Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series (9 page)

For a moment she did nothing, horrified, her lips drawn back from her teeth, watching
how he turned the stump, observing it, his eyes filled with wonder at the thing he
had accidentally done. He
was gritting his teeth against the pain, keeping it at bay while he studied the stump,
the severed hand.

Then, coming to herself again, she pressed the stud at her neck and sounded the alarm.

Much later Meg stood at the bottom of the slope, looking out across the water.

Night had already fallen, but in one place its darkness was breached. Across the bay
flames leapt high from the burning house and she could hear the crackling of burning
vegetation, the sudden
sharp retorts as wood popped and split.

Smoke lay heavy on the far side of the water, laced eerily with threads of light from
the blaze. She could see dark shapes moving against the brilliance; saw one of the
Security craft rise up
sharply, its twin beams cutting the air in front of it.

‘Meg? Come inside!’

She turned, looking back up the slope towards the cottage. Lamps burned at several
of the windows, throwing faint spills of light across the white-painted stonework.
Her father stood there, a
dark, familiar figure, framed in the light of the doorway.

‘I’m coming, daddy. Just a moment longer.
Please
.’

He nodded, somewhat reluctantly, then turned away.

Meg faced the blaze again, looking out across the dark glass of the bay. She thought
she could see small shapes in the uprush of flame, like insects burning, crackling
furiously as their shells
ignited in a sudden flare of brilliance.
Books
, she thought,
all those books
…

Ben was upstairs, in his bed. They had frozen the stump but they had not saved the
hand. He would need a new one now.

She could still hear the chord he had sounded; still see his fingers spreading to
form the shape. She looked away from the blaze. After-images flickered in the darkness.
The eye moved on, but
the image remained. For a time.

She went indoors. Went up and saw him where he lay, propped up with a mound of pillows
behind his back. He was awake, fully conscious. She sat at his bedside and was silent
for a time, letting
him watch her.

‘What’s it like?’

‘Beautiful. The way the light’s reflected in the dark water. It’s…’

‘I know,’ he said, as if he’d seen it too.

She looked away, noticing how the fire’s light flickered in the window pane; how it
cast a mottled, ever-changing pattern against the narrow opening.

‘I’m glad you did what you did,’ he said, more softly than before. ‘I would have stood
there and watched myself bleed to death. I owe you my life.’

It was not entirely true. He owed his life to their mother. If Beth had not come back
early then what she had done would not have mattered.

‘I only wrapped it with the sheet,’ she said. But she saw how he was looking at her,
his eyes piercing her. She could see he was embarrassed. Yet there was something else
there, too
– something that she had never seen in him before – and it touched her deeply. She
felt her lips pucker and her eyes grow moist.

‘Hey, little sis, don’t cry.’

He had never called her that before; neither had he ever touched her as he touched
her now, his good right hand caressing both of hers where they lay atop the bedclothes.
She shuddered and
looked down.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, as if in answer to something she had said, his hand squeezing
both of hers. ‘Father says they can graft a new hand onto the nerve ends. It’ll
work as good as new. Maybe better.’

She found she could not look up at him. If she did she would burst into tears, and
she didn’t want him to see her weakness. He had been so strong, so brave. The pain
– it must have
been awful.

‘You know, the worst thing was that I missed it.’

‘Missed what?’

‘I didn’t see it,’ he said, and there was genuine surprise in his voice. ‘I wasn’t
quick enough. I heard the chain break and I looked up, but I missed the accident.
It was done before I looked down again. My hand was no longer part of me. When I looked
it was already separate, there on the keyboard.’

He laughed. A queer little sound.

Meg looked at him. He was staring at the stub of his left arm. It was neatly capped,
like the end of an old cane. Silvered and neutral. Reduced to a thing.

‘I didn’t see it,’ he insisted. ‘The glass. The cut. And I felt… only a sudden absence.
Not pain, but…’

She could see that he was searching for the right words, the very thing that would
describe what he had felt, what he had experienced at that moment. But it evaded him.
He shrugged and gave
up.

‘I love you, Ben.’

‘I know,’ he said, and seemed to look at her as if to gauge how love looked in a person’s
eyes. As if to place it in his memory.

After Meg had gone he lay there, thinking things through.

