‘Hey...’
Meg made to move forward, but Ben reached out, holding her arm with his right hand. ‘No. Leave him. He’s only playing.’
His mother turned, looking at him.
‘There,’ he said, indicating a small table to one side of the room.
He watched her go across and set the tray down, then looked back at the kitten. It was sniffing at the fingers of the hand then lifting its head inquisitively.
‘Don’t...’ Meg said quietly.
He half turned, looking at her. ‘I won’t hurt it.’
‘No,’ she said, brushing his hand aside and moving across to lift the kitten and cradle it. ‘He’s real. Understand? Don’t toy with him.’
He watched her a moment, then looked down at the control box in his lap. Real, he thought. But how real is real? For if all I am is a machine of blood and bone, of nerve and flesh, then to what end do I function? How real am I?
Machines of flesh. The phrase echoed in his head. And then he laughed. A cold, distant laughter.
‘What is it, Ben?’
He looked up, meeting his mother’s eyes. ‘Nothing.’
He was quiet a moment, then he turned, looking across at the Han. ‘Relax a while, Shih Lin. I must find my father. There’s something I need to ask him.’
He found Hal in the dining room, the curtains drawn, the door to the kitchen pulled to. In the left-hand corner of the room there was a low table on which was set the miniature apple trees the T’ang had given the Shepherds five years before. The joined trees were a symbol of conjugal happiness, the apple an omen of peace, but also of illness.
His father was kneeling there in the darkened room, his back to Ben, his forearms stretched out across the low table’s surface, resting either side of the tree, his head bent forward. He was very still, as if asleep, or meditating, but Ben, who had come silently to the doorway, knew at once that his father had been crying.
‘What is it?’ he said softly.
Hal’s shoulders tensed; slowly his head came up. He stood and turned, facing his son, wiping the tears away brusquely, his eyes fierce, proud.
‘Shut the door. I don’t want your mother to hear. Or Meg.’
Ben closed the door behind him, then turned back, noting how intently his father was watching him, as if to preserve it all. He smiled faintly. Yes, he thought, there’s far more of me in you than I ever realized. Brothers, we are. I know it now for certain.
‘Well?’ he asked again, his voice strangely gentle. He had often questioned his own capacity for love, wondering whether what he felt was merely some further form of self-delusion, yet now, seeing his father there, his head bowed, defeated, beside the tiny tree, he knew beyond all doubt that he loved him.
Hal’s chest rose and fell in a heavy, shuddering movement. ‘I’m dying, Ben. I’ve got cancer.’
‘Cancer?’ Ben laughed in disbelief. ‘But that’s impossible. They can cure cancers, can’t they?’
Hal smiled grimly. ‘Usually, yes. But this is a new kind, an artificial carcinoma, tailored specifically for me, it seems. Designed to take my immune system apart piece by piece. It was Shih Berdichev’s parting gift.’
Ben swallowed. Dying. No. It wasn’t possible. Slowly he shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, Ben, but it’s true. I’ve known it these last two months. They can delay its effects, but not for long. The T’ang’s doctors give me two years. Maybe less. So, you see, I’ve not much time to set things right. To do all the things I should have done before.’
‘What things?’
‘Things like the Shell.’
For a moment Ben’s mind missed its footing. Shells... He thought of Meg and the beach and saw the huge wave splinter along the tooth-like rocks until it crashed against her, dragging her back, away beneath the foaming surface, then heard himself screaming – Meg!!! – while he stood there on the higher rocks, impotent to help.
He shivered and looked away, suddenly, violently displaced. Shells... Like the stone in the dream – the dark pearl that passed like a tiny, burning star of nothingness through his palm. For a moment he stared at where his hand ought to have been in disbelief, then understood.
‘What is it, Ben?’
He looked up. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never...’
He stopped. It was like a wave of pure darkness hitting him. A sheer black cliff of nothingness erasing all thought, all being from him. He staggered and almost fell, then he was himself again, his father’s hands holding his upper arms tightly, his heavily lined face thrust close to Ben’s own, the dark green eyes filled with concern and fear.
