But how to say no? What possible excuse could she give that would placate Hsiang K’ai Fan? Her mind raced, turning back upon itself time and again, trying to find a way out, some way of resolving this impossible dilemma. Then she relaxed, knowing, at last, what to do.
She smiled and moved closer, taking Hsiang’s hands gently and raising him from his chair.
‘Come,’ she said, kissing his swollen neck, her right hand moving down his bloated flank, caressing him. ‘You wanted special pleasures, Hsiang K’ai Fan, and special pleasures you will have. Good wine, fine music, the very best of foods…’
‘And after?’ He stared at her, expectantly.
Mu Chua smiled, letting her hand rest briefly on the hard shape at his groin, caressing it through the silk. ‘After, we shall do as you wish.’
Charles Lever’s son, Michael, sat at his desk, facing Kim across the vastness of his office.
‘Well? Have you seen enough?’
Kim looked about him. Huge tapestries filled the walls to the left and right of him: broad panoramas of the Rockies and the great American plains, while on the end wall, beyond Lever’s big oak desk and the leather-backed swivel chair, was a bank of screens eight deep and twenty wide. In the centre of the plushly carpeted room, on a big, low table, under glass, was a 3-D map of the east coast of City North America, ImmVac’s installations marked in blue. Kim moved closer, peering down through the glass.
‘There’s an awful lot to see.’
Lever laughed. ‘That’s true. But I think you’ve seen most of the more interesting parts.’
Kim nodded. They had spent the day looking over ImmVac’s installations, but they had still seen only a small fraction of Old Man Lever’s vast commercial empire. More than ever, Kim had been conscious of the sheer scale of the world into which he had come. Down there, in the Clay, it was not possible to imagine the vastness of what existed a wartha – up Above. At times he found himself overawed by it all, wishing for somewhere smaller, darker, cosier in which to hide. But that feeling never lasted long. It was, he recognized, residual; part of the darker self he had shrugged off. No, this was his world now. The world of vast, continent-spanning Cities and huge Corporations battling for their share of Chung Kuo’s markets.
He looked up. Lever was searching in one of the drawers of his desk. A moment later he straightened, clutching a bulky folder. Closing the drawer with his knee, he came round, thumping the file down beside Kim.
‘Here. This might interest you.’
Kim watched as Lever crossed the room and locked the big double doors with an old-fashioned key.
‘You like old things, don’t you?’
Lever turned, smiling. ‘I’ve never thought about it really. We’ve always done things this way. Handwritten research files, proper keys, wooden desks. I guess it makes us… different from the other North American Companies. Besides, it makes good sense. Computers are untrustworthy, easily accessed and subject to viruses. Likewise doorlocks and recognition units. But a good, old-fashioned key can’t be beaten. In an age of guile, people are reluctant to use force – to break down a door or force open a drawer. The people who’d be most interested in our product have grown too used to sitting at their own desks to commit their crimes. To take the risk of entering one of our facilities would be beyond most of them.’ He laughed. ‘Besides, it’s my father’s policy to keep them happy with a constant flow of disinformation. Failed research, blind alleys, minor spin-offs of more important research programmes – that kind of thing. They tap into it and think they’ve got their finger on the pulse.’
Kim grinned. ‘And they never learn?’
Lever shook his head, amused. ‘Not yet they haven’t.’
Kim looked down at the file. ‘And this?’
‘Open it and see. Take it across to my desk if you want.’
Kim flipped back the cover and looked, then turned his head sharply, staring at Lever. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘You’ve seen it before?’
Kim looked down at it again. ‘I have… of course I have, but not in this form. Who…?’ Then he recognized the handwriting. The same handwriting that had been on the copy of the cancelled SimFic contract he had been given by Li Yuan. ‘Soren Berdichev…’
Lever was looking at him strangely now. ‘You knew?’
Kim gave a small, shuddering breath. ‘Six years ago. When I was on the Project.’
‘You met Berdichev there?’
‘He bought my contract. For his Company, SimFic.’
‘Ah… Of course. Then you knew he’d written the File?’
Kim laughed strangely. ‘You think Berdichev wrote this?’
‘Who else?’
