CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Between Light and Shadow
cHEN KNELT patiently before the mirror as Wang Ti stood over him, brushing out his hair and separating it into bunches. He watched her fasten three of them at the scalp, her fingers tying the tiny knots with a practiced deftness. Then, with a glancing smile at his reflection, she began to braid the fourth into a tight, neat queue. As ever, he was surprised by the strength of her hands, their cleverness, and smiled to himself. A good woman, she was. The best a man could have.
"What are you thinking, Kao Chen?" she asked, her fingers moving on to the second of the bunches, her eyes meeting his in the mirror.
"Just that a man needs a wife, Wang Ti. And that if all men had wives as good as mine this world would be a better place."
She laughed; her soft, rough-edged peasant's laugh that, like so many things she did, made him feel warm deep down inside. He lowered his eyes momentarily, thinking back. He had been dead before he met her. Or as good as. Down there, below the Net, he had merely existed, eking out a living day by day, like a hungry ghost, tied to nothing, its belly filled with bile.
And now? He smiled, noting the exaggerated curve of her belly in the mirror. In a month—six weeks at most—their fourth child would be born. A girl, the doctors said. A second girl. He shivered and turned his head slightly, trying to look across at the present he had bought her only the day before, but she pulled his head back firmly.
"Keep still. A minute and I'll be done."
He smiled, noting the tone in her voice, that same tone she used for the children when they would not do as they were told, and held still, letting her finish.
"There," she said, stepping back from him, satisfied. "Now put on your tunic. It's on the bed, freshly pressed. I'll come and help you with your leggings in a while."
Chen turned, about to object, but she had already gone to see to the children. He could hear them in the living room, their voices competing with the trivee, his second son, the six-year-old Wu, arguing with the "baby" of the family, Ch'iang Hsin, teasing her, as he so often did. Chen laughed, then went across to the table, picking up the lacquered bowl he had bought her and rubbing his ringer across its smooth surface, tracing the raised figures of the household gods, remembering her expression of delight when she had taken it from the paper.
Things were good. No, he thought; things had never been better. It was as if the gods had blessed him. First Wang Ti. Then the children. And now all this. He looked about him at the new apartment. Eight rooms they had. Eight rooms! And only four stacks out from Bremen Central! He laughed, surprised by it all, as if at any moment he might wake and find himself back there, beneath the Net, that all-pervading stench filling his nostrils, some pale, blind-eyed bug crawling across his body while he slept. Back then, simply to be out of that hell had been the sum total of his ambitions. While this—this apartment that he rented in the upper third, in Level 224—had seemed as far beyond his reach as the stars in the midnight sky.
He caught his breath, remembering, then shook his head. That moment on the roof of the solarium—how long ago had that been now? Ten years? No, twelve. And yet he remembered it as if it were yesterday. That glimpse of the stars, of the snow-capped mountains in the moonlight. And afterward, the nightmare of the days that followed. Yet here he was, not dead like his companion, Kao Jyan, but alive: the T'ang's man, rewarded for his loyalty.
He set the bowl down and went through, pulling on his tunic, then looked at himself in the mirror. It was the first time he had worn the azurite-blue ceremonial tunic and he felt awkward in it.
"Where's that rascal, Kao Chen?" he asked his image, noting how strange his hair looked now that it was braided, how odd his blunt, nondescript face seemed atop such elegant clothes.
"You look nice," Wang Ti said from the doorway. "You should wear your dress uniform more often, Chen. It suits you."
He fingered the chest patch uncomfortably, tracing the shape of the young tiger there—the symbol of his rank as Captain in the T'ang's Security forces—then shook his head. "It doesn't feel right, Wang Ti. I feel overdressed. Even my hair."
He sniffed in deeply, unconsciously mimicking the Marshal, then shook his head again. He should not have let Wang Ti talk him into having the implants. For all his adult life he had been happy shaving his scalp, wearing its bareness like a badge, but for once he had indulged her, knowing how little she asked of him. It was four months now since the operation had given him a full head of long, glistening black hair. Wang Ti had liked it from the first, of course, and for a while that had been enough for him, but now his discontent was surfacing again.
"Wang Ti. . . ?" he began, then fell silent.
She came across, touching his arm, her smile of pride for once making him feel uncomfortable. "What is it, husband?"
"Nothing . . ." he answered. "It's nothing . . ."
"Then hold still. I'll do your leggings for you."
the woman was leaning over the open conduit, reaching in with the fine-wire to adjust the tuning, when Leyden, the elder of the two Security men, came up with a bulb of ch'a for her. She straightened up and set the wire down, looking across at him as she peeled off her elbow-length gloves.
"Thanks," she said softly, and sipped at the steaming lip of the bulb.
"How much longer, Chi Li?"
Ywe Hao looked up, responding to the false name on her ID badge, then smiled. It was a beautiful smile; a warm, open smile that transformed her plain, rather narrow face. The old guard, seeing it, found himself smiling in return, then turned away, flustered. She laughed, knowing what he was thinking, but there was nothing mocking in her laughter, and when he turned back, a trace of red lingering in the paleness of his neck, he, too, was laughing.
"If you were my daughter . . ." he began.
"Go on. What would you do?" The smile remained, but fainter, a look of unfeigned»curiosity in the young woman's eyes. Still watching him, she tilted her head back and ran one hand through her short dark hair. "Tell me, Wolfgang Leyden. If I were your daughter ..." And again there was laughter—as if she hadn't said this a dozen times before.
"Why ... I'd lock you up, my girl. That's what I'd do!"
"You'd have to catch me first!"
He looked at her, the web of wrinkles about his eyes momentarily stark in the brightness of the overhead light, then he nodded, growing quieter. "So I would. . . . So I would. . . ."
Their nightly ritual over, they grew silent, serious. She drained the bulb, then pulled on her gloves and got back to work, crouching there over the conduit while he knelt nearby, watching her clever hands search the tight cluster of filaments with the fine-wire, looking for weak signals.
There was a kind of natural fellowship between them. They were both out of their level, here at the top of the stack, both uniformed; his the pale-green fatigues of Patrol Security, hers the yellow and orange of Maintenance. From the first—
almost three weeks ago now—he had sensed something different in her; in the way she looked at him, perhaps. Or maybe simply because she, twenty years his junior, had looked at him; had noticed him and smiled her beautiful smile, making him feel both young and old, happy and sad. From that first day had come their game— the meaningless banter that, for him at least, was too fraught with meaning to be safe.
"There!" she said, looking up. "One more of the fiddly little buggers done!" v Leyden nodded, but he was still remembering how her top teeth pulled down the pale flesh of her lower lip when she concentrated; how her eyes filled with a strange, almost passionate intensity. As if she saw things differently. Saw more finely, clearly than he.
"How many more?"
She sat back on her heels and drew in a deep breath, considering. "Eighty-seven junctions, one hundred and sixteen conduits, eleven switches, and four main panels." She smiled. "Two weeks' work. Three at the outside."