Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series

by David Wingrove

  It was all there, in the journal. Some of it explicit, the rest hidden teasingly away – cyphers within cyphers – as if for his eyes alone.

  He had heard Augustus’s voice, speaking clearly in his head, as if direct across the years. ‘I am a failed experiment,’ he had said. ‘Old Amos botched me when he made me from his seed. He got more than he bargained for.’

  It was true. They were all an experiment. All the Shepherd males. Not sons and fathers, uncles and grandfathers, but brothers every last one of them – all the fruit of Amos’s seed.

  Ben laughed bitterly. It explained so much. For Augustus was his twin. Ben knew it for a certainty. He had proof.

  There, in the back of the journal, were the breeding charts – a dozen complex genetic patterns, each drawn in the tiniest of hands, one to a double page; each named and dated, Ben’s own amongst them. A whole line of Shepherds, each one the perfect advisor for his T’ang.

  Augustus had known somehow. Had worked it out. He had realized what he was meant for. What task he had been bred for.

  But Augustus had been a rebel. He had defied his father; refusing to be trained as the servant of a T’ang. Worse, he had sired a child by his own sister, in breach of the careful plans Amos had laid. His mirror had become his mate. Furious, his ‘father’, Robert, had made him a prisoner in the house, forbidding him the run of the Domain until he changed his ways, but Augustus had remained defiant. He had preferred death to compromise.

  Or so it seemed. There was no entry for that day.

  There were footsteps on the stairs. He tensed, then made himself relax. He had been expecting this; had been rehearsing what he would say.

  Hal stood in the doorway, looking in ‘Ben? Can I come in?’

  Ben stared back at him, unable to keep the anger from his face. ‘Hello, elder brother.’

  Hal seemed surprised. Then he understood. He had confiscated the journal, but he could not confiscate what was in Ben’s head. It did not matter that Ben could not physically see the pages of the journal: in his mind he could turn them anyway and read the tall columns of cyphers.

  ‘It isn’t like that,’ he began, but Ben interrupted him, a sharp edge to his voice.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. I’ve had enough of lies. Tell me who I am.’

  ‘You’re my son.’

  Ben sat forward, but this time Hal got in first. ‘No, Ben. You’re wrong. It ended with Augustus. He was the last. You’re my son, Ben. Mine and your mother’s.’

  Ben made to speak, then fell silent, watching the man. Then he looked down. Hal was not lying. Not intentionally. He spoke as he believed. But he was wrong. Ben had seen the charts, the names, the dates of birth. Amos’s great experiment was still going on.

  He let out a long, shuddering breath. ‘Okay… But tell me. How did Augustus die? Why did he kill himself?’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘Then how did he die?’

  ‘He had leukaemia.’

  That too was a lie, for there was no mention of ill health in the journal. But again Hal believed it for the truth. His eyes held nothing back from Ben.

  ‘And the child? What happened to the child?’

  Hal laughed. ‘What child? What are you talking about?’

  Ben looked down. Then it was all a lie. Hal knew nothing. Nor would he learn anything from the journal unless Meg gave him the key to it; for the cypher was a special one, transforming itself constantly page by page as the journal progressed.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said finally. ‘I was mistaken.’

  He lifted his eyes. Saw how concerned Hal was.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to trouble anyone.’

  ‘No…’

  Then, strangely, Hal looked down and laughed. ‘You know, Ben, when I saw Peng Yu-wei stuck there in the mud, all my anger drained from me.’ He looked up and met Ben’s eyes, his voice changing, becoming more serious. ‘I understand why you did it. Believe me. And I meant what I said the other night. You can be your own man. Live your own life. It’s up to you whether you serve or not. Neither I nor the great T’ang himself will force you.’

  Ben studied his brother – the man he had always thought of as his father – and saw suddenly that it did not matter what he was in reality, for Hal Shepherd had become what he believed he was. His father. A free man, acting freely, choosing freely. For him the illusion was complete. It had become the truth.

  It was a powerful lesson. One Ben could use. He nodded. ‘Then I choose to be your son, if that’s all right?’

  Hal smiled and reached out to take his good hand. ‘That’s all I ever wanted.’

  PART 9 ICE AND FIRE

  SUMMER 2201

  ‘War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.’

  —Mao Tse Tung, Problems Of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War (December 1936)

  ‘It is our historical duty to eradicate all opposition to change. To cauterize the cancers that create division. The future cannot come into being until the past is dead. Chung Kuo cannot live until the world of petty nation states, of factions and religions, is dead and buried beneath the ice. Let us have no pity then. Our choice is made. Ice and fire. The fire to cauterize, the ice to cover over. Only by such means will the world be freed from enmity.’

