Orleans Read online

  Daniel laugh. “Not like Orleans.”

  I shrug. “You got a nice place in East Coast?”

  Daniel nod. “A two-bedroom apartment. It’s okay. It’s got parking.”

  I don’t know what parking be, but it sound all right. “And schools? You got good schools, and enough to eat?”

  Daniel rush to keep up with me. “Not everyone does, but yes. I mean, if you can afford it, there’s plenty.”

  Every place you go got a price. I look down at Baby Girl and wish I still had that gold McCallan left me. Then Baby Girl be leaving with something to pay her way. “Don’t sound so different from here,” I say.

  Daniel finally catch up, and look me in the eye. “Believe me, it is.”

  • • •

  It be coming on afternoon when the trees give way to grass and marsh along the river. Soon we be at Shangri-Lo.

  Nothing more than a row of shanties where the river men live. When the Fever hit, all the Asians in Orleans moved over here. The Fever ain’t take to Asians the way it did the rest of us, so they like a tribe that way. They not like the rest of Orleans. They be mixing, for sure: Koreans and Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese and Filipino. But nothing else. Folks in Orleans all be mutts except for the Asians.

  “Why are we stopping?” Daniel almost run into me at the edge of the reeds. I point to the stick in the dirt with a red mark painted on it.

  “Oyster beds,” I say. “We almost there, but we need to work a plan.”

  “I thought you had a plan,” he say.

  It be enough to make me want to smack him, but Lydia always say there be more flies caught with honey. “I got us here, didn’t I? Up to you to get us the rest of the way. The Chinamen got boats that go to the Market across the river, but they ain’t taking us for free. You got any coin on you, or something for trade?”

  Daniel look down at his coat. “I’ve got some cash,” he say, and start to reach into a pocket. I shake my head.

  “Man, Outer States paper no good down here. It just wash away. What else you got?”

  “What’s considered valuable?”

  “Metal, fabric. Useful things. Glass? We don’t get a lot of glass anymore.”

  Daniel shake his head.

  Damn, this boy be useless. I think about my assets. I know a boatsman, used to study with the Ursulines, too, long time ago. We see each other time to time in the Market. His mama got a noodle stand there. Friendship don’t count for much in Orleans, but maybe.

  One good thing about these folks—they used to trading, so they ain’t that territorial. Seafood and boats be bringing all kinds of folks to they door, and we ain’t no exception.

  “Follow me.” I wave Daniel along, and we head across the mudflats into Shangri-Lo.

  17

  DANIEL’S HEART CAUGHT IN HIS THROAT. THE shantytown spread out along the shoreline before him, huts of flotsam and lean-tos. Families lived here. Children. Life of a sort he hadn’t expected to find. Thriving life. And to think he had the means to end it all in his pocket. He pulled his coat closer around him and self-consciously followed Fen into town.

  “Ni hao, konichiwa.” Fen waved as she and Daniel entered the first row of shacks. A toothless old woman waved her away like a fly as they walked past her into the main thoroughfare. Town was too big a word for this place. It was more like a collection of shacks, some made with concrete walls and roofs, others just sheets of plywood. Sticky mud sucked at Daniel’s boots as he picked his way after Fen. Small dirty dogs paced them through the row of sheds.

  “How do they live like this, right on the water?” Daniel asked, ducking under a line of drying laundry. Fen shrugged, her back looking too thin beneath the fraying fabric of her sack shirt and the weight of the baby slung across her chest.

  “How do anybody live?” she replied. “Concrete be good shelter in a storm, and it last if there be a flood. The rest of the wood be cheap. It blow away in the wind without breaking anything else, and float back when it over, so they put it back together again.”

  Daniel shook his head and stepped over an open gutter, wrinkling his nose at the filth that flowed through it.

  “Is that a sewer?”

  Fen laughed. “Naw, that be nasty. That the gutting canal. Where they throw all the oyster shells and fish guts. They wash back out to sea when the tide come in. It keep the place clean.”

  The sheds grew larger as they walked along the shore, deeper into Shangri-Lo. In some of the bigger huts, lanterns could be seen burning. Fen strode along confidently, forcing Daniel to jog to keep up.

