Jintao Read online

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he watched his banlu sleeping. Her eyes moved beneath thick black lashes, her side lifting slightly with each breath. Absolute beauty, he thought. He watched her for a while, then he lay down, turning his back to her. With her warmth next to him, within a few minutes he was asleep again.

  Midmorning, Sealy opened the shutters. She looked closely at his face and kissed him on the lips. His eyes opened.

  “Last night was very nice. I couldn’t wait any longer. Wake up sleepy head.”

  Quan sat up, somewhat groggy.

  “You should take it easy today,” she said with a smile. “Let’s have a leisurely breakfast and talk about where we’re going from here.”

  Padding through the penthouse, still in his pajamas, he entered the kitchen and pulled a stool up to the high translucent countertop. Head in hand, he stared at a broad ribbon of light crossing the marble floor. It seemed to disappear somewhere below the countertop. Leaning over sideways, he looked to see where it went. At the edge of the countertop, the light found a beveled edge and the brightness almost blinded him. Rubbing his eyes, he sat up. Ning was there, in front of him, putting a small bowl of congee down with a napkin and spoon. Quietly, he began to eat.

  Sealy pulled up a stool next to him. After observing him for a moment, she asked, “Are you feeling okay?”

  Chewing lazily, he managed a smile and said, “I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well.”

  Though their intimacy was once again in bloom, Quan’s feelings were somehow different than they had been. The transfer experience had affected him in a way he couldn’t yet grasp. Retracing his steps he thought back to the beginning and Ning’s late-night call, telling him of the disappearance. Then his departure from university, his return to the Jintao Corporation and unlocking the hidden files. He met the team of professionals and reanimated his father’s machine. It felt as though he knew what he was doing even thought it was an outlandish departure from his normal life. Every step of the way he had done what seemed logical and it had led him to crossing an unimaginable frontier. But there was a haunting feeling that he was following some grand design—as if he were acting out a part that had been scripted for him.

  His father used to say ‘Men are both kings and pawns.’

  Pawn or king. Which am I?

  Seeing that he was lost in thought, Sealy rubbed the back of his head. “Thank you for last night.”

  “It was way overdue,” he said, kissing her cheek. How to articulate his strange new feelings? The words refused to come. Retreating to a more mundane topic, he asked, “When is your sister arriving?”

  “We talked. She’s still out of town on break and she promised to visit before going back to university. Soon I think. In a few days.”

  17.

  Midday, Sealy was on the penthouse roof, standing in the safety zone as a taxi-glide slowly descended with its landing lights strobing. The glide settled, its door slid back, and a young woman in a full-length gold-and-silver coat stepped out. Wiggling her hips, she lifted her arms skyward with a dozen bracelets jingling and shouted, “Ah seh won! I’m back from the islands.” Her coat fluttered open, revealing a pastel pink and green bikini underneath.

  “You came direct from Eleuthera? I thought you’d go home and change first,” said Sealy. “Aren’t you cold?”

  Shifting a yellow visor up to the top of her head, Sealy’s sister grinned, crinkling her nose, and batting her eyelashes—lashes augmented with tiny pink and green feathers. “Everyting be irree, sista.”

  “What’s with the accent?”

  Lotus pouted her lips and dropped the Jamaican patois. “You’re no fun, girl. You need to get out more.” She pulled the thermal coat around her and shivered. “The view is amazing up here but yah honey, it’s cold!”

  “Come on, let’s go inside,” said Sealy, shaking her head.

  Lotus followed, holding her coat tightly as she shuffled along in her fleece-lined boots. A botcart unplugged from the glide and followed with her luggage.

  Inside the penthouse, Sealy said, “I’m happy you’re here. How have you been? Tell me all about your trip.”

  Lotus stripped off her coat, revealing a golden tan. With hands on her hips she turned, showing off her perfect figure. “I been sunnin,’ don’t ya know.”

  Sealy stared in amazement—a bikini in winter.

