Son of Heaven

by Wingrove, David

  ‘That’s an astonishing theory.’

  ‘No, Jake. It’s not a theory. It’s what happened. That’s what I’m telling you. All of those little articles and essays. They all add up. The signs were there, before it all happened. You only had to know where to look.’

  Jake looked down. Since he’d first seen it, he had been wondering what on earth it had been, out there on the horizon. Now he knew.

  ‘There’s something out there, Geoff. On the edge of things…’

  Geoff shifted slightly in his chair. ‘Are we talking metaphorically now, or for real?’

  ‘For real. It’s something Peter noticed. I went up on the King’s Tower with him earlier and he pointed it out to me. It’s out past Poole and Bourne -mouth way. Right out on the very limits of what we could see with the glasses.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s a great mass of whiteness, out there on the horizon.’

  ‘A block of whiteness?’ Geoff laughed.

  ‘Like a glacier. You want me to show you?’

  Geoff seemed to blanch at that. He realized suddenly that Jake was serious.

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Like a huge glacier. Only you don’t get glaciers this far south. And it’s October. And I think I know now who’s behind it…’

  ‘China…’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘A glacier?’ Geoff said. ‘Or a wall, maybe?’

  Jake nodded.

  ‘But why would they build a wall?’

  ‘Why do people ever build walls?’

  ‘To keep their enemies out…’

  ‘Or their people in.’

  ‘Yes, but why build it there?’

  ‘Unless it’s not a wall…’

  He took Geoff up onto the tower. There, using Geoff’s glasses, which were considerably less powerful than his own, he had tried to point it out, only it was hard to get a clear view.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Geoff said finally, lowering the glasses. ‘It looks like something there, but what it is…’

  ‘I’ll bring my glasses… tomorrow… we’ll look at it then… you’ll get a clearer view.’

  Geoff turned to him. ‘It’s like you said the other evening, Jake… The big question is what do they want with us? Do they want to rule us or exclude us? Help us or kill us?’

  ‘You think those are the only choices?’

  ‘Well… they sure as hell aren’t going to leave us be. That’s never the way of it. If history teaches anything, it’s that an invading force makes certain it’s secure, and by whatever means it can.’

  ‘Then we’re to fight? Resist them?’

  Geoff shrugged. ‘You saw their craft. Do you think we can?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then. Resistance isn’t an option.’

  Walking home, Jake thought about that. Was that it, then? Had Fate decided? When China came, was that their role in this – to acquiesce?

  If so, it seemed ignoble. Not only that, but the dark historical parallels of it disturbed him. When the world changed, people died. That was the rule of it.

  Yes, but maybe they could choose how they died… He was walking along the final stretch of the lane coming up to the church when he heard a noise, a strange animal whining, coming from just ahead of him, over to his left.

  That’s Boy, he thought. That has to be Boy!

  Jake broke into a run. As he came out onto the main stretch of road, he paused, trying to get a fix on the noise.

  There, he thought. The Hubbards’ house…

  His heart was pounding now. What if it was bandits… part of that huge army that Branagh’s men had driven off? Jake hauled his gun from his shoulder and ran with it out before him, the safety off. Anxiety burned in him now.

  Where’s the whistle? Why haven’t you blown the fucking whistle?

  As he came to the gate, he leapt the low wall and ran on, down the passage -way between the house and the garage and out into the garden space beyond.

  There, crouched low, like he’d been told to sit, Boy was howling now, his head tilted skyward.

  Jake turned, trying to make out what was happening.

  Peter was standing in the doorway, looking in.

  Thank god…

  Only he didn’t look right.

  ‘Peter…?’

  Peter turned his head, looking towards him. ‘Dad…?’

  He looked back inside, then quickly came across. ‘Thank god you’ve come. I was going to come and get you…’

  ‘Hey, hold on…’

  He lifted Peter’s face, saw it was wet with tears.

  ‘He’s dead, Dad. Tom’s dead…’

  ‘Dead…?’

  The shock of it ran through him like a jolt of electricity.

