Yang
IT WAS DARK where they sat, at the edge of the terrace overlooking the park. Behind them the other tables were empty now. Inside.^at the back of the restaurant, a single lamp shone dimly. Nearby four waiters stood in shadow against the wall, silent, in attendance. It was early morning. From the far side of the green came the sounds of youthful laughter; unforced, spontaneous. Above them the night sky seemed filled with stars; a million sharp-etched points of brilliance against the velvet blackness.
"It's beautiful," said Wyatt, looking down, then turning back to face the others. "You know, sometimes just the sight of it makes me want to cry. Don't you ever feel that?"
Lehmann laughed softly, almost sadly, and reached out to touch his friend's arm. "I know. ..."
Wyatt let his head tilt back again. He was drunk. They were all drunk, or they wouldn't be speaking like this. It was a kind of treason. The sort of thing a man whispered, or kept to himself. Yet it had to be said. Now. Tonight. Before they broke this intimacy and went their own directions once again.
He leaned forward, his right hand resting on the table, the fist clenched tightly. "And sometimes I feel stifled. Boxed in. There's an ache in me. Something unfulfilled. A need. And when I look up at the stars I get angry. I think of the waste, the stupidity of it. Trying to keep it all bottled up. What do they think we are? Machines?" He laughed; a painful laugh, surprised by it all. "Can't they see what they're doing to us? Do you think they're blind to it?"
There was a murmur, of sympathy and agreement.
"They can see," said Berdichev matter-of-factly, stubbing out his cigar, his glasses reflecting the distant image of the stars.
Wyatt looked at him. "Maybe. But sometimes I wonder. You see, it seems to me there's a whole dimension missing. From my life. From yours, Soren, and yours, Pietn» From everyone's life. Perhaps the very thing that makes us fully human." He leaned forward dangerously on his chair. "There's no place for growth anymore—no more white spaces on the map."
Lehmann answered him dryly. "Quite the contrary, Edmund. There's nothing but white."
There was laughter; then, for a short time, silence. The ceiling of the great dome moved imperceptibly, turning about the illusory axis of the north star.
It had been a good night. They had just returned from the Clay, the primitive, unlit region beneath the City's floor. Eight days they had been together in that ancient netherworld of rotting brick andsavage half-men. Days that had marked each of them in his own way. Returning they had felt good, but now their mood had changed. When Wyatt next spoke there was real bitterness in his voice.
"TheyVe killing us all. Slowly. Irreversibly. From the center out. Their stasis is a kind of poison. It hollows the bones."
Lehmann shifted uneasily in his chair. Wyatt turned, then saw and fell silent. The Han waiter came out from the shadows close by them, holding a tray out before him.
"More ch'o, sirs?"
Berdichev turned sharply, his face dark with anger. "Have you been listening?"
"Sir?" The Han's face froze into a rictus of politeness, but Wyatt, watching, saw the fear in his eyes.
Berdichev climbed to his feet and faced him, leaning over him threateningly, almost a head taller than the Han.
"You heard me clearly, old hundred names. You were listening to our conversation, weren't you?"
The waiter lowered his head, stung by the bitterness in Berdichev's voice. "No, honored sir. I heard nothing." His face remained as before, but now his hands trembled, making the bowls rattle on the tray.
Wyatt stood and took his friend's arm gently. "Soren, please, ..."
Berdichev stood there, a moment longer, scowling at the man, his resentment like something palpable, flowing out across the space between them, then h| turned away, glancing briefly at Wyatt.
Wyatt looked across at the waiter and nodded. "Fill the bowls. Then leave us. Put it all on my bill."
The Han bowed, his eyes flashing gratitude at Wyatt, then quickly filled the bowls.
"Fucking chinks!" Berdichev muttered, once the Han was out of earshot. He leaned forward and picked up his bowl. "You have to watch what you say these days, Edmund. Even small Han have big ears."
Wyatt watched him a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know. They're not so bad."
Berdichev laughed scornfully. "Devious little shit-eaters they are." He stared out across the green, pulling his silk pau tighter about his neck. "I'd rather hand all my companies over to my bitterest rival than have a single one of them in a senior management position."
Lehmann sighed and reached out for his bowl. "I find them useful enough. In their own way."
"As servants, yes. . . ." Berdichev laughed sourly, then finished his ch'a and set the bowl down heavily. He looked from one to the other of them as he spoke. "You know what they call us behind our backs? Big noses! The cheek of it! Big noses!"
Wyatt looked to Lehmann and both men laughed. He reached out and touched Berdichev's nose playfully. "Well, it's true in your case, Soren, isn't it?"
Berdichev drew his head back, then smiled, relenting. "Maybe." He sniffed and laughed, then grew serious again. "Maybe so. But I'll be damned if I'll have the little fuckers taking the piss out of me while they're drawing from my pocket!"
"But isn't that true of all men?" Wyatt insisted, feeling suddenly less drunk. "I mean . . . it's not just the Han. Our race—the Hung Moo—aren't most of us like that?"
"Speak for yourself," said Lehmann, leaning back, his whole manner poised, indifferent. "However, the Han rule this world of ours. And that changes things. It makes even the most vulgar little Han think he's a T'ang."
"Fucking true!" said Berdichev, wiping at his mouth. "They're arrogant bastards, one and all!"
Wyatt shrugged, unconvinced, then looked from one of his friends to the other. They were harder, stronger men than he. He recognized that. Yet there was something flawed in each of them—^some lack of sympathy that marred their natures, fine as they were. He had noted it, down there in the Clay: had seen how they took for granted what he had found horrifying.
Imagination, he thought. It has to do with imagination. With putting yourself in someone else's place. Like the waiter, just then. Or like the woman I met, down there, in the awful squalor of the Clay.
He shivered and looked down at his untouched ch'a. He could still see her. Could see the room where they had kept her. Mary, her name had been. Mary.
The thought of it chilled his blood. She was still there. There, in the room where he had left her. And who knew which callous bastard would use her next; would choose to beat her senseless, as she had been beaten so often before.
He saw himself again. Watched as he lifted her face to the light and traced the bruise about her eye with his fingers. Gently, aware of how afraid she was of him. He had slept with her finally, more out of pity than from any sense of lust. Or was that fair? Wasn't curiosity part of what he'd felt? So small she'd been, her arms so thin, her breasts almost nonexistent. And yet pretty, strangely pretty, for all that. Her eyes, particularly, had held some special quality — the memory, perhaps, of something better than this she had fallen into.
He had been wrong to leave her there. And yet, what choice had he had? That was her place, this his. So it was fated in this world. And yet there must be something he could do.
"What are you thinking, Edmund?"
He looked up, meeting Lehmann's eyes. "I was thinking about the woman."
"The woman?" Berdichev glanced across at him, then laughed. "Which one? There were hundreds of the scrawny things!"
"Andboys. ..."
"We won't forget the boys. ..."
He looked away, unable to join their laughter; angry with himself for feeling as he did. Then his anger took a sudden shape and he turned back, leaning aciro4 the table toward them.