36 Streets - T. R. Napper - E-Book

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T. R. Napper

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Beschreibung

Altered Carbon and The Wind-Up Girl meet Apocalypse Now in this Ditmar and Aurealis award-winning, fast-paced, intelligent, action-driven cyberpunk, probing questions of memory, identity and the power of narratives. Lin 'The Silent One' Vu is a gangster in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, living in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider. Through grit and courage, Lin has carved a place for herself in the Hanoi underworld under the tutelage of Bao Nguyen, who is training her to fight and survive. Because on the streets there are no second chances. Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory, an addictive immersive simulation of the US-Vietnam war. When an Englishman – one of the game's developers – comes to Hanoi on the trail of his friend's murderer, Lin is drawn into the grand conspiracies of the neon gods: the mega-corporations backed by powerful regimes that seek to control her city. Lin must confront the immutable moral calculus of unjust wars. She must choose: family, country, or gang. Blood, truth, or redemption. No choice is easy on the 36 Streets.

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

A Note on Vietnamese Language Usage

Part One

Chapter 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04

Chapter 05

Chapter 06

Chapter 07

Chapter 08

Chapter 09

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Episode 01

Episode 02

Episode 03

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Part Two

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Part Three

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Also Available from Titan Books

“36 Streets glows bright and hallucinatory as tropical neon, goes down smooth as warm sake, cuts deep as a nano-steel blade. Napper honours classic cyberpunk with fresh perspectives and hot genre recombinations, a nasty new-future gleam, the proverbial new coat of paint. But there are more austere echoes here too, of Graham Greene and Kazuo Ishiguro, of a whole post-colonial literary heritage banging to be let in. In a genre stuffed with facile hero narratives, 36 Streets consistently chooses something else – messy humanity, grey moral tones and choices, hard-edged geopolitical truth. Raw and raging and passionate, this is cyberpunk literature with a capital fucken L. Get it while it’s hot!” Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon

“Brutal, brooding, brilliant . . . an angry vision of violence wrapped around a complex meditation of memory, trauma and hegemony. This is cyberpunk with soul. Street crime and resistance; nihilism and heroism; sinners and saviours; tiny Vietnam and the all-devouring empires that have hounded it; turn this book this way and that and these opposites meld and merge and flash bloody smiles at you, like the edges of a single perfect blade, with Napper's hand on the hilt.” Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, author of The Salvage Crew

“Intimately concerned with the little guy in a world of neon gods, Napper paints a prophetic and uncomfortably believable vision of the future. A fascinating interplay between advancing technology and wish fulfillment, 36 Streets is ambitious in scope while remaining deeply human.” Tim Hickson, Hello Future Me

“A fun, frenetic journey of neon-blasted streets, sinister underworlds and oodles of brutal tech, rendered in cutthroat prose so tangible you can almost smell the grime and cigarette smoke. T.R. Napper’s cyberpunk world is a feral, back-alley brawl of a novel with real blood under its nails.” Jeremy Szal, author of Stormblood

“High-octane, immersive SF at its best. 36 Streets is sure to become a classic in the field.” Kaaron Warren, Shirley Jackson Award-Winner

“For his impressive debut novel, rising star of Australian speculative fiction T.R. Napper gives us an engrossing, intriguing action-packed duty tour of a tech-thick, violence-infused, neon-scorched near future gangland Vietnam, where unwinnable games run hot and wild. Highly recommended.” Cat Sparks, author of Lotus Blue

“Napper has made a remarkable character in the form of his protagonist Lin Thi Vu, subverting to some degree the conventions of the world of male power and violence. Lin is ‘other’ in this environment: female, somewhat Australian, not Vietnamese enough, desiring and desired widely. It’s a great achievement. The set pieces, the interludes, of performed mastery with weapons and skill, are well poised and set the scene with ritualised violence.” Stephen Teo, author of Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition

“Beautiful, shimmering, ghostly science fiction.” Anna Smith-Spark, author of the Empires of Dust trilogy

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36 Streets

Print edition ISBN: 9781789097412

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789097429

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: January 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 T. R. Napper. All Rights Reserved.

T. R. Napper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Sarah, Robert, and Willem. You three: the groundbeneath my feet, my sky, my stars.

A Note on VietnameseLanguage Usage

By English-language convention, character names do not use diacritics, nor does the country name Vietnam. However, all other Vietnamese words use diacritics to indicate tones, except where a non-Vietnamese speaker is using them. This may sound a little complicated, but I swear you won’t even notice.

It was their thirty-eighth fight. This time she fought with the kanabo, a three-foot iron-studded mace. Fights with such were not expected to last long.

They stood twelve feet apart on the tatami mats. Lin Thi Vu held her weapon two-handed, the weight of it already stinging her triceps. Her shihan held his with one, raised above his head, angled so the tip was pointed at her. The third person watched from the shadows, past the edge of her peripheral vision.

Shihan, silent, no war cry, not a breath: whirled, iron flashing, a gyre that tore towards her.

