But the secretary was not sharing the joke. "You would be well advised," she said seriously, "to take an order from a Renmin police inspector seriously."
"I will," he promised, suppressing the smile. Then, as he thought things over, he wondered just why the Renmin police inspector passed on her orders in just that way. Puzzlement became irritation. He waited until he was sure she would be home. Then, when Manyface was well asleep, Castor stole out of the house, hailed a taxi, and in ten minutes was in front of the building that contained Tsoong Delilah's apartment. He was smiling as he entered the elevator. He had calculated that the light traffic of late night would make the trip trivially brief. So it had. Ten minutes cab ride each way. Say sixty minutes in bed— no, better allow ninety—why, he could be back in time for a good five hours' sleep before getting up to start the rice steaming for Professor Fung's breakfast.
But when he knocked on the door the errand was not what he expected, and in fact it was not Delilah who answered the door. It opened no more than halfway, to show a tall Han Chinese youth, Castor's age or nearly. The young man gave him a hard-eyed look. "You are the peasant Pettyman Castor?" he demanded.
Castor didn't pay him the compliment of admitting it. "And who are you, then?" he demanded cuttingly.
"I am the son of your lover," said the youth. "I have orders for you. This urn here by the door contains the ashes of the murderer Feng. These are to be returned to his collective. It is my mother's order that you take them there tomorrow morning."
VIII
When the bus stopped at the Heavenly Grain Village Collective, Castor got off grandly. The conqueror of the city returns to the humble place of his childhood. Only the humble place did not seem to care. Though Castor was ready to smile and to grasp the hands of his old neighbors just as warmly as though he were still no better than they, no old neighbors were there. No adults at all were in sight. The only person around was little Pettyman Benjy, the five-year-old son of Castor's cousin Pettyman Pendrake. The boy was sucking his thumb in the doorway of the village school—thrown out again for wetting his pants in class, no doubt.
Castor had no time to seek more of an audience. "Citizen!" remonstrated the bus driver. "I have a schedule to keep. Which bag is yours?"
The injury to his vanity was only grazing. Castor shrugged, picked up the boxed urn, dangled his overnight shoulderbag from the other hand, and went into the assistant director's office. There his reception committee was waiting for him: Fat Rhoda, with more than the usual bundle of complaints to deliver, starting with, "Your bus was late!"
But at least it turned out that Fat Rhoda had really missed him. Well, that was not quite true. She had not missed Castor in particular, but she certainly was deeply aggrieved that her production team had been left a worker short. When she had finished reproaching him for the fact that their plan had, therefore, not been more than 83 percent completed in the past week, she gazed down at the screen on her desk and punched out orders for the plot of available housing. "What a nuisance," she grumbled, eyeing the plot on the screen. "I suppose you want a bed? And a meal tonight, no doubt? Although, since you're not on the ration strength anymore, everyone will suffer?"
Well, that was nonsense. To serve one more meal out of three hundred would certainly cause no suffering for anyone. At most, it would mean only a little less scraped into the cans to feed the tilapia. Castor did not dignify the statement with a reply, nor the next proposal—which was that he share a bed with one of the children that night. "Your own apartment—your former apartment—" she said with pleasure, "is of course being repainted for the next tenant."
"Of course," said Castor, wondering how she could lie so. Fat Rhoda had never charged a can of paint against her team's profit and loss in her life. "Keep your food," he said cuttingly. "Keep your pissed-in bed, too. Let me only charge out a bike, and I will go to River of Pearl and stay there tonight."
Fat Rhoda stared at him resentfully. "There's no need to take that tone," she said. "Still—well, yes, I suppose there's a bike in the transportation pool..."
There was also at least one human face glad to see Castor again and happy to talk over the small talk of the commune since he left. No, said Pettyman Jim, nothing had been heard of Maria. Yes, they still had the blackouts. Something to do with the radio-telescope, wasn't it? No, there wasn't any reason he couldn't take any bike he liked—only, see, Castor, he said apologetically, since Castor wasn't on the ration strength anymore, he'd have to pay tourist rates for the rental...
Castor had not expected the hole left by his departure from the commune would heal so seamlessly and fast.
It was dark when he reached the River of Pearl. Bawling cattle and snorting, snuffling pigs filled his ears— nose, too. Since he had phoned ahead, at least this time someone was waiting for him.
The waiting person was a girl, slim, dark, short. She wore blouse and shorts, but fashion was not a motive. The blouse was khaki and stained—with, Castor supposed, pig slop. The shorts were no better. As she moved into the light to greet him he saw her face and realized he had seen it before.
It was the face he had seen in photo exhibits at the inquest. It was the same face on the same head—though a more gracile version of it—that he had kicked against in the rice paddy, to start all his troubles. And triumphs. "I'm Feng Miranda," said the face, unsmiling, even unwelcoming. "Thank you for bringing Grandfather's ashes home. No, no. Don't hand them to me now. A memorial service has been arranged and the people are waiting, so come along."
As they walked into the lighted catwalk to the community center, Castor found that Feng Miranda had every reason to look like the murdered youth. She was his sister. Twin sister, and she shared more than genes. "He died a hero," she said matter-of-factly. "Who, my grandfather? Of course not! My brother was as dedicated to freeing America from the yoke of the oppressor as I. A martyr to America." Gee! Castor moved half a step farther away from her and let her guide him into the hall.
The point of not taking the old man's ashes from him at the bus, Castor discovered, was that they were to be handed over at a ceremonial, when appropriate remarks would be delivered. Why not? It would be interesting to see how these peasants conducted funerals; Tsoong Delilah would be amused, perhaps. But the ceremony was a surprise. It was a one-woman performance, and what she said in the hall was worse than she had said outside. She stood there before the gathering of forty or fifty villagers, mostly elderly, and let Castor hand the unboxed urn to her. She did not treat it reverently. She glanced casually at the nameplate to see no impostor was receiving her grandfather's funeral oration, then put the ashes down on a table—a kitchen table, Castor saw, though at least someone had troubled to cover it with a red cloth that drooped to the floor on both sides. She kissed the urn absentmindedly, as though she were brushing itching lips against some handy surface while her hands were full, and turned to the audience:
"This old man, Feng Hsumu, was my grandfather, who killed my brother. Feng Hsumu was a good father to our father and I mourn him for that, but he was a murderer to my brother—only because my brother wanted the Han Chinese to leave America and let it be free again."
Castor sidled off the platform, shocked a little, more sorry for the girl. She did not seem to have a good grasp of reality. Although the Chinese had preserved the forms of the old People's Republic, they were most of all just Chinese. America's lack of "freedom" interested them very little. The Han Chinese didn't look on themselves as occupiers of America (or of Eastern Siberia or Japan or Indochina or Australia, or all the other non-Chinese places they dominated). China—"Home"—was the China of the emperors. It included most of Indochina, part of Korea, and part of Siberia; that was their China, and they simply did not think of arguing the point. The rest of the areas under their control were foreign lands.