Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (50 page)

"I see. But
she is still not quite as she was, I take it?"

Tolonen looked
down, his eyes troubled. "Not quite,
Chieh Hsia
."

"I thought
as much. Well, listen to me, Knut. Knowing how busy you'll be these
next few weeks, I've come up with an idea that might put your mind at
ease and allow Jelka to come to terms with her experience."

"Chieh
Hsia
?"

"You
remember the island your family owned? Off the coast of Finland?"

"Near
Jakobstad?" Tolonen laughed. "How could I forget? I spent a
month there with Jenny, shortly after we were married."

"Yes ..."
The two men were silent a moment, sharing the sweet sadness of the
memory. "Well," said Li Shai Tung, brightening, "why
not take Jelka there for a few weeks?"

Tolonen beamed.
"Yes! Of course!" Then he grew quiet. "But as you say,
I am far too busy,
Chieh Hsia.
Who would look after her? And
then there's the question of passes..."

The T'ang
reached out and touched his Marshal's arm. It was like Tolonen not to
abuse the Pass Laws, not to grant permissions for his family or
friends. In all the years he had known him he had not heard of one
instance of Tolonen using his position for his own advantage.

"Don't
worry, Knut. I've arranged everything already. Passes, supplies, even
a special squad to guard her." He smiled broadly, enjoying the
look of surprise on Tolonen's face. "Your brother, Jon, and his
wife have agreed to stay with her while she's there."

Tolonen laughed,
astonished. "Jon?" Then he shook his head, overcome with
emotion. "I'm deeply grateful,
Chieh Hsia.
It will be
perfect. Just the thing she needs. She'll love it, I know she will."

"Good. Then
you'll take her yourself, tomorrow. After you've sorted out this
business with the boy. And Knut?"

"Yes,
Chieh
Hsia."

"Don't
hurry back. Stay with her a night. See her settled in, neh?"

"Is that an
order,
Chieh Hsia
?"

The T'ang smiled
and nodded. "Yes, dear friend. It is an order."

* *
*

AFTER TOLONEN
HAD gone, Li Shai Tung went to his private rooms. He bathed and
dressed in his evening silks, then settled in the chair beside the
carp pond, picking up the
Hung Low
Meng,
the Dream
of
Red
Mansions, which he had discarded earlier. For a while he
tried to read, tried to sink back down into the fortunes of young
Pao-yu and his beloved cousin, Tai-yu, but it was no good; his mind
kept returning to the question of the Aristotle File and what it
might mean for Chung Kuo.

His son Li Yuan
had seen it all five years before, in those first few days after he
had been told the secret of their world—the Great Lie upon
which everything was built. He remembered how Yuan had come to him
that night, pale and frightened, awakened by a terrible dream.

Why do we
keep the truth from them?
Yuan had demanded.
What are we
afraid of? That it might make them think other than we wish them to
think? That they might make other choices than the ones we wish them
to make?

Back then he had
argued with his son, had denied Yuan's insistence that they were the
jailers of Tsao Ch'un's City, the inheritors of a system that shaped
them for ill.
We are our own men,
he had said. But was it so?
Were they really in control? Or did unseen forces shape them?

He had always
claimed to be acting for the best; not selfishly, but for all men, as
the great sage Confucius had said a ruler should act. So he had
always believed. But now, as he entered his final years, he had begun
to question what had been done in his name.

Was there truly
any real difference between concealing the truth from a man and the
placing of a wire in his head?

Once he might
have answered differently, might have said that the two things were
different in kind; but now he was not so certain. Five years of war
had changed him, soured him.

He sighed and
looked back down at the page before closing the book.

"You were
right, Pao-yu. All streams are sullied. Nothing is
ch'ing . . .
nothing pure."

He stood, then
cast the book down onto the chair angrily. Where had his certainty
gone? Where the clarity of his youth?