The fight did not last long.

Her arm, broken, was folded behind her. She gasped with pain, vision flowing in and out of focus. Her kanabo lay beyond her fingertips on the white mat, now dotted red with her blood. Probably only a three-mat fight.

Legs astride her, the master held the mace above his head, ready for the last blow.

Bao Nguyen emerged from the shadows at the side of the room. Stood next to her, looking down. Eyes watching always watching, marking now the pain on her face. Her failure. Time and again, her failure.

Bao said: “[The will and the act.]”

Lips swollen, voice blood-slurred, she replied: “The will and the act.”

Bao said to the shihan: “[More.]”

With a triumphant cry, the master brought the iron down.

PART ONE

Fat Victory

I’ll give you twenty endless yearsTwenty years seven thousand nights of artillerySeven thousand nights of artillery lulling you to sleepAre you sleeping yet or are you still awake

– Tran Da Tu, Love Tokens

The problem with heroes was they thought the world owed them tribute before being sent to die. Awed respect. Last requests. Nobility in death. All that bullshit. This hero was no different. Handcuffed to a rusted wall pipe, wrists bloody, looking up at Lin Thi Vu through a sheen of sweat and fear and perverse hope. Dark eyes, lean shoulders, lean face. He said, jaw set: “[Get word to my mother. Tell her what happened.]”

The words came through her on-retina translator, in English. She understood what he was saying, but out of habit read the translation before nodding once.

Uncle Bao had given her the location of the safe house, told her to be careful, only go for the target, call it off if he had accomplices. Do no more than they’d been paid to do. Her thoughts, precisely.

He’d come alone; she’d got him. As usual, she’d made it harder than necessary.

*   *   *

Thirty minutes earlier Lin had been waiting on a plastic chair in the darkest corner of the room, wearing a conical bamboo hat, the rim down over her eyes. Chain smoking to help keep the tremors in her hands under control. The target was late, so the shakes had gotten progressively worse. Lin tapped her foot on the ground in a nervous staccato; her free hand gripping and un-gripping the loose material of her faded blue pants. The pulse pistol rested near her crotch. She picked it up, checked the charge, put it down again. Up, and down again. Battered blue metal, faded Baosteel logo stamped into the rear of the stock.

Lin was down to her last three cigarettes when a key rattled in the lock. She jumped, the pistol clattered to the ground. She bent down to scoop it up, dropped it again as the door opened, a shaft of light splitting the gloom. A shadow outlined in the doorway as Lin, down on one knee, finally grasped the weapon.

“[Who’s there?]” asked a voice. Lin could see more clearly now. Clear enough, anyway, to confirm it was her mark: young man, twenty-two, message runner and scout for the Việt Minh in Hoàn Kiêm.

He took one step forward, squinting into the gloom as he reached for something at his belt. She squeezed the trigger, the room lit up, strobe-flash-blue, the boy’s eyes wild-wide.

But her aim was off, the blue arc of electricity hitting his shoulder then striking the wall behind him, the shock popping a black-and-white picture of Ho Chi Minh from the wall. The boy shouted at the pain, half turned, legs wobbling. The weapon he was holding – a hook-bladed knife – dropped to the floor. He reached for the doorframe behind, trying to drag himself out.

Lin said: “Fuck,” and pulled the trigger again. The gun answered click. Then repeated itself: click click click. She swore again, too strung out to care what the neighbours heard. The shaking in her hands abated, her vision cleared, the adrenalin of imminent failure pumping into her system.

She sprung up, took four steps and swivelled her hips, delivering a high kick to the young man’s temple. His head snapped sideways, bounced off the doorframe, and he collapsed at her feet.

Lin dragged him by the arms across the smooth tile floor. Breathing heavily, she handcuffed him to a pipe and gaffer-taped his mouth, just as the shakes started up again. She stagger-stepped towards the couch, slumped backwards into it, missed, slid off the rounded armrest and cracked her temple on the side table as her butt hit the floor. Undeterred, Lin slid the vial out of her pocket and held it up in the thin light.

A sigh escaped from her lips. The viscous yellow liquid glowed as though generating its own light. No drink to mix it with, she pulled the dropper, hands respectfully calm as the chemicals in her body began to change in expectation, already starting to behave as they would post-hit.

Three drops onto her tongue. Bitter, pungent, cat-piss taste and then—

Euphoria.

The glow of the drops spread from her tongue, to her eyeballs, to her earlobes, to her fingernails. So she was glowing, glowing just like the vial. At peace, just like the vial, welcomed, belonging, just like the vial, part of an infinite present, connected via vital luminous threads to all the other vital luminous beings in that web, spread out in space, connected, all connected, all needed, all known, all wanted…

She awoke. Mouth dry. Lips tingling, aftereffect of the drug; she drew her thumb across them, as though to wipe the sensation away. Lin grunted as she pushed herself up. Left arm pins and needles where she’d been lying on it. The timestamp on-retina said: 6:16 pm

She’d been out twenty minutes. The boy was still there; the tension ebbed in her chest. Wrists bloody, must have woken before she did, one last desperate attempt to flee.