He had said nothing to her about what was in the journal. For once he felt no urge
to share his knowledge with her. It would harm her, as it had harmed him: not on the
surface, as the mirror
had, but deeper, where his true self lived. In the darkness.

He felt angered that he had not been told; that Hal had not trusted him enough. More
than that, he felt insulted that they had hidden it from him. Oh, he could see why
it was important for Meg
not to know; she responded to things in a different way. But to hide it? He clenched
his fists, feeling the ghostly movement in the hand he had lost. Didn’t they know?
Didn’t they
understand him, even now? How could he make sense of it all unless he could first
solve the riddle of himself?

It was all there, in the journal. Some of it explicit, the rest hidden teasingly away
– cyphers within cyphers – as if for his eyes alone.

He had heard Augustus’s voice, speaking clearly in his head, as if direct across the
years. ‘I am a failed experiment,’ he had said. ‘Old Amos botched me when he made
me
from his seed. He got more than he bargained for.’

It was true. They were all an experiment. All the Shepherd males. Not sons and fathers,
uncles and grandfathers, but brothers every last one of them – all the fruit of Amos’s
seed.

Ben laughed bitterly. It explained so much. For Augustus was his twin. Ben knew it
for a certainty. He had proof.

There, in the back of the journal, were the breeding charts – a dozen complex genetic
patterns, each drawn in the tiniest of hands, one to a double page; each named and
dated, Ben’s
own amongst them. A whole line of Shepherds, each one the perfect advisor for his
T’ang.

Augustus had known somehow. Had worked it out. He had realized what he was meant for.
What task he had been bred for.

But Augustus had been a rebel. He had defied his father; refusing to be trained as
the servant of a T’ang. Worse, he had sired a child by his own sister, in breach of
the careful plans
Amos had laid. His mirror had become his mate. Furious, his ‘father’, Robert, had
made him a prisoner in the house, forbidding him the run of the Domain until he changed
his ways, but
Augustus had remained defiant. He had preferred death to compromise.

Or so it seemed. There was no entry for that day.

There were footsteps on the stairs. He tensed, then made himself relax. He had been
expecting this; had been rehearsing what he would say.

Hal stood in the doorway, looking in ‘Ben? Can I come in?’

Ben stared back at him, unable to keep the anger from his face. ‘Hello, elder brother.’

Hal seemed surprised. Then he understood. He had confiscated the journal, but he could
not confiscate what was in Ben’s head. It did not matter that Ben could not physically
see the pages
of the journal: in his mind he could turn them anyway and read the tall columns of
cyphers.

‘It isn’t like that,’ he began, but Ben interrupted him, a sharp edge to his voice.

‘Don’t lie to me. I’ve had enough of lies. Tell me who I am.’

‘You’re my son.’

Ben sat forward, but this time Hal got in first. ‘No, Ben. You’re wrong. It ended
with Augustus. He was the last. You’re my son, Ben. Mine and your mother’s.’

Ben made to speak, then fell silent, watching the man. Then he looked down. Hal was
not lying. Not intentionally. He spoke as he believed. But he was wrong. Ben had seen
the charts, the names,
the dates of birth. Amos’s great experiment was still going on.

He let out a long, shuddering breath. ‘Okay… But tell me. How did Augustus die? Why
did he kill himself?’

‘He didn’t.’

‘Then how did he die?’

‘He had leukaemia.’

That too was a lie, for there was no mention of ill health in the journal. But again
Hal believed it for the truth. His eyes held nothing back from Ben.

‘And the child? What happened to the child?’

Hal laughed. ‘What child? What are you talking about?’

Ben looked down. Then it was all a lie. Hal knew nothing. Nor would he learn anything
from the journal unless Meg gave him the key to it; for the cypher was a special one,
transforming itself
constantly page by page as the journal progressed.

‘Nothing,’ he said finally. ‘I was mistaken.’

He lifted his eyes. Saw how concerned Hal was.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to trouble anyone.’

‘No…’

Then, strangely, Hal looked down and laughed. ‘You know, Ben, when I saw Peng Yu-wei
stuck there in the mud, all my anger drained from me.’ He looked up and met Ben’s
eyes, his
voice changing, becoming more serious. ‘I understand why you did it. Believe me. And
I meant what I said the other night. You can be your own man. Live your own life.
It’s up to you
whether you serve or not. Neither I nor the great T’ang himself will force you.’