He had foreseen
it all, sixteen years ago, on that dreadful evening when his darling
wife, Lin Yua, had died giving birth to his second son, Li Yuan. That
night he, too, had awoken from an awful dream—a dream of the
City sliding down into the maw of chaos, of dear friends and their
children dead, and of the darkness to come.

Such dreams had
meaning. Were voices from the dark yet knowing part of oneself,
voices you ignored only at your peril. And yet they
had
ignored
them, had built a System and a City to deny the power of dreams,
filling it with illusions and distractions, as if to kill the inner
voices and silence the darkness deep within.

But you could
not destroy what was inside a man. So maybe Yuan was right. Maybe it
was
best to control it. Now, before it was too late to act.
For wasn't it better to have peace—even at such a price—than
chaos?

He turned,
annoyed with himself, exasperated that no clear answer came.

He stared down
into the depths of the carp pool, as if seeking the certainty of the
past, then shook his head. "I don't know . . ." he sighed.
"I just don't know any longer."

A single carp
rose slowly, sluggishly to the surface, then sank down again. Li Shai
Tung watched the ripples spread across the pool, then put his hand up
to his plaited beard, stroking it thoughtfully.

And Yuan, his
son? Was Yuan as certain as he seemed?

He had heard
reports of trouble between Yuan and Fei Yen. Had been told that the
Prince, his son, had not visited his new wife's bed for several days,
and not through pressure of work. He had been there in the Palace at
Tongjiang with her, and still he had not visited her bed. That was
not right. For a couple to be arguing so early in their relationship
did not bode well for the future. He had feared as much—had
known
the match was ill-conceived—but once more he had
refused to listen to the voice within. He had let things take their
course, like a rider letting go the reins. And if he fell—if
his son's unhappiness resulted—who could he blame but himself?

Again the carp
rose, swifter this time, as if to bite the air. There was a tiny
splash as its mouth lifted above the surface, then it sank down
again, merging with the darkness.

Li Shai Tung
coiled his fingers through his beard, then nodded. He would let
things be. Would watch closely and see how matters developed. But the
cusp was fast approaching. He had told Tolonen otherwise, but the
truth was that he was not so sure Li Yuan was wrong. Maybe it
was
time to put bit and bridle on the masses, to master events before
the whole thing came crashing down on them.

It would not
hurt, at least, to investigate the matter. And if the boy Kim could
help them find a way . . .

The T'ang
turned, then bent down and retrieved the book, finding himself
strangely reassured by its familiarity. He brushed at the cover,
sorry that he had treated it so roughly. It was a book he had read a
dozen times in his life, each time with greater understanding and a
growing satisfaction. Things changed, he knew that now, after a
lifetime of denying it; but certain things—intrinsic things—
remained constant, for all men at all times. And in the interplay of
change and certainty each man lived out his life.

It was no
different for those who ruled. Yet they had an added burden. To them
was ordained the task of shaping the social matrix within which
ordinary men had their being. To them was ordained the sacred task of
finding balance. For without balance there was nothing.

Nothing but
chaos.

* *
*

IT WAS late
afternoon when Li Yuan finally arrived at Bremen. General Nocenzi had
offered his office for the young Prince's use, and it was there, at
the very top of the vast, three-hundred-level fortress, that he
planned to meet the boy.

Kim was waiting
down below. He had been there since his early morning session with
Tolonen, unaware of how his fate had hung in the balance in the
interim; but Li Yuan did not summon him at once. Instead he took the
opportunity to read the files again and look at extracts from the
visual record—films taken throughout the eight years of Kim's
stay within the Recruitment Project.

They had given
the boy the surname Ward, not because it was his name—few of
the boys emerging from the Clay possessed even the concept of a
family name—but because all those who graduated from the
Project bore that name. Moreover, it was used in the Hung Moo
manner—in that curiously inverted way of theirs, where the
family name was last and not first.

Li Yuan smiled.
Even that minor detail spoke volumes about the differences in
cultures. For the Han had always put the family first. Before the
individual.

He froze the
final image, then shut down the comset and leaned forward to touch
the desk's intercom. At once Nocenzi's private secretary appeared at
the door.

