The White Mountain (6 page)

Li Yuan stood in the centre of Ben's room, looking about him. Ben was hunched over his desk, working, making notations in a huge, loose-leafed book, the pages of which were covered in strange diagrams.

It was not what Li Yuan had expected. The room was cluttered and untidy, totally lacking, it seemed, in any organizational principle. Things were piled here, there and everywhere, as if discarded and forgotten, while one whole wall was taken up by numerous half-completed pencil sketches depicting parts of the human anatomy.

He looked back at Ben, seeing how tense he was, crouched over the big, square-paged book, and felt a ripple of unease pass through him. It did not seem right, somehow, to be working on the day of his father's funeral. Li Yuan moved closer, looking over Ben's shoulder at the diagram he was working on, seeing only a disorganized mess of lines and shapes and coded instructions, set down in a dozen brilliant colours on the underlying grid, like the scribblings of a child.

‘What is that?'

Ben finished what he was doing, then turned, looking up at the young T'ang.

‘It's a rough.'

‘A rough?' Li Yuan laughed. ‘A rough of what?'

‘No… that's what I call it. All of these are instructions. The dark lines – those in brown, orange and red, mainly, are instructions to the muscles. The small circles in blue, black and mauve – those are chemical input instructions; the nature of the chemical and the dosage marked within the
circle. The rectangular blocks are just that – blocks. They indicate when no input of any kind is passing through that particular node.'

‘Nodes?' Li Yuan was thoroughly confused by this time.

Ben smiled.
‘Pai pi
. You know, the old artificial reality experiments. I've been working on them these last fifteen months. I call them Shells. This here is an input instruction diagram. As I said, a rough. These eighty-one horizontal lines represent the input points, and these forty vertical lines represent the dimension of time – twenty to a second.'

Li Yuan frowned. ‘I still don't understand. Inputs into what?'

‘Into the recipient's body. Come. I'll show you. Downstairs.'

They went down, into the basement workrooms. There, at one end of the long, low-ceilinged room, almost hidden by the clutter of other machinery, was the Shell. It was a big, elaborately decorated casket; like something one might use for an imperial lying-in-state, the lid lacquered a midnight black.

Ben stood beside it, looking back at Li Yuan. ‘The recipient climbs in here and is wired up – the wires being attached to eighty-one special input points both in the brain and at important nerve-centres throughout the body. That done, the casket is sealed, effectively cutting the recipient off from all external stimuli. That absence of stimuli is an unnatural state for the human body: if denied sensory input for too long the mind begins to hallucinate. Using this well-documented receptivity of the sensory apparatus to false stimuli, we can provide the mind with a complete alternative experience.'

Li Yuan stared at the apparatus a moment longer, then looked back at Ben. ‘How complete?'

Ben was watching him, as a hawk watches a rabbit. An intense, predatory stare.

‘As complete as the real thing. If the art is good enough.'

‘The art… I see.' Li Yuan frowned. It seemed such a strange thing to want to do. To create an art that mimicked life so closely. An art that
supplanted
life. He reached out and touched the skeletal frame that hung to one side, noting the studded inputs about head and chest and groin. Eighty-one inputs in all. ‘But why?'

Ben stared at him as if he didn't understand the question, then handed him a book similar to the one he had been working on in his room. ‘These, as I said, are the roughs. They form the diagrammatic outline of
an event-sequence – a story. Eventually those lines and squiggles and dots will become events. Sensory actualities. Not real, yet indistinguishable from the real.'

Li Yuan stared at the open page and nodded, but it still didn't explain. Why this need for fictions? For taking away what was and filling it with something different? Wasn't life itself enough?

Ben was leaning close now, looking into his face, his eyes filled with an almost insane intensity, his voice a low whisper.

‘It's like being a god. You can do whatever you want. Create whatever you want to create. Things that never happened. That never
could
happen.'

Li Yuan laughed uncomfortably. ‘Something that never happened? But why should you want to do that? Isn't there enough diversity in the world as it is?'

Ben looked at him curiously, then looked away, as if disappointed. ‘No. You miss my point.'

It was said quietly, almost as if it didn't matter. As if, in that brief instant between the look and the words, he had made his mind up about something.

