Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 13

Thus it was that as Daniel and the boys approached the main Guard House, Raditz and his men stepped out They were armed with automatic rifles. Daniel ignored the guns and walked straight up to Raditz. "Things have got to change."

Raditz laughed. "Says who?"

Daniel narrowed his eyes. "You can listen or you can fight But if you fight you'll lose. And then you'll all be dead. So whaf s the point?" Raditz blinked. He had not expected Daniel to threaten him directly. This was a new Daniel, one he hadn't come across before."Okay," he said. "Talk." "You've got to let us go outside."

"Outside?" Raditz shook his head. "The Man won't allow it."

"Ask him. Ask Horacek to ask him."

"But why?"

"Because it's time we did the job we were trained for." This amused Raditz. He hadn't known they were training them for anything - unless it was as test-fodder for the new-generation mechanoids. Their job was to dig holes and cut rock, that was all.

"And what"s that?" he asked, amused now.

"To patrol his City. To be his shock-guards when the time comes."

"He's got guards."

"Not like us."

That's true, Raditz mused. Even the most corrupt of The Man's guards weren't as corrupt as these boys.

Yes, but it was still strange that Daniel should be the one to make this request. Unless he had really changed. And who knew what was possible? He, for one, had not expected to see Daniel come out of de-briefing alive. "Patrols?"

"Thafs right," Daniel said. "Six to a patrol. Eight hours, then back inside."

"And what1 s to make you come back?"

"These," Daniel said, tapping the back of his head where the wire was. "Oh, don't try and deny it, Raditz. I know whaf s in there. I've seen it dozens of times."

Yes, Raditz thought I bet you have.

And in his mind he had the picture of a head, the skull half shot away, the silver threads of the implanted wire showing clearly against the grey of the brain matter.

"Okay," he said, 'Til ask."

"Good," Daniel said. "And while you're at it, Raditz, you can tell your cook something for me."

"Oh, whaf s that?"

"Tell him Commandant Schutz tastes like s.h.i.t"

DeVore was amused. "Patrols?" "Yes, sir. He claims they'd do it better than our guards." "And so they would. But do we want them to?" Horacek shrugged. "I don't see what harm it would do.

Maybe it would even keep some of those golden-eyed c.u.n.ts in line."

"Have they been troubling you, then, Horacek?" "No, sir. But they give me the f.u.c.king shivers." "Oh?" DeVore turned, intrigued. "I wouldn't have thought anything gave you the shivers, Josef." "Oh, they don't scare me, if that"s what you mean. It's just something about them. They seem to know all the time when we're going to act, and where. If s like someone's tipping them off." "Then in all likelihood someone has been tipping them off.

Purge your staff, Josef." "I've done it" Yes, DeVore thought, looking at the odious little specimen.

In fact, it's a wonder anyone wOL come near you, let alone work with you. But there's always a willing supply of lunatics, ready to serve a monster like you. Thank the heavens. DeVore smiled. "Okay. Let Mussida have his way. Besides, it might be interesting, don't you think?" "And if they get out of line, sir?" "Then you'll blow their f.u.c.king little heads off, right?" Horacek grinned like a gargoyle made of tar. "Right, sir!" "Good. Now f.u.c.k off out of here. Fve work to do."

The woman lay where he had left her, tied to the bed, blood smeared over her naked b.u.t.tocks.

"There you are," he said, smiling tenderly, then sitting on the bed beside her, stroking her neck and shoulders.

"Who was it?" she asked, turning to look up at him, her face strikingly beautiful. The face of a much younger Emily Ascher. "That little gargoyle, Horacek. He wanted to know if his boys could play games outside their camps."

"And you said yes."

"Why not? After all, if s all a distraction. What does it matter what they do?"

He paused, then, "Does it hurt, still?"

"A little."

DeVore nodded. He had been, perhaps, too brutal last time. But the need had been so bad, the desire to hurt her so great, that he had not been able to stop himself.

Worrying, he thought. To lose control like that... I must get a better grip on myself.

