Gen sat on the low wall of one of the promenades overlooking the strait. He waved a hand to the north, where streets and rooftops covered everything they could see.

'The greatest harbour on Earth. The greatest city in the world, some say.'

'It's big, that's for sure. I didn't know it would be so..

'A million people here now, they say. And more coming all the time. They just keep building north, on up the peninsula.'

Across the strait, on the other hand, the southern peninsula was a waste of marshes and bare steep hills. It looked very empty compared to the city, and Kiyoaki remarked on it.

Gen shrugged: 'Too marshy, I guess, and too steep for streets. I suppose they'll get to it eventually, but it's better over here.'

The islands dotting the bay were occupied by the compounds of the imperial bureaucrats. Out on the biggest island the governor's mansion was roofed with gold. The brown foam streaked surface of the water was dotted with little bay boats, mostly sail, some smoking two strokes. Little marinas of square houseboats were tucked against the islands. Kiyoaki surveyed the scene happily. 'Maybe I'll move here. There must be jobs.'

'Oh yeah. Down at the docks, unloading the freighters – get a room at the boarding house – there's lots of work. In the chandlery too.'

Kiyoaki recalled his awakening. 'Why was that man so angry?'

Gen frowned. 'That was unfortunate. Tagomi san is a good man, he doesn't usually beat his help, I assure you. But he's frustrated. We can't get the authorities to release supplies of rice to feed the people stranded in the valley. The chandler is very high in the Japanese community here, and he's been trying for months now. He thinks the Chinese bureaucrats, over on the island there,' gesturing, 'are hoping that most of the people inland will starve.'

'But that's crazy! Most of them are Chinese.'

'Yeah sure, a lot are Chinese, but it would mean even more Japanese.'

'How so?'

Gen regarded him. 'There are more of us in the central valley than there are Chinese. Think about it. It may not be so obvious, because the Chinese are the only ones allowed to own land, and so they run the rice paddies, especially where you came from, over east side. But up valley, down valley – it's mostly Japanese at the ends, and in the foothills, the coastal range, even more so. We were here first, you understand? Now comes this big flood, people are driven away, flooded out, starving. The bureaucrats are thinking, when it's over and the land reemerges, assuming it will some day, if most of the Japanese and natives have died of hunger, then new immigrants can be sent in to take over the valley. And they'll all be Chinese.'

Kiyoaki didn't know what to say to this.

Gen stared at him curiously. He seemed to like what he saw: 'So, you know, Tagomi has been trying to organize private relief, and we've been taking it inland on the flood. But it isn't going well, and it's been expensive, and so the old man is getting testy. His poor workers are paying for it.' Gen laughed.

'But you rescued those Chinese stuck in the trees.'

'Yeah, yeah. Our job. Our duty. Good must result from good, eh? That's what the old woman boarding you says. Of course she's always getting taken.'

They regarded a new tongue of fog licking into the strait. Rain clouds on the horizon looked like a great treasure fleet arriving. A black broom of rain already swept the desolate southern peninsula.

Gen clapped him on the shoulder in a friendly way. 'Come on, I have to get her some stuff at the store.'

He led Kiyoaki up to a tram station, and they got on the next tram that ran up the western side of the city, overlooking the ocean. Up streets and down, past shady residential districts, then another government district, high on the slopes overlooking the stained ocean, wide esplanades lined with cherry trees; then another fortress. The hilly neighbourhoods north of these guns held many of the city's richest mansions, Gen said. They gazed at some of them from the tram as it squeaked past. From the tops of the precipitous streets they could see the temples on the summit of Mount Tamalpi. Then down into a valley, off that tram, and east on another one, across the peninsula and back to Japantown, with bags of food from a market for the proprietress of the boarding house.

Kiyoaki looked in the women's wing to see how Peng ti and her baby were doing. She was sitting in a window embrasure holding the child, looking blank and desolate. She had not gone to find any Chinese relatives, or to seek help from the Chinese authorities, not that there appeared to be much help from that direction; but she seemed not at all interested. Staying with the Japanese, as if in hiding. But she spoke no Japanese, and that was all they used here, unless they thought to speak to her directly in Chinese.

'Come out with me,' he said to her in Chinese. 'I have some money from Gen for the tram, we can see the Gold Gate.'

She hesitated, then agreed. Kiyoaki led her onto the tram system he had just learned, and they went down to the park overlooking the strait. The fog had almost burned off, and the next line of storm clouds were not yet arrived, and the spectacle of the city and the bay shone in wet blinking sunlight. The brown flood continued to pour out to sea, the scraps and lines of foam showing how fast the current was; it must have been ebb tide. That was every rice paddy in the central valley, scoured away and flushed out into the big ocean. Inland everything would have to be built anew. Kiyoaki said something to this effect, and a flash of anger crossed Peng ti's face, quickly suppressed.

'Good,' she said. 'I never want to see that place again.'

Kiyoaki regarded ber, shocked. She could not have been more than about sixteen. What about her parents, her family? She wasn't saying, and he was too polite to ask.

Instead they sat in the rare sun, watching the bay. The babe whimpered, and unobtrusively Peng ti nursed it. Kiyoaki watched her face and the tidal race in the Gold Gate, thinking about the Chinese, their implacable bureaucracy, their huge cities, their rule of Japan, Korea, Mindanao, Aozhou, Yingzhou and Inka.

'What's your baby's name?' Kiyoaki said.

'Hu Die,' the girl said. 'It means '

'Butterfly,' Kiyoaki said, in Japanese. 'I know.' He fluttered with a hand, and she smiled and nodded.

Clouds obscured the sun again, and it cooled rapidly in the onshore breeze. They took the tram back to Japantown.

At the boarding house Peng ti went to the women's wing, and as the men's wing was empty, Kiyoaki entered the chandlery next door, thinking to inquire about a job. The shop on the first floor was deserted, and he heard voices on the second floor, so he went up the stairs.

Here were the accounting rooms and the offices. The chandler's big office door was closed, but voices came through it. Kiyoaki approached, heard men speaking Japanese: ' I don't see how we could coordinate our efforts, how we could be sure it was all going off at once '

The door flew open and Kiyoaki was seized by the neck and dragged into the room. Eight or nine Japanese men glared at him, all seated around one elderly bald foreigner, in the chair of the honoured guest. The chandler roared, 'Who let him in here!'

'There's no one downstairs,' Kiyoaki said. 'I was just looking for someone to ask for a '

'How long were you listening?' The old man looked as if he was ready to hit Kiyoaki with his abacus, or worse. 'How dare you eavesdrop on us, you could get rocks tied to your ankles and thrown in the bay for that!'

'He's just one of the folks we plucked out of the valley,' Gen said from a corner. 'I've been getting to know him. Might as well enlist him, since he's here. I've already vetted him. He hasn't got anything better to do. In fact he'll be good.'