“I want things,” she said.
Okay, hopeless. Fred gave up. They stood by the wall for a long time, so long that eventually the moon shone down on them entirely from the west side of the branch that had been bisecting it.
“We’re waiting for someone,” Fred guessed.
“For the right train.”
“A train to where?”
She didn’t answer. He suppressed all his questions, tried to content himself with the sight of her. Part of the unexpected beauty of old Beijing at night. In his previous visits he had only ever been to the city outside the Sixth Ring Road, where high rises and industrial parks dominated. Now, with lit paper globes strung through the trees and reflecting off the still water, and a paper dragon draped along the stone dragon that topped the canal wall, it seemed as if he had been transported to a China out of legend.
Qi was looking across the canal.
“What’s wrong?” Fred said.
“There’s a chaoyangqunzhong over there,” she said.
“Is that police?”
“No, just an ordinary person being a public security volunteer. They use an app on their wrists to make anonymous tips to the police.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell by the glasses they’re wearing. Here, hug me.”
She moved against him and buried her head against his shoulder. Startled, he put his face in her hair, breathed it in. Faint scent of jasmine or some other flowery shampoo.
“Will they know that you’ve spotted them,” he murmured in her hair, as if romantically. He could feel her breasts pressed into his chest, and her pregnant belly, and she had an arm up and over his shoulder and neck. He could feel her warmth.
“I don’t know,” she said, voice muffled. “I’d like to get out of here, in the direction behind me. Turn so you’re on the canal side, and help me along.”
She turned and Fred followed her instructions, bending over her and murmuring nothings. “Do you have a Western name?” he asked in a low voice. “A Western name you used at school or something?”
“Charlotte,” she said.
“Charlotte,” he said, and breathed it like a chant as they hurried along the canalside. He hunched over her as much as he could, and she watched where they were going, guided him away from people coming in their direction. When they got to the end of the canal they turned right, and when they were in a narrow dark street they picked up their pace, finally running to the next intersection, hand in hand. Again she led him, dragging him first right then left, finally into a winding street. Dim streetlights competed with the moon to make the darkest shadows.
They came to a building so big it covered three or four blocks. “We have to wait,” Qi said, looking at her wristpad. “Fifteen minutes.”
“I don’t think we were followed.”
“You don’t know. I’m chipped, so we need to wait until my friends change that.”
“Change the chip?” he asked, confused.
“Change the train station’s record of the chip.”
Her scowl was enough to stop questions, at least for now. There was a look that flashed over her face from time to time that he found a little terrifying.
The train station was the source of all kinds of noise: huge hisses and whooshes, also hums like those of a power plant. Under those, an oceanic slosh of voices; also bell tones frequently ringing. Finally Qi took his hand and strapped one of the wristpads she had gotten from her friends onto his wrist. “Time to go,” she said. “You’re with me, so I’ll do the talking.”
“What if they ask me questions in English?”
“Tell them you’re with me!” she said, and dragged him off.
The train station was completely surrounded by other buildings, it seemed to Fred; trains were apparently arriving and departing underground. One new wing on the east end of the giant building displayed posters with pictures that suggested it was a hyperloop terminal. Qi confirmed this and added that they were very fast. She looked at his wristpad and told him his name was William Janney, then marched them to broad doors at the other end of the station, where they stood in the line going through a security checkpoint. Fred worried about the chip she had mentioned, embedded in her body somewhere. Was every Chinese person chipped, or was she special? He had heard once that the Chinese all had citizenship scores, like credit ratings but more comprehensive. He had never worried about that kind of thing himself, as he was a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide. No need to pry into a book that had no pages. But now it did. Fred gulped and stood behind her, looking down, feeling conspicuous. He didn’t like anything he couldn’t control, which of course meant there was a great deal he didn’t like, but this was unusually bad.
Finally they came to the security gate and sailed through without a second glance from the guards manning it. On through a huge central hall of the station, a cathedral-like space of empty air ringed by four stacks of busy balcony malls. Qi pulled him past a wall of ticket booths, then past shops and kiosks selling everything travelers might want, then onto a platform at the far end of the building. There was a train waiting by this platform, and again they presented their wristpads. Qi said something to a conductor, a severe elderly woman, and then they were allowed to step up into the narrow hallway of the train.
Everything about it was old and battered. A slow train, a train that had carried millions of people millions of kilometers, still in service despite all. A train for poor people. They passed through a car of open seats, then crossed into the next car, which featured individual sleeper compartments, each so narrow that people turned sideways to slip through their doorways. Qi held her wristpad to one of these, and when the door clicked she pushed it in and turned to squeeze through. Fred followed her. Inside, beyond the empty space needed for the door to open, a thin low bed filled the whole of the compartment, except for a narrow slot leading to the window, where two short seats faced each other. A minimalist space, but compared to what he had seen elsewhere on the train, luxurious.
They sat down on the two seats, looked out the window. In the darkness it was hard to see anything but their reflections in the glass. That other couple looked tired and worried.
“Seems like your friends got us through,” Fred said.
“So far so good,” she said. “We’ll know after we get off.”
“Will that be long?” he asked. Then, when she didn’t reply: “Are you sure you can’t tell me where we’re going?”
“Shekou,” she said.
He didn’t know where that was, which of course she knew would be the case.
“I’m going to go to the dining car and get us some food,” she said. “You stay here till I get back, all right?”
“All right.”
While she was gone Fred began to get even more worried, which surprised him, as he had thought he was already maxed out in that regard. Nothing had gone right since Governor Chang had crumpled into his arms. This single shard of memory was preceded and followed by blank periods, then by blurry recollections of coming to and fading out. No question there were major gaps in his memory of his time on the moon. This he found frightening. The gaps—also what he could remember—both were bad. His inability to understand Chinese was bad. The absence of Americans coming to his aid had been bad. Food had been bad; gravity had been bad. Being moved suddenly from place to place, wearing shackles or strapped to a gurney; taken to spaces smaller even than this sleeper compartment: all that had been very bad. He began to shiver a little. It was still happening faster than he could take in, and he had to work hard to suppress an undertow of terror.