Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (41 page)

Li Yuan sat back
slowly, shaking his head. "You talk of dictatorships, Marshal
Tolonen. Yet we are Seven."

Tolonen turned
his head aside, a strange bitterness in his eyes. "I talk of
things to be—whether they come in ten years or ten thousand."
He looked back at Li Yuan, his gray/eyes filled with sadness.
"Whatever you or I might wish, history tells us this—nothing
is eternal. Things change."

"You once
thought differently. I have heard you speaking so myself, Knut. Was
it not you yourself who said we should build a great dam against the
floodwaters of Change."

Tolonen nodded,
suddenly wistful, his lips formed into a sad smile. "Yes . . .
but
this!"

He sat there
afterward, when the Prince had gone, staring down at his hands. He
would do it. Of course he would. Hadn't his T'ang asked him to take
this on? Even so, he felt heavy of heart. Had the dream died, then?
The great vision of a world at peace—a world where a man could
find his level and raise his family without need or care. And was
this the first sign of the nightmare to come? Of the great, engulfing
darkness?

He kept thinking
of Jelka, and of the grandchildren he would someday have. What kind
of a world would it be for them? Could he bear to see them wired,
made vulnerable to the least whim of their lords and masters? He
gritted his teeth, pained by the thought. Had it changed so much that
even he—the cornerstone— began to doubt their course?

"Knut?"

He raised his
head, then got to his feet hurriedly. He had been so caught up in his
thoughts he had not heard the T'ang enter.

"Chieh
Hsia
!" He bowed his head exaggeratedly.

Li Shai Tung sat
where his son had been sitting only moments before, silent, studying
his Marshal. Then, with a vague nod of his head as if satisfied with
what he had seen, he leaned toward Tolonen.

"I heard
all that passed between you and my son."

"Yes,
Chieh
Hsia
."

"And I am
grateful for your openness."

Tolonen met his
eyes unflinchingly. "It was only my duty, Li Shai Tung."

"Yes. But
there was a reason for letting Yuan talk to you first. You see, while
my son is, in his way, quite wise, he is also young. Too young,
perhaps, to understand the essence of things—the place of Li
and Ch'i in this great world of ours, the fine balance that exists
between the shaping force and the passive substance."

Tolonen frowned,
lowering his head slightly. "I'm afraid I don't follow you,
Chieh Hsia."

The T'ang
smiled. "Well, Knut, I'll put it simply, and bind you to keep
this secret from my son. I have authorized his scheme, but that is
not to say it will ever come about. You understand me?"

"Not fully,
my Lord. You mean you are only humoring Li Yuan?"

Li Shai Tung
hesitated. "In a way, yes, I suppose you could say I am. But
this idea is deep-rooted in Yuan. I have seen it grow from the seed,
until now it dominates his thinking. He believes he can shape the
world to his conception, that this scheme of his will answer all the
questions."

"And you
think he's wrong?"

"Yes."

"Then why
encourage him? Why authorize this madness?"

"Because
Yuan will be T'ang one day. If I oppose him now in this, he will only
return to it after my death. And that would be disastrous. It would
bring him into conflict not only with his fellow T'ang but with the
great mass of the Above. Best then to let him purge it from his blood
while he is Prince, neh? To discover for himself that he is wrong."

"Maybe . .
." Tolonen took a deep breath. "But if you'll forgive me,
Chieh Hsia
, it still seems something of a gamble. What if this
'cure' merely serves to encourage him further? Isn't that possible?"

"Yes. Which
is why I summoned you, Knut. Why I wanted you to oversee the project.
To act as brake to my son's ambitions and keep the thing within
bounds. . . and to kill it if you must."

Tolonen was
staring at his T'ang, realization coming slowly to his face. Then he
laughed. "I see,
Chieh Hsia
... I understand!"

Li Shai Tung
smiled back at him. "Good. Then when Tsu Ma returns from riding,
I'll tell him you have taken the job, yes?"

Tolonen bowed
his head, all heaviness suddenly lifted from his heart. "I would
be honored,
Chieh Hsia.
Deeply honored."

