The White Mountain (36 page)

Drake returned with the drinks, handing Chen a tall glass beaded with chill drops of water. Chen raised his glass in a toast, then took a long sip, feeling refreshed.

‘Good,' said Debrenceni, as if he had said something. ‘The first thing to do is get you acclimatized. You're used to the City. To corridors and levels and the regular patterning of each day. But here… well, things are different.' He smiled enigmatically. ‘Very different.'

The White Mountain filled the sky. As the skimmer came closer it seemed to rise from the very bowels of the earth and tower over them. Chen pressed forward, staring up through the cockpit's glass, looking for the summit, but the rock went up and up, climbing out of sight.

‘How big is it?' he asked, whispering, awed by the great mass of rock.

Drake looked up from the controls and laughed. ‘About twelve
li
at the summit, but the plateau is less… no more than ten. There are actually two craters – Kebo and Mawensi. The whole thing is some five
li
across at the top, filled with glaciers and ice sheets.'

‘Glaciers?' Chen had never heard the term before.

‘A river of ice – real ice, I mean, not plastic. It rests on top like the icing on some monstrous cake.' He looked down at the controls again. ‘You can see it from up to four hundred
li
away. If you'd known it was here you could have seen it from Nairobi.'

Chen looked out, watching the mountain grow. They were above its lower slopes now, the vast fists of rock below them like speckles on the flank of the sleeping mountain.

‘How old is it?'

‘Old,' said Drake, softer than before, as if the sheer scale of the mountain was affecting him too. ‘It was formed long before Mankind came along. Our distant ancestors probably looked at it from the plains and wondered what it was.'

Chen narrowed his eyes.

‘We'll need breathing apparatus when we're up there,' Drake continued. ‘The air's thin and it's best to take no chances when you're used to air-conditioning and corridors.'

Again there was that faint but good-natured mockery in Drake's voice that seemed to say, You'll find out, boy, it's different out here.

Masked, Chen stood in the crater of Kebo, looking across the dark throat of the inner crater towards the crater wall and, beyond it, the high cliffs and terraces of the northern glacier. No, he thought, looking out at it, not a river but a city. A vast, tiered city of ice, gleaming in the midday sun.

He had seen wonders enough already: perfect, delicate flowers of ice in the deeply shadowed caves beneath the shattered rocks at the crater's rim, and the yellowed, steaming mouths of fumeroles, rank-smelling crystals of yellow sulphur clustered obscenely about each vent. In one place he had come upon fresh snow, formed by the action of wind and cold into strange fields of knee-high and razor-sharp fronds.
Neige penitant
, Drake had called it.
Snow in prayer
. He had stood on the inner crater's edge, staring down into its ashen mouth, four hundred
ch'i
deep, and tried to imagine the forces that had formed this vast, unnatural edifice. And failed. He had seen wonders, all right, but this, this over-towering wall of ice, impressed him most.

‘Five more minutes and we'd best get back,' Drake said, coming over and standing next to him. ‘There's more to show you, but it'll have to wait. There are some things back at Kibwezi you need to see first. This…' he raised an arm, indicating the vastness of the mountain ‘… is an exercise in perspective, if you like. It makes the rest easier. Much easier.'

Chen stared at him, not understanding. But there was a look in the other's masked face that suggested discomfort, maybe even pain.

‘If you ever need to, come here. Sit a while and think. Then go back to things.' Drake turned, staring off into the hazed distance. ‘It helps. I know. I've done it myself a few times now.'

Chen was silent a while, watching him. Then, as if he had suddenly tired of the place, he reached out and touched Drake's arm. ‘Okay. Let's get back.'

The guards entered first. A moment later two servants entered the cell, carrying a tall-backed sedan chair and its occupant. Four others – young Han dressed in the blue of officialdom – followed, the strong, acridly sweet scent of their perfume filling the cell.

The sedan was set down on the far side of the room, a dozen paces from where Ywe Hao sat, her wrists and ankles bound.

