The Rock Child Read Online Free Page A

her face. The creature felt sorry for herself. Perhaps she thought a hint of an appeal for sympathy, a gesture ofthe victimized, would affect him. He smiled to himself. You do not know me. You will never know me .
    Tarim was of a hardy race, the Uighurs. They lived in East Turkestan, the part of China west even of Mongolia, north of India and Tibet. Yet they shared little with Chinese—the Uighurs were Turks by blood and by tongue, Moslems by faith. Living midway on the great trade route from Europe to Asia, they had been acquainted with every conqueror marching east or west, and had found ways to adapt. They became traders, great traders. They spoke all the principal languages of Asia and the Middle East. They knew the Chinese were only one more invader and interloper. The Uighurs, Turks, would outlast them all.
    As a youth Tarim traveled far, apprenticed to his father, who traded the gold and jade from the region’s mountains. Tarim fell in love with gold. He discovered early that he disliked people, especially his family. So he left home to seek gold by trading in the sables of the vast Siberian forests. He acquired fluency in the Russian language, his fourth tongue, and found his way to the Pacific Coast of that land. He made no friends, established no ties. He learned peoples, customs, and religions, and came to despise them all equally. He gave himself a new name, the name of the great river of his rearing, merely because he liked the sound of it. He took what he wanted, and thought of those who did less as weaklings. He grew rich, and always lusted for more.
    No one could tell what kind of man he was. Asians thought him a dark European, Europeans a light Asian, and none could say which was his native tongue, for he never spoke Turkish. People despised him, the Chinese because he was not Chinese, the Russians because he was not Russian, and so on, the way of the world, the stupidity of the world. They knew two facts about him—he was very short, and his face was very misshapen, which gave them final reasons to despise him.
    Seeing profits in the hides of sea otters, Tarim bought a ship, hired hands, and crossed the ocean to Russian Alaska. In ten years on one of the islands of the Alaskan peninsula, he built a small empire. Then came disaster. The Russians turned the savages on him, drove him out, and stole his life’s work. They were white, they were Christian. He was dark, a heathen, and ugly. What did such a man matter to them?
    So at fifty years of age, Tarim came to Alta California, penniless, seeking another fortune in the hills of gold. In the ensuing years, he followed the gold hunters from strike to strike, boomtown to boomtown,and preyed upon them. He collected money. He played with people, and laid down layer upon layer of his contempt for them.
    A year and a half ago he gave birth to a very good idea for making money and debasing people in a single act. Chinese whores were popular in the gold camps, popular and hugely profitable. He would have whores—white, red, black, and yellow. Also he wanted something special, a whore who would be the talk of the camp. He wrote to a man he knew in the Chinese city of Chengdu, a man who would do anything. A nun, he said, a Buddhist nun. He offered a thousand dollars in gold, enough money to buy all the man’s daughters. He knew that nuns sometimes were not virgins, but the gold seekers saw only what they wanted to see. They would behold the brown robes and see a heathen virgin.
    Now, as the woman stood before him studying the piece of paper, Tarim had a rare experience. He felt an emotion. He was amused.
    “Read it aloud,” he said.
    Sun Moon set forth in a clear, steady voice.
    “‘I, Sun Moon, a citizen of China, came to Gum Saan, the United States, voluntarily.’”
    She eyed him contemptuously. “Lies.” She turned back to the paper.
    “‘I acknowledge my indebtedness to Tarim for my passage on the ship Fast Maisy across the ocean.’
    “More