by D. P. Oberon
Dang crushed over the rose petals as he stepped into the house. “Tell me about her,” he said.
“What, no hello? Dear sister here’s a present?” She put chubby hands weighed heavily with golden bangles against wide hips. Hips that belonged to the back of an aero-bus instead of a person. When he didn’t respond, she said, “What’s happened to you?” She wore a speculative look as he strode through the room. “You’ve grown in size. And what are those weird stripe marks across your skin?”
He wanted to growl. He wanted to rip her head off. But as he looked at the reflection in the corridor mirror, he knew his time hadn’t come. His business suit looked like somebody pumped it with air. He spotted roughly thrice the muscle mass before he’d injected the serum. The remarkable rate of growth was unprecedented. He’d even grown since he’d got on the aero-jet in High Beijing only thirty minutes ago.
All the aches and pains in his back and wrist were gone. He looked like an exaggerated blow-up muscle man. Stripes across his fists peered out from under his sleeves; those same stripes appeared around his neck. Diamond links cuffed his wrist to the briefcase. He’d worn the suit on purpose as it covered most of his body. But the stripes had become more visible.
Trying to control his anger—because he needed to use this useless bitch for one night to complete the transformation—he sat against Suyin’s red settee and smiled up at her.
“How are you, dearest sister?” he asked. His voice came as deep rumbling growl.
Suyin tensed at the sound of his voice. Already the small, spherical servbot cleared the front door spillage. Another servbot hovered over the mahogany table and laid down a porcelain pot that smelled of green tea.
“I am very well,” she said. “I was elected to the position of Head of Automation.” She crossed her legs as she sat down. She wore the colors of the China People’s Empire: red and gold. A jade dragon pendant lay between heavy breasts. Thick makeup plastered itself across her face.
Makeup on a pig doesn’t make the pig prettier, Dang thought. He said, “That’s because I told Itoku to put in a word for you. I told you I would look after you. It was Chunhua who gave you the job and the pay raise wasn’t it?” He leaned back and sipped at the lukewarm tea served at just the right temperature. He hated it when people served green tea hot. It wrecked the leaves.
Suyin’s hand paused as she lifted the teacup to her mouth. Her eyebrows rose. It was the only thing that gave it away. She’d always been more slippery than an eelbot. In many ways, she would’ve done well swimming with the sharkbots in High Beijing.
“Of course, I knew it was you,” she answered, eyeing his briefcase carefully. “And I did as you asked of me. I’ve always watched the Water Spinach Inn and kept a record of it.”
Dang put the cup down with a clatter. His pulse raced as Nuan’s face flared in front of his vision. A twinging sensation in his forearms made him rub at them. Something writhed beneath his forearm and he had to keep rubbing at it like a roller until it stopped.
“What’s happening to you, Dang?” Suyin asked.
“It’s part of an experiment, from the department. Just makes me stronger.”
“Why? Were you too weak to handle her without any enhancements?” Suyin crossed one leg over the other and narrowed her eyes.
The anger came so quick and hot that he found himself towering over her and shouted, “Nuan is mine. Do you hear me. Mine!” The roar of his voice even surprised him.
The blood drained from Suyin’s face as Dang sat back down. The mahogany table that separated them cracked in half. He had stomped on it using his foot. The table was over a meter wide and half a meter thick. The small plates that decorated her walls had cracked and now lay like eggshells against the floor. The crystal vases on her dining table had shattered as well.
A servbot moved to and fro as if its brain suffered a seizure trying to work out which pile of debris to clean first.
Suyin wiped her pale face. Only her shaking hand betrayed her. She said, “Hazou and Wenqi moved back to Urumqi weeks ago; Nuan came in just the other day. She’s got Lizhang with her.” She told Dang how his wife had come and begged for her old piano so that she could make money to help her brothers.
“That cunt was never interested in helping me make money.” Dang snorted.
“Jiao is going to go there for her first piano lesson. She’s to spy for me and report back.”
Dang’s niece, Jiao, only twelve and already as cunning as her mother. He disliked his sister and her spawn.