‘Ben? What is it?’
‘Darkness,’ he whispered. ‘It was like...’
Like what? He shuddered violently. And then the earlier thing came back to him. Shells... Pai pi. That was what his father meant. And that was why they had to make one. Because he was dying. Yes. It all made sense.
‘Like what?’ his father asked, fleshing the thought.
‘Nothing,’ he answered, calmer now. ‘The Shell. I understand it now.’
‘Good. Then you’ll help me sketch things out for the team?’
Ben frowned. ‘Team? What team?’
The pressure of Hal’s hands on Ben’s arms had eased, but he made no move to take them away. ‘I’ve arranged for a team of technicians to come here and work with us on the Shell. I thought we could originate material for them.’
Ben looked down. For a long time he was silent, thoughtful. Then he looked up again. ‘But why do that? Why can’t we do the whole thing?’
Hal laughed. ‘Don’t be daft, Ben.’
‘No. I’m serious. Why can’t we do the whole thing?’
‘Didn’t you hear me, earlier? It would take ages. And I haven’t got ages. Besides, I thought you wanted to get away from here. To Oxford.’
‘I do. But this...’ He breathed deeply, then smiled and reached up to touch his father’s face with his one good hand. ‘I love you. So trust me. Three months. It’s long enough, I promise you.’
He saw the movement in his father’s face; the movements of control; of pride and love and a fierce anger that it should need such a thing to bring them to this point of openness. Then he nodded, tears in his eyes. ‘You’re mad, Ben, but yes. Why not? The T’ang can spare me.’
‘Mad...’ Ben was still a moment, then he laughed and held his father to him tightly. ‘Yes. But where would I be without my madness?’
Ben turned from the open kitchen window. Behind him the moon blazed down from a clear black sky, speckled with stars. His eyes were dark and wide, like pools, reflecting the immensity he had turned from.
‘What makes it all real?’
His mother paused, the ladle held above the casserole, the smell of the steaming rabbit stew filling the kitchen. She looked across at her son, then moved ladle to plate, spilling its contents beside the potatoes and string beans. She laughed and handed it to him. ‘Here.’
She was a clever woman. Clever enough to recognize that she had given birth to something quite other than she had expected. A strange, almost alien creature. She studied her son as he took the plate from her, seeing how his eyes took in everything, as if to store it all away. His eyes devoured the world. She smiled and looked down. There was a real intensity to him – such an intellectual hunger as would power a dozen others.
Ben put his plate down, then sat, bringing his chair in closer to the table. ‘I’m not being rhetorical. It’s a question. An honest-to-goodness question.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t know. It seems almost impertinent to ask.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. It was scarcely the easiest of questions to raise at the dinner table. Who made the universe? he might as well have asked. Or Why is life? Who knew what the answer was?
Rabbit stew, maybe. She laughed.
Ben had gone very quiet, very watchful. A living microscope, quivering with expectancy.
‘Two things come to mind,’ she said, lett
ing the ladle rest in the pot. ‘And they seem to conflict with each other. The first is the sense that it’ll all turn out exactly as we expect it. What would you call that? – a sense of continuity, perhaps. But not just that. There’s also a sense we have that it will all continue, just as it ever did, and not just stop dead suddenly.’
‘And the second?’ It was Meg. She was standing in the doorway, watching them.
Beth smiled and began ladling stew into a plate for her.
‘The second’s the complete opposite of the first. It’s our ability to be shocked, surprised, or horrified by things we ought to have seen coming. Like death...’ Her voice tailed off.
‘A paradox,’ said Ben, looking down. He took a spoon from the table and began to ladle up the stock from his plate, as if it were a soup. Then he paused and nodded. ‘Yes. But how can I use that knowledge?’
There he had her. She in a lifetime had never fathomed that.
She turned to Meg, offering her the plate. ‘Where’s Father?’
‘He’ll be down. He said there was something he had to do.’
