Читаем Fractals полностью

So I do. "Then as a woman, I'm sure you're pleased that Muslim men won't have to stop the traditional subjugation of their wives when they come here. As long as they keep it in the home, of course."

"Excuse me." She turns her back to me, takes a step along the display.

"You're lying to us," I say, raising my voice. A couple of bystanders turn their heads.

She faces me, mouth open to speak. I pre-empt her: "Or perhaps you're lying to them. But you can't have it both ways, and you can't change the facts no matter how many bad classroom cartoons you force on us."

There's a part of me that hasn't enjoyed provoking the anger in her face. A few days ago, it might even have been the biggest part. But it's only a few thousand years old, tops, and the rest of me really doesn't give a shit.

I lift my arm in a gesture that takes in the whole display. "If I were a racist," I tell her, "this wouldn't begin to convince me."

I bare my teeth in a way that might be mistaken for a smile. I turn and walk deeper into the building.

***

Here it is: on the back page of Section C, in a newspaper almost two weeks old. Didn't even make it to the airwaves, I guess. What difference does one more battered Asian make, after all the gang warfare going down in Chinatown? No wonder I missed it.

He had a name. Wai Chan. Found unconscious at a North Van housing development owned by Balthree Properties, where he was—

(Balthree Properties? They're local, aren't they?)

—where he was employed as a night watchman. In stable condition after being attacked by an unknown assailant. No motive. No suspects.

Bullshit. Half the fucking city is suspect, we've all got motive, and they know it.

Or maybe they don't. Maybe they believe all the stories they feed us that say Hey, High-Density Living Good For You, Crime Rate Unconnected To Population Size, Massive Immigration Keeps Us Safe From America, hurrah hurrah!

Nothing like giving yourself a mild case of cancer to cure the measles, and every time somebody projects that the lower mainland will be sixty percent Chinese by 2010 the news is buried in a wave of stories about international goodwill and the cultural mosaic. Maybe they don't know what it's like to go back to the place you grew up and find it ripped to the ground, some offshore conglomerate's turned it into another hive crammed with pulsing yellow grubs, perhaps Balthree Properties isn't run out of Hong Kong after all but I didn't know that then, did I? That used to be my home, there were trees there once, and childhood friends, and now just mud and lumber and this ugly little Chink yammering at me, barely even speaks the fucking language and he's kicking me out of my own back yard—

Once I felt guilty about what I did to him. I was sick with remorse. That was stupid, woolly thinking. My guilt doesn't spring from the one time I let the monster out. No sirree.

It springs from all the other times I didn't.

***

The Indians are on the warpath. From the endowment lands on east, they're blocking us. We're on their land, they say. They want justice. They want retribution. They want autonomy.

Don't tell me, noble savage. So do I.

Traffic moves nose-to-bumper like a procession of slugs. At this rate it'll be hours before I even get out of town, let alone home. There was a time when I could afford to live in town.

There was even a time when I wanted to. Now, all I want to do is scream.

There's a group of Indian kids at the roadside, enjoying the chaos their parents have wrought. I bear them no ill will; the natives are a conquered people, drunk and unemployed, no threat to anyone. I sympathise. I honk my horn in support.

Thunk! A spiderweb explodes across my windshield, glassy cracks dividing and redividing into a network too fine to for my eyes to follow, I can barely see through—

Jesus! That sonofabitch threw a rock at me! There he is, winding up for another—no, he's after someone else this time, our ancestors weren't nice to their ancestors and this brat thinks that gives him some god-given moral right to trash other people's property—

I don't have to take this. I didn't take their fucking land away from them. Get off to the side, onto the shoulder—now floor it!

Watch the skid, watch the skid—and look at those punks scrambling out of the way! One of them isn't quite fast enough; catches my eye as he rolls off the hood, and holy shit did his sneer vanish in a hurry! I do believe he already regrets the rashness of his actions, and we've barely started dancing yet.

I turn off the ignition. I pocket the keys.

I get out of the car.

There are people shouting somewhere very far away, and horns honking. They sound almost the same. Someone gets up off the pavement in front of me, nursing his leg. He doesn't look so tough now, does he? Like it's just dawned on him that they lost Oka years ago. Where did all your friends go, fucker?

Where's Lasagna when you need him?