Ben studied his brother – the man he had always thought of as his father – and saw
suddenly that it did not matter what he was in reality, for Hal Shepherd had become
what he believed he
was. His father. A free man, acting freely, choosing freely. For him the illusion
was complete. It had become the truth.

It was a powerful lesson. One Ben could use. He nodded. ‘Then I choose to be your
son, if that’s all right?’

Hal smiled and reached out to take his good hand. ‘That’s all I ever wanted.’

PART 9 ICE AND FIRE

‘War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have
developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups,
and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.’

—Mao Tse Tung,
Problems Of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War
(December 1936)

‘It is our historical duty to eradicate all opposition to change. To cauterize the
cancers that create division. The future cannot come into being until the past is
dead. Chung Kuo cannot live until the world of petty nation states, of factions and
religions, is dead and buried beneath the ice. Let us have no pity then. Our choice
is made. Ice and fire. The fire to cauterize, the ice to cover over. Only by such
means will the world be freed from enmity.’

—Tsao Ch’un,
Address to his Ministers
, (May 2068)

Chapter 38

THE SADDLE

T
he old T’ang backed away, his hands raised before him, his face rigid with fear.

‘Put down the knife,
erh tzu
! For pity’s sake!’

A moment before there had been laughter; now the tension in the room seemed unendurable.
Only the hiss and wheeze of Tsu Tiao’s laboured breathing broke the awful silence.

In the narrow space between the pillars, Tsu Ma circled his father slowly, knife in
hand, his face set, determined. On all sides T’ang and courtier alike – all Han, all
Family
– were crowded close, looking on, their faces tense, unreadable. Only one, a boy of
eight, false whiskered and rouged up, his clothes identical to those of the old T’ang,
showed any
fear. He stood there, wide-eyed, one hand gripping the arm of the taller boy beside
him.

‘
Erh Tzu!
’ the old man pleaded, falling to his knees.
My son!
He bowed his head, humbling himself. ‘I beg you, Tsu Ma! Have mercy on an old man!’

All eyes were on Tsu Ma now. All saw the shudder that rippled through the big man
like a wave; the way his chin jutted forward and his face contorted in agony as he
steeled himself to strike.
Then it was done and the old man slumped forward, the knife buried deep in his chest.

There was a sigh like the soughing of the wind, then Tsu Ma was surrounded. Hands
clapped his back or held his hand or touched his shoulder briefly. ‘Well done, Tsu
Ma,’ each said
before moving on, expecting no answer; seeing how he stood there, his arms limp at
his sides, his broad chest heaving, his eyes locked on the fallen figure on the floor
beneath him.

Slowly the great room emptied until only Tsu Ma, the six T’ang and the two young boys
remained.

Li Shai Tung stood before him, staring into his face, a faint smile of sadness mixed
with satisfaction on his lips. He spoke softly, ‘Well done, Tsu Ma. It’s hard, I know.
The
hardest thing a man can do…’

Slowly Tsu Ma’s eyes focused on him. He swallowed deeply and another great shudder
racked his body. Pain flickered like lightning across the broad, strong features of
his face, and then he
spoke, his voice curiously small, like a child’s. ‘Yes… but it was
so
hard to do, Shai Tung. It… it was just like him.’

Li Shai Tung shivered but kept himself perfectly still, his face empty of what he
was feeling. He ached to reach out and hold Tsu Ma close, to comfort him, but knew
it would be wrong. It was
hard, as Tsu Ma now realized, but it was also necessary.

Since the time of Tsao Ch’un it had been so. To become T’ang the son must kill the
father. Must become his own man. Only then would he be free to offer his father the
respect he owed
him.

‘Will you come through, Tsu Ma?’

Tsu Ma’s eyes had never left Li Shai Tung’s face, yet they had not been seeing him.
Now they focused again. He gave the barest nod, then, with one last, appalled look
at the body on
the floor, moved towards the dragon doorway.

In the room beyond, the real Tsu Tiao was laid out atop a great, tiered pedestal on
a huge bed spread with silken sheets of gold. Slowly and with great dignity, Tsu Ma
climbed the steps until he
stood there at his dead father’s side. The old man’s fine grey hair had been brushed
and plaited, his cheeks delicately rouged, his beard brushed out straight, his nails
painted a
brilliant pearl. He was dressed from head to foot in white. A soft white muslin that,
when Tsu Ma knelt and gently brushed it with his fingertips, reminded him strangely
of springtime and the smell
of young girls.