* *
*

FIFTEEN LI north
of Tongjiang, at the edge of the T'ang's great estate, were the ruins
of an ancient Buddhist monastery that dated from the great Sung
Dynasty. They stood in the foothills of the Ta Pa Shan, three levels
of cinnabar-red buildings climbing the hillside, the once-elegant
sweep of their gray-tiled roofs smashed like broken mouths, their
brickwork crumbling, their doorways cluttered with weed and fallen
masonry. They had stood so for more than two hundred and forty years,
victims of the great Kb Ming purges of
the 1960s, their ruin becoming, with
time, a natural thing—part of the bleak and melancholy
landscape that surrounded them. On the hillside below the buildings
stood the ruin of an ancient moss-covered stupa, its squat, heavy
base chipped and crumbling, the steps cut into the face cracked,
broken in places. It was a great, pot-bellied thing, its slender
spire like an afterthought tagged on untidily, the smooth curve of
its central surface pocked where the plaster had fallen away in
places, exposing the brickwork.

In its shadow,
in a square of orange brickwork partly hidden by the long grass,
stood a circular pool. It had once been a well serving the monastery,
but when the Red (guards had come they had filled it with broken
statuary, almost to its rim. Now the water—channeled from the
hills above by way of an underground stream— rose to the lip of
the well. With the spring thaw, or when the rains fell heavily in the
Ta Pa Shan, the well would overflow, making a small marsh of the
ground to the southwest of it. Just now, however, the land was dry,
the pool a perfect mirror, moss on the statuary below giving it a
rich green color, like a tarnished bronze.

The sky overhead
was a cold, metallic blue, while to the north, above the mountains,
storm clouds were gathering, black and dense, throwing the farthest
peaks into deep shadow.

To the south the
land fell away, slowly at first, then abruptly. A steep path led down
into a narrow, deeply eroded valley through which a clear stream ran,
swift yet shallow, to the plains below.

At the southern
end of the valley where the sky was brighter, a horseman now
appeared, his dark mount reined in, its head pulling to one side as
it slowed then came to a halt. A moment later, a second rider came up
over the lip of rock and drew up beside the first. They leaned close
momentarily then began to come forward again, slowly, looking about
them, the first of them pointing up at the ruined monastery.

"What is
this place?" Fei Yen asked, looking up to where Tsu Ma was
pointing. "It looks ancient."

"It is. Li
Yuan was telling me about it yesterday. There used to be two hundred
monks here."

"Monks?"

He laughed,
turning in his saddle to look at her. "Yes, monks. But come.
Let's go up. I'll explain it when we get there."

She looked down,
smiling, then nudged her horse forward, following him, watching as he
began to climb the steep path that cut into the overhang above, his
horse straining to make the gradient.

It was
difficult. If it had been wet it would have been impossible on
horseback, but he managed it. Jumping down from his mount, he came
back and stood there at the head of the path, looking down at her.

"Dismount
and I'll give you a hand. Or you can leave your mount there, if you
like. He'll not stray far."

In answer she
spurred her horse forward, willing it up the path, making Tsu Ma step
back sharply as she came on.

"There!"
she said, turning the beast sharply, then reaching forward to smooth
its neck. "It wasn't so hard . . ."

She saw how he
was looking at her, his admiration clouded by concern, and looked
away quickly. There had been this tension between them all morning; a
sense of things unspoken, of gestures not yet made between them. It
had lain there beneath the stiff formality of their talk, like fire
under ice, surfacing from time to time in a look, a moment's
hesitation, a tacit smile.

"You should
be more careful," he said, coming up to her, his fingers
reaching up to smooth the horse's flank only a hand's length from her
knee. "You're a good rider, Lady Fei, but that's not a stunt I'd
recommend you try a second time."

She looked down
at him, her eyes defiant. "Because I'm a woman, you mean?"

He smiled back
at her, a strange hardness behind his eyes, then shook his head. "No.
Because you're not
that
good a rider. And because I'm
responsible for you. What would your husband say if I brought you
back in pieces?"

Fei Yen was
silent. What
would
he say? She smiled. "All right. I'll
behave myself in future."

