The Gilded Age Part 20

"f.u.c.king Daughters of Compa.s.sion!" yelled someone in the crowd.

People started pushing, shoving, throwing punches. Suddenly fists were pummeling Zhu's sore guts, and she was flailing with her own fists, her karate moves only as good as her strength, which was next to nothing. Sally and Pat were screaming, whistles shrieking, the speaker's voice fuzzy with feedback.

She was down on the ground in no time, curled up in a fetal position, her hands protecting her head, the back of her neck, and not much else. Someone ripped her jeans down, and she felt a man's hard body pressing against her b.u.t.t. The unmistakable sting of a knife whipped across the backs of her hands before she vomited in the cold mud and pa.s.sed out.

They beat up Sally bad, and Zhu too, seriously bruising but not breaking her ribs. Thankfully, the man didn't rape her, after all. She only fully appreciated her good fortune when she thought about the incident later and nearly vomited again at the memory of that hard male body pressing against her. Pat was stabbed half a dozen times. The WBCO transferred emergency funding and the Changchi medcenter sent her down to Beijing on a whirligig. Zhu heard that Pat died, then later that she was critical, but pulling through.

The mood at the compound became unbearable, a volatile mix of acute fear and red-hot rage. Several comrades quietly moved out. But for those who remained, a new fervor infected everyone.

Sally stood up at the front of the mess hall the very next day, fiercely proud with her face swollen and frightfully black and blue, bandages swathing her head and shoulders and legs. Arm in a sling, she held her cigarette in that hand, insisting on twisting her head down and the broken arm up to suck the herbal smoke in a torturous mime of self-sacrifice. She contaminated the air in the whole dome with her smoke, but no one seemed to care.

"We will not be intimidated!" she shouted in a ragged voice.

"We will not be intimidated!" everyone shouted.

They posted guards around the compound twenty-four hours a day. Sally managed to procure fifty a.s.sault rifles, no one knew from where or from whom. And in her feverish struggle to keep the Daughters alive, Sally also managed to procure the patches. The black patches. This was the point when everything really changed, Zhu thought later, when the Daughters of Compa.s.sion started using the black patches. They told no one, of course, especially the WBCO.

Zhu was in the dorm, recuperating. Sally wouldn't let her stay at the medcenter in town, she wanted her in the compound under the Daughters' guard. The medic had used a mollie knife on Zhu's cuts, which knit the skin just fine. But bruises still darkened the wound sites, the swelling was ugly, and she was weak. She lay huddled on her cot, bruises throbbing, gut gurgling, despair clogging her heart when Sally strode in and sat beside her.

"Give me your leg, kiddo." Sally pulled the bed sheet down.

Zhu felt a sting behind her right knee next to her contraceptive patch and slowly-was it possible?-the throbbing eased. Even her gut settled down. She sat up, twisted her leg, and took a look. There, a patch of silky black fabric adhered to her skin next to the bright red square of the contraceptive patch.

"Feel better?" Sally grinned, a cigarette dangling from her lip.

"Yeah! What is it? What did you do to me?"

"Take it easy. You don't know your own weakness. The patch masks it."

"What's the patch?"

"Oh, it's just some kind of opiate mixed with some kind of upper. What they call a speedball. A black patch."

"d.a.m.n you, Sally." Zhu had endured her teen years without so much as tasting a beer, let alone experimenting with the drugs that floated through Changchi. She must have looked horrified because Sally guffawed till she choked and fanned her face with her hand.

"Hey, don't worry, I can get more."

"This is so not a good idea."

"I think it's a great idea. They use the black patch for medical treatment, so it's okay. The patch releases its stuff over time. Just drizzles that sweet medication right in. Listen, Zhu," she said seriously, "between the bug in your gut and our pals in the square, you're halfway to nowhere. And I need you up and running." She pulled out some hardcopy. "We got info that the Parents hacked our d-base for our stats on skipcouples and skipkids in the Huo-wu District. We gotta get to these folks before they do."

"All right." Zhu remembered swinging her legs down from the cot and thinking that a nutribar might actually taste pretty good right about now.

"We gotta go down to the schools, talk to the teens, the twennies." Sally yammered on, stabbing at the hardcopy with her forefinger. "Plus, we heard they're aiding and abetting illegal pregnancies, setting up secret birth clinics, c.r.a.p like that."

"Okay. All right. I get it."

But Zhu had not gotten it. She had no clue then, no premonition at all, that this was another step down the road to chaos and madness.

No, she smiled. She felt much better with the black patch. She could hardly feel any pain anymore.

