“I see,” she said. “If it were me, I would use the Englishman to take revenge on the Nazi, who made me into his harlot. Is that a proper English word, harlot?”
“I understand it, yes,” Rance said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Miss Dutourd, but what it looks like to me is, a lot of the people in the ginger business are bastards, and you have to pick the one who will help you the most at any one time. For me right now, that’s Kuhn. Like I say, I’m sorry.”
“You are . . .” She groped for a word again. “Forthright.” Rance smiled. He couldn’t help himself. He’d never heard anybody actually say forthright before. He waved for her to go on, and she did: “In this, you are like my brother. He makes no apology for what it is that he does, either.”
“I’m not sorry to do the Lizards a bad turn any way I can,” Rance said. “Turning them into ginger addicts isn’t as good as shooting them, but it will do.”
“I do not love the Lizards, but I feel about the Boches as you feel about they—about them.” Monique Dutourd corrected herself.
“And how does your brother feel?” Auerbach wasn’t about to waste a chance to gather information on the people with whom he was dealing.
He got more than he bargained for. “Pierre?” Monique Dutourd’s lip curled in fine contempt. “As long as he can get his money, he does not care whence it comes.” Auerbach hadn’t heard whence very often, either. He got the idea she’d learned English from books. She added, “And if he does not get his money when he should, then unfortunate things, it could be, would happen.”
Sure as hell, that was worth knowing. All the same, Rance might have been happier not hearing it. He and Penny remained small fish in a tank full of sharks.
Peking was home. Liu Han hadn’t been sure, not when she first came back to the city, but it was. To her real astonishment, she even found herself glad to be eating noodles more often than rice.
“This is very strange,” she said to Liu Mei, using her chopsticks to grab a mouthful of buckwheat noodles from their bowl of broth and slurping them up. “Noodles felt like foreign food to me when I first came here.”
“They’re good.” Liu Mei took noodles for granted. Why not? She’d been eating them all her life.
Talking about noodles was safe. This little eatery wasn’t one where Party members gathered. The scrawny man at the next table might have been a Kuomintang operative. The fat fellow on the other side, the one who looked as if he’d bring in a good sum if rendered into grease, might have worked for the little scaly devils. That was, in fact, pretty likely. Men who worked for the scaly devils made enough to let them eat well.
“Hard times,” Liu Han said with a sigh.
Her daughter nodded. “But better days are coming. I’m sure of it.” Saying that was safe, too. All sides—even the little devils—thought their triumph meant better times ahead for China. Liu Han raised the bowl of noodles to her face and took another mouthful. She hoped that would cover the outrage she might show when thinking of what a triumph by the little scaly devils would mean.
They finished eating and got up to go. They’d already paid—this wasn’t the sort of place where the proprietor would trust people to leave money on the counter. As they went out onto the hutung—the alley—in front of the little food shop, Liu Han said, “We finally have enough tea in the city.”
“Do we?” Liu Mei said as men and women, all intent on their own affairs, hurried past. The hutung was in shadow; it was so narrow that the sun had to be at just the right angle to slide down into it. A man leading a donkey loaded with sacks of millet had people flattening themselves against the walls to either side to let him by. Liu Mei didn’t smile—she couldn’t—but her eyes brightened at what her mother said. “That’s good. It took us long enough.”
Before Liu Han could answer, a fly lit on the end of her nose. Looking at it cross-eyed, she fanned her hand in front of her face. The fly flew off. It was, of course, only one of thousands, millions, billions. They flourished in Peking as they did in peasant villages. Another would probably land on her somewhere in a minute.
She said, “Well, this is special tea, you know, not just the ordinary sort. It took a long time to pick the very best and bring it up from the south.”
“Too long.” Liu Mei was in one of those moods where she disapproved of everything. Liu Han understood that. Staying patient wasn’t easy, not when every day saw the little scaly devils sinking their claws ever deeper into the flesh of China. Liu Mei went on, “We’ll have to boil the fire up really hot.”