  “What’s that up there?” he asked, pointing to a triangular wooden hut on stilts in the distance. “A watchtower?”

  Fen paused. “Your datalink broken or something?”

  “I was just . . . curious.”

  “Well, this ain’t a tour, and I ain’t your guide.” She started off again, jouncing the baby, who had begun to cry. “I know, you hungry,” she said to the baby. Daniel swallowed hard, feeling foolish, and mentally accessed the link.

  INQUIRY: What is the purpose of a tall triangular hut on stilts in Orleans?

  RESPONSE: Further data required. Describe hut.

  INQUIRY: Slanted roof, wooden shingles. Cross of wood on top.

  RESPONSE: Orleans contains places of worship, raised on stilts to protect congregation from floods. Possible match.

  The church looked like a stork standing in the marshes. As he watched, someone was lowered from the little hut on a tire attached to a pulley.

  “Hurry up, now,” Fen called to him. “Rain coming.”

  For the first time, Daniel noticed the skies were darkening. He scurried to catch up to Fen, who had stopped at a three-sided shack facing the river.

  “Kuan-Jen, ni hao, brother,” Fen called into the shed.

  The building was framed in signs Daniel could not read, but a drawing of a bowl of rice told him it was a food stall. Inside was a long table with two chairs on one side and a sleeping cot pulled up along the other side to serve as a bench. “Kuan-Jen!” Fen called again. There was no answer.

  “Be right back,” she said, but Daniel followed close on her heels. Fen slipped between the shed and its neighbor into a small alley backed by more marshland. Behind the shed, a big black pot balanced over a cooking fire. A thin older man tended the fire. Fen bent toward the man and began speaking a language Daniel didn’t recognize.

  INQUIRY: Identify language.

  RESPONSE: A combination of French, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Tagalog.

  Daniel tried to read Fen’s face as she argued with the old man, who shook his head, laughing, and went back to stoking the fire.

  “What’s he saying?” Daniel asked.

  Fen waved him off and dropped to her heels. She lifted up her bundle to show the man the baby. The man dropped his poker and jumped up suddenly with more energy than Daniel would have thought possible. Grabbing Fen by the elbow, the man marched off, pulling her along with him. Fen turned back to Daniel and winked.

  They followed the older man out of the alleyway and down to the shore, where a young Chinese man was hauling in his sails on what looked like a windsurfer combined with an old Chinese fishing boat. The body of the craft was a shallow raft on runners, carved of wood, with empty plastic milk gallons attached for added ballast. Up top, a variegated sail was being drawn up a large beam like a window blind being raised to a top crossbar. The sail itself was cloth, segmented by thick bamboolike reeds. Daniel watched in bewilderment as the older man started shouting angrily. Whatever the argument, five minutes later, the young man lowered his sails again, the old man watching with crossed arms until Fen and Daniel boarded the junk.

  “Thanks a lot, Fen,” the young man complained. He looked to be about twenty, Daniel guessed. His smooth face was red with embarrassment as the wind whipped his ponytail across his mouth.

  “How did she rope you into this, man?” he asked Daniel. Daniel shrugged and the man laughed. “Well, I’m Kuan-Jen. And apparently
, this is my baby mama.”

  Daniel turned to Fen. “He’s the father?”

  “No,” she said. “That the only way to get Kuan’s dad to tell me where he be.”

  “That trick only works once,” Kuan-Jen said. “And you picked a bad time to cross, Fen. Rain on the way and night falling. What Lydia got you doing up in Algiers, anyway?”

  Fen’s face closed tight, making Daniel wonder who Lydia might be. “My business, not yours” was all she said.

  “Something up?” Kuan-Jen asked. “I heard rumors, but—”

  “But nothing. Right now we need to get across this river, get some food for this baby. Mama-san got anything I can borrow?”

  Kuan-Jen shrugged and finished tying his line. “You already owe me. How much more can you afford?” He jumped off the deck of the vessel and dragged it out into the water on a series of logs that turned like rollers beneath the bow. He climbed back aboard as it drifted into the river.

  “I said borrow.” Fen emphasized the word. “You know I be good for it.”

