Sergey had been shaking his head, a patient, condescending smile fixed on his lips, but now he interrupted her.
"What else is there? There's only light and shadow, texture and color. That's all you can put on a canvas. It's a two-dimensional thing. And all this business about things unseen, it's . . ." He waved it away lightly with his hand.
She shook her head violently, for once really angry with him. "No! What you're talking about is great design, not great art. Shepherd was right. That painting, for instance—the Tung Ch'i ch'ang. It was crap."
Sergey snorted again. "So you say. But it has nothing to do with art, really, has it?" He smiled, sitting back in his chair. "You fancy the fellow, don't you?"
She set her glass down angrily. Wine splashed and spilled across the dark green cloth. "Now you're talking bullshit!"
He shook his head, talking over her protestations. "My friend Amandsun tells me that the man's not even a member of the Arts Faculty. He really is a scientist of some kind. A technician."
He emphasized each syllable of the final word, giving it a distinctly unwhole-
some flavor.
Catherine glared at him a moment, then turned away, facing the aviary and its colorful occupants. On one of the higher perches a great golden bird fluffed out its wings as if to stretch into flight. The long, silken underfeathers were as black as night. It opened its beak, then settled again, making no sound.
Sergey watched the girl a moment, his eyes half lidded; then, sensing victory, he pushed home with his taunts.
"Yes, I bet our dear Catherine wouldn't mind him tinkering with her things unseen."
That did it. She turned and took her glass, then threw its contents into his face. He swore and started to get up, wiping at his eyes, but Wolf leaned across, holding his arm firmly. "Too far, Sergey. Just a bit too far . . ." he said, looking across at Catherine as he spoke.
Catherine stood there a moment longer, her head held back, fierce, proud, her face lit with anger; then she took five coins from her purse and threw them down onto the table. "For the meal," she said. Then she was gone, was walking out into the Mainway, ignoring the turned heads at other tables.
Sergey wiped the wine from his eyes with the edge of the tablecloth. "It stings! It fucking well stings!"
"It serves you right," said Lotte, watching her friend go, her eyes uncharac-teristically thoughtful. "You always have to push it beyond the limits, don't you?"
Sergey glared at her, then relented. The front of his hair was slick with wine, his collar stained. After a moment he laughed. "But I was right, wasn't I? It hit home. Dead center!"
Beside him Wolf laughed, looking across at his sister and meeting her eyes. "Yes," he said, smiling, seeing his smile mirrored back. "I've never seen her so angry. But who is this Shepherd? I mean, what's his background?"
Sergey shrugged. "No one seems to know. He's not from one of the known families. And he doesn't make friends, that's for sure."
"An upstart, do you think?" Lotte leaned across, collecting the coins and stacking them up in a neat pile.
"I guess so." Sergey wiped at his hair with his fingers, then licked them. "Hmm. It might be interesting to find out, don't you think? To try to unearth something about him?"
Wolf laughed. "Unearth. I like that. Do you think . . . ?"
Sergey wrinkled his nose, then shook his head. "No. He's too big to have come from the Clay. You can spot those runts from ten li off. No, Mid-Levels, I'd say."
Lotte looked up, smiling. "Well, wherever he comes from, he has nerve, I'll say that for him."
Sergey considered, then grudgingly agreed. "Yes. He's impressive in a sort of gauche, unpolished way. No manners, though. I mean, poor old Fan was completely at a loss. You can be sure he won't rest until he's found a way of getting even with our friend."
Wolf nodded. "That's the trouble with the lower levels," he said, watching his sister's hands as they stacked and unstacked the coins, "they've no sense of what's right. No sense of Li. Of propriety."
"Or of art," Sergey added.
"No . . ." And their laughter carried across the tables.
ben DREW BACK into the shadows, watching. The two old men had gone down onto their knees before the makeshift shrine, the paper offerings and the bowls of food laid out in front of them. As he watched they bowed in unison, mumbling a prayer to the spirits of the departed. Then, while one of them stood and stepped back, his head still bowed, the other took a small brush from his inside jacket pocket and lifting the bowls one at a time, swept the space in front of the tablets.
The two men were no more than ten or fifteen paces from Ben, yet it seemed as if a vast gulf separated them from him—an abyss of comprehension. He noted the paper money they had laid down for the dead, the sprigs of plastic "willow" each wore hanging from his hair knot, and frowned, not understanding.
When they were gone he went across and stood there, looking at the wall and at the offerings laid out before it. It was a simple square of wall, the end of one of the many cul-de-sacs that led from Main, yet it had been transformed. Where one expected blankness, one came upon a hundred tiny tablets, each inscribed with the names and dates of the deceased. He looked, reading several of them, then bent down, picking up one of the paper notes of money. It was beautifully made, like the other presents here, but none of it was real. These were things for the dead.
For the last hour he had simply walked in the lowest levels of Oxford stack, trying to understand the events in the lecture hall; had drifted through the corridors like a ghost, purposeless.
Or so he'd thought.
Their laughter had not touched him. It had been an empty, meaningless noise, a braying to fill the void within. No, but the emptiness itself—that unease he had seen behind every eye as he was speaking—that worried him. It had been like speaking to the dead. To the hordes of hungry ghosts who, so the Han believed, had no roots to tie them to this world, no living descendants to fulfill their all-too-human needs. They were lost and they looked lost. Even their guide, the Great Man. He more than any of them.
These thoughts had filled him, darkening his mood. And then, to come upon this. . .
Ben turned, hearing a noise behind him, but it was only an old man, two pots slung from the yoke that rested on his shoulders, the one balancing the other. As the old man came on he noticed Ben and stopped, his ancient face wrinkling, as if suspicious of Ben's motives.
Ben stood. "Forgive me. I didn't mean to startle you. I was just looking." He smiled. "Are you a ch'a seller?"
"Ch'a?" The old man stared back at Ben, puzzled, then looked down at one of the pots he was carrying and gave a cackle of laughter. "No, Master. You have it wrong. This . . ." he laughed again, showing his broken teeth, "this isn't ch'a, Master. This is ash."
"Ash?"
The old man grinned back at him fiercely. "Of course. I'm Lu Nan Jen for this stack."
The Oven Man.' Of course! So the ash . . . Ben laughed, surprised. "And all this?" he asked, half turning to indicate the shrine, the paper offerings, the bowls of food.
The old man laughed uneasily. "You're a strange one, Master. Don't you know what day it is? It's Sao Mu, the Feast of the Dead."
Ben's eyes widened. Of course! The fifteenth day of the third month of the old calendar. Ch'ing Ming, it was, the festival of brightness and purity, when the graves were swept and offerings made to the deceased.
"Forgive me," he offered quickly, "I'm a student. My studies. . . they've kept me very busy recently."