Yes, or next time he'd end up killing her, as he had the boy.

He smiled. Maybe he would give Daniel a tape of that, if he stepped out of line.

Let him know what had happened to his little friend, Ju Dun.

And what might yet happen to him, if he got too c.o.c.ky. For now he would indulge the boy. Build him. Maybe even set him up as a rival to Horacek.

Yes ... he could see that working beautifully.

But in the meantime ...

"Howard?"

"Yes," he answered, his hand pausing where it had been caressing the small of her back.

"Would you let me have some of your boys... to play with sometime?" He smiled, his fingers drifting lower, caressing her b.u.t.tocks, then slipping down into the gap between. "What kind of games have you in mind?" And as he said the word "games" he pushed his finger deep into her, making her gasp with pain. A shudder pa.s.sed through her whole body. "Just games, Howard," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "Just something to amuse me while you're gone."

Wiping his bloodied finger down her back, he drew the letter D, then smiled. "Okay. But I want to see what you do, all right'"' "Okay."

"And Em. I can't let them live, you know. Not afterwards. You understand that?" She turned her head again, looking up at him over her naked shoulder, and smiled. "I understand."

She found him in his room, his back to the doorway, painting.

"Ifs for you," he said, knowing she was there.

Meg stepped closer, looking over his shoulder at the canvas. It was a familiar scene - the rose garden at sunset, the cottage in the background bathed in golden light - but the picture seemed strange and threatening, for in the foreground, dominating the canvas, was a bee, a ma.s.sive, beautifully-detailed bee, its gold-black shape framed by the blood-red mouth of an open flower. She felt a ripple of apprehension pa.s.s through her. Catherine was right. He had changed. And not for the better. This painting had the air of rape. "For me?" she asked.

He looked back at her, a slight edge of challenge in his eyes. "Why? Don't you want it?"

"No. I... don't like it"

He looked back at the painting, then set his brush down. "No, I guess you wouldn't" She moved away from him, going over to the window. Outside the sun was low above the hills. Darkness filled the bowl of the bay while directly below her, still in sunlight, was the rose garden - the very scene he had painted - but anodyne, innocent, without his curious take on it "I knew you'd come back."

"Did you?" If so, it was more than she had known. She had begun to think she would never return.

"I... missed you."

Did you? But this time she was silent "Meg?"

She turned. He was watching her. Of course he was. He never stopped watching her. And maybe that was the problem. Maybe that was why she had needed to get away.

"Meg?"

"Not now, Ben," she said, a tiredness in her voice. "Not now."

CHAPTER-6.

siege mentality.

Li Yuan stepped back from the rail and looked across at Zelic. "I wondered how they managed to feed so many. Now I know."

The platform they were on was slowly descending. As it did, level after level came into view, like a series of ma.s.sive baking trays in a giant's oven, only these "trays" were filled with soil to form huge fields, three K to a side, in which were planted wheat and maize and rice. Huge arrays of lamps set into the underside of each level gave artificial sunlight to the plants below, while special channels moulded into the trays provided irrigation. Workers could be glimpsed out in those ma.s.sive fields; long lines of them, their backs bent, their heads protected by straw-woven hats. That much, at least, seemed timeless. There were one hundred and ten levels in all, according to Zelic, though, owing to crop rotation, only four-fifths were functional at any time. That effectively took out twenty-two levels, but it still left a total growing area of eight hundred square li.

"Impressive," said Li Yuan, wondering not merely at the ingenuity of it, but at the paranoia - the siege mentality - that had devised such a system. The Americans had built themselves a siring of castles to defend their border, like the kings of olden times. Yes, and like such kings they permitted no opposition. These were harsh times - how many times had he heard one or other of them say that? - and harsh times demanded harsh measures. Yet, as he knew from his own experience, one could not rule this way forever. One could only clench one's fist for so long. One day all this would have to change. He sighed, thinking once again how hard it was to see another make the same mistakes he'd made and have his voice unheard.

