“You see, this part of the world is better off than anywhere else on Earth. This is China’s century, as one of your uncles said. I suppose the same claim could be made back in history. But now China has come out from behind her wall. She’s been well-organized and peaceful for millennia—that excellent Shantung wine must have helped in that respect. Even during the purges in Mao’s time, there was a tradition of forgiving and even welcoming back those who confessed the error of their ways. And no other country got by without mechanization on China’s scale—India is a rubbish-tip by comparison. So now that fossil fuels and metals are as rare as rubies, China is not faced with the massive need to adjust which confronts the West. Why, take that gorgeous roast sucking pig we had—it never needed an internal combustion machine! That lobster in prawn and ginger sauce—it had never been near a nuclear fusion plant! You can’t tell me that that stuffed goat’s udder ever drew up at a filling station and found it closed for lack of gasoline! . . .”
They climbed laughing into their hard broad bed. He fell asleep with his head on her soft narrow breast.
XIX
A smiling, reserved uncle on a bicycle brought them word that Brother See was in committee at No. 35 Flowering Vegetable Lane.
Edward went there. The lane managed to look almost as rustic as its name, although new concrete houses had been slotted in an ugly way behind the walls which sheltered traditional homes of artisans.
It was evidently still necessary for him to get global matters into proper perspective. He sat out another session of waiting in a small upstairs room, looking out over concrete, grey-tiled eaves, dangling cables, a wooden house where two children played with a wooden doll, and a pigsty which contained five small porkers and a flowering cherry. He liked it.
His read-out that morning had told him he would sight his quarry today; but he remained sceptical of anything the PM said until he could feed it up-to-date programming. However, at three-thirty, a small procession of men in pallid business suits walked in dignity through the waiting-room. One of them had a face like a squeezed lemon and looked at Edward with a marked gaze as he passed; that would be the minister, Felicity’s father.
My father-in-law? he asked himself. That would depend on how the interview went, among other things.
Mindful of his manners, he followed respectfully down the stairs. An old car like a hearse waited outside on the cobbles. A lackey sprang to open doors and the company climbed in. The hearse drove off.
As Edward stood watching it go, preparing to be at least a little angry, the lackey came up and offered him a small yellow envelope. He tore it open. Inside was a square of card. On it, printed, the legend: Minister for External Trade and Exotic Invisible Earnings. Beneath it in a perfect script were the words, “Happy prognostications show that we shall meet soon in more harmonious surroundings”.
“He must have a better PM than I have, then,” Edward said, stuffing the envelope into his pocket. But the message pleased him, nevertheless.
When he showed the card to Felicity, she chewed the edge of it and puckered her brow in thought. To please Edward, she had gone out and bought a cheongsam, although she protested that the garment was wildly old-fashioned and, in any case, not true Chinese but invented in Manchester, England, for the benefit of the cotton trade. In this garment, as she lounged in a cane chair, she looked perfectly provocative. He went over and stroked her thigh.
“My father is a wily old fox,” she said. “This is what I think. He did not expect that you would grasp all the implications of this message. But he guessed that you would bring it to me, and that I would understand it. The message shows that he is inharmonious here, therefore he wishes to get away for a while. You see, he prefers philosophy to trade. So he will go to our coastal house in Chin Hsiang, in the Chekiang Province. Pie has learned from the pedalling uncle whom you met that we are together, so he expects us both to join him informally.”
“It must have been more than coincidence that we came together. Otherwise how should I manage?”
“If you are grateful, then never, never tell my honoured father that I was once Internal-girl and had men peering at the inside of my magnified private organs!”
“Shall I ever see those delicious organs again?”
“You will have to make do with your pornographic still photographs of them. So, let’s pack up and go to Chin Hsiang.”
“It should be good there at this time of year. How far is it?”
“Only two and a half thousand kilometres by rail. A full day’s journey on the train. Lin, you are very idle while in China, so you may tell us a story while we pack up.”
“I have a story called ‘Justice Performed’,” said the lin.
“It sounds like a good omen for Edward. Let us have it in an alto voice this time. Proceed.” She gave the machine a mock-formal bow.
“Flight was impossible where perverted justice ruled. ‘Let us return with honour to the volcano,’ cried the lusty silver band of oldest harlots. ‘Let us build the weaving mills among the mountains.’ Next year, musical patterns led to familiarity. Falcons brought spring. Towering photographers performed before the strong ruler. Sleep came.”
“That’s very sweet,” Felicity said. “You know, Edward, it would be both politic and polite if you give a present to my father when you meet. Why don’t you donate this antiquated lin to him?”
“It’s worth nothing. I’d be ashamed to present him with something so limited.”
She smiled and said, “Of the lin as of humans, the attraction lies in the limitations and in the maximum that can be achieved within those limitations. I hate my brother’s toy paintings because he cowers within his limitations, but this lin is bold and imaginative within his, and my father would surely appreciate such a gift.”
Edward clapped his hands together. “Then it shall be done. Lin, you are to have a more appreciative master.”
“We are all in the fiery hands of God,” said the lin.