  Like night and day, the sisters were different. Where Sealy was always dependable and proper, Lotus was ever the renegade. Where Sealy’s figure was willowy and her manner graceful, Lotus was built like a dancer and her energy was effusive.

  Until the age of six, Lotus had lived in an abandoned housing project with seventeen other children. When the authorities learned of their encampment, they were scooped up and each was placed in the care of families who wanted a second child. From the start, Lotus was free-spirited with a whip-smart mind—rebellious, but a welcome addition to the otherwise conservative Xiaoping family.

  On the circular sofa of the great front room, they took up positions across from each other.

  “Wow. Nice place,” said Lotus, looking around. “And that sim is just orbital.”

  “It’s California,” said Sealy. “Glad you like it. I helped design it.”

  “Where’s Quan?”

  “He’ll be here later. He’s has been gone a lot lately. Is your semester break still on? How much time do you have? Tell me about Eleuthera.”

  “Too many questions, sis. The island is one nonstop party. The last four days just fried me. It was a good time to leave. I’m glad to zone out with you for a while. I’m not ready to see Mom and Dad yet. So, what’s been happening?”

  “Quan’s burning the candle at both ends and I’ve been trying to continue with my course work but, well . . . I need a break. We could find something to do. Catch a play or a concert.”

  “Hey, great! I’m really into Foof Trizkit. They rock. Wonder if they’re playing here.”

  “Don’t know about them,” said Sealy, feeling the age gap widen.

  As the sun was setting outside, the indoor sim was gradually changing to evening in synchrony. Ning brought drinks and the girls continued to chat.

  “It’s weird,” said Lotus. “Sometimes I just know when something’s going to happen, like a premonition. I never told you this, but I had a premonition about Quan’s dad. It felt like a door closed and I couldn’t connect with my memory of him anymore. My psych professor calls it ‘non-local communication.’”

  “Maybe our brains are just more sophisticated than we think,” said Sealy. “I mean, we’re subconsciously processing stuff all the time. Maybe we eventually come to an understanding of what is most likely going to happen and it just pops into view. For instance, when I can’t remember something . . . a few minutes later it pops into my head. That always feels odd to me.”

  “That doesn’t really explain what I was talking about,” said Lotus.

  “Maybe not, but I don’t believe in paranormal explanations.”

  Lotus took another sip of plum wine and told her sister about an experiment she’d read about—a joint study between SRI in California and MIT in Massachusetts. A group of students were gathered at each campus, separated by thousands of kilometers. Their professors asked each of them to visualize the other group, to describe the surroundings and what the people were wearing, and what they might be holding. On average, they were sixty-four percent accurate and some of the participants scored as high as eighty-nine percent.

  “There are hundreds of documented reports of remote viewing every year,” said Lotus. “The theory goes that an intermingling of planetary fields produces a kind of holographic soup connecting all conscious beings. Pretty wack stuff, eh? And there’s probably a lot more we don’t know about.”

  Ning paused in the hallway, listening—her dark calm eyes searching under narrow lids. While doing her domestic chores, she processed the conversation, deconstructing the ideas, referencing subsets, accessing internal and external databa
ses. She retrieved over a thousand related articles and correlated the data while stripping the bed sheets. Two hundred and forty-three seconds into her research, parallelism was identified between her own logic functions and the concept of non-local communication. Leaving the laundry area, she deduced that only limited comprehension of the world is possible using data comparison; sensory sources are needed for a more complete understanding. She stored the theorem and, having made up the bed with fresh sheets, she left the guest room.

  It was 8:45 when a soft bell tone announced Quan’s arrival, and a few moments later he strolled into the great room. Lotus popped up. “It’s my brother from a different mother!” She rushed to him, hugged him, and kissed him on the mouth.

  The kiss was laced with the sweetness of plum wine and more intimate than he expected. Quan planted his hands firmly on her waist and pressed her away without making an obvious point of it. Seeing her bikini and matching feathered eyelids, he said, “What good fortune little sister. So glad you were able to come.”