“I can’t believe she’s staying with them. After all the things I gave her, she goes and stays with a bunch of cripples.” He rubbed his face.
Suyin didn’t goad him. He could see the slight fear that entered into her. The way she sat, not as arrogant anymore, but a little more passive. The way she avoided looking at the cracked table.
Oh just you wait, he thought, in the morning I’ll give you a surprise.
“I would like to stay for the night.” He stood up.
“Of course, I’ve the guest room upstairs ready for you.”
He began to walk toward the jump-pad when her voice called to him. “Mother works in the night market. She asks for you.”
It made him stop. “She can wait until the world freezes over.” He’d severed his ties with that stupid woman a long time ago.
The guest room consisted of red curtains with golden tassels and a large jade lantern that shed bright light. He dimmed the light, sat on the bed edged with bamboo posts, and sprawled his legs out. The briefcase stared back at him. He put his palm against its middle and it warmed taking a snapshot of his gene-id.
The case hissed open like the mouth of a hungry dogbot. The green serum sat within a huge cylinder attached to a hypodermic needle as large as his middle finger. He took it out slowly and couldn’t help the slight shaking of his hands.
This would be the final dose. After this, the change would be permanent. Chrysanthemum Striped Tigers, here I come, he thought. He put the needle against his jugular and pressed.
The hot fluid seared his vision and burned through his veins but he kept pressing until the entire cylinder emptied.
Dang fell back on the bed. Unconscious and barely breathing.
The last part of the transformation began.
Chapter 19 - Angpao
The smell of the night market consisted of stir-fried crabs in oyster sauce, roasted soy-pork, and stewed farm-fish, along with the rattle of turbines that choked the air with generator fumes. Most of the stalls powered themselves by their own hybrid generators, which were a mix of solar and recycled fuel.
Right in the center of the market, there sat eight iCash machines with the logo of the People’s Bank—a red envelope and the word angpao fortune-embossed on each of their hoods.
Nuan stood under one of these hoods and couldn’t help but drum her feet in excitement as she smiled at the iCash holo-display that flared to life. Her hands pressed against the machine’s hood as it scanned her eyes. Once it confirmed her gene-id, it asked her what she wanted.
“I want to withdraw all my crypto-currency,” she said.
“You have six hundred crypto-currency chips. Would you like to withdraw all of them?”
“Yes,” Nuan replied.
The ancient speakers above the hood made a ringing sound, and the long serpentine pipe that snaked around the iCash’s hood echoed with the noise of vacuum propelled cc-chips.
Nuan placed her palms under the long nose and caught the cc-chips as they clinked into her palms. The iCash’s screen encouraged her to take a loan of fifty percent that was only a one-time offer, chosen for special customers. She rolled her eyes at the absurdity and strolled away.
The cold air grazed her skin as she skipped toward Old Man Yok. He’d insisted on providing her an honor guard and after what happened when she’d bolted that day she obliged. High Beijing prided itself on its municipal safety records. Urumqi prided itself on its thuggery record.
“Ok
ay, now let’s go do some shopping,” she said, putting her hand through his. Old Man Yok held out his hand stiffly. He was one of those old school empire gentlemen with the hard shell. But Nuan knew that inside he was just a huggable panda.
“How much money did you get?” he asked.
“Six hundred cc-chips,” she said.
“That’s hardly enough for twelve lessons. Your hands have got callouses.” Nuan taught twelve students, an hour each lesson, from the morning. She’d only just finished forty minutes ago.
An aero-bus roared overhead filling the air with pungent exhaust fumes. They walked on the slow lane of the pavement making sure to give way to the passersby on air-skates and uni-wheels. A few glanced at them questioningly. Who walked these days? their gazes asked. The sunset and the orange mixed with the smoke to remind her of a drink she made for her husband, Dang.
Nuan shivered and wound her arm more solidly around Old Man Yok’s hand. She said, “It’s the sweetest money I’ve ever earned.” She didn’t want to admit it was the only money she earned. But that’s what happened when you got married to a powerful man when you were just in your teens. What a foolish girl she’d been.
