Seoul Survivors (21 page)

But no, what was she thinking? She bowed, trying to make herself as small as possible, but Dr. Kim reached for her hands and kissed them and clasped Mee Hee's hands to her blouse. Mee Hee's heart cried out in her chest.

Then Doctor Kim released her and stepped back, speaking loudly for the benefit of all the women, “My mother's name was indeed Kim Young Mi, and now I know my uncle's name as well. Thank you, Lee Mee Hee. I am forever in your debt. I only wish I could affirm my uncle's dreams about his sister, but my mother did not survive the long march to the South. She died on the road, shortly after I was born. I was taken by the Red Cross and was fortunate to grow up in America, free from hardship and hunger, but thirsty always for knowledge of my birth family. Kim Hyun Woo? He is living still?”

Doctor Kim was addressing her again. Mee Hee straightened her back and tried to speak as calmly and clearly as possible. “Kim Hyun Woo is old and very thin and weak, because he gives most of his food to the young ones, but he is hardy like a weed. Even though his own son died without giving him grandchildren, he says we must not let the ordeal of life defeat us. He still plays
baduk
every Sunday in the village square, and he teaches the older boys as well. He is famous for his laughter when he wins, and when he loses too. The magpie, they call him, because his good humor brings us luck.” Choking on emotion, Mee Hee stopped.

At the top of the line Older Sister was sobbing noisily, while many of the other women were wiping their eyes.

Dr. Kim, however, remained still. “You have my bottomless gratitude, Lee Mee Hee,” she said, in a voice that everyone could hear.

As Dr. Kim turned to greet Younger Sister, at last, Mee Hee felt her toes leave the ground. Floating on a hazy carpet of light, she realized that she would die for this woman.

But she didn't have to die. She had to give birth.

It was two days after the World Cup bombing, and the center of Seoul had been cordoned off by the police for a massive peace rally. Jin Sok had insisted Sydney come and march with him and his friends, so she went along, holding hands with the Korean models, chanting slogans and keeping an eye out for Damien Meadows. Da Mi was driving back from meeting the North Korean surrogate mothers in the mountains, but she'd called twice to see how Sydney was. She'd also suggested the rally might flush Damien out of hiding. But if it had, Sydney didn't see him in the heaving sea of people, flags and banners. At least the real Hugh Grant hadn't been at the football game like so many other celebs.

Da Mi had arranged to take her out for iced coffee in Apkuchong after the rally, so Jin Sok dropped her off in his location van, promising to see her again soon.

Da Mi was waiting in the elegant French café; she rose to give Sydney a hug as she entered. “Darling, how are you?”

Sydney plopped herself down on a seat. “I dunno—I didn't see Damien. And some of the people on the rally were saying Britain wants to bomb North Korea now.” Her lower lip began to tremble. “I'm scared, Da Mi.”

Da Mi squeezed her hand. “I know, darling. Lots of people are. But you're perfectly safe in Seoul. North Korea only ever uses its nuclear facilities as bargaining chips—it's a complicated game of bluff with the Americans. I very much doubt they sold raw uranium to the terrorists—and even if they had, North Korea's weapons-grade plants are far too close to Seoul to be targeted by the West.”

“Really?”

“Really. It's far more likely Great Britain will step up its campaign in Pakistan, where the terrorists were probably trained. Though,” she continued sternly, “if they keep targeting Muslim countries and religious leaders, and continue to kill civilians with their callous and bungled operations, the British Armed Forces will unfortunately make future attacks on the West more likely, not less. But darling, do you want a flavor in your frappé?”

“More attacks?” Sydney wailed. “But the whole world will be radiated. We'll all die of cancer, Da Mi.”

Da Mi was speaking in Korean to the waitress. She turned back to Sydney and stroked her hand. “No, no, darling. Honestly, future attacks won't be nuclear—snukes are the gold dust of terrorist weapons; it's almost impossible to obtain the raw uranium to make them. And Britain won't be in a hurry to escalate a nuclear war. No, this bombing is their equivalent of the World Trade Center demolition: a powerful statement by those who are, nevertheless, ultimately powerless to affect the course of history.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, Sydney, never mind the fear mongers on the march; we have to stay calm and prepare for a new kind of future. Yes, it's turbulent right now, but both the Mayan and the Hindu calendars predicted that this would be an epoch of seismic transitions. A five-thousand-year-long age of militarism is coming to an end. Alpha males will fight tooth and claw to maintain their power, but like the dinosaurs, this macho posturing is doomed to extinction. Humanity is finally outgrowing violence, and the forces of peace and cooperation will at last prevail.”

“I dunno, Da Mi.” Sydney sniffled, “aren't we just getting way better at blowing each other up? Maybe this really is the end of the world, like all those Lucifer's Hammer people keep saying.”