Now, in the midst of the Gilded Age Project, Zhu pushes those memories away and strides toward the invisible walls of Tangrenbu, determined to speak with Donaldina Cameron.

"Cameron is a fanatic a lot like you or she will be soon," Muse whispers archly in her ear, "only she's doing her work in 1895. With the blessings of the Presbyterian Church, not the World Birth Control Organization."

"I'm so glad she and I are soul mates."

"Watch the modernisms," Muse has the nerve to remind her.

Nine Twenty Sacramento Street is an imposing red-brick building poised at the crest of a hill angling steeply up n.o.b Hill to the west and down to Tangrenbu to the east. Imposing iron grilles are bolted over the windows. The place looks like a fortress. Or a prison.

The stench of Tangrenbu permeates the autumn air, and the bachelors in their denim sahms trek silently by. Zhu can feel the pressure of their eyes, their muted anger at her presence in front of the controversial Presbyterian mission. In her dress of a Western lady, the veil drawn over her face, and her hair pinned up beneath her Newport hat, she conceals her race. Someone flings a pebble, which strikes her shoulder blade. She doesn't turn around to catch a glimpse of him. Whoever flung the pebble is long gone. She lifts the door knocker and sends a resounding boom into the rooms behind the ma.s.sive walnut door.

A young Chinese woman, her brow knit with worry, cracks the door open and peeks out over a chain lock attached inside. She whispers, "Who is?"

"My name is Miss Zhu Wong. I have an appointment with Miss Cameron. She's expecting me."

The door bangs shut, and locks click. The door reopens, and the young woman hurries her inside, banging the door shut. She shows Zhu to a plain, straight-backed chair in a brightly lit, barren hall. Zhu sits and waits, sniffing the astringent air, the scents of wood polish and lemon soap. She runs her finger along the arm of the chair. Not a speck of dust.

At last a plump Scotch woman strides down the hall, her graying hair pulled back in a tidy bun, a pince-nez perched on her prominent nose. She too scowls with worry. "Good day, Miss Wong. I am Eleanor Olney."

"Good day. Pardon me, Miss Olney, but I'm not the bill collector. Why does everyone look so frightened?"

"We had to dispose of a stick of dynamite this morning. On our stoop, it was."

"Who would put dynamite on your stoop?"

"The highbinders, Miss Wong!" she exclaims. "The tongs are quite displeased with our temporary director. She's thrown the slavers into quite a whirl."

"I see." A peculiar shadow ripples at the far end of the hall, and Zhu looks warily around. Muse posts a string of statistics about the tongs in her peripheral vision. When she looks back, Miss Olney has tucked her pince-nez in her skirt pocket. Or has she? Zhu stares at the woman's face, glimpsing no marks on her nose. Those telltale indentions you usually see when a habitual wearer of gla.s.ses takes them off.

Oh, no. No! Is it happening again? Little changes, little ripples of reality right in front of her eyes. What do they mean? Fear crawls down her spine.

Miss Olney's watery pale blue eyes regard her suspiciously. "This way, Miss Wong. Lo Mo will see you now."

"Lo Mo?"

"Lo Mo means The Mother. With Miss Culbertson on leave, that's what the girls have started calling her. Though her family calls her Dolly, and her closest friends call her Donald. You," she says sternly, "may call her Miss Cameron.'

Zhu strides down the hushed hall, her b.u.t.ton boots clattering on the immaculate plank wood floors. After Jessie's excesses, she finds this place almost too austere, decorated only with a few sticks of furniture and scrupulously clean. Whitewashed walls are relieved by a couple of tiny paintings parsimoniously doled out-a blond Jesus, his blue eyes gazing up to heaven, surrounded by blond children. A smiling Mary in a hooded robe, coddling lambs and doves in her arms. From a distant room, girls' voices dutifully recite, "A B C D E F G."

Two little girls kneel with brushes and pails of soapy water and meticulously scrub the floor. An open door reveals girls seated at tables, busily sewing dresses and shirts, bolts of fabric heaped all around them. Steam and the scent of starch stream from another door where older girls bend over washtubs and piles of laundry. At the end of the hall, girls sit around a huge table heaped with silverware, tea sets, and tea trays, jars of polish and rags stained black. Their low conversation falls silent as Zhu walks by, and they glance at her with their dark eyes. Zhu can't tell if the girls are fearful or merely curious, but a peculiar tension grips them.

The girls are all Chinese, of course. Wards of the home.

Miss Olney shows Zhu to an office, then strides away.

