"This is the only one."

Lambert's eyes turned to ice. He stood up. "Good day, Mr. Broom. You're welcome to come back when you've sobered up."

Broom sighed. Lying to the crazy Texan was one thing; he should have known better with Lambert. He signaled the curator to sit down.

"There's three of them," Broom said, his voice low.

"And the other buyers?"

"Some junior oil tycoon in Texas who doesn't know Qin Dynasty from Corningware."

"Who else?"

"An Oriental restaurant guy down in Florida. I think he's going to put the soldier next to his salad bar."

"That's it?"

"Yes, I swear."

"I'll find out if you're lying," Lambert promised. "How much?"

"Seven fifty."

"Six hundred," Lambert said. "Three hundred now, the rest on delivery. If it's damaged when I open the crate, you won't see another penny-so I suggest you wrap it in heavy quilts and pack it in styrofoam. So… we have a deal?"

"Shit." Broom grimaced.

Lambert smiled. "Good. Now, when can I expect delivery?"

"A week, maybe more. You're number three on my list."

"But why?" Lambert cried.

"Because the others already paid us," Broom said, rising, "and their checks cleared."

Lao Fu had lived more than eighty years amid the monuments to dead Ming emperors. As a boy, he had witnessed the fall of China's last dynasty. For Lao Fu, the Communists were newcomers; when he thought about them at all, it was as emperors with different names. What difference did it make? A man lived and worked and, if he was lucky, his children cared for him until he died. At Sunrise Commune, Lao Fu was a man of distinction. There was nothing he had not known about ducks, and little he had forgotten. Had he not three times personally traveled more than fifty li to Peking to hear successive generations of chefs praise his ducks? Didn't the young men of the commune still come to him for advice when their foolish practice of force-feeding the ducks made the birds sick? Lao Fu was a man who possessed wisdom. So it was that the commune leaders chose not to know of the pastime that had, once a week, occupied Lao Fu for nearly half a century. Who would invoke bureaucratic injunction to an old man who could not read?

On a summer's afternoon, Lao Fu walked to the reservoir that nestles among the Ming Tombs. He borrowed a rowboat from the caretaker. With a small net, each perfect knot tied by patient hands, Lao Fu went fishing for carp. He fished in secret places.

When he returned that day, Lao Fu left a plump brown fish in the boat where the caretaker would find it and carried two others home to his family. At dinner, everyone praised his skill. They devoured tender white flesh. Lao Fu did not eat, refusing even the eyes and the maw, the most succulent and honored pieces that were his right.

Afterward, his eldest son asked Lao Fu if he was sick.

"I will die soon," the old man said.

"You are healthy and strong. You will not die for many years."

"My time is gone. There is too much I cannot understand."

The eldest son thought of the new commune television set, of the noisy diesel tractors, of the experiment to produce more ducks by keeping the lights burning in their roost. Each of these things he had carefully explained to his father.

But it was difficult.

"What troubles you, Father? I will try to help."

"What lives in the water?"

"Fish."

"What lives on the land?"

"Man and the other animals."

"Is it still so?"

"Yes, my father."

"You are wrong."

"How am I wrong?"

"Today I fished a man."

They brought Stratton tea, and a hair-curling local moonshine. They wrapped him in a blanket. A doctor came and, clucking, dressed his leg and gave him a shot of antibiotic with a needle meant for horses. They produced clothes that almost fit, and a pair of rope-soled sandals. People pressed around, all talking at once. They smiled and bowed. They shook his hand and pounded his back. Stratton let it happen.

He had been bundled onto the back of a truck, he and the waterlogged stocky man, peasant women cuddling the two little bodies and, it seemed, half the commune, a tight-pressed gesticulating horde.

Where else would they go but to the seat of power, the headquarters of the commune, the site of the local dispensary?

They had come to Man-ling.

Shivering in the humid tropic night, Stratton viewed himself as though from another dimension. Could it have been inevitable? All this time, all these years? Karma? Fate? What else could account for it? Of all the villages on the planet, he had been returned to the one that had seared him and stained him and left him a man of palpable sadness.

To that village was he led back, bearer of two tiny corpses. Fresh bodies for Man-ling. I am your plague, don't you see? I have only to come and people die.

Forgive me. I am sorry. This time I did my best. I tried. Now, please leave me alone. There are ghosts here who frighten me and of which I shall not speak. I want to leave.

Someone handed him a bowl and a pair of chopsticks. Eat, they gestured. He ate.

Face buried in the bowl, he could not see. It was better not to see.

The dispensary was new, single story and freshly whitewashed. It contained six beds, some rudimentary medical equipment and windows that opened onto the village main street. The view was of an old movie house across the street. Weary and sagging. In passing headlights, Stratton could see where bullets had marched up the facade. The movie house was as quiet, as dingy and as terrifying as it had been the first night he saw it. They had not even painted it.

Imagine.

After all these years they had not even painted it. His mind had seen the building thousands of times. And always he had imagined that it was white again, that someone had come, orders had been given, workers had arrived, and paint had covered the scars. White paint.

But his nightmare had deceived him. No paint. No clean-up, fix-up, paper-it-over. It was the wrong country for that. China. Let the scars be seen.

The people's struggle. Stratton wondered if Bobby Ho's body still lay on the stage.

Kangmei arrived at last and, with her, a measure of sanity.

She hurled herself at him, burying her head in his chest. Stratton's rice bowl went flying. From the spectators came laughter, nervous and polite. Women in the New China did not embrace foreigners, in private or public.

"Oh, Thom-as, you are so brave. So brave."

He kissed the top of her head.

"The children?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"The boy is well, Thom-as. The girl… the doctors are still working."

One for two. It could have been worse.

"Kangmei, can we go now? We have to talk." She felt so good in his arms.

"No, we cannot. There are very many people. Now you are everyone's rice expert.

They want to express their thanks."

"I just want to be alone with you."

"The train will be here in less than one hour."

He had forgotten.

"An hour?" He had so much to say to her.

The Chinese seized on Kangmei as their link to Stratton. They pushed and shoved and jostled for her attention. She yelled something in her struggle-session voice, and the crowd quieted. The semblance of a line formed.

"They will come individually to greet you. They want to take you across to the old theater where there is more room, but I said you were too weak. Also, I have told them to say only a few words and leave you to rest. Once they have left, so can we, not before."

"Let's get it over with." Stratton fixed a smile on his face.

A ruddy-faced man with iron gray hair appeared, speaking forcefully.

"This is the boy's grandfather," said Kangmei. "On behalf of his family, he extends his most grateful thanks and wishes you a speedy recovery. It is his wish that you will be guest of honor for a banquet once you are well."