An Inch of Ashes (CHUNG KUO SERIES)

by David Wingrove

‘It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘The desire for conformity, I guess. Things like that dome induce a sense of individuality in us. And they didn’t want that.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  Ben looked about him. The circle of light extended only so far. Beyond, it was as if the great stone buildings faded into uncreated nothingness. As if they had no existence other than that which the light gave them in its passage through their realm. Ben smiled at the thought, realizing that this was a clue to what he himself was doing. For he – as artist – was the light, creating that tiny circle of mock-reality about him as he passed.

  He turned back, looking at the girl, answering her.

  ‘When it all fell apart, shortly before City Earth was built, there was an age of great excess – of individual expression unmatched in the history of our species. The architects of City Earth – Tsao Ch’un, his Ministers and their servants – identified the symptom as the cause. They saw the excesses and the extravagance, the beauty and the expression as cultural viruses and sought to destroy them. But there was too much to destroy. They would have found it easier to destroy the species. It was too deeply ingrained. So, instead, they tried to mask it – to bury it beneath new forms. City Earth was to be a place where no one wanted for anything. Where everything the physical self could need would be provided for. It was to be Utopia – the world beyond Peach-Blossom River.’

  She frowned at him, not recognizing the term, but he seemed almost unaware of her now. Slowly he led her on through the labyrinth of streets, the doubled lights, like sun and moon, reflected in the ceiling high above.

  ‘But the City was a cage. It catered only for the grounded, physical being. It did not cater for the higher soul – the winged soul that wants to fly.’

  She laughed, surprised by him. But of course one caged birds. Who had ever heard of a bird flying free?

  The walls closed about them on either side. They were walking now through a narrow back alley, the guide only paces in front of them, his lamp filling the darkness with its strong white light. For a moment they could almost have been walking in the City.

  Unless you looked up. Unless you stopped and listened to the silence; sensing the darkness all around.

  Ben had been silent, looking away. Now he turned, looking back at her.

  ‘It was to be a landscape devoid of all meaning. A landscape of unrelated form.’

  He had paused and she had been obliged to stop with him. But all she wanted now was to get out, for all the strange beauty of this place. She felt uncomfortable here. Afraid, and vulnerable.

  ‘We are creatures of the earth, Catherine,’ he said, his eyes sharing something of the darkness beyond the lamp’s fierce circle. ‘Creatures of the earth... and yet...’ he hesitated, as if in pain, ‘and yet we want to fly. Don’t you find that strange?’

  She looked past him, at the old brickwork, itself a geometric pattern. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we were always looking to create something like the City. Perhaps it’s only the perfection of something we always had in us.’

  He looked at her fiercely, shaking his head in denial. ‘No! It’s death, that’s what it is! Death!’

  He shuddered. She felt it through her hand. A shudder of revulsion. She hadn’t understood before, but now she saw. Why he had isolated himself. Why he always seemed so hostile.

  ‘You talk as if you’re not from the City,’ she said. ‘As if...’ But she left her question unasked. He would tell her if he wanted.

  ‘We keep the names,’ he said, ‘but they mean nothing any more. They’re cut off. Like most of us, they’re cut off.’

  ‘But not you,’ she said after a moment.

  He laughed but said nothing.

  It irritated her for once, that enigmatic side of him. She freed her hand from his and walked on. He followed, the light from his lamp throwing faint shadows off to one side.

  She was angry. Hurt that he made no concessions to her. As if she meant nothing to him.

  She stopped, then turned to face him.

  He stood there, the lamp held high, the light throwing his face into strange lines; the shadows making it seem wrong: a face half in brightness, half in dark.

  ‘Shall we go on?’ he asked. But she could make out no expression on his face. His features were a rigid mask of shadow and light.

  ‘I hate it here.’

  He turned, looking about him once again, the light wavering with the movement, throwing ghostly shards of brilliance against the windows of the buildings to either side. Dead, black eyes of glass, reflecting nothing.

