Main had become a kind of encampment. The shops she remembered from her childhood had been turned into sleeping quarters, their empty fronts covered with sheets. There were crude stalls in Main now, though what they sold seemed barely worth selling. There was rubbish everywhere, and the plain, clean walls she had glimpsed in memory were covered with graffiti and posters for a hundred different political groupings. And sometimes the symbol of a fish, done in blood-red spray paint.
Everything stank here. Urchins with shaved heads ran about between the milling adults. As she watched, an old woman pushed an empty soup-cart back toward the elevators. Loose wiring hung from its empty undercarriage and a worn sign on its scratched and battered side showed it had been donated by one of the big Above companies.
There was no sign anywhere of Security, but there were other groupings here. Men wearing armbands and looking better fed than the others, stood at the intersections and about Main itself, wielding ugly-looking clubs. Against the walls families huddled or lay, mother and father on the outside, children between. These last were mainly Han. They called them "little t'ang" down here, the irony quite savage, for these t'ang had nothing—only the handouts from Above. And an unfair share of that.
It had been only eight years since she had come from here. How could it have changed so much in that brief time?
Ywe Hao pushed across Main, jostled by surly, ill-featured men who looked at her with undisguised calculation. She glared back threateningly. On the far side one of them came across and took her arm. She shook herself free, reached out with a quicksilver movement that surprised him, and held him beneath the chin, pushing his head back firmly. "Don't. . ." she warned as she pushed him away. He backed off respectfully, understanding what she was. Others saw it too, and a whisper went out, but she was gone by then, down a side corridor that, unlike the rest, seemed little changed. At the far end was her mother's place.
The room was squalid. Three families were huddled into it. She knew none of them. Angry, worried, she came out into the corridor and stood there, her heart pounding. She hadn't thought. . . .
From across the corridor an old man called to her. "Is that you, Ywe Hao? Is that really you?"
She laughed and went across, stepping over a child crawling in the corridor. On either side people were watching her, standing in doorways or out in the corridor itself. There was no privacy anywhere down here.
It was her Uncle Chang. Her mother's brother. She went to him and held him tightly to her, so glad to see him that for the moment she forgot they had parted badly.
"Come in, girl! Come in out of the way!" He looked past her almost haughtily at the watching faces, sniffing loudly before ushering her inside and sliding back the panel.
It was quieter inside. While her uncle crouched at the kang, preparing ch'a, she looked about her. Most of the floor was taken up by three bedrolls, made neatly, tidily. To her left, beside the door panel, was a small table containing holos and 2-D's of the family. In a saucer in front of them was the stub of a burnt candle. The room smelled of cheap incense.
"Where's Mother?" she asked, seeing her presence everywhere.
Her uncle looked around at her and smiled. "At market. With Su Chen."
"Su Chen?"
He looked away, embarrassed. "My wife," he said. "Didn't you hear?"
She almost laughed. Hear? How would she hear? For years she hadn't known a thing. Had lived in fear of anyone finding out anything about them. But she had never stopped thinking of them. Wondering how they were.
"And how is she?"
"Older," he answered distractedly, then grunted his satisfaction at getting the kang to work. Ywe Hao could see he did little here. There was a Vid unit in the corner, but it was dead. She looked at it, then back at him, wondering how he filled his days.
She had been right to get out. It was like death here. Like slow suffocation. The thought brought back the memory of the last time she had been here. The argument. She turned her face away, gritting her teeth. How could they live like this?
The tiny silver fish hung on a chain about her neck, resting between her breasts, its metal cool against her flesh. It was like a talisman against this place; the promise of something better. And though it was foolish to wear it, she could not have faced this place without it.
Her uncle finished pottering about and sat back on the edge of the nearest bedroll. "So how are you?" His eyes looked her up and down. Weak, watery eyes, watching her from an old man's face. He had been younger, stronger, when she'd last seen him, but the expression in the eyes was no different. They wanted things.
He was a weak man, and his weakness made him spiteful. She had lived out her childhood avoiding his spitefulness; avoiding the wanting in his eyes. From his pettiness she had forged her inner strength.
"I'm fine," she said. And what else? That she was an expert killer now? One of the most wanted people in the City?
"No man? No children, then?"
Again she wanted to laugh at him. He had never understood. But something of her contempt must have shown in her face, for he looked away, hurt.
"No. No man. No children," she said, after a moment. "Only myself."
She moved away from the door and crouched beside the table, studying the small collection of portraits. There was one of her, younger, almost unrecognizably younger, there beside her dead brother.
"I thought Mother didn't need this."
Her uncle breathed out deeply. "She gets comfort from it. You'd not deny her that, surely?"
There was a holo of her father; one she had never seen before. No doubt her mother had bought the image from the public records. There was a file date at the foot of it that told her the holo had been made almost eight years before she had been born. He would have been—what?—twenty then. She shivered and straightened up, then turned, looking down at her uncle. "Do you need money?"
She saw at once that she had been too direct. He avoided her eyes, but there was a curious tenseness in him that told her he had been thinking of little else since she'd shown up. But to admit it... that was something different. He was still her uncle. In his head she was still a little girl, dependent on him. He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. "Maybe ... It would be nice to get a few things."
She was about to say something more when the panel behind her slid back and her mother stepped into the room, a middle-aged Han female close behind her.
"Chang, I—"
The old woman paused, then turned to face Ywe Hao, confused. At first it didn't register; then with what seemed a complete transformation, her face lit up. She dropped the package she was carrying and opened her arms wide. "Hao! My little Hao!"
Ywe Hao laughed and hugged her mother tightly, having to stoop to do so. She had forgotten how small her mother was. "Mama . . ." she said, looking into her eyes and laughing again. "How have you been?"
"How have I been?" The old lady shook her head. Her eyes were brimming with tears and she was trembling with emotion. "Oh, dear gods, Hao, it's so good to see you. All these years. . ." There was a little sob, then with another laugh and a sniff, she pointed to the beds. "Sit down. I'll cook you something. You must be hungry."
Ywe Hao laughed, but did as she was told, squatting beside her uncle on the bedroll. From the doorway Su Chen, unintroduced, looked on, bewildered. But no one thought to explain things to her. After a while she pulled the door closed and sat on the far side of her husband. Meanwhile, the old lady pottered at the kang, turning every now and then to glance at her daughter, wiping her eyes before turning back, laughing softly to herself.