“Can’t make good tea any other way,” Liu Han agreed.
They came out of the alley onto Hsia Hsieh Chieh, Lower Slanting Street, in the western part of the Chinese City, not far from the Temple of Everlasting Spring. Bicycles, rickshaws, wagons, foot traffic, motorcars, buses, trucks—Lower Slanting Street was wide enough for all of them. Because it was, and because everyone used it, traffic moved at the speed of the slowest.
More often than not, that was an annoyance. The little scaly devils in a mechanized fighting vehicle must have thought so; they had to crawl along with everyone else. Scaly devils were impatient creatures. They hated having to wait. They ran their own lives so waiting was only rarely necessary. Moving along jammed Chinese streets, though, what choice did they have?
When Liu Han said that aloud, Liu Mei said, “They could just drive over people or start shooting. Who would stop them? Who could stop them? They are the imperialist occupiers. They can do as they please.”
“They can, yes, but they would touch off riots if they did,” Liu Han said. “They are, most of them, smart enough to know that. They don’t want us to get stirred up. They just want us to be good and to be quiet and to let them rule us and not to cause them any trouble. And so they’ll sit in traffic just as if they were people.”
“But they have the power to start running people over or to start shooting,” Liu Mei said. “They think they have the right to do those things, whether they choose to do them or not. There’s the evil: that they think they have the right.”
“Of course it is,” Liu Han agreed. “I don’t suppose people can do anything about having the little scaly devils here on Earth with us—it’s too late for that. But having them think they have the right to rule us—that’s a different business. We should be free. If they can’t see that, they need reeducating.” She smiled. “Maybe we could all sit down together over tea.”
No, her daughter couldn’t smile: one more score to lay at the feet of the little devils. But Liu Mei nodded and said, “I think that would be very good.”
The little scaly devils’ machine tried to slide into a space just ahead. But a man on an oxcart squeezed in first. He had to lash the ox to make it move fast enough to get ahead of the armored vehicle. As soon as he found himself in front of it, he set down the whip and let the ox amble along at its own plodding pace. That did infuriate the scaly devils. Their machine let out a loud, horrible hiss, as if to cry, Get out of the way! The man on the oxcart might have been deaf, for all the good that did them.
People—Liu Han among them—laughed and cheered. The fellow on the oxcart took off his broad straw hat and waved it, acknowledging the applause. If the little scaly devils understood that, it probably made them angrier than ever. Unless they chose to get violent, they could do nothing about it.
Then more laughter rose. It started a couple of blocks up Lower Slanting Street and quickly spread toward Liu Han and Liu Mei. Liu Han stood on tip-toe, but couldn’t see over the heads of the people around her. “What is it?” she asked her daughter, who was several inches taller.
Liu Mei said, “It’s a troop of devil-boys, cutting up capers and acting like fools.” Disapproval filled her voice. The young men and—sometimes—young women who imitated the little scaly devils and adopted their ways were anathema to the Communist Party. They learned the little devils’ language; they wore tight clothes decorated with markings that looked like body paint; some of them even shaved their heads
so as to look more like the alien imperialists. There were such young people in the United States, too, but the United States was still free. Perhaps people there could afford the luxury of fascination with the scaly devils and their ways. China couldn’t.
But then Liu Mei gasped in surprise. “Oh!” she said. “These are not ordinary devil-boys.”
“What are they doing?” Liu Han asked irritably. “I still can’t see.” She stood on tiptoe again. It still didn’t help.
Annoying her further, all her daughter said was, “Wait a bit. They’re coming this way. You’ll be able to see for yourself in a minute.”
Luckily for Liu Mei, she was right. And, by the time Liu Han could see, shouts and cheers from the crowd had given her some idea of what was going on. Then, peering over her daughter’s shoulder and through a gap in the crowd in front of them, she did indeed see—and, like everyone around her, she started laughing and cheering herself.
