Diverse Energies

by Joe Monti Tobias S. Buckell

  But Nix wasn’t part of the plan.

  She jerked her head away when I touched her cheek. “What are you doing?”

  I leaned forward on my toes and brushed my lips over hers. She didn’t move. I felt as if I might shatter into a thousand dusky moths, wings sounding a staccato beat in the still air, and the only thing that would hold me together was a kiss from this girl.

  I curved my hand around her neck to tug her down toward me, and her muscles were tight as steel bars beneath her skin. I thought she would resist, but all of a sudden her mouth pressed hard against mine. She tasted slightly of soy sauce, but there was a stud in her tongue and it sent a ripple through my entire body as the metal clicked against my teeth. I could dissolve right there. I could melt into the wet dark concrete of the alley and no one would ever find me again. I reached up. Her scalp was surprisingly soft under my hands; the stubble of her hair pushed against my palms like fur.

  When she shoved me away I couldn’t breathe, and her face was wild with panic. “Not a good idea,” she muttered.

  “Wait,” I gasped, but she was already gone. She had even left the takeout containers behind. I sank down onto the back stoop, my body reeling with adrenaline and woozy from her kiss.

  A fuse had lit inside me. I had to see it through to the end.

  I brought a pound of rice with me when I snuck down to the Tunnels the next day. I stood there with the plastic bag swinging in my hand, and I whispered, “Nix?”

  She was there, a shadow in the dark a few feet away.

  I moved toward her, holding out the bag. “I brought you some rice.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she said, but she took the rice.

  This time I heard the Patrol the same instant she did, and I followed her through the crack in the wall, where we crouched on the grimy concrete beneath the counter, trying to disappear into the dark as flashlight beams pierced the broken window above. I wondered if the Patrol ever actually caught anyone down here. I hadn’t heard of any Tunnel mutts being caught in a long time. Maybe it was all for show now — a show for those of us who had to live aboveground and endure the endless campaigns for genetic purity and political order and whatever other crap initiative the premier and his ministers came up with.

  But Nix seemed plenty worried about it. She didn’t relax until the Patrol was long past, and then, like last time, she swung around and sat on the edge of the mattress and turned on the electric light. “What do you want?” she asked bluntly.

  I crawled over to her and did what I had been thinking about since the night before: I kissed her. And she didn’t resist.

  The mattress was lumpy, but it was better than the floor. She wouldn’t let me peel off her jacket, and the metal buttons hurt a little when they dug into me, but I liked it. I liked how rough her hands were, and I let her touch me, and I shoved my mouth against her neck so that I didn’t make a sound.

  The next night she came to the alley at one in the morning. I had been hoping she would come, but she didn’t tell me she would. All day I had been in a daze. Even my friends at school had noticed, but I didn’t tell them a thing. I enjoyed having my secret. Everybody said I was so good, such a perfect student and daughter and citizen. I liked being a liar.

  When she arrived, I opened the kitchen door. “Don’t you want a cup of tea?” I asked.

  She smiled — the first smile I’d seen from her, though it was gone in a flash. “Sure,” she said.

  I made the tea: one teaspoon of precious jasmine leaves in the cracked blue porcelain teapot. I opened the spout on the kettle so that it wouldn’t whistle and wake up my mother. Then I heated up leftovers for Nix, who sat down at the kitchen table — the table where I had done my homework every day after school, obediently, for years — and wolfed down rice and pork and pickled turnips. When the tea was ready, I poured it, steaming and fragrant, into one of our chipped teacups and placed it in front of Nix. I felt like a little wife preparing dinner for my criminal of a lover.

  We made out on the kitchen table afterward, carefully moving all the dishes aside first so that we wouldn’t smash them and make a noise. But I must have forgotten where I was, because the next thing I knew, Nix was pulling away from me, her eyes looking behind me, where I heard my mother’s voice: “—are you? What are you doing to my daughter?”

  Nix’s face was dazed, but an instant later that expression vanished behind a blank, hard mask, and she turned and left. The kitchen door had already banged shut by the time I managed to sit up, pulling my shirt closed. My mother was yelling at me, but I barely heard her words over the pounding of my heart. I saw her mouth opening and closing as she berated me, the flash of her teeth, the rising tide of red in her cheeks.

  I buttoned my shirt. My fingers barely shook at all.

  My mother lunged forward and slapped me.

  I reeled, one hand rising to cup my stinging face, and I slid off the table and backed away from her.

  “Don’t ignore me,” my mother said, spitting out the words. “What have you done? Do you know what could happen to our family if someone found out? You’re a good girl, Kyle — how could you do this? With a Tunnel mutt. You’re only one month away from assignment! If you get pregnant, I can’t afford to buy you an abortion, much less pay off the government. I’ll lose the restaurant. We’ll lose everything. Is that what you want?”

  I flinched involuntarily. “I’m not going to get pregnant.”