Old Man Yok eyed her through his shaggy eyebrows. “That’s hard money.”
Nuan shrugged. “Word of mouth. Once I get more clients, I can increase my price. But for now, I’m new and most of these children are from the People’s Servants quarters. They aren’t used to coming to Southeast Urumqi. Some of their children didn’t even know the poorer region existed.”
“Hah, that’s easy to believe,” said Old Man Yok as they threaded their way into the night market. “Do you think the People’s Favor floating inside her Jade Palace even knows about us? We’re just fodder for the politicians. Our politicians care more what happens in the Austra Asian Empire than what happens here.”
Nuan thought for a moment. She’d seen a side of the government as an unentitled Urumqi citizen, and a side of the government when in High Beijing. Projects existed that helped all citizens, just as those that existed to make life easier for the rich.
“It’s not all doom and gloom.” Nuan patted his hand. “There are good servants in the government.”
“Whatever.”
Nuan laughed, leaned over, and placed a light kiss on Old Man’s Yok’s grizzled cheeks. He blushed and shook his head.
“I remember coming here as a child.” She eyed the stalls wistfully. “With my mother to buy soyalite blocks when we’d run out of real vegetables. We had a good food-printer back then. I used to print carrots so carefully many of our customers couldn’t tell the difference between them and our organic ones.” She’d begun to ramble, and sweat beaded down her neck.
“The night market is one of the safest places in Urumqi.” He patted her hand as they passed a group of surly looking women standing at an intersection that connected one part of the market to another. “The market is run by a gang called the Chrysanthemum Striped Tigers.”
“Dang likes chrysanthemums,” she said. “He made me plant them in our garden.”
One of the women made a suggestive gesture at her and she averted her gaze. She hated it when women preyed on women. I wonder what it would be like to be a man, she thought? Wenqi’s words still stung because deep down she knew they held some truth. What had she been thinking? Suyin would call Dang to tell him the news. And what would Nuan do if Dang came to Urumqi? Run? She didn’t want to get Hazou or Wenqi into trouble. Maybe she could hide? But another voice told her to stop behaving like a child. Dang’s most often used word when she wanted to do something. She realized he’d shattered her psyche so completely that she couldn’t even function without help from her brother. When Dang does come here, she thought, I will confront him. As if, said another voice, you’re too weak.
The seed stall tucked itself into the very edge of the market where shadows coalesced. They passed under a bright blue light that zapped at flying mothbots. The frying and cooking smells dispersed and instead a sweet, rotting smell shoved itself into Nuan’s nostrils.
A lone crone peered out from the dark of the seed stall. The woman hawked and spat phlegm. The ground in front of her pockmarked with the dying glow of phlegm spots. She has land-tinge, Nuan thought. She didn’t register her own cringe or the fact she pressed herself against Old Man Yok, pushing him forward.
Old Man Yok said, “Nonlicensed seeds. Don’t try to trick me Lichi. You gave Hazou and Wenqi old licensed seeds that couldn’t even register against the license portal.”
“I sold them what they could afford,” said Lichi. “Anyway, what are you doing with those two?”
“They are my friends,” said Old Man Yok. “And Lee and I are living with them. They are good boys.”
“Oh well done. I thought you would forever be going from place to place.” She sneezed a liquefied red mist. A rust-stained handkerchief came out of her pockets and went back in.
“Do you have the unlicensed seeds?” asked Old Man Yok.
Lichi turned her back and retreated to the back of the stall where a bunch of trays held a square display with a picture of a seed and a square mini holo-display showing its properties. She reached for one and it clicked as it ejected from the shelf. She turned back and held the tray against her side.
“What type of seed is it?” asked Nuan, curiosity getting the better of her.
The woman held out the tray and Nuan reached for it but when she did, the woman didn’t let the tray go.
“I know you, girl. What is your name?” Lichi’s left eye wobbled like an egg yolk.
“I’m Nuan Mao,” she answered, and then faltered.