  She reached out and touched his arm. ‘Let’s go back, Ben. Please. Back to Oxford.’

  He smiled bitterly, then nodded. Back to Oxford, then. The name meant nothing to her, after all. But it was where they had been these last two hours. A place, unlike the bright unreality that had been built over it. A real place. For all its darkness.

  In her dream she saw herself, walking beside him, the lamp held up above their heads, the shadowed, ancient town surrounding them, the floor of the City lost in the darkness overhead.

  She saw the labyrinth again; saw its dark and secret rivers, the Isis and the Cherwell, flow silently, like blood in the veins of the earth. His words. His image for them. In her dream she stood there with him on the old stone bridge, her flesh connected to his at the palm. And when he lifted his lamp the water shone. Wine red it shone, the water black as ink beneath the surface.

  She woke, feeling hot, feverish, and switched on the bedside lamp. It was four in the morning. She sat up, rubbing her palms together, looking at them in amazement and relief. It had been so real. She had felt where her flesh sank into his and shared a pulse, seen the wine-dark flow where it passed beneath the stone arch of the bridge...

  So real that waking seemed a step down.

  For a while she sat there, shivering, not from cold but from a surreal sense of her other self. Of her sleeping, dreaming self who, like the figure in the dream, walked on in darkness, understanding nothing.

  She closed her eyes, trying to recapture it, but the image was fading fast, the feeling of it slipping from her. Then the pulse of it faltered, died.

  She got up and went across to the canvas, then sat on the stool in front of it, the seat cold against her naked buttocks, her toes curled about the rounded bar. Her body was curved, lithe, like a cat’s, while her fine, flame-like hair fell straight, fanning halfway down her back, her flesh like ivory between its livid strands.

  She stared at the painting, studying it minutely.

  It was dark. Reds and greens dominated the visual textures, sharply contrasted, framed in shapes of black that bled from the edge of the painting. Harsh, angular shapes, the paint laid thick on the canvas, ridged and shadowed like a landscape.

  His face stared out at her, flecks of red and green like broken glass forming his flesh, the green of his eyes so intense it seemed to flare and set all else in darkness.

  She had shown him seated in her chair, his shoulders slightly forward, his arms tensed, as if he were in the act of rising. His long, spatulate fingers gripped the arms firmly, almost lovingly.

  There was a hard-edged abstract quality to the composition that none of her friends would have recognized as hers, yet something softer showed through: a secondary presence that began to dominate once that first, strong sense of angularity and darkness diminished.

  The painting lived. She smiled, knowing that in this she had transcended herself. It was a breakthrough. A new kind of art. Not the mimicry she had long accepted as her art, but a new thing, different in kind to anything she had ever done before.

  Behind the firmness of the forms there was an aura. A light behind the darkness. A tenderness behind those harsh, sharp-sculpted shapes. His dark, fragmented face grew softer the more she looked, the eyes less fierce, more gentle.

  She reached out with one hand to touch the bottom surface, her fingers following the line of white
ness where the figure faded into darkness. Below that line what at first seemed merely dark took on new forms, new textures – subtle variations of grey and black.

  Buildings. Strange, architectural forms. Ghost images she had seen as real. All crowded there; trapped, pressed down beneath the thinnest line of white. Like a scar on the dark flesh of the canvas.

  She tilted her head, squinting at the figure. It was stiff, almost lifeless in the chair, and yet there was the suggestion of pure force; of an intense, almost frightening vitality. A doubleness, there in everything: something she had not been aware of until he had shown it to her.

  She relaxed, satisfied, and straightened her back, letting her hands drop to her knees. Then she stretched, her arms going up and back, her small, firm breasts lifting with the movement. She clawed the air with her fingers, yawning, then laughed to herself, feeling good.

  Leaning forward, she activated the graphics keyboard beneath the painting’s lower edge, then pressed one of the pads, making the canvas rotate through a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

  Slowly the figure turned, presenting its left shoulder to the viewing eye, its face moving into profile.

