An Inch of Ashes (CHUNG KUO SERIES)

by David Wingrove

  He smiled sadly. ‘I know. I feel it too, my love. It calls us strongly. But this is now, not then. We cannot go back. This is a new age and the heroes are dead. The land of Kalevala is gone. We cannot bring it back.’

  She shivered. No, she wanted to say; it’s still alive, inside us – in that part of us that dreams and seeks fulfilment. And yet he was right. There was only this left. This faint, sad echo of a greater, more heroic age. This only. And when it too was gone?

  She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of loss. The loss of something she had never known. And yet not so, for it was still a part of her. She could feel it – there in the sinew and bone and blood of her.

  ‘Jelka?’

  She looked up. Her uncle was standing by the shelves, watching her, concerned, the pain in his eyes the reflection of her own.

  ‘The Kalevala... Would you like to read it?’

  He stretched out his hand, offering one of the thick, leather-bound volumes. Jelka stared back at him a moment, then went across to him, taking the book. For a moment she simply stared at it, astonished, tracing the embossed lettering of the cover with her finger, then she turned, looking at her father.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course. But remember what I said. It belongs here. Nowhere else.’

  Jelka nodded, then looked back at the book. She opened the cover and read the title page.

  ‘I didn’t think...’ she began, then laughed.

  ‘Didn’t think what?’ said her uncle, standing beside her.

  ‘This,’ she said, looking up into his face. ‘I never dreamed there would be a book of it.’

  ‘It wasn’t a book. Not at first. It was all songs, thousands of songs, sung by peasants in the homelands of Karelia. One man collected them and made them into a single tale. But now there’s only this. This last copy. The rest of it has gone – singers and songs, the people and the land – as if it had never been.’

  She looked back at him, then stared at the book in her hands, awed. The last copy. It frightened her somehow.

  ‘Then I’ll take good care of it,’ she said. ‘As if it were a sister to me.’

  Chen raised himself uneasily in the bed, then pulled the cover up, getting comfortable again. His chest was strapped, his arm in bandages, but he had been lucky. The knife had glanced against a rib, missing anything vital. He had lost a lot of blood, but he would heal. As for the arm wound, that was superficial – the kind of thing one got in a hard training session.

  Karr was sitting across from him, scowling, his huge frame far too big for the hospital chair. He leaned forward angrily, giving vent to what he’d had to hold in earlier while the nurse had been in the room.

  ‘You were stupid, Chen. You should have waited for me.’

  Chen gritted his teeth against a sudden wash of pain, then answered his friend.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gregor. There wasn’t time.’

  ‘You could have contacted me. From Liu Chang’s. You could have let me know what you planned. As it was I didn’t even know you’d gone to see the pimp until half an hour back. I thought we were waiting for the Security report on Liu Chang.’

  ‘I got it back before I went in. It confirmed what we’d thought. He was an actor, in opera, before he became a pimp. And there was one unproven charge of murder against him. That was the reason he was demoted to the Net.’

  Karr huffed impatiently. ‘Even so, you should have waited. You could have been killed.’

  It was true. He should have waited. But he hadn’t. Why? Perhaps because he had wanted to do it himself. It was mixed up with Pavel somehow – the boy on the Plantation who had been killed by DeVore’s henchman. He still felt guilty about that. So perhaps he had put himself at risk to punish himself. Or maybe it was more complex than that. Maybe it had to do with the risks involved. He had enjoyed it, after all. Had liked the way the odds were stacked against him.

  Five to one. And he had come out of it alive. Had fought them hand to hand and beaten them. Kwai he was. He knew it now, clearer than he had ever known it before. Kwai.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘It was wrong of me.’

  Karr sat back a little, then laughed, meeting Chen’s eyes, his anger dissipating. ‘Still, you’re alive.’

  There was a knock, then a head poked round the door.

  ‘Axel!’ Chen tried to sit up, then eased back, groaning softly.