"Are you tired, Chay Shal"

He turned. For a moment he had forgotten Zelic. Tired? Was he tired? Maybe. But not in any sense the young Captain would understand. No. His was a weariness of the spirit. To continue after his useful time, like an old man playing chequers in the sun, that was his fate now. All he had seen, all he had done meant nothing now. For these young men it had no value, no ... significance. "No, Captain Zelic. I am fine."

The platform slowed then stopped. This was as far as it descended. Going to the rail Li Yuan leaned over, looking down. The levels went on, down into the earth itself, while beneath them, at the very foot of this great edifice, were the workers' quarters. Workers ... He smiled at the euphemism. They were slaves, every last one of them, enemies of the state, taken in war, the flicker of the electronic collars about their necks a constant reminder of their status. "Does it never worry you, Captain?"

"Worry me, Chay Sha?"

"The impermanence of things?"

Zelic laughed. "You think all this impermanent, Chay Ska?"

"Of course. The wheel turns ..."

He stopped, looking past young Zelic. On the far side of the platform a door had opened and two men had stepped out One wore the simple blue one-piece of a high official, the other the uniform of a Major in Egan's Southern army. "Forgive us for interrupting you, Li Yuan," the official began, coming over to him, "but I'm given to understand that you'd like to visit one of the frontier posts."

Li Yuan glanced at Zelic, but Zelic merely shrugged. He turned back, facing the official. "If it would not be too inconvenient.""Not at all," the man continued urbanely. "Whatever you wish to see. After all, we have no secrets here." No secrets, eh? But Li Yuan kept what he was thinking from his face. "That is most kind," he answered. "And Captain Zelic here?" The official did not even glance at Zelic. "It would be best if the Captain stayed here. Major Lanier will provide full security throughout your tour of the front" "But Chay Sha," Zelic protested. "I have orders ..." "If s okay," Li Yuan said. "I am sure I will be perfectly safe in Major Lanier's care" The Major straightened slightly at the mention, bowing his head the tiniest amount, more in acknowledgement of what Li Yuan had said than from any notion of respect A weakness, Li Yuan thought, remembering his own men, back in those days when ten million men had served him, doing his will, dying to his command. Respect is the cement of a society. Without it, the arch falls, things fall apart. Those final words reminded him suddenly of Shepherd and of the gift Ben had given him that time - the book of proscribed poems by the man Yeats. So strange they'd been. So pa.s.sionate. A violation almost And yet true. True, in a way his own kind's poetry was not.

Barbarians, yes, yet even barbarians can sing ... As with all of the things Shepherd had given him across the years, it had been a lesson. An "eye-opener" as Shepherd had called it And indeed it had opened his eyes, to a side of these Hung Mao he had never really guessed at, for all their proximity. Reading Yeats' poems he had finally understood what motivated them; what soothed and angered them; what fuelled their strange, irrational moods. They were not like Han. No, yet there was common ground. "You will need to wear a suit," Lanier said, stepping forward, almost but not quite touching Li Yuan's arm.

He met the man's eyes directly, adopting a sudden tone of command in both his manner and his voice. "Is that really necessary, Major?" The Major blinked, surprised, automatically reacting to the signals of tone and gesture. This time he bowed his head fully.

"I... am afraid so, Master Li. I cannot guarantee your safety unless you wear a body-suit, and if I cannot guarantee your safety..." "Of course," Li Yuan said, dismissing the matter. Yet the moment had been interesting. It was still there in him, that instinct to control and command. The plague had not devoured it, no, nor had time or lack of opportunity diminished it. When a man had been born and bred to rule - when one belonged to the seventh generation of a powerful ruling dynasty - one could take away the world and still that man would think himself an Emperor. Yes, he thought. I shall have to set that down. He looked down, smiling, amused by the thought How often now he found himself contemplating his own thoughts and actions, as if at a distance from them; almost as though he were a clerk, following himself around, noting down each tiny utterance and gesture So a man becomes, when there is nothing else to fill his time. As if a man were but a well, waiting to be filled. He glanced up. Zelic was still waiting, his eyes uncertain, his whole manner anxious. Surprised, Li Yuan almost asked him what the matter was, but that would have been a mistake - a clear breach of etiquette. "You may leave me now, Captain Zelic," he said softly. "I shall be all right Major Lanier has given his word."

