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POCKETFUL OF DHARMA

By Paolo Bacigalupi

WANG JUN STOOD ON THE rain-slicked streets of old Chengdu and stared up into the drizzle at Huojianzhu.

It rose into the evening darkness, a massive city core, dwarfing even Chengdu’s skyscrapers. Construction workers dangled from its rising skeleton, swinging from one section of growth to the next on long rappelling belts. Others clambered unsecured, digging their fingers into the honeycomb structure, climbing the struts with careless dangerous ease. Soon the growing core would overwhelm the wet-tiled roofs of the old city. Then Huojianzhu, the Living Architecture, would become Chengdu entirely.

It grew on lattices of minerals, laying its own skeleton and following with cellulose skin. Infrastructure strong and broad, growing and branching, it settled roots deep into the green fertile soil of the Sichuan basin. It drew nutrients and minerals from the soil and sun, and the water of the rancid Bing Jiang; sucking at pollutants as willingly as it ate the sunlight which filtered through twining sooty mist.

Within, its veins and arteries grew pipelines to service the waste and food and data needs of its coming occupants. It was an animal vertical city built first in the fertile minds of the Biotects and now growing into reality. Energy pulsed from the growing creature. It would stand a kilometer high and five wide when fully mature. A vast biologic city, which other than its life support would then lie dormant as humanity walked its hollowed arteries, clambered through its veins and nailed memories to its skin in the rituals of habitation.

Wang Jun watched Huojianzhu and dreamed in his small beggar-boy mind of ways and means that might lead him out of the wet streets and hunger and into its comforts. Already sections of it glowed with habitation. People, living high and far above him, roamed the organism’s corridors. Only the powerful and wealthy would live so high above. Those with guanxi. Connections. Influence.

His eyes sought the top of the core, through the darkness and rain and mist, but it disappeared long before his eyes could find it. He wondered if the people up high saw the stars while he saw only drizzle. He had heard that if one cut Huojianzhu, its walls would bleed. Some said it cried. He shivered at the rising creature and turned his eyes back to earth to continue pushing with his stick-thin limbs and bent posture through the Chengdu crowds.

Commuters carried black umbrellas or wore blue and yellow plastic ponchos to protect them from the spitting rain. His own hair lay soaked, slicked to the contours of his skull. He shivered and cast about himself, seeking hard for likely marks, so that he nearly tripped over the Tibetan.

The man squatted on the wet pavement with clear plastic covering his wares. Soot and sweat grimed his face, so that his features sheened black and sticky under the harsh halogen glare of the street lamps. The warped and jagged stumps of his teeth showed as he smiled. He pulled a desiccated tiger claw from under the plastic and waved it in Wang Jun’s face.

“You want tiger bones?” He leered. “Good for virility.”

Wang Jun stopped short before the waving amputated limb. Its owner was long dead so that only the sinews and ragged fur and the bone remained, dried and stringy. He stared at the relic and reached out to touch the jerky tendons and wickedly curving yellowed claws.

The Tibetan jerked it away and laughed again. There was a tarnished silver ring on his finger, studded with chunks of turquoise; a snake twining around his finger and swallowing its tail endlessly.

“You can’t afford to touch.” He ground phlegm and spit on the pavement beside him, leaving a pool of yellow mucus shot through with the black texturing of Chengdu’s air.

“I can,” said Wang Jun.

“What have you got in your pockets?”

Wang Jun shrugged and the Tibetan laughed. “You have nothing, you stunted little boy. Come back when you’ve got something in your pockets.”

He waved his goods of virility at the interested, more moneyed buyers who had gathered. Wang Jun slipped back into the crowd.

It was true what the Tibetan said. He had nothing in his pockets. He had a ratted wool blanket hidden in a Stone-Ailixin cardboard box, a broken VTOL Micro-Machine, and a moldering yellow woolen school hat.

He had come from the green-terraced hills of the countryside with less than that. Already twisted and scarred with the passage of plague, he had come to Chengdu with empty hands and empty pockets and the recollections of a silent dirt village where no thing lived. His body carried recollections of pain so deep that it remained permanently crouched in a muscular memory of that agony.