Kim looked away. ‘So. He claimed it for his own.’
Lever shook his head. ‘Are you trying to tell me he stole it from someone?’
In a small voice, Kim began to recite the opening of the File: the story of the pre-Socratic Greeks and the establishment of the Aristotelian Yes/No mode of thought. Lever stared back at him with mounting surprise.
‘Shall I continue?’
Lever laughed. ‘So you do know it. But how? Who showed it to you?’
Kim handed it back. ‘I know because I wrote it.’
Lever looked down at the folder then back at Kim, giving a small laugh of disbelief. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘You were only a boy.’
Kim was watching Lever closely. ‘It was something I put together from some old computer records I unearthed. I thought Berdichev had had it destroyed. I never knew he’d kept a copy.’
‘And you knew nothing about the dissemination?’
‘The dissemination?’
‘You mean, you really didn’t know?’ Lever shook his head, astonished. ‘This here is the original, but there are a thousand more copies back in Europe, each one of them like this, handwritten. Now we’re going to do the same over here – to disseminate them amongst those sympathetic to the cause.’
‘The cause?’
‘The Sons of Benjamin Franklin. Oh, we’d heard rumours about the File and its contents some time back, but until recently we’d never seen it. Now, however…’ He laughed then shook his head again in amazement. ‘Well, it’s like a fever in our blood. But you understand that, don’t you, Kim? After all, you wrote the bloody thing!’
Kim nodded, but inside he felt numbed. He had never imagined…
‘Here, look…’ Lever led Kim over to one of the tapestries. ‘I commissioned this a year ago, before I’d seen the file. We put it together from what we knew about the past. It shows how things were before the City.’
Kim looked at it then shook his head. ‘It’s wrong.’
‘Wrong?’
‘Yes, all the details are wrong. Look.’ He touched one of the animals on the rocks in the foreground. ‘This is a lion. But it’s an African lion. There never were any lions of this kind in America. And those wagons, crossing the plains, they would have been drawn by horses. The petrol engine was a much later development. And these tents here – they’re Mongol in style. Red Indian tents were different. And then there are these pagodas…’
‘But in the File it says…’
‘Oh, it’s not that these things didn’t exist, it’s just that they didn’t exist at the same time or in the same place. Besides, there were Cities even then – here on the east coast.’
‘Cities… but I thought…’
‘You thought the Han invented Cities? No. Cities have been in Man’s blood since the dawn of civilization. Why, Security Central at Bremen is nothing more than a copy of the great zigurrat at Ur, built more than five thousand years ago.’
Lever had gone very still. He was watching Kim closely, a strange intensity in his eyes. After a moment he shook his head, giving a soft laugh.
‘You really did write it, didn’t you?’
Kim nodded then turned back to the tapestry. ‘And this…’ He bent down, indicating the lettering at the foot of the picture. ‘This is wrong, too.�
�
Lever leaned forward, staring at the lettering. ‘How do you mean?’
‘AD. It doesn’t mean what’s written here. That was another of Tsao Ch’un’s lies. He was never related to the Emperor Tsao He, or to any of them. So all of this business about the Ancestral Dynasties is complete nonsense. Likewise BC. It doesn’t mean “Before the Crane”. In fact, Tsao He, the “Crane”, supposedly the founder of the Han dynasty and ancestor of all subsequent dynasties, never even existed. In reality, Liu Chi-tzu, otherwise known as P’ing ti, was Emperor at the time – and he was twelfth of the great Han dynasty emperors. So, you see, the Han adapted parts of their own history almost as radically as they changed that of the West. They had to – to make sense of things and keep it all consistent.’
‘So what do they really mean?’
‘“AD”… That stands for Anno Domini. It’s Latin – Ta Ts’in – for “The Year of our Lord”.’
‘Our Lord?’
‘Jesus Christ. You know, the founder of Christianity.’
‘Ah…’ But Lever looked confused. ‘And BC? Is that Latin, too?’
Kim shook his head. ‘That’s “Before Christ”.’
Lever laughed. ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Why the mixture of languages? And why in the gods’ names would the Han adopt a Christian dating for their calendar?’
