the Daughters of Compassion. It had been a summer outing, and someone had flown a lavender kite in the shape of a fish.
Yu-lai and Li Wong were prosecuted for abandonment, child endangerment, embezzlement, theft, and skipchild abuse. Due to her youth, Zhu was not included in the proceedings. She never saw her skipparents again, but she sure saw their images splattered all over the media:
SKIPCHILD ABANDONED BY SKIPPARENTS
WHILE LOTTERY COUPLES CRY FOR THEIR OWN
It was when the Parents tried to make an example out of Zhu that she was first approached by the Daughters of Compassion. Orphaned once by the law, orphaned twice by her skipparents, harassed and alone at a vulnerable age when everyone needs a friend, Zhu gladly fled to the Cause, to the rigors of comradeship. To the contemplation of Kuan Yin.
A woman came calling as Zhu studied in the library for winter examinations. The village administrators had placed her in the custody of the local cooperative. Another shameful thing. She had to face her neighbors and peers as a ward of the state. No longer was she a skipchild with a family, an inheritance, and the likelihood of going off to the university. She was so depressed at the time she had actually considered taking her own life. A bona fide option, according to the fashionable international death cults.
The sharp-eyed, wiry woman sat down next to her. Zhu glanced up from the rented workstation, the lesson hovering before her--an English translation of a spectacular holoid by Magda Mira, an American filmmaker praised for her celebration of death. Gory gross-out stuff, but Mira’s work was as popular as potato chips.
“You the skipkid?” the woman said.
Zhu gathered up her jacket and backpack, preparing to flee, though she’d waited sixteen days to get access to the workstation.
“Don’t waste your time with that crap,” the woman said, pointing to the holoid. “There’s work to be done, here, in our mother China. The Cause is much more important than vulgar American entertainments that have no meaning in your life.”
“Mira celebrates death,” Zhu said automatically. Then, “The Cause has more meaning?” She hesitated, panic skidding through her.
“Hell, yes!” the woman said. “All the sacrifice and pain you’ve gone through as a skipkid means nothing if lottery couples are going to go off and have kids illegally. Let alone if parents with one kid—skip or natch—go off and have another. Talk about challenging the odds. Talk about greed. And they say Changchi will have another drought this summer, and they don’t know if they’ll be able to herd rain from Siberia. It’s a damn shame.”
Zhu remembered listening to all this with her mouth hanging open. “You’re talking about negative population growth.”
“I’m talking about the Cause,” the woman said. “I’m talking about enforcement of the Generation-Skipping Law, the finest gesture of international cooperation ever witnessed in our sad and sorry history of the world. And the only hope for our mother China.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Sally Chou. Born and raised in Chicago, but I came to the motherland with a bunch of Americans during the pilgrimage of ’73. I’ll not go back to America. I’m a Daughter of Compassion.”
Zhu remembers that first meeting still.
“What are you doing after graduation?” Sally Chou lit a cigarette, and Zhu smelled a tart scent of herbs, not tobacco.
When Zhu shrugged, Sally Chou laughed and said, “You’re coming with me, skipkid. The Daughters of Compassion need you.”
Zhu moved to the compound the Daughters of Compassion owned south of Changchi. A wealthy Californian friend had repossessed the place after the local real estate developers had defaulted on one of countless refinancings. Nothing in Changchi was particularly elegant, but at least the compound was cleaner than most, with excellent air conditioners and the best water recycler and generator that could be had in a provincial burg like Changchi.
“We must fight the Society for the Rights of Parents,” Sally Chou declared in the village square during the first rally Zhu attended. “We must stand guard at WBCO clinics. We must chaperone clinic staff. We must trace illegal fund withdrawals. We must restore order in the databases. There is no turning back for mother China. We must break the back of exponential growth.”
“So what if another hundred thousand illegal babies are born?” someone heckled from the back. “Why do you care?”
“Because with exponential growth,” Sally Chou said, “another hundred thousand illegal babies means another million six people before we’ve reached our own middle age. Can our fields feed another million