He had had nothing in his pockets then and he had nothing in his pockets now. It might have bothered him if he had ever known anything but want. Anything but hunger. He could resent the Tibetan’s dismissal no more than he might resent the neon logos which hung from the tops of towers and illuminated the pissing rain with flashing reds, yellows, blues, and greens. Electric colors filled the darkness with hypnotic rhythms and glowing dreams. Red Pagoda Cigarettes, Five Star Beer, Shizi Jituan Software, and Heaven City Banking Corporation. Confucius Jiajiu promised warm rice wine comfort while JinLong Pharmaceuticals guaranteed long life, and it all lay beyond him.

He hunkered in a rain-slicked doorway, with his twisted bent back and empty pockets and emptier stomach and wide-open eyes looking for the mark who would feed him tonight. The glowing promises hung high above him, more connected to those people who lived in the skyscrapers: people with cash and officials in their pockets. There was nothing up there he knew or understood. He coughed, and cleared the black mucus from his throat. The streets, he knew. Organic rot and desperation, he understood. Hunger, he felt rumbling in his belly.

He watched covetously as people walked past and he called out to them in a polyglot of Mandarin, Chengdu dialect, and the only English words he knew, “Give me money. Give me money.” He tugged at their umbrellas and yellow ponchos. He stroked their designer sleeves and powdered skin until they relented and gave money. Those who broke away, he spat upon. The angry ones who seized him, he bit with sharp yellow teeth.

Foreigners were few now in the wet. Late October hurried them homeward, back to their provinces, homes, and countries. Leaner times lay ahead, lean enough that he worried about his future and counted the crumpled paper the people threw to him. He held tight the light aluminum jiao coins people tossed. The foreigners always had paper money and often gave, but they grew too few.

He scanned the street, then picked at a damp chip of concrete on the ground. In Huojianzhu, it was said, they used no concrete to build. He wondered what the floors would feel like, the walls. He dimly remembered his home from before he came to Chengdu, a house made of mud, with a dirt floor. He doubted the city core was made of the same. His belly grew emptier. Above him, a video loop of Lu Xieyan, a Guangdong singer, exhorted the people on the street to strike down the Three Wrongs of Religion: Dogmatism, Terrorism, and Splittism. He ignored her screeching indictments and scanned the crowds again.

A pale face bobbed in the flow of Chinese. A foreigner, but he was a strange one. He neither pushed ahead with a purpose, nor gawked about himself at Chengdu’s splendors. He seemed at home on the alien street. He wore a black coat which stretched to the ground. It was shiny, so it reflected the reds and blues of neon, and the flash of the street lamps. The patterns were hypnotic.

Wang Jun slid closer. The man was tall, two meters high, and he wore dark glasses so that his eyes were hidden. Wang Jun recognized the glasses and was sure the man saw clearly from behind the inky ovals. Microfibers in the lenses stole the light and amplified and smoothed it so that the man saw day, even as he hid his eyes from others in the night.

Wang Jun knew the glasses were expensive and knew Three-Fingers Gao would buy them if he could steal them. He watched the man and waited as he continued up the street with his assured, arrogant stride. Wang Jun trailed him, stealthy and furtive. When the man turned into an alley and disappeared, Wang Jun rushed to follow.

He peeked into the alley’s mouth. Buildings crowded the passageway’s darkness. He smelled excrement and dead things moldering. He thought of the Tibetan’s tiger claw, dried and dead, with pieces nicked away from the bone and tendons where customers had selected their weight of virility. The foreigner’s footsteps echoed and splashed in the darknesss; the even footsteps of a man who saw in the dark. Wang Jun slid in after him, crouching and feeling his way blindly. He touched the roughness of the walls. Instant concrete. Stroking the darkness, he followed the receding footsteps.

Whispers broke the dripping stillness. Wang Jun smiled in the darkness, recognizing the sound of a trade. Did the foreigner buy girls? Heroin? So many things for a foreigner to buy. He settled still, to listen.