  “Hold on tight,” Kuan-Jen said by way of reply. The boat jerked sharply as it was taken by the current. They angled down the river and Daniel could see tiny lights on the far shore. Midway, the water receded back into mudflats. Kuan-Jen tweaked the sails and the boat glided forward on its runners, tugged by the wind until it hit another deep channel of water.

  “I had no idea the river was this wide,” Daniel said under his breath. But Fen heard him.

  “You got no idea ’bout a lot of things. You a tourist, pure and simple.”

  “Outlander, eh?” Kuan-Jen shouted from the far end of the boat. “Don’t get many of those anymore.” He turned to Fen. “This one got anything worth trading for?”

  Fen looked at Daniel. “Do you?”

  He thought of the things Fen said were of value—glass, metal. Useful things. With his duffel gone, all he had left were a few glow sticks, carbo food tubes for the encounter suit, and . . .

  He felt inside his pockets. “Just candy,” he said forlornly, pulling out one of the snack-size Snickers bars he’d taken from the front desk of his motel on the other side of the Wall.

  Kuan-Jen’s face lit up. “Candy bars? I miss candy bars. Missionaries used to bring them in, or airdrop them over the Wall.” Even Fen looked impressed.

  Daniel handed the thumb-size candy over. “It’s kind of melty,” he apologized.

  The boatman accepted it reverently in his callused hands. He looked up at Fen, then Daniel. “Two more will get you dinner and a change of clothes for Fen.”

  Daniel reached back into his pocket, then hesitated. “What about diapers?”

  Kuan-Jen gave him a suspicious look. “What about them?”

  “I want a pack of diapers. And dinner, and a shirt for Fen.”

  Kuan-Jen lowered his outstretched hand and frowned. “For what?”

  Daniel reached into another pocket. “For this.” He held up a handful of mini candy bars. “Happy Halloween.”

  “Hey, tourist, heads up,” Fen said.

  Daniel followed her gaze. They were across the river now and lights stretched for a half mile in either direction. On the shore sprawled a village, covered in blue tarps and Christmas lights. Daniel looked up as a docksman waved them to a berth and the skiff bumped into the pier. Kuan-Jen threw the man a rope and they tied up to the shore.

  “Welcome to the Market,” Fen said. “This be the heart of Orleans.”

  18

  THE RIVERFRONT WAS DEVOTED TO FISHING craft and boating supplies. Daniel followed Fen and Kuan-Jen through a rabbit’s warren of stalls, cobbled together from driftwood, old beams, sheets of plastic, and the blue tarping that roofed it all. From above, he imagined it would look like a giant blue umbrella on a flat gray beach. The rain was starting to come down and the tiny lights of the Market—solar-powered holiday lights from the early days of the Wall, according to Fen—spread a warm firefly yellow against the slate gray sky.

  Nets. Buckets. Shrimping baskets. Shucking knives. Broad hats worn by some of the denizens of Shangri-Lo. Leathery-faced men and women of Asian and less determinate race haggled in a dozen different languages with customers over their wares. This city was alive, and in such variety that it stunned Daniel. Did the government know about this? Did the military?

  Fen was moving fast through the crowd. Daniel had to fight the urge to linger and observe. If he lost sight of her now, he was truly lost.

  The fishing supply stalls gave way to fishmongers, long low booths with large tubs of live crab, catfish, shark, and shrimp skittering through murky water, drawn by the handful to be weighed and sold.

  INQUIRY: What forms of currency are used in Orleans?

  RESPONSE: Official currency of Orleans unknown. Barter and trade are most common. Postulating commodities to include food, tools, sexual favors, and blood.

  Daniel balked at the thought, and found himself narrowing his field of vision to focus on Fen’s retreating back rather than witness any of the muddy denizens of the Market in compromising positions.

  Beyond the fishmongers, the stalls turned into food stands, with the sizzling sound of cooking fires and popping grease. The smoky stench of charcoal blended with the sweet, spicy tang of stews and fried seafood. Daniel looked up from the stall of a raw oyster bar—hand-size oyster shells split and served with wedges of lemon and red pepper—to see Fen turn an abrupt corner. He chased after her and found himself in a narrow lane of stalls with a hand-painted sign overhead that echoed the one he’d seen in Shangri-Lo—a bowl of noodles with chopsticks and a curl of painted steam.