XX
Chin Hsiang was a quiet agricultural town, built where two canals met. There were inviting hills to the south, their lower slopes sculpted into paddy terraces which flowed like living contour lines. The town itself was set partly on a hill. The modest house of the Li Kwang family was half-way up this rising ground, its wooden gate opening on a square. Blossom trees were flowering everywhere. Lying to the east, and tiny in the distance, was a bay of the sea.
“It’s one of the loveliest places I’ve ever seen,” Edward exclaimed. He went and walked in the square under the midday sun. There were a few stalls in the centre of the square, tended by stalwart peasant women, who offered gay paper toys, picture books, chillis and blue-shelled eggs and toads in baskets, pallid lettuce and withered tomatoes, huge radishes, bright green peppers, and little fish speared on reeds. Beside them were barrels and pots and colourful animals dangling on strings.
The whole picture pleased him. An ochre-walled lane led down from the square, a cobbled stair led up. The houses had tiled roofs. It reminded him of something, but of precisely what he could not recollect. He felt at home there.
That afternoon, they went to meet Felicity’s father, the Minister. His bungalow overlooked a secluded courtyard shared by the main house. Felicity led Maine to a bare room at the rear of the bungalow, where a small fire burned. The fire was of sticks and peat; real flames played there, real ash fell. Maine, long accustomed to the mock-fire in his homapt on Fragrance II, gazed at it with astonishment; he had lived too much of his life between fireproof doors.
The delicate noises of the fire emphasized the quiet of the room. There was one window, which looked out at the courtyard without admitting much light. Beneath the window was a large desk of polished wood. Behind the desk stood a small man dressed in an old-fashioned grey suit. He made a small bow as Maine stepped forward. It was the official Maine had seen in the ministry in Peking, his face wrinkled like a lemon, his eyes guilty and gentle like a reindeer’s.
When the ceremony of
greeting was over, Felicity brought them some wine and the men sat down facing one another.
“There is something eternal about China,” Edward said, embarking with verve upon a flattering speech. “I am very pleased to be here. Of all civilizations, yours weathers the ages best. You have accepted time as a natural element. In the West, time is a challenge. We’ve treated it that way ever since the Renaissance. The Renaissance has provided out great fund of ideas over the past few centuries. I mean the dynamic ideas of humanism, individualism, and speculations about the external world. You could say that the impulse which sprang from the prosperous families of Italy in the fifteenth century led us eventually to space travel, and so to the Zodiacal Planets, which are like little city states.
“But we’re in trouble now that that questing spirit has brought about the exhaustion of fossil oil and mineral deposits. Some say that America and the West are played out. I don’t believe so. But I do believe the times are temporarily against us, and that we are having to weather a storm of our own creating. Whereas China sails grandly on as if time does not exist.”
He paused several times during this speech, inserting gaps and “urns”, as he tried to remember what he wanted to say. He was not good at big theories, and had to recall what the eloquent Stein-Presteign would have said in similar circumstances.
“You are generous in your comments,” Li Kwang See replied. “The strength of China lies in her land, and in the peasants that work it. There is nothing else. Possibly in the West you have been too arrogant with your land, and have not understood its meaning and importance. The big businessman has possibly been more revered than the small farmer, if I may so comment. However, as to time, let me relate to you an amusing incident which illustrates that time can stand still even in your ever-moving country.
“Whenever I am in Houston, Texas, I visit the elegant museum there to look at one thing and one thing only. That object is an eighth-century vase of the T’ang dynasty. When I regard that vase, the material and the spiritual come together and I am restored. The last time I was there, standing by the vase, a guide came along with a bunch of tourists, and he said to them, ‘This beautiful vase is thirteen hundred years old.’ Now, when I was there fifteen years earlier, that same guide announced to another bunch of tourists, ‘This beautiful vase is thirteen hundred years old.’ So, you see, time has been standing absolutely still in the Houston Museum for at least fifteen years.”
Edward wondered if he cared for the humour of foreigners, but professed to enjoy the story. He then produced the lin with due formality.
Li Kwang admired the curlicues of its plasticwork and Edward asked the machine if it had a suitable story for its new master.
“New master, I have an exciting story for you,” said the lin. “It is called ‘Old Regiments’. The regiments with goat eyes came among the valleys. Lonely old officers cried among the royal courts because taxation returned. ‘The export market is a dinosaur; it increases the flight from towering ideals,’ one said. But the magnesium airports changed towns. Volcanoes were built. Promises were obliterated. Girls put their arms demandingly round old fathers.”
“Very pretty—although we hope that exports are not necessarily in conflict with towering ideals,” said Li Kwang, smiling politely and hiding his mouth behind his hand.
“At least we can make part of the story come true,” said Felicity, going over to hug her parent. “You see, girls put their arms demandingly round old fathers. Daddy, you must listen to what Edward has to say about his invention, the prediction machine, because it is very important for him that you approve of it. Tell him, Edward.”
So Edward embarked on an explanation of the principles of the PM. He described how the prototype worked. He put it frankly that the PM represented a large financial investment, and that his corporation would be greatly assisted if they knew in advance that they would be able to export and sell the machine on Earth as well as among the zeepees—a matter on which he understood Li Kwang’s word to be allimportant.
