Daylight on Iron Mountain

by David Wingrove

  He eased forward a little, pressing the touch-sensitive pads on the arm rest. With a tap he could change images, or focus in on one of the massive screens, dimming the rest while one stood out clear and sharp. Just now, however, he was content to let his gaze roam from one screen to another, seeing with his own eyes how Ebert’s assassination had stirred things up.

  He laughed quietly. It was a regular hornet’s nest tonight. Why, he had not seen so much activity for a long, long while.

  Ebert’s death had come completely out of the blue. Not a single one of them had known it was coming. Now they were trying to find out just what was going on, calling in their spies and consulting their advisors, anxious, in varying degrees, not to be overtaken by events.

  Tsao Ch’un smiled. Let them try. They were chasing shadows. Not even the great Lord of Intrigue himself, the First Dragon, had the slightest lead as to why Gustav Ebert had been killed, much as the great man prided himself on knowing everything. But that did not surprise him, for what the First Dragon did not know – what he would never have suspected in his wildest, darkest dreams – was just how far events were shaped by Tsao Ch’un: how every single strand of their intrigues was spun from the darkness of this room, like the threads of a giant web.

  Tsao Ch’un glanced across. Chao Ni Tsu was sleeping in his chair, his ash-white hair combed back from his wrinkled face. In his late seventies now, he slept a lot these days. But Tsao Ch’un still liked to have him there, useful or not, if only as a reminder of the old days, when the two of them had taken on the world and beaten it.

  Yes. It was Chao who had devised this system. Chao who had given him the means by which he might control and shape it all.

  It was all quite simple, really. To rule such a host of mightily ambitious men he had had to ensure that they never became his rivals. Their own, certainly, but never his. Which was why, over the years, Tsao Ch’un had spun intrigue after intrigue, setting one against another, keeping them at each other’s throats and away from his.

  What delighted him most, however, was the fact that they thought themselves completely unobserved, safe from all watching eyes.

  Tsao Ch’un sat back, taking in everything.

  On screen, the First Dragon yawned, then stood and came around his desk. It was his habit on most nights to send for a meal of shrimps and freshly baked bread, only tonight the old man seemed to have no appetite. He was troubled. The interview with Lahm had puzzled him.

  As it ought.

  P’eng Chuan, Lahm’s rival, was the obvious suspect, especially after what he’d said to Lahm earlier in the day. But he too seemed greatly troubled. He paced his bedchamber, ignoring the two young boys who lay there, naked beneath the silks, whilst he spoke to his AI. Sending out queries and getting back reports, striving to discover just who had struck the killing blow, and why.

  That why, of course, puzzled them all. Were BioMek the culprits? They would certainly benefit from the fallout more than any others. Only it seemed unlikely. To assassinate a rival, that wasn’t their style.

  Prince Ch’eng So Yuan, whose image was on the screen beneath P’eng Chuan’s, was clearly not to blame. Unless, of course, he had taken something to steady his nerves, for he slept like a baby, his great fat belly rising and falling like some huge silken pillow inflating and deflating.

  No. Prince Ch’eng was innocent. But then, Tsao Ch’un knew that. Knew what they all didn’t know, Amos Shepherd included.

  Amos himself was on the screen in the top right corner, the back of his head to the camera as he sketched his friend, the marshal. Another view of the same scene – focusing on Jiang Lei – could be seen three down and one in from the right.

  Maybe he should call Amos and let him in on what was happening. Then again, why spoil his fun? Amos would enjoy working it out. That was, if he hadn’t started already.

  Tsao Ch’un smiled. Wormholes. There were wormholes everywhere, and had been for years, ever since Chao Ni Tsu put them there.

  He looked back at the screen, his eyes going to Wolfgang Ebert – three squares in and two down, near the centre of the screen. Ebert had just stepped into a room, a place of white tiles and echoing voices. Tsao Ch’un frowned, trying to work out where exactly he was, then understood. He was in the mortuary. He had come to pay his last respects to his dead brother. At least, to what was left of him.

