The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “We are here to discuss a very serious matter,” he said. “Many of you know this girl.”

  There was a laptop hooked up and a very nervous looking boy running it. Jieling looked carefully at the laptop but it didn’t appear to be a special projects computer. In fact, it was made in Korea. He did something and an ID picture of a girl flashed on the screen.

  Jieling didn’t know her. But around her she heard noises of shock, someone sucking air through their teeth, someone else breathed softly, “Ai-yah.”

  “This girl ran away, leaving her debt with New Life. She ate our food, wore our clothes, slept in our beds. And then, like a thief, she ran away.” The Human Resources man nodded his head. The boy at the computer changed the image on the big projector screen.

  Now it was a picture of the same girl with her head bowed, and two policemen holding her arms.

  “She was picked up in Guangdong,” the Human Resources man said. “She is in jail there.”

  The cafeteria was very quiet.

  The Human Resources man said, “Her life is ruined, which is what should happen to all thieves.”

  Then he dismissed them. That afternoon, the picture of the girl with the two policemen appeared on the bulletin boards of every floor of the dormitory.

  On Sunday, Baiyue announced, “I’m not going.”

  She was not supposed to leave the compound, but one of her roommates had female problems – bad cramps – and planned to spend the day in bed drinking tea and reading magazines. Baiyue was going to use her ID to leave.

  “You have to,” Jieling said. “You want to grow old here? Die a serf to New Life?”

  “It’s crazy. We can’t make money dancing in the plague-trash market.”

  “I’ve done it before,” Jieling said. “You’re scared.”

  “It’s just not a good idea,” Baiyue said.

  “Because of the girl they caught in Guangdong. We’re not skipping out on our debt. We’re paying it off.”

  “We’re not supposed to work for someone else when we work here,” Baiyue said.

  “Oh come on,” Jieling said. “You are always making things sound worse than they are. I think you like staying here being little Miss Lei Feng.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Baiyue snapped.

  “Well, don’t act like it. New Life is not being fair. We don’t have to be fair. What are they going to do to you if they catch you?”

  “Fine me,” Baiyue said. “Add to my debt!”

  “So what? They’re going to find a way to add to your debt no matter what. You are a serf. They are the landlord.”

  “But if —”

  “No but if,” Jieling said. “You like being a martyr. I don’t.”

  “What do you care,” Baiyue said. “You like it here. If you stay you can eat pork buns every night.”

  “And you can eat congee for the rest of your life. I’m going to try to do something.” Jieling slammed out of the dorm room. She had never said harsh things to Baiyue before. Yes, she had thought about staying here. But was that so bad? Better than being like Baiyue, who would stay here and have a miserable life. Jieling was not going to have a miserable life, no matter where she stayed or what she did. That was why she had come to Shenzhen in the first place.

  She heard the door open behind her and Baiyue ran down the hall. “Okay,” she said breathlessly. “I’ll try it. Just this once.”

  The streets of Shanghai were incredibly loud after weeks in the compound. In a shop window, she and Baiyue stopped and watched a news segment on how the fashion in Shanghai was for sarongs. Jieling would have to tell her mother. Of course her mother had a TV and probably already knew. Jieling thought about calling, but not now. Not now. She didn’t want to explain about New Life. The next news segment was about the success of the People’s Army in Tajikistan. Jieling pulled Baiyue to come on.

  They took one bus, and then had to transfer. On Sundays, unless you were lucky, it took forever to transfer because fewer busses ran. They waited almost an hour for the second bus. That bus was almost empty when they got on. They sat down a few seats back from the driver. Baiyue rolled her eyes. “Did you see the guy in the back?” she asked. “Party functionary.”

  Jieling glanced over her shoulder and saw him. She couldn’t miss him, in his careful polo shirt. He had that stiff party-member look.

  Baiyue sighed. “My uncle is just like that. So boring.”

  Jieling thought that to be honest, Baiyue would have made a good revolutionary, back in the day. Baiyue liked that kind of revolutionary purity. But she nodded.

