“Second, the Chen are famous in the city. The Chen are strong. When you say you are Chen JieMin, others are warned they must respect you, lest the family step in on your behalf. No one wants this.
“Third, the Chen compound in Arcadia City is like Chagu. All are Chen. In the compound you are safe.
“Finally, Chen Zumu is your sponsor. Chen Zumu is a magic name in Arcadia City, second only to Chen Zufu. If things are not working out, you can say, ‘I will ask Chen Zumu about this,’ or ‘Chen Zumu sent me.’ This should solve most problems, even for someone of your age and appearance.”
JieMin continued to look out the windows as he listened to his mother. This all seemed like overkill to him. How big could Arcadia City be? There were hundreds of Chen in Chagu. That was a lot of people. How big could Arcadia City be?
Of course, he knew the numbers. Nine million people total in the colony, and, despite incentives to move out of Arcadia City into one of the other cities that had sprung up along the coast and well into the interior, almost two million people lived in Arcadia City.
But the numbers didn’t convey the reality. As the truck made a turn out of the valley and across the shoulder of one of the foothills, JieMin got a panoramic view of Arcadia City, with the ocean to the east – the left from his point of view, looking south – and the softly rolling hills of the interior to the west.
It was immense. A cluster of dozens of tall buildings in the center – some a dozen or more stories tall – surrounded by square miles of lower buildings. Apartment buildings dominated the close-in areas, fading into single-family homes as one moved out from the center.
JieMin gaped at the sight. How could he not get lost in such a maze? FangYan had an answer.
“The city is laid out in numbers, JieMin. The center – downtown – is zero-zero, like a graph. North is the positive direction for the first number, and each block is one hundred. The numbers of each intersection are on the street signs.
“The Chen compound is a square from one hundred west to three hundred west, and from fourteen hundred north to sixteen hundred north. If you remember that, you can look at street signs and always find your way home.”
JieMin called up a map of Arcadia City in his heads-up display, then, and saw it. He had never paid attention to the small grid numbers before. Looking out at the huge city, though, and consulting the map, it all fell into place. He saw it, and he saw the Chen compound on the map.
Once it clicked, JieMin’s earlier concern evaporated. There was no way he could get lost in the city.
The Chen compound now, a hundred years after the founding of the colony, had grown to four city blocks in Arcadia City, from Hospital Street west to Green Street and Fourteenth Street north to Sixteenth Street.
One the west side of Market Street, there was still a walled garden from Fourteenth Street north to the halfway point of the block. This was for the very delicate plants, and for work on hybrids and new strains. Commercial production had all moved out to farming enclaves like Chagu.
The north half of that block was still an apartment building around a central courtyard, but the first building had been replaced by a taller, masonry building. The apartment complex that now filled the next block north – from Fifteenth Street to Sixteenth Street, and from Market Street west to Green Street – had been built first. Everyone moved into that new complex, and then the old apartment building had been demolished and replaced with the new, twelve-story building.
There was a bridge on the third-floor level over Fifteenth Street between the apartment buildings, and Chen Zufu and Chen Zumu still had their apartment on the first floor of the south building, with their tea rooms opening out onto the garden.
East of Market Street, too, the compound had grown. The Uptown Market was now a three-story enclosed gallery of stalls and shops. The restaurant was now on the first floor of the Uptown Market building, expanding the garden space west of Market Street. The workshop on the eastern half of that block was still there, and the apartments above it remained.
North of Fifteenth Street was additional workshop space, on multiple floors, on the east half of the block. The west half of the block was the warehouse and distribution center that supplied the market as well as other restaurants and groceries in the capital.
There were bridges on the third-floor level across both Fifteenth Street and Market Street, tying that warehouse and workshop facility into the rest of the compound.
It was into this complex of buildings the box truck drove on its way to the Chen warehouse in the city.
When the box truck had backed up to the loading dock of the warehouse from Sixteenth Street, FangYan and JieMin got out.
“Come with me, JieMin.”
FangYan led JieMin through the warehouse and across Fifteenth Street to the Uptown Market, through the market and across Market Street into the apartment building on the other side.
JieMin looked around curiously as they walked.
“This is all Chen?” he asked.
“This is all Chen, in which all Chen have shares,” FangYan said. “Our ancestors were good businessmen and worked hard. It is up to us to live up to their example.”
They walked up to the reception desk in the lobby of
