Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series (11 page)

Then she understood. She heard the giggling from the trees topple over into laughter.
Flushing deeply, she lowered her head slightly. ‘Tsu Tao Chu. I… I’m delighted to
meet
you. Forgive me if I seemed confused. I…’ Then, forgetting her disappointment, she
too burst into laughter.

‘What is it?’ asked the eight-year-old, delighted that he had somehow managed to amuse
this mature woman of nineteen.

‘Nothing,’ she said quickly, fanning herself and turning slightly, so that the shadow
of the willow hid her embarrassment. ‘Nothing at all’ She turned quickly to Li Yuan,
finding it easier, suddenly, to talk to him. ‘Li Yuan, forgive me. My father, Yin
Tsu, sends his deep regards and best wishes on your forthcoming birthday. I have come
on his behalf to
celebrate the day.’

Li Yuan’s smile was unexpectedly warm. Again he bowed, once more colouring from neck
to brow. His awkwardness made her remember the last time they had met – that time
he had come to
her and cried upon her shoulder, four days after Han Ch’in’s death. Then, too, his
reaction had been unexpected. Then, too, he had seemed to shed a skin.

‘I… I…’ He stuttered, then looked down, seeming almost to laugh at himself. ‘Forgive
me, Fei Yen. I was not told you were coming.’

She gave the slightest bow. ‘Nor I until this morning.’

He looked up at her, a strange expectation in his eyes. ‘Will you be staying long?’

‘A week.’ She turned and signalled to her maids who at once came out from beneath
the trees and hurried along the path to her. Then, turning back, she added, ‘We had
best be
getting back, don’t you think? They’ll be expecting us in the house.’ And, before
they could answer, she turned away, heading back towards the bridge.

Li Yuan stood there a while, watching her. Only when he turned to speak to Tao Chu
did he realize how avidly the boy was studying him.

‘What are you staring at, Squib?’ he said, almost angrily, conscious that his cheeks
were warm for the third time that afternoon.

‘At you, Great Yuan,’ answered Tao Chu with a mock earnestness that made Li Yuan relent.
Then, in a softer voice, the small boy added, ‘You love her, don’t you?’

Li Yuan laughed awkwardly then turned and looked back up the path. ‘What does it matter?
She was my brother’s wife.’

The Overseer’s House dominated the vast plain of the East European plantation. Three
tiers high, its roof steeply pitched, it rested on stilts over the meeting point of
the two broad irrigation canals that ran north-south and east-west, feeding the great
latticework of smaller channels. To the south lay the workers’ quarters; long, low
huts that seemed
embedded in the earth. To the north and east were store-houses; huge, covered reservoirs
of grain and rice. West, like a great wave frozen at its point of turning under, lay
the City, its walls
soaring two
li
into the heavens.

It was late afternoon and the shadow of the Overseer’s House lay like a dark, serrated
knife on the fields to the east. There, in the shadow, on a bare earth pathway that
followed the edge
of one of the smaller north-south channels, walked three men. One walked ahead, alone
and silent, his head down, his drab brown clothes, with their wide, short trousers,
indicative of his status as
field worker. The two behind him joked and laughed as they went along. Their weapons
– lethal
deng
rifles, ‘lantern guns’ – slung casually over their shoulders. They
were more elegantly dressed, the kingfisher blue of their jackets matching the colour
of the big sky overhead. These were the Overseer’s men, Chang Yan and Teng Fu; big,
brutal men who were
not slow to chastise their workers and beat them if they fell behind with quotas.

‘What does he want?’ Teng asked, lifting his chin slightly to indicate the man plodding
along in front of them but meaning the Overseer when he said ‘he’. No one
requested to see the Overseer. He alone chose who came to see him.

‘The man’s a thief,’ said Chang. He spat out into the channel, below and to his left,
and watched the off-white round of spittle drift away slowly on the water. Then he
looked
back at Teng. ‘One of the patrol cameras caught him in the Frames making harvest.’

The Frames were where they grew the special items – strawberries and lychees, pineapples
and oranges, grapes and peaches, cherries and almonds, pears and melons.

‘Stupid,’ Teng said, looking down and laughing. ‘These peasant types – they’re all
stupid.’

