The Year’s Best Science Fiction (St Martin's) 26

by Gardner Dozois

  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.

  “What should we do?” Baiyue asked.

  “Tie him up,” Jieling said. Although she wasn’t sure what they’d do with him then.

  Jieling used the cord to her boombox to tie his wrists. When she grabbed his hands he gasped and struggled feebly. Then she took her pillowcase and cut along the blind end, a space just wide enough that his head would fit through.

  “Sit him up,” she said to Baiyue.

  “You sit him up,” Baiyue said. Baiyue didn’t want to touch him.

  Jieling pulled Mr. Wei into a sitting position. “Put the pillowcase over his head,” she said. The pillowcase was like a shirt with no armholes, so when Baiyue pulled it over his head and shoulders, it pinned his arms against his sides and worked something like a straightjacket.

  Jieling took his wallet and his identification papers out of his pocket. “Why would someone carry their wallet to a break-in?” she asked. “He has six ID papers. One says he is Mr. Wei.”

  “Wow,” Baiyue said. “Let me see. Also Mr. Ma. Mr. Zhang. Two Mr. Liu’s and a Mr. Cui.”

  Mr. Wei blinked, his eyes watering.

  “Do you think he has a weak heart?” Baiyue asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jieling said. “Wouldn’t he be dead if he did?”

  Baiyue considered this.

  “Baiyue! Look at all this yuan!” Jieling emptied the wallet, counting. Almost eight thousand yuan!

  “Let me go,” Mr. Wei said weakly.

  Jieling was glad he was talking. She was glad he seemed like he might be all right. She didn’t know what they would do if he died. They would never be able to explain a dead person. They would end up in deep debt. And probably go to jail for something. “Should we call the floor auntie and tell him that he broke in?” Jieling asked.

  “We could,” Baiyue said.

  “Do not!” Mr. Wei said, sounding stronger. “You don’t understand! I’m from Beijing!”

  “So is my stepfather,” Jieling said. “Me, I’m from Baoding. It’s about an hour south of Beijing.”

  Mr. Wei said, “I’m from the government! That money is government money!”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jieling said. “Why did you come in through the window?” Jieling asked.

  “Secret agents always come in through the window?” Baiyue said and started to giggle.

  “Because this place is counter-revolutionary!” Mr. Wei said.

  Baiyue covered her mouth with her hand. Jieling felt embarrassed, too. No one said things like “counter-revolutionary” anymore.

  “This place! It is making things that could make China strong!” he said.

  “Isn’t that good?” Baiyue asked.

  “But they don’t care about China! Only about money. Instead of using it for China, they sell it to America!” he said. Spittle was gathering at the corner of his mouth. He was starting to look deranged. “Look at this place! Officials are all concerned about guanxi!” Connections. Kickbacks. Guanxi ran China, everybody knew that.

  “So, maybe you have an anti-corruption investigation?” Jieling said. There were lots of anti-corruption investigations. Jieling’s stepfather said that they usually meant someone powerful was mad at their brother-in-law or something, so they accused them of corruption.

  Mr. Wei groaned. “There is no one to investigate them.”

  Baiyue and Jieling looked at each other.

  Mr. Wei explained, “In my office, the Guangdong office, there used to be twenty people. Special operatives. Now there is only me and Ms. Yang.”

  Jieling said, “Did they all die of bird flu?”

  Mr. Wei shook his head. “No, they all went to work on contract for Saudi Arabia. You can make a lot of money in the Middle East. A lot more than in China.”

  “Why don’t you and Ms. Yang go work in Saudi Arabia?” Baiyue asked.

  Jieling thought Mr. Wei would give some revolutionary speech. But he just hung his head. “She is the secretary. I am the bookkeeper.” And then in a smaller voice, “She is going to Kuwait to work for Mr. Liu.”

  They probably did not need bookkeepers in the Middle East. Poor Mr. Wei. No wonder he was such a terrible secret agent.

  “The spirit of the revolution is gone,” he said, and there were real, honest to goodness tears in his eyes. “Did you know that Tiananmen Square was built by volunteers? People would come after their regular job and lay the paving of the square. Today people look to Hong Kong.”

  “Nobody cares about a bunch of old men in Beijing,” Baiyue said.

  “Exactly! We used to have a strong military! But now the military is too worried about their own factories and farms! They want us to pull out of Tajikistan because it is ruining their profits!”

  This sounded like a good idea to Jieling, but she had to admit, she hated the news so she wasn’t sure why they were fighting in Tajikistan anyway. Something about Muslim terrorists. All she knew about Muslims was that they made great street food.

  “Don’t you want to be patriots?” Mr. Wei said.

  “You broke into my room and tried to steal my—you know that’s not a computer, don’t you?” Jieling said. “It’s a bio-battery. They’re selling them to the Americans. Wal-Mart.”

  Mr. Wei groaned.

  “We don’t work in special projects,” Baiyue said.

  “You said you did,” he protested.

