A River of Stars

by Vanessa Hua

  It was early February, in the weeks following the Spring Festival, when their factories closed. Until the holiday, Viann had been traveling to mainland China at least once a week, lining up several deals with new clients. While he’d been under treatment, she’d dreamed up an anniversary marketing push for the shortbread division: a commemorative tin that doubled as a clutch, a raft of testimonials from Hong Kong’s stars, and status as the exclusive tea time supplier for the national football team. He’d never doubted her, but hadn’t known if the world would respect her. It turned out the world had changed, and he hadn’t. He’d always viewed himself as a man who cast aside convention, but somehow, he’d gone backward. For too long, he’d hampered Viann, and soon enough she’d start her own empire if he didn’t rethink his succession plans. If he survived, if he found his son, little brother would have much to learn from elder sister.

  In the next lab they visited, a scientist—a woman with a skunk’s streak of silver hair—explained how the gene sequencer worked. The machine, glossy white, striped with a pulsing, sapphire band of light, resembled a spaceship’s warp drive and spent twenty-four hours a day sequencing DNA samples, drawn from blood or saliva and dropped onto a glass slide. The laboratory hummed: the sequencing machines, the stack of data servers guarded behind a cage, the refrigerator with the glass door filled with racks of test tubes, and the buzz of fluorescent lights. A song that sounded like the future, like the whoosh of a mother’s blood flow to a baby in utero.

  “You can clone me from a drop of blood?” Uncle Lo joked through the interpreter.

  “Not quite,” the scientist said.

  “Not yet.”

  Didn’t Uncle Lo realize that a gathering of his clones would lead to a bloody battle to the death? If they didn’t first band together to rise up against him. Uncle Lo’s brother yawned. Never Theodore or Ted, but still and forever Teddy, the younger brother. They looked nothing alike, Uncle Lo lean and pale as a fish, his brother dark, stocky, and barrel-chested—the differences that must have made people whisper that their mother had an affair. Infidelity might run in the family.

  High on the wall, a painting featured futuristic skyscrapers at night, shining with green, blue, red, and yellow lights. Tokyo or Kuala Lumpur? Boss Yeung didn’t recognize the skyline.

  “Where is this?”

  The researcher laughed. “It’s me.” A few of her DNA sequences had been isolated to create the image. “It’s one of a kind.”

  Uncle Lo’s eyes gleamed. “So you can tell me if I’m smarter than most people? Or if I’ll live longer?”

  “It’s complicated,” the scientist said. “Those traits aren’t determined by any one gene. But we’re looking into those questions.”

  “Can you tell if someone will come down with certain illnesses?” Viann didn’t look at Boss Yeung. His chest ached. The sole blessing, if she wasn’t his daughter—she wouldn’t have to worry about inheriting this sickness. His son might.

  “A few,” the scientist said. She squared her shoulders. “More each year.” A decade ago, it took nine months and a hundred million dollars to sequence a single human genome. Now you could sequence fetal DNA by sampling the father’s saliva and the mother’s blood. Another test used a drop of blood to detect every virus that had ever infected you.

  Blood, saliva. The cigar he’d recovered didn’t have enough to sample, but Boss Yeung had been harvesting more bodily fluids on this trip: Uncle Lo’s crumpled napkin on the airplane, the plastic wineglass that he’d pinched from the flight, saved in a baggie for testing upon their return to Hong Kong. But he didn’t have to wait, not with these machines, not in a lab designed to collect specimens tapped straight from the vein.

  “Let’s give it a try,” Boss Yeung said. “Let’s get sequenced.” The ultimate vanity, to declare your body a continent worthy of exploration.

  “It’s not a toy,” Viann said. “You can’t interrupt their experiments.”

  “They’ll do whatever we want.” He looked at Uncle Lo. “When I’m gone, you’ll have this. If you have a map of me, maybe you can find me again.”

  A map. Scarlett had treasured that view from above, charting their route, tracing her finger along hundreds of kilometers of roads. No doubt, she’d teach their son how to orient himself. Their son who might never know that his father had cherished him.