  He switched cameras, wanting to see his face.

  At once the angle changed. Now he was looking up past the edge of the gurney into Wolfgang’s face.

  That face, which was normally so hard, so uncompromising, right now was broken and vulnerable, tears dripping from those cold blue eyes as he witnessed what they had done to his brother.

  ‘Bastards…’

  Ebert knew already how it had been done. Knew now that the datscape had already been ‘infected’ when they’d bought it – riddled with wormholes that had been made to seem part of the machine’s basic programming.

  He knew how, but not why. None of them knew why.

  Tsao Ch’un looked down to where his hands rested on the arms of the chair.

  By such means had he neutered his enemies in the past, rendering their technology unusable. Shutting them down and controlling them, without them knowing what he had done. The Russians and the Americans… anyone, in fact, who had tried to oppose him.

  But rarely so spectacularly.

  Tsao Ch’un flexed his hands, then looked back at the screen.

  In the bottom left-hand square, Li Chao Ch’in, one of Tsao Ch’un’s seven closest advisors, was in his study in Tongjiang, seated at his desk, talking on the screen to his fellow advisor, Tsu Chen. The two were discussing the attack on GenSyn, trying to make sense of it. Only they too were at a loss.

  For once that pleased Tsao Ch’un. It meant that his little ploy had worked. For if those two who were closest to him knew nothing…

  He stood, tired of it all suddenly.

  Maybe. But what of Lahm?

  Tsao Ch’un glanced at Lahm’s image on the screen, then scowled. He had grown tired of Lahm and his antics. Tired of the way the man behaved. Tired of his pompous posturing and his vindictiveness. Lahm thought himself superior to all. Thought himself a grand master of intrigue. But this once he’d been shown up.

  ‘Clear the screens…’

  At once the screens went blank. The room was in heavy shadow.

  Tsao Ch’un walked over to the window and stood there, looking out across the troubled surface of the sea. A storm was blowing. If he’d wanted to, he could have gone out onto the balcony and felt its fury on his face and arms; could have listened to the waves breaking on the rocks beneath the tower. He often did, when sleep would not come. But not now.

  It had been a long day.

  He turned, looking back towards Chao Ni Tsu. The old man was in deep shadow. Embedded in the darkness, the mere suggestion of a seated man.

  Tsao Ch’un smiled.

  The truth was simple. GenSyn had been getting too big, growing too fast, becoming far too influential, especially when it came to their ‘project’ – that audacious attempt of theirs to clone perfect copies of living people. Not that that was a bad idea, only… he didn’t want that kind of biotechnology getting into the wrong hands.

  Which was why he’d had Gustav Ebert killed. Why he had stepped in anonymously an hour back, to buy up GenSyn’s fallen shares on the market and save them from going under.

  But that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was to rein them in.

  Control was the key. A key that had never failed him yet.

  One step ahead. That was what counted. That you were always one step ahead of everyone else. And if that meant killing a few good men, then so be it. For what was a single man among ten billion?

  But Lahm… what was he to do with Lahm?

  Tsao Ch’un spoke to the air. ‘The Eighth Dragon… Lahm… see to it that he has an accident… something he won’t survive.’

  There was no answer, yet he kne
w it would be done. So it was. For he had power over all. And Lahm?

  He would erase Lahm from the records. Erase all trace of the man, as if he’d never been.

  Tsao Ch’un smiled. Amos, at least, would have appreciated the irony – that one of the great architects of their faked history should disappear, his person erased from those same pages. But then Amos would never know. No. In time they would all forget that a man called Lahm had ever existed.

  Wormholes. Tsao Ch’un chuckled, thinking of it. It was all nothing but worm-holes, after all.

  PART FIVE Daylight On Iron Mountain

  SUMMER 2087

  We’ve learned the grief of raising sons –

  Not like the quiet joy of daughters

  We can marry to our neighbours.

  Our boys lie under the weeds

  Near Kokonor, their old white bones

  Remain with no one to collect them.