  She pressed PAUSE then sat back, looking. He was handsome. No, more than handsome: he was beautiful. And she had captured something of that. Some quality she had struggled at first to comprehend. A wildness – a fierceness – that was barely contained in him.

  She shifted the focus, drawing out a detail of the wrist, the muscles there. She leaned forward, looking, touching the hard-edged textures of the projection, seeing what the machine had extrapolated from her intention.

  She studied it a moment longer then got to work, bringing the pallet round into her lap and working at the projection with the light-scalpels, making the smallest of alterations, then shifting focus again, all the while staring at the canvas, her forehead creased in a frown of intense concentration, her body hunched, curled over the painting, her hands working the plastic surface to give it depth.

  When she had finished it was almost eight and the artificial light of the wake hours showed between the slats of her blinds, but she had worked all the tiredness from her bones.

  She felt like seeing him.

  Her robe lay on the chair beside her bed. She put it on and went across to the comset, touching his code from memory. In a moment his face was there, on the flatscreen by her hand. She looked down at him and smiled.

  ‘I need to see you.’

  His answering smile was tender. ‘Then I’ll be over.’

  The screen went dark. She sat there a moment, then turned away. Beside the bed she bent down, picking up the book she had left there only hours before. For a moment she stared at its cover as if bewitched, then opened it and, picking a passage at random, began to read.

  She shuddered. It was just as Ben had said. There was no comparison. It was such a strange and wonderful book. Unseemly almost, and yet beautiful. Undeniably beautiful.

  The novel she remembered had been a dull little morality tale – the story of a boy from the Clay who, taken in by a First Level family, had repaid their trust by trying to corrupt the upright daughter of the house. In that version filial piety had triumphed over passion. But this...

  She shook her head, then set the book down. For all its excesses, it was so much more real, so much more true than the other. But what did it mean? What did all of these things mean? The paintings, the strange buildings beneath the City, and now this... this tale of wild moors and savage passions? What did it all add up to?

  Where had Ben found these things? And why had she never heard of them before?

  Why?

  She sat, a small shiver – like an after-shock – rippling down her spine. Things that existed and yet had no existence. Things which, if Ben were right, were dangerous even to know about. Why should such things be? What did they mean?

  She closed her eyes, focusing herself, bringing herself to stillness, calming the inner voices, then leaned back on her elbows.

  He was coming to her. Right now he was on his way.

  ‘Then I’ll be over.’

  She could hear his voice; could see him clearly with her inner eye. She smiled, opening her eyes again. He had not even kissed her yet. Had not gone beyond that first small step. But surely that must come? Surely? Else why begin?

  She stood, looking about her, then laughed, a small thrill passing through her. Why, he hadn’t even kissed her yet.

  Ben stood there in the doorway, relaxed, one hand loosely holding the edge of the sliding panel, the other combing through his hair.

  ‘Really...’ he was saying, ‘I’d much rather treat you to breakfast.’

  He seemed elated, strangely satisfied; but with himself, not with her. He had barely looked at her as yet.

  She felt herself cast down. A nothing.

  ‘I’d like to cook you something...’ she began again, knowing she had said it already. Again he shook his head. So definite a movement. Uncompromising. Leaving her nowhere. A bitter anguish clenched the muscles of her stomach; made her turn from him, lest he see. But she had seen how his eyes moved restlessly about the room, not really touching anything. Skating over surfaces, as if they saw nothing.

  As if what he really saw was not in her room.

  She turned and saw that he was looking at the covered canvas. But there was no curiosity in his eyes. For once he seemed abstracted from the world, not pressed right up against it. She had never seen him like this before; so excited and yet so cut off from things.

  She looked at him a moment longer, then shrugged and picked up her slender clutch bag. ‘All right. I’m ready.’