  The plague-trash market was full on a Sunday. There was a toy seller making tiny little clay figures on sticks. He waved a stick at the girls as they passed. “Cute things!” he called. “I’ll make whatever you want!” The stick had a little Donald Duck on it.

  “I can’t do this,” Baiyue said. “There’s too many people.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Jieling said. She found a place for the boombox. Jieling had brought them to where all the food vendors were. “Stay here and watch this,” she said. She hunted through the food stalls and bought a bottle of local beer, counting out from her little horde of money she had left from when she came. She took the beer back to Baiyue. “Drink this,” she said. “It will help you be brave.”

  “I hate beer,” Baiyue said.

  “Beer or debt,” Jieling said.

  While Baiyue drank the beer, Jieling started the boombox and did her routine. People smiled at her but no one put any money in her cash box. Shenzhen people were so cheap. Baiyue sat on the curb, nursing her beer, not looking at Jieling or at anyone until finally Jieling couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “C’mon, meimei,” she said.

  Baiyue seemed a bit surprised to be called little sister but she put the beer down and got up. They had practiced a routine to an M.I.A. song, singing and dancing. It would be a hit, Jieling was sure.

  “I can’t,” Baiyue whispered.

  “Yes you can,” Jieling said. “You do good.”

  A couple of people stopped to watch them arguing, so Jieling started the music.

  “I feel sick,” Baiyue whimpered.

  But the beat started and there was nothing to do but dance and sing. Baiyue was so nervous, she forgot at first, but then she got the hang of it. She kept her head down and her face was bright red.

  Jieling started making up a rap. She’d never done it before and she hadn’t gotten very far before she was laughing and then Baiyue was laughing, too.

  Wode meimei hen haixiude

  Mei ta shi xuli

  Tai hen xiuqi –

  My little sister is so shy

  But she’s pretty

  Far too delicate –

  They almost stopped because they were giggling but they kept dancing and Jieling went back to the lyrics from the song they had practiced.

  When they had finished, people clapped and they’d made thirty-two yuan.

  They didn’t make as much for any single song after that, but in a few hours they had collected 187 yuan. It was early evening and night entertainers were showing up – a couple of people who sang opera, acrobats, and a clown with a wig of hair so red it looked on fire, stepping stork-legged on stilts waving a rubber Kalashnikov in his hand. He was all dressed in white. Uncle Death, from cartoons during the plague. Some of the day vendors had shut down, and new people were showing up who put out a board and some chairs and served sorghum liquor; clear, white and 150 proof. The crowd was starting to change, too. It was rowdier. Packs of young men dressed in weird combinations of clothes from plague markets – vintage Mao suit jackets and suit pants and peasant shoes. And others, veterans from the Tajikistan conflict, one with an empty trouser leg.

  Jieling picked up the boombox and Baiyue took the cash box. Outside of the market it wasn’t yet dark.

  “You are amazing,” Baiyue kept saying. “You are such a special girl!”

  “You did great,” Jieling said. “When I was by
myself, I didn’t make anything! Everyone likes you because you are little and cute!”

  “Look at this! I’ll be out of debt before autumn!”

  Maybe it was just the feeling that she was responsible for Baiyue, but Jieling said, “You keep it all.”

  “I can’t! I can’t! We split it!” Baiyue said.

  “Sure,” Jieling said. “Then after you get away, you can help me. Just think, if we do this for three more Sundays, you’ll pay off your debt.”

  “Oh, Jieling,” Baiyue said. “You really are like my big sister!”

  Jieling was sorry she had ever called Baiyue “little sister.” It was such a country thing to do. She had always suspected that Baiyue wasn’t a city girl. Jieling hated the countryside. Grain spread to dry in the road and mother’s-elder-sister and father’s-younger-brother bringing all the cousins over on the day off. Jieling didn’t even know all those country ways to say aunt and uncle. It wasn’t Baiyue’s fault. And Baiyue had been good to her. She was rotten to be thinking this way.

