“Ahh, your mama,” Kyriades retorted. They grinned at each other. You had to get on with your partner pretty well to be able to give him that kind of grief. Kyriades stirred the Realie with his toe. “We oughta call the meat wagon for this guy.”
“What we oughta do is let him lay there, let his little pals rifle his pockets and maybe smash in his dumb fuckin’ head.” But duty won. Razmara went over to the car and called for an ambulance. “There. Happy now?”
“If I am, how come my face don’t know it?”
Kyriades might have gone on singing that song for some time. He might have, but he didn’t, because a different avatar appeared in front of him and Razmara. Razmara’s service revolver was in his hand before he quite knew how it got there. The avatar—a bare-chested guy, definitely hunky—threw back his head and laughed. Then he threw his arms wide in invitation. “Go ahead, man. Shoot me. Stun me. Whatever gets you off.”
“Bite me,” Razmara said. Talking back to avatars went against doctrine, but sometimes they pissed you off so much you couldn’t help yourself. If he did shoot this one, the bullet would go on through as if the thing were so much air. If he yanked out his stun gun instead, he would be stunning nothing.
But an avatar could touch him. An avatar could hand out things if he wanted to ... things like little cardboard squares, for instance.
How? The cop didn’t know. The LAPD crime lab sure as hell didn’t. Nobody in the USA did.
“Wanna ... get Real?” the avatar asked, holding out a little blue square and a little yellow one.
“No,” Razmara said stonily.
“Fuck off and die,” Kyriades explained.
The avatar only laughed some more. “Shoveling shit against the tide,” he said, and winked out of existence. Shapur wished he would have thought the thing was wrong.
Hu Zhiaoxing dressed with meticulous care for his conference with the American diplomats. As befitted a country living in the past, the United States preferred—indeed, insisted on—formalwear of long-outmoded style. And so Third Minister Hu had had to learn such archaic skills as tying shoelaces and knotting a cravat. That wasn’t quite a hangman’s knot, even if it felt like one with the pale blue shirt’s collar button buttoned. He wondered why people in bygone days had insisted on such uncomfortable clothes.
“Ready, Minister?” his aide asked. Wang Zemin didn’t have to worry about putting on a silly outfit before he went and explained the facts of life to the Americans. He was wearing a pullover with a sensibly loose neckline, elasticated pants, and memory-foam slip-on shoes.
“I suppose so,” Hu said resignedly. The jacket with lapels he shrugged on wasn’t particularly bad to wear. It just looked stupid. Well, no help for it. He grabbed his briefcase—one more bit of flummery. “Yes, let’s go.”
From the harbor at Avalon, Minister Hu could see the American mainland on the eastern horizon. China had taken Catalina and the other Channel Islands a generation earlier, after the USA—again!—found itself unable to pay its bills. Avalon had been a pretty little town before the transfer of sovereignty: Hu had seen old pictures. In his admittedly biased opinion, it was prettier now.
As they got into the boat, Wang Zemin said, “A pity you can’t do this by avatar, and spare the annoyance of real travel.”
“If I’m not there in the flesh, the Americans will think we’re insulting them.” Minister Hu rephrased that for greater precision: “Looking down our noses at them.”
“Well, so what? We do look down our noses at them,” Wang said. “If they want to think so, fine. As for insulting them ... The trouble with them is, they still think these are the old days, when they knew everything worth knowing and could throw their weight around as much as they pleased. It’s not like that any more.”
“No. It’s not,” Hu Zhiaoxing agreed. “But they still have their pride.”
“They have more of it than they know what to do with,” his aide said. “Why else would you have to go see them in person? Why else would you have to speak English when you do? The whole world uses Mandarin these days. The whole world—except for them. They need to get Real.”
He touched a button. The boat sprang away from the pier. It would cross the forty-odd kilometers—twenty-six miles, an ancient song called the distance, and the Americans still clung to their cumbersome old measurements—in little more than half an hour.
Seabirds squawked in the sky, though they soon fell behind the boat. Unless you were a birder, which Hu wasn’t, the gulls and cormorants and pelicans on this side of the Pacific looked pretty much like the ones far to the west.
An honor guard awaited the minister and his aide when they got to the harbor at San Pedro. The men looked tough and capable. Their uniforms and weapons ... As charitably as he could, Hu thought, China has better.
A white man in a suit much like his came forward and held out his hand. “How do you do, sir?” he said in English. “I’m Brett Hill, the protocol chief.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Minister Hu said. He shook hands—one more old-fashioned ritual you had to endure with Americans. “But I understood I was to meet with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the DEA?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” Hill had a broad, eager, friendly smile of the sort the minister instinctively distrusted. “They’re waiting for you not far from here. We have a car to take you to the hotel.”
He gestured. The large, muscular car was an American model. Hu Zhiaoxing sighed to himself. If the officials weren’t far away, the machine would probably get him there without breaking down. Wang Zemin’s expression was eloquent. He didn’t say anything. Neither did Hu. He just nodded. The things I do for my country, he thought.
Smiling still, the protocol chief led them to the Saturn. The honor guard presented arms when the Chinese walked past. One man’s hand twisted for a moment as he gripped the stock of his minichain. Only a Realie would have used that gesture. Hu’s face betrayed nothing. Neither did Wang’s. The aide didn’t mind showing what he thought of the American government. Getting an ordinary soldier in trouble was a different story.
The car idled roughly. Its shocks left something to be desired. Brett Hill plainly thought it was state of the art. Minister Hu didn’t waste time educating him. Life was too short. Hill also plainly took potholes for granted. A raised eyebrow from Hu passed a message to his aide. He’s only an American. He doesn’t know any better. Wang gave back an almost imperceptible nod of his own.
They’d cleaned up the Marriott—it was indeed near the harbor—so it almost came up to Chinese standards. That only made the neighborhood around the place seem more blighted by comparison.
In the conference room where the American dignitaries waited, Hu declined ice water. He accepted tea. Drug residues in a small cup wouldn’t be too bad, and boiling ought to kill the germs. Wang Zemin drank nothing at all.
Secretary of State Jackson was short and plump and black. Secretary of Defense Berkowitz was short and thin and white. Secretary of the DEA Kojima was short and potbellied (but not really plump) and, by his looks, no more than a quarter Asian. Both Hu and Wang were five or six centimeters taller than any of them—and taller than Brett Hill, too, for that matter. Better nutrition when we were growing up, Hu thought.
But that had nothing to do with the price of rice. “As you requested, gentlemen, I am here,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”
“You’ve got to stop selling your poison in our towns!” Kojima burst out.