by Leigh Lyn
Blushing and nodding, he said, “Yes, still here... No… No problem, hang on—” Xiao Cai covered the receiver. “Miss Architect, our lady boss at the top is very sorry about your accident. She says tonight, you must stay at her penthouse next door as it is empty anyway.”
Lady boss? Would that be Cherry, who was ‘practically’ Lao Bo’s wife?
“Thank you for the kind offer, but I better get back to my hotel.”
“Bu-yao-keqi! No need to be so polite, Miss—” Xiao Cai stopped in mid-sentence, searched his pockets and fished out a vibrating phone. Taken aback by the caller displayed, he answered it.
“Dui, boss... we found her!... She’s right here! Dui, boss, the Old Lady has invited her—What? Oh, it’s on its way? Dui… Dui, I’ll try, boss.” His face changed from red to crimson. “No problem, boss!”
Sweating profusely, Xiao Pang held both phones to his meaty stomach, pressing them into the folds of his hefty body. “Miss Architect,” he said. “My other boss likes to invite you to see our facilities in the mountains. He’ll be honored if you would accept.”
“What?” I asked.
“Transportation is on its way already.”
“Right now?” I stammered.
“Dui, my boss is an efficient man,” Xiao Pang said.
“Thanks, but no thanks.” I got up. Xiao Pang lifted both phones to his mouth and said, “Hang on.”
He reached out to touch my arm, his damp and sticky fingers still holding the phone, and said with pleading eyes. “Listen, I have to humor my bosses. They are putting a lot of pressure on me, not the least because we found you in a compromising situation.” Seeing my expression, Xiao Pang dropped the rest of the sentence. “Please, Miss Architect, I have a wife and a kid to support. My dad here—” He pointed at Flesh Mountain, who had started snoring. “He lost his farm when they built the Three Gorges Dam.”
“I understand, but it’s late. I’ll come back tomorrow.” And with that, I turned on my heels and walked out the door.
On the other side of the same door, two men in navy blue Mao suits with inscrutable faces awaited me. Something in their expression made me turn and go back inside to face Xiao Pang. Before either of us could say anything, the two men had followed me into the site office. One of them walked up to the site supervisor and whispered into his ear. Shocked, he looked at me. “Alright, Miss Architect. If you’d like to go with these two gentlemen, they will take you to our boss.”
Without waiting for my response, they each grabbed one of my arms, lifted me up and marched me outside. Gusts of wind and the deafening roar of a machine surrounded us. When we reached the car park at the far side of the main building, the source of the noise revealed itself as a helicopter parked on the white dot of the landing pad. The letters “G.Y.” were printed in red on the side of its bulbous body. Ignoring my protests, the men buckled me up in its backseat like a toddler, and with a single nod to the pilot, they signaled for him to take off.
Noise and wind exploded as the chopper rose toward the thunderous sky. Despite the terrible weather, the darkness of the night transformed the city of Chongqing into a little spectacle with glowing skyscrapers as neon-lit fountains created mesmerizing auroras. But my heart was heavy and my nerves were going through a rollercoaster ride dampening my appreciation of the sights. Had Roger been whisked up in the air in the same way too?
Chapter 24
The helicopter picked up a steady pace and, soon, we’d left the shimmering night-scape of Chongqing behind. My limbs were shaking, my heart was beating, and I was feeling nauseous. As the minutes passed, my nerves calmed down somewhat. By the time the chopper was following the course of the Yangtze and flying toward the horizon sandwiched between the two mountainsides of the gorge, I’d resigned myself to the worst.
The dawn-bleached heaven and earth, rendering them in hazy layers and multiple shades of mud-yellow and yellow-gray. Although it was the first time I had seen them, I recognized the mountain scenes that had been captured by numerous artists for thousands of years. After a while, they all became the same, and my mind slipped back to the solitary depth of my thoughts. I made up one plan and then another, and another, each more futile than the next when I envisioned them in the light of the ephemeral scene around me. Fighting a growing feeling of despair, I told myself to stay calm and checked my phone, shielding its light from the attention of the pilot. There was a chain of text messages from a Peggy, the last one reading: “UA660, 11 PM, 12-6-2-2014.”
