In the Balance

Without warning, the machine shuddered beneath them. “Earthquake,” Liu Han squalled. “We’ll be crushed, we’ll be killed-” she’d never heard anything like the roar that went with the terrible, unending shaking.

Without warning, she felt as if two or three people-or maybe a brick wall, knocked down by the earthquake-had fallen on top of her. She tried to scream, but produced no more than a gurgle; the dreadful, unending weight made it hard to breathe at all, let alone drag in enough air for a shriek. After a little while, much of the racket went away, though a more muted rumble and several medium-loud mechanical noises persisted.

“What’s happening to us, Yi Min?” Liu Han gasped out. However much she disliked him, he was the only other human being caught in this devilish trap. Besides, with his education, he might even have known the answer.

“I have ridden on the railroad,” he replied, his voice also coming forth in effortful grunts. “When a train starts to move, it presses you back into your seat. But-never like this.”

“No, never like this. This is no train,” Liu Han said scornfully. His words satisfied her no better than his body had.

The rumble from beneath them abruptly cut off. At the same instant, the crushing pressure on Liu Han’s chest also went away. Her own weight somehow seemed to disappear, too. Were it not for the prisoning straps that grasped her, she felt as if she could have floated away from her seat, perhaps even flown like a magpie. Exhilaration she’d never known flooded through her. “It’s wonderful,” she exclaimed.

The only answer Yi Min gave was a sick, gulping noise that reminded her of a fish trying to breathe after it was hauled out of its pond. She twisted her neck so she could look over at him. His face was pale as whey. “I will not vomit,” he whispered fiercely, as if trying to make himself believe it. “I will not vomit.”

Big drops of sweat grew on his cheeks and forehead. He shuddered, still fighting to control his rebellious stomach. Liu Han watched, fascinated, as one of the drops broke free. It didn’t fall. It just hung almost motionless in midair, as if hooked to the ceiling with an invisible line of spider silk. But no, no silk here.

Yi Min let out another gulp, this one louder than the last. All at once, Liu Han hoped he would not be sick. If his vomit hung as the drop of sweat had, it was liable to smother him-and if it drifted through the air, it was liable to smother her.

Then the apothecary quavered, “L-look at the devil, Liu Han.”

Liu Han turned back toward the ladder up which the little scaly devil had climbed. He was there in the hatchway again, peering down at the two humans with his unnerving, independently mobile eyes. But those eyes, at the moment, were the least unnerving thing about him. He floated head-down, a couple of yards above Liu Han, with neither hands nor feet holding onto anything. He did not fall, any more than the drop of Yi Min’s sweat had.

When he saw that the people could not escape, he twisted in midair so his legs were toward them. The practiced maneuver might have been part of a dance in three dimensions; for the first time, Liu Han found a devil graceful. He reached out, grabbed a rung of the ladder, pushed. Sure enough, just as Liu Han had imagined, he flew upward into his own cabin.

“Isn’t that the most amazing thing you ever saw?” she said.

“It’s impossible,” Yi Min declared.

“Who knows what’s impossible for devils?” Liu Han asked. Through his sickness, Yi Min stared at her. She needed a moment to read the expression on his face. Then she realized that without thinking about it, she had spoken to him as to an equal. That was not proper, but it was the truth; here, caught by the devils’ cords, they were equals, equal, nothings. And of the two of them, she was having the better time of coping with this strange (she would not say impossible) place.

If Yi Min had reprimanded her, shoved her, back down into the subservient role she’d taken all her life, likely she would have accepted it without a murmur. But he didn’t; he was too filled with his own nausea, too filled with his own fear. Because of that, some things-not everything, but some things-changed forever between them in the next few silent minutes.

she didn’t know how long they traveled with their weight left behind. She enjoyed every second of it, and wished only that she were free to float about and try the twisting move the little scaly devil had used. Yi Min lay huddled on his seat. Every so often, he made another sick gulping noise. Liu Han did her best not to laugh at him.

The plane in which they were flying made noises of its own. The pops and hisses meant nothing to Liu Han, so she hardly noticed them. But the metallic bangs and the grating sound that came from the front end after a while were impossible to ignore. She said, “Are we going to crash?”

“How should I know?” Yi Min answered peevishly, diminishing himself in her sight yet again.