We drop out of contact.
"My point," I say.
"Time is up," Liu Wen says. "Nine points, you almost made it."
Time is up? "How long have we been playing?" I ask.
"Two hours," Liu Wen says. "That's how much we paid for. If I had realized you had nine points I'd have fed you the tenth, just so you could see what it was like."
"Like the golden ball?" I ask, staring into the gold of the table.
He shakes his head. "Different."
Better, I think.
I look up from the gold. Already the others are back in contact, only Haibao, Liu Wen and I are out. Somehow I keep expecting to drop back in, but instead, they take off their contacts and I take off mine. My bare wrist feels cold in the air.
I look at them, Haibao looks tense. Liu Wen looks like he always does. I am aware of perspiration on my neck, under my hair. I am even more aware of my aching testicles, and that I am tight against the seam of my pants. I feel as if I have been cock-teased for a couple of hours, which is precisely what has happened. But it doesn't seem as if we have been playing for two hours.
I lick my lips.
"He did pretty well," Haibao says.
"Beginners luck," Liu Wen says.
I realize that Liu Wen paid for me. "Thank you for the game," I say.
"I love the way you talk," Haibao says softly.
"How do I talk?" I ask.
"Your accent, the formal way you say things."
"Do I have much accent?" I ask.
"It's charming, exotic, and yet you sound so refined."
I thought my Mandarin was pretty good. I resolve to work on my accent.
Liu Wen shakes his head, smiling. "I'll see you two later," he says and heads back towards another table. I follow him with wistful eyes, wishing to be back in the golden glow, although I ache.
"He's handsome," Haibao says.
"He could be," I answer, "if he would bother."
"Come with me?" Haibao asks. Lai gen wo ma?
Of course I will go with him. We walk through the godown to the back, where there is a narrow iron stair, and up above the lights he opens a door on a room like a coffin, a little more than a meter high, the same wide. It is only then that I realize why he has taken me here, that there is not another game at the end, or at least, only the old game.
I laugh, although I am so aroused there will be damn little joy.
He stoops and enters, and sitting on the mat says, softly, "Lai lai lai," 'Come, come, come. I stoop and follow him, kneeling in front of him, aware of my boots on the mat. I lean awkwardly forward, resting my hand on the mat next to his thigh, and we kiss. I tug gently at his pants and he raises his hips for me to slide them down. If there is a way to do this without a sense of interruption I have never found it. But then I kneel reverently and pay homage.
And later, once, he asks me, "Why 'ghost'?"
"Waiguai," I say, 'foreign-devil' or 'foreign-ghost'. It's the old slang term for a foreigner. Not very flattering. Like Westerners say 'Slope-head.'
"You aren't a "waiguai," he says, "you're hauqiao." Not a foreign ghost, but an overseas Chinese.
That is what it says on my identification. I was certain my IDEX would be waiguoren but it says huaqiao. The flimsie they gave me indicated that my genetic mother may have been Philippine Chinese (the combination of my mother's Hispanic genes and my father's Chinese, I suppose.) Haibao doesn't know that my mother is Hispanic-American. I do not mention it.
"You look tired," the doctor says in Mandarin.
I am, I did not get much sleep the night before. It is Monday and I met Haibao for dinner last night-late because he had something he had to do before he saw me. I was jealous but did not ask.
I am here for an examination, just to make sure that my new kidneys are working.
"You are the first patient I have ever had who is the result of cosmetic gene-splicing," she says. "It's illegal here except for authorized disorders."
It is now at home as well. Except for things like Taysachs, Downs, Herodata's Schizophrenia. She has accessed my deep records, I wonder if she will change my IDEX, but she doesn't seem to think of it. I am jittery and nervous.
The doctor is astonishing. Gone is the perfect, concerned woman I remember from when I was sick. She says the correct things, like 'You look tired,' but she says them with an air of detachment. I don't answer her and it doesn't seem to matter. She explains things, tells me how my kidneys grew, how the old ones are beginning to atrophy. She holds me off with her words. "If you experience any depression or anxiety these days you are welcome to come and talk with a counselor."
I nod unhappily. She is jacked in to my medical records. What does she find in my medical records that makes her think that I need counseling? Something from Baffin Island? Or perhaps my constructed genetic make-up is flawed and I am prone to system imbalances? She certainly does not want to counsel me. Why did I think her so wonderful?
"Are you eating right?" she asks, and does not wait for an answer. "Still avoid things like beer and alcohol and not too much protein yet." She stands. I stand.
"Thank you Dr. Cui," I say.
It must be the unit that they used to keep me quiet. It must have encouraged me to trust my doctor, to assume that everything is all right.
All my life, or at least since I was seven and got my jacks implanted, I have jacked in; in school, at work, to call a friend, to find out how much credit was on my account. But those are operations where the system is passive, where I draw on the information. In the West, active systems, systems that feed back into the human nervous system, are illegal. There are exceptions; the big kites that the pros fly, for example; they feed flight information back to the flyer, but those are licensed. I've never been to the doctor and been jacked into an active system.
Jianqiu, 'Pressball' is an active system, too. I know it is illegal, that's why one doesn't use one's real name, although if the system records a trace they can identify our individual nervous system patterns. Still, that takes a lot of work, I suppose they'd almost have to know who we were first.
Active systems are illegal, as everyone knows, because they can cause injury. And because they are addicting. I wonder if Jianqiu causes any sort of degeneration of my already taxed nervous system. There are certainly ways in which it is taxing. But I have no idea if I will ever play again. I'd certainly like to.
Is that the definition of addicting? If so, duck is addicting because I'd also like to try Nanjing duck again.
On Tuesday I have my engineering tutorial again. I cross the busy arcade and take the lift. I don't know if we are going to bother with engineering again.
"Lai, lai," Haibao says absently, opening the door. He is not looking at me, and the flat is rose. He gestures and the lights come up. So I suppose we are going to work. We sit down and he sighs, sits for a moment as if too listless to bother before leaning forward to look through the book.
It is quite a performance. But I'm not Liu Wen to make fun of it.
"We don't have to work this evening," I say, "I can go back, we can work another time."
"No," he says, "it doesn't matter." He pages through my book.
"No, truly," I say. "I'm doing better. It makes more sense these days." This is the truth, although I have some questions I'd like to ask.
He smiles. "You are always so polite," he says, "are all American huaqiao so polite as you?"
"Old fashioned, maybe," I say, and begin to get up.
He puts his hand on my arm. "Don't pay any attention to me, Liu Wen doesn't."
"Liu Wen knows you better than I do," I say.
To my astonishment his eyes fill with tears and he looks away. Then he stands up and walks to the window. He stands with his back to me and I wait, confused and alarmed. What did I say?