The White Mountain

by David Wingrove

  ‘Wang Sau-leyan,’ he began, looking across at his moon-faced cousin, calm now that he had taken the first step, ‘there is a small matter I would like to raise before we continue. A matter of… etiquette.’

  Wang Sau-leyan smiled. ‘As you wish, cousin.’

  Li Yuan opened the folder, looking down at the wafer-thin piece of black plastic. It was the template of a hologrammic image: the image of Wang Sau-leyan in the garden at Tao Yuan, meeting with Li Yuan’s bondsman, Hsiang Shao-erh. There were other things in the folder – a taped copy of their conversation, and the testimony of Wang’s Master of the Royal Household, Sun Li Hua, but it was the holo that was the most damning piece of evidence.

  He made to offer it to Wang, but Wang shook his head. ‘I know what it is, Li Yuan. You have no need to show me.’

  Li Yuan gave a small laugh of astonishment. What was this? Was Wang admitting his treachery?

  With what seemed like resignation, Wang pulled himself up out of the chair and went to the double doors, unlocking them and throwing them open. At his summons a servant approached, head bowed, bearing a large, white lacquered box. Wang took it and turned, facing his fellow T’ang.

  ‘I wondered when you would come to this,’ he said, approaching to within an arm’s length of where Li Yuan was sitting. ‘Here. I was saving this for you. As for the traitor, Sun, he has found peace. After telling me everything, of course.’

  Li Yuan took the box, his heart pounding.

  He opened it and stared, horrified. From within the bright red wrappings of the box Hsiang Shao-erh stared back at him, his eyes like pale grey, bloated moons in an unnaturally white face, the lids peeled back. And then, slowly, very slowly, as in a dream, the lips began to move.

  ‘Forgive… me… Chieh… Hsia… I… confess… my… treachery… and… ask… you… not… to… punish… my… kin… for… my… abjec … unworthiness…’ There was a tiny shudder from the severed head, and then it went on, the flat, almost gravelly whisper like the voice of stone itself. ‘Forgive… them… Chieh… Hsia… I… beg… you… Forgive… them…’

  Li Yuan looked up, seeing his horror reflected in every face but one. Then, with a shudder of revulsion, he dropped the box, watching it fall, the frozen head roll unevenly across the thick pile of the carpet until it lay still, resting on its cheek beside Wang Sau-leyan’s foot. Bending down, the T’ang of Africa lifted it and held it up, offering it to Li Yuan, the smile on his face like the rictus of a corpse.

  ‘This is yours, I believe, cousin.’ Then he began to laugh, his laughter rolling from him in great waves. ‘Yours…’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Kung Lao.’

  ‘And yours?’

  ‘Kung Yi-lung.’

  ‘You’re brothers, then?’

  The nine-year-old, Yi-lung, shook his head. ‘Cousins,’ he said quietly, still not sure of this man who, despite his air of kindness, wore the T’ang’s uniform.

  Chen sat back slightly, smiling. ‘Okay. You were friends of Ywe Hao’s, weren’t you? You helped her when those men came, didn’t you?’

  He saw how the younger of the two, Lao, looked at his cousin before he nodded.

  ‘Good. You probably saved her life.’

  He saw how they looked down at that; how, again, they glanced at each other, still not sure what this was all about.

  ‘She must have been a very good friend for you to do that for her, Yi-lung. Why was that? How did you come to be friends?’

  Yi-lung kept his head lowered. ‘She was kind to us,’ he mumbled, the words offered reluctantly.

  ‘Kind?’ Chen gave a soft laugh, recalling what Karr had said about the guard, Leyden, and how she had probably spared his life. ‘Yes, I can imagine that. But how did you meet her?’

  No answer. He tried another tack.

  ‘That’s a nice machine she’s got. A MedRes Network-6. I’d like one like that, wouldn’t you? A top-of-the-range machine. It was strange, though. She was using it to record news items.’

  ‘That was our project,’ the younger boy, Lao, said, without thinking, then fell quiet again.

  ‘Your project? For school, you mean?’