  Fen was glaring at him from beneath the awning of the second shop on the right. She cradled the baby to her chest and scowled. “Keep up, man.”

  Daniel ducked into the open front of the stall behind her. Low crates had been set up to form seating along a narrow plank of driftwood, planed smooth on top. A short black man, blacker than anyone Daniel had ever seen, was crouched on the far side of the table, shoveling a bowl of hot noodles into his mouth. He ignored them completely, absorbed with his food.

  “This be Mama-san’s,” Fen explained. Kuan-Jen had gone through a blue tarp draped across the back of the stall. A moment later, a small Chinese woman in a yellow rain slicker came through the curtain. She observed Daniel and Fen with bright small eyes, then looked at the baby.

  “Ni hao, Mama-san,” Fen said, and continued in a blend of languages.

  Mama-san reached for the baby. Fen hesitated, then pulled her out of the sling. Mama-san gasped at the sight of the baby’s makeshift diaper, the hay gone soft with urine and Fen’s own sweat. Daniel didn’t need a translator to know that Fen was being chastised.

  Fen grabbed the baby and motioned for Daniel to sit down. Mama-san disappeared and returned a few minutes later with two bowls of plain noodles.

  “No,” Fen said sharply, startling Daniel. The word was in English, but the meaning was clear enough, even to Mama-san.

  • • •

  THEY TRYING TO BE CHEAP WITH ME NOW, after they got all that good chocolate the smuggler brought. No way. We be needing real diapers, not just them cloth things. A bloodhound can scent a diaper as good as blood, and we ain’t got time to stop and wash them. Best to throw them out quick. We also gonna get some hot food with meat in it. Kuan-Jen and his mama be arguing, but I don’t care. I know what things be worth.

  A minute later, we get a hot pot, a clay stove over a charcoal burner, with gumbo boiling away inside, chock-full of oysters and shrimp and thick slices of okra. We keep the noodles and get cups of rice, too.

  “Eat,” I say to Daniel, but he hesitate and I remember Delta food be like poison to him. He run his datalink over the pot to analyze, but it no good.

  “Sorry, man,” I tell him. “You ain’t got no food on you, other than them candy bars?”

  He make a face like he smell something bad. “Just carbo gel. For energy. It’s too soon for another one.”

  “That a shame,” I say, a
nd pull his bowl of rice to me.

  I don’t know how hungry I be ’til Mama-san put everything on the table. Daniel look jealous, but that be his problem, not mine.

  By the time I hit the bottom of the bowl, Kuan-Jen and his mama be back. They got what I need. Real diapers, the old disposable kind from before the storms, and a couple cloth ones that will last. And formula, a whole can of it, and some bottles of water to mix it with.

  I offer Daniel a bottle. “Thirsty?”

  He shake his head.

  “It be clean,” I tell him. “One thing we got a lot of down here be bottled water. They been dropping it from the sky for ten years straight, and most of us drink what already here, so it like wine or something. For a special occasion.”

  “The suit . . .” He hesitate. “Recycles fluids. I’m fine.”

  I grimace at the thought of drinking your own fluids, but I guess it make some kind of sense.

  I mix a bottle for Baby Girl and heat it over the coals. Mama-san keep looking at the baby like she something special, so I let her hold her for a while, and she be all smiling and happy and singing some Chinese song. It kind of nice, especially when we ready to leave and she act like we been doing her a favor. Kuan-Jen nod when I wave good-bye.

  “She she,” I say, and bow. Kuan-Jen laugh at me. Mama-san, she bow back and wave bye-bye to Baby Girl. It be like Daniel don’t exist. He mumble good-bye and follow me out into the Market.

  “Much better,” I say when we out in the open. I got me a new shirt—new for me, at least—with long sleeves, and it made out of cotton, so it not as cold and scratchy as the sackcloth been. And my new backpack be full of baby diapers, formula, and bottled water. Mama-san even threw in a decent knife when she saw we was meaning to leave. Nobody who want to live in Orleans walk around without some kind of weapon. I be feeling kind of sleepy after all that food, but Lydia always say a good person pay they debts.

  I head away from the river. “Come on, now. The Professors ain’t far, but we don’t want to be out too long after dark.”