Chapter 9: Zau consults a friend
As always when he needed to think deeply and long, Zau retired to the water. He had his driver take him through the crowded streets of Guangzhou in his Tesla sedan, down to the water front, past crated goods from a dozen countries on wharf to the private spot in which his chûn was moored.
The tide was ebbing and would be slack in two hours, the perfect time to slip out of the harbor and into more open water. His stress eased just with the act of walking up the gangplank, of once more being close to water, even if unable to enter it. He brought his fingers to his milky eyes, touched the lids, sighed.
He had lived a thousand years, through many tense times. While worldly wise beyond the imagination of any single man or woman, he was still assailed with doubt, emotion and pain, just as they were, still subject to external forces which would, eventually, bring him low. He had already lived longer than the Roman Empire, but had expected to live many more centuries. Yet here he was girding for war, for battle, for a fight that might mean the end of him. Not this time the role of wallflower, observer or profiteer as Generals led their armies to their deaths.
If only he could think what weapons to bring to bear, and on what targets.
Human ignorance had led to this, but so had his. He sat beside the table on the deck, under the frame with the woven cover rolled back, and signed to his chauffeur who set loose the linkage to the wharf and slipped behind the large wheel. The electric motors hummed quietly into action, a barely audible whine reaching his still sharp ears, backing them away from the wharf. He had owned this chûn for two hundred years, and had installed a diesel engine in it over a hundred years ago, as soon as one had become practical. Noisy, belching smoke, and it seems more insidiously, this mixture of carbon and oxygen that was poisoning his oceans. He had made part of his current fortune importing those engines, helping foul his environment for short-sighted greed.
He had had the latest diesel engines stripped out two years earlier, diverted his businesses which still imported, maintained and supported diesel engines for industry and transport to pure electric and hybrid diesel, but it was literally a drop in the ocean, just as his Tesla was a speck of dust on roads choked with fumes.
The boat servant padded silently up on suede-soled shoes, brought Zau the green raiment lined with yellow silk he favored these days, draped it upon his shoulders.
He was very good with numbers, and had poured through the climate models, had some of his own built. This simple and necessary chemical compound was just too prevalent, too slow to be sequestered by natural processes and being emitted in too large a volume by people going about what they thought of as their normal and natural lives.
A vermilion sparrow fluttered down, perched upon the framework overhead. The boat servant brought the steaming teapot, poured a tiny porcelain cup for him, and retired again. Zau poured another cup, gestured to the tiny bird above him.
“Please join me, old friend.”
The sparrow hopped off of the wood above, transformed into a mature woman in a scarlet pien-fu. She sat down across from him, accepted her tea and performed the appropriate kau tau to her host. She inhaled the fragrant sent of jasmine, smiled slightly and sipped. She cocked her eyes at him.
“It’s good to see you. Your color is appropriate in one way, but I cannot feel that the times are auspicious. Summer has become too long, too warm.”
She blinked, slowly.
“Yes, that is possible, and not only possible, deeply problematic.” Zau talked for a while of the science behind it, the implications, the challenges for the creatures of the sea, his personal domain. He spoke of wilder weather, more chaotic winds buffeting the creatures of the air, the domain she lived most fully within.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Yes, it is disruptive of the world above as well. Many of your kin will perish. It is not all longer summers and more buoyant thermals to glide upon.” And then Zau spoke of Qi, his beloved daughter, of finding her dead corpse rolling in the surf, of her funeral.
The woman placed her hand upon his sleeve, her pien-fu shifting slowly to alabaster white, the colour of mourning, the colour of righteousness, her eyes glistening with tears even as his rolled unconstrained down his cheeks. They sat in silence as the tide changed.
He signaled to the boat servant. Minutes later delicate ha gow dumplings, a chili sauce, a plate of pak choi in garlic sauce and crispy barbeque pork buns dusted with sesame seeds were placed before them. Zau offered a little of everything to his guest but she took only one bun, and sat carefully plucking a single sesame seed off at a time and placing it upon her tongue. When they had eaten, the table was cleared again, and Zau resumed.
“So what to do? For a while I thought of rubella, bringing a plague upon the human populace to reduce its numbers. But every disease that arises, they eradicate in weeks or at most months, with only the tiniest fraction of their population dying. I’ve read theses on climatology, listened to speeches by leaders to thunderous ovation and watched agreements made, then ignored. I’ve watched even those most willing to understand and accept the reality turn around and buy more cars, support politicians who put in more coal plants. Humanity seems incapable of seeing that it will be the loser in the end, that it will be diminished catastrophically, pen pals and porn stars and pachinko addicts all sliding into the failed environment.”
He paused. She was still for long minutes. Then her pien-fu shifted slowly from white to a deep blue.
He looked at her, thought for a few minutes of what she might mean, of what the implications were. “Of course. I’ve been adhering to the axiom that there were too many to attack, that they were too strong. But their strength is also their weakness.”
He stood, performed a deep kau tau.
“Xie xie, ni. Xie xie.”
He stood, looked toward his chauffeur and signaled. The boat hummed a different tune, started turning back toward the wharf. Zau looked back to his guest, but she was now once again a sparrow, once again white, and flying off to sea.