The whispers grew heated and terminated in a brief yelp of surprise. Someone gagged and then there was a rasping and a splash. Wang Jun trembled and waited, as still as the concrete to which he pressed his body.

The words of his own country echoed, “Kai deng ba.” Wang Jun’s ears pricked at a familiar accent. A light flared and his eyes burned under the sharp glare. When his sight adjusted he stared into the dark eyes of the Tibetan street hawker. The Tibetan smiled slowly showing the encrustations Of his teeth and Wang Jun stumbled back, seeking escape.

The Tibetan captured Wang Jun with hard efficiency. Wang Jun bit at the Tibetan’s hands and fought, but the Tibetan was quick and he pressed Wang Jun against the wet concrete ground so that all Wang Jun could see were two pairs of boots; the Tibetan’s and a companion’s. He struggled, then let his body lie limp, understanding the futility of defiance.

“So, you’re a fighter,” the Tibetan said, and held him clown a moment longer to make his lesson clear. Then he hauled Wang Jun upright. His hand clamped painfully at Wang Jun’s nape. “NJ shi shei?” he asked.

Wang Jun trembled and whined, “No one. A beggar. No one.”

The Tibetan looked more closely at him and smiled. “The ugly boy with the empty pockets. Do you want the tiger’s claw after all?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“You will receive nothings” said the Tibetan’s companion. The Tibetan smirked. Wang Jun marked the new speaker as Hunanese by his accent.

The Hunanese asked, “What is your name?”

“Wang Jun.”

“Which ‘Jun’?”

Wang Jun shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The Hunanese shook his head and smiled. “A farmer’s boy,” he said. “What do you plant? Cabbage? Rice?” He laughed. “The Sichuanese are ignorant. You should know how to write your name. I will assume that your ‘Jun’ is for soldier. Are you a soldier?”

Wang Jun shook his head. “I’m a beggar.”

“Soldier Wang, the beggar? No. That won’t do. You are simply Soldier Wang.” He smiled. “Now tell me, Soldier Wang, why are you here in this dangerous dark alley in the rain?”

Wang Jun swallowed. “I wanted the foreigner’s dark glasses.”

“Did you?”

Wang Jun nodded.

The Hunanese stared into Wang Jun’s eyes, then nodded. “All right, Little Wang. Soldier Wang,” he said. “You may have them. Go over there. Take them if you are not afraid.” The Tibetan’s grip relaxed and Wang Jun was free.

He looked and saw where the foreigner lay, face down in a puddle of water. At the Hunanese’s nod, he edged closer to the still body, until he stood above it. He reached down and pulled at the big man’s hair until his face rose dripping from the water, and his expensive glasses were accessible. Wang Jun pulled the glasses from the corpse’s face and laid its head gently back into the stagnant pool. He shook water from the glasses and the Hunanese and Tibetan smiled.

The Hunanese crooked a finger, beckoning.

“Now, Soldier Wang, I have a mission for you. The glasses are your payment. Put them in your pocket. Take this,” a blue datacube appeared in his hand, “and take it to the Renmin Lu bridge across the Bing Jiang. Give it to the person who wears white gloves. That one will give you something extra for your pocket.” He leaned conspiratorially closer, encircling Wang Jun’s neck and holding him so that their noses pressed together and Wang Jun could smell his stale breath. “If you do not deliver this, my friend will hunt you down and see you die.”

The Tibetan smiled.

Wang Jun swallowed and nodded, closing the cube in his small hand. “Go then, Soldier Wang. Dispense your duty.” The Hunanese released his neck, and Wang Jun plunged for the lighted streets, with the datacube clutched tight in his hand.

The pair watched him run.

The Hunanese said, “Do you think he will survive?”

The Tibetan shrugged. “We must trust that Palden Lhamo will protect and guide him now.” “And if she does not?”

“Fate delivered him to us. Who can say what fate will deliver him.? Perhaps no one will search a beggar child. Perhaps we both will be alive tomorrow to know.”

“Or perhaps in another turning of the Wheel.”

The Tibetan nodded.