Lichi’s other hand grasped at Nuan’s and it felt like she was held by a spiderbot. The woman thumped her chest. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Nuan tried to place the woman’s face in her memory but she couldn’t. Who was she? Could she have been one of her tutors when she was living in Urumqi?
“I don’t remember,” said Nuan. The old woman still held her hand.
A look of disappointment fluttered through that age-old face and then it went away quickly. As if she didn’t want anybody to think she could be disappointed.
“I am Lichi Mao. Dang’s mother.”
Nuan ripped her hand away. A wooziness took her and she swayed on her feet. Old Man Yok held her up and she leaned against him.
“I remember you, that beautiful girl all the boys mooned over. You’re Juan and Bo’s daughter.” She nodded her head. “Dang always wanted you, right from the start when he laid eyes on you when you were thirteen.”
“I remember you too,” said Nuan, feeling a strength she didn’t know fuel her. “You were the one who ensnared me. Telling me all those things about your son. How the only way I could get away from Urumqi was to marry him. How I wouldn’t amount to anything else.” She ripped her away blouse to expose the bruises that splotched across her breast all the way to the collarbone.
“This is what your son did,” she said.
Lichi Mao’s lips trembled. Old Man Yok whispered into Nuan’s ear. “Let’s go; this is a waste of time.” They both turned around and took a few steps back before Lichi’s voice halted them.
“My son forsook me a long time ago. I’m here in this poverty stricken night market suffering from land-tinge while my son has dinner with the People’s Favor in High Beijing.”
He doesn’t have dinner with the People’s Favor yet, Nuan wanted to say. She didn’t doubt he would one day considering his ambition. Nothing stopped Dang.
“What happened to you? Why are you back?”
Nuan inhaled sharply and looked down. She wore a dress from Lady Lee. It had long sleeves to cover the bruises on her forearms and a flowing skirt. She’d bought a skin-tint from the local pharmacy along with a disposable wrist-comp. Otherwise her face showed the bruises too. Yet for all her attempts at covering up, it felt like Lichi’s egg-wobbly eye could see through it all.
“Dang has gotten angrier in the last few mo
nths. And I have a daughter. Her name is Lizhang. If not for her, I wouldn’t be here. I couldn’t risk it anymore.”
Lichi bent forward and whispered earnestly. “Do you have a picture of my granddaughter?”
Nuan did. She showed the picture from her wrist-comp. The hologram popped up in low res but it was clear enough to show the young girl of nine years.
“She looks like your mother,” said Lichi Mao. Her good eye watered and she rubbed at it. “Juan was plain looking but so very sweet. She was my age you know. We were good friends once.”
“Her name is Lizhang. She’s better than a thousand rays of sunshine,” Nuan said.
Lichi reached out and grasped Nuan’s fingers weakly. “We raised my son well. The anger didn’t come from us.”
Old Man Yok coughed. “We need to go, Lichi. We need to buy some seeds.”
“I’ve got the seeds right here, you old bat.” Lichi thumped the tray onto the stall’s table. The picture showed a brown seed with a white strip down the middle. “You see there is no netcode on this. It’ll grow without any licensing requirements.”
Nuan clapped her hands in delight. “That’s exactly what we need.”
“You can have it for two hundred cc-chips.” She sighed and pressed her fingers against the numpad and typed in twenty. Then her fingers pressed themselves against the sensor and the tray slid aside. Twenty seeds sat inside wrapped in a small transparent skin-like membranes. She held it to Nuan.
“Are you sure? That sounds too cheap.”
“These are the best ones. Unlicensed. From the organic underground. You know, people die to keep the organic seed market alive.”
Nuan counted out three hundred cc-chips and dropped them into Lichi’s other palm. The woman’s face crinkled with a smile. Nuan had a sudden premonition that Lichi was part of the organic seed black market. She’s not just a seller, she thought.
Lichi counted each of the cc-chips dourly and dropped the skin-wrap onto Nuan’s palm. “It’s in skin-wrap because it fakes the seeds into thinking it’s a live environment. The seeds are hacked licensed seeds.”