The White Mountain (17 page)

He stood and went to the window again, looking out across the lambent hemisphere of the dome to the darkness beyond.

He had never returned from Mars. What had landed at Nanking ten years ago had been a copy – a thing so real that to call it artificial questioned definition – while he had remained here, perfecting his plays, watching, from this cold and distant world, how the thing he had made fared in his place.

It had been impressive. Indeed, it had exceeded all expectations. Whatever doubts he had harboured about its ability had quickly vanished. By all reports it had inherited his cunning along with many other of his traits. But in the end its resources had proved insufficient. It had been but a single man, fragile in all the ways a single man is fragile. Karr's rifle butt had split its skull and ended all its schemes. And so it was if one
were
single. But to amend the forgotten poet Whitman's words, he would contain multitudes: would be like the dragon's teeth that, when planted from the dragon's severed head, would sprout, producing a harvest of dragons, each fiercer, finer than its progenitor.

He breathed deeply then turned, looking at the morph again. Soon it would be time. They would take this unformed creature and mould it, mind and body, creating a being superior to those it would face back on Chung Kuo. A quicker, more cunning beast, unfettered by pity or love or obligation. A new model, better than the last.

But this time it would have another's face.

He went across, placing his hand on the creature's shoulder. Its flesh was warm, but the warmth was of the kind that communicated itself to the senses only after a moment or two: at first it had seemed cold, dead almost. Well, so it was, and yet, when they had finished with it, it would think itself alive; would defy God himself had He said, ‘I
made
you.'

But whose face would he put to this one? Whose personality would furnish the empty chambers of its mind? He leaned across the creature to play another stone, furthering his line in
p'ing
, extending out towards tsu, the north. A T'ang? A general? Or something subtler – something much more unexpected?

DeVore smiled and straightened up, squeezing the creature's arm familiarly before he moved away. It would be interesting to see what they made of this one, for it was different in kind from the last. Was what his own imperfect copy had dreamed of. An
inheritor
. The first of a new species. A cleaner, purer being.

A dragon's tooth. A seed of destruction, floated across the vacuum of space. The first stone in a new, more terrifying game. He laughed, sensing the creature move behind him in the semi-dark, responding to the noise. Yes, the first… but not the last.

Chapter 71

BETWEEN LIGHT AND SHADOW

C
hen knelt patiently before the mirror as Wang Ti stood over him,
brushing out his hair and separating it into bunches. He watched her fasten three of them at the scalp, her fingers tying the tiny knots with practised deftness. Then, with a glancing smile at his reflection, she began to braid the fourth into a tight, neat queue. As ever, he was surprised by the strength of her hands, their cleverness, and smiled to himself. A good woman, she was. The best a man could have.

‘What are you thinking?' she asked, her fingers moving on to the second of the bunches, her eyes meeting his in the mirror.

‘Just that a man needs a wife, Wang Ti. And that if all men had wives as good as mine this world would be a better place.'

She laughed; her soft, rough-edged peasant's laugh, which, like so many things she did, made him feel warm deep down inside. He lowered his eyes momentarily, thinking back. He had been dead before he had met her. Or as good as. Down there, below the Net, he had merely existed, eking out a living day by day, like a hungry ghost, tied to nothing, its belly filled with bile.

And now?

He smiled, noting the exaggerated curve of her belly in the mirror. In a month – six weeks at most – their fourth child would be born. A girl, the doctors said. A second girl. He shivered and turned his head slightly, trying to look across at the present he had bought her only the day before, but she pulled his head back firmly.

‘Keep still. A minute and I'll be done.'

He smiled and held still, letting her finish.

‘There,' she said, stepping back from him, satisfied. ‘Now put on your tunic. It's on the bed, freshly pressed. I'll come and help you with your leggings in a while.'

Chen turned, about to object, but she had already gone to see to the children. He could hear them in the living-room, their voices competing with the trivee, his second son, the six-year-old Wu, arguing with the ‘baby' of the family, Ch'iang Hsin, teasing her, as he so often did.

Chen laughed. Things were good. No, he thought; things had never been better. It was as if the gods had blessed him. First Wang Ti. Then the children. And now all this. He looked about him at the new apartment. Eight rooms they had. Eight rooms! And only four stacks out from Bremen Central! He laughed, surprised by it all, as if at any moment he might wake and find himself back there, beneath the Net, that all-pervading stench filling his nostrils, some pale, blind-eyed bug crawling across his body while he had slept. Back then, simply to be out of that hell had been the total of his ambitions. While this – this apartment that he rented in the upper third, in Level 224 – had seemed as far beyond his reach as the stars in the midnight sky.

He caught his breath, remembering, then shook his head. That moment on the roof of the solarium – how long ago had that been now? Ten years? No, twelve. And yet he remembered it as if it were yesterday. That glimpse of the stars, of the snow-capped mountains in the moonlight. And afterwards, the nightmare of the days that had followed. Yet here he was, not dead like his companion, Kao Jyan, but alive: the T'ang's man, rewarded for his loyalty.

He pulled on his tunic, then looked at himself in the mirror. It was the first time he had worn the azurite-blue ceremonial tunic and he felt awkward in it.

‘Where's that rascal, Kao Chen?' he asked his image, noting how strange his hair looked now that it was braided, how odd his blunt, nondescript face seemed set against such elegant clothes.