Chang shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I thought this one was different. He was supervisor.
A trusted man. We’d had no trouble with him before.’

‘They’re all trouble,’ said Teng, scratching his left buttock vigorously. ‘Stupid
and trouble. It’s genetic. That’s what it is.’

Chang laughed.

They had come to a bridge. The first man had stopped, his head still bowed, waiting
for the others. He was forbidden to cross the bridge without a permit.

‘Get on!’ said Teng, drawing the long club from his belt and jabbing the man viciously
in the small of the back. ‘The Overseer wants to see you. Don’t keep him waiting,
now!’

The man stumbled forward onto the bridge, then got up and trudged on again, wiping
his dirtied hands against his thighs as he went and glancing up briefly, fearfully,
as the big house loomed
over him.

More guards lounged at the foot of the steps. One of them, a tall
Hung Mao
seated apart from the rest, looked up as the three men approached, then, with the
vaguest movement of his head
to indicate that they should go on up, looked back down at the rifle in his lap, continuing
his meticulous inspection of the weapon.

‘Good day,
Shih
Peskova,’ said Teng, acknowledging the Overseer’s lieutenant with a bow. But Peskova
paid him no attention. Teng was Han and Han were shit. It
didn’t matter whether they were guard or peasant. Either way they were shit. Hadn’t
he heard as much from The Man himself often enough?

When they had gone, Peskova turned and looked up at the house again. He would have
to watch that Teng. He was getting above himself. Thinking himself better than the
other men. He would have to
bring him down a level. Teach him better manners.

With a smile he put the rifle down and reached for the next in the stack at his side.
Yes, it would be fun to see the big Han on his knees and begging. A lot of fun.

Overseer Bergson looked across as the three men entered.

‘What is it, Teng Fu?’

The big Han knelt in the doorway and bowed his head. ‘We have brought the man you
asked for, Overseer.’

Bergson turned from the bank of screens that took up one whole wall of the long room
and got up from his chair. ‘You can go, Teng Fu. You too, Chang Yan. I’ll see to him
myself

When they were gone and he was alone with the field supervisor, Bergson came across
and stood there, no more than an arm’s length from the man.

‘Why did you do it, Field Supervisor Sung?’

The man swallowed, but did not lift his head. ‘Do what,
Shih
Bergson?’

Bergson reached out almost tenderly and took the man’s cheek between the fingers of
his left hand and twisted until Sung fell to his feet, whimpering in pain.

‘Why did you do it, Sung? Or do you want me to beat the truth out of you?’

Sung prostrated himself, holding on to Bergson’s feet. ‘I could not bear it any longer,
Overseer. There is barely enough to keep a child alive, let alone men and women who
have to
toil in the fields all day. And when I heard the guards were going to cut our rations
yet again…’

Bergson stepped back, shaking Sung’s hands off. ‘Barely enough? What nonsense is this,
Sung? Isn’t it true that the men steal from the rice fields? That they eat much of
the
crop they are supposed to be harvesting?’

Sung went to shake his head, but Bergson brought his foot down firmly on top of his
left hand and began to press down. ‘Tell me the truth, Sung. They steal, don’t they?’

Sung cried out, then nodded his head vigorously. ‘It is so,
Shih
Bergson. There are many who do as you say.’

Bergson slowly brought his foot up, then stepped away from Sung, turning his back
momentarily, considering.

‘And you stole because you had too little to eat?’

Sung looked up, then quickly looked back down, keeping his forehead pressed to the
floor. ‘No… I…’

‘Tell me the truth, Sung!’ Bergson barked, turning sharply. ‘You stole because you
were hungry, is that it?’

Sung miserably shook his head. ‘No,
Shih
Bergson. I have enough.’

‘Then why? Tell me why.’

Sung shuddered. A sigh went through him like a wave. Then, resigned to his fate, he
began to explain. ‘It was my wife, Overseer. She is a kindly woman, you understand.
A good woman. It was
her suggestion. She saw how it was for the others: that they were suffering while
we, fortunate as we were, had enough. I told her we could share what we had, but she
would not have it. I pleaded
with her not to make me do as she asked…’

‘Which was?’

