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.