He tried to explain, but she was terrified. That big red label on his button—KILLER—FAIR GAME—didn’t fill people with confidence in his character. She hit the button hard, several times. He spent an hour on the floor of the elevator, riding from level to level, and came to with internal bleeding, a cracked ocular orbit, three broken ribs, and a vicious bite mark on his left buttock.
He limped down to the lowest level, where they put the crèches, and found his old crèche manager. She was gray, stooped, and much more frail than he remembered.
“Zhang Lei.” She put a gentle palm on his head—the only place that didn’t hurt. “I was your first cuddler. I decanted you myself. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
If he cried then, he never admitted it.
Zhang Lei watched Jen Dla carry a pot of soup into the dining room. She moved awkwardly, shifting her balance around that bulbous gut. He couldn’t understand it. Why hadn’t she had an operation to remove the tumor? Her mother was even a surgeon.
Terminal, he guessed, and then realized he’d been staring.
Jen Dla nestled the pot on the stove in the middle of the table, and lit the flame. He caught the chef’s eye as she adjusted the temperature of the burner.
“Your father must be an important man here in Paizuo,” he said.
Jen Dla laughed.
“He certainly thinks so.” She laid her hand on the embroidered blouse draped over her bulging abdomen. “Fathers get more self-important with every new grandchild.”
She tapped her finger on her stomach. Zhang Lei sat back in his chair, abruptly. She wasn’t sick, but pregnant—actually bearing a child.
“Are all Miao children body-birthed?” he asked.
She looked a little offended. “Miao who choose to live in Paizuo generally like to follow tradition.”
Abrupt questions leapt behind his teeth—does it hurt, are you frightened—but her expression was forbidding.
“Congratulations,” he said. She smiled and returned to her kitchen.
After talking to Marta, he’d taken the painting down to his room and hidden it under the bed, then collapsed into dream-clouded sleep. The arena at Sklad, deserted, the vast spread of ice all his own. The blades of his skates cut the surface as he built speed, gathered himself, and launched into a quad, spinning through the air so fast the flesh of his face pulled away and snapped back into place on landing. He jumped, spun, jumped again.
Dreams of power and joy, ruined on waking. He’d pulled the painting from under his bed and hid it behind the sofa in the guest house lounge.
Jen Dla’s soup began to bubble. Tomatoes bobbed in the sour rice broth. Zhang Lei watched the fish turn opaque as it cooked, then pinged one word at the three artists upstairs—lunch. They clattered down.
“Looked like you were having a productive session yesterday,” Prajapati said. “Good to see.”
“Don’t stop the flow,” Han Song added.
Paul grinned. “Nothing artists love more than giving unwanted advice.”
“It’s called encouragement,” said Prajapati. “And it’s especially important for young artists.”
“Young competitors, you mean.”
“I don’t see it that way.” She turned to Zhang Lei. “Do you?”
All three artists watched him expectantly. Zhang Lei stared at his hands resting on the wooden tabletop. He’d forgotten to roll down his sleeves. His forearms were exposed, the scarred skin dotted with pigment. He put his hands in his lap.
“I think the fish is ready,” he said.
After lunch, while exploring for new compositions, he found Jen Dang behind the guest house. The water buffalo—one of the first creatures he’d looked up on his seer—was tethered to a post by a loop of rope through its nose. It was huge, lavishly muscled, and heavy, with ridged, back-curving horns, but it stood placidly as Jen Dang examined its hooves.
“Stay back,” Jen Dang said. “Water buffalo aren’t as friendly as they look. He’s not a pet.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Zhang Lei. When he’d sketched the water buffalo, a stern warning had popped into his eye: Do not approach. Will trample, gouge, and kick.
He lifted his viewcatcher and captured a composition: Jen Dang stooping with his back turned to the water buffalo, drawing its massive hindquarter between his own legs and trapping the hoof between his knees.
“All he has to do is back up, and you’ll get squashed,” said Zhang Lei.
“He knows me.” Jen Dang dropped the hoof and patted the animal’s rump. “And he knows the best part of his day is about to begin.”
The farmer untied the rope from the post and led the animal up the narrow trail behind the houses. Zhang Lei followed. A bird stalked from between the trees, its red, gold, and blue body trailing long, spotted brown tail feathers. His seer tagged it: Golden Pheasant, followed by a symbol that meant major symbolic and cultural importance to the indigenous people at this geographical location. Which was no different from most of the plants and animals the seer had identified.
“So, I’ve been using a seer,” he said, as if his rice paddy conversation with Jen Dang had happened that morning instead of days before. “It doesn’t explain anything. Why is every butterfly important to Miao but not the flies? Why one species of bee but not the other?”
“The butterfly is our mother,” Jen Dang said.
“No, it’s not. That’s ridiculous.”
“I might ask you who your mother is, if I were young and rude, and didn’t know better.”
“I don’t have a mother. I was detanked.”
“That means you’re the product of genetic advection, from a tightly edited stream of genetic material subscribed to by your crèche. How is that less strange than having a butterfly mother?”
“Is the butterfly thing a metaphor?”
Jen Dang glanced over his shoulder, his gaze cold. “If you like.”
The water buffalo lipped the tail of Jen Dang’s shirt. He tapped its nose with the palm of his hand to warn it off. The trail widened as it began to climb a high ridge. The water buffalo was heavy but strong. It heaved itself up the slope, like a boulder rolling uphill. Jen Dang ran alongside to keep pace, so Zhang Lei ran after. The exertion felt good, scrambling uphill against the full one-point-zero, with two workout partners. So what if one of them was an animal? Zhang Lei would take what he could get.
When the trail widened, he took the chance to sprint ahead. He made it to the top of the ridge a full ten seconds before the water buffalo. Jen Dang looked him up and down.
“Not bad. Most guests are slow.”
Zhang Lei grinned. “I train in the dubs.”
“Dubs?”
“Double Earth-normal gravity. You know. For strength.”
“I never would have guessed.”
“I know,” Zhang Lei said eagerly. “I look bottom-heavy, right? Narrow above a wide butt and thick legs. That’s what makes me a good skater.”
Shut up, Marta hissed in his ear. But he couldn’t stop. Finally, a real conversation.
“I train for optimal upper-body flexibility, like all center forward play—”
One twinge in his throat, that was all it took to send Zhang Lei plummeting to the ground. He twisted and rolled when he hit the dirt—away from the edge of the hill, and then the world faded to mist.
Zhang Lei clawed his way to consciousness.
You’re fine, you’re fine, nobody’s touched you.
Okay, he mumbled.
You’ve only been down five minutes, Marta added. Tell him you have a seizure disorder and your neurologist is fine-tuning your treatment protocol. Say it.