For most of this speech, Li Kwang listened while gazing out at the courtyard, where a shower of rain was falling.
When Edward had finished, he gestured to his daughter to pour more wine.
“My word is a poor thing,” he said. “You must not set too much store by it. Your invention sets great store by words. We are all aware of the power of words and must bow to them, but we should seek escape from their demands when we can. It is mistaken to fall even more into their power. Words must be staunched with silence.”
“Daddy, let us talk philosophy later. First, you must say yes to Edward.”
He smiled at her reproof, his face wrinkling into an even closer resemblance to a lemon, a humorous lemon. “It is precisely because this is a philosophical matter that I am not able to say yes to our guest, vexing though that is for me.” He leaned forward and said to Edward, “Mr Maine, you probably know that in China we already have a method of guidance for every day of the year. I will not call it prediction, but prediction is possibly a misnomer also for your prototype, seeing that it interpolates advice among its percentages. Our method of divination is based on one of the sacred books of the Orient, the I Ching—or Book of Changes, as it is known in the West. The I Ching is almost four thousand years old and still regularly consulted. It is a permanent source of wisdom, as well as a daily guide.”
“Oh, I know about the I Ching, sir, and I assure you we wouldn’t want to put it out of business,” said Edward hastily.
“That is kind of you. Most considerate. However, the problem lies elsewhere. You see, your invention dramatically embodies a basic conflict between East and West, whether you realize it or not.”
Taking alarm at this, Edward said, “I certainly do not realize it, sir. With the ability to see ahead a little, men should be less in conflict.”
“Allow me to make myself clear. Your machine is very elaborate in itself. It has complex diagnostic elements, and of course it relies on a power input. Then, it is not really effective unless its data is kept current by daily bulletins from a computer system, thus encouraging centralism. All told, it is most ingenious and will for that reason always be expensive and cumbersome; ever more pertinently, it will merely intensify the self-generating nature of Western technology—technology demands more technology.”
“But—”
“On the other hand, here is my modest divination machine.”
Li Kwang rose, turned to the north-facing wall behind him, and lifted a black package from a shelf set at shoulder height. He set this on his desk. From the same shelf, he took a container of carved cherry-wood, and placed it beside the package.
He opened the package, which was a book wrapped in a square of black silk. “This is my copy of the I Ching,” he said.
He opened the container. A number of polished sticks lay inside. “These are fifty twigs of the common yarrow, which I gathered myself in a Chin Hsiang hedgerow. They and the book constitute the world’s best-tried method of divination.
“I need only these. Oh, I also need a little time and thought, and maybe a little interpretation from Confucius. But that’s all.”
Maine laughed. “Without wishing to sound scornful, Minister, when our PM is perfected, it will cause you to wrap your book up and put it back on its shelf for good. A four-thousand-year-old book can’t take much account of today’s hormone levels, can it now?”
“Nor will your machine ever be advanced enough to enable us to grasp something of the sensuous cycles and rhythms of nature which shape our inner being, or help us to live in harmony with our surroundings, as does the I Ching.”
As he said this, Li Kwang slowly folded up the book and closed the box of yarrow sticks. He replaced them on their appointed shelf.
Maine told himself that this was merely a discussion, and he must not grow angry. He glanced at Felicity, but she had moved tactfully to the window and was staring out at the rain.
“Maybe our PM is a bit more accurate than your yarrow
sticks,” he said. “At least it works on a scientific principle. It’s rational, it doesn’t grow in hedgerows. Once we fully grasp the laws of chance and can predict coincidences, then we’ll be almost one hundred per cent accurate.”
“And of course you see that as important. Yet in part you work on something called the Uncertainty Principle! Now that is very much how the I Citing works. The uncertainty is essential, forcing us to learn; otherwise we would all be robots, utterly predictable in a universe where every event is as foreseeable as a railway line.”
“You are making excuses for the inaccuracy of the I Ching by saying that. We do not excuse our inaccuracy; we aim to eradicate it. We want accuracy—and we’re getting it. What’s more, we have only been working on this project for a decade, whereas you’ve had four thousand years!”
“Frankly, accuracy is one of the most destructive targets of the West. Also, you must realize that to work with devotion on something for four thousand years is very instructive, whether it is a rice field or an item of philosophical debate.”
“Yes, but if the concept is all wrong . . . I mean, I don’t want to knock the I Ching, but I do know that the Chinese have claimed that it has predicted all the great Western inventions, like electricity and nuclear energy. That seems nonsense to me.”
“Forgive me, but it seems to me nonsense to say that the West invented electricity and nuclear energy. Both natural forces have always been around, and were around even four thousand years ago.”
“A slip of the tongue. I meant that we harnessed them. What I was going to say was, if you believe that the I Ching is true, that it functions effectively, then you should not mind the PM being sold on Earth, because it will not supersede your system. We maintain that millions of people who will live under the World State will be unable to use or believe in the I Ching, and so will turn to the PM for guidance. Besides, we are not in competition. If we make a little money, you do not lose it, because nobody makes any money from I Ching, as you yourself admit.”
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