The Demon and the City (35 page)

Pin dreamed of finding a patron, just as a wealthier young man might have yearned to find a lover, and the two were not exactly unrelated, as Pin's embarrassing nickname suggested. He could cheerfully have murdered Maiden Ming for bestowing it upon him. Until that throwaway and unnecessary remark, tossed over one exquisite shoulder and accompanied by Maiden Ming's ethereal laugh, his name had been Ryu Tang. It might have been a rather prosaic name, perhaps, but at least it was his own. Pin had, however, been searching for a stage name, something alluring and mysterious, and he had been unwise enough to mention this in company. It had sparked off Maiden Ming's famous comment, which had contained sufficient truth to stick.

"How about 'Pin H'siao'?" Ming had asked. "A charming name, 'The Flute Player.' " The name did have that literal meaning in Cantonese, but it also meant something rather more lewd, and since Pin's youth and good looks had made him popular at some of the city's more decadent parties, not entirely inappropriate. Miss Jhin, being a woman of almost supernatural refinement, had overheard Ming, however, and had taken the new nickname at face value.

"Why, how charming and cultured! I had no idea you were a flautist."

Fourth Chorus, to a person, had fallen about in laughter.

"He keeps his talent well-zipped up, Miss Jhin," someone said.

"Yes, he's supposed to be really accomplished at blowing," added someone else, to the accompaniment of hysterical mirth. Pin H'siao, formerly known as Ryu Tang, had listened sourly to all this, but dared not protest. He knew what would happen if he did: they'd flog the joke to death; but if he kept quiet, maybe it would wear thin. Unfortunately, it had been too good a joke, surviving no less than two cast changes, and Pin doubted now whether he'd ever shake it off. He tried to be graceful about it, with minimal success. At least he'd managed to abbreviate it to "Pin." The humiliation, however, added to his most cherished desire: find a patron and escape from these vulgar surroundings.

Pin had nursed a hidden hope that Paugeng's Jhai Tserai might be that patron, an expectation that he now realized to be completely unrealistic. Halfway through the first aria he had glanced up and seen that Jhai's face was as closed as if a shutter had fallen in front of it. In fact, sitting in tedious splendor as the complicated plot of the opera unfolded around her, she had looked downright bored. So, no chance of patronage there, Pin admitted to himself, but there never had been, really. It was all in his dreaming, hoping mind. In his saner moments, indeed, the thought seized him with a
frisson
of horror. And Jhai already
had
a consort, if the rumors about the demon were true. With a sudden terrified bound of his heart, Pin realized that the demon might very well be at the party. Miss Jhin was coming down the stairs with a handful of invitations; Pin went to see if his name was on the list, and found that it was.

Half an hour later, waiting on the curb outside the Opera House, Pin was joined by a smaller, cloaked figure. Resentful eyes glared from beneath a brocaded hood. Pin crowed.

"You got an invitation, too!"

"I don't think it's funny," Maiden Ming said. "At least you deserve your nickname."

"Well,
Maiden,
you certainly don't," Pin countered, delighted to have scored a point.

A car stopped, and the back door opened.

"Ladies first," he said, with a flourish. Maiden Ming climbed stiffly inside without a backward glance.

It was a long drive to Paugeng. When they reached the complex, all the lights were blazing, but not a sound could be heard above the heavy thud of construction work, somewhere toward the back of the building. The complex was being rebuilt, the work almost complete. The driver led Pin and Ming across the forecourt to the atrium, and sent them up in the elevator. The party was being held on the fiftieth floor, in Tserai's own ballroom, and appeared to be in full swing. As the door of the elevator opened, a man in his forties, with a wide, glazed smile, approached and then kissed Maiden Ming on the cheek. She gave a small trill of laughter and threw off her cloak, holding her arms wide. Pin had to admit that she was an excellent actress, particularly once she was off the stage. Her new friend drew her into the crowd. She did not look back. Pin sighed and stepped through the door.

