plugged the memory key into one of her notebook’s USB ports, brought out her portable thirty-two-cell Braille display, and got down to work. When she was done she would output her answers onto the USB key for Mr. Heidegger to read. She was always one of the first, if not the first, to finish every in-class test and assignment — but not today. Her mind kept wandering, conjuring up visions of light and color as she recalled the incredible, joyous wonder of the night before.