The Demon and the City

entirely different: a vast plain, with a bright strip of river crossing it and a sky on fire.
    Zhu Irzh grabbed Chen's arm and dragged him down the street, pulling him through the door of the nearest bar. It was packed to the gills, but they were lucky: a couple was leaving, a departure accelerated when they caught sight of the demon. Chen and Zhu Irzh were able to slide into a curtained booth. Beneath the edge of the curtain a hand appeared with a tray. Chen scrawled a drinks order on the paper and put it on the tray with the money. The bar was badly lit. Zhu Irzh rubbed his eyes with his hands, again and again. Fingers locked around his wrist.
    "Don't. You'll make them sore," Chen said.
    "Okay, okay," Zhu Irzh said, surprised at this sudden paternal consideration. The sake arrived, a half-bottle with tea glasses.
    "We've run out of proper ones," an unseen person said.
    "I don't care," Chen said. He filled the little three-inch glass carefully to its brim and handed it to the demon, who knocked it back.
    Chen said, "Well?"
    "I'm really sorry," the demon muttered. He looked away, as if seeking an answer. "What I told you was true. One minute I was all right. Then you were on the floor and I was leaning over you. I don't remember a thing."
    "Or don't want to," Chen said neutrally. The demon looked at him for a long moment.
    "Is that what you think of me?"
    "Zhu Irzh, you nearly killed me. I'm wondering if this memory loss isn't a conveniently selective amnesia. It might be paranoid, but I suddenly find myself in a paranoid mood. Someone who didn't know you as well as I think I do could conjecture that it's a useful excuse for doing whatever you please and passing it off as something you can't help. Whatever Senditreya's virus may have to do with it."
    "Would it help if I said that I've wondered that myself on the way here?" Deliberately, he poured more of the sake into each glass. "With the dowser—but it's not like me, Chen. I'm fundamentally too lazy to go around attacking people. You know that. It has to be the virus, but—" Zhu Irzh paused for a moment. "What if it's permanent? This is worrying me, Chen. I don't like zoning out like that. And there was no warning. What if I start to change my appearance, like that Celestial?" He gave a fastidious shudder.
    "I don't know." Chen was studiedly calm. "Wait here. I'm going to try to call Ma."
    While Chen was elsewhere, Zhu Irzh listened to the conversations around him and realized that he had quite forgotten the date, what with all the fuss. It was the Festival of the Dead.
    The first night of the festival had apparently got well under way, in spite of the earthquake. Indeed, the morning's tremors might even have added to the holiday atmosphere; everyone, it seemed, had a story to tell, their own narrow escape from death. The news networks were functioning, and the demon listened along with everyone else. Most of the reports centered on the collapse of the Eregeng Trade House: there was an extensive item on the actual damage, which was considerable, muffled in a sandwich of human-interest stories and geomantic speculation. So far, the death toll was running at three hundred and twenty, and rising every hour. The governor was featured, pleading for calm, and ignored at least by the five thousand or so who had already fled the city for the surrounding hills of Wuan Chih. The airport had been set off-limits. There was some scorn in the bar for those who had taken flight. This was, to a certain extent, justified.
    A number of those who had gone were members of the Ereday cult, Zhu Irzh learned. They were claiming it as a personal victory for the judgement that would come. They believed Earth to be in its last days, and the doomsday date had crept forward as the years went by and the world continued to orbit in relative peace. It must have been galling to belong to the cult, Zhu Irzh thought, every time the latest prophecy proved false. You would wonder what you paid your tithes for, and he supposed that it accounted for the decline in membership. Perhaps the number of converts would rise now, after the gratifyingly dramatic events of the morning.
    The inhabitants of the bar clearly felt flight to be a spineless option. The mood of bravado in the face of considerable odds grew as the news stories progressed. Someone began to sing, loudly and tunelessly. Another twitched the curtain of the booth aside with a jocular remark. He encountered the demon's icy stare and hastily