*   *   *

“[Yes, you’ll tell her?]” he asked again.

Lin nodded. Even that single gesture heavy, weighed down with the lie. There’d be no back-channel communication, no quiet moment over a kitchen table, Lin’s hand on some old woman’s, mumbling condolences. Tokenism of that sort could be linked back to Lin. And Lin, well, wasn’t much in the mood for being kidnapped by the Việt Minh, then tortured, murdered, filmed, and later broadcast out onto the freewave as an example of what happens to traitors.

“[Promise,]” he said.

Lin pressed her lips together in displeasure at his demand, but replied in Vietnamese: “Chị hứa.” No point in letting him get all emotional before the authorities arrived.

“[She lives on Chan Cam. Green apartment, third floor,]” he said. “[You know it?]”

Lin nodded. In the thirty-six streets. Of course she knew it.

“[Tell her I died as a patriot, for our country.]”

Lin lit a cigarette and settled back into the sofa. The body buzz from the drugs relaxed her limbs, sharpened her focus. The boy wasn’t speaking to her anymore. He was speaking for himself, the words forming heroic images in his mind. The coda of his life’s narrative. She blew out a cloud of smoke. Twenty years old, more or less. Pretty short story.

The smoke pooled across the ceiling. Peeling paint, dirty white, no fan. Narrow window, sunset, room darkening. Outside a view of a courtyard, overgrown, a tight square between apartments stacked on top of each other, four, five, six stories high, depending on how much risk the landlord wanted to swallow. Poorly made top-floor apartments were known to lose roofs, contents, even occupants, if the winds got high enough.

This one was solid. Just old, its entrance hidden down one of the alleys in the Old Quarter. Labyrinthine passages, unmarked, slick concrete, shocks of green emerging from cracks, from drains.

She smoked until someone tapped on the door, light. Lin rose to her feet, fluid, knife in her hand. Black moulded grip, long black blade, matching pair each ankle, nano-edged Chinese special forces knives that had found their way onto the Hà Nội street market.

“Yes?” she asked, in Vietnamese.

The door creaked open, hesitant; Lin reached, no hesitation, and pulled the person in. It was her street kid, grubby face, eyes round in their sockets. He was too poor to have a memory pin, the room was dim, and the rim of the conical bamboo hat covered half of her face. Still, she grabbed his hair and gently tilted his head until he was looking at the floor.

“[They’re here,]” he mumbled.

She sheathed her blade, pulled a wad of yuan from her pocket. A cashless world, they insisted. Against all contrary evidence. Citizens didn’t like putting prostitutes on their credit link, for one, no matter the guarantees of anonymity. Everything black market required cold hard.

She handed him a note. He grabbed it, big smile cracking his face. Lin turned him around and pushed him out the door. Increased jamming in the Old Quarter lately had neural links dropping out all the time, so she’d gone analogue, found a street communicator. Better anyway, harder to trace.

Lin closed the door and walked over to the young hero, checked his cuffs, gleaming in the low light, firm around his red wrists. She’d add the price of them to the bill.

He looked up at her. The fear was consuming him now, chasing away the last hints of righteousness. He asked: “[What will they do to me?]”

Torture you. Virtual, physical, until you don’t know the difference. Over weeks. Turn you. Turn you against everyone you ever loved. Everything you ever loved. Everyone you ever fought alongside. Make you confess every offence you, or anyone you ever knew committed. Put a bullet in you. Bury you in the jungle in an unmarked grave.

“Don’t know,” she said.

He nodded. Steeling himself.

She found herself staring at the young man. His thin shirt, sweat-soaked skin, his failing courage. Utterly alone. She wet her lips to say something, but the thump thump thump of heavy boots on stairs changed her mind.

Lin Thi Vu left the room quickly, passing the men with her eyes down, conical hat covering her face. Not wanting to be seen, and most of all not wanting to see them and the hard purpose in their eyes.

At the bottom of the stairs she picked up her bamboo pole, baskets on either end holding bananas and lychees and mangosteens and whatever else she could find in the market earlier that day. She stepped out into the darkened alley, into the steaming night air.

Loose pants, traditional tunic, conical hat: at first glance she looked like a young hawker. And hawkers didn’t warrant more than a first glance. She walked towards the light and noise. The traffic frenetic, as though in the intensity of nine million glimmer bikes and one million cars the world could be forgotten. The war could be forgotten. The fierce energy of the city hit her as her foot touched the sidewalk, the fury of occupation, of defeat, of a rebellious, quarrelsome, unbreakable city that now lay broken. The fury now directed into white noise, throwing it like a cloak over thought and memory.

Memory most of all. To forget the past, to forget even the present, obscure it with sound and movement; with arguments over the price of produce, fistfights over one bike parked too close to another, stabbings over the outcome of a soccer game.

