look. For an instant they actually had something in common, their fear. Holly Ann softly armored the infant with her hand. After another minute the Chinese woman got them on the move again, faster this time.
They reached the top floor. The roof gaped open in violent patches, and Holly Ann caught snatches of stars. She smelled fresh air. They clambered over a small landslide of scorched wood and cinder blocks and approached a brightly lit doorway.
Bags of cement had been piled like sandbags as a barricade. The fronts had been slashed open and rainwater had soaked the spillage, turning it to hard knuckles of concrete. It was like climbing folds of lava.
Holly Ann struggled, one arm clutching the infant. Near the top, her head knocked against a cold cannon barrel pointing where they'd come from. Hands with broken fingernails reached down for her from the electric brilliance.
All the dramatics changed. It was like entering a besieged camp: soldiers everywhere, guns, blasted architecture, rain cutting naked through great wounds in the roof. To Holly Ann's enormous relief, Wade was there, sitting in a corner, holding his head.
Once the room might have been a small auditorium, or a cafeteria. Now the space was illuminated with Stalinist klieg lights and looked like Custer's Last Stand. Soldiers from the People's Liberation Army, mostly men in pea-green uniforms or black-striped camouflage, were all business among their weapons. They gave wide berth to Holly Ann. Several elites pointed at the baby inside her sweater.
In the distance, Mr Li was appealing to an officer who carried himself with the iron spine of a hero of the people. His crewcut was gray. He looked weary.
She went over to Wade. He was bleeding into both eyes from a laceration across the scalp line. 'Wade,' she said.
'Holly Ann?' he said. 'Thank God. Mr Li told them you were still below. They sent someone to find you.'
She avoided his bear hug. 'I have something to show you,' she announced quietly.
'It's very dangerous here,' Wade said. 'Something's going on. A revolution or something. I gave Li all our cash. I told him to pay anything, just get us out of here.'
'Wade,' she snapped. He wasn't listening to her.
A voice suddenly boomed in the back, where Mr Li stood. It was the officer. He was shouting at Holly Ann's rescuer, the tall woman. All around her, soldiers looked angry or ashamed for her. Obviously she had allowed some terrible breach. Holly Ann knew it had to do with this baby.
The officer unsnapped his leather holster and looked at her. He drew his pistol out.
'Good Lord,' Holly Ann murmured.
'What?' said Wade. He stood there like some bewildered monster. Useless.
It was her call. Holly Ann astonished herself. As the officer approached her, she started off to meet him halfway. They met in the center of the rubble-strewn room.
'Mr Li,' Holly Ann commanded.
Mr Li glared at her, but came forward.
'Tell this man I have selected my child,' she said. 'I have medicine in the car. I wish to go home now.'
Mr Li started to translate, but the officer abruptly chambered a round. Mr Li blinked rapidly. He was very pale. The officer said something to him.
'Put on floor,' Mr Li said to her.
'We have all the necessary permits,' she explained quite evenly. She said it directly to the officer. 'Out in our car, permits, understand? Passports. Documents.'
'Please you put on floor,' Mr Li repeated very softly. He pointed at her baby. 'That,'
he said, as if it were a dirty thing.
Holly Ann despised him. Despised China. Despised the God that allowed such things.
'She,' said Holly Ann. 'This girl goes with me.'
'Not good,' Mr Li softly pleaded.
'She will die otherwise.'
'Yes.'
'Holly Ann?' Wade loomed behind her.
'It's a baby, Wade. Our baby. I found her. On a pile of garbage. And now they want to kill her.' Holly Ann felt the infant stirring. The tiny fingernails pulled at her blouse.
'A baby?'
'No,' Mr Li said.
'I'm taking her home with us.'
Mr Li shook his head emphatically.
'Give them the money,' she instructed him.
Wade blustered foolishly. 'We're American citizens. You did tell them, didn't you?'
'This isn't for you,' Mr Li said. 'It's a trade. This for that.'
She could feel the infant's hunger, miniature lips groping for a nipple. 'A trade?' she demanded. 'Who are you trading with?'
Mr Li glanced nervously at the soldiers.
'Who?' she insisted.
Mr Li pointed at the ground. Through it. 'Them.' Holly Ann felt faint. 'What?'
'Our babies. Their babies. Trade.' The infant made a tiny sound.
Over Mr Li's shoulder, Holly Ann saw the officer aiming his gun. She saw a puff of color spit from the barrel.
Holly Ann barely felt the bullet. Her fall to earth was more like floating. All the way down, she held the child in safety.
Above her, violent shadows thundered. More guns went off. Her name roared out. She smiled and rested her head gently against the bundle at her shoulder. Little
no-name. No-luck. I belong to you. Before they could reach her, Holly Ann did the only thing left to do. She unveiled the daughter China had refused. Time to say good-bye.
In her search around the world for a child, Holly Ann had seen babies of every race and color. Her search had changed her forever, she thought. Black eyes or blue, kinky hair or straight, chocolate skin or yellow or brown or white, crooked, blind, or straight: none of that mattered.
As she opened the sweater wrapping the baby, Holly Ann fully expected to recognize her common humanity in this tiny being. Every infant was a chalice. That was her conviction. Until now.
Even dying, Holly Ann was able to kick the thing away from her.
Oh God, she cursed, and closed her eyes.
A sound like giants walking wakened her. She looked. It was not footsteps, but the old man carefully planting one shot at a time as he tracked the foundling.
Finally it was done. And she was glad.
...nature hath adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view...
– JONATHAN SWIFT, Gulliver's Travels
12
ANIMALS
The July Tunnels
In a gut of coiled granite, the mortal fed.
The meat was still warm from life. It was more than food, less than sacrament. Flesh is a
