by Sean Stewart
Li Mei coughed. “Has it come to that?”
“Well, not officially, but you see how it goes. The Snows are in Government House, at the invitation of the Purse, your Huang Ti.”
“Dog-fucker,” Jen growled.
“What is he to do?” Water Spider said. “You know what the Snows are like. If they occupied the building first and asked my permission after, I would smile and serve tea too.”
Jen grunted. His hairless head and face were hatched with thin scabs and stubble. “What happened? Why should the Snows fight with us?”
“We are not fighting,” Water Spider said. “We would be mad to fight. The heir to Southside has run away from home and Winter is here looking for her.”
“He also killed my mother,” Li Mei said. “Or had you forgotten?”
Floating Ant stood noisily. “More noodles for anyone?”
“If this is not a time to fight, what is?” Li Mei said.
“Provocation is irrelevant,” Water Spider said evenly. “As servants of the Government, we may not allow our personal feelings to color our judgment. We must do what is best for Chinatown. And no matter what outrage the Southsiders commit, we dare not fight with them. We simply have no hope of winning.”
“Not with surprise? A concentrated attack, when they are not expecting—”
Jen grunted. “The Snows are always looking.” Warily he picked up a clam with his fingers and scraped the chili paste off on the side of his bowl. “We could attack them with guns while they lay asleep in their beds with five to one odds and be lucky to get out alive. Compared to them, we have no fucking science at all.”
“The barbarians found a way,” Li Mei said. “Perhaps if—”
“No chance,” Jen said flatly. He rubbed his chest. “The Honorable Minister was careful to prove this to me. White devil broke my fucking luck,” Jen said between mouthfuls. “Ballsy, though.”
Water Spider remembered walking down Pender Street, the moon in his breath, the goddess asking him to name his heart’s desire. A second later she was gone, leaving Claire behind like her shadow. “The Iron Goddess of Mercy,” he murmured.
The others looked at him. “Mm. Nothing.” He wondered about the white goddess and her daughter. He wondered about the half brother he had never known, dead of cholera or dysentery before his first birthday in the dread days of the Dream. He sipped his tea. The flavor spiralled down into him, a secret road. Where would it lead, if he chose to follow it? He could not say. The continent of sorrow, perhaps.
“Our best policy would be to find Emily Thompson,” Water Spider said. “When Winter has his missing heir, he will become more tractable.”
“Do not be ridiculous!” Floating Ant snorted. “Of course we must repel the Southsiders. What kind of Minister could hand over his government so easily?”
“An unemployed one?” Li Mei suggested.
“Father, you do not understand what kind of soldiers these Snows are.”
Floating Ant waved the Snows away. “Big guns, big muscles, yah yah yah. Irrelevant.” He began to declaim:
“‘Those who win one hundred triumphs
In one hundred conflicts
Do not have supreme skill.
Those who have supreme skill
Use strategy to bend others without coming into conflict.’”
Li Mei winced. “Quoting Sun Tzu. Emily Thompson does this too.”
“You say, quite rightly, we cannot fight with the Snows,” Floating Ant said. “Therefore, we must make the Snows leave of their own will.” He put another helping of noodles into his own bowl. “There are ways of doing that besides acceding to their every demand.”
Li Mei’s thin eyes thinned some more. “I begin to think you may be a very cunning old man.”
“A lovely idea, Father. But how do you propose to execute it?”
“They are very superstitious,” Li Mei said thoughtfully. “They are not at all comfortable with the depth of ghosts and demons out here.”
Jen said, “They are right to be scared.”
“Then perhaps we should ask the Shrouded Ones to stand aside,” Floating Ant suggested.
Li Mei blanched.
“You said the Shrouded Ones were no more, Father!”
“I did no such thing. Don’t glare at me, Spider. Jimmy Kwong told you that. He was the one wearing gold.”
“Then there are Shrouded Ones still?”