  He could hear it now, from upstairs. The sound of sobbing.

  ‘Christ… when?’

  Peter’s face convulsed. ‘He was sitting up talking to us. He…’

  He shook his head, unable to continue. Jake gripped his shoulder briefly, then pushed past, hurrying across.

  The sound was louder inside. For a moment he paused, looking about him at the kitchen. So many happy moments he’d shared with them, here about their table. So much joy. But now the room seemed desolate, untenanted.

  He climbed the stairs, fighting gravity it seemed, his reluctance like some foul force draining his strength.

  Dead. He couldn’t be dead.

  At the doorway he stopped, looking in, seeing how the four of them crowded the bed. Clinging to him, like they’d become one in their grief. Tom’s girls.

  The thought of it unmanned him. Tears rolled down his face.

  Tom’s girls…

  Sensing him there, Mary turned and, on seeing him, wiped her eyes on her apron and came across.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked, looking past her at Tom’s face, where it lay, pale against the pure white pillow.

  Tom looked like he was sleeping.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mary said quietly. ‘His ’eart…’

  She stopped, her face creased with pain.

  Jake stepped close, holding her to him, letting her sob against his shoulder.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mary… So sorry…’

  Her hands gripped his shoulders briefly. She took a long, shuddering breath, then moved back slightly. She was trying to smile, to reassure him somehow, only it came out like a grimace.

  ‘It’s good in a way, Jake. At least he won’t suffer…’

  But he could see she didn’t believe that. She looked distraught. Besides, he knew how it had been between them. There was no faking that. Every second she had had with Tom had been precious. But now he was gone, and that vast gulf between the living and the dead had opened up between them; a vastness that made nothing of the distance between stars.

  He had been dying, sure, but that was weeks off, months they’d hoped. To lose him now seemed cruel.

  ‘I’ll go back down,’ he said. ‘Make us all some tea…’

  Mary was staring at him now. ‘Thanks…’ But as he made to turn away, she reached out, taking his arm.

  ‘Jake… don’t go home tonight. Stay here… please… Just tonight…’

  ‘Sure…’

  He went down, busying himself, trying not to think.

  As if he had a choice…

  It was the end of familiar life, he realized. Of normalcy. It was not just Tom’s death. Not just the whiteness at the edge of things. Everything had changed.

  And so it comes again…

  Once before he had faced this. Once before it had all dissolved about him. Only this time he was scared, truly scared. This time it was sink or swim. This time it was for real.

  Chapter 9

  ENDURING WILLOW

  It was a rest day and Jiang Lei was writing poetry.

  At least, trying to.

  Jiang Lei was a tall, elegant Han. A refined and dignified man, he had the self-contained air of one accustomed to command. Dressed in a pale blue silk, his dark hair,
in which there were threads of grey, tied back severely in a bun at the back of his head, he might easily have been mistaken for a figure from an ancient painting. A study by Ku K’ai Chih, or Chou Fang, or the masterful Ku Hung Chung.

  He was sitting on an ancient campaign chair his men had found for him some months back, when they had been in France; a relic of the Napoleonic Wars. Jiang liked the chair, even if it was somewhat uncomfortable. He liked its history. The thought that maybe it had belonged to a general like himself.

  The view was a pleasant one. Of water meadows and a river, and, beyond a small outcrop of rocks, the sea. Another day he might have brought his paint box from the ship and spent the morning sketching. But not today. Today he was composing.

  Or trying to.

  The place he was in was quite beautiful. He had chosen it himself having seen it from the air a day or two ago during their reconnaissance. Just behind him, to his right, was an ancient temple, what the locals called a ‘parish church’, and beside that a graveyard, curiously untended, the ancestor stones worn down and covered in moss, some of them hidden in the tangle of wild flowers and brambles. He had walked there earlier, enjoying the peacefulness of the place; the sense of timelessness.

  Only its time had ended now. In a day or two it would all be gone.