  Both boys nodded. Yi-lung spoke for them. ‘She was helping us with it. She always did. She took the time. Not like the rest of them. Any time we had a problem we could go to her.’

  Chen took a deep breath. ‘And that’s why you liked her?’

  Both boys were looking at him now, a strange earnestness in their young faces.

  ‘She was funny,’ Lao said reflectively. ‘It wasn’t all work with her. She made it fun. Turned it all into a game. We learned a lot from her, but she wasn’t like the teachers.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Yi-lung offered, warming to things. ‘They made everything seem dull and grey, but she brought it all alive for us. She made it all make sense.’

  ‘Sense?’ Chen felt a slight tightening in his stomach. ‘How do you mean, Yi-lung? What kind of things did she say to you?’

  Yi-lung looked down, as if he sensed there was some deeper purpose behind Chen’s question. ‘Nothing,’ he said evasively.

  ‘Nothing?’ Chen laughed, letting go, knowing he would get nothing if he pushed. ‘Look, I’m just interested, that’s all. Ywe Hao’s gone missing and we’d like to find her. To help her. If we can find out what kind of woman she was…’

  ‘Are you tracking her down?’

  Chen studied the two a moment, then leaned forward, deciding to take them into his confidence. ‘Ywe Hao’s in trouble. Those men who came tried to kill her, but she got away. So, yes, Kung Lao, we have to find her. Have to track her down, if that’s how you want to put it. But the more we know – the more good things we know about her – the better it will be for her. That’s why you have to tell me all you can about her. To help her.’

  Lao looked at his cousin, then nodded. ‘Okay. We’ll tell you. But you must promise, Captain Kao. Promise that once you find her you’ll help her all you can.’

  He looked back at the two boys, momentarily seeing something of his own sons in them, then nodded. ‘I promise. All right? Now tell me. When did you first meet Ywe Hao, and how did you come to be friends?’

  The maintenance room was empty, the hatch on the back wall locked, the warning light beside it glowing red in the half-light. Karr crouched down, squeezing through the low doorway, then stood there, perfectly still, listening, sniffing the air. There was the faintest scent of sweat. And something else… something he didn’t recognize. He went across, putting his ear against the hatch. Nothing. Or almost nothing. There was a faint hum – a low, pulsing vibration.

  He paused a moment, studying the hatchway, realizing it would be a tight squeeze; that he would be vulnerable momentarily if she was waiting just the other side. But the odds were that she was far away by now.

  He ducked into the opening backwards, head first, forcing his shoulders through the narrow space diagonally, then grabbed the safety bar overhead and heaved himself up, twisting sideways. He dropped and spun round quickly, his weapon out, but even as he turned, he had to check himself, staggering, realizing suddenly that the platform was only five ch’i in width and that beyond…

  Beyond was a drop of half a li.

  He drew back, breathing slowly. The conduit was fifty ch’i across, a great diamond-shaped space, one of the six great hollowed columns which stood at the corners of the stack, holding it all up. Pipes went up into the darkness overhead, massive pipes twenty, thirty times the girth of a man, each pipe like a great tree, thick branches stretching off on every side, criss-crossing the open space. Service lights speckled the walls of the great conduit above and below, but their effect was not so much to illuminate the scene as to emphasize its essential darkness.

  It was a cold, sombre place, a place of shadows and silence. Or so it seemed in those first few moments. But then he heard it – the sound that underlay all others throughout the City – the sound of great engines, pushing the water up the l
evels from the great reservoirs below, and of others, filtering what came down. There was a palpable hum, a vibration in the air itself. And a trace of that same indefinable scent he had caught a hint of in the room earlier, but stronger here. Much stronger.

  Poking his head out over the edge, he looked down, then moved back, craning his neck, trying to see up into the shadows.

  Which way? Had she gone up or down?

  He looked about him, locating the cameras, then frowned, puzzled. There was no way the cameras wouldn’t have seen her come out of the room and on to the platform. No chance at all. Which meant that either she hadn’t gone into the maintenance room in the first place or those cameras had been tampered with. And she had gone into the room.