“And if he accesses the data?”

The Tibetan sighed and turned away. “Then that too will be fate. Come, they will be tracking us.”

THE BING JIANG ran like an oil slick under the bridge, black and sluggish. Wang Jun perched on the bridge’s railings soot-stained stone engraved with dragons and phoenixes cavorting through clouds. He looked down into the river and watched styrofoam shreddings of packing containers float lazily on the thick surface of the water. Trying to hit a carton, he hawked phlegm and spat. He missed, and his mucus joined the rest of the river’s effluent. He looked at the cube again. Turning it in his hands as he had done several times before as he waited for the man with the white gloves. It was blue, with the smoothness of all highly engineered plastics. Its texture reminded him of a tiny plastic chair he had once owned. It had been a brilliant red but smooth like this. He had begged from it until a stronger boy took it.

Now he turned the blue cube in his hands, stroking its surface and probing its black data jack with a speculative finger. He wondered if it might be more valuable than the glasses he now wore. Too large for his small head, they kept slipping down off his nose. He wore them anyway, delighted by the novelty of day-sight in darkness. He pushed the glasses back up on his nose and turned the cube again.

He checked for the man with white gloves and saw none. He turned the cube in his hands. Wondering what might be on it that would kill a foreigner.

The man with white gloves did not come.

Wang Jun coughed and spit again. If the man did not come before he counted ten large pieces of styrofoam, he would keep the cube and sell it.

Twenty styrofoam pieces later, the man with white gloves had not come, and the sky was beginning to lighten. Wang Jun stared at the cube. He considered throwing it in the water. He waited as nongmin began filtering across the bridge with their pull-carts laden with produce. Peasants coming in from the countryside, they leaked into the city from the wet fertile fields beyond, with mud between their toes and vegetables on their backs. Dawn was coming. Huojianzhu glistened, shining huge and alive against a lightening sky. He coughed and spit again and hopped off the bridge. He dropped the datacube in a ragged pocket. The Tibetan wouldn’t be able to find him anyway.

Sunlight filtered through the haze of the city. Chengdu absorbed the heat. Humidity oozed out of the air, a freak change in temperature, a last wave of heat before winter came on. Wang Jun sweated. He found Three-Fingers Gao in a game room. Gao didn’t really have three fingers. He had ten, and he used them all as he controlled a three-dimensional soldier through the high mountains of Tibet against the rebellion. He was known in Chengdu’s triad circles as the man who had made TexTel’s Chief Rep pay 10,000 yuan a month in protection money until he rotated back to Singapore. Because of the use of three fingers.

Wang Jun tugged Three-Fingers’s leather jacket. Distracted, Three-Fingers died under an onslaught of staff-wielding monks.

He scowled at Wang Jun. “What?”

“I got something to sell.”

“I don’t want any of those boards you tried to sell me before. I told you, they’re no good without the hearts.”

Wang Jun said, “I got something else.”

“What?”

He held out the glasses and Three-Fingers’s eyes dilated. He feigned indifference. “Where did you get those?”

“Found them.”

“Let me see.”

Wang Jun released them to Three-Fingers reluctantly. Three-Fingers put them on, then took them off and tossed them back at Wang Jun. “I’11 give you twenty for them.” He turned back to start another game.

“I want one hundred.”

“Mei me’er.” He used Beijing slang. No way. He started the game. His soldier squatted on the plains, with snowy peaks rising before him. He started forward, pushing across short grasses to a hut made of the skin of earlier Chinese soldiers. Wang Jun watched and said, “Don’t go in the hut.”

“I know.”

“I’ll take fifty.”

Three-Fingers snorted. His soldier spied horsemen approaching and moved so that the hut hid him from their view. “I’ll give you twenty.”

Wang Jun said, “Maybe BeanBean will give me more.”

“I’ll give you thirty, go see if BeanBean will give you that.” His soldier waited until the horsemen clustered. He launched a rocket into their center. The game machine rumbled as the rocket exploded. “You have thirty now?”