  The interpreter’s gaze ping-ponged between them until Uncle Lo told her, “You heard what he said!”

  The development officer pulled the scientist aside. Though Boss Yeung couldn’t make out the words, he could see her pleading expression, asking for a favor, a sacrifice for the sake of the university, for her research. The officer must have dealt with enough billionaires to know she couldn’t buy off donors with a box lunch, souvenir T-shirt, and a visor. Until a donor’s check cleared, she could never assume commitment.

  A lab tech led them to a chair and drew blood samples from Boss Yeung and Uncle Lo. A familiar ritual: the rubber tourniquet and its powdery balloon smell, the tech gently tapping for a vein, Boss Yeung’s hand clenched into a fist, and the pinch of the needle. Everyone else declined, including Viann, but he needed a sample from her to compare against Uncle Lo’s.

  “Afraid of the sight of your own blood?” Boss Yeung said.

  She shook her head. “They’ve got enough to work on.”

  “They have the capacity.” Boss Yeung spread his arms to take in all the machines in the lab. Teddy, stepping aside, knocked over a bottle on the counter, a cloudy white plastic vessel that bounced once and rolled underneath a cabinet. He flushed. He clasped his hands in front of him, and then behind him, with the resigned expression of a handcuffed suspect being led to a police car.

  “This generation is afraid to spill any blood,” Uncle Lo said mockingly, exasperated yet affectionate, a tone he employed when he expected them both to obey.

  Viann and Teddy glanced at each other, and it seemed they didn’t like getting categorized as cowards.

  “You’re always talking about the future, how we have to prepare for the future,” Boss Yeung told Viann. “It will only take a minute.”

  She couldn’t deny him his wish. She rolled up her sleeve, and after hesitating, Teddy followed. He didn’t want to seem more cowardly than a girl. He presented his fleshy forearm, and looked away as the needle slid in. Viann bit her lip, watching as blood gushed into the vial.

  * * *

  —

  Later, while everyone rested at the hotel before the reception, Boss Yeung hopped a cab back to Stanford. They drove slowly around campus, past the stately groves of eucalyptus trees giving off their menthol scent, the sandstone buildings and the red terra-cotta tile roofs that resembled an Italian prince’s villa. It didn’t take him long to spot the research building, a series of blocks in green glass, sandstone, and copper panels. He told the driver to wait.

  The front door was locked. When a student biked up, she didn’t question him following her into the building. He got into the elevator and tried to remember where the lab was located. They’d walked endless corridors today, ferried around the spacious campus by a fleet of golf carts. Students had zipped by on mountain bikes and joggers pounded past with the determination that plowed down the weak.

  On the second floor, nothing looked familiar—or rather, everything did, and each lab could have been the one he’d visited. The next floor up, he wandered past the custodian, turned the corner and recognized the sign upon which someone had affixed a smiley face sticker. He knocked, but no one answered. Peeking into the window, he didn’t see the scientist or her technicians, who might have stepped out for a beer to complain about having to satisfy the whims of a Chinese billionaire. He tried the doorknob. Locked. He was due in the lobby of their hotel in a half hour, and the cab ride back would take up most of the time.

  The custodian must have keys. He found her emptying the trash in another
lab, a sturdy coffee-colored woman who unlocked the door after he explained that he’d left behind his sweater. His English mangled, but she understood with the help of pantomime. The gene sequencers whirred, processing day and night the information coursing through his body. He felt as if he stood in the temple of a strange god for whom he’d left an offering. He spread his hand on the sequencer, cool to the touch, the vibrations purring through him.

  The tech had explained that his blood would be spun down to extract a clear syrup of DNA, followed by another step to prepare it for the sequencer. The remainder of his DNA would be stored in the refrigerator until the lab completed testing. He pulled out a rack of tubes labeled not with names but barcodes. The tubes clinking, his hands sweaty. If he dropped it—disaster. Would the tech place the most recent samples in the front, or wherever there was space available? He couldn’t steal all the tubes—the lab would notice the theft at once, and how could he carry them all?

