Getting Real

If it had, he needed to find out with a no-shit axe, not a pretend one. He needed to do it in a hurry, too. If you were terrific with a sword, who gave a rat’s ass? But Pablo the Guitar God could have every bit as much fun in plain old ordinary L.A. as he could when he got Real. And how could you beat that? Simple, man—you couldn’t. No fuckin’ way.

* * * *

Hu Zhiaoxing let out a long sigh of relief. The stupid Americans had kicked up another fuss, and he’d handled it. The big wheels in Beijing couldn’t piss and moan about the job he’d done, not with a foothold on the mainland and the unchallenged right to spread getting Real as widely as China pleased.

So his next posting wouldn’t be as mayor in some dusty town in Xinjiang Uygur. It wouldn’t be as a camp administrator up on the Kolyma, either. China found the gold mines by the Arctic Ocean to be as useful for disposing of unreliables as the USSR had back in the twentieth century. Running them was necessary work, but not work Hu wanted.

Right this minute, he wanted no work at all. He wanted to relax. He’d damn well earned the right. And so he would.

Getting Real ... As he had with the Secretary of the DEA, he snorted his contempt. That was fine if you liked loud noises and primary colors. Fine for Americans, in other words. But there were better ways, if you had the taste to appreciate them.

He lit the spirit lamp on the low table in his Avalon apartment. He lay on a couch in front of the lamp, his head resting on a hard pillow of leather-colored bamboo. Everything he needed was within easy reach.

With the sharp end of the brass dipper, he twirled up some of the sticky mass above the dish and, still twirling to make sure it didn’t fall off, he began to roast it over the lamp. Every motion had the smoothness of long practice. He didn’t want the mass to dry out too much—or, worse, to burn. Then he’d have to start again from scratch.

Every so often, he took it off the lamp and rolled it on the flat bowl of his long-stemmed pipe. When it was ready, he heated the center of the bowl and the dipper to stick the seed-sized mass just above the hole there.

Time to smoke. With the end of the stem in his mouth, he put the bowl above the lamp. As soon as the pellet started to frizzle, he inhaled deeply, three or four times. Opium smoke filled his lungs.

“Ahhh!” he said at last. The smoke flowed out through his nose and mouth as tranquillity flowed through him. Tranquil was better, ever so much better, than Real. Nodding at that transcendent truth, Minister Hu slowly began to prepare another pellet.