Son of Heaven
Page 1
SON OF HEAVEN
1
Son of Heaven
2
Daylight on Iron Mountain
3
The Middle Kingdom
4
Ice and Fire
5
The Art of War
6
An Inch of Ashes
7
The Broken Wheel
8
The White Mountain
9
Monsters of the Deep
10
The Stone Within
11
Upon a Wheel of Fire
12
Beneath the Tree of Heaven
13
Song of the Bronze Statue
14
White Moon, Red Dragon
15
China on the Rhine
16
Days of Bitter Strength
17
The Father of Lies
18
Blood and Iron
19
King of Infinite Space
20
The Marriage of the Living Dark
SON OF HEAVEN
DAVID WINGROVE
First published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books.
Copyright © David Wingrove, 2011
The moral right of David Wingrove to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 524 1
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 525 8
eBook ISBN: 978 0 85789 169 3
Printed in Great Britain
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ
www.corvus-books.co.uk
CONTENTS
PART ONE The Last Year of the Old World – Autumn 2065
Chapter 1 Lucky Man
Chapter 2 The Nature of the Catastrophe
Chapter 3 Distant Shadows
PART TWO The East is Red – Spring 2043
Chapter 4 Futures
Chapter 5 Solid Air
Chapter 6 Fragments
Chapter 7 West
PART THREE When China Comes – Autumn 2065
Chapter 8 Things Behind the Sun
Chapter 9 Enduring Willow
Chapter 10 East
Chapter 11 The End of History
Character listing
Glossary of Mandarin terms
Author’s note and acknowledgments
For Susan. Always for Susan.
PART ONE
The Last Year of the Old World
AUTUMN 2065
Oh, for a great mansion of ten thousand rooms
Where all the poor on earth could find welcome shelter
Steady through every storm, secure as a mountain!
Ah, were such a building to spring up before me,
I would freeze to death in my wrecked hut well content.
—Tu Fu, ‘My Thatched Hut is Wrecked by
the Autumn Wind’, 8th Century AD
Chapter 1
LUCKY MAN
A thin layer of mist wreathed the meadows all the way down to the reeds that traced the meandering path of the river. In the early morning light, the few trees that jutted from that paleness seemed iron black, leafless now that the season had changed. This had all been heath until a few years back, from Corfe to the South Deep. Now the sea had encroached upon those ancient fields, covering stretches of the lowlands to a depth of several feet.
Jake stood there on a ridge of higher ground, surveying the scene, his shotgun tucked beneath his arm. He was dressed for the season in a thick sheepskin coat and warm britches, a hunter’s cap and black waders. Close by stood his son, Peter, fourteen and the image of his father, down to the gun beneath his arm. Beside him was Boy, their eight-year-old border collie, his coat sleek and black, his sharp eyes and ears taking in every movement.
A cuckoo called; possibly the last of the year. For a moment after there was silence, then a slushing noise and the sound of beating wings, a heavy sound in the early morning air. As they watched, the bird flew up. Jake’s eyes followed its path, then settled on the ruins of the old cottage.
Until six years back this had been a busy, bustling place. Jed Cooper and his family had lived here. A cheerful man, Jed had shared the cottage with his equally cheerful wife, Judy, and their twin boys, Charlie and John, who had been Peter’s age. Only then the sickness had come and they’d been swept away, along with scores of others in the surrounding villages. Last year the roof had fallen in and now the walls were crumbling, nature reclaiming the building, its damp brickwork sinking back into the earth.
Jake looked down and sighed. At his back, a mile to the west, the land climbed steeply to a ridge. There, its ruined keep outlined against the sky, was the castle. Almost a thousand years it had stood. When the Normans came, they’d built it to subdue the locals and place their mark upon the land. Later, in the years of the Civil War, it had been partially demolished, yet still it dominated the skyline, its ruined towers like slabs of living history.
Boy tensed. Peter looked down at him and smiled.
‘Seek ’em, Boy! Go chase ’em out!’
The dog was off at once, a streak of darkness cutting through the mist. Jake raised his gun. Beside him, Peter did the same, the two of them waiting patiently as Boy turned the game towards them.
Two gunshots echoed across the meadows, barely a pause between them. Boy slowed then barked, settling beside one of the fallen rabbits.
‘Good lad,’ Jake said, looking to his son and smiling.
They walked across, Peter going straight to Boy; kneeling down to ruffle his neck and hug him close, telling him again and again what a good boy he’d been.