She watched Meg take her place, then began to pour stew into another plate. It was unlike Hal to be late to table. But Hal had changed. Something had happened. Something he couldn’t bring himself to tell her just yet.
‘I’m sorry to keep you, Beth.’ Hal was standing in the doorway, something small hidden behind his back. He smiled, then came forward, offering something to her.
‘What is it?’ She wiped her hands on her apron, then took the tiny present from him.
He sat, then leaned back, his arms stretched wide in a gesture of expansiveness. The old fire still burned in his eyes, but she could see that he was unwell.
She shivered and looked down at the tiny parcel, then, with a brief smile at him, began unwrapping it.
It was a case. A tiny jewel case. She opened it, then looked up, surprised.
‘Hal... It’s beautiful!’
She held it up. It was a silver ring. And set into the ring was a tiny drop-shaped pearl. A pearl the colour of the night.
Meg leaned forward excitedly. ‘It is beautiful! But I thought all pearls were white...’
‘Most are. Normally they’re selected for the purity of their colour and lustre – all discoloured pearls being discarded. But in this instance the pearl was so discoloured it attained a kind of purity of its own.’
Beth studied the pearl a moment, delighted, then looked up again. Only then did she notice Ben, sitting there, his spoon set down, his mouth fallen open.
‘Ben?’
She saw him shiver, then reach out to cover the cold, silvered form of his left hand with the fleshed warmth of his right. It was a strangely disturbing gesture.
‘I had a dream,’ he said, his eyes never leaving the ring. ‘The pearl was in it.’
Meg laughed. ‘Don’t listen to him. He’s teasing you.’
‘No.’ He had turned the silvered hand and was rubbing at its palm, as if at some irritation there. ‘It was in the dream. A pearl as dark as nothingness itself. I picked it up and it burned its way through my palm. That’s when I woke. That’s when I knew I’d damaged the hand.’
Hal was looking at his son, concerned. ‘How odd. I mean, it wasn’t until this morning, just as I was leaving, that Tolonen brought it to me. He knew I was looking for something special. Something unusual. So your dream preceded it.’ He laughed strangely. ‘Perhaps you willed it here.’
Ben hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No. It’s serendipity, that’s all. Coincidence. The odds are high, but...’
‘But real,’ Meg said. ‘Coincidence. It’s how things are, isn’t it? Part of the real.’
Beth saw how Ben’s eyes lit at that. He had been trying to fit it into things. But now Meg had placed it for him. Had allowed it. But it was strange. Very strange. A hint that there was more to life than what they experienced through their senses. Another level, hidden from them, revealed only in dreams.
She slipped the ring on, then went across to Hal and knelt beside him to kiss him. ‘Thank you, my love. It’s beautiful.’
‘Like you,’ he said, his eyes lighting momentarily.
She laughed and stood. ‘Well. Let’s have some supper, eh? Before it all goes cold.’
Hal nodded and drew his chair in to the table. ‘Oh, by the way, Ben, I’ve some news.’
Ben looked across and picked up his spoon again. ‘About the team?’
‘No. About the other thing. I’ve arranged it.’
‘Ah...’ Ben glanced at Meg, then bent his head slightly, spooning stew into his mouth.
‘What other thing?’ Meg asked, looking at Ben, a sudden hardness in her face.
Ben stared down at his plate. ‘You know. Oxford. Father’s said I can go.’
There was a moment’s silence, then, abruptly, Meg pushed her plate away and stood. ‘Then you are going?’
‘Yes.’
She stood there a moment, then turned away, storming out down the steps. They could hear her feet pounding on the stairs. A moment later a door slammed. Then there was silence.
Ben looked across and met his mother’s eyes. ‘She’s bound to take it hard.’
Beth looked at her son, then away to the open window. ‘Well...’ She sighed. ‘I suppose you can’t stay here for ever.’ She looked down, beginning to fill her own plate. ‘When do you plan to go?’
‘Three months,’ Hal answered for him. ‘Ben’s going to work on something with me before then. Something new.’
She turned, looking at Hal, surprised. ‘So you’ll be here?’