To Pin's relief, the demon was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the huge room was filled with Singapore Three's elite: executives from the corporations that ran the city, stars from screen and opera, visiting dignitaries from other nations. Servants moved among them with engineered grace, exciting little flurries of interest as they passed; they were joined by the human whores, who had their own admirers. Pin realized without enthusiasm that there were many people whom he knew, but it was unlikely that anyone would remember him. No one would recall a mere rent-boy. As unobtrusively as possible, he collected a drink from a nearby servant and walked across to the window, where he stood looking out across the immense span of the city.

Immediately below, lay the dark pool of the harbor and the curving emptiness of the ocean beyond. From this height, the harbor looked no bigger than a puddle. Pin traced the streets that ran in all directions in a series of diagonals. He could see the main artery of Shaopeng, which, so the Feng Shui dowsers said, mirrored the line of energy called the Great Meridian. Pin was never quite sure whether he believed in
feng shui
, but the corporations took it very seriously and the temple of the dowsers, the Senditreya Endo, had wielded a great deal of power in the city until its recent disgrace. Sometimes, too, it seemed to Pin that he could feel something when he walked in certain places, like a current of electricity stirring under the earth. There were places that caused a curious sense of comfort and security, but others where he did not like to go, because they made him uneasy. Pin shivered, thinking of a little square at the back of Ghenret, which he was afraid to walk through because it produced such a feeling of chilly horror. The dowsers said that such places were closer to Hell than the rest of the world, but Pin put this thought swiftly aside. It did not do to think too much about such things; it was unlucky.

He had wondered, at times, whether he might be sensitive enough to be a dowser. It paid good money, and used to be pretty much a job for life, but Pin thought you had to come from one of the old families to be an initiate into the temple, and besides, it was dangerous. Dowsers walked with one eye on Heaven and the other on Hell, or so it was said, and Pin had a healthy respect for the sanctity of his own soul. And lately there had been some very disturbing stories about the Feng Shui Practitioners' Guild and the earthquakes that had devastated much of Singapore Three. Yet he couldn't be too much of a coward, he thought to himself . . .and then he looked up and saw two bright pinpoints of light, reflected in the smoky glass of the window. The demon was standing behind him. Pin turned, his mouth suddenly dry.

The demon's pointed face was pale, and his eyes were a fiery gold, rimmed with a dark contour as though he had lined each eyelid with kohl. Perhaps he had, Pin thought in a daze of admiration. It was impossible to tell his age; the demon's hair was dark and slick, his face unlined. He did not look much above thirty. He gave Pin a smile that managed to be simultaneously engaging and predatory, revealing sharp teeth.

"Good evening," the demon said, in accented Cantonese.

Pin swallowed hard and managed to find his voice. "I—I hope you enjoyed the performance, sir."

"I enjoyed it immensely," the demon said, "but I'm not sure I entirely understood the plot." His smile widened. "Perhaps you could explain it to me?"

"Oh," Pin said, beginning to babble. "It's really very simple. You see, it's a story about the Tao. There's positive energy, of course—
ch'i
—and negative energy,
sha
. They have to be balanced in order to generate good fortune. In the opera, Celestial Dragon represents the positive energy, and Storm Lord King represents the negative, but that's only one way of looking at it. In some of the operas it's the other way round. And the hero of the opera is a priest who believes in balance. When the Storm Lord conquers the dragon, it symbolizes the balancing of energy. Negative and positive, you see. And balance." With an effort, Pin forced himself to stop wittering repetitively on.

"I see," the demon said, very seriously. One sharp canine caught his lower lip. "Thank you for your explanation. What's your name?"

"Pin," he said, before he could stop himself.

"Pin," the demon repeated. "And my name is Zhu Irzh."

There was a short silence. Pin opened his mouth to say something but at that point a voice purred from behind him

"Why,
darling
 . . ." Pin felt his elbow taken in a steely hand, and suddenly he was staring into the dark eyes of Jhai Tserai. He had thought that the heiress of Paugeng Pharmaceuticals would be taller, yet she was close to his own height; a doll in a silken sari. Her intricately braided hair lay close to her head like a nest of snakes.

"I see you're making friends, dear," Jhai said, with an arch of her eyebrows in the direction of the demon. With a pinch, she released Pin and stepped to take Zhu Irzh's arm in her own. Zhu Irzh looked down at her with an expression that Pin was unable to interpret: a kind of amused tolerance, perhaps. Attuned to malice, Pin schooled his own face into a bland semblance of politeness and gave his hostess a low bow. When he straightened up again, Jhai had already turned away, whispering something to the demon. Zhu Irzh was drawn forward with her, but as he did so he looked back over his shoulder and smiled at Pin.

