For the Win - Cory Doctorow (read novels website txt) 📗

well-spoken he was in Chinese.

The eldest tourist, a woman with wrinkled arms and neck showing beneath a top with thin straps, looked hard at him. She removed her oversized sunglasses and assayed a little Chinese. "We are fine," she said, her accent no better than Matthew's, which he found oddly comforting. She was with three others, a man he took to be her husband and two young men, about Matthew's age, who looked like a cross between her and the husband: sons.

"Please," he said. "I take you out, find taxi. You tell --" he tried to find the word for policemen, couldn't remember it, found himself searching through his game-vocabulary. "Knights? Paladins? Soldiers. You tell soldiers I am guide. We all go."

The boys grinned at him and he thought they must be gamers, because they'd really perked up at paladins, and he tried grinning back at them, though truth be told he didn't feel like doing anything. They conferred in hushed voices.

"No thank you," the older man said. "We're all right."

He squeezed his eyes shut. He had to get somewhere that his phone would work, had to check in with Big Sister Nor and find out where the others were, what the plan was. He'd have to get new papers, maybe go to one of the provinces or try to sneak into Hong Kong. "You help me," he managed. "I no go without you. Without, uh, foreigners." He gestured at the police, at their shields. "They not hurt foreigners."

The older man's eyes widened in comprehension. They spoke again among themselves. He caught the word "criminal."

"I not criminal," he said. But he knew it was a lie and felt like they must know it too. He was a criminal and a former prisoner, and he would never be anything but, for his whole life; just like his grandfather.

They all stared at him, then looked away.

"Please," he said, looking at each one in turn. He jerked his head at the police. "They hurt people soon."

The woman drew in a deep breath, turned to the man, said, "We need to get out of here anyway. It will be good to have a local."

The taller of the two boys said, "What do you play?"

"Svartalfaheim Warriors, Zombie Mecha, Mushroom Kingdom, Clankers, Big Smoke, Toon," he said, ticking them off on his fingers.

"All of them?" The boys boggled at him.

He nodded. "All."

They laughed and he laughed too, small sounds in the roar of the crowds and the thunder of the choppers overhead.

"You are sure about this?" the woman said. Adding, "Certain?" in Chinese. He nodded twice.

"Come with me," he said and drew in a deep breath and led them out toward the police lines.

Wei-Dong didn't want to wake Jie, but he needed to sleep. He finally curled up on the floor next to the mattress, using his shoulderbag as a pillow to get his face off of the filthy carpet. At first he lay rigid in the brightly lit room, his mind swirling with all he'd seen and done, but then he must have fallen asleep and fallen hard, because the next thing he knew, he was swimming up from the depths of total oblivion as Jie shook his shoulder and called his name. He opened his eyes to slits and peered at her.

"Wha?" he managed, then realized he was talking English and said, "What?" in Chinese.

"Time to go," she said. "Big Sister Nor says we have to move."

He sat up. His mouth was full of evil-tasting salty paste, a stale residue of dumplings and sleep. Self consciously, he breathed through his nose.

"Where?"

"Hong Kong," she said. "Then..." She shrugged. "Taiwan, maybe? Somewhere we can tell the story of the dead without being arrested. That's the most important thing."

"How are we going to cross the border? I don't have a Chinese visa in my passport."

She grinned. "That part is easy. We go to my counterfeiter."

It was as good a plan as any. Wei-Dong had watched the Webblies change papers again and again. Shenzhen was full of counterfeiters. He rode the Metro apart from her again, staring at his stupid guide map and trying to look like a stupid tourist, invisible. It was easier this time around, because there was so much else going on -- factory girls talking about Jie's radio show and "the 42," policemen prowling the cars and demanding the papers of any group of three or more people, searching bags and, once, confiscating a banner painted on a bedsheet. Wei-Dong didn't see what it said, but the police took four screaming, kicking girls off the train at the next station. Shenzhen was in chaos.

They got off the train at the stock market station, and he followed Jie, leaving a hundred yards between them. But he came up against her when they got to the surface. The last time he'd been here, it had been thronged with counterfeiters and touts handing out fliers advertising their services, scrap-buyers with scales lining the sidewalks, hawkers selling fruit and ices. Now it was wall-to-wall police, a cordon formed around the entrance to the stock-market. Officers were stationed every few yards on the street, too, checking papers.

Jie picked up her phone and pretended to talk into it, but Wei-Dong could see she just didn't want to look suspicious. He got out his tourist-map and pretended to study it. Gradually, they both made their way back into the station. She joined him at a large map of the surrounding area.

"Now what?" he whispered, trying not to move his mouth.

"How were you going to get out of here?" she said.

His stomach tightened. "I hadn't really thought about it much," he said.