You’re dead
, Tsu Ma thought, gazing tenderly into his father’s face.
You’re really dead, aren’t you?
He bent forward and gently brushed the cold lips with
his own, then sat back on his heels, shivering, toying with the ring that rested,
heavy and unfamiliar, like a saddle on the first finger of his right hand. And now
it’s me.

He turned his head, looking back at the six T’ang standing amongst the pillars, watching
him.
You know how I feel,
he thought, looking from face to face.
Each one of you.
You’ve been here before me, haven’t you?

For the first time he understood why the Seven were so strong. They had this in common:
each knew what it was to kill their father; knew the reality of it in their bones.
Tsu Ma looked back at
the body – the real body, not the lifelike GenSyn copy he had ‘killed’ – and understood.
He had been blind to it before, but now he saw it clearly. It was not life that
connected them so firmly, but death. Death that gave them such a profound and lasting
understanding of each other.

He stood again and turned, facing them, then went down amongst them. At the foot of
the steps they greeted him; each in his turn bowing before Tsu Ma; each bending to
kiss the ring of power he
now wore; each embracing him warmly before repeating the same eight words.

‘Welcome, Tsu Ma. Welcome, T’ang of West Asia.’

When the brief ceremony was over, Tsu Ma turned and went across to the two boys. Li
Yuan was much taller than when he had last seen him. He was entering that awkward
stage of early adolescence
and had become a somewhat ungainly-looking boy. Even so, it was hard to believe that
his birthday in two days’ time would be only his twelfth. There was something almost
unnatural in his
manner that made Tsu Ma think of childhood tales of changelings and magic spells and
other such nonsense. He seemed so old, so knowing. So unlike the child whose body
he wore. Tsu Tao Chu, in
contrast, seemed younger than his eight years and wore his heart embroidered like
a peacock on his sleeve. He stood there in his actor’s costume, bearded, his brow
heavily lined with black
make-up pencil, yet still his youth shone through, in his eyes and in the quickness
of his movements.

Tsu Ma reached out and ruffled his hair, smiling for the first time since the killing.
‘Did it frighten you, Tao Chu?’

The boy looked down, abashed. ‘I thought…’

Tsu Ma knelt down and held his shoulders, nodding, remembering how he had felt the
first time he had seen the ritual, not then knowing what was happening, or why.

Tao Chu looked up and met his eyes. ‘It seemed so real, Uncle Ma. For a moment I thought
it was Grandpa Tiao.’

Tsu Ma smiled. ‘You were not alone in that, Nephew Chu.’

Tao Chu was his dead brother’s third and youngest son and Tsu Ma’s favourite; a lively,
ever-smiling boy with the sweetest, most joyful laugh. At the ritual earlier Tao Chu
had
impersonated Tsu Tiao, playing out scenes from the old T’ang’s life before the watching
Court. The practice was as old as the Middle Kingdom itself and formed one link in
the great
chain of tradition, but it was more than mere ritual, it was a living ceremony, an
act of deep respect and celebration, almost a poem to the honoured dead. For the young
actor, however, it was a
confusing, not to say unnerving experience, to find the dead man unexpectedly there,
in the seat of honour, watching the performance.

‘Do you understand why I had to kill the copy, Tao Chu?’

Tao Chu glanced quickly at Li Yuan, then looked back steadily at his uncle. ‘Not at
first, Uncle Ma, but Yuan explained it to me. He said you had to kill the guilt you
felt at Grandpa
Tiao’s death. That you could not be your own man until you had.’

‘Then you understand how deeply I revere my father? How hard it was to harm even a
copy of him?’

Tao Chu nodded, his eyes bright with understanding.

‘Good.’ He squeezed the boy’s shoulders briefly, then stood. ‘But I must thank you,
Tsu Tao Chu. You did well today. You gave me back my father.’

Tao Chu smiled, greatly pleased by his uncle’s praise, then, at a touch from Li Yuan,
he joined the older boy in a deep bow and backed away, leaving the T’ang to their
Council.

