Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (52 page)

"Go on,"
he said, encouraging her. "Down there, in the end stall."

Still she
hesitated, as if afraid, making him laugh.

"It's a
gift, silly." He lowered his voice, slightly. "My way of
saying that I'm sorry."

"Down
there?"

"Yes. Come,
I'll show you."

He took her arm,
leading her to the stall.

"There!"
he said softly, looking down at her.

She looked.
There in the dimness of the stall, stood the horse he had bought her.
As she took first one, then another, slow step toward it, the horse
turned its long white head, looking back at her, its huge dark eyes
assessing her. It made a small noise in its nostrils, then lowered
its head slightly, as if bowing to her.

He saw the tiny
shudder that went through her and felt himself go still as she went
up to the horse and began to stroke its face, its flank. For a
moment, that was all. Then she turned and looked back at him, her
eyes wet with tears.

"He's
beautiful, Yuan. Really beautiful." She shivered, looking back
at the horse, her hand resting in its mane, then lowered her head
slightly. "You shouldn't have, my love. I have a horse already."

Yuan swallowed,
moved by her reaction. "I know, but I wanted to. As soon as I
saw him I knew you'd love him." He moved closer, into the
dimness of the stall itself, and stood there beside her, his hand
resting gently on the horse's flank.

She looked up at
him, her eyes smiling through the tears. "Has he a name?"

"He has.
But if you want to you can rename him."

She looked back
at the Arab. "No. Look at him, Yuan. He is himself, don't you
think? A T'ang among horses."

He
smiled.
"That he is, my love. An Emperor. And his name is Tai Huo."

She studied the
Arab a moment longer, then turned back, meeting Li Yuan's eyes again.
"Great Fire . . . Yes, it suits him perfectly." Her eyes
searched Yuan's face, awed, it seemed, by his gift. Then,
unexpectedly, she knelt, bowing her head until it touched her knees.
"My husband honors me beyond my worth . . ."

At once he
pulled her up. "No, Fei Yen. Your husband loves you. I, Yuan,
love you. The rest. . ." he shuddered, "well, I was
mistaken. It was wrong of me."

"No."
She shook her head, then lifted her eyes to his. "I spoke out of
turn. I realize that now. It was not my place to order your
household. Not without your permission."

"Then you
have my permission."

His words
brought her up short. "Your permission? To run your household?"

He smiled. "Of
course. Many wives do, don't they? And why not mine? After all, I
have a clever wife."

Her smile slowly
broadened; then, without warning, she launched herself at him,
knocking him onto his back, her kisses overwhelming him.

"Fei Yen!"

There was
laughter from the nearby stalls, then a rustling of straw as the
watching grooms moved back.

He sat up,
looking at her, astonished by her behavior; then he laughed and
pulled her close again, kissing her. From the stalls nearby came
applause and low whistles of appreciation. He leaned forward,
whispering in her ear. "Shall we finish this indoors?"

In answer she
pulled him down on top of her. "You are a Prince, my love,"
she said softly, her breath hot in his ear, "you may do as you
wish."

* *
*

JOEL hammond
stood in the doorway, watching the boy unpack his things. They had
barely spoken yet, but he was already conscious that the boy was
different from anyone he had ever met. It was not just the quickness
of the child, but something indefinable, something that fool Spatz
hadn't even been aware of. It was as if the boy were charged with
some powerful yet masked vitality. Hammond smiled and nodded to
himself. Yes, it was as if the boy were a compact little battery,
filled with the energy of
knowing;
a veiled light, awaiting
its moment to shine out and illuminate the world.

Kim turned,
looking back at him, as if conscious suddenly of his watching eyes.

"What did
you do before you came here,
Shih
Hammond?"

"Me?"
Hammond moved from the doorway, picking up the map Kim had set down
on the table. "I worked on various things, but the reason I'm
here is that I spent five years with SimFic working on artificial
intelligence."

Kim's eyes
widened slightly. "I thought that was illegal? Against the
Edict?"

Hammond laughed.
"I believe it was. But I was fortunate. The T'ang is a forgiving
man. At least, in my case he was. I was pardoned. And here I am."