  He spied a red plastic biohazard box, a kind he’d come to know during his many injections at the hospital. The tech must have disposed of the vials that held their blood in here. He popped open the lid and with a pen, ferreted out the four labeled with today’s date and their names. It seemed enough blood remained to test. He looked up to see the janitor, still standing in the doorway, staring at him. He apologized and stumbled out, the vials digging into his thigh, pulsing with a life of their own.

  * * *

  —

  At sunset in the sculpture garden, the light fell low and flattering, and the crisp scent of cypress hung in the air. While a string quartet played, guests sipped wine and mingled with the jovial university president, two Nobel Prize–winning professors, and the trustees whose interest in China and its riches went far beyond the fiduciary. There was talk of the Great Wall, of pandas, of how both countries might prosper together. Boss Yeung sipped hot water with lemon, his body damp from the exertions of the late afternoon. When the waiter offered a tray of bacon wrapped shrimp, Uncle Lo cajoled Viann, “Eat! You look like a little girl.”

  “I’m full.”

  “Too thin!” said Uncle Lo, flush, vital, and impeccably dressed in a tailored buttoned-up shirt, his tie knotted tight as a fist.

  She waved off the tray.

  “No man wants a scrawny chicken.”

  “Enough!” Boss Yeung said.

  Uncle Lo popped one into his mouth. “More for me.” He clapped his hands and unveiled a surprise for his grandchildren: the Guardian, the brand-new American-born sensation, back home for a special private performance.

  The next moment, a lean young man bounded in front of The Gates of Hell, Rodin’s sculpture of twisted bodies emerging from the weathered bronze. On top of the concrete pavilion, a stool, microphone stand, and guitar had materialized. He started off with an acoustic version of his hit “I Love You Hot.” His falsetto had a mosquito’s whine, but his voice was distinctive and Boss Yeung caught himself humming along. If his son remained in America, would he—like the Guardian—someday have such curiosity about China and things Chinese? If Uncle Lo hadn’t told him, he’d never have known that this young Chinese fellow didn’t even speak Cantonese. He must have memorized the sounds like a seal—er, er, er.

  Uncle Lo’s niece swooned, her hands clasped under her chin, swaying to the melody, while his nephew snapped photos—Teddy’s children. Boss Yeung retreated into the garden, where the shadows of the statues were long and inky as wraiths. By tomorrow, he’d know Viann’s paternity. The concierge at the hotel had been courteous and discreet, promising to find a local laboratory that could run a paternity test with utmost speed.

  Though the information would bring Boss Yeung no closer to his son, he felt it would give him a measure of certainty and control now missing in his life. He studied a statue mounted on a pedestal: a frowning man, his hooded eyes staring into infinity. The statue’s broad nose was as big as Boss Yeung’s fist. He wanted to ask Scarlett what she thought of the sculptor’s intentions, if he’d wanted to impress or to terrify. He stroked the statue’s cheek, rippled and solid, still warm from the sun. The model had long since died, but his likeness lived on. Boss Yeung’s thoughts went still; he felt suspended, floating in a depthless pool.

  He heard the sound of voices carried on the breeze. Uncle Lo and Viann, standing by a tall hedge, their backs to him. Their absence must worry the development officer and the university president, but Uncle Lo abided by no schedule except his own.

  Boss Yeung crept in a wide circle and positioned himself on the other side of the hedge. They were talking loudly, their tongues loosened by the glasses of champagne. He was jealous of their ease, of their banter, of their certainty in their continued existence. Even if he’d stood beside them, he might not have warranted their attention. He heard snatches of their conversation: a call from Mama Fang, traced to San Francisco, to Chinatown. The Pearl Pavilion.

  “A dead end,” Uncle Lo said.

  Until now, he’d assumed that Uncle Lo kept the investigation confidential, but it sounded as though he and Viann had been discussing the case for months. He felt betrayed all over again, as if they’d cheated on him. Bile welled up in the back of his throat.

  “Doesn’t Mama Fang know anything?” Viann asked.

  She was in delicate health after the amputation, Uncle Lo said. Her left foot. Boss Yeung’s own foot tingled. It was the first he’d heard of her troubles. He despised Mama Fang, but never would have wished her such a fate.

