The candy shop had vanished and the old woman with it. "Where is she?" he asked.The scavenger shrugged and continued to sift through wreckage, seeking good wood or good cardboard or corrugated iron."How is it above?" he asked."As below," the man said in halting Cantonese. "Some good, some bad. Joss."Wu thanked him. He was barefoot, carrying his shoes to protect them and now he left the storm drain and forced his way over some of the debris wreckage to find the path that meandered upward. From where he was he could not see his area though it seemed there were no slides there. Armstrong had allowed him to come home to check when the radio news had again reported bad slides in this part of the resettlement area. "But be back as quickly as you can. Another interrogation's scheduled for seven o'clock.""Oh yes, I'll be back," he muttered out loud.The sessions had been very tiring but for him good, with much praise from Armstrong and the chief of SI, his place in SI assured now, transfer and training to begin next week. He had had little sleep, partially because the session hours bore no relationship to day or night, and partially because of his wish to succeed. The client was shifting from English to Ning-tok dialect to Cantonese and back again and it had been hard to follow all the ramblings. It was only when his fingers had touched the wonderful, rare roll of bills in his pocket, his winnings at the races, that a lightness had taken hold and carried him through the difficult hours. Again he touched them to reassure himself, blessing his joss, as he climbed the narrow pathway, the path at times a rickety bridge over small ravines, climbing steadily. People passed by, going down, and others were following going up, the noise of hammers and rebuilding, reroofing all over the mountainside.His area was a hundred yards ahead now, around this corner, and he turned it and stopped. His area was no more, just a deep scar in the earth, the piled-up avalanche of mud and debris two hundred feet below. No dwellings where there had been hundreds.Numbly he climbed, skirting the treacherous slide, and went to the nearest hovel, banging on the door. An old woman opened it suspiciously."Excuse me, Honored Lady, I'm Wu Cho-tam's son from Ning-tok</emphasis>"The woman, One Tooth Yang, stared at him blankly, then started speaking but Wu did not understand her language so he thanked her and went off, remembering that this was one of the areas settled by the Yang, some of the northern foreigners who came from Shanghai.Closer to the top of the slide he stopped and knocked on another door."Excuse me, Honored Sir, but what happened? I'm Wu Cho-tam's son from Ning-tok and my family were there." He pointed at the scar."It happened in the night, Honorable Wu," the man told him, speaking a Cantonese dialect he could understand. "It was like the sound of the old Canton express train and then a rumbling from the earth, then screams then some fires came. It happened the same last year over there. Ah yes, the fires began quickly but the rains doused them. Dew neh loh moh but the night was very bad." The neighbor was an old man with no teeth and his mouth split into a grimace. "Bless all gods you weren't sleeping there, heya?" He shut the door.Wu looked back at the scar, then picked his way down the hill. At length he found one of the elders of his area who was also from Ning-tok."Ah, Spectacles Wu, Policeman Wu! Several of your family are there." His gnarled old finger pointed above. "There, in the house of your cousin, Wu Wam-pak.""How many were lost, Honorable Sir?""Fornicate all mud slides how do I know? Am I keeper of the mountainside? There are dozens missing."Spectacles Wu thanked him. When he found the hut, Ninth Uncle was there, Grandmother, Sixth Uncle's wife and their four children, Third Uncle's wife and baby. Fifth Uncle had a broken arm, now in a crude splint."And the rest of us?" he asked. Seven were missing."In the earth," grandmother said. "Here's tea, Spectacles Wu.""Thank you, Honored Grandmother. And Grandfather?""He went to the Void before the slide. He went to the Void in the night, before the slide.""Joss. And Fifth Niece.""Gone. Vanished, somewhere.""Could she still be alive?""Perhaps. Sixth Uncle's searching for her now, below, and the others, even though she's a useless mouth. But what about my sons, and their sons, and theirs?""Joss," Wu said sadly, not cursing the gods or blessing them. Gods make mistakes. "We will light joss sticks for them that they may be reborn safely, if there is rebirth. Joss." He sat down on a broken crate. "Ninth Uncle, our factory, was the factory damaged?""No, thank all gods." The man was numbed. He had lost his wife and three children, somehow scrambling out of the sea of mud that had swallowed them all. "The factory is undamaged.""Good." All the papers and research materials for Freedom Fighter were there—along with the old typewriter and ancient Ges-tetner copying machine. "Very good. Now, Fifth Uncle, tomorrow you will buy a plastic-making machine. From now on we'll make our own flowers. Sixth Uncle will help you and we will begin again."The man spat disgustedly, "How can we pay, eh? How can we start? How can we . . ." He stopped and stared. They all gasped, Spectacles Wu had brought out the roll of bills. "Ayeeyah, Honored Younger Brother, I can see that at long last you have seen the wisdom of joining the Snake!""How wise!" the others chorused proudly. "All gods bless Younger Brother!"The young man said nothing. He knew they would not believe him if he said otherwise, so he let them believe. "Tomorrow begin looking for a good secondhand machine. You can pay only $900," he told the older man, knowing that 1,500 was available if necessary. Then he went outside and arranged with their cousin, the owner of this hut, to lease them a corner until they could rebuild, haggling over the price until it was correct. Satisfied that he had done what he could for the Wu clan, he left them and plodded downhill back to headquarters, his heart weeping, his whole soul wanting to shriek at the gods for their unfairness, or carelessness, for taking so many of them away, taking Fifth Niece who but a day or so ago was given back her life in another slide.Don't be a fool, he ordered himself. Joss is joss. You have wealth in your pocket, a vast future with SI, Freedom Fighter to manufacture, and the time of dying is up to the gods.Poor little Fifth Niece. So pretty, so sweet."Gods are gods," he muttered wearily, echoing the last words he remembered her ever saying, then put her out of his mind.776:30 P.M. :Ah Tat hobbled up the wide staircase in the Great House, her old joints creaking, muttering to herself, and went along the Long Gallery, hating the gallery and the faces that seemed ever to be watching her. Too many ghosts here, she thought with superstitious dread, knowing too many of the faces in life, growing up in this house, born in this house eighty-five years ago. Uncivilized to hold their spirits in thrall by hanging their likenesses on the wall. Better to act civilized and cast them into memory where spirits belong.As always when she saw the Hag's knife stuck through the heart of her father's portrait a shudder went through her. Dew neh loh moh, she thought, now there was a wild one, her with the unquenchable demon in her Jade Gate, ever secretly bemoaning the loss of the tai-pan, her husband's father, bemoaning her fate that she had married the weakling son and not the father, never to be bedded by the father, her Jade Gate unquenchable because of that.