  “We did not,” Jieling said. “You just thought that. How did you know this was my room?”

  “The company lists all its workers in a directory,” he said wearily. “And it’s movie night, everyone is either out or goes to the movies. I’ve had the building under surveillance for weeks. I followed you to the market today. Last week it was a girl named Pingli, who blabbed about everything, but she wasn’t in special projects.

  “I put you on the bus, I’ve timed the route three times. I should have had an hour and fifteen minutes to drive over here and get the box and get out.”

  “We made all our connections,” Baiyue explained.

  Mr. Wei was so dispiri
ted he didn’t even respond.

  Jieling said, “I thought the government was supposed to help workers. If we get caught, we’ll be fined and we’ll be deeper in debt.” She was just talking. Talking, talking, talking too much. This was too strange. Like when someone was dying. Something extraordinary was happening, like your father dying in the next room, and yet the ordinary things went on, too. You made tea, your mother opened the shop the next day and sewed clothes while she cried. People came in and pretended not to notice. This was like that. Mr. Wei had a gun and they were explaining about New Life.

  “Debt?” Mr. Wei said.

  “To the company,” she said. “We are all in debt. The company hires us and says they are going to pay us, but then they charge us for our food and our clothes and our dorm and it always costs more than we earn. That’s why we were doing rap today. To make money to be able to quit.” Mr. Wei’s glasses had tape holding the arm on. Why hadn’t she noticed that in the restaurant? Maybe because when you are afraid you notice things. When your father is dying of the plague, you notice the way the covers on your mother’s chairs need to be washed. You wonder if you will have to do it or if you will die before you have to do chores.

  “The Pingli girl,” he said, “she said the same thing. That’s illegal.”

  “Sure,” Baiyue said. “Like anybody cares.”

  “Could you expose corruption?” Jieling asked.

  Mr. Wei shrugged, at least as much as he could in the pillowcase. “Maybe. But they would just pay bribes to locals and it would all go away.”

  All three of them sighed.

  “Except,” Mr. Wei said, sitting up a little straighter. “The Americans. They are always getting upset about that sort of thing. Last year there was a corporation, the Shanghai Six. The Americans did a documentary on them and then western companies would not do business. If they got information from us about what New Life is doing . . .”

  “Who else is going to buy bio-batteries?” Baiyue said. “The company would be in big trouble!”

  “Beijing can threaten a big expose, tell the New York Times newspaper!” Mr. Wei said, getting excited. “My Beijing supervisor will love that! He loves media!”

  “Then you can have a big show trial,” Jieling said.

  Mr. Wei was nodding.

  “But what is in it for us?” Baiyue said.

  “When there’s a trial, they’ll have to cancel your debt!” Mr. Wei said. “Even pay you a big fine!”

  “If I call the floor auntie and say I caught a corporate spy, they’ll give me a big bonus,” Baiyue said.

  “Don’t you care about the other workers?” Mr. Wei asked.

  Jieling and Baiyue looked at each other and shrugged. Did they? “What are they going to do to you anyway?” Jieling said. “You can still do big expose. But that way we don’t have to wait.”

  “Look,” he said, “you let me go, and I’ll let you keep my money.”

  Someone rattled the door handle.

  “Please,” Mr. Wei whispered. “You can be heroes for your fellow workers, even though they’ll never know it.”

  Jieling stuck the money in her pocket. Then she took the papers, too.

  “You can’t take those,” he said.

  “Yes I can,” she said. “If after six months, there is no big corruption scandal? We can let everyone know how a government secret agent was outsmarted by two factory girls.”

  “Six months!” he said. “That’s not long enough!”

  “It better be,” Jieling said.

  Outside the door, Taohua called, “Jieling? Are you in there? Something is wrong with the door!”

  “Just a minute,” Jieling called. “I had trouble with it when I came home.” To Mr. Wei she whispered sternly, “Don’t you try anything. If you do, we’ll scream our heads off and everybody will come running.” She and Baiyue shimmied the pillowcase off of Mr. Wei’s head. He started to stand up and jerked the boombox, which clattered across the floor. “Wait!” she hissed and untied him.

  Taohua called through the door, “What’s that?”

  “Hold on!” Jieling called.

  Baiyue helped Mr. Wei stand up. Mr. Wei climbed onto the desk and then grabbed a line hanging outside. He stopped a moment as if trying to think of something to say.

  “‘A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery,’” Jieling said. It had been her father’s favorite quote from Chairman Mao. “‘. . .it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.’”

  Mr. Wei looked as if he might cry and not because he was moved by patriotism. He stepped back and disappeared. Jieling and Baiyue looked out the window. He did go down the wall just like a secret agent from a movie, but it was only two stories. There was still the big footprint in the middle of Taohua’s magazine and the room looked as if it had been hit by a storm.

  “They’re going to think you had a boyfriend,” Baiyue whispered to Jieling.

  “Yeah,” Jieling said, pulling the chair out from under the door handle. “And they’re going to think he’s rich.”