  “We’re on break,” said Lotus, bouncing on her toes, hands tucked behind her.

  Sealy interjected, “We were having a glass of wine. Would you like to join us?”

  “In a few minutes. First, I need to take care of something.” Seeing two empty wine bottles on the table, he added, “We should eat.”

  “Good idea,” said Sealy. “I’ll have Ning make some food.”

  Quan sent a message to von Ang and returned to the great room.

  Curled up on the circular sofa, the sisters were laughing uncontrollably. On the table in front of them were three cylindrical bamboo boxes, a platter of egg rolls and pot stickers, and a new bottle of plum wine. Quan lifted one of the bamboo covers, releasing wisps of steam.

  Lotus blurted, “Try the lotus in lobster leaf. It’s out of this world.”

  “Thanks, Lotus,” said Quan, picking up a plate. “I’m sure you meant lobster in lotus leaf, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, sorry. I mixed Lobster and Lotus. What was I thinking?” She pressed her hands to her cheeks and wiggled her fingers like feelers.

  Attempting to pull herself together, Sealy added, “NutriSynth has thousands of recipes. Who knows, there may be a lobster leaf in there somewhere.”

  Lotus added, “How about some duck lips in ginger sauce?”

  Quan picked up a piece of lobster with his chopsticks and tossed it into his mouth. “Duck lips are one of my favorites,” he said. “Right up there with pig’s wings and shark feet.”

  “You’re a funny man,” said Lotus, calming down a bit.

  Quan forced himself to stay and make small talk, all the while thinking about the immensity of what he was dealing with. There was so much he didn’t know. He felt like a wooden stump, only branching into the conversation now and again while wondering how rude it would be to just get up and leave. He needed time to think. The police had come to an impasse. Investigator Yang had found no evidence of abduction, and that left only one avenue open to explore—the Braneworld. That seemed to be more like detour than a path to solving his father’s disappearance. He doubted that his father was still in that other place.

  Sitting there with the sisters chattering on, Quan felt dismayed—feeling there were better uses of his time. Thankfully, his com disk starting bipping. It was von Ang, and he excused himself. After a few minutes, he returned to the great room.

  “Now that Lotus is here, it feels more like family. I think I’ll work from home. I have a meeting with Dr. von Ang and I need to talk with him in private. It’s set for tomorrow morning. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “He means we have to behave,” said Sealy.

  “No chance of that,” said Lotus.

  18.

  Sealy and Lotus were in their pajamas, sitting at a small side table in the kitchen, having a morning chinwag. A plate of sweet buns and a pot of oolong were on the table between them and Sealy was talking about the brilliant young physicist who was soon to arrive. Quan’s meeting was important and they would be wise to be out of the house when the time came.

  “We could go downtown. I need to have my hair done and we could do some shopping while we’re there.”

  “If I’m imposing,” said Lotus, “I can always go back to Mom and Dad’s house.”

  “No. No. We both want you to stay. We just need to give Quan some privacy.”

  As 10:00 drew near, Lotus was sitting in the great room, ready to leave, while Sealy was still in the bedroom talking to Quan.

  The landing signal began softly pulsing throughout the house. Lotus looked around to see if anyone was going to greet their guest. She got up and went toward the door when she saw Ning coming down the hall.

  “I’ll see to the door,” said Lotus.

  “Very well, miss,” said Ning.

  Lotus stepped out looking like something from another galaxy in a high-collar navy blue sweater, bulky white corduroy pants, and a pair of high-top, multicolored canvas sneakers. Von Ang disembarked the taxi-glide and looked in her direction. Lotus walked toward him with a hand raised to her forehead protecting her eyes from the bright sunlight. Her red anodized hair fluttered in the morning breeze and her red anodized lips lifted into a broad smile. On approach, she extended a hand. “Hello. I’m Lotus. I’m Quan Jintao’s sister-in-law. You must be Dr. von Ang. We’ve been expecting you.”