Jake stooped, once, then a second time, to lift the dead rabbits and slip them into the big leather satchel at his side. He straightened up. The gunshots would have frightened off any other game, but they had plenty of time. The fields beyond the river were pocked with rabbit holes.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, lad?’
‘D’you think it’ll ever come back?’
Jake thought about it a moment. ‘I dunno… It’s just… if it were coming back, then I guess it would have by now. Only…’
‘Only?’
Jake looked down at the dog. Boy enjoyed being petted. His eyes looked back at Peter adoringly, his tail wagging eagerly.
Only nothing. But he didn’t say that. It was gone, that old world. Never to return. And good riddance. Only Peter, who had never known it, was fascinated.
‘Well?’ Peter insisted, getting back to his feet.
Jake laughed. ‘You’d have hated it.’
‘Why? I mean… all that great stuff you had.’
They had this conversation often, and as so often happened it led nowhere. The Past – the great computer age – was dead, and most of the ‘great stuff’ with it. All that was left were the husks.
>
‘Come,’ Jake said, walking on, not letting his mood be affected by such talk. ‘What’s gone is gone, lad. It’s no good grieving over it.’
‘But Dad…’
A look, a raised eyebrow, and Peter fell silent.
‘Come, Boy,’ he said, standing, shouldering his gun.
They paused at the ruins, baring their heads, paying their respects, then walked on. Cooper and his family were buried in the churchyard. Long buried now, along with the rest of those who had died that winter. Six years it had been. Only it didn’t seem that long. To Jake it seemed like yesterday.
And there too was another truth. That back in the old days they would have survived. Most of them, anyway, if not all. A jab of something and a week in bed and they’d have been right as rain.
Only these weren’t the old days.
Jake pushed the thought away, then looked to his son once more.
‘Come, lad. Let’s go bag some more before breakfast.’
Two hours had passed and they had just decided to turn back, when Jake spotted the strangers, some distance off to the north-west, out on the Ware-ham Road.
His satchel was bulging with dead game. That, and the sight of strangers on the road made up Jake’s mind to leave. Now, before they were spotted.
There was an old barn, partway up the slope. There they hid, Jake perched in the gaping stone window, the Zeiss-style glasses – a pair of Bresser Hunters his father had bought more than fifty years before – to his eyes as he checked out the newcomers.
It was as he’d thought. They were refugees. Just a small party, eight strong. Five adults and three children, all of their worldly possessions either on their backs or on the sled one of them dragged along.
He moved from face to face, seeing the tiredness there, the fear. They were a peculiarly shabby lot, with an emaciated, almost haunted look. As far as Jake could make out, a small, fussy little man was leading them; stocky and balding, he never seemed to stop talking. Alongside him was a much taller woman. She was a pale, consumptive-looking creature with lank hair and a pair of broken spectacles that gave her a slight academic air. There were two other men – nondescript fellows with shaven heads and the kind of faces you instantly forgot, they were so generic. Working men, Jake thought, seeing those faces. At least, they would have been, once upon a time. But these two were barely into their thirties. They’d have been ten at most when things fell apart.
The last of the adults – another woman – was perhaps the most interesting, and he took his time, studying her. She didn’t seem part of this party. She had a distracted air to her and an uncertainty – a lack of ease – that suggested she had joined them somewhere along the way. For protection, maybe. The look of her – the quality of her clothes – did not go with the others. And there was one other thing. She was pretty.
Jake switched his attention to the children. The eldest was a tall, spindly boy of adolescent age. The clothes he was wearing looked thin and ragged. He seemed to hug himself against the morning’s chill. Most noticeable, however, were his eyes – pale eyes that were dark-rimmed and fearful, like he suffered from bad dreams.
His siblings, if that was what they were – a boy and a girl, one perhaps five and the other eight or nine – shared the same, dispirited look.
It made him wonder just how long they had been on the road. Three days? Four? Had they eaten in all that time? Were they hungry?
They certainly looked hungry. Hungry and afraid. As always, something in him responded to their plight and wanted to help; only he couldn’t. He had learned that lesson long ago – not to trust anyone in these untrustworthy times. Not strangers, anyway.
Even so…
Jake focused again on the little man, the fussy one, trying to get some clue to it all. A lot of people made the journey west. He’d been told that life was a lot better out here. Only this party didn’t seem to be driven by the desire for a better life. No. They looked as if they had been chased out.
Jake lowered the glasses. ‘They’re no threat,’ he whispered. ‘But let’s get back anyway and warn the others, just in case.’