As the waitress set their coffees down, Da Mi smiled at her, then said, “Sydney, did you know that before the Mayan Great Day of Creation, human beings didn't make weapons?”

Sydney frowned. “No.”

“It's true. In all the early settlements and towns—Çatal Hüyük, the Orkneys, Knossos, Hussuna—we find ample evidence of cooking, playing, agriculture, worship, but no artifacts of war. There's nothing inevitable about killing each other.”

Sydney struggled to follow Da Mi's argument. “But before, you said we were aggressive because of our brains?”

“Yes, that's correct, I did. Our hormones and our serotonin levels certainly have a profound effect on our behavior. But equally, our environment and our social conditioning affect our hormone production levels—you might even say that our violent, competitive global economy
forces
us to be aggressive and fearful and jealous in order to survive. That's why I've insisted that the Peonies grow up in a mountain village, governed by the principles of mutual aid and respect for all creation.” Sydney opened her mouth to say
that she knew the Peonies would be perfect, it was the rest of us who—, but the Scientist raised her palm and swept on. “Sydney, I have dedicated my professional life to the goal of advancing human evolution at all levels—physical, social and spiritual—and if there's one thing the Mayan prophecies and my own Korean heritage have taught me, it's that right now we need to go back to the ancestors in order to move forward. We need to live and work together in small groups, but in ways that are globally connected with others. Lucifer's Hammer isn't a meteor; it isn't even this bombing: it's a metaphor, a symbol representing our last chance to stand together and work cooperatively again. I'm not afraid, because I know that the Hammer is knocking some sense into us all at last. Look at how the whole world has joined together in sympathy and support for London right now.”

Da Mi was so smart, Sydney thought; she knew all about history as well as genes. Sydney couldn't begin to argue with her. It was just hard to see a nuclear terrorist attack as a step on the way to world peace. Sydney gazed around the café. To the background noise of tinkling coffee spoons and the trippy sound of a French pop song, people were staring at the plasma-screen TV replay footage of the Wembley detonation. There was the pink and orange stadium all lit up for the evening game, then, with first one terrible white flash, then another, it was sucked up into two towering mushroom clouds that filled the screen and smothered the night sky.

Sydney couldn't look at the next images, the survivors. She pushed away her coffee. “I'm sorry Da Mi. I guess I know what you're saying, but still, everything's a total nightmare right now. How can people just sit and
eat
while
that's
on TV?”

“Koreans have just watched Japan endure Fukushima, and many of them remember Hiroshima. To them a nuclear bomb is not unthinkable. Sydney,” Da Mi said firmly, “life goes on, and we must all do what we can to make it better for future generations. And you and I are creating the Peonies, yes?”

Sydney fell silent. That was true, and if Da Mi was right, it was super-important. At the very least, it was something she had promised to do, a steady, secure job in a world where nowhere was safe anymore. “Yes,” she said, in a small voice, and then, in a rush, “You know I'd never let you down, Da Mi.”

“I know, sweetheart—so you must stay strong and have fun finding Damien Meadows. I'm sure he'll appreciate a new friend right
now. Now here.” Da Mi took a paper bag out of her purse. “I want you to try this special
ddok
. It's filled with honey-syrup.”

Sydney took a piece of the doughy rice cake. It was chewy, and filled with delicious runny honey.

“Ummm,” she gurgled.

“Do you like it? Oh good; have another piece. Now, darling, when does your next period start? We need to get that ultrasound done.”

A week later Sydney started bleeding. She called Da Mi right away, then rang off and skipped to the bathroom to shave her legs, wax her bikini line and think about what to wear to the lab. Perhaps an A-line linen skirt and her new Calvin Klein panties? That would look professional. Fingers crossed, her ovaries would also look good, then she could donate on Day Fourteen. Luckily, because her eggs were going to be frozen she wouldn't have to take the ovulation suppressants and stimulants normal egg donors had to inject to synchronize cycles with their recipients. Instead, on Day Twelve and Thirteen, Da Mi would dose her up with fertility hormones and her ovaries would then make loads of eggs which would be sucked out of her by a long needle. It would only take twenty minutes. Then, once she'd found Hugh Grunt and got the eggs fertilized, Da Mi would do her genetic mojo on the blastocysts—whatever a blastocyst was—in time to implant them on December twenty-first.

The ultrasound room smelled like her mother's favorite air-freshener: antiseptic pine needles. And the bed had stirrups. Great. She should have worn jodhpurs.

“I'm sorry it's so clinical.” Da Mi spoke in Korean to a young nurse, who pressed a button on an iPod in the corner. Traditional flute music wafted across the room as Da Mi and the nurse stepped outside and Sydney slipped off her sandals, skirt and panties and climbed up onto the bed. Lying on a thick white towel, she pulled a sheet across her stomach. Da Mi rejoined her and turned the ultrasound monitor so Sydney could see it. At the foot of the bed, the nurse greased up something; Da Mi called it a “transducer.”

