The White Mountain (38 page)

‘Which one first?' Drake asked, coming alongside.

Chen hesitated. ‘The girl,' he said finally. ‘The one who calls herself Chi Li.'

His voice was strong, resonant. The very sound of it gave him sudden confidence. He saw at once how his outward calm, the very tone of his voice, impressed them. There was fear and respect behind their hatred now. He turned away, as if he had done with them.

He heard the guards unshackle the girl and pull her away. There were murmurs of protest and the sounds of a brief struggle, but when Chen turned back she was standing away from the others, at the far end of the cell.

‘Good,' he said. ‘I'll see the others later.'

The others were led out, a single guard remaining inside the cell, his back to the door.

He studied the girl. Without her chains she seemed less defiant. More vulnerable. As if sensing his thoughts, she straightened up, facing him squarely.

‘Try anything and I'll break both your legs,' he said, seeing how her eyes moved to assess how things stood. ‘No one can help you now but yourself. Cooperate and things will be fine. Fight us and we'll destroy you.'

The words were glib – were the words Drake had taught him to say in this situation – but they sounded strangely sinister now that things were real. Rehearsing them, he had thought them stagey, melodramatic, like
something out of an old Han opera, but now, alone with the prisoner, they had a potency that chilled him as he said them. He saw the effect they had on her. Saw the hesitation as she tensed and then relaxed. He wanted to smile, but didn't. Karr was right. She was an attractive woman, even with that damage to her face. Her very toughness had a beauty to it.

‘What do you want to do?' Drake asked.

Chen took a step closer. ‘We'll just talk for now.'

The girl was watching him uncertainly. She had been beaten badly. There were bruises on her arms and face, unhealed cuts on the left side of her neck. Chen felt a sudden anger. All this had been done since she'd been released to SimFic. Moreover, there was a tightness about her mouth that suggested she had been raped. He shivered, then spoke the words that had come into his head.

‘Have they told you that you're dead?'

Behind him Drake drew in a breath. The line was impromptu. Was not scripted for this first interview.

The girl looked down, smiling, but when she looked up again Chen was still watching her, his face unchanged.

‘Did you think this was just another Security cell?' he asked, harsher now, angry, his anger directed suddenly at her – at the childlike vulnerability beneath her outward strength; at the simple fact that she was there, forcing him to do this to her.

The girl shrugged, saying nothing, but Chen could see the sweat beading her brow. He took a step closer; close enough for her to hit out at him, if she dared.

‘We do things here. Strange things. We take you apart and put you back together again. But different.'

She was staring at him now, curiosity getting the better of her. His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, as if what he was saying to her was quite ordinary, but the words were horrible in their implication and the very normality of his voice seemed cruel.

‘Stop it,' she said softly. ‘Just do what you're going to do.'

Her eyes pleaded with him, like the hurt eyes of a child; the same expression Ch'iang Hsin sometimes had when he teased her. That similarity – between this stranger and his youngest child – made him pull back; made him realize that his honesty was hurting her. Yet he was here to hurt. That
was his job here. Whether he played the role or not, the hurt itself was real.

He turned from her.

Drake was watching him strangely, his eyes half-lidded.
What are you up to?
he seemed to be saying.

Chen met his eyes. ‘She'll do.'

Drake frowned. ‘But you've not seen the others…'

Chen smiled. ‘She'll do.' He was still smiling when she kicked him in the kidneys.

She was beaten and stripped and thrown into a cell. For five days she languished there, in total darkness. Morning and night a guard would come and check on her, passing her meal through the hatch and taking the old tray away. Otherwise she was left alone. There was no bed, no sink, no pot to crap into, only a metal grill set into one corner of the floor. She used it, reluctantly at first, then with growing indifference. What did it matter, after all? There were worse things in life than having to crap into a hole.

For the first few days she didn't mind. After a lifetime spent in close proximity to people it was something of a relief to be left alone, almost a luxury. But from the third day on it was hard.

On the sixth day they took her from the cell, out into a brightness that made her screw her eyes tight, tiny spears of pain lancing her head. Outside, they hosed her down and disinfected her, then threw her into another cell, shackling her to the floor at wrist and ankle.

