James Swallow: Jade Dragon

Through the walls he could hear the woolly sounds of the Yip family next door, the strident noise of the mother ordering the kids out to school and the usual arguments in return. One of Ko’s other neighbours had told him the Yip boys both had ADHD, but Ko was less inclined to be so generous. The kids were just noisy, unruly and argumentative, and the Yips and the Chens had come to loggerheads over it on many occasions. Nikita didn’t help, with frequent bouts of playing her musichip collection at ear-stunning volume. Plenty of times Ko had come home to hear the strains of some Petya Tcherkassoff ballad reaching down the stairwell from the eleventh floor. He hated that whiney sovpop. Ko’s musical tastes ran to rapcore and PacRim turbine bands like Nine Milly Meeta, 100 Yen or the Kanno Krew.

He glanced over his shoulder as Nikita’s door opened and she clattered into the bathroom. Ko tried to think of more pleasant things as she went through her regular purge ritual in there. Watery morning sunshine filtered in through the peeling UV sheets on the window, casting a faint cage of shadows across the floor where the safety bars crisscrossed outside. Ko wandered over, nibbling at his food, letting the hot tea warm his chilled fingers. In the dull glass he saw a frowning reflection, and peered past it, scanning the street below. The wan daylight revealed skinny tower blocks looking like something from the building set of a patient but unimaginative child, tall rods of polymerised stone growing out of the face of the Kowloon hillside, their footprints barely enough to cover the acreage of a conventional two-tier home like the ones in the walled enclaves. Through the gaps between the other towers, Ko could spy parts of the city beneath its constant cowl of yellow-grey smog. Soon that view would be gone forever. Another new housing project was already sprouting on the hill, a series of con-apts that would rise to twice the height of Ko’s block. Right now, they were just greenish humps in the middle distance, fuzzy shapes like desert cacti from the vat-grown bamboo scaffolds that concealed them. In a few months they would be finished, and a hundred thousand new citizens would feed into Hong Kong from across the border. The city had slowly been advancing out from the bay for centuries, gradually consuming every bit of spare land from the outlying New Territories. There would come a time when the Hong Kong Free Economic Enterprise Quadrant would collide with the ferrocrete wall that marked the edge of True China. Ko did not want to be here when that happened; for a moment his brain flashed on that idea, of he and Nikita as wizened little eldos, still here, still fighting, but too old to go anywhere else.

He forced the thought away with a shudder and did the three-click finger snap that made the television switch on. Ko paged through the channels with the sound on mute, passing the multiple ZeeBeeCee feeds, Panda Vision and NBO. Most of the stations were carrying clips from the new Juno Qwan album and Ko chewed his lip. The singer had a weird attract-repel quality to her, with the way she would yo-yo between hi-fashion pop diva one day to gothic lolita the next. Ko would never admit it, but he actually liked some of her stuff. She did this song-it was a b-side, maybe?-called “Doppler Highway” that had just the right kind of lonely in it, conjuring up the same melancholy freedom that Ko got from a night ride through the hills. He hesitated, watching the silent vid. Juno was wrapped in a holodress, the outfit morphing and changing as she walked along a sun-dappled beach, planes of light shifting to reveal just enough flesh that you knew she was naked underneath. She moved over sand raked into geometric shapes and water-smoothed stones. There were trains of letters and numbers on her clothes, moving and warping. Cool, perfect blue waves lapped at her bare feet and overhead was a cloudless cerulean sky. Juno’s smile was relaxed and calm, but her eyes were a little sad, as if she felt sorry that you were not there on that idyllic beach with her.

“I’m the perfect smile. Touch my thoughts and flow, there’s no world we can’t know.” Nikita walked into the room, singing along with the silent starlet. “I love her stuff. She’s so deep. Didn’t think she was your type.”

“She’s not,” Ko changed the channel and found a weather report.

Nikita made a face and gathered her jacket off the threadbare sofa where she had deposited it the night before. She produced a fold of crisp yuan and held it out to him. “Rent money,” she explained. “There’s extra in there, too.”

Ko made no move to take it. “Where’d you get that?”

She blew out a breath. “I don’t want to do this, Ko. Just take the damn cash.”

He wanted to; part of him really wanted to say no more and let it go. But that wasn’t how it was going to play out. Before he was even fully aware of what he was doing, Ko’s mouth was running away and they were sliding straight back into the same patterns they had followed since they were children. “Let me guess, you were exceptionally good at selling drinks in the Dot? Or perhaps you gave that bald loser a blowjob-”

The slap came from nowhere and stung him with its ferocity; but the anger in the swipe wasn’t reflected in his sister’s eyes. All he saw there was fatigue. “You don’t have the right to lecture me on what I do, Ko. You’re a thief, little brother, and you’re not a very good one at that. If you grow the hell up, you might just understand enough to have an opinion, but until then, shut up and pay the rent! ”

He pointed at his chest. “Thief? What does that make you, Niki? You want me to say it?”

“Don’t you dare…”

“You want me to call you what you are?” His voice was rising, and so was the fury, coming on hot and strong. “I’m not the one behaving like a child! Which of us is the one living in a fairy tale, sis? Who is the one looking for a prince charming in a laser-cut suit?” He waved a hand in front of her face. “I live in the real world, not the stupid plastic dreamland those corp bastards do!”

“Wake up!” Nikita snapped. “Look around, Ko, the corps are the real world! They run the real world! You’re not part of that machine, you get hammered down!”

“I’d rather be poor and free than in their pockets!” he replied.

“And it shows! Look at you! You watch those stupid movies and you play like you’re some hustler ronin, but you’re going nowhere! I’m making something of myself, Ko.” She advanced and prodded him in the chest. “I’m ready to do whatever I have to. You? You’ve got nothing but a bunch of half-assed principles and a downward spiral.”

He tried to frame a reply but nothing came.

“I’m not ending up like…” Nikita stumbled over the words. “I’m not going to stay here for the rest of my life. I’ve got goals.” She threw the money at him and he caught it.

“You lie with pigs, you become dirty,” Ko said in a low voice. “Your boyfriends at the Dot, it’s their kind that is screwing us all, not just you and me, the whole damn planet! You want to be part of that?”

She snatched up her bag and drew a silver card from within. “I am part of it, Ko. I’m connected.”

“What the hell is that?”

Nikita waved the smartcard in the air. Ko recognised the design as a single use corporate security pass. When he was younger, he’d often picked them from the pockets of drunk salarymen in the bar district. “I wasn’t going to tell you because I know you’d blow your stack, but what the hell, you’d find out eventually.” She leaned in. “I’m moving up, Ko. I’ve got a patron.”

He swore explosively and grabbed at her, snatching the strap on her bag. Nikita kept hold of the other end and an angry tug-of-war ensued. “I’m not letting you go uptown! I forbid it!”