She leaned forward slightly, tensed. From his dress – from the cut of his robes and the elaborate design on his chest patch – she could tell this was a high official. And from his manner – from the brutal elegance of his deportment – she could guess which Ministry he represented. The
T'ing Wei
, the Superintendency of Trials.

‘I am Yen T'ung,' the official said, not looking at her, ‘Third Secretary to the Minister, and I am here to give judgment on your case.'

She caught her breath, surprised by the suddenness of his announcement, then gave the smallest nod, her head suddenly clear of all illusions. They had decided her fate already, in her absence. That was what Mach had warned her to expect. It was just that that business with Karr – his kindness and the show of respect he had made to her – had muddied the clear waters of her understanding. But now she knew. It was War. Them and us. And no possibility of compromise. She had known that since her brother's death. Since that day at the hearing when the overseer had been cleared of all blame, after all that had been said.

She lifted her head, studying the official, noting how he held a silk before his nose, how his lips formed the faintest moue of distaste.

The Third Secretary snapped his fingers. At once one of the four young men produced a scroll. Yen T'ung took it and unfurled it with a flourish. Then, looking at her for the first time, he began to read.

‘I, Ywe Hao, hereby confess that on the seventh day of June in the year two thousand two hundred and eight I did, with full knowledge of my actions, murder the honourable Shou Chen-hai,
Hsien L'ing
to his most high eminence, Li Yuan, Grand Counsellor and T'ang of City Europe. Further, I confess that on the ninth day of the same month I was responsible for the raid on the Dragonfly Club and the subsequent murder of the following innocent citizens…'

She closed her eyes, listening to the list of names, seeing their faces vividly once more, the fear or resignation in their eyes as they had stood before her, naked and trembling. And, for the first time since that evening, she felt the smallest twinge of pity for them – of sympathy for their suffering in those final moments.

The list finished, Yen T'ung paused. She looked up and found his eyes
were on her; eyes that were cruel and strangely hard in that soft face.

‘Furthermore,' he continued, speaking the words without looking at the scroll, ‘I, Ywe Hao, daughter of Ywe Kai-chang and Ywe Sha…'

She felt her stomach fall away. Her parents… Kuan Yin! How had they found that out?

‘… confess also to the charge of belonging to an illegal organization and to plotting the downfall of his most high eminence—'

She stood, shouting back at him. ‘This is a lie! I have confessed nothing!'

The guards dragged her down on to the stool again. Across from her Yen T'ung stared at her as one might stare at an insect, with an expression of profound disgust.

‘What you have to say has no significance here. You are here only to listen to your confession and to sign it when I have done.'

She laughed. ‘You are a liar, Yen T'ung, in the pay of liars, and nothing in heaven or earth could induce me to sign your piece of paper.'

There was a flash of anger in his eyes. He raised a hand irritably. At the signal one of his young men crossed the room and slapped her across the face, once, then again; stinging blows that brought tears to her eyes. With a bow to his master, the man retreated behind the sedan.

Yen T'ung sat back slightly, taking a deep breath. ‘Good. Now you will be quiet, woman. If you utter another word I will have you gagged.'

She glared back at him, forcing her anger to be pure, to be the perfect expression of her defiance. But he had yet to finish.

‘Besides,' he said softly, ‘there is no real need for you to sign.'

He turned the document, letting her see. There at the foot of it was her signature – or, at least, a perfect copy of it.

‘So now you understand. You must confess and we must read your confession back to you, and then you must sign it. That is the law. And now all that is done, and you, Ywe Hao, no longer exist. Likewise your family. All data has been erased from the official record.'

She stared back at him, gripped by a sudden numbness. Her mother… they had killed her mother. She could see it in his face.

In a kind of daze she watched them lift the chair and carry the official from the room.

‘You bastard!' she cried out, her voice filled with pain. ‘She knew nothing!'

The door slammed.

Nothing
…

‘Come,' one of the guards said softly, almost gently. ‘It's time.'

