He smiled. Wang Ti would have liked to see this. She had always said she would love to live outside, beneath the sun and the stars, her feet planted firmly on the black earth. As their forefathers had once lived.
For a moment Chen's smile broadened, thinking of her and Jyan and the child to come, then his face cleared as he put all thought of her behind. He was Tong Chou now and had no family. Tong Chou, demoted from the levels. Tong Chou. Until this was over.
The crowd slowed. Another line formed. Chen waited, patient, knowing that patience alone would carry him through the coming days. When he came to the barrier a guard babbled at him in Kua-yu. He shook his head. "I'm new," he said. "I only speak English. You know, Ying Kuo."
The guard laughed and turned to say something to one of his fellows, again in Mandarin. The other guard laughed and looked Chen up and down, then said something that made the first guard laugh crudely. They were both Hung Moo.
He handed the guard his permit, then waited while the man scrutinized it thoroughly and, with a show of self-importance, used his comset to double-check. He seemed almost disappointed to find nothing wrong with it.
"Take care, Han," the guard said, thrusting his card back at him.
He moved on, keeping his head down, following the flow.
"Chiao shen me ming tsu?"
Chen looked up, expecting another guard, but the young man who had addressed him wore the drab brown of a field-worker. Moreover, he was Hung Mao. The first Hung Moo he had seen here who was not a guard.
He looked the youth up and down, then answered him. "I'm sorry. My Mandarin is very poor."
The young man had a long face and round, watery blue eyes. His hair was dark but wispy and his mouth was crooked, as if he had suffered a stroke. But he was far too young, too fit, to be suffering from heart troubles. The crooked mouth smiled and the eyes gave Chen the same scrutiny Chen had given him.
"I'm Pavel," the youth said, inclining his head the slightest degree. "I was asking what they called you."
"Tong Chou," Chen answered, then realized how easily it had come to his lips,
Pavel took one of his hands and turned it over, examining it. "I thought so," he said, returning it. "You're new to this."
Chen smiled. There were things that could not be faked, like calluses on the palms. "I'm a refugee from the levels," he said. "When my father died I got into debt over his funeral. Then I got in with a shark. You know how it is."
Pavel looked at him a moment, his watery blue eyes trying to figure him; then his crooked mouth smiled again. "Come on,
long Chou. You'll need someone to show you the ropes. There's a spare bed in our hut. You can sleep down there."
Pavel set off at once, moving away from the slow-moving column of new recruits. Only as he turned did Chen notice something else about him. His back was hunched, the spine bent unnaturally. What Chen had taken for a bow of politeness was the young man's natural gait. Chen followed him quickly, catching up with him. As they walked along the dirt path Pavel began to talk, explaining how things worked on the plantation.
"How did you know I was new?"
Pavel glanced sideways at him. "The way you walk. The way you're wearing those clothes. The way you squint against the sun. Oh, a hundred little signs. What were you up above? You've strong hands. They're not an office-worker's hands."
"But not a peasant's either?"
Pavel laughed, throwing his head back to do"so. Chen, watching him, decided he liked the youth. He looked a dull-wit, but he was sharp. Very sharp.
"And where are you from, Pavel?"
Pavel sniffed, then looked away across the vast plain. "Me? I was bom here."
"Here?"
Pavel smiled crookedly and nodded. "Here. In these fields."
Ahead of them was a break in the green. A long black line that cut right across their path. The dirt track led out onto a wooden bridge. Halfway across the bridge Chen stopped, looking down.
Pavel came back to him and looked where he was looking, as if expecting to see something unusual in the water. "What is it?" he asked.
Chen laughed. "Nothing. It's nothing." But he had realized that he had never seen water flow like this before. Taps and baths and pools, that was all he had ever seen. It had made him feel strange. Somehow incomplete.
Pavel looked at him, then laughed. "What did you say you were?"
They went on. The field they had crossed had been empty, but beyond the bridge it was different. Long lines of workers—five hundred, maybe a thousand, to each line—were stretched out across the vast green, hunched forward, huge wicker baskets on their backs, their coolie hats making them seem a thousand copies of the same machine. Yet each was a man or woman—a person, like himself.
Where the path met another at a crossroads, a group of men were lounging by an electric cart. They were dressed differently, in smart black trousers and kingfisher-blue jackets. They wore black, broad-rimmed hats with silk tassels hanging from the back and most of them had guns—deng rifles, Chen noted— strapped to their shoulders. As Chen and Pavel approached, they seemed to stir expectantly.
Pavel touched Chen's arm, his voice a whisper. "Keep your head down and keep walking. Don't stop unless they specifically order you to."
Chen did as Pavel said. Even so, two of the men detached themselves from the group and came across onto the path, blocking their way. They were big, brutal-looking men. Han, both of them.
"Who's this, Pavel?" one of them asked.
The youth kept his head lowered. "This is Tong Chou, Shi/i Teng. I am taking him to register."
Teng laughed caustically and looked at his fellow. "You're quite a bit out of your way then, Pavel. Registration is back there, where you've just come from. Or have they moved it since I was last there?"
There was laughter from the men by the cart.
Chen glanced at the youth and saw how he swallowed nervously. But he wasn't finished yet. "Forgive me, Shift Teng. That would be so normally. But Tong Chou is a replacement. He has been drafted to fill the place left by Field Supervisor Sung's unfortunate death. I was told to take him direct to Acting Supervisor Ming. Ming is to fill out a special registration form."
Teng was silent a moment, then he stepped aside. "Get moving, then. I want to see you both in the fields within the hour, understand me?"
Pavel dipped his head, then hurried on. Chen followed, keeping his eyes on the ground.
"Who were they?" Chen asked, when they were out of hearing.
"Teng Fu and Chang Yan. They're the Overseer's men. Chang's fairly docile. Teng's the one you need to watch. He's a vicious piece of work. Thinks he's something special. Fortunately he knows very little about how this place works. But that's true of most of them. There's not one of those guards has any brains. Providing you keep your nerve you can convince them of anything."
Chen nodded. "You were frightened, though. You took a risk for me. I'm grateful for that, Pavel."
Pavel breathed deeply. "Not for you, so much, Tong Chou, but for all of us. They say the spirits of the dead have no shadows, but the deaths of Field Supervisor Sung and his wife have left a darkness here that no man can dispel."
Chen looked thoughtfully at him. "I see."
"I'll tell you sometime," the youth said, glancing at him.
They walked on. Up ahead of them, maybe ten li or so in the distance, the straight line of the horizon was broken by a building; a huge three-tiered pagoda.
"What's that?" Chen asked after a while.
Pavel didn't even bother to look up. "That? That's the Overseer's House."