  Old ghosts and new complaints: you can hear them

  All night long through falling mist and rain.

  —Tu Fu, ‘Song of the Wagons’, 8th Century AD

  Chapter 16

  FACING WINTER

  The long, carved mahogany table dominated the chamber, its massive bulk dividing the courthouse down the centre, its far end facing the raised platform of the dais and the imposing judge’s chair.

  On that table, stacked high along one side like some miniature cityscape from before the Collapse, were piles of dusty law tomes, their covers brown and green and black. The smell of leather and old parchment was strong in that poorly ventilated place.

  Entering the chamber and seeing that great stack of books, seeing beyond them, the massed host – the Chang family and their lawyers, their ranks filling the rows of benches across from him – Jake felt his stomach clench with anxiety.

  The twenty years he had worked for MicroData ought to have carried some weight. Ought to have guaranteed him his pension, only what chance did he have against such a team? What in heaven’s name had made him think he could outwit and out-argue them? No. The Chang family were an old and powerful family. They had connections. And they clearly had the wealth and the will to fight him every step of the way.

  Jake swallowed, then glanced round at his own legal team – at the grey-beard, Yang Hung Yu and his young, beardless assistant, Chi Lin Lin. Their eyes, he saw, caught on that huge mountain of legal tomes and quailed. Advocate Yang looked down at the slender file he was carrying and seemed dismayed. He had said to Jake that this was just a formality, only it didn’t look that way. The Chang family were clearly going to deal with this before it became a problem. And he – Jake Reed – would be the one to suffer the consequences.

  A test case, that’s what I am.

  Jake looked across, as Chang Yi Wei and his three brothers – the most senior members of their clan – entered the chamber through the far door. They were dressed in the finest, most expensive silks, their wrists and necks dripping with silver and gold. From their smiling, joking demeanour, they clearly felt very pleased with themselves. In their minds the case was already decided. Decided and dismissed.

  Chang Yi Wei seemed particularly smug. His face – familiar to Jake through the briefings he had had with Advocate Yang – had a sneering quality Jake found disconcerting. It seemed to imply that he was the defendant here, not they.

  Yang reached across, tugging at Jake’s arm. ‘Shih Reed… come…’

  Jake let himself be led across, taking a seat between Advocate Yang and his young assistant, the three of them lost in those massive, empty benches, facing the Chang family and their legal team.

  It’s like being on a battlefield, Jake thought. Like looking across the space between two armies in that final moment before the drums rolled and they threw themselves at each other.

  Or like David and Goliath, he thought, only that wasn’t so. What could his tiny little slingshot do against this great host of big men?

  We are outnumbered, Jake thought, despairing now that his day in court had come. Hard as he knew it would be, he had imagined it otherwise. Had thought it would be more equal. More fair. Only the Changs were not interested in fair. They had not bought the MicroData Corporation to be fair. They had bought it to advance their family’s fortunes. Yes, and to strip it to the bone.

  Which was why Jake was here.

  He leaned across, whispering in Yang’s ear, ‘We haven’t a fucking chance, have we?’

  Yang Hung Yu didn’t say no, but then he didn’t say yes either. He seemed… stunned. Terrified by the massed ranks that sat across from him. Cowed by them. Like Jake, he had not quite understood what he was taking on.

  ‘Aiya!’ young Chi Lin Lin murmured. ‘Ai-fucking-ya!’

  But there was barely time to get used to the situation when the Judge entered from the far end, from the huge doorway just beyond the platform, flanked by the six officers of the court, all of them resplendent in their peacock-blue gowns, big square badges on their chests denoting their ranks.

  All seven of them Han, Jake noted. For that was how it was. From what Peter had told him, there was barely a single Hung Mao in the whole judicial system.

  Which is one way of controlling it all, I guess. One means of keeping us Hung Mao in our place.

  The three of them stood and bowed, even as the Judge took his seat, spreading his silks about him as if he was lord of all he surveyed. Which he was, to all intents and purposes.