She lay there for a time, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the light. After the foetid darkness of the tiny cell she had the sense of space about her, yet when finally she looked up, it was to find herself eye to eye with a naked man. He was crouched on all fours before her, his eyes lit with a feral glint, his penis jutting stiffly from between his legs. She drew back sharply, the sudden movement checked by her chains. And then she saw them.

She looked about her, appalled. There were forty, maybe fifty naked people in the cell with her, men and women both. All were shackled to the floor at wrist and ankle. Some met her eyes, but it was without curiosity, almost without recognition. Others simply lay there, listless. As she watched, one of them raised herself on her haunches and let loose a bright stream of urine, then lay still again, like an animal at rest.

She shuddered. So this was it. This was her fate, her final humiliation, to become like these poor souls. She turned back, looking at her neighbour. He was leaning towards her, grunting, his face brutal with need, straining against his chains, trying to get at her. One hand was clutched about his penis, jerking it back and forth urgently.

‘Stop it,' she said softly. ‘Please…' But it was as if he was beyond the reach of words. She watched him, horrified; watched his face grow pained, his movements growing more frantic, and then, with a great moan of pain, he came, his semen spurting across the space between them.

She dropped her eyes, her face burning, her heart pounding in her chest. For a moment – for the briefest moment – she had felt herself respond; had felt something in her begin to surface, as if to answer that fierce, animal need in his face.

She lay there, letting her pulse slow, her thoughts grow still, then lifted her head, almost afraid to look at him again. He lay quietly now, no more than two
ch'i
from her, his shoulders rising and falling gently with each breath. She watched him, feeling immense pity, wondering who he was and what crime he had been sent here for.

For a time he lay still, soft snores revealing he was sleeping, then, with a tiny whimper, he turned slightly, moving on to his side. As he did she saw the brand on his upper arm; saw it and caught her breath, her soul shrivelling up inside her.

It was a fish. A stylized fish.

Chen stood in the doorway to the Mess, looking into the deeply shadowed room. There was the low buzz of conversation, the smell of mild euphorics. Sitting at the bar, alone, a tall glass at his elbow, was Debrenceni. Seeing Chen, he lifted his hand and waved him across.

‘How are the kidneys?'

Chen laughed. ‘Sore, but no serious damage. She connected badly.'

‘I know. I saw it.' Debrenceni was serious a moment longer, then he smiled. ‘You did well, despite that. It looked as if you'd been doing the job for years.'

Chen dropped his head. He had been in the sick bay for the last six days, the first two in acute pain.

‘What do you want to drink?'

Chen looked up. ‘I'd best not.'

‘No. Maybe not.' Debrenceni raised his glass, saluting Chen. ‘You were right about the girl, though.'

‘I know.' He hesitated, then, ‘Have you wired her yet?'

‘No. Not yet.' Debrenceni sat back a little on his stool, studying him. ‘You know, you were lucky she didn't kill you. If the Security forces hadn't worked her over before we'd got her, she probably would have.'

Chen nodded, conscious of the irony. ‘What happened to her?'

‘Nothing. I thought we'd wait until you got back on duty.'

It was not what Chen had expected. ‘You want me to carry on? Even after what happened?'

‘No.
Because
of what happened.' Debrenceni laid his hand lightly on Chen's shoulder. ‘We see things through here, Tong Chou. To the bitter, ineluctable end.'

‘Ineluctable?'

‘Ineluctable,' repeated Debrenceni solemnly. ‘That from which one cannot escape by struggling.'

‘Ah…' In his mind Chen could see the girl and picture the slow working out of her fate.
Ineluctable
. Like the gravity of a black hole or the long, slow process of entropy. Things his son, Jyan, had told him of. He gave a tiny, bitter laugh.

Debrenceni smiled tightly, removing his hand from Chen's shoulder. ‘You understand, then?'

‘Do I have a choice?'

‘No one here has a choice.'

‘Then I understand.'