  It was Sunday, and Jieling and Baiyue were sitting on the beach. Jieling’s cell phone rang, a little chime of M.I.A. hip-hop. Even though it was Sunday, it was one of the girls from New Life. Sunday should be a day off, but she took the call anyway.

  “Jieling? This is Xia Meili? From packaging. Taohua told me about your business? Maybe you could help me?”

  Jieling said, “Sure. What is your debt, Meili?”

  “3,800 R.M.B.,” Meili said. “I know it’s a lot.”

  Jieling said, “Not so bad. We have a lot of people who already have loans, though, and it will probably be a few weeks before I can make you a loan.”

  With Mr. Wei’s capital, Jieling and Baiyue had opened a bank account. They had bought themselves out, and then started a little loan business where they bought people out of New Life. Then people had to pay them back with a little extra. They had each had jobs—Jieling worked for a company that made toys. She sat each day at a table where she put a piece of specially shaped plastic over the body of a little doll, an action figure. The plastic fit right over the figure and had cut-outs. Jieling sprayed the whole thing with red paint and when the piece of plastic was lifted, the action figure had a red shirt. It was boring, but at the end of the week, she got paid instead of owing the company money.

  She and Baiyue used all their extra money on loans to get girls out of New Life. More and more loans, and more and more payments. Now New Life had sent them a threatening letter saying that what they were doing was illegal. But Mr. Wei said not to worry. Two officials had come and talked to them and had showed them legal documents and had them explain everything about what had happened. Soon, the officials promised, they would take New Life to court.

  Jieling wasn’t so sure about the officials. After all, Mr. Wei was an official. But a foreign newspaperman had called them. He was from a newspaper called The Wall Street Journal and he said that he was writing a story about labor shortages in China after the bird flu. He said that in some places in the west there were reports of slavery. His Chinese was very good. His story was going to come out in the United States tomorrow. Then she figured officials would have to do something or lose face.

  Jieling told Meili to call her back in two weeks—although hopefully in two weeks no one would need help to get away from New Life—and wrote a note to herself in her little notebook.

  Baiyue was sitting looking at the water. “This is the first time I’ve been to the beach,” she said.

  “The ocean is so big, isn’t it.”

  Baiyue nodded, scuffing at the white sand. “People always say that, but you don’t know until you see it.”

  Jieling said, “Yeah.” Funny, she had lived here for months. Baiyue had lived here more than a year. And they had never come to the beach. T
he beach was beautiful.

  “I feel sorry for Mr. Wei,” Baiyue said.

  “You do?” Jieling said. “Do you think he really had a daughter who died?”

  “Maybe,” Baiyue said. “A lot of people died.”

  “My father died,” Jieling said.

  Baiyue looked at her, a quick little sideways look, then back out at the ocean. “My mother died,” she said.

  Jieling was surprised. She had never known that Baiyue’s mother was dead. They had talked about so much but never about that. She put her arm around Baiyue’s waist and they sat for a while.

  “I feel bad in a way,” Baiyue said.

  “How come?” Jieling said.

  “Because we had to steal capital to fight New Life. That makes us capitalists.”

  Jieling shrugged.

  “I wish it was like when they fought the revolution,” Baiyue said. “Things were a lot more simple.”

  “Yeah,” Jieling said, “and they were poor and a lot of them died.”

  “I know,” Baiyue sighed.

  Jieling knew what she meant. It would be nice to . . . to be sure what was right and what was wrong. Although not if it made you like Mr. Wei.

  Poor Mr. Wei. Had his daughter really died?

  “Hey,” Jieling said, “I’ve got to make a call. Wait right here.” She walked a little down the beach. It was windy and she turned her back to guard protect the cell phone, like someone lighting a match. “Hello,” she said, “hello, mama, it’s me. Jieling.”

  Days of Wonder

  GEOFF RYMAN

  Born in Canada, Geoff Ryman now lives in England. He made his first sale in 1976, to New Worlds, but it was not until 1984, when he made his first appearance in Interzone—the magazine where much of his published short fiction has appeared—with his brilliant novella The Unconquered Country that he first attracted any serious attention. The Unconquered Country, one of the best novellas of the decade, had a stunning impact on the science fiction scene of the day, and almost overnight established Ryman as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, winning him both the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award; it was later published in a book version, The Unconquered Country: A Life History. His output has been sparse since then by the high-production standards of the genre, but extremely distinguished, with his novel The Child Garden: A Low Comedy, which won both the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; his later novel Air also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. His other novels include The Warrior Who Carried Life; the critically acclaimed mainstream novel Was; Coming of Enkidu; The King’s Last Song; Lust; and the underground cult classic 253, the “print remix” of an “interactive hypertext novel” that in its original form ran online on Ryman’s home page, ryman.com, and which in its print form won the Philip K. Dick Award. Four of his novellas have been collected in Unconquered Countries. His most recent book is a new novel, When It Changed.