‘You look nice,' Wang Ti said from the doorway. ‘You should wear your dress uniform more often, Chen. It suits you.'

He fingered the chest patch uncomfortably, tracing the shape of the
young tiger there – the symbol of his rank as Captain in the T'ang's Security forces – then shook his head. ‘It doesn't feel right, Wang Ti. I feel overdressed. Even my hair.'

He sniffed-in deeply, then shook his head again. He should not have let Wang Ti talk him into having the implants. For all his adult life he had been happy shaving his scalp, wearing its bareness like a badge, but for once he had indulged her, knowing how little she asked of him. It was four months now since the operation had given him a full head of long, glistening black hair. Wang Ti had liked it from the first, of course, and for a while that had been enough for him, but now his discontent was surfacing again.

‘Wang Ti…?' he began, then fell silent.

She came across, touching his arm, her smile of pride for once making him feel uncomfortable. ‘What is it, husband?'

‘Nothing.' he answered. ‘It's nothing…'

‘Then hold still. I'll do your leggings for you.'

The woman was leaning over the open conduit, reaching in with the fine-wire to adjust the tuning, when Leyden, the elder of the two Security men, came up with a bulb of
ch
'
a
for her. She set the wire down, looking across at him as she peeled off her elbow-length gloves.

‘Thanks,' she said softly, and sipped at the steaming lip of the bulb.

‘How much longer, Chi Li?'

Ywe Hao looked up, responding to the false name on her ID badge, then smiled. It was a beautiful smile; a warm, open smile that transformed her plain, rather narrow face. The old guard, seeing it, found himself smiling in return, then turned away, flustered. She laughed, knowing what he was thinking, but there was nothing mocking in her laughter, and when he turned back, a trace of red lingering in the paleness of his neck, he too was laughing.

‘If you were my daughter…' he began.

‘Go on. What would you do?' The smile remained, but fainter, a look of unfeigned curiosity in the young woman's eyes. Still watching him, she tilted her head back and ran one hand through her short dark hair. ‘Tell me, Wolfgang Leyden. If I were your daughter…' And again there was laughter – as if she hadn't said this a dozen times before.

‘Why… I'd lock you up, my girl. That's what I'd do!'

‘You'd have to catch me first!'

He looked at her, the web of wrinkles about his eyes momentarily stark in the brightness of the overhead light, then he nodded, growing quieter. ‘So I would… So I would …'

Their nightly ritual over, they grew silent. She drained the bulb, then pulled on her gloves and got back to work, crouching there over the conduit while he knelt nearby, watching her clever hands search the tight cluster of filaments with the fine-wire, looking for weak signals.

There was a kind of natural fellowship between them. From the first – almost three weeks ago now – he had sensed something different in her; in the way she looked at him, perhaps. Or maybe simply because she, twenty years his junior,
had
looked at him; had noticed him and smiled her beautiful smile, making him feel both young and old, happy and sad. From that first day had come their game – the meaningless banter that, for him at least, was too fraught with meaning to be safe.

‘There!' she said, looking up. ‘One more of the fiddly little buggers done!'

Leyden nodded, but he was still remembering how her top teeth pulled down the pale flesh of her lower lip when she concentrated; how her eyes filled with a strange, almost passionate intensity. As if she saw things differently. Saw more finely, clearly than he.

‘How many more?'

She sat back on her heels and drew in a deep breath. ‘Eighty-seven junctions, one hundred and sixteen conduits, eleven switches and four main panels.' She smiled. ‘Three weeks' work at the outside.'

She was part of a team of three sent in to give the deck its biannual service. The others were hard at work elsewhere – checking the transportation grid for faults; repairing the basic plumbing and service systems; cleaning out the massive vents that threaded these upper decks like giant cat's cradles. Their jobs were important, but hers was the vital one. She was the communications expert. In her hands rested the complex network of computer links that gave the deck its life. There were back-ups, of course, and it was hard to cause real damage, but it was still a delicate job – more like surgery than engineering.

‘It's like a huge head,' she had told him. ‘Full of fine nerves that carry
messages. And it has to be treated like a living mind. Gently, carefully. It can be hurt, you know.' And he recalled how she had looked at him, real tenderness and concern in her face, as if the thing really were alive.

But now, looking at her, he thought,
Three weeks
. Is
that all? And what then? What will I do when you're gone?
Seeing him watching her, she leaned across and touched his arm gently.

‘Thanks for the ch'a, but shouldn't you be checking on things?'

He laughed. ‘As if anything ever happens.' But he sensed that he had outstayed his welcome and turned to go, stopping only at the far end of the long, dark shaft to look back at her.

She had moved on, further in towards the hub. Above her the overhead lamp, secure on its track and attached to her waist by a slender, web-like thread, threw a bright, golden light over her dark, neat head as she bent down, working on the next conduit in the line. For a moment longer he watched her, her head bobbing like a swimmer's between light and shadow, then turned, sighing, to descend the rungs.

Chen sat there, watching the screen in the corner while Wang Ti dressed the children. The set was tuned to the local MidText channel and showed a group of a dozen or so dignitaries on a raised platform, a great mass of people gathered in the Main in front of them. It was a live broadcast, from Hannover, two hundred
li
to the south-east.