‘Then what is the point?' Li Yuan insisted, setting the book down on the padded innards of the casket.

Ben looked down, his hand reaching out to touch the apparatus. For the first time Li Yuan noticed that the hand was artificial. It seemed real, but the deeply etched ridge of skin gave it away. Once revealed, other signs added to the impression. There was an added subtlety of touch; a deftness of movement just beyond the human range.

‘Your question is larger than you think, Li Yuan. It questions not merely what I do, but all art, all fiction, all dreams of other states. It asserts that “what is” is enough. My argument is that “what is” is insufficient. We need more than “what is”. Much more.'

Li Yuan shrugged. ‘Maybe. But this takes it too far, surely? It seems a kind of mockery. Life is good. Why seek this false perfection?'

‘Do you really believe that, Li Yuan? Are you sure there's nothing my art could give you that life couldn't?'

Li Yuan turned away, as if stung. He was silent for some time, then he looked back, a grim expression of defiance changing his features. ‘Only illusions. Nothing real.'

Ben shook his head. ‘You're wrong. I could give you something so real, so
solid and substantial that you could hold it in your arms – could taste it and smell it and never for a moment know that you were only dreaming.'

Li Yuan stared at him, aghast, then looked down. ‘I don't believe you. It could never be that good.'

‘Ah, but it will.'

Li Yuan lifted his head angrily. ‘Can it give you back your father? Can it do that?'

The boy did not flinch. His eyes caught Li Yuan's and held them. ‘Yes. Even that, if I wanted it.'

Li Yuan arrived at Tongjiang four hours later to find things in chaos, the audience hall packed with his Ministers and advisors. While the T'ang changed, Nan Ho went among the men, finding out what had been happening in their brief absence.

When Li Yuan returned to his study, Nan Ho was waiting for him, his face flushed, his whole manner extremely agitated.

‘What is it, Nan Ho? What has got my Ministers in such a state?'

Nan Ho bowed low. ‘It is not just your Ministers,
Chieh Hsia
. The whole of the Above is in uproar. They say that more than two hundred are ill already, and that more than a dozen have died.'

Li Yuan sat forward. ‘What do you mean?'

Nan Ho looked up at him. ‘There is an epidemic,
Chieh Hsia
, sweeping through the Minor Families. No one knows quite what it is…'

Li Yuan stood angrily and came round his desk. ‘No one knows? Am I to believe this? Where are the Royal Surgeons? Have them come to me at once.'

Nan Ho lowered his head. ‘They are outside,
Chieh Hsia
, but—'

‘No buts, Master Nan. Get them in here now. If there is an epidemic we must act fast.'

Nan Ho brought them in, then stood back, letting his T'ang question the men directly.

The eight old men stood there, their ancient bodies bent forward awkwardly.

‘Well?' he said, facing the most senior of them. ‘What has been happening, Surgeon Yu? Why have you not been able to trace the source of this disease?'

‘Chieh
Hsia…' the old man began, his voice quavering. ‘Forgive me, but the facts contradict themselves.'

‘Nonsense!' Li Yuan barked, clearly angry. ‘Do you know the cause of the disease or not?'

The old man shook his head, distressed. ‘Forgive me,
Chieh Hsia
, but it is not possible. The Families are bred immune. For more than one hundred and fifty years…'

Li Yuan huffed impatiently. ‘Impossible?
Nothing
is impossible! I've just come from Hal Shepherd's funeral. They killed him, remember? With a cancer. Something that, according to you, was quite impossible. So what have they come up with now?'

The old man glanced sideways at his colleagues, then spoke again. ‘It seems, from our first tests, that what the victims are suffering from is what we term
yang mei ping
, “willow-plum sickness”.'

Li Yuan laughed. ‘A fancy name, Surgeon Yu, but what does it mean?'

Nan Ho answered for the old man. ‘It is syphilis,
Chieh Hsia
. A sexually transmitted disease that affects the brain and drives its victims insane. This strain, apparently, is a particularly virulent and fast-working one. Besides sidestepping the natural immunity of its victims, it has a remarkably short incubation period. Many of its victims are dead within thirty hours of getting the dose.'

