The Art of War (35 page)

‘Ben’s hand?’ Hal turned, looking across at Ben, then he laughed. A brief, colourless laugh. ‘Of course. Your mother said.’

Ben’s eyes didn’t leave his father for a moment. ‘Thanks. Tell Mother I’ll be up.’

She hesitated, wanting to ask him what was wrong, but she could see from the look of him that she was excluded from this.

‘Ben?’

Still he didn’t look at her. ‘Go on. I told you. I’ll be up.’

She stood there a moment longer, surprised and hurt by the sudden curtness in his voice. Then, angered, she turned and ran back down the space between the racks and up the steps.

At the top of the steps she stopped, calming herself. Hal had said no. That was it! And now Ben was angry with her, because she didn’t want him to go either. Meg shivered, her anger suddenly washed from her; then, giving a soft laugh, she pushed the door open and went through.

The hand lay on the table, filaments trailing from the precisely severed wrist like fine strands of hair. It was not like the other hand. This one shone silver in the light, its surfaces soft and fluid like mercury. Yet its form suggested heaviness and strength. Meg, staring at it from across the room, could imagine the being from which it had been cut: a tall, faceless creature with limbs on which the sunlight danced like liquid fire. She could see him striding through the grass below the cottage. See the wood of the door splinter like matchwood before his fist.

She shuddered and turned, looking back at the man kneeling at Ben’s side. As she looked he glanced up at her and smiled, a polite, pleasant smile. He was a Han. Lin Hou Ying, his name was. A tiny, delicate man in his sixties, with hands that were so small they seemed like a child’s. Hands so doll-like and delicate, in fact, that she had asked him if they were real.

‘These?’ He held them up to her, as if for her appraisal. Then he had laughed. ‘These hands are mine. I was born with them. But as to what is real...’

He had almost finished removing the damaged hand by now. As she watched he leaned close, easing the pressure on the vice that held the hand, then bent down and selected one of the tiny instruments from the case on the floor beside his knee. For a moment longer he was busy, leaning over the hand, making the final few adjustments that would disconnect it.

‘There,’ he said, finally, leaning back and looking up into Ben’s face. ‘How does that feel?’

Ben lifted his left arm up towards his face, then turned it, studying the clean line of the stump. ‘It’s strange,’ he said, after a moment. ‘The pain’s gone. And yet it feels as if the hand’s still there. I can flex my fingers now and they don’t hurt.’

Lin Hou Ying smiled. ‘Good. That’s a sure sign it was only the unit that was damaged. If you had twisted it badly or damaged the nerve connections it might have been more difficult. As it is, I can fit you with a temporary unit until the old one is repaired.’

‘That thing there?’

Lin glanced across. ‘Yes. I’m sorry it’s so ugly.’

‘No. Not at all. I think it’s quite beautiful.’

Meg laughed uncomfortably. ‘No.
Shih
Lin’s right. It’s ugly. Brutal.’

‘It’s only a machine,’ Ben answered, surprised by the vehemence, the bitterness in her voice. ‘It has no life other than that which we give it.’

‘It’s horrible,’ she insisted. ‘Like the morph.’

Ben shrugged and looked back at Lin Hou Ying. ‘Does it function like the other one?’

The small man had been studying the hand in the vice, probing it with one of the tiny scalpels. He looked up, smiling.

‘In certain ways, yes, but in others it’s a vast improvement on this model here. Things have changed greatly in the last five years. Prosthetics among them. The response time’s much enhanced. It’s stronger, too. And in that particular model...’ he indicated the hand on the table with a delicate motion of his head ‘...there’s a remote override.’

Ben stared at it a moment, then looked back at Lin Hou Ying. ‘Why’s that?’

Lin stood and went across to the carrying case that stood on the floor beside the table. Earlier he had taken the hand from it. ‘Look,’ he said, taking something from inside. ‘Here’s the rest of the unit.’

It was an arm. A silver arm. Ben laughed. ‘How much more of him have you?’

Lin laughed, then brought the arm across. In his other hand he held a control box. ‘Some of our customers have lost far more than you,
Shih
Shepherd. The arm is a simple mechanism. It is easy to construct one. But a hand. Well, a hand is a complex thing. Think of the diversity of movements it’s possible to make with a hand. Rather than waste our efforts making a single unit of hand and arm together, we decided long ago to specialize – to concentrate on the hands. And this...’ he handed Ben the control box ‘...controls the hand.’