He looked back
down at the map again. "This is the Tun Huang star chart, isn't
it? I saw it once, years ago. Back in college. Are you interested in
astronomy?"

The boy
hesitated. "I was." Then he turned, facing Hammond, his
dark eyes looking up at him challengingly. "Spatz says he's
going to keep me off the Project. Can he do that?"

Hammond was
taken aback. "I—"

The boy turned
away, the fluidity of the sudden movement—so unlike anything he
had ever seen before—surprising Hammond. A ripple of fear
passed down his spine. It was as if the boy were somehow more and, at
the same time, less human than anyone he had ever come across. For a
moment he stood there, his mouth open, astonished; then, like a
thunderbolt, it came to him. He shuddered, the words almost a
whisper.

"You're
Claybom, aren't you?"

Kim took a
number of books from the bottom of his bag and added them to the pile
on the desk, then looked up again. "Yes. I lived there until I
was six."

Hammond
shuddered, seeing the boy in a totally new light. "I'm sorry. It
must have been awful."

Kim shrugged. "I
don't know. I can't remember. But I'm here now. This is my home."

Hammond looked
about him at the bare white walls, then nodded. "Yes. Yes, I
suppose it is." He put the chart down and picked up one of the
books. It was Liu Hui's
Chiu Chang Suan Shu,
"Nine
Chapters on the Mathematical Art," the famous third-century
treatise from which all Han science began. He smiled and opened it,
surprised to find it in the original Mandarin. Flicking through, he
noticed the notations in the margin, the tiny, beautifully drawn
pictograms in red and black and green.

"You speak
Kuo-yu,
Kim?"

Kim straightened
the books, then turned, looking back at Hammond. He studied him a
moment, intently, almost fiercely; then he pointed up at the overhead
camera. "Does that thing work?"

Hammond looked
up. "Not yet. It'll be two or three days before they've
installed the system."

"And Spatz?
Does he speak
Kuo-yu
—Mandarin?"

Hammond
considered a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not sure. I don't
think so, but I can check easily enough. Why?"

Kim was staring
back at him, the openness of his face disarming Hammond. "I'm
not naive,
Shih
Hammond. I understand your position here.
You're here on sufferance. We're alike in that. We do what we're told
or we're nothing. Nothing."

Hammond
shivered. He had never thought of it in quite those terms, but it was
true. He put the book down. "Yes. But I still don't follow you.
What is all this leading to?"

Kim picked the
book up and opened it at random, then handed it back to Hammond.

"Read the
first paragraph."

Hammond read it,
pronouncing the Mandarin with a slight southern accent, then looked
back at Kim. "Well?"

"I thought
so. I saw how you looked at it. I knew at once that you'd recognized
the title."

Hammond smiled.
"So?"

Kim took the
book back and set it beside the others on the shelf.
,;

"How good
is your memory?"

"Pretty
good, I'd say."

"Good
enough to hold a code?"

"A code?"

"When you
go back, Spatz will order you not to speak to me about
anything to do with the Project. He'll instruct you to keep me away
from all but the most harmless piece of equipment."

"You know
this?"

Kim looked
round. "It's what he threatened shortly before you arrived. But
I know his type. I've met them before. He'll do all he can to
discredit me."

Hammond laughed
and began to shake his head; then he stopped, seeing how Kim was
looking at him. He looked down. "What if I don't play his game?
What if I refuse to shut you out?"

"Then he'll
discredit you. You're vulnerable. He knows you'll have to do what
he-says. Besides, he'll set a man to watch you. Someone you think of
as a friend."

"Then what
can
I do?"

"You can
keep a diary. On your personal comset. Something that will seem
completely innocent when Spatz checks on it."

"I see. But
how will you get access?"

"Leave that
to me." Kim turned away, taking the last of the objects from the
bag and putting it down on the bedside table.

"And the
code?"

Kim laughed.
"That's the part you'll enjoy. You're going to become a poet,
Shih
Hammond. A regular Wang Wei."

* *
*

devore sat at
his desk in the tiny room at the heart of the mountain. The door was
locked, the room unlit but for the faint glow of a small screen on
one side of the desk. It was late, almost two in the morning, yet he
felt no trace of tiredness. He slept little—two or three hours
a night at most—but just now there was too much to do to even
think of sleep.