  Jiang turned his head, looking back at the encampment. His tent was on the near side of the field, in the shade of an old oak tree; a spacious thing of delicate rose-coloured silk with pale yellow panels. Beyond it, on the far side, were two rows of simple canvas tents, near to which his men – random specimens of ‘Old Hundred Names’, peasant soldiers with peasant faces – went about their business, washing and cooking and checking their weapons.

  Beyond them, some way distant, was the city – or part of it, anyway – being built even as he sat there, a great slab of hexagonal whiteness that dominated the horizon. Closer to hand, not half a mile away, his men were busy putting up barbed wire fences, enclosing a large space in which stood six rows of dormitory huts made of the same opaque plastic as the city.

  He turned back, looking down at the page, then tore the paper from the pad and, crumpling it, threw it down.

  He was a good poet. A better poet, indeed, than he was a general. He was even famous, among his own people, the Han. But they did not know him as Jiang Lei, they knew him under his pen name, Nai Liu, ‘Enduring Willow’. Indeed, for many he was the voice of his time, his verses reprinted in a thousand places. But life was far from easy for Jiang Lei, for he was also a general in the Eighteenth Banner of the great army of the illustrious and wise Tsao Ch’un, sole ruler of half the earth, and as such he was closely watched.

  It was that watcher, a short and stocky man with a quite strikingly ugly face, who approached him now, walking towards Jiang Lei from the direction of the river. This was Wang Yu-Lai, the cadre appointed by the Ministry, ‘The Thousand Eyes’ as it was known. His task was to watch Jiang Lei, to ensure that things were done properly, and to report back to his Masters whether they were or not.

  My dark shadow, Jiang Lei thought, seeing him approach.

  Wang stopped two paces from Jiang Lei, his shadow falling over the older man’s notebook. ‘Might I have a word, my lord?’

  Wang’s head was bowed, his manner deferent, yet there was something in his voice that lacked respect. Wang thought that he had the power. That he had only to maintain the semblance of respect.

  Not that that worried Jiang Lei too much. It was not that that rankled with him. Or not much, anyway. It was Wang’s humourlessness, the absence of any charity in his nature. Wang was not a good Confucian. He did not understand that one had to lead by example; that benevolence was a virtue, not a weakness. No, the man was little more than a common bully. Jiang had seen with his own eyes how he treated the men.

  It was disgusting. But Jiang Lei had no choice. Wang Yu-Lai had been appointed to him by the First Dragon himself, the Head of The Thousand Eyes. To watch him with his petty little black eyes, like a jackdaw watching a worm.

  Jiang almost smiled. He would write that down later on. Make a couplet of it, maybe.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Jiang said, revealing nothing of his real self.

  ‘It is just… I have had a word, my lord… with those at home and…’

  ‘Go on,’ Jiang said, noting Wang’s hesitation. It was usually the prelude to some nastiness or other.

  ‘Well, my lord, the feeling is that you have been too… lenient, shall we say. That you have allowed, perhaps, too many into the camps that should have been passed over.’

  Killed, you mean.

  But Jiang didn’t say that.

  ‘And is that how you feel, Wang Yu-Lai? Am I being too lenient?’

  Wang bowed even lower. He seemed to be cringing, but Jiang knew that Wang’s true self was smiling, even if his face showed something else.

  ‘Oh, no, my lord… but my Masters…’

  Wang’s head lifted a little, his eyes taking a sneaky little look at Jiang Lei to see how he was reacting to the news, then went down again.

  ‘Well… it would not harm to placate them, neh, my lord? To give them what they want.’

  Only Jiang knew what they wanted. Annihilation. Genocide. Call it what you will. But this was better. This semblance of fairness.

  ‘You may tell your Masters that I hear what they say… and will act.’

  Wang bobbed as much as bowed. ‘My lord…’

  Jiang waited until the odious little bastard was gone, then, setting his book aside, stood up and walked over to the river’s edge, looking out across the waterlogged fields.