“Of course there are, you ignorant boy. You wake up alive in your bed every morning, don’t you? Who do you think has been keeping the demons from your streets?”
“But I thought you said—”
“True, yes, very true: things are less dangerous than they were. But some demons still prowl—as poor Jen here has learned to his cost. In fact, as the Powers unravel, there may be more minotaurs now than years ago, albeit smaller and less powerful ones. Perhaps we should ask the Shrouded Ones who remain to come back to Chinatown at last; to cross Hastings, and let the demons come too, under their watchful eyes. It is a risky plan: but the things that creep forth from the wrong side of Hastings Street will not be so easy for a Snow to dismiss with a burst from a gun, ha?”
Li Mei sipped her tea. “Yes. You are very definitely a cunning old man.”
“I am a poet—or I was once,” Floating Ant remarked. “Do you know that wonderful line by Emily Dickinson? ‘Tell the truth / But tell it slant.’”
“There is a Mandate for you,” Water Spider said sourly.
Floating Ant was unperturbed. “Your problem, Spider, is that you keep thinking about your enemy, about these Southsiders. In fact, they are irrelevant. This is Chinatown. It is the Tao of Chinatown you must heed. The Dragon, Double Monkey, and The Lady in the Garden are the Powers here. Align yourself with them, and you cannot go astray.”
Chapter
Nineteen
After eating, Floating Ant sent Water Spider and Jen out to purchase groceries and spy on the lay of the land. Once they were gone he shuffled around his apartment, performing a sort of feeble tidying. “I am afraid it has been a very long time since I entertained a young lady of consequence,” he said to Li Mei.
One corner of her mouth quirked up. “Pray, do not trouble yourself. Yesterday, it is true, I would have been appalled by the company I am keeping. Today I am merely another unmarried woman without family, unemployed and in disgrace. Ask yourself, rather, if you care to be associating with me.”
“My dear girl! Your presence illuminates the day. In future years I will devour the memory. Remembrance is the food of the old, you know.”
“‘What does a memory weigh?’” Li Mei said.
“Wah! You know this little poem of mine?”
“My mother was a great admirer of your verse. She gave me a book of it once, for a New Year’s gift.” Closing her eyes, Li Mei chanted:
“‘What does a memory weigh?
The bed we shared is light, now;
Heavy the sighs of our parting.
My soul in my breath, my breath
In my oath. My life pawned,
Flesh and sinew for air and angels.
Now you are dust; my words only air.
What can I do, kneeling in the garden,
But eat these stones?’”
Li Mei opened her eyes. “The words don’t die. And their beauty does not grow old.”
Floating Ant grunted. “Hm, yes: to escape time through art. Can’t blame the ones who try. Nobody wants to die, ha? Nobody wants to grieve. Hm, hm, yes: ‘gather me into the artifice of eternity…’ and so on. Art to cheat death!…‘Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing…’” Floating Ant glanced sharply at Li Mei. “Famous poem, that one. Taught it in schools, when I was young. But the same man, older, wiser, wrote, ‘I must lie down where all ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.’”
Li Mei said, “When Grandmother was lying on her deathbed, my mother cut the flesh from her own arm to make a magic soup to make her
well. Tears ran down her face and blood fell on the floor. I can remember her holding Grandmother’s mouth open, trying to make her drink this soup, but she would not. Her spirit ran away that night and hid. I was a little girl then. All my life I have wondered if I would be brave enough to cut out my flesh for my mother. Now I know I would have done that too. Only I was not given a chance to be brave. I made one mistake and then there was no time to fix it.”
Floating Ant touched her hand with his old fingers. “There is this about life: it will always give you another chance to be brave. Sorrow for your mother, yes, do! It is right and proper. But do not believe this will be your last chance to grieve.” He shook a finger at Li Mei, pretending to scold. “Regret is a luxury you have no time for. Think! What will you do about these cold white strangers in your kingdom?”
“I told you. I no longer work for the Government. I am the disgraced attendant of a dismissed Minister.”