‘Can I?’

Lin lowered his head slightly. ‘As you wish,
Shih
Shepherd.’

For a while Ben experimented, making the fingers bend and stretch, the hand flex and clench. Then he turned it and made it scuttle, slowly, awkwardly, like a damaged crab, on the table’s surface.

Ben set the box down. ‘Can I keep this?’

Lin bowed his head. ‘Of course. And the arm?’

Ben laughed, then looked across at Meg and saw how she was watching him. He looked down. ‘No. Take the arm.’

Just then the door at the far end of the room opened and his mother came in, carrying a small tray. Behind her came the kitten, Zarathustra.

‘Refreshments,
Shih
Lin?’

The small man bowed low. ‘You honour me,
nu shi.
’

Beth made to set the tray down on the table beside the silver hand, but as she did so, the kitten jumped up on the chair beside her and climbed up on to the table.

‘Hey...’

Meg made to move forward, but Ben reached out, holding her arm with his right hand. ‘No. Leave him. He’s only playing.’

His mother turned, looking at him.

‘There,’ he said, indicating a small table to one side of the room.

He watched her go across and set the tray down, then looked back at the kitten. It was sniffing at the fingers of the hand then lifting its head inquisitively.

‘Don’t...’ Meg said quietly.

He half turned, looking at her. ‘I won’t hurt it.’

‘No,’ she said, brushing his hand aside and moving across to lift the kitten and cradle it. ‘He’s real. Understand? Don’t toy with him.’

He watched her a moment, then looked down at the control box in his lap.
Real
, he thought.
But how real is real? For if all I am is a machine of blood and bone, of nerve and flesh, then to what end do I function? How real am I?

Machines of flesh. The phrase echoed in his head. And then he laughed. A cold, distant laughter.

‘What is it, Ben?’

He looked up, meeting his mother’s eyes. ‘Nothing.’

He was quiet a moment, then he turned, looking across at the Han. ‘Relax a while,
Shih
Lin. I must find my father. There’s something I need to ask him.’

He found Hal in the dining room, the curtains drawn, the door to the kitchen pulled to. In the left-hand corner of the room there was a low table on which was set the miniature apple trees the T’ang had given the Shepherds five years before. The joined trees were a symbol of conjugal happiness, the apple an omen of peace, but also of illness.

His father was kneeling there in the darkened room, his back to Ben, his forearms stretched out across the low table’s surface, resting either side of the tree, his head bent forward. He was very still, as if asleep, or meditating, but Ben, who had come silently to the doorway, knew at once that his father had been crying.

‘What is it?’ he said softly.

Hal’s shoulders tensed; slowly his head came up. He stood and turned, facing his son, wiping the tears away brusquely, his eyes fierce, proud.

‘Shut the door. I don’t want your mother to hear. Or Meg.’

Ben closed the door behind him, then turned back, noting how intently his father was watching him, as if to preserve it all. He smiled faintly.
Yes,
he thought,
there’s far more of me in you than I ever realized. Brothers, we are. I know it now for certain.

‘Well?’ he asked again, his voice strangely gentle. He had often questioned his own capacity for love, wondering whether what he felt was merely some further form of self-delusion, yet now, seeing his father there, his head bowed, defeated, beside the tiny tree, he knew beyond all doubt that he loved him.

Hal’s chest rose and fell in a heavy, shuddering movement. ‘I’m dying, Ben. I’ve got cancer.’

‘Cancer?’ Ben laughed in disbelief. ‘But that’s impossible. They can cure cancers, can’t they?’

Hal smiled grimly. ‘Usually, yes. But this is a new kind, an artificial carcinoma, tailored specifically for me, it seems. Designed to take my immune system apart piece by piece. It was
Shih
Berdichev’s parting gift.’

Ben swallowed. Dying. No. It wasn’t possible. Slowly he shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, Ben, but it’s true. I’ve known it these last two months. They can delay its effects, but not for long. The T’ang’s doctors give me two years. Maybe less. So, you see, I’ve not much time to set things right. To do all the things I should have done before.’

‘What things?’