Donaldina Cameron sits imperiously behind a large rosewood desk with the implements of business precisely arranged before her-pen and inkwell, stationery, leather-bound ledgers, an elegant Underwood typewriter. Zhu knows she is only twenty-five, but her chestnut hair caught up in a pompadour is broadly streaked with white, making her appear much older. Her complexion is ashen, her expression harried. Still, she's a lovely woman, Zhu thinks. Scotch, with broad bold brows, large expressive eyes, prominent cheekbones, a sensuous mouth. She wears a billowing black voile skirt and a plum shirtwaist with leg-o'-mutton sleeves hand-folded in tiny pleats.

At her throat gleams an Art Nouveau brooch. With a start, Zhu peers more closely, but the curves of gold are the wings of a dove. Not the aurelia, but expensive. The sort of clothes and jewelry a fine lady would wear. Which seems out of place, unexpected even, in this spartan fortress. A Chinese girl brings in a polished silver tray and serves tea in cups of celadon-glazed porcelain.

"A gift for you, Miss Cameron," Zhu says deferentially and lays the Bible on her desk.

Miss Cameron looks her up and down coldly. "Miss Wong. You look like a proper young lady. Is it true you are employed by that scourge, Jessie Malone?"

Zhu hesitates, her anger quickening at this fine, pampered lady running this bleak mission. Muse flashes a warning in her peripheral vision, and she bites her tongue. Of course she needs Cameron's help. How else can she rescue Wing Sing ? "I'm merely her bookkeeper." At Cameron's contemptuous glance, she adds, "Miss Malone isn't so bad. She's fair."

Cameron takes the Bible, runs her finger down the leather binding. "That is the first time, Miss Wong, I have ever heard anyone call a purveyor of female flesh fair." Dark circles underscore her large, pretty eyes. "What can I do for you?"

"I know of a girl, an abducted girl." And Zhu tells Cameron about Wing Sing and her servitude at Madam Selena's on Pacific Street.

"Oh indeed, I know all about Selena," Cameron says, suddenly freed of her foul mood. Her tired eyes light up. "Selena is despicable. Miss Culbertson rescued a five-year-old from that sink last spring. The child had been smuggled in and sold as a mooie-jai, a household slave. When the child didn't serve tea properly, Selena poured boiling water on her hands. Let me see." Cameron seizes a ledger, leafs through the pages. "Selena's house has got a trapdoor in the roof leading up from the southeast bedroom. There's a butcher's shop in back, a narrow gap between the rooftops, and a fire escape leading down from the shop. That route of escape will have to be watched." She slaps the ledger shut and narrows her eyes. "Why do you want me to rescue this girl?"

"Because. . . ." Zhu hates lying to Cameron, but she's got to. "She's a distant relative of mine. A distant cousin. I truly do not want to see her live like that." At least that's true enough.

"I see. You wouldn't by any chance intend to recruit your distant cousin for Jessie Malone's Morton Alley cribs?"

"No, no! I swear it on that Bible! Nothing like that!"

"Well, Miss Wong, your employment hardly recommends you. We've been deceived by the likes of you many times before."

"I want Wing Sing to live here," she declares with genuine pa.s.sion. "She must live here. She's supposed to live here. Please, I implore you, Miss Cameron. Take Wing Sing into your home. Keep her safe."

This is the truth. This is the object of the Gilded Age Project.

Cameron studies her. Then the gleam returns to her eye, a slow smile to her face. She actually rubs her hands with glee. Glee! "Very well! Let us go rescue Wing Sing."

Cameron sends a messenger to the callbox on Kearny Street, and the officer with the patrol wagon there takes her message to the Chinatown station. Before Zhu has finished her tea, five local bulls show up at the door bearing hatchets, sledgehammers, crowbars, ropes, wedges, and determined scowls.

"Hallo there, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Andrews, gentlemen," Cameron greets them briskly. Zhu thinks the policemen are rather dapper in their bowler hats, high starched collars, cravats, and tweed jackets neatly b.u.t.toned. "This," she says to Zhu, "is our raiding squad." She tells the bulls that Zhu is her informant and mentions Madam Selena, whose name excites their chatter, the flexing of manly muscles, and twitching of mustaches.

Off they go, crammed in a brougham, bound for Pacific Street.

The plug-ugly Stick Victorian has got a red light burning in the window, in spite of the city ordinance. Cameron confers with the police, and two bulls stride around back to stand guard at the fire escape leading down from the roof of the butcher's shop. The rest of their party climbs the stairs to Madam Selena's front door. To Zhu's amazement, Cameron hoists up her skirts and petticoats and bounds up the stairs, leading the way. Zhu follows.