  Von Ang couldn’t help but stare at the metallic-red lips glistening in the daylight. Gently grasping her hand, he said, “Call me Gaston. I’m a little early. I hope that’s all right.”

  “It’s fine. Good timing. You’re going to get cold out here. Come, let’s go inside.”

  She put her hands on his forearm and walked him toward the rooftop entrance.

  “I hear you’re a famous scientist. I was expecting an old fuddy-duddy. Oops.” She put a hand to her mouth.

  Raising an eyebrow, von Ang said, “It’s a career path. We start out young and optimistic, and we end up in fuddy-duddy-hood.”

  Lotus chuckled.

  Dr. Von Ang couldn’t resist asking, “Do you live here?”

  “No. At the moment I’m between opportunities,” she said with a continuous smile.

  Sealy emerged from the rooftop doorway bundled in a dark green overcoat. “Lotus, I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Dr. von Ang, I’m Sealy, Quan’s banlu. Welcome.”

  “My sister,” said Lotus, blandly.

  Von Ang slid his heels together, gave a slight head bow, and said, “A pleasure.”

  “We were just on our way out. Quan is expecting you. Lotus, please have the taxi wait while I show Dr. von Ang in.”

  Sealy escorted von Ang to the door, while Lotus spoke a hasty command to the glide’s dispatch panel and hurried to catch up with them. Inside the corridor, from behind, Lotus called out, “We won’t be gone long. It would be nice if you could stay for lunch.”

  Sealy turned and shot a concerned glance back at her sister.

  “What?” said Lotus in a hushed tone.

  Entering the great room, Quan greeted his guest, “Welcome. I see you’ve met the sisters.”

  “I invited Gaston to stay for lunch. I hope that’s okay,” said Lotus.

  Sealy’s look of frustration was obvious and Quan instantly grasped the situation. “We haven’t made any plans . . . but I think if you can stay that would be great. We can all get to know each other a little better.”

  “If it isn’t an imposition, I’d be delighted,” said von Ang.

  “Wonderful,” said Quan. “That’s settled, then.” He turned and spoke quietly to Ning who was standing by. “We’ll be four for lunch.”

  Lotus went to get a jacket and a few minutes later the sisters were back outside where the taxi-glide was waiting.

  The two men entered the study next to Master Jintao’s private suite, a room paneled in Afzelia wood with two black leather chairs and a red lacquered coffee table at its center. Daylight filtered in from a skylight. In a far corner a Chinese fig tree with its oversiz
ed leaves almost touched the ceiling and in the opposite corner sat a black leather reading chair and ottoman.

  Quan gestured to the two chairs at the center of the room.

  “How are you feeling?” asked von Ang as he took to his seat.

  “I’m feeling fine, thanks,” said Quan. “Strange as it may sound, I feel better than I did before. To a certain extent I feel more awake. My senses seem more acute.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I’m impressed with what you and my father accomplished. I don’t completely understand the physics involved.”

  “The technology is complex and at the same time it’s not. In a way, we knew what we needed to do before we did it—simply reproducing the effects of that malfunctioning reactor.”

  “With respect to your expertise though, no one understands the technology better than you do. I suspect having to explain it to me and the others might be somewhat annoying. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought I detected some friction between us at our last meeting. I wonder if there’s a problem.”

  Rustle the bushes to bring out the snakes.

  “A problem? Well, since you ask, I was wondering why you brought in someone else to look over the stabilizer plans. It goes without saying that the project is yours to direct but, when I agreed to assist, I assumed you knew my capability. It was counterproductive to keep information from me.”

  “Please,” said Quan, holding up a hand. “It was in no way an indictment of your ability. This is all new for me and it’s been a lot for me to deal with. I never meant to slight you in any way. Your contribution is indispensable.”

  “I do what I can,” said von Ang, straightening.