Sydney opened her legs.

The plastic wand nudged into her, a cool, foreign presence, provoking just a hint of “ouch.” Then Da Mi was pointing out her uterus on the screen and she was lost in the grainy wonder of the
lopsided cushion inside her, that spermatozoan Shangri-La where, she could proudly say, no cum had ever been. Well, except for pre-cum maybe.

The transducer shifted position and the Koreans started cooing at the screen.

“Fantastic.” Da Mi patted her hand. “A healthy endometrial lining in the womb, and at least twenty antral follicles between the two ovaries. You are a very fertile young lady, Sydney.”

“Really? Maybe I should get a hormone patch.”

The scientist smiled. “We'll provide you with the very latest in birth control, never fear. But for the next two weeks you shouldn't take any chances: condoms can break, and if you were to require an abortion, it would hold us up at least two months, not to mention the distress you might be caused.”

“Don't worry, Da Mi”—Sydney crossed her fingers—“can't you see the dust-bunnies up there? I've got way better things to think about right now than men.” It wasn't exactly a lie, she reasoned as the nurse removed the transducer. She didn't know if Jae Ho would ever come over again.

“Still, people, especially Westerners, will be having a lot of panic sex right now. It always happens after a disaster. I'd prefer you didn't visit the nightclubs until we harvest the eggs, darling. We can look for Damien Meadows again after your hormones have calmed down.”

Raging hormones and panic sex? It sounded a shame to miss out. But she didn't want to disappoint Da Mi. “Sure, I promise.” Sydney sat up and toweled her thighs clean of blood. It was a beautiful color, dark as pomegranate juice.

By Day Fourteen, she was horny as hell, jacked up on fertility hormones and bored to death by the four walls of her apartment. She couldn't get to the GRIP clinic fast enough. Da Mi held her hand as some male doc extracted her eggs with a long needle, and in an hour she was back out on the street with a purse full of cash even three hours' shopping couldn't dent.

As she dumped the designer bags on her
yo
, Da Mi called. “Sydney,” she purred, “your eggs are
marvelous
. Now I want you to just relax and enjoy looking for Mr. Good Genes!”

Fantastic. That night she was back in Gongjang, looking for the English guy, Jae Ho, a trio of squaddies, she didn't care who she
took home. Jae Ho, however, did. She'd only been dancing twenty minutes before he caught her eye and nodded at the door.

“Are you climbing again?” he murmured, later.

“Sort of. Gently,” she explained, wondering if she was lying, and if he understood her anyway. Then she leaned back and he twisted and buckled, the tip of his cock sharp as a star inside her, and suddenly, unmistakably, she was coming again, her cries as vulnerable as his voice.

“
Eum Yang
,” he said into her ear when they awoke. He reached down her arm and fingered her Gotcha. “Very good. Sy-duh-nee, Olympic bomb is
Yang
. Make love is
Eum
. We need much
Eum
in world now.”

“Yeah?” She cuddled him drowsily as his hand pattered down her belly.

“
Dong'gul
,” he said, pulling at her pussy lips. “Cave.”

“
Tong gul
.” She felt hypnotized. Maybe that's why having a native-speaking lover was the best way to learn a foreign language. After sex, your mind was wide open.

“Do you know Tan'gun?”

“Tan'gun? No. What is Tan'gun?”

“What?
Who!
Tan'gun First Korean! Before, only animals and God. Animals want to be man, fight, very bad. So God make cave for two animals—bear and tiger, for one hundred days. He give them only
manul
—”

This one Sydney knew: “Garlic!”

“—yes, only garlic to eat. The tiger, not happy, not eat, but bear love garlic, eat all. So God make bear into woman. She have baby. Tan'gun.”

Weird. She'd just donated her eggs and here he was, telling her a baby story. But something was amiss. “So why Tan'gun first Korean? Why not bear woman?”

“Okay, okay, Western woman, Tan'gun first Korean
King
.” He ruffled her hair. “I sorry, very sorry, first Korean is
woman.
Now you like my story?”

“I like very much.” She stroked his cock as it drooped on its plump brown pillow. What was the word for mushroom? Oh yeah—“Does bear woman eat
posot
, too?” she asked.

“Bear woman eat mushroom man! What mushroom man eat? I hungry!” he declared. She checked the clock. Eleven a.m.: not a bad time for brunch. She got up and had a look in the fridge, but except for some milk and a jar of hot sauce, it was empty.

“I very bad wife,” she smirked.

He picked up his pants, fished about in the pockets for some money and passed her a
man won
note. “You buy some food?” he asked sweetly.