From the camera’s vantage point, twenty
li
out from the spaceship, it was hard to tell its scale. The huge sphere of its forward
compartments was visible only as a
nothingness in the star-filled field of space – a circle of darkness more intense
than that which surrounded it. Its tail, so fine and thin that it was like a thread
of silver, stretched out
for ten times its circumference, terminating in a smaller, silvered sphere little
thicker than the thread.

It was beautiful. Li Shai Tung drew closer, operating the remote from a distance of
almost three hundred thousand
li
, adjusting the camera image with the most delicate of touches, the
slight delay in response making him cautious. Five
li
out he slowed the remote and increased the definition.

The darkness took on form. The sphere was finely stippled, pocked here and there with
hatches or spiked with communication towers. Fine, almost invisible lines covered
the whole surface, as if
the sphere were netted by the frailest of spiders’ webs.

Li Shai Tung let the remote drift slowly towards the starship and sat back, one hand
smoothing through his long beard while he looked about him at the faces of his fellow
T’ang.

‘Well?’

He glanced across at the waiting technicians and dismissed them with a gesture. They
had done their work well in getting an undetected remote so close to
The New Hope
. Too well, perhaps.
He had not expected it to be so beautiful.

‘How big is it?’ asked Wu Shih, turning to him. ‘I can’t help thinking it must be
huge to punch so big a hole in the star field.’

Li Shai Tung looked back at him, the understanding of thirty years passing between
them. ‘It’s huge. Approximately two
li
in diameter.’

‘Approximately?’ It was Wei Feng, T’ang of East Asia, who picked up on the word.

‘Yes. The actual measurement is one kilometre. I understand that they have used the
old
Hung Mao
measurements throughout the craft.’

Wei Feng grunted his dissatisfaction, but Wang Hsien, T’ang of Africa, was not so
restrained. ‘But that’s an outrage!’ he roared. ‘An insult! How dare they flout the
Edict
so openly?’

‘I would remind you, Wang Hsien,’ Li Shai Tung answered quietly, seeing the unease
on every face. ‘We agreed that the terms of the Edict would not apply to the
starship.’

He looked back at the ship. The fine web of lines was now distinct. In its centre,
etched finer than the lines surrounding it, were two lines of beadlike figures spiralling
about each other,
forming the double helix of heredity, symbol of the Dispersionists.

Three years ago – the day after Under Secretary Lehmann had been killed in the House
by Tolonen – he had summoned the leaders of the House before him, and there, in the
Purple
Forbidden City where they had murdered his son, had granted them concessions, amongst
them permission to build a generation starship. It had prevented war. But now the
ship was almost ready and
though the uneasy peace remained intact, soon it would be broken. The cusp lay just
ahead. Thus far on the road of concession he had carried the Seven. Thus far but no
further.

He stared at the starship a moment longer. It was beautiful, but both House and Seven
knew what
The New Hope
really was. No one was fooled by the mask of rhetoric. The Dispersionists
talked of it being an answer – ‘the only guarantee of a future for our children’ –
but in practical terms it did nothing to solve the problem of over-population that
was
supposedly its
raison d’être
. Fully laden, it could carry no more than five thousand settlers. In any case, the
ship, fast as it was, would take a thousand years to reach the
nearest star. No,
The New Hope
was not an answer, it was a symbol, a political counter – the thin end of the great
wedge of Change. It heralded not a new age of dispersal but a return
to the bad old days of technological free-for-all – a return to that madness that
had once before almost destroyed Chung Kuo.

He cleared the image and sat there, conscious that they were waiting for him to say
what was on his mind. He looked from face to face, aware that the past three years
had brought great changes
in his thinking. What had once seemed certain was no longer so. His belief in peace
at all costs – in a policy of concession and containment – had eroded in the years
since Han
Ch’in’s death. He had aged, and not only his face. Some days there was an air of lethargy
about him, of having done with things.
Yes
, he thought, looking down at his own long
hands,
the tiger’s teeth are soft now, his eyes grown dull. And they know this. Our enemies
know it and seek advantage from it. But what might we do that we have not already
done? How can
we stem the tidal flow of change?

Tsu Ma broke into his thoughts. ‘Forgive me, Li Shai Tung. But what of Tolonen?’

Li Shai Tung looked up, surprised, meeting the new T’ang’s eyes.

‘Tolonen? I don’t understand you, Tsu Ma. You think I should accede to the House’s
demands?’ He looked away, a bitter anger in his eyes. ‘You would have me give
them that satisfaction too?’