Kim smiled. When one thought about it, it didn’t make a great deal of sense, but that was how it was – how it had been for more than a hundred years before Tsao Ch’un had arrived on the scene. It was the Ko Ming – the Communists – who had adopted the Western calendar, and Tsao Ch’un, in rewriting the history of Chung Kuo, had found it easiest to keep the old measure. After all, it provided his historians with a genuine sense of continuity, especially after he had hit upon the idea of claiming that it dated from the first real Han dynasty, ruled, of course, by his ancestor, Tsao He, ‘the Crane’.
‘Besides…’ Lever added, ‘I don’t understand the importance of this Christ figure. I know you talk of all these wars fought in his name, but if he was so important why didn’t the Han incorporate him into their scheme of things?’
Kim looked down, taking a long breath. So… they had read it but they had not understood. In truth, their reading of the File was, in its way, every bit as distorted as Tsao Ch’un’s retelling of the world. Like the tapestry, they would put the past together as they wanted it, not as it really was.
He met Lever’s eyes. ‘You forget. I didn’t invent what’s in the File. That’s how it was. And Christ…’ he sighed. ‘Christ was important to the West, in a way he wasn’t to the Han. To the Han he was merely an irritation. Like the insects, they didn’t want him in their City, so they built a kind of Net to keep him out.’
Lever shivered. ‘It’s like that term they use for us – T’e an tsan – “innocent Westerners”. All the time they seek to denigrate us. To deny us what’s rightfully ours.’
‘Maybe…’ But Kim was thinking about Li Yuan’s gifts. He, at least, had been given back what was his.
Ebert strode into the House of the Ninth Ecstasy, smiling broadly, then stopped, looking about him. Why was there no one here to greet him? What in the gods’ names was the woman up to?
He called out, trying to keep the anger from his voice – ‘Mu Chua! Mu Chua, where are you?’ – then crossed the room, pushing through the beaded curtain.
His eyes met a scene of total chaos. There was blood everywhere. Wine glasses had been smashed underfoot, trays of sweetmeats overturned and ground into the carpet. On the far side of the room a girl lay face down, as if drunk or sleeping.
He whirled about, drawing his knife, hearing sudden shrieking from the rooms off to his left. A moment later a man burst into the room. It was Hsiang K’ai Fan.
Hsiang looked very different from when Ebert had last seen him. His normally placid face was bright – almost incandescent – with excitement; his eyes popping out from the surrounding fat. His clothes, normally so immaculate, were dishevelled, the lavender silks ripped and spattered with blood. He held his ceremonial dagger out before him, the blade slick, shining wetly in the light, while, as if in some obscene parody of the blade, his penis poked out from between the folds of the silk, stiff and wet with blood.
‘Lord Hsiang…’ Ebert began, astonished by this transformation. ‘What has been happening here?’
Hsiang laughed: a strange, quite chilling cackle. ‘Oh, it’s been wonderful, Hans… simply wonderful! I’ve had such fun. Such glorious fun!’
Ebert swallowed, not sure what to make of Hsiang’s ‘fun’, but quite sure that it spelt nothing but trouble for himself.
‘Where’s An Liang-chou? He’s all right, isn’t he?’
Hsiang grinned insanely, lowering the dagger. His eyes were unnaturally bright, the pupils tightly contracted. He was breathing strangely, his flabby chest rising and falling erratically. ‘An’s fine. Fucking little girls, as usual. But Hans… your woman… she was magnificent. You should have seen the way she died. Oh, the orgasm I had. It was just as they said it would be. Immense it was. I couldn’t stop coming. And then…’
Ebert shuddered. ‘You what?’ He took a step forward. ‘What are you saying? Mu Chua is dead?’
Hsiang nodded, his excitement almost feverish now, his penis twitching as he spoke. ‘Yes, and then I thought… why not do it again? And again…? After all, as she said, I could settle with Whiskers Lu when I was done.’
Ebert stood there, shaking his head. ‘Gods…’ He felt his fingers tighten about his dagger then slowly relaxed his hand. If he killed Hsiang it would all be undone. No, he had to make the best of things. To make his peace with Whiskers Lu and get Hsiang and An out of here as quickly as possible. Before anyone else found out about this.
‘How many have you killed?’