A whole city pulsating with fear and denial, sweat streaming down its face, in a heat that clogged the throat and clouded the mind.

Lin, bamboo pole balanced on her shoulder, walked through it all unseen. A spectre, part in the city, part elsewhere. The weight of the bamboo bearing down as she stepped between slick, stinking puddles, through the cacophony of blaring horns and street sellers.

Straining under the burden, head bowed, she made her way into the fetid heart of the thirty-six streets.

Lin walked up the narrow, uneven staircase. Musky air, moisture on the stone. A hundred years old, a hundred years of soft-soled feet trudging up and down, smoothing the steps, bowing them. The drip drip drip of human existence wearing down the rock, wearing it smooth and indifferent.

Three floors up, Lin banged on a blue steel door with her fist. She took a step back and tilted her head upwards, let the nano-cams above – and the people behind them – check her face. Simultaneously, sensors in the door received the pass code from her cochlear implant. Human and technological components of the security system satisfied, the door creaked open.

She stepped into a room filled with smoke, laughter, and the sour smell of masculinity. Maybe half of Bao’s men were inside – thirty or so – sitting on knee-high plastic chairs drinking, eating, playing cards and dice.

They yelled chúc sức khỏe! [Good health!] as they downed rice whiskey and fresh beer, red-faced, boasting, boisterous. Smoking cheap cigarettes rolled with black-market tobacco for hours on end, day after day in between jobs. Nicotine coated the white blinds in a thin film of yellow, stained the roof. The concrete floor, swept every night by an ancient bent woman in exchange for food, was covered now in peanut shells and spilt beer.

At the table closest to the door, a skinny toe-cutter named Snakehead Tran and a thick-necked southerner called Bull Neck Bui sat with heads craned over a game of Vietnamese chess. Bull glanced up, whacked Snakehead on the shoulder, indicating Lin with his chin.

Bull was a third-generation taxi driver from Sài Gòn, now a head enforcer for the gang. She never quite knew where she stood with him. Technically, she was above him in the hierarchy, but neither he nor anyone else acted as though this was the case.

She lowered her pole and fruit baskets to the ground with a sigh.

Tran smiled, Bull burst into laughter, “Bah hah hah!” pointing a shot glass at her clothes. “[Hey! Silent One! Make me some phở!]”

A man at a nearby table joined in: “[Little sister! Off to work in the fields?]” And another: “[Little sister, some fucking doughnuts!]”

Lin glanced at the translation of the comments on-retina and replied: “Đụ má!”

The men fell about laughing. Lin could never quite get the accent right, even when using words she always used, like motherfucker. The men always found it hilarious. Red-eyed, sheen of sweat on their skin, missing teeth. Ugly men, violent men, crude, uneducated, loyal, tough. Better than most. As good as it got, in this city.

Lin walked past the smoke and insults, pushing through a cheap wooden door at the other end of the room. The door swung closed and she leaned against it. Alone in her tiny, dark office, shutting her eyes for just a few moments. She sighed, yanked off her hat, chucked it into a corner, and nudged her way around her desk. Standing, she opened the top drawer, pulled out a bottle of green-labelled sake and a white ceramic cup. Filled it, took a shot, filled it again, got the glowing dropper out, gave it one.

Lin turned to the window, cup in hand. Lights across the city now, the crackle of gunfire somewhere in the distance, raucous laughter of the men coming from behind. The violet neon of a gin bar gleaming down below. She sipped her sake and ice-seven.

A crack of light, as the other door to her office popped open.

A voice, quiet but not soft, said in Vietnamese: “[How are you, little sister?]”

“Fine, Uncle,” she said in English.

“Fine,” he repeated, using the English word, then waited.

Lin sighed again. “No more of those jobs.”

“[Why?]” Curiosity in the voice.

She turned. Bao Nguyen stood in the doorway. Full white hair, black moustache, watchful eyes, always watching, never missed a thing. She made to say something, then changed her mind.

“[Bring the bottle,]” he said, and disappeared from sight.

Lin closed the door and was reaching for her sake when the throbbing pain in her temple made itself known.

It’d been there all along, under the buzz of the drugs and the dulling guilt. She winced as she touched it and drew away her hand, spots of blood on her fingertips. She went over to her cooler unit – a small black box sitting on the floor against the wall – removed the ice tray, popped some cubes out onto the floor. Sifted through the shelves until she found one of her singlets, wrapped it around the ice, and pressed it to her temple.

Holding the sake with the other hand, she went through to the next room.

Bao sat behind his desk, the fauxwood surface battered and scratched, flexiscreen to one side, half-bottle of brandy and a plate of sunflower seeds sitting in front of him. Bao was simply dressed. Worn cloth jacket, shirt with drooping collar. Like always, nothing to give his status away as the most influential gangster in Hà Nội.