Pin turned back to the window, feeling oddly shaken. Over the short course of his life, he had met many people and done many things, some of them he would have preferred to have left in the realms of imagination rather than those of experience, yet the demon was different. It was not simply a question of attraction; Pin felt that Zhu Irzh would be able to explain things to him somehow, to make sense of the world.

Pin gazed around the room and realized that his life, which he had previously accepted as a matter of fate and therefore something which one could do nothing about, was no longer the one he wanted. He supposed the impression had been growing for some time—his thoughts about dowsing had indicated that—but the demon seemed to have catalyzed it. Restlessly, he put down his empty glass and wandered across the room to the huge double doors, avoiding those who tried to catch his eye. He needed to be alone for a while.

"Where's the bathroom?" he said to a little servant at the door. The thing turned smoothly and raised its childlike face. Pin caught the antiseptic smell of engineered flesh and automatically took a step back.

"Down the corridor and on the right," the servant said in a sweet, whispering voice. Pin could see its vocal mechanisms stirring in its throat, but the rosebud mouth did not move. He made his way in the direction indicated by its pointing hand.

Even the bathroom was magnificent. Pin spent a moment exploring, then went over to the wall unit and splashed his face with water. He stared at his own reflection in the mirror, wishing that the glass was a gate to another world, and he could step through and walk away. There had to be more than this, but if it were a choice between either corporate indenture, or Fourth Chorus and occasional bouts of prostitution, he'd take the latter options. At least he got to go to parties, he thought dismally.

From one of the cubicles there came a sudden rustle of skirts and a stifled laugh. The door of the cubicle began to open. Pin recognized the laugh; he'd heard it often enough. So that was where Maiden Ming had got to. Having no desire, in his current mood, to encounter his rival, he stepped swiftly into the nearest cubicle and closed the door. There was the murmur of conversation, which Pin could not hear, and then a brief flurry of movement. Pin raised his eyes to the ceiling and waited. He heard the door swing open, and a grunt of exertion as someone emerged. Then the bathroom door whirred open and closed. Cautiously, Pin pushed the cubicle door aside and peered out. The bathroom was empty. He stepped out and paused: on the floor, just in front of the cubicle, was a single drop of blood. In the pallor of the surrounding room, it seemed almost to glow.

Pin knew that there was always the danger, in this particular kind of environment, that one would meet people whose tastes ran to extremes: his own memory winced from certain recollections. He despised Ming, but she was a member of the opera, and therefore one of his own. He ran to the bathroom door, listened for a moment, then stepped carefully through. The corridor was empty. Pin took a deep, steadying breath. Something had happened to Ming, presumably at the hands of one of the guests. Pin thought fast.

Appealing to his hostess was out of the question. The role of chorus people, during their off-hours, was to attend social functions, to be amiable and amusing, and to provide discreet services for the guests, for which they would be handsomely paid. They were also supposed to keep their mouths firmly shut. If Pin started making a fuss, he'd be branded a troublemaker, and why would Jhai Tserai care, anyway? Why would
anyone
care what happened to some little chorus girl? People like Ming and Pin went missing every day. Sometimes they turned up alive, but usually they did not turn up at all, and one was obliged to shrug one's shoulders and carry on as usual. Pin was suddenly sickened by his environment. He considered going alone in search of Ming, but surely the place was a hive of security cameras, and he had no wish to be found somewhere that he shouldn't be. Indecisively, he bit his lip; the impulse toward heroics warred with self-preservation, and the latter won. Guiltily, he made his way back to the party.

Back in the ballroom, the party was getting into its stride.

Pin found Zhu Irzh sitting on a couch, talking to a middle-aged man whom he evidently knew. Pin appraised the stranger with a practiced eye, and noticed two things: firstly, the man was entirely unremarkable, and secondly, he did not appear to be enjoying himself. As the demon talked, the stranger's gaze roamed around the room with ill-concealed distaste, which did not alter substantially when it focused on Pin.