9
"Quick, Young Moon, everything into the fire!" Father barked. I had never ever heard him this angry before.
Wait, angry isn't it, I thought. He's scared! Now I was getting frightened too.
I ran to the plastic file cabinet in the corner of the lab and grabbed a stack of papers from the open drawer, then dashed back to the open fire in the burning metal rubbish bin in the middle of the room.
"These, Father?"
"Yes, everything. All of it, and quickly. They could be here any minute."
Who? Why? I thought, but I didn't dare speak.
Father had awakened me from a sound sleep only an hour before. With an urgency I had never seen in him, he bundled me off to his lab here in the heart of University City. It was late at night and no one was around. Despite the secrecy of the place, no one tried to stop us either, and that was unusual.
I dumped the papers in the fire and went back for more. The flames crackled and spit and licked aloft a few of the lighter pieces. Gently, like kites floating above the beach on a breezy day, they rose and fell. The gentleness of it seemed very out of place in all this excitement, and for a few seconds I was transfixed.
Paper is much too valuable to burn, I thought. It should be recycled at least. This is not like Father at all.
The fire itself was a blasphemy in this room. Like a curse word spoken in anger in front of Mother. Something that just shouldn't be. This sparkly-clean laboratory was Father's pride, and I spent hours here in the days before Apophis, drawing my circles while he huddled with others over banks of screens.
That seemed like a different world, now.
I made three more trips and the paper was gone, burning red and crackling in the bottom of the metal bin. The smoke curled towards the ceiling tiles, and I wondered if it would set off alarms.
I stooped to pick up a few stray sheets that had slipped to the floor, and was suddenly frozen to the spot.
One of them was my drawing! The same drawing Father took from me on that day so long ago.
What's this doing here? I thought.
Deep veins within the inked lines on the page began to come to life as the firelight flickered. Instantly, faces formed in the patterns and then just as quickly disappeared.
"Father, what is this doing here?" I began to ask.
He cut me off. "We don't have much time now. Move!"
Father had finished wiping data cubes and was gathering some electronics from the glass table along the back wall. He stuffed them into a sack, then paused a moment and, with a deep breath, flicked a single old-style toggle switch on the wall above his nearly empty desk.
Then he turned and headed for the door with purpose.
"Come! Now!"
I folded the drawing, slipped it into my pocket and ran to catch up. For some reason, I didn't want him to see me do this. Like it was stealing.
But it's my drawing! I thought, and I want it!
We were out the door and down the shaky wooden fire escape in seconds. Father kept his car under the stairs, which is technically illegal and could have meant jail to a normal person, but the campus guards looked the other way because Father was special.
Or so I thought.
He jumped in the driver's seat and I into the back. As he powered up, an explosion shook the ground. Fire burst through the door we had just left and debris rained down on the hood of the car, pinging and thumping like hailstones on a metal roof.
Father put the car in reverse and mashed the throttle.
"Get down, Young Moon!" he shouted.
The car snapped backwards and slammed into the staircase as Father spun the steering wheel. I thought we'd get stuck but he punched drive and off we sped, silently, down the narrow alley past the Science and Technology Mansion, out the unguarded North Gate (Unguarded?) and onto the darkened Zhongguancun Street beyond.
Father was driving by hand like I'd never seen before. He was always stern about me wearing a seat harness, but now he was focused elsewhere. I liked not being told what to do, as if I were still a child. I was seventeen now, after all, and he trusted me to act like an adult. I buckled myself in and tightened the harness.
I heard sirens in the distance, but they weakened as Father headed north. We passed under the Third Ring Road and then the Fourth. Farther and farther from the destruction of all he'd worked so hard for.
He seemed to know where he was going, and he wanted to get there fast. After an hour of weaving through dark quiet neighborhoods and occasionally retracing his route, he slowed through a narrow, empty market place, just wide enough to pass.
I know this place! I thought. Arabic meats. Halal stuff.
We weren't too far from my school on Wenyang Road. The shops were dark. It must have been quite late now. Or quite early.
Father turned off the lights, veered into a loading area and powered down. He grabbed his bag and motioned for me to follow and be quiet.
We clicked the car doors closed as silently as we could and walked briskly over to the loading gate. There, a small service door had been left open just a bit, spilling a sharp needle of yellow light out and across the stained concrete deck.
Father went in first but held my hand tight. He opened the door wide and stepped through. I followed.
A single oil lamp sitting on a high, square table glared through a dirty glass chimney. Around the table sat four Western men. One noticed us enter, motioned to his friends and they all stood.
"Good, Young Moon is with you."
I knew that voice and swung around.
Thank goodness!
"Mother!" I cried.
She stepped out of the shadows. Father smiled and she smiled back. Whatever it was, things would be all right now. Mother was here.
I ran over to her. "Mother! I'm so glad you're here. Where's Joo Chen? Is he with you?"
"He's fine," replied Father, now beside us. He took Mother's hand and gave it a squeeze.
"He's with friends," said Mother, "and you'll see him again soon, but now you must stay close. We are leaving."
"Leaving? Where? Why?" I had so many questions, but Mother shot me that look.
"Later, Young Moon!" Then, suddenly tender. "Ah, how thin you are!" she sighed, raising her hand to brush my hair back from my forehead.
Mother was always worried about how thin I looked, but really I felt fine. Besides, in pictures of her at my age, she was not much different than I.
Father and the others bowed politely and shook hands, then huddled together around the table, talking. It sounded like English, but I couldn't understand a word of it. Soon some agreement was made.
"We must leave. Now!" Mother said as the short meeting broke up. Stern. Like a leader.
Who is this woman? I thought.
She took my hand and walked us quickly out the door into a small panel van.
That wasn't here before, was it? I thought. And Father's car — where did it go?
The van was windowless except for the front. It had a new-car smell and was surprisingly roomy inside. One of the men got behind the wheel and in a moment we were powered up. He drove out of the alley and didn't turn his lights on until we hit Wenyang Road. He drove by hand, avoiding the outer ring roads where that wasn't allowed.
Soon the speeding up and hard braking and the bouncing over the rutted streets made me a little ill. Father said to lay my head on his shoulder and I did. The road smoothed once we were far from the city and my stomach calmed. It had been a busy night, and soon I was fast asleep.
I bounced awake hours later to a red sun rising in a flaming sky. It looked as if the world itself was on fire.
From my seat in the back I saw, out the windshield, a rocky red outcropping on either side of the gravel road that stretched as far as I could see. Velvet red in shadow, it was speckled by bright yellow-orange patches of sunlight.
It all looked achingly beautiful, but also remote and hostile. No vegetation at all, either, like some alien world. I thought of Father's globe, slowly rotating back in his office at home.
"Mars!" I said aloud without realizing it.
"No, Vietnam." replied Father, matter-of-fact. I swung my head. There he was, still next to me, with a shiny red apple in his hands. He put his thumbs in the hollow on top, pressed down and pulled apart. The apple snapped in two with a satisfying sound, and the aroma filled my nostrils.
"From here it will be easier to get to America. Are you hungry?" he asked with a smile, and he turned and offered me a perfect half.