Whoever this Peggy was, she was wasting the little battery I had left in a dire situation if there ever was one. I ignored them to type an SOS message to Ben when the damn thing died on me, and I felt sick to my stomach.
I didn’t know how long we’d been in the air, but it must have been hours. We were flying over a bend in the Yangtze where the water was so low we could see patches of the pebbled riverbed emerging above its muddy surface and glistening in the early light. The riverbed dipped, twisted, and turned. The chopper ascended higher and higher till it punctured a cloud, and the muddy waves were veiled from sight. Rising above it, the chopper entered a horizontal slice of the gorge sandwiched between the cloud below and one above. Piercing layer after layer of mist and clouds, the chopper ascended till it reached a height where part of the slope leveled out and became a small plateau populated by gigantic trees the tops of which disappeared into the mist above.
Suspended in this tranquil, cosmic skewer of heaven and earth, I spotted a swarm of sparrows that had chosen a quiet ledge as a temporary repose for the night. Perching in clusters on its ground, they’d folded their wings under which they’d tucked their heads. As the chopper flew straight toward it, the swallows grew to a bizarre size until it dawned on me they were clusters of houses with huge pitched roofs.
The pilot steered the chopper toward a big white dot in a clearing on the plateau. Standing next to the dot was the tiny figure of a woman. Her hands were capping her eyes. Her white linen outfit billowed in the wind with long, wide sleeves spread like a crane’s wings. A large hood covered her head. Captivated, my heart pounded.
“Welcome to the 8th Sky,” the woman chimed as the pilot helped me out of the chopper. Her voice was light as froth, her face shaped like a pine nut with sallow skin and large, soothing eyes. Like the beak of a newborn chick, a small crimson mouth was propped on top of a long neck without the interruption of a chin.
Introducing herself as Pui, she bowed her delicate head and beckoned me to follow her. Without looking back, she meandered across the precinct at a fleeting pace. Speechless, I took in the dreamlike sights laced with slivers of mist. Bamboo boardwalks connected the raised verandas the houses wore like bamboo tutus under cover of overflying roofs. Pui stopped in front of a small house. Without a sound, a glass door slid aside. Raising a finger to her lips, Pui said, “Everyone is still sleeping.”
Wondering if G.Y. treated hostages like guests or manhandled guests like hostages, I stepped inside. Side by side, we walked through a maze of dark-bricked corridors until we stood in front of a small bamboo door without a doorknob or handle. Pui lay her palm on a circular glass plate next to the doorframe, and it slid open. Gesturing me to enter, she said, “Take a rest, and I’ll come back in a few hours when our director is ready to meet you.”
The door closed after I stepped over the threshold, confining me to a dark and simple room with a bed in the corner. At the far end, along the full width of the room, was a latticed window with a translucent screen running horizontally. As soon as I lay down, fatigue swallowed me like hurricanes suck up clouds, spinning me round and round in an upward fall until a soft murmuring startled me and I sat up.
The white screen at the far end of the room was aglow with shadows moving wildly across it. Intrigued, I walked up to it and, remembering a trick from reruns of old kung-fu movies, I wetted the translucent rice paper screen with saliva. Making a small hole in it with my finger, I peeked through it. In a torch-lit courtyard, bird-like-creatures were
performing a beautiful martial dance with a rejuvenating energy. Looking more closely, I saw that they too were women dressed in billowing clothes. In the flickering light, each of their lovely features looked like variants of Pui’s, and I was suddenly filled with a fuzzy, warm feeling.
The next time I woke up, the room was basking in a warm, filtered light, and Pui was standing in the doorway. She asked me to follow her. Outside, the slithers of moody white haze of a few hours earlier had evaporated, and the houses were bathing in bright, sparkling sunlight. I felt numb, having slept for only an hour or two. We passed through a yard where a group of tiny midgets in red aprons were doing morning exercises. I stopped to rub my blurred eyes and saw that the midgets were children.