  For a moment Karr stared at the camera just across from him, then, struck by the absurdity of it, he laughed. It was all too bloody easy. Since the City had first been built Security had been dependent on their eyes – their security cameras – to be their watchdogs and do most of their surveillance work for them, not questioning for a moment how satisfactory such a system was, merely using it, as they’d been taught. But the Yu had recognized how vulnerable such a network was – how easily manipulated. They had seen just how easy it was to blind an eye or feed it false information. All they needed was access. And who had access? Technicians. Maintenance technicians. Like the five dead men. And the girl. And others. Hundreds of others. Every last one of them tampering with the network, creating gaps in the vision of the world.

  False eyes they’d made. False eyes. Like in wei chi, where a group of stones was only safe if it had two eyes, and where the object was to blind an eye and take a group, or to lull one’s opponent into a false sense of security, by letting them think they had an eye, whereas, in fact…

  Pulling his visor down, he leaned out, searching the walls for heat traces.

  Nothing. As he’d expected, the trail was cold. He raised the visor, sighing heavily. What he really needed was sleep. Twelve hours if possible, four if he was lucky. The drugs he was taking to keep awake had a limited effect. Thought processes deteriorated, reflexes slowed. If he didn’t find her soon…

  He leaned back, steadying himself with one hand, then stopped, looking down. His fingers were resting in something soft and sticky. He raised them to his mouth, tasting them. It was blood, recently congealed.

  Hers? It had to be. No one else had come here in the last few hours. So maybe she’d been wounded in the fire-fight. He shook his head, puzzled. If that were so, why hadn’t they found a trail of blood in the corridors outside?

  Unless they hadn’t looked.

  He went to the edge of the platform, feeling underneath, his fingers searching until, at the top of the service ladder, three rungs down, they met a second patch of stickiness.

  Down. She had gone down.

  Karr smiled, then, drawing his gun, turned and clambered over the edge, swinging out, his booted feet reaching for the ladder.

  Towards the bottom of the shaft it became more difficult. The smaller service pipes that branched from the huge arterials proliferated, making it necessary for Karr to clamber out, away from the wall, searching for a way down.

  The trail of blood had ended higher up, on a platform thirty levels down from where he had first discovered it. He had spent twenty minutes searching for further traces, but there had been nothing. It was only when he had trusted to instinct and gone down that he had found something – the wrapping of a field dressing pad, wedged tightly into a niche in the conduit wall.

  It was possible that she had gone out through one of the maintenance hatches and into the deck beyond. Possible but unlikely. Not with all the nearby stacks on special security alert. Neither would she have doubled back. She had lost a lot of blood. In her weakened state the climb would have been too much.

  Besides which, his instinct told him where he would find her.

  Karr moved on, working his way down, alert for the smallest movement, the least deviation in the slow, rhythmic pulse that filled the air. That sound seemed to grow in intensity as he went down, a deep vibration that was as much within his bones as in the air. He paused, looking up through the tangled mesh of pipework, imagining the great two-li-high conduit as a giant flute – a huge k’un-ti – reverberating on the very edge of audibility: producing one single, unending note in a song written for titans.

  He went down, taking greater care now, conscious that the bottom of the shaft could not be far away. Even so, he was surprised when, easing his way between a nest of overlapping pipes, his feet met nothing. For a moment he held himself there, muscles straining, as his feet searched blindly for purchase, then drew himself up again.

  He crouched, staring down through the tangle of pipework. Below him there was nothing. Nothing but darkness.

  In all probability she was down there, in the darkness, waiting for him. But how far down? Twenty ch’i? Thirty? He pulled his visor down and switched to ultra-violet. At once his vision was filled with a strong red glow. Of course… he had felt it earlier – that warmth coming up from below. That was where the great pumps were – just beneath. Karr raised the visor and shook his head. It was no use. She could move about as much as she wanted against that bright backdrop of warmth, knowing that she could not be seen. Neither could he use a lamp. That would only give his own position away, long before he’d have the chance to find her.

  What then? A flash bomb? A disabling gas?

  The last made sense, but still he hesitated. Then, making up his mind, he turned, making his way across to the wall.