Surgeon Yu looked at Nan Ho gratefully, then nodded. ‘That is so,
Chieh
Hsia. However, it seems that this particular strain affects only those of Han origin. As far as we can make out, no
Hung Mao
are affected.'

Li Yuan turned away, recognizing at once the implications of the thing. Willow-plum sickness… He had a vague recollection of reading about the disease. It was one of those many sicknesses the
Hung Mao
had brought with them when they had first opened China up, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But this was worse, far worse than anything those ancient sea traders had spread among the port women, because this time his kind had no natural immunity to it. None at all.

He turned back. ‘Are you certain, Surgeon Yu?'

‘As certain as we can be,
Chieh Hsia
.'

‘Good. Then I want you to isolate each victim and question them as to who they have slept with in the past thirty days. Then I want all contacts traced and isolated. Understand?'

He looked past Yu at his Chancellor. ‘Nan Ho… I want you to contact all the heads of the Minor Families and have them come here, at once. By my express order.'

Nan Ho bowed.
‘Chieh Hsia
…'

And meanwhile he would call his fellow T'ang. For action must be taken. Immediate action, before the thing got out of hand.

Karr was buttoning his tunic when Chen came into the room, barely stopping to knock. He turned from the mirror, then stopped, seeing the look of delight on Chen's face.

‘What is it?'

Chen handed Karr a file. ‘It's our friend. There's no doubt about it. These are stills taken from a Security surveillance film thirty-two hours back at Nantes spaceport.'

Karr flipped the folder open and flicked through the stills a moment, then looked back at Chen, his face lit up. ‘Then we've got him, neh?'

Chen's face fell. He shook his head.

‘What?'

‘I'm afraid not. It seems his man, Lehmann, picked him up and carried him out of there.'

‘And no one intercepted him? Where were Security?'

‘Waiting for orders.'

Karr made to speak, then understood. ‘Gods…
Again?'

Chen nodded.

‘And the Security Captain. He committed suicide, neh?'

Chen sighed. ‘That's right. It fits the pattern. I checked back in their surveillance records. The computer registers that a man matching DeVore's description passed through Nantes spaceport four times in the past month.'

‘And there was no Security alert?'

‘No. Nor would there have been. The machine was reprogrammed to ignore the instruction from Bremen. As he was wearing false retinas, the only way they could have got him was by direct facial recognition, and because they rely so heavily on computer-generated alerts, the chance of that was minimal.'

‘So how did we get these?'

Chen laughed. ‘It seems there was a fairly high-ranking Junior Minister on the same flight as DeVore. He complained about the incident direct to Bremen, and when they discovered they had no record of the event they instigated an immediate enquiry. This resulted.'

Karr sat down heavily, setting the file to one side, and began to pull on his boots. For a moment he was quiet, thoughtful, then he looked up again.

‘Do we know where he'd been?'

‘Boston. But who he saw there or what he was doing we don't yet know. Our friends in North American Security are looking into it right now.'

‘And the assassins?' Karr asked, pulling on the other boot. ‘Do we know who they were?'

Chen shrugged. ‘The two Han look like Triad assassins, but the third… well, we have him on record as a probable
Ping Tiao
sympathizer.'

Karr looked up, raising his eyebrows.
‘Ping Tiao?
But they don't exist any longer. At least, that's what our contacts down below tell us. Our friend Ebert is supposed to have wiped them out.'

Chen nodded. ‘You don't think…?'

Karr laughed. ‘Even Ebert wouldn't be stupid enough to try to work with the
Ping Tiao
. DeVore wouldn't let him.'

‘So what do you think?'

Karr shook his head. ‘We don't know enough, that's clear. Who, beside ourselves, would want DeVore dead?'

‘Someone he's crossed?'

Karr laughed. ‘Yes. But that could be anyone, neh? Anyone at all.'

Li Yuan looked out across the marbled expanse of the Hall of the Seven Ancestors and nodded to himself, satisfied. The space between the dragon pillars was packed. More than two thousand men – all the adult males of the Twenty-Nine – were gathered here this afternoon. All, that was, but those who had already succumbed to the sickness.