Three heads turned as they approached; three bodies repositioned themselves about the table, as if confronting Chen. Like fighters, he thought, and then wondered why he’d thought that, for the look of them was soft, their muscle tone poor. Their clothes—so different from his own—seemed garishly effete, while the jewelry they wore—rings, bracelets, and fine necklaces of gold—were so overdone that they reminded him of how his daughter, Ch’iang Hsin, had used to dress up when she was younger. Their faces were made up, their nails carefully manicured. First Level, that look said clearly: Supernal.
“Sao Ke, Andre, Christian—this is Kao Chen.” Chen realized he was frowning and tried to smile, but all he could do was grimace grotesquely and nod. Like the clod I am, he thought, conscious of how intently—how critically—they were watching him. “Kao Chen ...” Sao Ke repeated thoughtfully from where he sat on the far side of the table, then nodded to himself. He took a sip from his wine cup, then met Chen’s eyes. “You’re a student, I take it?” Hannah answered for him, pulling an empty chair out beside her as she did, indicating that Chen should sit.
“No. Kao Chen is an old family friend.”
Chen glanced at her, then looked back at the others, trying to keep the smile from slipping. The two Hung Mao—Christian and Andre—were silently assessing him. And dismissing me, no doubt, he thought, discomfort making him swallow drily. Yet even as he did, Hannah leaned close, her scent once again distracting him. “Are you drinking?” she whispered, her mouth against his ear.
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Good.” She smiled, then poured wine from the jug into the empty cup in front of him. A strong red sorghum wine that, when he tasted it, made him nod with appreciation.
He looked up and saw she was watching him, enjoying his enjoyment of the wine, and for a moment he thought how strange that was. It was a long time since anyone had done that; since anyone had worried what he, Kao Chen, was feeling. He looked down, a faint shiver passing through him. “Well. . .” one of the two Hung Mao said—Christian? Andre? he wasn’t sure. Chen glanced from one to the other. They smiled, and lifted their cups to him in a toast, but behind the smiles there was a coldness, an implacable dislike for his kind.
“So what do you do, Kao Chen?”
The speaker sat to Chen’s left, the other side of Hannah. “Kao Chen is a potter,” Hannah answered, before he could even think what to say. “As was his father and his father’s father. And before you ask, his pots are very good. Some say that their shape is too crude, the clay too thick, the design too simple, but that merely serves to demonstrate their ignorance. Besides, their glaze is the most delicate you’ve ever seen; the colors”—she turned and, smiling, winked at Chen, who was staring at her, astonished—“well, the colors are just perfect. There’s a blue he uses which is ... well, it’s like the blue of heaven itself.” Chen stared at her a moment longer, then, realizing what he was doing, he looked away, trying to compose himself. It was all invention, certainly—all part of some game she was playing—but why? What did she mean by it all?
“My own taste is for the funerary, of course,” Sao Ke said, leaning forward slightly, an interested gleam in his eyes, “but young Hannah here is a fine judge of artifacts. Praise from her is high praise indeed. But tell me, Kao Chen—“ Hannah interrupted him. “Forgive me, Ke, but it will do you little good asking Kao Chen. I should have said at once. My dear friend is dumb. A childhood accident. . .”
Dumb! Chen almost laughed. Was there no end to her audacity? And yet it all made sense of a kind. Knowing he was an artisan—if only of a lowly kind, a potter—they would be more inclined to talk freely in his presence. And his affliction, his inability to speak—again he almost laughed aloud at the thought of it!—it was the perfect excuse to simply sit there and listen. He glanced at her again, saw she was watching him, and looked down, smiling. There was more to her—much more—than he’d realized. Hannah leaned forward, smiling gaily around the table. “Well, anyway . . . We were talking of the changes, remember? Andre, you were saying something interesting about your father’s Company. About...” Chen half listened at first, struck more by the look of these young men, by the intoxicating atmosphere of the Golden Carp, than by anything they said. Andre and Christian, he realized, were brothers. Or, if not, then they ought to have been, the facial similarities were so striking. But it was not merely the look of them—the cosmetic outer shell of them—that he found fascinating, it was something in the language of gesture they used; something he had only vaguely noticed before that moment. They were arrogant, that went without saying, yet it was of a kind that was untempered by any kind of self-knowledge or self-consciousness. The arrogance of princes and great men, that Chen understood; but the arrogance of such little men—such hsiao jen— surprised him. What they knew, what they were: it all seemed like a thin veneer, covering up an inner emptiness so vast, so frightening, that they must keep talking to disguise the nothingness within. When they talked, they did not meet each other’s eyes but stared languidly at their own fingernails or into the air. They seemed completely insular—completely self-obsessed. Yet how could one be self-obsessed where there was no true self? It puzzled Chen as he sat there. Puzzled him that Hannah could bring herself to listen to these fools, these elegant, empty mouths. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was his own recently acquired habit of introspection, but Chen found himself wanting to voice these thoughts, these insights ... to tell them exactly what they were. But what good would that do? What could mere words achieve against such stultifying ignorance? Even so, the desire made him lean in toward them, as if in combat, to set aside his thoughts and listen, engaging for the first time in what they were saying.
Christian was talking now, turning the conversation away from the meal they had just eaten to something he had heard about the Lowers—about how they had been putting “chemicals” in the food all these years. “It’s not much,” he said. “Not even enough to register on the taste buds of the most sensitive gourmet, but, well ... it has its effect. It makes them . . . docile. It dampens down their natural aggressive instincts. Or, at least, it used to. Now that the food quotas have fallen they’re not getting enough, it seems, and the powers that be can’t add any more without it becoming . . . discernible. That’s why there’s more trouble down there these days. Why there are so many riots and disturbances. They’re waking up, you see. And they’re getting angry.” That’s true, Chen thought, but it’s not because of any chemicals in their food. He’d heard the rumors before. They were rife these days. But there was no proof. Besides, there were other reasons to be angry. More than enough reasons to riot.
“Maybe that’s why there are so many revolutionaries these days,” Christian added after a moment.
Sao Ke chipped in at once, his sardonic drawl the voice of Emptiness itself, his cultured Han face one long, consistent sneer. “Revolutionaries . . . there’s a hollowness at the center of them all when it comes right down to it. They’re fucked up, and because they’re fucked up, they want the world to be fucked up too. . . .” Hannah, as if sensing Chen’s sudden interest, cut in. “That may be true of some of them, even the majority, perhaps, but it can’t be true for them all. There must be some for whom the ideal of revolution is . . . well, a vocation.”
Sao Ke leaned back, showing perfect, pearled teeth as he laughed, his laughter a bray of pure scorn. “Well, I’ve heard it called many things, but never that. A vocation!” He shook his head, then reached out to pour more wine into his bowl. “Don’t be fooled, my young and beautiful friend. All that shit about the altruism of the lower levels, about the honest, hardworking peasant stock you’ll find down there . . . it’s all a myth!—a fiction, served up by the Trivee Companies to make us feel okay about it all. Besides, all this ideology they spout, it’s window dressing, that’s all, a cynical disguise the bastards use to justify killing and maiming innocent people. But have no illusions, it’s all Number One when it comes right down to it. Self, self, self, however prettily the ideas might be packaged!”