‘Good. Then we'll start in the morning. At six sharp. I want you to bring her from the cells. I'll be in the theatre. Understand?'

It was late when Chen returned to his room. He felt frayed and irritable. More than that, he felt ashamed and – for the first time since he'd come to Kibwezi – guilty of some awfulness that would outweigh a lifetime's atonement. He sat heavily on his bed and let his head fall into his hands. Today had been the day. Before now he had been able to distance himself from
what had been happening. Even that last time, facing her in the cell, it had not really touched him. It had been something abstract; something happening to someone else – Tong Chou, perhaps – who inhabited his skin. But now he knew. It was himself. No one else had led her there and strapped her down, awaiting surgery. It was no stranger who had looked down at her while they had cut her open and put things in her head.

‘That was
me,'
he said, shuddering. ‘That was
me
in there.'

He sat up, drawing his feet under him, then shook his head in disbelief. And yet he had to believe. It had been too real – too
personal
– for disbelief.

He swallowed deeply. Drake had warned him. Drake had said it would be like this. One day fine, the next the whole world totally different; like some dark, evil trick played on your eyesight, making you see nothing but death. Well, Drake was right. Now he too could see it. Death. Everywhere death. And he a servant of it.

There was a knocking at the door.

‘Go away!'

The knocking came again. Then a voice. ‘Tong Chou? Are you all right?'

He turned and lay down, facing the wall. ‘Go away…'

Ywe Hao had never run so far, or been so afraid. As she ran she seemed to balance two fears in the pit of her stomach: her fear of what lay behind outweighing her fear of the dark into which she ran. Instinct took her towards the City. Even in the dark she could see its massive shape against the skyline, blotting out the light-scattered velvet backdrop.

It was colder than she had ever thought it could be. And darker. As she ran she whimpered, not daring to look back. When the first light of morning coloured the sky at her back she found herself climbing a gradual slope. Her pace had slowed, but still she feared to stop and rest. At any moment they would discover her absence. Then they would be out, after her.

As the light intensified, she slowed, then stopped and turned, looking back. For a while she stood there, her mouth open. Then, as the coldness, the stark openness of the place struck her, she shuddered violently. It was so open. So appallingly open. Another kind of fear, far greater than anything she had known before, made her take a backward step.

The whole of the distant horizon was on fire. Even as she watched,
the sun's edge pushed up into the sky, so vast, so threatening, it took her breath. She turned, away from it, horrified, then saw, in the first light, what lay ahead.

At first the ground rose slowly, scattered with rock. Then it seemed to climb more steeply until, with a suddenness that was every bit as frightening as anything she had so far seen, it ended in a thick, choking veil of whiteness. Her eyes went upward… No, not a veil, a
wall
. A solid wall of white that seemed soft, almost insubstantial. Again she shuddered, not understanding, a deep-rooted, primitive fear of such things making her crouch into herself. And still her eyes went up until, beyond the wall's upper lip, she saw the massive summit of the shape she had run towards throughout the night. The City…

Again she sensed a wrongness to what she saw. The shape of it seemed… Seemed what? Her arms were making strange little jerking movements and her legs felt weak. Gritting her teeth, she tried to get her mind to work, to triumph over the dark, mindless fear that was washing over her, wave after wave. For a moment she seemed to come to herself again.

What was wrong? What in the gods' names was
it?

And then she understood. The shape of it was wrong. The rough, tapered, irregular look of it. Whereas… Again her mouth fell open. But if it wasn't the City… then what in hell's name was it?

For a moment longer she stood there, swaying slightly, caught between two impulses, then, hesitant, glancing back at the growing circle of fire, she began to run again. And as she ran – the dark image of the sun's half-circle stamped across her vision – the wall of mist came down to meet her.

It was just after dawn when the two cruisers lifted from the pad and banked away over the compound, heading north-west, towards the mountain. Chen was in the second craft, Drake at the controls beside him. On Chen's wrist, scarcely bigger than a standard Security field comset, was the tracer unit. He glanced at it, then stared steadily out through the windscreen, watching the grassy plain flicker by fifty
ch'i
below.