  Haavikko came into the room. Giving a small nod of acknowledgment to Karr, he went across and took Chen’s hand, concerned.

  ‘What happened? Gregor told me you’d been hurt, but not how.’

  Chen took a painful breath, then grinned up at Haavikko, squeezing his hand. ‘It was only a scrape...’

  Karr laughed. ‘Only a scrape! You know what our friend here has been doing, Axel?’

  Haavikko looked, shaking his head.

  ‘Shall I tell him, Chen, or do you want to?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Chen, the pain from his ribs momentarily robbing him of breath.

  Karr pointed beyond Haavikko, indicating a chair in the corner. ‘Those are Chen’s clothes. Look in the top pocket of the tunic. You’ll find something there that will interest you.’

  Haavikko turned and looked. The tunic was ripped and bloodstained, but the pocket was intact. He reached inside and drew out a thin piece of transparent card.

  ‘This?’

  Karr nodded and watched as Haavikko studied it a moment then looked back at him, his expression blank. ‘So? What is it?’

  Karr went across, taking the card. ‘I’ll show you exactly how it works later on. For now take my word on it. This is what they call an implant. Or, at least, the record of one. On this card is stored all the information you’d need to make a special chemical. One that could create a false memory in someone’s head.’

  Haavikko looked up. ‘So?’

  ‘So the information on this particular card was designed for one specific person. You.’

  ‘Me?’ Haavikko laughed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just this. Chen here did some digging into your friend Liu Chang’s past. And then he paid the man a visit. From that he got confirmation of something he and I had suspected from the start. That and an address below the Net. At that address he found a man named Herrick who makes these things. And from Herrick he got this card – which is a copy of a false memory that was implanted in your head. The memory of killing a young sing-song girl.’

  Haavikko had blanched. ‘No... It’s not possible. I remember...’ His voice faltered and he looked down, wetting his lips with his tongue. ‘It can’t have been false. It was too real. Too...’

  Karr reached out, touching his shoulder. ‘And yet it’s true, Axel Haavikko. You didn’t kill her. Someone else did. Probably Liu Chang. Your only mistake was to take the drug that was mixed in with your wine. It was that which made you think you’d killed her.’

  ‘No...’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Chen. ‘Wait until you see the copy. You never touched her. You couldn’t have done, don’t you see? You’re not that kind of man.’

  They watched him. Watched his chest rise and fall. Then saw how he looked at them again, disbelief warring with a new hope in him.

  ‘Then I really didn’t do it? I didn’t kill that poor girl?’

  ‘No,’ said Karr fiercely, taking his arm. ‘No, my friend. But we know who did. We can’t prove it yet but we will. And when we do we’ll nail the bastard. For all the lives he’s ruined.’

  Jelka cried out, then sat up in the darkness, the terror of the dream still gripping her. She could see the three men vividly: tall, thin men, standing there at the lake’s edge, staring across at her, their eyes like black stones in their unnaturally white faces, their long, almost skeletal hands dripping with blood. And herself, there at the centre of the lake, the great slab of stone sinking slowly beneath her feet, drawing her down into the icy depths.

  She heard footsteps on the flags of the corridor outside, then the creaking
of her door as it opened. Her heart leaped to her mouth, certain they had come for her again, but as the lamplight spilled into the room she saw it was only her father.

  ‘What is it, my love?’

  He came across and, setting the lamp down on the bedside table, sat beside her on the bed, holding her to him. She closed her eyes a moment, shuddering, letting him comfort her, then moved back slightly, looking up into his face.

  ‘It was the dream again. But worse. This time I was in Kalevala... in the land of heroes. All about me was a wilderness of tree and rock and shallow pools. And still they came for me, following me through the trees. As if they had travelled back across the years to find me...’

  His face creased in sympathetic pain. He drew her close, comforting her. ‘There, my love. It’s all right. I’m here now. No one will harm you. I promise you.’