Liu Mei had also been right in saying this was no ordinary troop of devil-boys. Instead of slavishly imitating the little scaly devils, they burlesqued them. They pretended to be a mixed group of males and females, all taking ginger and all mating frenetically.
“Throw water on them!” shouted one would-be wit near Liu Han.
“No! Give them more ginger!” someone else yelled. That got a bigger laugh.
And then Liu Han started shouting, too: “Tao Sheng-Ming! You come here this instant!”
One of the devil-boys looked up in surprise at hearing his name called. Liu Han waved to him. She wondered how well he could see her. She also wondered whether he’d recognize her even if he could see her. They hadn’t met in more than three years, and she didn’t think he knew her name.
Whether he knew it or not, he hurried over when she called. And he did recognize her; she could see that in his eyes. Or maybe he just recognized Liu Mei, who, being much closer to his own age and much prettier, was likelier to have stuck in his mind. No—when he spoke, it was to Liu Han: “Hello, lady. I greet you.” The last three words were in the language of the Race.
“And I greet you,” she answered in the same tongue. Then she returned to Chinese: “I am glad to see you came through safe, after all the troubles Peking has seen since the last time we ran into each other.”
“I managed.” From his tone, he was used to managing such things. His grin was wry, amused, older than his years. “And I’m glad to see you’re all right, too, you and your pretty daughter.” Yes, he remembered Liu Mei, all right. He sent that grin her way.
She looked back as if he were something nasty she’d found on the sole of her shoe. That only made his grin wider, which annoyed Liu Mei and amused Liu Han. She asked the question that needed asking: “Did you ever go and visit Old Lin at Ma’s brocade shop?”
If Tao Sheng-Ming had visited Old Lin, he’d have been recruited into the Communist Party. If he hadn’t, it was just as well that he didn’t know Liu Han’s name. But he nodded. His eyes glowed. “Oh, yes, I did that,” he said. “I know more about comradeship now than I ever did before. Shall I tell you what”—he lowered his voice—“Mao says about the four characteristics of China’s revolutionary war?”
“Never mind,” Liu Han said. “So long as you know them.” He wouldn’t, unless he was a Communist himself. Or unless he’s bait for a trap, Liu Han thought. But she shook her head. Had the little scaly devils known she was coming into Peking, they would have seized her. They wouldn’t have bothered with traps.
Tao’s grin came back. “Oh, yes. I know them. I know all sorts of things I never thought I would know. I have many things to blame you for—I mean, to thank you for.”
He might be a Communist. But he was still a devil-boy, too. He enjoyed being outrageous. The foolish skit that he and his fellows had been performing proved that. “Did you have fun there, making the little devils look ridiculous to the masses?” Liu Han asked him.
He nodded. “Of course I did. That was the point of the antics. Good propaganda, don’t you think?”
“Very good,” Liu Han agreed. “I will have to do some talking with the Central Committee”—that made Tao Sheng-Ming’s eyes widen, as she’d hoped it would—“but I think you and your devil-boys may prove even more useful in the continuing revolutionary struggle.”
“How?” Tao was pantingly eager.
Liu Han smiled at Liu Mei. “Why, in the matter of the special tea that’s come up from the south, of course.” Liu Han laughed. Liu Mei didn’t, but she nodded. Tao Sheng-Ming looked most intrigued. Liu Han laughed again. Sure enough, she knew how to get devil-boy wildness to serve the Party.
“There is no justice.” Monique Dutourd spoke with great assurance and equally great bitterness.
Her brother was shaving with a straight razor, a little soap, and a handheld mirror. Pierre paused with the right side of his face scraped clean and the left still full of lather and whiskers. All he said was, “Now tell me something I did not know.”
“Oh, shut up,” she snarled. “You don’t mind working with that Nazi again, no matter what he did to me.”
Pierre Dutourd sighed and raised his chin so he could shave under it. Some small part of Monique hoped he’d cut his throat. He didn’t, of course. He guided the razor with effortless, practiced skill. He didn’t talk while shaving around his larynx. But when he started on his left cheek, he said, “Nobody in this business is a saint, little sister. The Nazi was screwing you. The Englishmen were screwing somebody else—that Jew, the American said.”