Three-Fingers turned away from his game and his soldier perished quickly as bio-engineered yakmen boiled out of the hut. He ignored the screams of his soldier as he counted out the cash to Wang Jun. Wang Jun left Three-Fingers to his games and celebrated the sale by finding an unused piece of bridge near the Bing Jiang. He settled down to nap under it through the sweltering afternoon heat.

He woke in the evening and he was hungry. He felt the heaviness of coins in his pocket and thought on the possibilities of his wealth. Among the coins, his fingers touched the unfamiliar shape of the data cube. He took it out and turned it in his hands. He had nearly forgotten the origin of his money. Holding the data cube, he was reminded of the Tibetan and the Hunanese and his mission. He considered seeking out the Tibetan and returning it to him, but deep inside he held a suspicion that he would not find the man selling tiger bones tonight. His stomach rumbled. He dropped the datacube back into his pocket and jingled the coins it resided with. Tonight he had money in his pockets. He would eat well.

“How much for mapo dofu?”

The cook looked at him from where he stood, swirling a soup in his broad wok, and listening to it sizzle.

“Too expensive for you, Little Wang. Go and find somewhere else to beg. I don’t want you bothering my customers.”

“Shushu, I have money.” Wang Jun showed him the coins. “And I want to eat.”

The cook laughed. “Xiao Wang is rich! Well then, Little Wang, tell me what you care for.”

“Mapo dofu, yu xiang pork, two liang of rice and Wu Xing beer.” His order tumbled out in a rush.

“Little Wang has a big stomach! Where will you fit all that food, I wonder?” When Wang Jun glared at him he said, “Go, sit, you’ll have your feast.”

Wang Jun went and sat at a low table and watched as the fire roared and the cook threw chiles into the wok to fry. He wiped at his mouth to keep from drooling as the smell of the food came to his nose. The cook’s wife opened a bottle of Five Star for him, and he watched as she poured the beer into a wet glass. The day’s heat was dissipating. Rain began to spatter the street restaurant’s burlap roof. Wang Jun drank from his beer and watched the other diners, taking in the food they ate and the company they kept. These were people he might have previously harassed for their money. But not tonight. Tonight he was a king. Rich, with money in his pocket.

His thoughts were broken by the arrival of a foreigner. A broad man with long white hair pulled back in a horse’s tail. His skin was pale and he wore white gloves. He stepped under the sheltering burlap and cast alien blue eyes across the diners. The Chinese at their tables stared back. When his eyes settled on Wang Jun’s bent form, he smiled. He went to squat on a stool across from Wang Jun and said, in accented Mandarin, “You are Little Wang. You have something for me.”

Wang Jun stared at the man and then, feeling cocky with the attention of the Other Chinese said, “Ke neng.” Maybe.

The foreigner frowned, then leaned across the table. The cook’s wife came, interrupting, and set down Wang Jun’s mapo dofu, followed quickly by the pork. She went and scooped out a steaming bowl of rice, broader than Wang Jun’s hand and set it before him. Wang Jun picked up chopsticks and began shoveling the food into his mouth, all the while watching the foreigner. His eyes watered at the spiciness of the dofu and his mouth tingled with the familiar numbing of ground peppercorns.

The wife asked if the foreigner would eat with him, and Wang Jun eyed the foreigner. He felt the money in his pocket, while his mouth flamed on. He looked at the size of the foreigner and assented reluctantly, feeling his wealth now inadequate. They spoke in Chengdu hua, the dialect of the city, so that the foreigner did not understand what they said. The man watched as the wife scooped another bowl of rice and set it in front of him with a pair of chopsticks. He looked down at the white mountain of rice in his bowl and then looked up at Wang Jun. He shook his head, and said, “You have something for me. Give it to me now.”

Wang Jun was stung by the foreigner’s disregard of the offered food. Because he was unhappy he said, “Why should I give it to you?”

The pale white man frowned and his blue eyes were cold and angry. “Did not the Tibetan tell you to give me something?” He held out a white-gloved hand.

Wang Jun shrugged. “You didn’t come to the bridge. Why should I give it to you now?”

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