He had spent the
afternoon teaching Sun Tzu to his senior officers: the final chapter
on the employment of secret agents. It was the section of Sun Tzu's
work that most soldiers found unpalatable. On the whole they were
creatures of directness, like Tolonen. They viewed such methods as a
necessary evil, unavoidable yet somehow beneath their dignity. But
they were wrong. Sun Tzu had placed the subject at the end of his
thirteen-chapter work with good reason. It was the key to all. As Sun
Tzu himself had said, the reason an enlightened prince or a wise
general triumphed over their enemies whenever they moved—the
reason their achievements surpassed those of ordinary men—was
foreknowledge. And as Chia Lin had commented many centuries later,
"An army without secret agents is like a man without eyes or
ears."

So it was. And
the more one knew, the more control one could wield over
circumstance.

He smiled. Today
had been a good day. Months of hard work had paid off. Things had
connected, falling into a new shape—a shape that bode well for
the future.

The loss of his
agents among the
Ping Tiao
had been a serious setback, and the
men he had bought from among their ranks had proved unsatisfactory in
almost every respect. He had had barely a glimpse of what the
Ping
Tiao
hierarchy were up to for almost a week now. Until today,
that was, when suddenly two very different pieces of information had
come to hand.

The first was
simply a code word one of his paid agents had stumbled upon: a single
Mandarin character, the indentation of which had been left on a
notepad Jan Mach had discarded. A character that looked like a house
running on four legs. The character
yu,
the Han word for fish,
the symbol of the
Ping Tiao
. It had meant nothing at first,
but then he had thought to try it as an entry code to some of the
secret
Ping Tiao
computer networks he had discovered weeks
before but had failed to penetrate.

At the third
attempt he found himself in.
Yu
was a new recruitment
campaign; a rallying call; a word passed from lip to ear; a look,
perhaps, between two sympathetic to the cause. DeVore had scrolled
through quickly, astonished by what he read. If this were true . . .

But of course it
was true. It made sense. Mach was unhappy with what was happening in
the
Ping Tiao
. He felt unclean dealing with the likes of
T'angs and renegade Majors. What better reason, then, to start up a
new movement? A splinter movement that would, in time, prove greater
and more effective than the
Ping Tiao
. A movement that made no
deals, no compromises. That movement was
Yu.

Yu. The very
word was rich with ambivalence, for
yu
was phonetically
identical with the Han word meaning "abundance." It was the
very symbol of wealth, and yet tradition had it that when the fish
swam up-river in great numbers it was a harbinger of social unrest.
Yu
was thus the symbol of civil disorder.

And if the file
was to be trusted,
Yu
was already a force to be reckoned with.
Not as powerful yet as the
Ping Tiao,
nor as rich in its
resources, yet significant enough to make him change his plans. He
would have to deal with Mach. And soon.

The second item
had come from Fischer in Alexandria. The message had been brief—a
mere minute and three-quarters of scrambled signal—yet it was
potentially enough, in its decoded form, to shake the very
foundations of the Seven. He leaned forward and ran the film again.

The first thirty
seconds were fairly inconclusive. They showed Wang Sau-leyan with his
Chancellor, Hung Mien-lo. As Fischer entered, the T'ang turned
slightly, disappearing from camera view as the Captain bowed.

"Are they
here?" Wang asked, his face returning to view as Fischer came
out of his bow.

"Four of
them,
Chieh Hsia.
They've been searched and scanned, together
with their gift."

"Good,"
the T'ang said, turning away, looking excitedly at his Chancellor.
"Then bring them in."

"
Chieh
Hsia. .
."

DeVore touched
the pad, pausing at that moment. Wang Sau-leyan was still in full
view of Fischer's hidden camera, his well-fleshed face split by a
grin that revealed unexpectedly fine teeth. He was a gross character,
but interesting. For all his sybaritic tendencies, Wang Sau-leyan was
sharp, sharper, perhaps, than any among the Seven, barring the young
Prince, Li Shai Tung's son Yuan.