“Nobody is a saint?” Monique rolled her eyes. “Well, if I didn’t already know that, you would prove it.”
“Merci beaucoup.” Pierre was hard to infuriate, which was one of the most infuriating things about him. He finished shaving, rinsed and dried his razor, then washed his face with the water left in the enameled basin. He toweled himself dry and examined himself in the mirror. Only after a self-satisfied nod did he continue, “You know that, if you grow too unhappy here, you are always free to go elsewhere. There are times when I would say you were welcome to go elsewhere.”
Ha! Monique thought. I did hit a nerve there, even if he doesn’t want to let it show. But Pierre had hit a nerve, too, and painfully. Monique still had nowhere else to go, and she knew it. She had received a couple of more letters from universities that had survived the fighting. Nobody seemed to need a Roman historian whose university was now nothing but rubble that made a Geiger counter click.
She said, “You may be sure that, when the chance comes, I will take it.” Each word might have been chipped from ice.
“Meanwhile, though, you would be wise not to bite the hand that feeds you,” her brother went on, almost as if she hadn’t spoken. “You would also be wise to become useful to someone in some way.”
“Useful!” Monique made it a swear word. “Aren’t you glad you’re useful to the Lizards?”
“Of course I am,” he answered. “If I weren’t, I would have had to work much harder for most of my life. People I don’t like would have told me what to do much more than they do now. Things could have been better, yes, but they also could have been much worse.”
He was impervious. Monique stormed out of the tent. She’d been doing that more and more often these days. This time, she almost ran into a Lizard who was about to come in. “Excusez-moi,” he said in hissing French. Monique strode past him without a word.
She’d just got to the edge of the tent city when a double handful of Lizards hurried past her. They were all carrying weapons. She was no great expert on the many patterns of body paint the Race used, but she thought theirs—which were all similar to one another—had to do with law enforcement.
Uh-oh, she thought. She turned and looked back. Sure enough, they too were heading for the tent she’d just left. And she couldn’t do anything about it. They were moving faster than she could. She was too far away to scream out a warning to her brother. And, after this latest blowup, she wasn’t much inclined to scream out a warning anyway.
She waited. Sure enough, the Lizards emerged with not only the one who’d gone before them but also with her brother in custody. They marched their prisoners out of the camp—marched them right past Monique, though Pierre didn’t notice her—hustled them into a waiting motorcar with flashing orange lights, and drove them away.
Well, Monique thought, what do I do now? She hadn’t wanted to look for work in a shop. That would have been as much as admitting that she’d never find another academic position. As long as she could live with Pierre and Lucie, she’d been able to indulge those hopes. When you couldn’t indulge your hopes any more, what did you do? If you had any sense, you buckled down and got on with your life.
With her brother a captive of the Race, she was going to have to get on with her life if she wanted to keep eating. Shop girl, scullery maid . . . anything this side of selling herself on the street. Dieter Kuhn had made her do something all too close to that. Never again, she vowed to herself. Better to jump off a cliff and hope she landed on her head. Everything would be over in a hurry then.
Hitting bottom here, realizing she’d have to look for work that had nothing to do with her degree, might have felt like that. It might have, but it didn’t. Instead, it was oddly liberating. All right, she couldn’t be a professor—or, at least, she couldn’t be a professor right now. She’d be something else, then.
She started out of the camp and toward the rebuilding city of Marseille. She hadn’t gone very far before she ran into Lucie coming back from the city. Unlike her own brother, Lucie recognized her. Of course, the Lizards hadn’t just seized Lucie, either.
Monique was tempted to let her go back to the tent. Maybe the Lizards had left some sort of alarm behind so they could swoop down again when she did return. But Pierre’s mistress hadn’t given Monique a bad time. Lucie had, in fact, been easier to get along with than her own brother.
Aftershocks Page 42