  Across from them the Chang clan and their lawyers had turned as one to face the Judge, bowing in unison, as if they had practised it. Which was probably the truth.

  It was an inauspicious day. He had known that from the moment he had woken, hours before the dawn, not quite knowing where he was, in the grip of childhood dreams.

  Up on the dais, the Judge gestured that all should be seated. Jake sat, then took the cloth Mary had given him from the pocket of his silks, wiping the sweat from his brow. He felt hot suddenly, unbearably uncomfortable.

  Dreams. It was years since he’d been plagued with such dreams.

  Advocate Yang leaned in, whispering to his ear. ‘Their Chief Advocate… Hui Chang Yeh… he’s the big fat one. He has to make their deposition now. He’ll argue that there’s no case to answer. It make take some while. They’ll doubtless quote a precedent or two. Then I’ll have a chance to speak. To convince the Judge that there is a case, and to get him to allow us to present our evidence. But as I say, it may take some time.’

  Which was true. Not only that, but Chief Advocate Hui made his presentation in Mandarin; barely a word of which Jake understood.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Yang said, leaning close to whisper in his ear. ‘Chi Lin Lin is taking notes. You can read a translation later. But look… it will be hours yet before Hui has finished. If you want to go and rest… I can have Chi Lin Lin come fetch you when he’s winding up.’

  Jake considered that. Part of him felt he ought to stay, for form’s sake, if nothing else. Then again, he had hardly slept last night, and when he had…

  He looked across at the packed benches opposite. What would they think of him if he left now?

  Damn what they think, he decided, smiling at Yang and standing. Fuck the Changs and their massed ranks!

  ‘Fetch me, yes?’ he said to Chi Lin Lin. ‘You know where I am.’

  Jake lay there on his bed in the rented room, propped up against the wall. He had stayed in some uncomfortable places in his life, but this topped them all.

  The room was barely bigger than the single bed. There was a small sink with a mirror, and a tiny screen set into the wall, its channel permanently fixed to the local news station. Only the walls…

  He shuddered. The walls were the plain translucent white of ice. Normally they would have been sprayed, decorated to make them opaque, only these were not. That hadn’t stopped a succession of temporary tenants from spotting the wall with all manner of foul-coloured substances, like some abstract piece of art.

  I am too old for this, he thought, closing his
eyes. Not that there was any real choice. Home was more than two hours by public transport, and at his age he knew it would kill him off to do that journey here and back every day. Especially if the case went on for weeks, and there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t. The carriages were packed, and he’d been lucky today to get a seat.

  Jake sighed. This was the Changs’ doing. He had hoped they would try this case in one of the local courthouses, but they’d had it transferred here. Had used their influence to fuck him over. Why, this was barely ten minutes from their head office.

  He yawned, unable to stop himself. Three hours he’d had at most last night. And then he’d woken, sheened in sweat, from the dream.

  He could remember every single detail of that day. Could remember that morning, playing out in the garden with his sister, May, running about, chasing each other and giggling. The grass beneath their feet the softest green, wet from the dew, the lawn scattered with bright red leaves.

  They had meant to go cycling that morning, up the narrow lanes that cut through the woods behind his grandparents’ house – to the old pond, maybe, or what they called the crow’s nest at the very top of the hill. Only his bike had got a puncture. A tiny nail, it was. He remembered his grandfather placing it in his palm. Could recall the cold wet feel of it. And then his parents, calling out to them, asking if they wanted to go into town to get some shopping.

  May had gone but he had stayed, helping his grandfather fix the puncture, running water into the bowl from the outside tap, then carrying it across, the water slopping side to side as he walked. Watching as his grandfather squeezed the inner tube, looking for the hole, air bubbles finally rising to the surface.

  There!

  And then the phone, ringing and ringing, and after it had stopped, after a long and oddly peaceful silence, the birds singing in the nearby trees. Yes, he remembered. Remembered how he had turned at the sound of his grandma’s choking voice, staring at her, trying to make sense of her tears as she stumbled through the door, her legs almost giving way.