  “Excuse me,” said a man. He wasn’t like the packs of young men with their long hair and plague clothes. Jieling couldn’t place him but he seemed familiar. “I saw you in the market. You were very fun. Very lively.”

  Baiyue took hold of Jieling’s arm. For a moment Jieling wondered if maybe he was from New Life, but she told herself that was crazy. “Thank you,” she said. She thought she remembered him putting ten yuan in the box. No, she thought, he was on the bus. The party functionary. The party was checking up on them. Now that was funny. She wondered if he would lecture them on Western ways.

  “Are you in the music business?” Baiyue asked. She glanced at Jieling, who couldn’t help laughing, snorting through her nose.

  The man took them very seriously though. “No,” he said. “I can’t help you there. But I like your act. You seem like girls of good character.”

  “Thank you,” Baiyue said. She didn’t look at Jieling again, which was good because Jieling knew she wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face.

  “I am Wei Rongyi. Maybe I can buy you some dinner?” the man asked. He held up his hands, “Nothing romantic. You are so young, it is like you could be daughters.”

  “You have a daughter?” Jieling asked.

  He shook his head. “Not anymore,” he said.

  Jieling understood. His daughter had died of the bird flu. She felt embarrassed for having laughed at him. Her soft heart saw instantly that he was treating them like the daughter he had lost.

  He took them to a dumpling place on the edge of the market and ordered half a kilo of crescent-shaped pork dumplings and a kilo of square beef dumplings. He was a cadre, a middle manager. His wife had lived in Changsha for a couple of years now, where her family was from. He was from the older generation, people who did not get divorced. All around them, the restaurant was filling up mostly with men stopping after work for dumplings and drinks. They were a little island surrounded by truck drivers and men who worked in the factories in the outer city – tough grimy places.

  “What do you do? Are you secretaries?” Wei Rongyi asked.

  Baiyue laughed. “As if!” she said.

  “We are factory girls,” Jieling said. She dunked a dumpling in vinegar. They were so good! Not congee!

  “Factory girls!” he said. “I am so surprised!”

  Baiyue nodded. “We work for New Life,” she explained. “This is our day off, so we wanted to earn a little extra money.”

  He rubbed his head, looking off into the distance. “New Life,” he said, trying to place the name. “New Life . . .”

  “Out past the zoo,” Baiyue said.

  Jieling thought they shouldn’t say so much.

  “Ah, in the city. A good place? What do they make?” he asked. He had a way of blinking very quickly that was disconcerting.

  “Batteries,” Jieling said. She didn’t say bio-batteries.

  “I thought they made computers,” he said.

  “Oh yes,” Baiyue said. “Special projects.”

  Jieling glared at Baiyue. If this guy gave them trouble at New Life, they’d have a huge problem getting out of the compound.

  Baiyue blushed.

  Wei laughed. “You are special project girls, then. Well, see, I knew you were not just average factory girls.”

  He didn’t press the issue. Jieling kept waiting for him to make some sort of move on them. Offer to buy them beer. But he didn’t, and when they had finished their dumplings, he gave them the leftovers to take back to their dormitories and then stood at the bus stop until they were safely on their bus.

  “Are you sure you will be all right?” he asked them when the bus came.

  “You can see my window from the bus stop,” Jieling promised. “We will be fine.”

  “Shenzhen can be a dangerous city. You be careful!”

  Out the window, they could see him in the glow of the streetlight, waving as the bus pulled away.

  “He was so nice,” Baiyue sighed. “Poor man.”

  “Didn’t you think he was a little strange?” Jieling asked.

  “Everybody is strange anymore,” Baiyue said. “After the plague. Not like when we were growing up.”

  It was true. Her mother was strange. Lots of people were crazy from so many people dying. Jieling held up the leftover dumplings. “Well, anyway. I am not feeding this to my battery,” she said. They both tried to smile.

  “Our whole generation is crazy,” Baiyue said.

  “We know everybody dies,” Jieling said. Outside the bus window, the streets were full of young people, out trying to live while they could.