Peter nodded, then turned to Boy. Boy had been laying there, silent, patient; now he jumped up, eager again.
Peter leaned in close, speaking in a whisper to the dog. ‘Hush now, Boy. We’re going home, right?’
Normally Boy would have given off a bark – an eager response – but Peter had trained him well. When he used that hushed voice, Boy was to keep quiet.
Jake, looking on, smiled. He was a lovely dog. One of the best. He hadn’t known how good it was to have a dog until they’d had him. He put out his hand and Boy came across at once, nuzzling him, licking his fingers and giving off the faintest whine.
‘Come…’
They moved quickly, purposefully, up the steep grassy slope and along the Ridgeway, the castle – a massive thing of fallen tawny stone, huge chunks of which were embedded in the grassy hillside – directly ahead. Beyond it, beyond the broad green slope of the castle’s enclosed lower field, nestling in the curve of the valley, was Corfe itself. A V-shaped spill of grey-brown two-storey cottages that hugged both arms of the forking road, the parish church with its square tower thrusting up from amidst that great sprawl. It was a sight Jake never tired of, and as always he paused, to take it in, sensing a connection that was beyond his own lifetime. For some reason this was his place and he had come here out of instinct when it had all gone wrong. Here and nowhere else. Because here was where he belonged.
Some of the locals were at the Bankes Arms Hotel already, despite the early hour, unloading carts and carrying bits and pieces through to the gar -den at the back of the big coaching inn. They were preparing for the evening ahead, it being their custom, once a month, to hold a gathering of all the surrounding villages. It was a celebration – of life and friendship, and of the Past, of the quite astonishing fact that any of them had survived these past twenty or so years.
Jake’s best friend, Tom Hubbard, was there, with his youngest daughter Meg, who was Peter’s age. While Peter ran across to talk to her, Boy at his heels, Jake sidled over to his old friend.
Tom met his eyes. ‘Somethin’ up?’
Tom spoke with the same Dorset dialect as Jake’s son, Peter, and even as he answered him, Jake was conscious at some level of the lack of that same richness in his own voice. He had been here for more than twenty years, but he was still, in some important way, an outsider. This place, home as it was to him now, was still foreign parts.
‘Strangers… on the old Wareham Road. No threat, I’d judge – they’re a bit of a ragtag assortment – but we ought to send a warning round.’
Tom nodded, then turned and whistled through his teeth. ‘Alec! Young Billy!’
Two young heads appeared from behind the cart. ‘Yeah?’
‘Leave that for now. There’s strangers on the Wareham Road. Best put out a warnin’ to Stowborough and Furzebrook… oh, and East Holme while you’re at it.’
He turned to Jake again. ‘How many was it, Jake?’
‘Just the eight. Three men, two women and three kids. It’s just that they looked hungry, and hunger makes thieves of us all.’
Tom turned and gestured to the two youngsters, who ran off at once. He turned back, then nodded towards the bulging satchel.
‘It’s a wonder there’s any rabbits left, what with you and the lad.’
Jake grinned. ‘Thought I’d bag a dozen or so for the do tonight.’
‘An’ the rest?’
But it didn’t need to be said. Tom knew who Jake had bagged them for. Old Ma Brogan, down on the East Orchard. If Jake hadn’t brought her a brace of rabbits every now and then she’d never have tasted meat at all, now that her son had run off.
‘How’s Mary?’
Tom looked up again. ‘She’s fine. Lookin’ forward to tonight. Like a bloody teenage girl, she gets. Can’t get no sense out of her or our eldest pair. You’d think it were Christmas.’
The two
men laughed, then fell silent. There were shadows over everything they said these days.
They were living on borrowed time and they both knew it. But life had to be lived, not feared. You had to get on with things, no matter what was headed your way. And sometimes that was enough. Only it made it hard to plan anything, hard to look beyond the immediacy of things, and that, so the more astute of them realized, robbed the experience of something precious. When you didn’t have a future, what did you have?
Jake turned, taking it all in – the castle, the village, all of it unchanged for centuries – and felt a shiver pass through him. It was like living in a vacuum some days. There was Peter, of course, and his friends, but what was it all for? What was the point if it could all be swept aside in an instant?
He patted the bulging satchel, conscious of the smell of the dead creatures which hung upon him.
‘Anyway… I’d best deliver these.’
Tom smiled. ‘You know what? I’m glad it happened… cos if it hadn’t…’
He reached out, holding Jake’s arm.
It wasn’t like Tom to comment on the past. Nor was it like him to be quite so tactile.