Noticing I’d stalled, Pui came back for me. “Orphans,” she said, following my gaze. “The Orphanage and Childcare centers are 8th Sky’s most appreciated successes.”
“I heard.” I nodded, wondering how old Pui was.
“Come,” she said. “Shi Gong is waiting.”
We hurried to the far side of the plateau. Away from the other houses stood a courtyard house with a bamboo gate. Pui lay her palm on the circular glass plate next to it, and we entered. She led the way through a white hall and living room, and out into a large courtyard facing the sun-drenched gorge below.
Nothing prevented one from falling off the plateau, yet Pui walked right up to the edge without giving it a thought. The view down the gorge knocked the air out of my lungs. It was with shaking knees and my back pressed against the rock that I followed her down stone steps hewn in the steep face of the gorge, until we came to a smaller ledge more than a hundred feet below the main compound.
Carved into the rock was a tiny stone pavilion. In the middle sat an old man in a lotus position on a round, rosewood platform. His eyes were closed, his cheeks hollowed, his body so thin his hands and feet showed a thickening at the joints. He looked familiar, and it occurred to me I’d seen him before, perhaps in one of those looped promotional films shown at the Corp.
Pui kneeled next to him and said, “Shi Gong?”
The old man opened his eyes; their murky-gray color struck me as odd.
“Your guest,” Pui said and gestured me to take a seat on the platform. I obeyed with a fluttery, empty feeling in my stomach, after which she retreated. I was alone with the old man.
Chapter 25
The old man’s remarkable eyes shone as he said, “I’m sorry to hear about your little mishap, Miss Lee.”
“Call me Lin, please.” I mustered a smile although my mouth felt dry like sand. “No need to apologize, sir.”
“In that case, call me Shi Gong like everyone else. It’s too bad your site visit coincided with the typhoon. At any other time, the premises would have been full with workers who would have helped you.”
“Xiao Pang was helpful enough,” I hurried to say.
“Was he?” Shi Gong’s gaze skimmed over the rippled clouds hanging over the gorge. “He told me you bumped your head and passed out. I’ve arranged for Dr. Ma, our physician, to come. He will give you a physical examination.”
“That’s kind of you, but I feel better now.”
I had not been hijacked to appease Shi Gong’s sense of responsibility, had I?
“I insist. It’s the least we can do. Until he arrives, will you join me for some refreshments?” The old man pressed a button mounted on the side of a post. “The mountain air makes one so hungry.”
Two women appeared with trays of tofu, root vegetables, and other vegan dishes.
“Don’t mind if I do.” I sat up. Having skipped dinner, I could have eaten a mountain goat. I reached for the braised tofu as he continued.
“8th Sky has had its share of inquisitive reporters hunting for breaking news: The next sensational drug, forged baby formula, or genetic splicing experiment gone wrong.”
Taken aback by his frankness, I replied, “As the architect, we were looking for defects in the construction works. But since we’re on the subject, why do the reporters think they will find anything here?”
Shi Gong passed me the sesame-speckled mushrooms. “How old do you think I am?”
“Mid-sixties, early seventies?”
“I have been on the road since Mao’s long march in ‘37.”
“Since ‘37? That means you were born in the twenties?”
Could those quick eyes and upright, lean body belong to a ninety-year-old?
“The author, Mr. Aldous Huxley, wrote it in 1931, and I read it in the mid-thirties. Before they burned the books. Do you know it would take another sixty-five years before they cloned the first sheep and seventy-six before they sequenced the first human genome?”
My mouth was full, so I shook my head.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Shi Gong’s eyes shimmered. “The author, Mr. Aldous Huxley, came from a family of famous scientists. His grandfather was an eighteenth-century biologist whose nickname was Darwin’s bulldog.”
“Is that true?” I was impressed he knew. Living on a remote ledge up in the mountain no longer meant one was disconnected. But why was he telling me this? Why was I whisked up here to listen to him talk about books?
“Oh yes, his brother is a member of the British Eugenics Society, believe it or not. And his half-brother is a Nobel prize-winning bio-physicist, whose findings G.Y.’s research is still based on. I know, because it’s my business to know, the business of G.Y.”