“You are waiting perhaps for Huang Ti to solve the dilemma?”
Li Mei laughed raggedly. “Hm. You have a point.”
“One does become wise with age. Otherwise, why bother growing old? Merely to feel your joints swell and your bladder shrink?” Floating Ant sniffed. “So. You know this man very well, Winter, the leader of the Snows. Think like him. Become him. You have brought your people to this alien land. You are looking for a jewel of great price.” Li Mei closed her eyes, nodding. “You have been here one day. Now, relax all the way down to dan tien, and ask yourself—”
“—Well, gentlemen: what do we do next?”
Silence around the table as Winter met the eyes of his staff. David Oliver noted his own discomfort, put it aside, and met his commander’s gaze. He had become quite good at detaching his feelings from his actions. Still, he was surprised to hear himself say, “I suppose that requires a clear answer to another question: why are we here? Sir.”
Winter regarded him. “Repeat that question, Major.”
“Why are we here, sir? What precisely is our objective? The men feel some confusion on this score.”
“And you, Major? Do you share their confusion?” All eyes turned away from him, except for Winter’s. Narrow blue eyes in a seamed face.
“Sir, I do.”
Winter leaned back in the red lacquered chair at the head of the conference room they had borrowed from the Mandarins. Most of the men looked absurd, sitting in these ornate thrones inlaid with emblems in mother-of-pearl. Winter alone was at ease seated in the Dragon chair at the head of the table, one booted foot crossing his other knee, his old frame still lean and tough as a hank of wire. “Why do you think we are here, Major? Give me your honest analysis.”
“First, to respond to the massacre of our men and fulfill the contract between ourselves and the Mandarinate.” David listened to his calm voice tick on, mindless as clockwork. “Second, to recover Emily.”
“Those are our two principal objectives, Major. You may tell the men as much, when they come to you to profess their confusion.”
David wondered if it was simple weariness and lack of sleep that had created this frightening sense of disconnection between himself and what he was doing. He could even feel the pressure of the situation, the fear of drawing down Winter’s enmity; but he felt it distantly, like an argument coming from a neighboring apartment.
Ah. He was speaking again. “The problem, sir…”
“You have balls, Major. I like that.” Winter smiled. “The problem is that the men think I’ve gone crazy, to send them out here in these numbers to claim back one young woman. If they have to put the good of their community ahead of their wives and family, why shouldn’t I? How can I risk widowing their wives over a family quarrel between Emily and myself? Is that an accurate summation, Major?”
“I think that covers it, sir.”
Winter looked slowly around the table. “If I go to Hell, gentlemen, it will be because I chose the good of my community over the good of those close to me. If I go to Hell, it will be because I decided a long time ago I would rather be damned on behalf of my fellows than saved at the cost of their lives. Yes, of course, it makes sense from a purely military perspective to commit ourselves fully to the conflict with the Downtown barbarians. History is full of half-assed campaigns that turned into fiascos because the man with overwhelming force on his side was too timid to deploy it. Economically, Chinatown has been unwilling to pay for an operation of this scale. I chose to go ahead anyway. It sets a bad precedent, everywhere our troops are hired, if we are willing to let them be destroyed piecemeal.
“A student of Chinese history could put a darker interpretation on the Silks’ unwillingness to recruit us in force. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that the Mandarins would prefer that there be very few heavily armed foreigners occupying their territory at the conclusion of hostilities with these barbarians? History teems with people conquered by the very armies they asked in to help them fight some third foe. I direct your attention to the conquest of Spain by the Berbers, for instance.
“Still, the question remains: how can we pay for this operation? Partly, we must use this exercise as advertising. Communication technologies are re-establishing themselves at a tremendous rate across the continent. I now talk regularly with representatives of dozens of major population centers. Such a thing would have been unheard of even twenty years ago. So, we have an ever-increasing number of potential clients, and an ever-increasing opportunity to advertise.”