  His arms encircled her, strong, powerful arms that were like great walls of stone, protecting her, but still she could see the three assassins; see how they smiled, toothless, their mouths black like coals, as she sank into the ice-cold water.

  He moved back, looking down at her. ‘Shall I ask Helga to come?’

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  He went to the door, then turned, looking back at her. ‘And don’t worry. No one will harm you here. No one.’

  She was up early the next morning, watching her father pack. Later she sat there at the harbour’s edge, watching the boat slowly disappear from sight. For a while she just stared at the nothingness, aching for him to return, then, with a start, she realized that the nothingness was filled with living things: was a universe of form and colour.

  She walked back slowly to the house, looking about her, Erkki, the young guard her father had insisted on, trailing some twenty ch’i behind. There was a whole world here to explore, different in kind from the soft and sun-baked islands of Sumatra she had known during her father’s exile. No, even the light was different here; was somehow familiar. Already the island seemed not strange but merely something she had forgotten.

  In the days that followed she explored the island. Day by day she added to her knowledge of its ways; its dark pools and tiny waterfalls, its narrow inlets and silent places, its caves and meadows. And slowly, very slowly, she fell in love with it.

  Above all there was one special place...

  It was the afternoon of her fourth day and she was making her way down from the island’s summit, Erkki following. Usually he stayed close, calling her back when he felt she was taking too great a risk, but the path down from the crest was familiar now, and he relaxed, letting her go ahead.

  She made her way across the grassy hilltop to a place where the land fell away. There, at the cliff’s edge, stood a ruined chapel, its roof open to the sky, the doorway empty, gaping. It was a tiny building, the floor inside cracked and overgrown with weeds, one of the side walls collapsed, the heavy stones spilled out across the grass. Yet you could still read the lettering carved into the stone lintel and see the symbols of fish, lamb and cross cut into the stone inside.

  She had asked her uncle about the words – words that seemed familiar despite their strangeness; which shared the same letters as her own tongue, yet were alien in their form – but he had not known their meaning, only that they were Latin, the ancient language of the Ta Ts’in. As for the symbols, he knew but he would not say.

  For a moment she stood there, staring out at the sea beyond the ruin, then went on, finding the path down.

  It was an old path, worn by many feet, and near the bottom, where the way grew steep, steps had been cut into the rock. She picked her way nimbly between the rocks and out beneath the overhang. There, on the far side of the broad shelf of rock, was the cave.

  This was her special place; the place of voices. Here the island spoke to her in a thousand ancient tongues.

  She went halfway across the ledge then stopped, crouching, looking down through the crack in the great grey slab. There, below her, the incoming tide was channelled into a fissure in the rock. For a moment she watched the rush and foam of the water through the narrow channel, then looked across at the young guard, noting how he was watching her, smiling, amused by what she was doing.

  ‘Can’t you hear it, Erkki? It’s talking to me.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s just a noise.’

  She looked down at it again, then lifted her head, listening for the other voices – for the sound of the wind, the branches singing overhead, the cry of sea birds calling out to sea. ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘They’re voices. But you have to listen carefully.’

  Again he laughed. ‘If you say so, Nu shi Tolonen. But it’s just noise to me. I haven’t the ear for it, I guess.’

  She looked at him a moment, then smiled and turned away. No, he hadn’t the ear for it but, then, few had these days. A constant diet of trivee shows and holodramas had immunized them against it; had dulled their senses and filled their heads with illusions. But she could hear it – the inner voice of things. Could feel it in her blood. The pulse of the great world – more real, more alive, than anything within the levels.

  She paused, wiping her hands against her thighs, then went across and stood there at the edge of the rock, looking out across the rutted surface of the sea. She could feel the wind like a hand against her face, roughly caressing her; could taste the salt tang on her lips. For a moment she stood there, her eyes closed, imagining herself at the helm of a great ship, crossing the vast ocean, on her way to discover new lands. Then, smiling, she turned and went across to the cave, ducking beneath the low shelf of rock into the darkness beyond.