With a reluctant nod, Zelic turned and left Li Yuan watched him go, wondering why he'd seemed so anxious. Then, steeling himself to make the best of things, he turned back, facing Lanier and the official.

"Well, Major, it seems I am in your hands. Lead on. I'm rather looking forward to seeing what you keep out there"

The room was arctic blue and chill, a huge, vault-like s.p.a.ce, the walls of reflecting gla.s.s, the s.p.a.ce between unfurnished. Overhead a sloping ceiling of smooth black ice, two hundred ch'i to a side, was supported by two lines of slender pillars.Into this room now stepped two white-coated technicians, their faces masked, their shaven heads reflecting back the cool blue light. They paused, conscious of the ent.i.ty embedded in the perspex at the far end of the room, then slowly, hesitantly, began to walk toward it As they did, a disembodied voice filled the great hall with a low ba.s.s resonance, like the voice of emptiness itself.

"Is it ready yet?"

A dozen paces from the far end of the room, they stopped and bowed, the taller of them answering.

'It is ready, Master."

There was a pause, then an echoing reply. "Good. That is... good" The wall facing them was dark. Now it began to glow, a dim cold light growing in its depths, like a firefly trapped in a block of ice. As the glow grew, a tiny figure was revealed, more an emaciated mummy than a man. One side of its skull was larger than the other, the mottled skin stretched tight across the bone. One eye was fixed and focused, staring mad, the other rolled slowly in its...o...b.. The arms were thin and tiny, like a child's, but the hands were big, the fingers brown and elongated, the knuckles swollen like dice. It had a belly like a young baby's and long stringy legs that dangled uselessly.

At the end of them the feet were black and rotted, one of them almost a stump.

This was Josiah Egan, grandfather of the reigning king. Slowly the two men set to work, freeing the great block of perspex from its position in the wall. That done, one of them turned and gestured to the camera overhead. At once six others entered the room at the far end - big, heavily-muscled men in black one-pieces - bringing with them a large flotation tray. As the technicians stepped back, the newcomers lifted the heavy block up onto the thick-based tray, then slowly manoeuvred it across the floor. "I died ..." the voice said, sending its low, ba.s.s echoes throughout the room.

"Six times I died." And now they would bring it back to life again. Two hours and it would be done. Two hours and twenty years of intensive work would be concluded. The technicians looked to each other and smiled.

"Would you like anything, Oaeh Hsid?"

Li Yuan turned from the painting he had been studying and smiled. "No thank you, Chang. I am fine. You see to your Mistress, neh?" "Chteh Hsia."

With a low bow, Chang backed away, returning to Fei Yen who sat in the corner of that ma.s.sive anteroom, both of Li Yuan's maids attending to her. Behind her, through a great silk curtain of red, white and blue, he could glimpse servants laying the tables and making their final preparations for the banquet. My Court, he thought, looking about the room at the nine people gathered there. Once he had maintained a great household of five thousand servants, now he was reduced to this: a steward, a cook, a barber, a seamstress, two maids, a serving-boy and a bootmaker who doubled as his taster. Not that he really missed such luxury, for with it had come a stultifying sense of confinement, of being a prisoner to ritual and obligation, yet it was hard to come to terms with such a reduction in social status, especially when one had to deal with such hsiao jen as these Americans, who judged a man not by his innate qualities but by how many "coats" he could stand beside his dining table. He turned back, looking at the ma.s.sive painting once again, taking in its brutality, its heavy-handed symbolism, reminded, as he did, of his visit to the frontier post that afternoon, and experiencing again that same tiny frisson of shock he'd felt earlier.