‘I stole, Overseer. I took fruit from the Frames and gave it to the others.’

Bergson laughed coldly. ‘Am I meant to believe this, Sung? An honest thief? A
charitable
thief? A thief who sought no profit from his actions?’

Sung nodded his head once but said nothing.

Bergson moved closer. ‘I could have you flogged senseless for what you did, Sung.
Worse, I could have you thrown into the Clay. How would you like that, Field Supervisor
Sung? To be sent
into the Clay?’

Sung stared up at Bergson, his terror at the thought naked in his eyes. ‘You’d not
do that,
Shih
Bergson. Please. I beg you. Anything but that.’

Bergson was silent a moment. He turned and went across to the desk.

When he returned he was holding a thin card in one hand. He knelt down and held it
in front of Sung’s face a moment.

‘Do you know what this is, Sung?’

Sung shook his head. He had never seen the like of it. It looked like a piece of Above
technology – something they never saw out in the fields – but he would not have liked
to have guessed just what.

‘This here, Sung, is the evidence of your crime. It’s a record of the hour you spent
harvesting in the Frames. A hidden camera took a film of you.’

Again Sung shuddered. ‘What do you want,
Shih
Bergson?’

Bergson smiled and slipped the thin
sliver of ice into his jacket pocket, then stood up again. ‘First I want you to sit
down over here and write down the names of all those who shared the stolen fruit with
you.’

Sung hesitated. And then?’

‘Then you’ll go back to your barracks and send your wife to me.’

Sung stiffened but did not look up. ‘My wife, Overseer?’

‘The good woman. You know, the one who got you into all this trouble.’

Sung swallowed. ‘And what will happen to my wife,
Shih
Bergson?’

Bergson laughed. ‘If she’s good – if she’s
very
good to me – then nothing. You understand? In fact – and you can tell her this – if
she’s
exceptionally
good I might even give her the tape. Who knows, eh, Sung?’

Sung looked up, meeting Bergson’s cold grey eyes for the first time in their interview,
then looked down again, understanding perfectly.

‘Good. Then come. There’s paper here and ink. You have a list of names to write.’

She came when it was dark. Peskova took her up to the top room – the big room beneath
the eaves – and locked her in as he had been told to. Then he went, leaving
the house empty but for the woman and the Overseer.

For a time DeVore simply watched her, following her every movement with the hidden
cameras, switching from screen to screen, zooming in to focus on her face or watching
her from the far side of
the room. Then, when he was done with that, he nodded to himself and blanked the screens.

She was much better than he had expected. Stronger, prettier, more attractive than
he’d anticipated. He had thought beforehand that he would have to send her back and
deal with Sung some
other way, but now he had seen her he felt the need in him, like a strong, dark tar
in his blood, and knew he would have to purge himself of that. He had not had a woman
for weeks – not since
that last trip to the Wilds – and that had been a sing-song girl, all artifice and
expertise. No, this would be different; something to savour.

Quickly he went to the wall safe at the far end of the room and touched the combination.
The door irised open and he reached inside, drawing out the tiny phial before the
door closed up again.
He hesitated a moment then gulped the drug down, feeling its warmth sear his throat
and descend quickly to his stomach. It would be in his blood in minutes.

He climbed the stairs quickly, almost eagerly now, but near the top he slowed, calming
himself, waiting until he had complete control. Only then did he reach out and thumb
the lock.

She turned, surprised. A big woman, bigger than her husband, nothing cowed or mean
about the way she stood.
You married below yourself
, DeVore thought at once, knowing that Sung would
never have made Field Supervisor without such a woman to push him from behind.

Her bow was hesitant. ‘Overseer?’

He closed the door behind him, then turned back to her, trying to gauge her response
to him. Would she do as he wanted? Would she try to save her husband? She was here.
That, at least, augured
well. But would she be compliant? Would she be
exceptionally
good to him?

‘You know why you’re here?’ he asked, taking a step closer to her.

Her eyes never left him. ‘I’m here because my husband told me to be here,
Shih
Bergson.’

DeVore laughed. ‘From what I’m told old Sung is a docile man. He does what he’s told.
Am I wrong in thinking that? Does Sung roar like a lion within his own walls?’