She sat across from him and poured herself a drink while he watched. Bao had a habit of looking at someone for too long before taking his turn to speak. Lin was never sure if he was thinking about what he wanted to say, or was trying to see something in the person he was talking to. Lin sometimes wondered another thing, related to those rumours that followed him around. Whether he actually wasn’t interested in what was being said, his mind’s eye, somewhere else, back in the jungle.

Lin put down the ice pack for a moment so she could light a cigarette, snapping closed her steel lighter before chucking it onto the table in front of her. Ice pack in one hand, sake and cigarette in the other, she was set.

Bao smiled wryly and lifted his small, red-coloured glass. He said: “[Good health,]” she replied: “Chúc sức khỏe,” and they downed their drinks.

Bao always seemed calm, reserved, with just the occasional glimpse of dry humour. She’d only seen him violent once in the five years she’d known him. Though that one time. Well.

“[You got the job done,]” he said. Not a question.

“Yeah.”

“[That is what matters.]”

Lin said nothing to that, taking a drag on her cigarette instead.

“[How old are you now, Lin?]” he asked.

Lin raised an eyebrow at him. “Does it matter?”

“[Yes,]” he replied, and waited.

“Twenty-four.”

“[Hm. Your spirit is older than that. But still, you have the naïvety of the young.]”

“Fuck. Uncle. I’ve been a gangster since I was nineteen. With you.”

“[Yes. But when you are young it is still possible to believe in something.]”

Lin downed her drink. As she poured another she said: “That’s all you got, Uncle: don’t be naïve? You’re young, you don’t know what you’re talking about?”

He stared at her for a few moments. “[Well. Yes. It works with everyone else.]” He smiled. “[They nod respectfully and then pour my brandy.]”

“Ha. Pour your own fucken brandy.” The glow from the ice-seven was spreading. One drop, just enough to relax her body, focus her mind, shift her conscience to neutral. Bao was the only one she was comfortable speaking English with, other than her family. Nearly nine years returned, she could understand pretty much everything that was spoken to her in Vietnamese. But she found it useful to double-check unfamiliar words on-retina, make sure the meaning she got was straight.

She had a few strong suits. A couple, anyway. Language wasn’t one of them. Hated the laughter every time she foundered on a tone, self-conscious with new words, she fell back into silence. Perfectionist, acutely self-conscious, proud: the unholy trinity when it came to learning a language. So she never talked much. Switching between English and Vietnamese, embarrassed at using either, at the impurity of her identity.

Her reluctance to talk earned her the gang name Silent One. They called her Mouse at the start, but after she broke the knee of Laughing Man Tran and pushed his face into a pan filled with deep-frying tofu, well – they decided the Mouse didn’t quite fit. The Laughing Man had called her a foreign dog. Probably the last coherent thing he did say. Lips melted, nose halfway down his face, a slurring horror show that no one wanted to look at.

Bao condoned the fight; she fought exactly as he’d taught her. After Laughing Man got out of hospital he didn’t want to hang around. Packed his bags and was gone. Rumour it was for the underground freak fights down in Đà Nẵng.

She’d fought him in silence. Took the abuse, then unmanned him. It didn’t take much to make it as a gangster: you just had to be smarter, tougher, and meaner than anyone else in the room.

Bao cracked sunflower seeds between his fingernails, popping them into his mouth, discarding the husks. Watching her, always watching.

“[It’s war,]” he finally said.

“Yeah,” she replied, settling back into her chair. Bao had comfortable chairs. Cloth hand-sewn, padded armrests. She tilted her head back until it rested against the back, her face pointed at the ceiling. Moisture ran in lines across the surface above, warping, bubbling the off-white paint. It was cool in Bao’s room. No point in being the boss if it didn’t come with air conditioning.

Lin smoked, cold pack still pressed against her temple, and watched the water seep across the ceiling. Listened to the crick crick crick, as Bao broke open sunflower pods; clatter of dice and beer glasses on tables from the room behind lulled her, drew her back to that first time.

Nineteen, drunk, lost. No language, too scared to ask where she was, no credit for a taxi. Every dollar spent on fresh beer. Empty stomach, regretting not having bought some fried tofu. Boiled peanuts. Anything.

Paved alleyway, close on all sides, the Old Quarter. The men at the bia hơi she’d just left watched her go, sullen, red-eyed. The heat beating down, worse than usual, night but still unbearable, air thick. Tempers on edge, the aftermath of a Chinese crackdown the week before. A prism grenade thrown into a high-end restaurant popular with Chinese military; two dead officers, two dead waiters, a dozen injured. Not the most notable of attacks, except one of the dead officers was a general. So there were raids and arrests and bodies turning up, young men and young women, tortured and aired out and worse. Everyone an informant, everyone Việt Minh, no one able to talk or trust.

She lurch-stepped down the alley. The Thirty-Six Streets they called it. Maybe it was, maybe once, when the Old Quarter was built. Thirty-six streets for the thirty-six guilds that existed seven hundred years before, for the artisans in silk or silver or wood or cloth or bamboo or herbal medicine.

