An Inch of Ashes (19 page)

It had not been easy, making T’ai Cho believe he had given up. It had hurt to disillusion his old tutor, but it was necessary. If he was to function at all in this set-up, he had to allay Spatz’s suspicions. Had to make Spatz believe he was behaving himself. And what better way of convincing Spatz than by manipulating the reactions of the man supposedly closest to him? T’ai Cho’s indignation – his angry disappointment in Kim – would throw Spatz off the scent. Would give Kim that tiny bit of room he needed.

Even so, it hurt. And that surprised Kim, because he had begun to question whether he had any feelings left after what they had done to him in Socialization. He recalled all the times he had met T’ai Cho since then, knowing what the man had once been to him, yet feeling nothing. Nothing at all. He had lain awake at nights, worried about that absence in himself, fearing that the ability to love had been taken from him, perhaps for good. So this – this hurt he felt at hurting another – was a sign of hope. Of a change in him.

He looked down at the poem on the desk, then sighed. What made it worse was that there was an element of truth in what he’d said. Remove Spatz and another Spatz would be appointed in his place. So it was in this life. Moreover, it was true what he had said about himself. Truer, perhaps, than he had intended.

All his life he had been owned. Possessed, not for himself, but for the thing within him – his ‘talent’. They used him, as they would a machine. And, like a machine, if he malfunctioned he was to be repaired, or junked.

He laughed softly, suddenly amused.
Yes
, he asked,
but what makes me different from the machines? What qualities distinguish me from them? And are those qualities imperfections – weaknesses – or are they strengths? Should I be more like them or less?

They had conditioned him; walled off his past, taught him to mistrust his darker self; yet it was the very part of him from which it all emanated – the wellspring of his being.

The thinking part... they overvalued it. It was only the processor. The insights came from a deeper well than that. The upper mind merely refined it.

He smiled, knowing they were watching him, listening to his words. Well, let them watch and listen. He was better at this game than they. Much better.

He leaned forward, studying the poem.

To the watching eyes it would mean nothing. To them it seemed a meaningless string of chemical formulae; the mathematical expression of a complex chain of molecules. But Kim could see through the surface of the page and glimpse the Mandarin characters each formula represented. He smiled to himself, wondering what Spatz would make of it. Beyond the simple one-for-one code Kim had devised to print out the information taken from Hammond’s personal files was a second code he had agreed upon with Hammond. That, too, was quite simple – providing you had the key to how it worked and a fluent understanding of Mandarin.

The poem itself was clumsy, its images awkward, clichéd – but that was understandable. Hammond was a scientist, not a poet. And whilst the examination system insisted upon the study of ancient poetry, it was something that most men of a scientific bias put behind them as quickly as possible. What was important, however, was the information contained within the central images. Three white swans represented how Spatz had divided the research into three teams. Then, in each of the next three lines, Hammond detailed – by use of other images – the area of study each team was undertaking.

It was a crude beginning – no more than a foundation – yet it showed it could be done. As Hammond gained confidence he would develop subtlety: a necessity in the days to come, for the information would be of a degree of complexity that would tax their inventiveness to the limit.

That said, the most difficult part was already resolved. Kim had devised a means by which he could respond to Hammond. His co-conspirator had only to touch a certain key on his computer keyboard and Kim’s input would automatically load into his personal files. That same instruction would effectively shut down Hammond’s keyboard – render it useless, its individual keys unconnected to its regular program. Whichever key Hammond subsequently pressed would bring up one character of Kim’s reply, until his message was complete.

It was a trick he had learned in Socialization. A game he’d played, haunting the files of others with his cryptic messages. And no one had dreamed it was possible.

He typed his queries out quickly, keeping this first response simple, modelling his poem on one by the fourth-century poet, T’ao Ch’ien. It printed up on the screen as further chains of molecules. Then, happy with what he had done, he punched the code to send it to Hammond’s file.

