“Right,” Mei Ling laughed without humor. “And meanwhile, our claim expires in six months. It’s either build up or clean out, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Do you want to go back to slaving in a geriatric ward, wiping drool and cleaning the diapers of little emperors? Work that’s unfit for robots?”
“There are farms, in the highlands.”
“They only allow refugees who prove ancestral connection. But our families were urban, going back two revolutions. Red Guards, bureaucrats, and company men. We have no rural roots!”
Bin grimaced and shook his head, eyes downcast. We’ve been over this, so many times. But Mei Ling continued. “This time, we may not even find work in a geriatric ward. You’ll get drafted into a levee-building crew-maybe wind up buried under their New Great Wall. Then what will become of us?”
He squinted at the monumental barrier, defending the glittery towers of Xidong District against the most implacable invader, worse than any other to threaten China.
“I’ll take the salvage to town,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ll get a better price ashore. For our extra catch, too. Anyway, we need some things.”
“Yeah, like beer,” Mei Ling commented sourly. But she didn’t try to stop him, or mention that the trip was hazardous. Fading hopes do that to a relationship, he thought.
They said nothing further to each other. She slipped back inside. At least the baby’s crying soon stopped. Yet… Peng Xiang Bin lingered for a moment, before going downstairs. He liked to picture his child-his son-at her breast. Despite being poor, ill educated and with a face that bore scars from a childhood mishap, Mei Ling was still a healthy young woman, in a generation with too many single men. And fertile, too.
She is the one with options, he pondered, morosely. The adoption merchants would set her up with a factory job to supplement her womb-work. Little Xiao En would draw a good fee, and maybe grow up in a rich home, with education and implants and maybe…
He chased the thought away with a harsh oath. No! She came here with me because she believed in our dream. I’ll find a way.
Using the mansion’s crumbling grand staircase as an indoor dock, Bin built a makeshift float-raft consisting of a big cube of polystyrene wrapped in cargo net, lashed to a pair of old surfboards with drapery cord. Then, before fetching the salvage, he dived to visit the traps and fishing lines, surrounding the house. By now he felt at home among the canted, soggy walls, festooned with seaweed and barnacles. At least there were a dozen or so nice catches this time, most of them even legal, including a big red lobster and a plump, angry wrasse. So, luck wasn’t uniformly bad.
Reluctantly, he released a tasty Jiaoxi crab to go about its way. You never knew when some random underwater monitor, disguised as a drifting piece of flotsam, might be looking. He sure hoped none had spotted a forbidden rockfish, dangling from a gill net in back, too dead to do anything about. He spared a moment to dive deeper and conceal the carcass, under a paving stone of the sunken garden.
The legal items, including the wrasse, a grouper, and two lionfish, he pushed into another mesh sack, wary of the lionfish spines.
Our poverty is a strange one. The last thing we worry about is food.
Other concerns? Sure. Typhoons and tsunamis. Robbers and police shakedowns. City sewage and red tides. Rot and mildew. Low recycle prices and the high cost of living.
Perhaps a fair south wind will blow today.
This old mansion had been doomed from the day it was built, of course, even without nature’s wrath. Windows faced too many directions letting qi leak in and out. Ignoring lessons of the revered past, no doorsills were raised, to retain good luck. The owners must have hired some foreign laowai as an architect. Bin hoped to correct these faults someday, using rolls of mirror sheeting to reflect both light and qi in positive ways. Pixelated scenery cloth would be even better.
Bin checked his tide-driven drill, pushing a metlon support pole into the foundation. Just ten more and the hammock-home would have an arch frame, strong as bedrock. And then? A tidal generator. A bigger rain catchment. A smart gathernet and commercial fishing license. A storm shelter. A real boat. More metlon.
He had seen a shorestead where the settlers reached Phase Three: recoating the old house plumbing, connecting to the city grids, then resealing the old walls with nano-crete to finish a true island of self-sufficiency. Every reclaimer’s dream. And (he sighed) about as likely as winning the lottery.
Peng Xiang Bin propelled the polystyrene square by sweeping a single oar before him in a figure eight, with minimal resistance on the forward stroke. His goal-a static pull-rope used by other shoresteaders, leading ashore near Dongyuan Hanglu, where the mammoth seawall swung back a hundred meters to protect Pudong Airport, allowing a beach to form. One might sell fish there, to merchants or chefs from the Disney resort. On weekends, a few families even emerged to frolic amid surf and sand, sometimes paying well for a fresh, wriggling catch.
But the rising tide that pushed him closer also meant the massive gates were closed. So, I’ll tie up at the wall and wait. Or maybe climb over. Slip into town, till it ebbs. Bin had a few coins. Not enough to buy more metlon. But sufficient for a well-deserved beer.
Bin’s chunk of polystyrene held a hollow tube with a big, fish-eye lens for scanning below as he rowed-a small advantage that he kept secret. No matter how many times you took a route, there were always new things revealed by the shifting sea. Most of the homes in this zone had been bulldozed after evacuation, then cleared with drag lines, before shoresteading became accepted as a cheaper alternative. Let some poor dope slave away for years, driven by a slender hope of ownership.
Here, little remained but concrete foundations and stubby utility pipes. Still, Bin kept peering through the tube, deliberately veering by what had been the biggest mansion along this coast. Some tech-baron’s sprawling seaside palace, before he toppled in a purge, was dragged off, tried in secret and disassembled for parts-quickly, so he could not spill secrets about even mightier men. Or so the story told. There had been a lot of that going on twenty years ago, all over the world.
Of course government agents picked the place cleaner than a bone at a Sichuan restaurant, before letting the bulldozers in, then other gleaners. Yet, Bin always felt a romantic allure, passing a couple of meters overhead, picturing the place when walls and windows stood high, festooned with lights. When liveried servants patrolled with trays of luscious delicacies, satisfying guests in ways that-well-Bin couldn’t imagine, though sometimes he liked to try.
Of course, the sand and broken crete still held detritus. Old pipes and conduits. Cans of paint and solvents still leaked from the ruin, rising as individual up-drips to pop at the surface and make it gleam. From their hammock-home, Xiang Bin and Mei Ling used to watch sunsets reflect off the rainbow sheen. Back when all of this seemed exciting, romantic and new.
Speaking of new…
Bin stopped sweeping and bent closer to his makeshift periscope, peering downward. A glitter. Something different.
There’s been a cave-in, he realized. Under the foundation slab.
The sea was relatively calm, this far beyond the surf line. So Bin secured the oar and slipped on his facemask. Then he grabbed a length of tether from the raft, took several deep breaths, and flipped into the warm sea with barely a splash, diving for a better look.