  He was a good Confucian and his service record was exemplary, but lately he had come to question his role in things, and some of that questioning had come out in his poetry. All of which disturbed him, for a good poem ought to possess ‘Wen Ch’a Te’ – elegance, and of late his work had had a certain spikiness and lack of shape which he abhorred. Only what could he do? It was the path his creative instincts chose and they had always, until now, been right.

  And yet it felt wrong. Not only that, but he knew that such poems could not be published, not in the current climate, anyway, and should the odious Wang get hold of them… well… there would be trouble.

  Jiang closed his eyes, letting go of the turbulence within, letting his mind clear, his inner spirit grow calm, and in a moment all was well once more. When he opened his eyes what he saw was the simple beauty of the land. Its ancient mystery.

  Ying Kuo… Inn-glaan.

  Jiang formed the words in his mind the way his men would say them, in that crude peasant way of theirs. Inn-glaan. He, of course, could speak the language fluently, but sometimes it paid to feign ignorance when you were dealing with them.

  Sometimes…

  Jiang sighed, hearing the man’s creeping footsteps approach from behind him once again. He waited and, after a while, Wang cleared his throat.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, speaking to Jiang’s back. ‘Forgive me for disturbing you but… another batch of processees has arrived. I thought…’

  ‘I’ll deal with it later,’ Jiang said, making no move to turn and face the man; his voice brooking no argument. ‘Just settle them in, neh?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Jiang Lei waited, listening to the rustle of the man’s cheap silks as he retreated, then turned.

  Wang was hurrying across the field towards the tents, lifting his skirts so as not to get mud on them. He was already some way off, but even from that distance Jiang Lei could see a kind of pent-up vindictiveness in the man. Wang was a busybody. He had an instinct for making others’ lives miserable, and right now he was going to spread some of that misery among the men.

  Jiang watched a moment longer, then turned away. The truth was he despised Wang Yu-Lai. Loathed Wang with a fierceness that was most unlike his normal self, not merely for his pettiness but for his cruelty.

  Jiang shook his head slowly. He had given up on the poem. There would be no composing today. Wa
ng had seen to that. He was in much too sour a mood now to continue.

  As for this matter of his leniency…

  Jiang walked across, then stood in the doorway of his tent. He had told Wang he would do this later, but there was no real point in delaying. No. He would begin at once. Get it done and out of the way. Then maybe he could rest.

  He went inside, into the right-hand chamber where his portable desk was. His papers were still there where he’d left them earlier, and his slate.

  Jiang picked the slate up and took it through into his inner sanctum. There, sprawled out on his bed, he began, watching their faces come onscreen, quickly reading through their files, sorting through them one by one, deciding which would stay and which go.

  Like Solomon, he thought, recalling the old story.

  Only the wisdom of Solomon evaded him. At best he was a good servant to Tsao Ch’un. At worst… Well, some might have called him a murderer.

  I have no choice, he told himself, not for the first time. If it were not I, then another would do this, and cause much greater suffering than I. At least I am fair.

  Only it didn’t convince him. It never did. And as he came to the end of it, he felt what he always felt – a kind of self-disgust. A self-loathing almost equal to that he had of Cadre Wang.

  Only deeper and more profound.

  ‘Curse my mood,’ he mumbled, setting the slate aside. ‘And curse the lack of poetry in me.’

  But it wasn’t the lack of poetry that really worried him. It was the lack of pity.

  On that clear, beautiful autumn day, in the grassy space at the back of St. Peter’s Church, they gathered to say goodbye. There were more than a hundred in all, friends of Tom, come in from the surrounding villages to pay their last respects.

  Beside the grave itself, stood Mary and her girls, the four of them dressed in black, distraught, clinging on to each other as that darling man, their father, was lowered into the earth.

  For Jake, looking on, it was unbearable. His loss was vast, yet it was the sight of Tom’s girls, weeping uncontrollably, that got to him. He felt bereft, his heart broken, yet his sorrow was but a shadow of theirs. Mary, particularly, seemed close to collapse. As Geoff Horsfield read the eulogy, she shook, like at any moment she would fall into that awful, gaping hole with the man she’d loved.