  They found a quiet place on the far side of The Green from the Café Burgundy. At first they ate in silence, the curtain drawn about them in the narrow booth, giving the illusion of privacy. Even so, voices carried from either side. Bright, morning voices. The voices of those who had slept and came fresh to the day. They irritated her as much as his silence. More than that, she was annoyed with him. Annoyed for the way he had brought her here and then ignored her.

  She looked across the table’s surface to his hands, seeing how at ease they were, lying there either side of the shallow, emptied bowl. Through the transparent surface she saw their ghostly images, faint but definite, refracted by the double thickness of the ice. He was so self-contained. So isolated from the world. It seemed, at that moment, that it would be easier for her to reach through the surface and take those ghostly hands than reach out and grasp the warm reality.

  She felt a curious pressure on her; something as tangible in its effect as a pair of hands pressed to the sides of her head, keeping her from looking up to meet his eyes. Yet nothing real. It was a phantom of her own creating – a weakness in her structure.

  She looked away; stared down at her untouched meal. She had said nothing of her new painting. Of why she had called him. Of all she had felt, staring at that violent image of his face. He had shut her out. Cut off all paths between them. As she sat there she wished for the strength to stand up and leave him there, sitting before his empty bowl.

  As if that were possible.

  She felt her inner tension mount until it seemed unendurable. And then he spoke, reaching out to take her hands in his own; the warmth of them dissipating all that nervous energy, destroying the phantoms that had grown vast in his neglect.

  ‘Have you ever tasted real food, Catherine?’

  She looked up, puzzled, and met his eyes. ‘What do you mean, real?’

  He laughed, indicating her bowl. ‘You know, I’ve never seen you eat. Not a morsel.’ His hands held hers firmly yet without real pressure. There was a mischievous light behind his eyes. She had not seen him like this before.

  ‘I eat,’ she said, making him laugh again at the assertiveness of her simple statement. ‘But I still don’t understand you.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Then the answer is no.’

  She shook her head, annoyed with him again, but in a different way.
He was teasing her. Being unfair.

  ‘It’s strange what becomes important,’ he said. ‘For no apparent reason. Things take hold. Won’t release you.’

  He looked up again, all humour gone from his eyes. That intensity was back. That driven quality.

  ‘And that’s your obsession, is it? Food?’

  She saw at once that her joke had misfired. In this, it seemed, he was vulnerable. Wide open.

  Perhaps that was what obsession was. A thing against which there was no defence. Not even humour.

  So, she thought. And this is yours. The real.

  For a time he said nothing. She watched the movement in his dark, expressive eyes. Sea moods beneath the vivid green. Surface and undertow. And then he looked out again, at her, and spoke.

  ‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’

  Ben’s apartment was to the north of Oxford Canton, on the edge of the fashionable student district. Catherine stood there in the main room, looking about her.

  ‘I never imagined...’ she said softly to herself, then turned to find him there in the doorway, a wine-filled glass in each hand.

  ‘You’re privileged,’ he said, handing her a glass. ‘I don’t usually let anyone come here.’

  She felt both pleased and piqued by that. It was hard to read what he meant by it.

  It was a long, spacious room, sparsely decorated. A low sofa was set down in the middle of the plushly carpeted floor, a small, simply moulded coffee table next to it. Unlike the apartments of her friends, however, there were no paintings on the wall, no trinkets or small sculptures on the tabletop. It was neat, almost empty.

  She looked about her, disappointed. She had expected something more than this. Something like Sergey’s apartment.

  He had been watching her. She met his eyes and saw how he was smiling, as if he could read her thoughts. ‘It’s bleak, isn’t it? Like a set from some dreadfully tasteful drama.’

  She laughed, embarrassed.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. This is’ – he waved his hand in an exaggerated circle – ‘a kind of mask. A front. In case I had to invite someone back.’

  She sipped her wine, looking at him sharply, trying to gauge what he was saying to her. ‘Well?’ she said, ‘What were you going to show me?’