Whatever the past, now there were myriad streets, and alleys, and lanes, and dead ends, and hidden entrances, and backways of smooth brick and deep shadow. Signs torn down to confuse the Chinese. Lin was in the labyrinth now, unsure of the way home, back to that narrow, frightened space she lived in with Kylie and Phuong. She aimed herself towards the far end of the alley, herd of glimmer bikes droning past; she’d figure it once she got to the street. Stagger along until she found a landmark.

“[Little sister, where are you going?]” Men in the shadows, three, sitting near their battered scooters. Two playing Vietnamese chess while the third watched; all looking at her now.

She ignored them, kept walking, her head down.

“[Little sister, join us for a drink,]” said the man.

She glanced over. The speaker was shirtless, the other two had their singlets rolled up, bellies exposed. Shirtless had a shaved head and a bottle of cheap rice whiskey in his hand.

Large drops of rain, splashes the size of her palm, fell infrequently. Splash – step – splash – step – splash.

Lin picked up her pace, wanting to be away from the sickly heat of their attention, slipped in a puddle, righted herself, slipped again and ended up pitching forward.

The men laughed. Lin winced, trying to rise quickly, embarrassed, slipping again.

A hand appeared near her face. “[Let me help.]”

Lin batted the arm away, rose unsteadily to her feet. A badly pockmarked face was suddenly close to hers, whiskey and decay on his breath as he asked: “[Do you have a boyfriend?]”

Adrenalin pushed her senses through the drink haze. Aware now of how dark it was here, a partial blackout perhaps. The bia hơi thirty metres back down the alley had forgotten her. An old woman sat out thefront of her home a few feet away. Weathered, silver hair parted down the middle, a dark-skinned highlander sitting on a six-inch bamboo stool washing dishes in a large plastic bowl. She wasn’t watching. Lot of things happened in these streets people made sure not to watch.

Lin was aware of her body now. Shoulders bare, just wearing a black singlet, tight jeans, plastic thongs on her feet. The heat and the fat drops of water made her top stick to her skin. The man – around the same height as Lin – let his eyes range over her, linger on her breasts.

“Leave me alone,” she said. In English.

The man’s face hardened. “[What?]”

She pressed her lips together.

“[What?]” he asked again. “[Are you Vietnamese?]”

The next part happened fast.

She tried to push past—

—he slammed her in the stomach with whiskey bottle and fist—

—she doubled over and threw up on his feet. Bare feet, plastic sandals.

Lin groaned, hands on her stomach, the taste of bile in her mouth. The man jumped back and called her bitch.

“[Hey! Leave her alone!]” someone yelled. A woman, the old woman, nearby, deciding to see.

“[Eat shit, bitch,]” the man said.

“[Small dick!]”

“[You are black like a dog’s shit.]”

A pause, and then angrily: “[I’ll get my son!]”

The shirtless man pulled a knife from his belt, the blade small and scratched, and showed it to the old woman. “[Go inside.]”

The woman said nothing.

He waved it at her again. “[I’ll cut your neck!]”

She stood up. “[Your dick is like that knife! I’m going to call my son!]” She stormed inside, leaving the dishes on concrete.

His attention returned to Lin. “[Fat lips. Cock-sucking lips.]”

One of the other men said: “[Spicy hot.]”

The last, indifferent, was still looking at the board, figuring his next move.

A lesson Lin had learned hard, growing up: if you were going to commit to a course of action, commit fully. No half-measures.

She rammed the heel of her palm into the nose of shirtless. Bone crunched and he staggered back, his bottle shattering on the stone.

Lin’s head snapped sideways. White flash of pain and she was falling, her palms scraping on slick stones.

Someone called her a bitch again and kicked her in the stomach. Lin’s eyes popped, she gasped, rolling in the wet. A second man had joined the first. Blindsided her with a punch. She got onto her back, instinct kicking in, legs coiled and ready to lash out when they got too close.

Fear clarifying, she saw and heard and smelled them, watched the two move, arranging themselves around her.

Fear clarifying, against their dark intent.

Fear, primal, clarified.

She rammed her heel into the balls of the first man who stepped up; he groaned, hands on crotch, mincing backwards. Pockmarked face stepped in, she lashed out, he tore off her thong trying to grab her foot and she kicked again. He laughed and stepped back. Blood on his top lip and chin, his nose broken. Still, he smiled. Teeth gleaming, enjoying himself. He stepped towards her, knife flashing in his hand. She pushed away, still on her back, until her head was against the gutter. The duo positioned themselves near her legs. The pockmarked leader with his blade and broken nose, the second holding his groin, the third over at the game, still contemplating his next move.

Shirtless said: “[A drink would have been easier.]”

“Not if it involved smelling the open sewer of your mouth.”

“[We can teach you how to behave like a Vietnamese.]”

“I reckon I’m nailing it.”

They moved closer, she lashed out again, hitting the same guy in the groin. He collapsed backwards; Lin couldn’t help but smile. Hard to beat the satisfaction of a good clean heel to the nuts, twice.