‘Things like the Shell.’

For a moment Ben’s mind missed its footing. Shells... He thought of Meg and the beach and saw the huge wave splinter along the tooth-like rocks until it crashed against her, dragging her back, away beneath the foaming surface, then heard himself screaming –
Meg
!!! – while he stood there on the higher rocks, impotent to help.

He shivered and looked away, suddenly, violently displaced. Shells... Like the stone in the dream – the dark pearl that passed like a tiny, burning star of nothingness through his palm. For a moment he stared at where his hand ought to have been in disbelief, then understood.

‘What is it, Ben?’

He looked up. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never...’

He stopped. It was like a wave of pure darkness hitting him. A sheer black cliff of nothingness erasing all thought, all being from him. He staggered and almost fell, then he was himself again, his father’s hands holding his upper arms tightly, his heavily lined face thrust close to Ben’s own, the dark green eyes filled with concern and fear.

‘Ben? What is it?’

‘Darkness,’ he whispered. ‘It was like...’

Like what? He shuddered violently. And then the earlier thing came back to him. Shells...
Pai pi.
That was what his father meant. And that was why they had to make one. Because he was dying. Yes. It all made sense.

‘Like what?’ his father asked, fleshing the thought.

‘Nothing,’ he answered, calmer now. ‘The Shell. I understand it now.’

‘Good. Then you’ll help me sketch things out for the team?’

Ben frowned. ‘Team? What team?’

The pressure of Hal’s hands on Ben’s arms had eased, but he made no move to take them away. ‘I’ve arranged for a team of technicians to come here and work with us on the Shell. I thought we could originate material for them.’

Ben looked down. For a long time he was silent, thoughtful. Then he looked up again. ‘But why do that? Why can’t we do the whole thing?’

Hal laughed. ‘Don’t be daft, Ben.’

‘No. I’m serious. Why
can’t
we do the whole thing?’

‘Didn’t you hear me, earlier? It would take ages. And I haven’t got ages. Besides, I thought you wanted to get away from here. To Oxford.’

‘I do. But this...’ He breathed deeply, then smiled and reached up to touch his father’s face with his one good hand. ‘I love you. So trust me. Three months. It’s long enough, I promise you.’

He saw the movement in his father’s face; the movements of control; of pride and love and a fierce anger that it should need such a thing to bring them to this point of openness. Then he nodded, tears in his eyes. ‘You’re mad, Ben, but yes. Why not? The T’ang can spare me.’

‘Mad...’ Ben was still a moment, then he laughed and held his father to him tightly. ‘Yes. But where would I be without my madness?’

Ben turned from the open kitchen window. Behind him the moon blazed down from a clear black sky, speckled with stars. His eyes were dark and wide, like pools, reflecting the immensity he had turned from.

‘What makes it all real?’

His mother paused, the ladle held above the casserole, the smell of the steaming rabbit stew filling the kitchen. She looked across at her son, then moved ladle to plate, spilling its contents beside the potatoes and string beans. She laughed and handed it to him. ‘Here.’

She was a clever woman. Clever enough to recognize that she had given birth to something quite other than she had expected. A strange, almost alien creature. She studied her son as he took the plate from her, seeing how his eyes took in everything, as if to store it all away. His eyes devoured the world. She smiled and looked down. There was a real intensity to him – such an intellectual hunger as would power a dozen others.

Ben put his plate down, then sat, bringing his chair in closer to the table. ‘I’m not being rhetorical. It’s a question. An honest-to-goodness question.’

She laughed. ‘I don’t know. It seems almost impertinent to ask.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. It was scarcely the easiest of questions to raise at the dinner table.
Who made the universe?
he might as well have asked. Or
Why is life?
Who knew what the answer was?

Rabbit stew, maybe. She laughed.

Ben had gone very quiet, very watchful. A living microscope, quivering with expectancy.

‘Two things come to mind,’ she said, letting the ladle rest in the pot. ‘And they seem to conflict with each other. The first is the sense that it’ll all turn out exactly as we expect it. What would you call that? – a sense of continuity, perhaps. But not just that. There’s also a sense we have that it
will
all continue, just as it ever did, and not just stop dead suddenly.’

‘And the second?’ It was Meg. She was standing in the doorway, watching them.