She climbed
down, aware suddenly of how close he was to her, closer than he had
been all morning; and when she turned, it was to find him looking
down at her, a strange expression in his eyes. For a moment she stood
there, silent, waiting for him, not knowing what he would do. The
moment seemed to stretch out endlessly, his gaze traveling across her
face, her neck, her shoulder, returning to her eyes. Then, with a
soft laugh, he turned away, letting her breathe again.

"Come!"
he said briskly, moving up the slope, away from her. "Let's
explore the place!"

She bent down
momentarily, brushing the dust from her clothes, then straightened
up, her eyes following him.

"You asked
me what monks were," he said, turning, waiting for her to catch
up with him. "But it's difficult to explain. We've nothing like
them now. Not since Tsao Ch'un destroyed them all. There are some
similarities to the New Confucian officials, of course—they
dressed alike, in saffron robes, and had similar rituals and
ceremonies. But in other ways they were completely different."

She caught up
with him. "In what way different?"

He smiled and
began to climb the slope again; slowly, looking about him all the
while, his eyes taking in the ruins, the distant, cloud-wreathed
mountains, the two horses grazing just below them. "Well, let's
just say that they had some strange beliefs. And that they let those
beliefs shape their lives—as if their lives were of no
account."

They had reached
the pool. Tsu Ma went across and stood there, one foot resting
lightly on the tiled lip of the well as he looked back across the
valley toward the south. Fei Yen hesitated, then came alongside,
looking up at him. "What kind of beliefs?"

"Oh . . ."
He looked down, studying her reflection in the pool, conscious of the
vague, moss-covered forms beneath the surface image. "That each
one of us would return after death, in another form. As a butterfly,
perhaps, or as a horse."

"Or as
a
man?"

"Yes . . ."
He looked up at her, smiling. "Imagine it! Endless cycles of
rebirth. Each new-born form reflecting your behavior in past lives.
If you lived badly you would return as an insect."

"And if
well, as a T'ang?"

He laughed.
"Perhaps . . . but then again, perhaps not. They held such
things as power and government as being of little importance. What
they believed in was purity. All that was important to them was that
the spirit be purged of all its earthly weaknesses. And because of
that—because each new life was a fresh chance to live
purely—they believed all life was sacred."

A path led up
from where they stood, its flagstones worn and broken, its progress
hidden here and there by moss and weed. They moved on, following it
up to the first of the ruined buildings. To either side great chunks
of masonry lay in the tall grasses, pieces of fallen statuary among
them.

In the doorway
she paused, looking up at him. "I think they sound rather nice.
Why did Tsao Ch'un destroy them?"

He sighed, then
pushed through, into the deep shadow within. "That's not an easy
question to answer, my Lady. To understand, you would have to know
how the world was before Tsao Ch'un. How divided it was. How many
different forms of religion there were, and every one of them 'the
truth.' "

She stood there,
looking in at him. "I know my history. I've read about the
century of rebellions."

"Yes . . ."
He glanced back at her, then turned away, looking about him at the
cluttered floor, the smoke-blackened walls, the broken ceiling of the
room he was in. There was a dank, sour smell to everything, a smell
of decay and great antiquity. It seemed much colder here than out in
the open. He turned back, shaking his head. "On the surface of
things the Buddhists seemed the best of all the religious groups.
They were peaceful. They fought no great holy wars in the name of
their god. Nor did they persecute anyone who disagreed with them. But
ultimately they were every bit as bad as the others."

"Why? If
they threatened no one . . ."

"Ah, but
they did. Their very existence was a threat. This place ... it was
but one of many thousand such monasteries throughout Chung Kuo. And a
small one at that. Some monasteries had ten, twenty thousand monks,
many of them living long into their eighties and nineties. Imagine
all those men, disdainful of states and princes, taking from the
land—eating, drinking, building their temples and their
statues, making their books and their prayer flags—
and
giving nothing back.
That was what was so threatening about them.
It all seemed so harmless, so peaceful, but it was really quite
insidious—a debilitating disease that crippled the social body,
choking its life from it like a cancer."