  “Where are you getting money for birth control? Are you stealing? Whatever you buy under the table won’t work. And if you keep seeing this boy, you will get pregnant.” Her hands clenched into fists.

  Everything I had never said to her — all the times I bit my tongue when she warned me to stay away from non-Asian boys; all my frustration over her emotionless reaction to Kit’s disappearance — it all exploded out of me, and I said the worst thing I could think of. “Are you afraid I’m going to be just like you?”

  My mother’s eyes bulged.

  “I know my father wasn’t Asian,” I continued relentlessly. “Do you really think I don’t know that you did everything you tell me not to?”

  I braced for a blow, but instead my mother’s shoulders slumped, and tears slid down her cheeks as if a dam had broken. She sat down in a chair, cradling her head in her hands, and I saw the white streaks radiating out from the crown of her head. She suddenly seemed so old and tired, and guilt began to seep through me. I said in a quieter voice, “I know that’s what happened to you, but it’s not going to happen to me because Nix is a girl.”

  She raised her head. “What?”

  “She’s a girl. The person who was just here. As far as I know,” I said, sarcasm lacing my words, “she can’t get me pregnant.”

  My mother stared at me. I heard the hum of the refrigerator in the background. The creak of her chair as she shifted in her seat. I pulled out the other chair — we only had two, since there were only two of us — and sat as well. The clock hanging over the door ticked. It was just after three in the morning.

  “Well,” she said finally, “that’s almost a relief.”

  Tears welled up hot and urgent at the corners of my eyes, and suddenly I found it difficult to breathe.

  “Are you doing this because of your brother?” she asked.

  I recoiled. “What are you talking about?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Sneaking around after midnight with a Tunnel mutt. Girl or not, that’s still not safe. You could ruin everything, Kyle. Not only for you, but for me too.”

  I hunched over. “I’m not going to ruin everything.”

  “I hope not.” She didn’t sound like she believed me.

  I glared at her, wiping away my hot tears. “Why don’t you ever talk about Kit? You act like he never existed.”

  She let out a broken sigh. “Of course he existed. He was my baby boy.” She sounded wistful, and a smile flitted over her face. “He was a good boy, too. Never cried or fussed the way you did.” She got up to put th
e kettle on the stove. “I thought he would be assigned somewhere outside Chinatown, he was so good at school. But I guess my status is still a problem.”

  “What do you mean?” My mother had never said so much about this before.

  “The government only let me keep you two because my parents paid them off,” she said, preparing a fresh pot of tea. She didn’t use the jasmine, just the regular black tea.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. It was a disgrace when Kit was born — I was lucky he looked Asian, because his father certainly wasn’t pure-blood. But I loved him, Kyle. Every minute I had with your father was worth it.”

  My mother sounded unexpectedly fierce, and I was taken aback. I had never thought of my father as a real man; he had always been a distant idea to me, flimsy as the paper of my birth certificate, on which he wasn’t even named. The knowledge that my mother had loved him opened a new ache inside myself. But how could I suddenly long for someone I had never known?

  “What happened?” I whispered. “Why didn’t they sterilize you after Kit?” That was the standard procedure for girls who gave birth outside the Health Ministry’s plans. I never should have been born.

  My mother poured boiling water into the teapot and sat down again. “Your grandfather was a decorated military officer, so the government was willing to overlook the indiscretion. That might have been the end of it. I might have been able to continue at my assignment at the Defense Ministry. But I was too young, and too much in love. When you came along, my parents had to bribe the officials. It was expensive, and I had to submit to sterilization then. I was reassigned here, and I never saw your father again.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”

  She shrugged. “It’s ancient history. Nothing to be done about it. Besides, when Lao Yan died and asked that I be given the restaurant, it seemed like I was getting a pretty good deal. We have food, Kyle. We’re lucky. And we have a roof over our heads, and because I own this place now I can sweep it for bugs. We can talk freely inside here. I have more freedom now than I’ve ever had before. If you get assigned to Chinatown, you should remember that.”

  “Kit didn’t want to be assigned here.”

  “No. Kit didn’t. He had dreams —” My mother gave an impatient sigh. “He didn’t understand his place.”

  “Did he tell you that he was leaving? Did he tell you why?”

  She poured two cups of tea and slid one across the table to me. “No.”

  “Don’t you miss him?” I demanded. “Don’t you want to know where he went? What if he was taken in by the Patrol and imprisoned for being mixed? Shouldn’t we look for him?”

  Red splotches darkened my mother’s cheeks, but her voice was measured when she answered me. “I did look for him. I’ve done more to look for him than you know. Is that why you found this Tunnel mutt? Because you thought Kit joined a Tunnel gang?”

  “Don’t call her a mutt. Kit and I are mutts, too.”

  Her face hardened. “No, you’re not. Don’t ever say that — not even to me at home. You’re my children; you’re not a mutt living in the filth below everybody else.”

  “They only live there because the government won’t let them live aboveground.”

