China Mountain Zhang

'You checked up on me?' I'm not sure if I like this or not.

'Well, not exactly, I just remembered what people said about you, and then because people knew we were friends, it's a small place, people like to talk.'

'I find this all a little unnerving, and I find the way Alexi is looking at me, well, I'm not sure what it means.

'Think about it,' I say briskly, 'I'd like to have you and Theresa.' I find as I say it, I mean it. Oh, I know that the moment Theresa throws a tantrum I'm going to wonder how I ever got into this, but for right now, I really feel it. I need not to be alone, and Alexi is someone I could live with.

'We could try it,' I add, 'at least for Theresa's sake. If it doesn't work out, I throw you out. It's not an irrevocable decision.'

He nods slowly.

I know well enough when to leave, I stand up and he stands up, too.

He opens the door and then says, 'Well, how about,' shyly, 'I mean if we're thinking about getting married, if you wouldn't mind, a good night kiss?'

And after that he says, 'How about if I walk you home?'

GHOST (Zhang)

'Ni hao ma?' the nurse says, smiling at me. Mandarin 'How are you,' literally translates as 'You good, huh?'

'Hao,' I answer, 'good.' Actually I feel dreadful. I have finally decided that it's not adjustment to a different time zone, I have been sick the entire week since I got here. I am running a fever and I have the backache to end all backaches and if I throw up one more time I will hang myself in despair.

I catalogue my complaints for the nurse who frowns and tells me that I am not in the system. 'Ni gang lai-le ma?'

I went to a special secondary school where we spoke nothing but Mandarin, I can dream in Mandarin, so how come my fever be-fogged brain has to translate laboriously to recognize, 'You just got here?'

'Dui,' I manage. Right.

'Huaqiao ma?' 'Are you overseas Chinese?'

'Dui.' I think for a moment before I add, 'Can I sit down?'

He checks me with a monitor and informs me brightly that I have a fever, apparently an infection, and slaps a tab on my arm. I'm not sure how long he says to leave it on, I'm not really paying much attention. I have decided it would be altogether too impolite to put my head down on the table. He comes back, peels the tab off and tells me to come back in three days.

Then I'm out on the street again. So much for the most advanced medical system in the world. I want to be home in New York. Instead I wait for a bus. I have to ask three times about where to sit. I keep getting up and down confused in Mandarin. I walk to the back muttering loushang, houbiar, upstairs back, like it is my mantra. It doesn't really bother me when the front separates from the back of the bus, but when the top separates and we cut up into the overcity there's this moment where the thing rises as if cresting a hill and my stomach rises with it. I am not violently ill, but it is purely a matter of will.

I manage to get off at Nanjing University, where I am a special student but where I have yet to attend a class. I go to the correct tower, take the elevator up and find the suite I share with Xiao Chen.

'What did the doctor say?' he asks in English, either for practice or out of deference to my condition.

'That I'm sick,' I say, and go to bed.

I sleep for twelve hours and wake up feeling human. Whatever they gave me has worked wonders. I emerge wan but without fever, my mind burned clear. Everything feels new, amazing. Colors are wonderful, not feeling as if I am going to throw up is wonderful, people do not know how lucky they are. Xiao Chen and I go downstairs to get something for breakfast. I don't know him yet, we have only been roommates for a week and I've been sick all that time. I know he's from Singapore and he speaks Mandarin, Singapore and Singapore-English (augmented) and is learning to speak English (augmented.) He seems nice enough, moon-faced and dark. I keep telling him he should learn Japanese but he is studying scientific history and all of the important stuff from the 20th and 21st century is in English.

He convinces me that I should have hot rice cereal for breakfast, that it's bland. I'm not really hungry but it smells nice. Standing in line I drop my spoon and bend over for it, when I stand up I see stars and things go black for a moment because all the blood has rushed to my head, except that my ears start roaring and my vision won't clear. I grab for the counter in front of me, for Xiao Chen's arm, although I'm not sure where he is, the world is turning or I am falling.

And that's the last thing I remember for three days.

I wake in a perfect little room, very clean. I am jacked in, the unit on my left wrist is heavy. I'm comfortable, it is just difficult to work up the energy to do more than turn my head. On the windowsill is a bright yellow spray of forsythia. I have vague memories of dreams.

The doctor comes in, crisp and businesslike in her dark red tails. She sits and jacks in. 'I am Dr. Cui. We'll speak English, I think you have quite enough to worry about without trying to speak Mandarin.' Her English is dictionary perfect in the style of someone who is augmented but either her system is very good or her English isn't bad on its own because she doesn't hesitate for translation time.

'When you came in on Friday the practitioner saw that you had an infection and gave you standard treatment.' She glances over a flimsie, obviously my medical print-out. 'We gave you a virus to combat the infection.'

'Pardon me?' I say.

'You don't do that in the West?' she asks, perfect eyebrows rising. She is a very polished woman, I feel as if I can trust her. 'The virus we gave you carries RNA which uses your body's own immune system to tell it what cells are infection cells.' She gestures with manicured hands. 'Your cells learn to identify a disease by the pattern of it's outer layer and then creates antibodies that are templates for that outer layer, that fit the offending cell. Do you understand?'

I nod, although I am not really sure.

'All right, the virus we gave you 'learns,' so to speak, to identify a bad cell from reading the cells of your own body and then alters itself to attack those cells.'

Okay. So why am I in a tiny clean room?

'Unfortunately, once in a while something goes wrong. In your case most of the virus did what it was supposed to do, but a small portion of the virus mis-identified. That is why you became so ill on Saturday, and Saturday and Sunday you were a very ill man. This is Tuesday, you have been here for three days.'

'Am I okay now?' I ask.

She smiles benignly, 'You are recovering nicely, tongzhur. However I am afraid you will be here for a few weeks until your new kidneys are mature.'

'You have to give me new kidneys?' I ask.

'Oh no,' she says, 'you already have them, we just have to wait for them to come on-line, so to speak.' She smiles, dimples a little, 'That is all right to say, isn't it? 'On-line'? In a sense, what we have done is infect you with new kidneys, we have implanted naive kidney cells, cells like fetal cells, to piggyback on your old kidneys. The naive cells are also anonymous, which means that they have no identification at all and your body doesn't recognize them and so attack them. The unit on your wrist is monitoring your condition and stimulating your new kidneys to grow. Is that clear?'

'I think,' I say, and smile back.

'All right,' she says, 'lie still a moment, I want to check you out.'

I have no desire to do anything else. She concentrates for a moment, frowning at the air. She sees a display but I don't, I'm not jacked into her system.

'Everything looks fine,' she says after a moment. 'Go to sleep.'

It's as if she has tripped a relay, because I do.