He switched off the set and sat back, stretching, suddenly tired. Then, unexpectedly, the comset came alive again, the printer at the side of the desk beginning to chatter. He caught his breath, watching the printout slowly emerge. A moment later it fell silent. He leaned forward and tore the printout off, then sat back, reading it through.

It was from Spatz, informing him that he had been given permission to use the recreational facilities of the local Security forces.

He studied it a moment and then laughed. A pool! Spatz had given him a pool!

Her Uncle Jon had set and lit a fire in the huge hearth. Its flickering light filled the big, tall-ceilinged room, making it seem mysterious and half-formed, as if, at any moment, the walls would melt and run. Her father was sitting in a big, upright armchair by the window, staring out at the sea. Standing in the doorway, she looked across at him then back at the fire, entranced. It was something she had never seen before. Something she had never thought to see. Outside, beyond the latticed windows, evening was falling, dark clouds gathering over the sea, but here, inside, the firelight filled the room with warmth.

She knelt beside the fire, putting her hands out to it, shivering suddenly, not from the cold but from a feeling of familiarity; from a strange sense of having made the gesture before, in another life than this.

‘Careful,’ her father said, almost lazily. ‘It’s hot. Much hotter than you’d think.’

She knelt there in the half-shadow, mesmerized by the flickering pattern of the firelight, its fierce heat, its ever-changing dance of forms, then looked back at her father. His face was changed by the fire’s light; had become a mask of black and gold, his eyes living, liquid jewels. For some reason it moved her deeply. At that moment her love for him was like something solid: she could touch it and smell it; could feel its very texture.

She looked about her. There were shelves on the walls, and books. Real books, like those she had seen in the museum once – leather-bound. She turned, hearing the door creak open, and looked up, smiling, at her uncle. Behind him came her aunt, carrying a tray of drinks.

‘What are all the books?’

She saw how her uncle looked to her father before he answered her; as if seeking his permission.

‘They’re old things. History books and myth.’

‘Myth?’

Her Aunt Helga looked up, a strange expression in her eyes, then looked down again, busying herself with the drinks.

Again her Uncle Jon looked to his brother uncertainly. ‘They’re stories, Jelka. Old legends. Things from before the City.’

He was about to say more, but her father interrupted him. ‘There are things that belong here only. You must not take them back with you, understand me, child? You must not even mention them. Not to anyone.’

She looked down. ‘Why?’

‘Content yourself that they are.’

She looked across at him again. His voice had been harsh, almost angry, but his eyes seemed troubled. He looked away, then back at her, relenting. ‘While you’re here you may look at them, if that’s what you want. But remember, these things are forbidden back in the City. If anyone knew...’

She frowned. Forbidden? Why forbidden?

‘Jelka?’

She looked up, then quickly took the glass her Aunt Helga was holding out to her. ‘Thanks...’

She was silent a moment, then looked across at her uncle. ‘Daddy said this place had a name. Kalevala. Why is it called that?’

Jon laughed, then took a glass from his wife and came across, sitting in the chair nearest Jelka.

‘You want to know why this house is called Kalevala? Well’ – he looked across at her father then back at Jelka – ‘it’s like this...’

She listened, entranced, as her uncle talked of a distant past and a land of heroes, and of a people – her people – who had lived in that land. Of a time before the Han and their great City, when vast forests filled the land and the people were few. Her mind opened up to the freedom of such a past – to a world so much bigger than the world she knew. A vast, limitless world, bounded by mist and built upon nothingness. Kalevala, the land of heroes.

When he was finished, she sat there, astonished, her drink untouched.

‘Well?’ her father said over the crackle of the fire, his voice strangely heavy. ‘Do you understand now why we are forbidden this? Can’t you see what restlessness there would be if this were known to all?’

She stared at him, not recognizing him for a moment, the vision filling her mind, consuming her. Then she lowered her eyes and nodded. ‘I think so. And yet...’

He smiled sadly. ‘I know. I feel it too, my love. It calls us strongly. But this is now, not then. We cannot go back. This is a new age and the heroes are dead. The land of Kalevala is gone. We cannot bring it back.’