  “Scarlett is bad luck,” Viann said. “For anyone she meets.”

  “After we find her, the only bad luck will be her own.”

  Viann said nothing, seemingly taken aback by this vengeful talk, and after a long pause, she outlined a new plan to ensure Scarlett and the baby never bothered the Yeungs again. Once they’d tracked down Scarlett, she could stay in the United States on a green card purchased for a half-million dollars through the immigrant investor program that was popular among well-to-do Chinese.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Viann said.

  “It’s yours,” Uncle Lo said. “The baby won’t do much for your father, but will cause trouble for you.” Maybe he’d had second thoughts about retaliation, or maybe he could tell how much Viann wanted a different destiny for Scarlett, one that kept her out of a labor camp, but put her—and her child—far from the Yeungs.

  Viann exhaled, a shuddering breath of relief. They were conspiring against him, ignoring what might be his final wishes. Viann wasn’t acting out of compassion, but out of self-interest. Boss Yeung’s rage nearly lifted him out of his shoes, and he had to stop himself from tackling Uncle Lo and grinding his face in the dirt. His body was coiled, ready to strike, months of suspicions now culminating in his fists.

  The song ended and the Guardian started another. Viann and Uncle Lo turned toward The Gates of Hell. Boss Yeung followed, his creaking bones rattling into motion. Their backs straight, arms pumping, their strides long enough to cross valleys. They outstripped him and would go so much farther than he ever could.

  * * *

  —

  Boss Yeung spread out three manila folders on his desk at the hotel. He’d obtained three copies of the paternity report, one for Viann and one for her father—for Uncle Lo.

  He’d been preparing himself for this eventuality for so long he felt neither shock nor the heat of anger, only the bitter satisfaction that he had uncovered the truth. For decades, Uncle Lo had been dictating the terms and conditions of Boss Yeung’s life. He wouldn’t stop meddling, not until the end, not until he’d planned the parade route and musical selections for his funeral. Not unless Boss Yeung struck back as Uncle Lo had struck him.

  The third copy of the report was for Teddy. The man wasn’t Uncle Lo’s younger brother, but his son. His son! He reeled at all the possibilities this information presented.

  Uncle Lo had fathered a legion of bastards: Teddy, Viann,
and who knew how many more? Armed with the facts, Teddy might challenge Uncle Lo, might upset the precarious order that kept the twelve heirs in check and drag his newfound brothers and sisters into a palace bloodbath.

  Viann was coming by shortly to take him to an appointment with a specialist at the university hospital, but he wanted no more of the pricking and prodding, no more experimental treatments. She had plotted with Uncle Lo, and that wounded him most of all. And yet, if she knew the truth, she’d cut her mother and Uncle Lo out of her life. When Boss Yeung passed on—and he would, he would—she would be orphaned.

  He stacked the reports on the table, fanned them out, and stacked them again. Uncle Lo had promised Viann not to go after Scarlett, but what if he reneged? Boss Yeung could stop him by threatening to report him. The Party had been cracking down on the decadent and the depraved, after that eight-person orgy of officials went viral, and a spy chief had been caught with six mistresses, each installed in her own villa. Uncle Lo, who seemed to be harboring political aspirations, would want to protect his interests. If he agreed to end his feud against Scarlett, Boss Yeung would keep the bastards a secret.

  At last, his friend might respect him, for a game well played, a final wrestling move that flipped him incontestably onto his back. A move Uncle Lo believed only he had mastered, that he didn’t think Boss Yeung had in him. He locked the folders in the hotel safe, slid on his shoes, and hobbled out.

  Chapter 23

  A few weeks after she and Daisy married, they returned to the palatial City Hall for a lala festival. Scarlett had lived her life among the masses, chanting slogans with her classmates on National Day or packed into plazas singing the national anthem, but never like this, united in a purpose outside of the Party’s. Rainbow flags snapped in the breeze. The crowd spilled over the lawn in a red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple explosion, in their crowns of paper flowers, glittering plastic bead necklaces, tutus, knee socks, and feathers.