  For a moment she paused, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, sniffing at the air. Then she frowned. Maybe it was only her imagination, but today it seemed different, less dank and musty than usual, but maybe that had to do with the weather. Her uncle had said a storm was on its way. Had warned her to be indoors when it came.

  She smiled and turned, looking about her. There, on the wall behind her, were the ancient letters, a hand’s length in height, scored into the rock and dyed a burned ochre against the pale cream of the rock. Their stick-like, angular shapes brought to mind a game she had played as a child with her amah’s yarrow stalks. Further in, where the ceiling sloped down to meet the floor of the cave, she had found a pile of tiny bones and the charred remains of an ancient fire. She bent down, squinting into the deep shadows, then frowned. They had been disturbed.

  A tiny ripple of fear went up her back. And then she heard it. A strange, rustling noise at the back of the cave.

  ‘Erkki!’ she called, in a low, urgent whisper.

  He was there in a moment, crouched in the cave’s entrance, his gun searching the dark interior.

  ‘What is it?’ he said quietly.

  She held her breath. Maybe she had imagined it. But then it came again, closer now. She shivered, then caught her breath as a pair of eyes looked back at her from the darkness. Dark, feral eyes that held her own, unblinking.

  ‘It’s an animal,’ she said softly, fear giving way to astonishment in her. ‘A wild animal.’

  She heard the click as Erkki took the safety off his gun and put her hand out, signalling him to hold still.

  She took a slow step backward, then another, until she was beside him. ‘It won’t harm us. It’s more afraid of us than we are of it. It must have been sleeping at the back of the cave, and I disturbed it.’

  Beside her Erkki shivered. ‘I thought all the animals were dead.’

  Yes, she thought. So did I. But there’s one – and probably more than one – here on the island. She could make out more of it now – could see how dark its fur was, how small, yet powerful its limbs. She had seen its like in her school textbooks. It was a fox. A real live fox.

  Erkki touched her arm gently. ‘Shall I bring a cage? There’s one in the house. We could catch it and take it back with us.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Let it go free. It belongs here. Look at it – it wasn’t meant to
be caged.’

  Nor we, she thought, wondering how long ago the trap had been set on her own kind, the bars secured on every side. But she could do this much: could leave this tiny fragment of wildness here where it belonged. To make a pet of it... She shuddered. It would die if they put it in a cage.

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘let’s get back. The storm is coming.’

  At the summit she stopped again, looking about her. Gulls circled overhead, their cries shrill, bad-tempered. She pulled her jacket close about her. The wind was growing stronger, more blustery. To the north-east storm clouds were gathering, dark and threatening, massing above the City. A storm was coming, just as her uncle had said. She laughed. Let it come! Let the heavens open! She would greet it here, if need be. Then she turned and saw Erkki watching her.

  ‘Okay. I’m coming. Just a little longer...’

  He nodded and started down. For a moment longer she stood there, looking about her, imagining herself mistress of all she saw. Then, with a sigh, she followed Erkki down towards the lights of the house.

  Director Spatz sat back in his chair, pointing directly at the screen.

  ‘Well, Ellis? What in the gods’ names is that?’

  ‘We’re not sure as yet, Director, but we’re working on it. At first we thought it might be some kind of star chart, considering the boy’s interest in astronomy, but we’ve run it through the computer for a possible match and there’s nothing.’

  For a moment both men were silent, staring at the screen. There were forty-six points in all, most of them linked by straight lines to three or four other lines. They formed a tight cat’s cradle on the screen, elliptical in structure, like the upper half of a skull.

  Spatz huffed loudly. ‘You’re absolutely certain it has nothing to do with what we’re working on?’

  ‘Absolutely. Apart from the fact that we’ve barely begun work on the actual positioning of the wires, those points simply don’t correspond to the areas of the brain we’d be looking to use. In my opinion it’s only coincidence that it has that shape.’