slaves when they were between the ages of five and eleven. Sex slaves after that. Immigration authorities bribed, false names, etcetera. Would you like to view your instructions holoid again? I will download Zhu.doc for you.”
“No.” Zhu paced across the locked room. She smelled the sour odor of her frustration, of her fear. “Then who is this woman who just ‘bought’ me?”
Alphanumerics flickered in her peripheral vision. “My analysis indicates a high probability that she is a procurer. A madam.”
“You mean she runs a brothel?”
“Correct.”
“Is this a brothel?”
Muse posted a line of tiny print. “No, it appears to be a residence. The more successful madams lived off the premises.”
“Oh, that’s just great. Then she’s going to force me into prostitution.” Zhu strode to the window, yanked it open, and looked down. Maybe thirty-five feet to the ground. No pipes. No gutter, no gingerbread, no fire escape. Nothing. Excellent. She’d break her damn neck if she jumped.
All she had were the clothes on her back, data in the monitor, a feedbag purse filled with neurobics and pharmaceuticals, and a very nice mollie knife. No rope. No pitons. Not even a tube of superglue. She got out the mollie knife and began cutting apart a bed sheet. She could make a rope. Rappel down the wall.
“Z. Wong, please refrain from causing damage to these premises.”
That was when a cold needle of fear stitched down her spine. Why was the monitor obstructing her mission?
“Muse,” Zhu said evenly. “I swore I would fulfill the object of my project. I want the criminal charges against me reduced.”
“Stay calm, Z. Wong,” the monitor said.
“I am not staying calm. I’m getting the hell out of here. No way in a million years will I prostitute myself. And I’ve got a duty to rescue Wing Sing.” She felt terrible about abandoning the defenseless girl, for whom she felt a rush of protective loyalty. A teenager forced into prostitution? Tricked? Sold by her mother?
She was just a kid.
“Take it easy, Z. Wong,” Muse insisted. “This is the turn of events. I cannot verify your presence in this residence, but neither do the Archives refute it. So deal with it. Try some of that brandy on the nightstand. It’s probably quite good.”
“’This is the turn of events’? That’s all you’ve got to say?” Zhu snapped. It was almost as if Muse were encouraging her to abandon the project. But why? Was Muse testing her?
“You don’t know San Francisco in 1895,” Muse continued smoothly. “You could get yourself killed out there. Please review the Closed Time Loop Peril of the Tenets of the Grandmother Principle.” The monitor posted the text in her peripheral vision.
That shut her up. She paced around the room while Muse rattled on about the technopolistic plutocracy and how employment during the hyperindustrial era closely resembled servitude. As if that was supposed to make her feel better.
“Imagine taxes so high people’s incomes were halved,” Muse argued. “Imagine housing costs and living costs so high that the rest of people’s incomes were consumed by daily expenses. That it was normal to assume debt in excess of one’s personal resources. That was the heyday of the technopolistic plutocracy. The woman who bought you is a small operator.” Muse added, “She’ll come after you if you run away. She knows this town. She knows the police. She could get you thrown in jail. You don’t want to go to the Pest Hall, the jail for Chinese. Trust me, you don’t. Besides,” and this, Muse’s final argument, clinched it, “you’re more valuable to her for your intelligence. Convince her of that, and she won’t force you into prostitution.”
In the morning, Jessie Malone unlocked and entered Zhu’s room and introduced herself. Splendid in a lavender shirtwaist and billowing skirts, she reeked of patchouli oil and booze. She had Mariah bring in a tray with fresh-squeezed orange juice and coffee with cream and sugar. The black maid silently regarded Zhu with sympathetic eyes.
“I got a feeling about you, missy,” Jessie said in a blunt manner that Zhu liked in spite of herself. “There’s something I see in you. Maybe you can tell me what it is.”
Zhu reprised her alibi, embellishing the story with a British education in Hong Kong. She declared, “I didn’t sell myself to him, Miss Malone. I have no intention of selling myself here.” The passion she summoned uttering those words surprised even herself.
“Did it for love, what a shame,” Jessie said, circling her, appraising her as if she were a