  “Who’s giving you these ideas? They’re criminals!”

  “Wasn’t my father a criminal?” I shouted, and then I winced. I hadn’t expected my words to come flying out so loudly.

  My mother’s face went white, and she stood up, shoving her chair back so forcefully it fell over, clattering, onto the floor. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice so thick with fury that I felt as if she had slapped me in the face again. “Go to your room. And never bring this up again.”

  I stood, my legs shaking. “You can’t treat me like a child forever. I deserve to know the truth.”

  Instead of going to my room, I ran out the back door, letting it slam shut just as Nix had.

  I had never been out after closing time, and the streets of Chinatown were deserted and eerie, lit by dim street lamps that left pools of thick darkness in between. As I rounded the edge of Confucius Square, I heard the wail of Patrol sirens, and I instinctively ducked into a doorway, hoping their bright floodlights wouldn’t find me. If they caught me now, with no work papers giving me a reason to be out after curfew, that would be the end of my life as I knew it. They’d test me for MID and even if I came up negative, I bet they’d disappear me, or at least send me to Bronx sector. There was no excuse for being out this late, and I didn’t think it would be brushed off as a minor offense — especially given my mother’s record.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, cold sweat prickling over my skin. But just as panic was about to paralyze me completely, I realized the sirens were fading. I opened my eyes to see the last of the floodlights sweeping out of sight. I sucked in the cool air in a ragged gasp, relief searing through me. With it came a kind of reckless confidence: I was lucky tonight. As soon as I was sure the Patrol was gone, I sprinted toward the crack in the wall.

  When I arrived, I was surprised to see a dim glow coming from below, and then I remembered that after dark the Tunnel gangs ruled the underground. I was about to walk into their territory, and I hadn’t even brought a bribe with me.

  But I couldn’t go home. I wouldn’t. And I also couldn’t stay up here, because the Patrol would be back.

  At the bottom of the broken stairs, a group of men were standing together, joking and drinking by the light of electric lanterns set on the ground. I didn’t see Nix. But the men saw me, and one of them called out, “You lost, little girl?”

  Another clicked on the bright beam of a flashlight and shone it directly at me. I threw my hand up to block the glare.

  “I’m looking for Nix,” I said.

  They laughed. “Who? You sure that’s what you’re looking for?”

  The guy holding the flashlight came toward me and put his big hand on my chin and jerked my face up. He had light-brown skin and curly hair, and his breath stank of liquor. “You’re a pretty little girl. You shouldn’t be out this late alone.”

  I tried to pull away, but his fingers just dug deeper into my face. “I need to talk to Nix,” I said again. I knew he could hurt me — they all could — but I didn’t care. “Let go of me,” I snapped.

  His eyes narrowed, his forehead wrinkling. “Smart-ass lazy bitch. Shut up.”

  “Hey, take it easy,” someone said from behind him.

  The man glanced over his shoulder. “You wanna deal with this rich girl? Go ahead.” He dropped his hand from my face, but not without shoving me back so that I sat down, hard, on the edge of the stairs. I bit back a cry of pain.

  “You want to talk to Nix?”

  This man was younger — maybe only a few years older than me — and his head was also shaved and tattooed like Nix’s. The expression on his face was wary but not unkind. “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my jaw. It felt like that man’s fingerprints were permanently indented in my chin. I pushed myself to my feet. “Where is she?”

  He looked at me for a while, and I glared back. He laughed. “I’ll take you to her.”

  I had only ever heard rumors about what the Tunnels were like: dank, disease-ridden sewers crammed full of stinking mutts and their gang leaders. Unending darkness, full of the scrabbling noise of rats. None of the rumors prepared me for what I saw: an entire city underground, layer upon layer of board-covered walkways, black iron pillars and rainbow-colored tiled walls lit with scavenged lanterns. A honeycomb of wonders, all safely tucked away beneath the streets. I would never be able to find my way out without a guide. I knew I should be afraid, but I wasn’t. I was overwhelmed by the evidence before my eyes: There was an entire world down here, and it was full of people. Healthy people.

  I’d learned in school that mixing genes of different races would almost certainly lead to MID and early death, but these people seemed stronger than some of my classmates. And there were so many of them. They were working:
laying boards across abandoned train tracks; slapping laundry in giant steel vats of water; frying noodles in a shallow pan, a line of mixed-blood children waiting with bowls in hand. As we walked past, the kids swiveled their heads to look at me. Here, I was the oddity, not them.

  We walked for about twenty minutes before we arrived at our destination: a giant underground room as grand as a government hall, with marble walls and dark chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. A few lights still shone from above, giving the whole space a dim yellow glow. All along the perimeter, the walls were covered with bits of paper, and as we approached I realized they were mostly photos. Some were decorated with ribbons or notes, some with plastic flowers, others with wilting grasses or weeds that must have been brought down from above. People were scattered all around the hall, looking at photos or decorating them.