  There would be a way down. A ladder. He would find it and descend, into the darkness.

  He went down, tensed, listening for the slightest movement from below, his booted feet finding the rungs with a delicacy surprising in so big a man. His body was half-turned towards the central darkness, his weapon drawn, ready for use. Even so, it was a great risk he was taking and he knew it. She didn’t have night-sight – he was fairly sure of that – but, if she was down there, there was the distinct possibility that she would see him first, if only as a shadow against the shadows.

  He stopped, crouching on the ladder, one hand going down. His foot had met something. Something hard but yielding.

  It was mesh. A strong security mesh, stretched across the shaft. He reached out, searching the surface. Yes, there – the raised edge of a gate, set into the mesh. He traced it round. There was a slight indentation on the edge farthest from the ladder, where a spanner-key fitted, but it was locked. Worse, it was bolted from beneath. If he was to go any further he would have to break it open.

  He straightened up, gripping the rung tightly, preparing himself, then brought his foot down hard. With a sharp crack it gave, taking him with it, his hand torn from the rung, his body twisting about.

  He fell. Instinctively, he curled into a ball, preparing for impact, but it came sooner than he’d expected, jarring him.

  He rolled to one side, then sat up, sucking in a ragged breath, his left shoulder aching.

  If she was there…

  He closed his eyes, willing the pain to subside, then got up on to his knees. For the briefest moment he felt giddy, disoriented, then his head cleared. His gun… he had lost his gun.

  In the silent darkness he waited, tensed, straining to hear the click of a safety or the rattle of a grenade, but there was nothing, only the deep, rhythmic pulse of the pumps, immediately beneath. And something else – something so faint he thought at first he was imagining it.

  Karr got to his feet unsteadily, then, feeling his way blindly, he went towards the sound.

  The wall was closer than he’d thought. For a moment his hands searched fruitlessly, then found what they’d been looking for. A passageway – a small, low-ceilinged tunnel barely broad enough for him to squeeze into. He stood there a moment, listening. Yes, it came from here. He could hear it clearly now.

  Turning side on, he ducked inside, moving slowly down the cramped passageway, his head scraping the ceiling. Ha
lfway down he stopped, listening again. The sound was closer now, its regular rhythm unmistakable. Reaching out, his fingers connected with a grill. He recognized it at once. It was a storage cupboard, inset into the wall, like those they had in the dormitories.

  Slipping his fingers through the grill, he lifted it, easing it slowly back and up into the slot at the top. He paused, listening again, his hand resting against the bottom edge of the niche, then began to move his fingers inward, searching…

  Almost at once they met something warm. He drew them back a fraction, conscious of the slight change in the pattern of the woman’s breathing. He waited for it to regularize, then reached out again, exploring the shape. It was a hand, the fingers pointing to the left. He reached beyond it, searching, then smiled, his fingers closing about a harder, colder object. Her gun.

  For a moment he rested, his eyes closed, listening to the simple rhythm of the woman’s breathing, the deep reverberation of the pumps. In the darkness they seemed to form a kind of counterpoint and for a moment he felt himself at ease, the two sounds connecting somewhere deep within him, Yin and Yang, balancing each other.

  The moment passed. Karr opened his eyes into the darkness and shivered. It was a shame. He would have liked it to have ended otherwise, but it was not to be. He checked the gun, then pulled his visor down, clicking on the lamp. At once the cramped niche filled with light and shadow.

  Karr caught his breath, studying the woman. She lay on her side, her face towards the entrance, one hand folded across her breasts. In the pearled glow of the lamp she was quite beautiful, her asiatic features softened in sleep, her strength – the perfect bone structure of her face and shoulders – somehow emphasized. Like Marie, he thought, surprised by the notion. As he watched she stirred, moving her head slightly, her eyes flickering beneath the lids in dream.

  Again he shivered, recalling what the guard, Leyden, had said about her, and what the two boys had told Chen. At the same time he could see the murdered youth at the Dragonfly Club and the soft, hideous excess of that place, and for a moment he was confused. Was she really his enemy? Was this strong, beautiful creature really so different from himself?