He stopped and looked around the table. “Advertise. You don’t know this word, do you?” He shook his head. “To make other people aware that we have a military product of proven efficiency.” He ran his hand back through his white hair. “We may also find that if we present a complete bill for this operation to the Mandarinate, the presence of large numbers of heavily armed troops will make them think twice about refusing to pay it.”
Is it true that you beat Chinatown’s ambassador to death last night? David said. Oh, no, no words came out this time. And how does this figure into the long range diplomatic relations between our communities?
No. No words came out.
Winter opened his hands. “And yet, clearly there is a personal side to this. I want Emily back. This is not a secret. Why? Why was I willing to risk, and to lose, a platoon of men just to bring back one twenty-year-old girl? I am right on this one, Major. We are classing Captain Ranford’s men as missing and presumed dead, are we not?”
“I believe so. Sir.”
Winter closed his eyes. Opened them. “If Emily were only a member of my family, I would let her go. Hell, plenty of kids need room to grow up when they get to be her age. She’s had a lot of responsibility put upon her. And it isn’t just that she is going to be my successor, either. It would be a pain in the ass but I could train someone new, if that was all there was to it. It is not. There is a compact between myself and the North Side. A contract. As far as I know, the Southside is the second largest single community on the North American continent. There are cities with a higher total population, if you look at the Dream metropolitan areas. Here in Vancouver is one. Minneapolis-St. Paul, Little Boston, and San Diego are others. But those populations exist in islands separated from one another by no man’s land. On this entire continent, I believe only Madison, Wisconsin came through the Dream with a larger unified core of survivors.
“Believe me when I tell you, we owe our very existence to the contract between myself and the North Side. Blood is required. But I can’t live forever, and Emily is the last of my line. She in turn must pay the price for our collective survival. That is why we are here, gentlemen. We are here to recover my granddaughter. As soon as Major Oliver and his fellows in Intelligence produce her, we can go.”
It was almost a relief to feel the axe come down, David thought. “Do you have any suggestions, then, sir? Emily appears to have entered the Forest. As I feared, we have been unable to penetrate it.”
“Burn it down,” someone grumbled.
David sat bolt upright. “
I strongly recommend no such action be taken against a Power, gentlemen. Need I remind you of what happened with the napalming of Harlem, or the Tampa Bay nuke?”
“No, you needn’t,” Winter said drily. “Obviously, we don’t want to deal with any Powers, let alone provoke them. And napalming a forest to get Emily out of it would leave me with a barbecued heir, eh, Mike?”
General Beranek sighed. “I just hated losing the men. I don’t like fighting here, sir. The terrain is so ridden with minotaurs…It gives the men creeps. Frankly, it gives me the creeps. And the food!” He glanced at Martha Antoski, the quartermaster. “The stuff your men have been buying…Some of it gives me the shudders, Martha. Little crispy green things that used to live in the sea. With too many legs. I mean, I don’t know what half this stuff is. And when I ask, I wish I hadn’t.”
Winter laughed out loud. “Oh, the soldier’s life is a hard one, eh?”
“Sir, I know it sounds foolish, but these can be serious concerns. Morale is not good to start with. First the massacre. Now stories about Ranford’s men are getting around. The food is one more thing to make the men uneasy.”
“Then let’s get this thing done, shall we? I want a three-block-wide firebreak cleared on the Downtown side of Granville Street, gentlemen. I want to make it clear Downtown that their party is over. Major Oliver, I very much wish to speak to Li Bing’s daughter. It is now almost three o’clock Saturday afternoon. If we still haven’t found Li Mei by tomorrow morning, I want you to start going door to door.”
“With respect, sir, that will ruffle a lot of feathers.”
Winter shrugged. “If it reduces the length of our stay in Chinatown, it will be worth it to the slants as well as us.” Winter rubbed his eyes. It occurred to David that the old man had probably had even less sleep than he had since Friday morning.