She hissed in frustration. "You must have had some idea. How about the way you got in?"

He hadn't told anyone the details of his transoceanic voyage. It would have felt weird to admit that he was part owner of a giant shipping company. Besides, he didn't really feel like it was his. It was his father's.

Two policemen passed by, grim-faced, moving quickly, an urgent, insectile buzz coming from their earpieces.

"Really?"

"If we could get into the port," he said. "I think I could get us anywhere."

She smiled, and it was the first real smile he'd seen on her face since -- since before the shooting had started.

"But I need to call my mother."

The policemen that questioned Matthew were so tense they practically vibrated, but the tourist lady put on a big show of being offended that they were being stopped and demanded that they be allowed to go, practically shouting in English. Matthew translated every word, speaking over the policemen as they tried to ask him more questions about how he'd come to be there and what had happened to get his clothes so dirty with paint and mud.

The tourist lady took out her camera and aimed it at the policemen, and that ended the friendly discussion. Before she could bring the screen up to her face, a policeman's gloved hand had closed around the lens. The two boys moved forward and it looked like someone would start shoving soon, and the man was shouting in English, and all the noise was enough to attract the attention of an officer who gave the cops a blistering tongue lashing for wasting everyone's time and waved them on with a stern gesture.

Matthew could hardly believe he was free. The tourists seemed to think it was all a game as he urged them down the road a way, out of range of the police cordon and away from the shouting. They walked up the shoulder of the Shenhui Highway, staying right on the edge as huge trucks blew past them so fast it sucked the breath out of their lungs.

"Taxi?" the woman asked him.

He shook his head. "I no think taxi today," he said. "Private car, maybe."

She seemed to understand. He began to wave at every car that passed them by, and eventually one stopped, a Chang���an sedan that had seen better days, its trunk held shut with a bungee cord that allowed the lid to bang as the car rolled to a stop. It was driven by a man in a dirty chauffeur's uniform. Matthew leaned in and said, "100 RMB to take us to Jiabin Road." It was high, but he was sure the tourists could afford it.

"No, too far," the man said. "I have another job --"

"200," Matthew said.

The man grinned, showing a mouthfull of steel teeth. "OK, everyone in."

They were on the road for a mere five minutes before his phone chirped to let him know that he had voicemail waiting for him. It was Justbob, from Big Sister Nor.

"Mom?"

"Lawrence?"

"Hi, Mom." He tried to ignore Jie who was looking at him with an expression of mingled hilarity and awe. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of gamer cafes with private rooms, and had brought them to this one in the ground floor of a youth hostel that catered to foreigners and had a room set off for karaoke and net-access.

"It's been so long since I've heard your voice, Lawrence."

"I know, Mom."

"How's your trip?"

"Um, fine." He tried to remember where he told her he'd be. Portland? San Francisco?

"Oh, Lawrence," she said, and he heard that she was crying. It was what, 8PM back in LA, and she was crying and alone. He felt so homesick at that moment he thought he would split in two and he felt the tears running down his own cheeks.

"I love you, Mom," he blubbered.

And they both cried for a long time, and when he risked a look at Jie, she was crying too.

"Mom," he said, choking back snot. "I have a favor to ask of you. A big favor."

"You're in trouble."

"Yes." There was no point in denying it. "I'm in trouble. And I can't explain it right now."

"You're in China, aren't you?"

He didn't know what to say. "You knew."

"I suspected. It's that gamer thing, isn't it? I did the math on when you answered my messages, when you called."

"You knew?"

"I'm not stupid, Lawrence." She wasn't crying anymore. "I thought I knew, but I didn't want to say anything until you told me."

"I'm sorry, Mom."

She didn't say anything.

"Are you coming home?"

He looked at Jie. "I don't know. Eventually. I have something I have to do here, first."

"And you need my help with that."

"Mom, I need to you order a shipment from Shenzhen to Mumbai." Big Sister Nor had suggested it, and Jie had shrugged and said that it was fine with her, one place was as good as any other. "I'll give you the container number. And you have to have Mr Alford call the port authority here and tell them that I'm authorized to access it."

"No, Leonard. I'll call the embassy, I'll get you home, but this is --" He could picture her hand flapping around her head. "It's crazy, is what it is."

"Mom --"

"No."

"Mom, listen. This is about a lot more than just me. There are people here, friends, whose lives are at stake. You can call the embassy all you want but I won't go there. If you don't help me, I'll have to do this on my own, and I have to be honest with you, Mom, I don't think I'll be able to do it. But I can't abandon my friends."

She was crying again.

"I'm going to be at the port in --" he checked the screen of his phone -- "in three hours. I've got my passport with me, that'll get me inside, if