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across one of his desktop knickknacks. "It's not much of an existence, truth be told. But that doesn't
mean we don't have an economy that needs fueling. We have jobs. We have vacancies for skilled labor.
Machines do our drilling, but the machines need to be fixed and programmed by people, down at the
cutting face. We pay well, for those prepared to work for us."
"And you come down hard on those who displease you."
"Local solutions to local problems, that's our mantra. You wouldn't understand, cozied up in the middle
of the empire. You pushed the dissidents and troublemakers out to the edge and left us to worry about
them." He tapped a finger against his desk. "Nestorian Christians, Buddhists, Islamists. It's a thousand
years since we crushed them, and they still haven't got over it. Barely a week goes by without some
regressive, fundamentalist element stirring up trouble, whether it's sabotage of one of our industrial
facilities or a terrorist attack against the citizenship. And yet you sit there in New High Karakorum and
shake your heads in disgust when we have the temerity to implement even the mildest security measures."
"I wouldn't call mass arrests, show trials, and public executions 'mild,' " I said tartly.
"Then try living here."
"I get the impression that's not really an option. Unless you mean living in prison, for the rest of my life, or
until NHK sends an extraction team."
Qilian made a pained expression. "Let's be clear. You aren't my enemy. Quite the contrary. You are now
an honored guest of the Kuchlug special administrative volume. I regret what happened earlier, but if
you'd admitted your true identity, none of that would have been necessary." He folded his arms behind
his neck and leaned back in his chair with a creak of leather. "We've got off on the wrong footing here,
you and I. But how are we supposed to feel when the empire sends undercover agents snooping into our
territory? And not only that, but agents who persist in asking such puzzling questions?" He looked at me
with sudden, sharp intensity, as if my entire future hung on my response to what he was about to say.
"Just what is it about the phantoms that interests you so much, Yellow Dog?"
"Why should you worry about my interest in a phenomenon that doesn't exist?" I countered.
"Do you believe that, after what you saw on the Burkhan Khaldun?"
"I can only report what I saw. It would not be for me to make inferences."
"But still."
"Why are we discussing this, Commander Qilian?"
"Because I'm intrigued. Our perception was that NHK probably knew a lot more about the phenomenon
than we did. Your arrival suggests otherwise. They sent you on an intelligence-gathering mission, and the
thrust of your inquiry indicates that you are at least as much in the dark as we are, if not more so."
"I can't speak for my superiors."
"No, you can't. But it seems unlikely that they'd have risked sending a valued asset into a trouble spot like
Kuchlug without very good reason. Which, needless to say, is deeply alarming. We thought the core had
the matter under control. Clearly, they don't. Which only makes the whole issue of the phantoms even
more vexed and troubling."
"What do you know?"
He laughed. "You think I'm going to tell you, just like that?"
"You've as much as admitted that this goes beyond any petty political differences that might exist between
NHK and Kuchlug. Let me report back to my superiors. I'll obtain their guarantee that there'll be a
two-way traffic in intelligence." I nodded firmly. "Yes, we misjudged this one. I should never have come
under deep cover. But we were anxious not to undermine your confidence in us by revealing the depth of
our ignorance on the phenomenon. I assure you that in the future everything will be aboveboard and
transparent. We can set up a bilateral investigative team, pooling the best experts from here and back
home."
"That easy, eh? We just shake hands and put it all behind us? The deception on your part, the torture on
ours?"
I shrugged. "You had your methods. I had mine."
Qilian smiled slightly. "There's something you need to know. Two days ago not long after we dug that
thing out of you we did in fact send a communique to NHK. We informed them that one of their agents
was now in our safekeeping, that she was being more than helpful in answering our questions, and that
we would be happy to return her at the earliest opportunity."
"Go on." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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