She shivered.
No
, she wanted to say;
it’s still alive, inside us – in that part of us that dreams and seeks fulfilment
. And yet he was right. There was only this left. This faint, sad echo of a greater, more heroic age. This only. And when it too was gone?

She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of loss. The loss of something she had never known. And yet not so, for it was still a part of her. She could feel it – there in the sinew and bone and blood of her.

‘Jelka?’

She looked up. Her uncle was standing by the shelves, watching her, concerned, the pain in his eyes the reflection of her own.

‘The Kalevala... Would you like to read it?’

He stretched out his hand, offering one of the thick, leather-bound volumes. Jelka stared back at him a moment, then went across to him, taking the book. For a moment she simply stared at it, astonished, tracing the embossed lettering of the cover with her finger, then she turned, looking at her father.

‘Can I?’

‘Of course. But remember what I said. It belongs here. Nowhere else.’

Jelka nodded, then looked back at the book. She opened the cover and read the title page.

‘I didn’t think...’ she began, then laughed.

‘Didn’t think what?’ said her uncle, standing beside her.

‘This,’ she said, looking up into his face. ‘I never dreamed there would be a book of it.’

‘It wasn’t a book. Not at first. It was all songs, thousands of songs, sung by peasants in the homelands of Karelia. One man collected them and made them into a single tale. But now there’s only this. This last copy. The rest of it has gone – singers and songs, the people and the land – as if it had never been.’

She looked back at him, then stared at the book in her hands, awed. The last copy. It frightened her somehow.

‘Then I’ll take good care of it,’ she said. ‘As if it were a sister to me.’

Chen raised himself uneasily in the bed, then pulled the cover up, getting comfortable again. His chest was strapped, his arm in bandages, but he had been lucky. The knife had glanced against a rib, missing anything vital. He had lost a lot of blood, but he would heal. As for the arm wound, that was superficial – the kind of thing one got in a hard training session.

Karr was sitting across from him, scowling, his huge frame far too big for the hospital chair. He leaned forward angrily, giving vent to what he’d had to hold in earlier while the nurse had been in the room.

‘You were stupid, Chen. You should have waited for me.’

Chen gritted his teeth against a sudden wash of pain, then answered his friend.

‘I’m sorry, Gregor. There wasn’t time.’

‘You could have contacted me. From Liu Chang’s. You could have let me know what you planned. As it was I didn’t even know you’d gone to see the pimp until half an hour back. I thought we were waiting for the Security report on Liu Chang.’

‘I got it back before I went in. It confirmed what we’d thought. He was an actor, in opera, before he became a pimp. And there was one unproven charge of murder against him. That was the reason he was demoted to the Net.’

Karr huffed impatiently. ‘Even so, you should have waited. You could have been killed.’

It was true. He
should
have waited. But he hadn’t. Why? Perhaps because he had wanted to do it himself. It was mixed up with Pavel somehow – the boy on the Plantation who had been killed by DeVore’s henchman. He still felt guilty about that. So perhaps he had put himself at risk to punish himself. Or maybe it was more complex than that. Maybe it had to do with the risks involved. He had enjoyed it, after all. Had liked the way the odds were stacked against him.

Five to one. And he had come out of it alive. Had fought them hand to hand and beaten them.
Kwai
he was. He knew it now, clearer than he had ever known it before.
Kwai.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘It was wrong of me.’

Karr sat back a little, then laughed, meeting Chen’s eyes, his anger dissipating. ‘Still, you’re alive.’

There was a knock, then a head poked round the door.

‘Axel!’ Chen tried to sit up, then eased back, groaning softly.

Haavikko came into the room. Giving a small nod of acknowledgment to Karr, he went across and took Chen’s hand, concerned.

‘What happened? Gregor told me you’d been hurt, but not how.’

Chen took a painful breath, then grinned up at Haavikko, squeezing his hand. ‘It was only a scrape...’

Karr laughed. ‘Only a scrape! You know what our friend here has been doing, Axel?’

Haavikko looked, shaking his head.

‘Shall I tell him, Chen, or do you want to?’