Outside was heat – fifty
ch'i
of heat. Through a gate in the wire fencing, a flight of a dozen shallow steps led down into the bunkers. There the icy coolness was a shock after the thirty-eight degrees outside. Stepping inside was like momentarily losing vision. Chen stopped there, just inside the doorway, his heart pounding from exertion, waiting for his vision to normalize, then moved on slowly, conscious of the echo of his footsteps on the hard concrete floor. He looked about him at the bareness of the walls, the plain unpainted metal doors, and frowned. Bracket lights on the long, low-ceilinged walls gleamed dimly, barely illuminating the intense shadow. His first impression was that the place was empty, but that, like the loss of vision, was only momentary. A floor below – through a dark, circular hole cut into the floor – were the cells. Down there were kept a thousand prisoners, fifty to a cell, each shackled to the floor at wrist and ankle, the shortness of the chains making them crouch on all fours like animals.

It was Chen's first time below. Drake stood beside him, silent, letting him judge things for himself. The cells were simple divisions of the open-plan floor – no walls, only lines of bars, each partitioned space reached by a door of bars set into the line. All was visible at a glance, all the misery and degradation of these thin and naked people. And that, perhaps, was the worst of it – the openness, the appalling openness. Two lines of cells, one to the left and one to the right. And between, not recognized until he came to them, were the hydrants. To hose down the cells and swill the excrement and blood, the piss and vomit, down the huge, grated drains that were central to the floor of each cell.

Chen looked on, mute, appalled, then turned to face Drake. But Drake had changed. Or, rather, Drake's face had changed; had grown harder, more brutish, as if in coming here he had cast off the social mask he wore above, to reveal his true face; an older, darker, more barbaric face.

Chen moved on, willing himself to walk, not to stop or turn back. He turned his head, looking from side to side as he walked down the line of cells, seeing how the prisoners backed away – as far as their chains allowed. Not knowing him, yet fearing him. Knowing him for a guard.

At the end he turned and went to the nearest cell, standing at the bars and staring into the gloom, grimacing with the pain and horror he was feeling. He had thought at first there were only men, but there were women too, their limbs painfully emaciated, their stomachs swollen, signs of torture and beatings marking every one of them. Most were shaven-headed. Some slouched or simply lay there, clearly hurt, but from none came even the slightest whimper of sound. It was as if the very power to complain, to cry out in anguish against what was being done to them, had been taken from them.

He had never seen… never imagined…

Shuddering, he turned away, but they were everywhere he looked, their pale, uncomplaining eyes watching him. His eyes looked for Drake and found him there, at the far end.

‘Is…?' he began, then laughed strangely and grew quiet. But the question remained close to his tongue and he found he had to ask it, whether these thousand witnesses heard him or not. ‘Is
this
what we do?'

Drake came closer. ‘Yes,' he said softly. ‘This is what we do. What we're
contracted
to do.'

Chen shivered violently, looking about him, freshly appalled by the passive suffering of the prisoners; by the incomprehensible acceptance in every wasted face. ‘I don't understand,' he said, after a moment. ‘What are we trying to do here?'

His voice betrayed the true depth of his bewilderment. He was suddenly a child again, innocent, stripped bare before the sheer horror of it.

‘I'm sorry,' Drake said, coming closer. His face was less brutish now, almost compassionate; but his compassion did not extend beyond Chen. ‘There's no other way. You have to come down here and see it for yourself. What you're feeling now… we've all felt that. Deep down we still do. But you have to have that first shock. It's… necessary.'

‘Necessary?'
Chen laughed, but the sound seemed inappropriate. It died in his throat. He felt sick, unclean.

‘Yes. And afterwards… once it's sunk in… we can begin to explain it all. And then you'll see.'

But Chen
didn't
see. He looked at Drake afresh, as if he had never seen him before that moment, and began to edge round him, towards the steps and the clean, abrasive heat outside, and when Drake reached out to touch
his arm, he backed away, as if the hand that reached for him were something alien and unclean.

‘This is vile. It's…'

But there wasn't a word for it. He turned and ran, back up the steps and out – out through icy coolness to the blistering heat.