"Even the highbinders dare not harm my person," Cameron declares. "Stay close to me, Miss Wong. You will need to identify her."

The door-Zhu notices for the first time-comes equipped with an outer door of iron bars. A security door that is, at the moment, securely locked. Cameron reaches through the bars, seizes the door knocker shaped like a rooster, and knocks. Nothing happens, but curtains stir in an upstairs window.

"Mr. Andrews?" Cameron says. "Break it down."

Andrews wields his ax and, in a moment, he's smashed the wood all around the door of iron bars. Cooke applies his crowbar, plucking the bolts right out, and pries the door from its frame. Andrews smashes his ax against the inner front door, splintering the wood. A third bull kicks the door in.

Cameron storms inside, her black skirts a thunderhead of fury, and Zhu steps into the parlor she entered before in her coolie's disguise. Andrews whirls, smashing rosewood chairs, tables, statuary, the lewd paintings on the walls. Cooke kicks at the spittoons, the vases, sending porcelain shattering against the baseboards. The third bull heaves the lamp with its red light through the front window, shattering the gla.s.s. Selena's girls fly out of their rooms, shrieking, scrambling here and there, to the back of the house, upstairs.

Zhu and Cameron charge up the stairs, Zhu leading the way now, recalling the bedroom where she last saw Wing Sing. Madam Selena, in a black silk nightgown and robe, steps out of Wing Sing's bedroom. She slams and locks the door, and stands defiantly in their way, barricading the room with her body.

"That's her room, at the end of the hall!" Zhu cries.

And then she stares-is that a figure darting behind Selena into the room? No, no, no. It can't be. Selena just closed and locked the door. Zhu's breath rasps in her throat. Suddenly she's dizzy, disoriented. Reality is shifting and tilting all around her again.

What on earth is happening?

Selena heaves herself at Zhu, cursing and punching. "You go now! No one here!" One of the cops pulls her off and slams her against the wall.

Andrews swings his ax at the door, and Cooke wedges his crowbar. They pop the bedroom door right open, and Zhu and Cameron rush inside.

"No one here!" Selena shouts and spits. "Fahn quai!"

There is no one here. The bedroom is empty. Cameron throws open the closet, throws back the bedclothes, kicks at the flimsy wire frame of the bed.

"She not here, fahn quai!" Madame Selena shouts. "You go now, white devils!"

"Wait," Cameron says, c.o.c.king her head. She presses her forefinger to her lips.

Zhu strains to listen. And there! A tiny, scratching sound.

"You turn into turtle!" Selena yells. "All your children, they turn into toads!"

Cameron seizes the bed, struggles to push it away from the room's corner. Andrews and Cooke join in, shoving the bed frame across the room. Andrews breaks the washstand with one stroke of his ax, sending water and basin flying. Cameron hugs the walls, tapping, listening. "Listen for a hollow sound," she tells Zhu. "There's a secret compartment in here, I can smell it."

Zhu starts tapping on the walls, too, but she hears nothing unusual.

Cameron wipes her n.o.ble forehead with her hand, flushed and sweating.

Again that tiny scratching.

Cameron drops to her knees with a cry of triumph, scratches at the floor with her fingernails. Zhu pushes her aside, takes out and runs the mollie knife down the crack between the floorboards. Cooke applies his crowbar, a loose nail flies out, and two floorboards pop up.

And there, in a narrow s.p.a.ce beneath the floor, lies Wing Sing, wide-eyed and trembling.

"Ai!" screams Madam Selena. "All go to h.e.l.l!"

A tong enforcer stands watching at the door, but he makes no move to interfere. He smiles a little, staring boldly at Zhu.

"Wing Sing," Zhu says, taking her hand, and helps her sit up. The girl is gla.s.sy-eyed, her makeup smeared. Drugged? Her mouth hangs open, her limbs are limp, her hair disheveled. She wears the same apple-green silk pajamas, now soiled and wrinkled. Foreboding rises in Zhu's throat as she glances at the girl's feet. She wears the same straw sandals threaded with green silk. But now her feet are concealed by thick white cotton stockings. Bound or unbound? Zhu can't tell.

"We're going to go now, just like I promised you. Okay?"

"Jade Eyes?"

"Yes, it's me. We're going to take you home." But that's not strictly true. How she hates lying to this girl! "We're going to take you to the home," she amends.

"My jade, my gold," Wing Sing says. "My dowry. I take my dowry!"

"Where's the jewelry she brought with her?" Zhu says to Selena.