Unnerved he had read my mind, I asked, “You mean those were not the author’s own ideas?”
“Oh, they are. But he soaked up the original gist of them when he grew up in this brilliant scientific milieu. At best, he was playing devil’s advocate; at worst, he stole the outstanding ideas of his ingenious family to monger fear.”
It was not the best time to be disagreeable, but I couldn’t help saying, “Huxley has a point. You can’t deny—”
Shi Gong raised his hand. “Oh, I know his point. Coming from my background, I know exactly where he’s coming from.” He preferred his soliloquies uninterrupted. “I used to believe moral values, ethics, benevolence and civility can be bred to counterbalance the evil of fear.”
“Bred? What do you mean?” I asked, wishing the throbbing vein on my temple was less conspicuous.
“The fear Huxley instilled was so gripping the idea of designer babies still horrifies everyone. It is forever spoiled.
“We at G.Y. concluded we didn’t know enough about human behavior to predict it, much less engineer or control it, not at this stage anyway.” Seeing the dazed look on my face, he added, “So we have applied bio-engineering to something more effective.”
“Is that what G.Y. does, bio-engineering?”
“The origin of G.Y. is Chinese medicine, we harvest the herbs from these prehistoric woods.”
Chinese medicine? Niang would love this.
“It’s been half a century since G.Y. expanded into Western medicine, but we still believe nature’s ingenuity is light-years ahead of men’s.” Raising his knobby hand, Shi Gong pointed at the beautiful mountain scenery around us. “Can man ever top this?”
“Is that why the facilities are here?”
“Yes, there are rare and precious herbs on these mountain slopes. We have already synchronized the genomes of three quarters of the one-thousand-eight-hundred-eighty-something herbs in Li Shizhen’s almanac of Chinese medicine. Using their genetic code, G.Y. bioengineers them for cheaper production and intake with medical devices. One day, that will make oral or intravenous medication obsolete.”
“That’s great, but how do you breed civility?” I asked.
Shi Gong hesitated, looking for the right words. “Do you know why, today, the greatest danger to governments the world over is popularism?”
I shook my head.
“Because globalization eroded our centers of gravity and undermined our convictions. That opened a void for sweet talkers with false promises and hidden agendas to sweep in and grab power.” He smoothed his white lin
en shirt as he chose his words with care. “G.Y.’s mission is to create or reinstate a natural gravitation towards collective well-being.”
Intrigued, I looked at him. “How?”
“Take Confucianism; Confucius used the natural inborn love and relationship between parent and child to impose moral and social order; or take Capitalism, Adam Smith used our natural survival instinct and the principle of survival of the strongest to hike up competition. He claimed there’s an impartial spectator inside each of us whose moral conscience persuades us to distribute the spoils within the community. He urges us to share any economic prosperity. Inspired by Adam Smith, G.Y. too is exploring this natural, human trait to forge mankind’s next step toward civility.”
“Wait, why do you meddle with nature rather than let it take its natural course?”
“Because, without the cultivation of that natural order, the creative destruction and positive disintegration we’ve seen for the last three quarters of a century is too destructive.”
“Sorry, I thought destruction—if creative—is good?”
Shi Gong sighed. “Take me: I am old. I have lived through the Japanese invasion, the birth of the PRC, the Red Guards, the ups and downs of the Party, Deng’s reforms, the wreckage of popularism during the Tiananmen riots and, now, the financial success of our state capitalism and the free spirits it creates.” He added, “Our country tried it all, and the people suffered through it all. Time and again, we and what we stood for or believed in was broken down and reconstructed into something completely different, only to be crucified for it the next time around.
“Like a million others, I stayed on every part of the road, felt every pothole, every bump. I endured every inch of the road alongside our people. And it’s harsh. Our past makes us what we are and forms our prejudices. To dismantle this is like pulling a card out from the bottom of a house of cards. The past is part of our collective memory. It’s the social glue. If this is systematically removed, it becomes our collective trauma so it would be impossible to resurrect it.”
