READING: "Turkestan" & "Aristoi"
Chen Tao: Turkestan:
Thinking only of their vow
That they would crush the Tartars—
On the desert, clad in sable and silk,
Five thousand of them fell—But arisen from their crumbling bones
On the banks of the river at the border,
Dreams of them enter, like men alive,
Into rooms where their loves lie sleeping.
Walter Jon Williams: Aristoi:
“I want nothing more than to take some kind of desperate action. But if I do something, I want to make certain that it will be proper and effective. I don’t want to make this move out of a kind of despair, out of a misplaced mourning for our friends. Adding the Surveyors’ names to a long casualty list won’t be of service to anyone.”
Clancy’s voice was earnest. “What do our lives matter, Aristos? Within a year, half humanity may be gone.”
Five thousand soldiers lost, Gabriel thought, after Chen Tao, Cold fur, cold silk, lying on an alien world… bones with wives who dream of them still. Five thousand. Five thousand dead was a bad break for the Tang Dynasty, but now the casualties could number five thousand million. Fifty thousand million. More…