Hsiang laughed. ‘I’m not sure. A dozen. Fifteen. Maybe more…’
‘Gods…’
Ebert stepped forward, taking the knife from Hsiang. ‘Come on,’ he said, worried by the look of fierce bemusement in Hsiang’s face. ‘Fun’s over. Let’s get An and go home.’
Hsiang nodded vaguely then bowed his head, letting himself be led through.
Towards the back of the house things seemed almost normal. But as Ebert came to the Room of Heaven he slowed, seeing the great streaks of blood smeared down the doorframes, and guessed what lay within.
He pushed Hsiang aside then went into the room. A girl lay to one side, dead, her face bloody, her abdomen ripped open, the guts exposed, while on the far side of the room lay Mu Chua, naked, face up, on the huge bed, her throat slit from ear to ear. Her flesh was ashen, as if bleached, the sheets beneath her dark with her blood.
He stood there, looking down at her a moment, then shook his head. Whiskers Lu would go mad when he heard about this. Mu Chua’s house had been a key part of his empire, bringing him a constant flow of new contacts from the Above. Now, with Mu Chua dead, who would come?
Ebert took a deep breath. Yes, and Lu Ming-shao would blame him – for making the introduction. For not checking up on Hsiang before he let him go berserk down here. If he had known…
He twirled about, his anger bubbling over. ‘Fuck you, Hsiang! Do you know what you’ve done?’
Hsiang K’ai Fan stared back at him, astonished. ‘I b-beg your pardon?’
‘This!’ Ebert threw his arm out, indicating the body on the bed, then grabbed Hsiang’s arm and dragged him across the room. ‘What the fuck made you want to do it, eh? Now we’ve a bloody war on our hands! Or will have, unless you placate the man.’
Hsiang shook his head, bewildered. ‘What man?’
‘Lu Ming-shao. Whiskers Lu. He’s the big Triad boss around these parts. He owned this place. And now you’ve gone and butchered his Madam. He’ll go berserk when he finds out. He’ll hire assassins to track you down and kill you.’
He saw how Hsiang swallowed at that, how his eyes went wide with fear, and felt like laughing. But, no, he could use this. Yes, ma
ybe things weren’t quite so bad after all. Maybe he could turn this to his advantage.
‘Yes, he’ll rip your throat out for this, unless…’
Hsiang pushed his head forward anxiously. ‘Unless…?’
Ebert looked about him, considering. ‘This was one of his main sources of income. Not just from prostitution but from other things too – drugs, illicit trading, blackmail. It must have been worth, oh, fifteen, twenty million yuan a year to him. And now it’s worth nothing. Not since you ripped the throat out of it.’
‘I didn’t know…’ Hsiang shook his head, his hands trembling. His words came quickly now, tumbling from his lips. ‘I’ll pay him off. Whatever it costs. My family is rich. Very rich. You know that, Hans. You could see this Whiskers Lu, couldn’t you? You could tell him that. Please, Hans. Tell him I’ll pay him what he asks.’
Ebert nodded slowly, narrowing his eyes. ‘Maybe. But you must do something for me, too.’
Hsiang nodded eagerly. ‘Anything, Hans. You only have to name it.’
He stared at Hsiang contemptuously. ‘Just this. I want you to throw your party this afternoon – your chao tai hui – just as if nothing happened here. You understand? Whatever you or An did or saw here must be forgotten. Must never, in any circumstances, be mentioned. It must be as if it never was. Because if news of this gets out there will be recriminations. Quite awful recriminations. Understand?’
Hsiang nodded, a look of pure relief crossing his face.
‘And Hsiang. This afternoon… don’t worry about the girls. I’ll provide them. You just make sure your friends are there.’
Hsiang looked down, chastened, the madness gone from him. ‘Yes… As you say.’
‘Good. Then find your friend and be gone from here. Take my sedan if you must, but go. I’ll be in touch.’
Hsiang turned, making to go, but Ebert called him back one last time.
‘And, Hsiang…’
Hsiang stopped and turned, one hand resting against the bloodstained upright of the door. ‘Yes?’
‘Do this again and I’ll kill you, understand?’
The White Mountain Page 2