But before he could answer, Ben pushed back his chair and stood. ‘I’d best go to her. See she’s all right.’
‘There’s no need...’ she began. But Ben had already gone. Down the steps and away through the dining room, leaving her alone with Hal.
‘You’re ill,’ she said, letting her concern for him show at last.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m ill.’
The door was partly open, the room beyond in shadow. Through the window on the far side of the room the moon shone, cold and white and distant. Meg sat on her bed, her head and shoulder turned from him, the moonlight glistening in her long, dark hair.
He shivered, struck by the beauty of her, then stepped inside.
‘Meg...’ he whispered. ‘Meg, I’ve got to talk to you.’
She didn’t move; didn’t answer him. He moved past her, looking out across the bay, conscious of how the meadows, the water, the trees of the far bank – all were silvered by the clear, unnatural light. Barren, reflected light, no strength or life in it. Nothing grew in that light.
He looked down. There, on the bedside table, beside the dull silver of his hand, lay a book. He lifted it and looked. It was Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the Hans Old etching on the cover. From the ancient paper cover Nietzsche stared out at the world, fierce-eyed and bushy-browed, uncompromising in the ferocity of his gaze. So he himself would be. So he would stare back at the world, with an honest contempt for the falseness of its values. He opened the book where the leather bookmark was and read the words she had underlined. To be sure, I am a forest and a night of dark trees... Beside it, in the margin, she had written ‘Ben’. He felt a small shiver pass down his spine, then set the book down, turning to look at her again.
‘Are you angry with me?’
She made a small noise of disgust. He hesitated, then reached out and lifted her chin gently with his good hand, turning her face into the light. Her cheeks were wet, her eyes liquid with tears, but her eyes were angry.
‘You want it all, don’t you?’
‘Why not? If it’s there to be had?’
‘And never mind who you hurt?’
‘You can’t breathe fresh air without hurting someone. People bind each other with obligation. Tie each other down. Make one another suffocate in old, used-up air. I thought you understood that, Meg. I thought we’d agreed?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘We agre
ed all right. You told me how it would be and what my choices were. Take it or leave it. I had no say.’
‘And you wanted a say?’
She hesitated, then drew her face back, looking down, away from him. ‘I don’t know... I just feel... hurt by it all. It feels like you’re rejecting me. Pushing me away.’
He reached out again, this time with his other hand, not thinking. She pushed it from her, shuddering. And when she looked up, he could see the aversion in her eyes.
‘There’s a part of you that’s like that, Ben. Cold. Brutal. Mechanical. It’s not all of you. Not yet. But what you’re doing – what you plan... I’ve said it before, but it’s true. I fear for you. Fear that, that...’ she pointed to the hand ‘...will take you over, cell by cell, like some awful, insidious disease, changing you to its own kind of thing. It won’t show on the surface, of course, but I’ll know. I’ll see it in your eyes, and know it from the coldness of your touch. That’s what I fear. That’s what hurts. Not you going, but your reasons for going.’
He was silent for a moment, then he sat down next to her. ‘I see.’
She was watching him, the bitterness purged from her eyes. She had said it now. Had brought to the surface what was eating at her. She reached out and took his hand – his human hand – and held it loosely.
‘What do you want, Ben? What, more than anything, do you want?’
He said it without hesitation, almost, it seemed, without thought.
‘Perfection. Some pure and perfect form.’
She shivered and looked away. Perfection. Like the hand. Or like the moonlight. Something dead.
‘Do you love me?’
She heard him sigh, sensed the impatience in him. ‘You know I do.’
She turned slightly, looking at him, her smile sad, resigned now. Letting his hand fall from hers, she stood and lifted her dress up over her head, then lay down on the bed beside him, naked, pulling him down towards her.
‘Then make love to me.’
As he slipped from his clothes she watched him, knowing that, for all his words, this much was genuine – this need of his for her.
You asked what’s real, she thought. This... this alone is real. This thing between us. This unworded darkness in which we meet and merge. This and this only. Until we die.
The Art of War Page 27