Her smile lasted a good half-second. Until shirtless laid his foot into her. She cried out, then he was down close, hand over her mouth, eyes gleaming.

His fingers dug into the side of her jaw as he said: “[You don’t belong here.]”

He let an errant finger near her mouth, she bit down, something gleeful and rabid rising in her. It was his turn to scream, high-pitched; as he tried to yank his finger out, she bit down harder, blood spurting into her mouth. Something struck her face, that only locked her jaw; he struck her face again, back of her head hitting pavement and—

—the lights blinded her. Lin gagged, coughing out blood and fingertip, and rolled away as the man pulled his weight from her. Lin held a hand up against the glare, scooter lights, alley alight.

Silhouettes, three.

“[Small dick!]” The old woman’s voice, somewhere behind Lin’s head. “[My son is here!]”

The three new humans walked down the alley; the two who’d attacked Lin backed away slowly. Lights from the other direction, more scooters. More men. Lin rose to her knees, her feet.

The lights lit up the obvious leader of the new arrivals. Thick grey hair, cigarette hanging from his lips, his eyes watching, quiet, unwavering. Near his shoulder, a dark-skinned man followed, eyes popping with anger.

“[Uncle Bao,]” said the pockmarked one, clutching his bleeding fingertip. “[I didn’t—I didn’t realise. I didn’t know you…]”

“[Beehive Hung,]” said the white-haired newcomer. “[I do know you. You spend your wife’s salary on whiskey and boxing bets.]”

“[I apologise, Uncle.]”

“[Ten point three million dong owed to me. Three days overdue.]”

Beehive Hung looked at his feet.

“[Fifteen million now.]”

Beehive looked up, but said nothing.

“[Pay to Aunty Be,]” said Bao, indicating the old woman nearby, “[for the insult.]”

Beehive made a couple of different shapes with his mouth, then nodded, eyes back down.

“[Now,]” said Bao, with a well-timed exhalation of smoke, “[fuck off.]”

They fucked off. Beehive Hung had a hard time starting his scooter with his bloodied hand, but started it. The idle game-player sighed and helped the pale-faced, groin-hobbled second man onto the back of his bike, and they disappeared as well.

Bao walked over to Lin. She stood her ground, fists clenched.

He looked her up and down. One of her eyes was closing up. Adrenalin, post facto, made her legs shake.

Bao waited for a few seconds longer than necessary, then said: “[You’re Phuong’s sister. The bad one.]”

“How did…?” Lin started, then stopped. The man had this way, this presence, that stopped a lot of talk around it. A bullshit filter, an Australian would say. Something stronger, actually, that shut it down all together. Those eyes, his eyes, held a promise. There wasn’t any compromise in that promise.

Bao and Lin stood in silence for a few moments more, while he considered it all, and he decided he wanted to talk again.

“[First thing,]” he said, “[is to teach you how to fight.]”

Lips dry, she stretched her shoulders. Something itched on her face. A sunflower seed came away in her hand, several more sat in her lap.

“The fuck, Bao?”

He held another black sunflower seed between his fingers up next to his ear, ready to throw. “[Most of my men pretend everything I say has the weight of the law, and the wisdom of the ages.]”

Lin grunted, shifted upright.

“[You just fall asleep.]”

She patted pockets vaguely for her cigarettes. “Sorry, Uncle.”

“[No you’re not.]”

Lin found her smokes, hesitated, rested the pack on her lap. She sighed. “I am, Bao. I just—I just don’t like working for the fucken Chinese.”

Something stilled in Bao. Smoke idled from his cigarette. He said: “[No one does. This work I take on—]” He exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “[—is for precise reasons.]” She waited for him to elaborate. Instead she got: “[Get out of here, clean yourself up. I have a new job for you.]”

She raised an eyebrow.

“[At the Metropole, this evening.]”

She lit her cigarette, inhaled, savoured it.

“[Little sister, you want a change from your regular job. This is a change.]”

“Yeah?”

“[Westerner, very wealthy. Imagines we are private detectives.]”

She smiled, sardonic. “How’d he get that idea?”

“[Sandfly Ha works the bar there. Helps the clientele access things they legally cannot access.]”

“Legality?”

“[Appearances must be kept, even during a war.]”

“The war is why the rich come here. They can do whatever they want.”

“[The rich can do whatever they want anywhere. But decorum needs to be maintained at all times. People like Sandfly help them play these games.]” Bao took a drag on his cigarette, spark in his eye. “[So this man. English, or something European. Was asking around about private investigators. Sandfly said yes, no problem, we have private investigators in Vietnam. Very good, very cheap. No problem. The Westerner says he had something ‘most vexatious’ to be sorted and they had to send their best man. Sandfly checked the meaning of vexatious first, then tells the man yes, no problem, we’ll send our best man. Very best. Fixes vexatious all the time.]”

Lin smiled. “Private fucken eye?”

“[Maybe he likes old movies.]”