  They made all their bus connections as smooth as silk. So quick, they were home in forty-five minutes. Sunday night was movie night, and all of Jieling’s roommates were at the movie so she and Baiyue could sort the money in Jieling’s room. She used her key card and the door clicked open.

  Mr Wei was kneeling by the battery boxes in their room. He started and hissed, “Close the door!”

  Jieling was so surprised she did.

  “Mr Wei!” Baiyue said.

  He was dressed like an army man on a secret mission, all in black. He showed them a little black gun. Jieling blinked in surprise. “Mr Wei!” she said. It was hard to take him seriously. Even all in black, he was still weird Mr Wei, blinking rapidly behind his glasses.

  “Lock the door,” he said. “And be quiet.”

  “The door locks by itself,” Jieling explained. “And my roommates will be back soon.”

  “Put a chair in front of the door,” he said and shoved the desk chair towards them. Baiyue pushed it under the door handle. The window was open and Jieling could see where he had climbed on the desk and left a footprint on Taohua’s fashion magazine. Taohua was going to be pissed. And what was Jieling going to say? If anyone found out there was a man in her room, she was going to be in very big trouble.

  “How did you get in?” she asked. “What about the cameras?” There were security cameras.

  He showed them a little spray can. “Special paint. It just makes things look foggy and dim. Security guards are so lazy anymore no one ever checks things out.” He paused a moment, clearly disgusted with the lax morality of the day. “Miss Jieling,” he said. “Take that screwdriver and finish unscrewing that computer from the wall.”

  Computer? She realized he meant the battery boxes.

  Baiyue’s eyes got very big. “Mr Wei! You’re a thief!”

  Jieling shook her head. “A corporate spy.”

  “I am a patriot,” he said. “But you young people wouldn’t understand that. Sit on the bed.” He waved the gun at Baiyue.

  The gun was so little it looked like a toy and it was difficult to be afraid, but still Jieling thought it was good that Baiyue sat.

  Jieling knelt. It was her box that Mr Wei had been disconnecting. It was all the way to the right, so he had started with it. She had come to feel a little bit attached to it, thinking of it sitting there, occasionally zap
ping electricity back into the grid, reducing her electricity costs and her debt. She sighed and unscrewed it. Mr Wei watched.

  She jimmied it off the wall, careful not to touch the contacts. The cells built up a charge, and when they were ready, a switch tapped a membrane and they discharged. It was all automatic and there was no knowing when it was going to happen. Mr Wei was going to be very upset when he realized that this wasn’t a computer.

  “Put it on the desk,” he said.

  She did.

  “Now sit with your friend.”

  Jieling sat down next to Baiyue. Keeping a wary eye on them, he sidled over to the bio-battery. He opened the hatch where they dumped garbage in them, and tried to look in as well as look at them. “Where are the controls?” he asked. He picked it up, his palm flat against the broken back end where the contacts were exposed.

  “Tap it against the desk,” Jieling said. “Sometimes the door sticks.” There wasn’t actually a door. But it had just come into her head. She hoped that the cells hadn’t discharged in a while.

  Mr Wei frowned and tapped the box smartly against the desktop.

  Torpedinidae, the electric ray, can generate a current of 200 volts for approximately a minute. The power output is close to 1 kilowatt over the course of the discharge and while this won’t kill the average person, it is a powerful shock. Mr Wei stiffened and fell, clutching the box and spasming wildly. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Mr Wei was still spasming. Jieling and Baiyue looked at each other. Gingerly, Jieling stepped around Mr Wei. He had dropped the little gun. Jieling picked it up. Mr Wei was still spasming. Jieling wondered if he was going to die. Or if he was already dead and the electricity was just making him jump. She didn’t want him to die. She looked at the little gun and it made her feel even sicker so she threw it out the window.

  Finally Mr Wei dropped the box.

  Baiyue said, “Is he dead?”

  Jieling was afraid to touch him. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Then he groaned and both girls jumped.

  “He’s not dead,” Jieling said.