"Prince
Yuan?"

"Have them
bring the boy. I understand there's a Project official with him, too.
A man by the name of T'ai Cho. Have him come too."

"Of course,
Excellency."

He got up from
the desk, then went to the window wall and stood there. He was still
standing there, his back to them, when they entered.

T'ai Cho cleared
his throat. "Your Excellency . . . ?"

Li Yuan turned
and looked at them. They stood close to the door, the boy a pace
behind the official. T'ai Cho was a tall man, more than five
ch'i,
his height emphasized by the diminutive size of the Claybom
child. Li Yuan studied them a moment, trying to get the key to their
relationship—something more than could be gained from the
summaries in the file—then he returned to the desk and sat,
leaving them standing.

There were no
chairs on the other side of the desk. He saw how T'ai Cho looked
about him, then stepped forward.

"Excellency
. . ." he began, but Li Yuan raised a hand, silencing him. He
had noticed how the boys eyes kept going to the broad window behind
him.

"Tell me,
Kim. What do you see?"

The boy was so
small; more like a child of eight than a boy of fifteen.

Kim shook his
head, but still he stared, his large eyes wide, as if afraid.

"Well?"
Li Yuan insisted. "What do you see?"

"Outside,"
the boy answered softly. "I see outside. Those towers. The top
of the City. And there," he pointed out past the Prince, "the
sun."

He stopped, then
shook his head, as if unable to explain. Li Yuan turned to look where
he was pointing as if something wonderful were there. But there were
only the familiar guard towers, the blunted edge of the City's walls,
the setting sun. Then he understood. Not afraid . . .
awed.

Li Yuan turned
back, frowning; then, trusting to instinct, he came directly to the
point.

"I've
called you here because you're young, Kim, and flexible of mind. My
people tell me you're a genius. That's good. I can use that. But I've
chosen you partly because you're not a part of this infernal
scientific setup. Which means that you're likely to have a much
clearer view of things than most, unsullied by ambition and
administrative politics, by a reluctance to deal with me and give me
what I want."

He laced his
fingers together and sat back.

"I want you
to join a scientific team, a team whose aim is to develop and test
out a new kind of entertainment system."

Kim narrowed his
eyes, interested but also wary.

"However,
that's not all I want from you. I want you to do something else for
me—something that must be kept secret from the rest of the
members of the team, even from Marshal Tolonen."

The boy
hesitated, then nodded.

"Good."
He studied the boy a moment, aware all the time of how closely the
tutor was watching him. "Then let me outline what I want from
you. I have a file here of R & D projects undertaken by the late
Head of SimFic, the traitor Berdichev. Some are quite advanced,
others are barely more than hypothesis. What I want you to do is look
at them and assess—in your considered opinion— whether
they can be made to work or not. More than that, I want you to find
out what they
could
be used for."

He saw the boy
frown and explained. "I don't trust the labels Berdichev put on
these projects. What he says they were intended for and what their
actual use was to be, were, I suspect, quite different."

Again the boy
nodded. Then he spoke.

"But why
me? And why keep these things secret from the Marshal?"

Li Yuan smiled.
It was as they'd said; the boy had a nimble mind.

"As far as
Marshal Tolonen is concerned, these things do not exist. If he knew
of them he would have them destroyed at once, and I don't want that
to happen."

"But surely
your father would back you in this?"

He hesitated;
then looking at the official sternly, he said, "My father knows
nothing of this. He thinks these files have already been destroyed."

T'ai Cho
swallowed and bowed his head. "Forgive me, Highness, but. . ."

"Yes?"
Li Yuan kept his voice cold, commanding.

"As I say,
forgive me, but. . ." The man swallowed again, knowing how much
he risked even in speaking out. "Well, I am concerned for the
safety of my charge."

"No more
than I,
Shih
T'ai. But the job must be done. And to answer
Kim's other question—he is, in my estimation, the only one who
can do it for me."