“I don’t think I’ve seen any of those movies.”

“[I have,]” said Bao. He looked at her, and for a few moments she wondered if he wanted her to say something. But then he added: “[This is not much different from what you do already. Working contacts, lookouts, informants. Tracking people down who do not wish to be found.]”

“If you say so.”

“[Drinking too much, like a private detective.]” His eyes flicked over towards the gash on her temple. “[Getting beat up.]”

“I fell.”

“[Drugged out, asleep in the boss’s office. Snoring.]”

“I don’t snore.”

“[Single. Snores like a drunken cat. No close relationships.]”

“I get laid all the time.”

He paused and smoked. “[No family. No stability.]”

The sting floated up from somewhere beneath the buzz. “Don’t start, Bao.”

He watched.

Lin smoked and thought about another drop of ice-seven.

“[Your sister was in the news again.]”

Lin finished her drink, smoothing her face. She stood, grabbing her bottle.

He said: “[The case. The Metropole, tonight, seven-thirty.]”

“Why me?”

“[I told you why.]”

“Why else?”

“[You are more comfortable around them.]”

Her lips tightened. “That’s not true.”

“[Perhaps. But you understand them better. They trust you.]”

“What are you trying to say?”

“[You speak English.]” She thought he was going to add something to that, but instead he said: “[You wanted a different kind of job. This is the job. You will take it.]”

Lin bent down, scooped up her singlet. Cool in her hand, water dripping on the floor. She sighed. “Yes, Uncle.”

“[And, little sister.]”

She turned back to him. “Yeah?”

“[This man.]”

“Yeah?”

“[Make sure you take all his money.]”

Lin paused outside her apartment door to listen to Barry sing. She smiled, a wry one. The trilling stopped as soon as she thumbed the lock.

Barry the yellow songbird was hanging in his bamboo cage at the open window, facing towards the courtyard. A handful of the other residents had the same habit: their songbirds – blue and black and red – singing to each other in the tall closed space between apartments, deep courtyard hemmed in on all four sides. Lush green overgrown space below, peeling concrete walls above, the air in between filled with trill-trilling.

The man she’d bought the songbird from had insisted it was flesh and bone. Genetically bred to be resistant to the bird flu that had killed three per cent of the people and all the birds in Hà Nội twenty years before. It was probably just a repurposed drone, uploaded with a limited AI and a tweet-tweet soundtrack. But Lin wasn’t about to slice him open to find out.

“You ever going to sing for me, fucker?” she asked the bird.

Barry corkscrewed his little head at her, the way birds do, and refused to answer. She took out his seed tray, refilled it, paused. “You realise that’s the deal, Barry? Food for song? Like your mates out there.”

Barry twisted his head the other way, but still said nothing, waiting.

Lin sighed and slotted the tray back in. Barry hopped along his perch and pecked at his seed. She glanced around her small dim apartment absently as she shucked off the urchin attire. Lin picked a change of clothes up from the floor and dressed, pulling on her jacket last. She felt the inside pocket to confirm the presence of her cigarettes and the book.

“Okay, Barry.” She sighed. “I gotta go to this fucking job.”

Barry started singing as soon as she’d clicked the door behind her.

Lin’s third time downstairs at the Metropole. Third time feeling the anger in the pit of her stomach. At the yellow gold, the shimmering crystal, at the white-jacketed waiters carrying thousand-yuan cocktails. At the diamond and tuxedo-clad patrons washing down blacklisted food with champagne like it was nothing out of the ordinary.

Like food shortages, starvation, pyres of the burning dead were all on another planet.

Lin stood in the foyer as the clientele swirled past. Ignoring her. Actively ignoring her. As requested by Bao, she’d worn her best clothes: denim jeans, shiny dark blue bomber jacket, short hair combed back. She’d walked out of her apartment feeling overdressed.

Next to the tailored suits and gleaming silk cheongsams, her best looked vagrant. If she was lucky they’d think it was post-materialist peasant chic.

Probably not, from the looks she was getting. More disdain, like she was a rodent.

Two young Chinese women walked past, giggling, hands over mouths. One was wearing a Mao suit and gold-glitter eyeliner, the other was walking a shaved cat on a diamond-sparkling leash.

Yeah. This was another planet.

A Vietnamese man wearing an impeccable dark suit, silver name badge, and too-straight back approached her.

“[Miz Vu, from Nguyen Investigations?]” he asked, eyes flicking over her attire.

Lin nodded.

“[Follow me,]” he said, turning on his polished boot.

When they got to the elevator he said: “[Herbert Molayson is a valued client.]”

She said nothing as he pressed the button for the second-to-top floor.

“[We know who you’re with. We don’t want any of that business coming into the Metropole.]”

The door pinged and still she’d said nothing. The concierge made a tight line with his mouth. “[The Metropole is backed by the Chinese military. That gang makes your gang—]”

Lin put a finger to his lips and whispered: “Shhhhhh.” Red crept into his features as she left the elevator.



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