  —Tsao Ch’un, Address to his Ministers, (May 2068)

  Chapter 38

  THE SADDLE

  The old T’ang backed away, his hands raised before him, his face rigid with fear.

  ‘Put down the knife, erh tzu! For pity’s sake!’

  A moment before there had been laughter; now the tension in the room seemed unendurable. Only the hiss and wheeze of Tsu Tiao’s laboured breathing broke the awful silence.

  In the narrow space between the pillars, Tsu Ma circled his father slowly, knife in hand, his face set, determined. On all sides T’ang and courtier alike – all Han, all Family – were crowded close, looking on, their faces tense, unreadable. Only one, a boy of eight, false whiskered and rouged up, his clothes identical to those of the old T’ang, showed any fear. He stood there, wide-eyed, one hand gripping the arm of the taller boy beside him.

  ‘Erh Tzu!’ the old man pleaded, falling to his knees. My son! He bowed his head, humbling himself. ‘I beg you, Tsu Ma! Have mercy on an old man!’

  All eyes were on Tsu Ma now. All saw the shudder that rippled through the big man like a wave; the way his chin jutted forward and his face contorted in agony as he steeled himself to strike. Then it was done and the old man slumped forward, the knife buried deep in his chest.

  There was a sigh like the soughing of the wind, then Tsu Ma was surrounded. Hands clapped his back or held his hand or touched his shoulder briefly. ‘Well done, Tsu Ma,’ each said before moving on, expecting no answer; seeing how he stood there, his arms limp at his sides, his broad chest heaving, his eyes locked on the fallen figure on the floor beneath him.

  Slowly the great room emptied until only Tsu Ma, the six T’ang and the two young boys remained.

  Li Shai Tung stood before him, staring into his face, a faint smile of sadness mixed with satisfaction on his lips. He spoke softly, ‘Well done, Tsu Ma. It’s hard, I know. The hardest thing a man can do…’

  Slowly Tsu Ma’s eyes focused on him. He swallowed deeply and another great shudder racked his body. Pain flickered like lightning across the broad, strong features of his face, and then he spoke, his voice curiously small, like a child’s. ‘Yes… but it was so hard to do, Shai Tung. It… it was just like him.’

  Li Shai Tung shivered but kept himself perfectly still, his face empty of what he was feeling. He ached to reach out and hold Tsu Ma close, to comfort him, but knew it would be wrong. It was hard, as Tsu Ma now realized, but it was also necessary.

  Since the time of Tsao Ch’un it had been so. To become
T’ang the son must kill the father. Must become his own man. Only then would he be free to offer his father the respect he owed him.

  ‘Will you come through, Tsu Ma?’

  Tsu Ma’s eyes had never left Li Shai Tung’s face, yet they had not been seeing him. Now they focused again. He gave the barest nod, then, with one last, appalled look at the body on the floor, moved towards the dragon doorway.

  In the room beyond, the real Tsu Tiao was laid out atop a great, tiered pedestal on a huge bed spread with silken sheets of gold. Slowly and with great dignity, Tsu Ma climbed the steps until he stood there at his dead father’s side. The old man’s fine grey hair had been brushed and plaited, his cheeks delicately rouged, his beard brushed out straight, his nails painted a brilliant pearl. He was dressed from head to foot in white. A soft white muslin that, when Tsu Ma knelt and gently brushed it with his fingertips, reminded him strangely of springtime and the smell of young girls.

  You’re dead, Tsu Ma thought, gazing tenderly into his father’s face. You’re really dead, aren’t you? He bent forward and gently brushed the cold lips with his own, then sat back on his heels, shivering, toying with the ring that rested, heavy and unfamiliar, like a saddle on the first finger of his right hand. And now it’s me.

  He turned his head, looking back at the six T’ang standing amongst the pillars, watching him. You know how I feel, he thought, looking from face to face. Each one of you. You’ve been here before me, haven’t you?

  For the first time he understood why the Seven were so strong. They had this in common: each knew what it was to kill their father; knew the reality of it in their bones. Tsu Ma looked back at the body – the real body, not the lifelike GenSyn copy he had ‘killed’ – and understood. He had been blind to it before, but now he saw it clearly. It was not life that connected them so firmly, but death. Death that gave them such a profound and lasting understanding of each other.

  He stood again and turned, facing them, then went down amongst them. At the foot of the steps they greeted him; each in his turn bowing before Tsu Ma; each bending to kiss the ring of power he now wore; each embracing him warmly before repeating the same eight words.

  ‘Welcome, Tsu Ma. Welcome, T’ang of West Asia.’

  When the brief ceremony was over, Tsu Ma turned and went across to the two boys. Li Yuan was much taller than when he had last seen him. He was entering that awkward stage of early adolescence and had become a somewhat ungainly-looking boy. Even so, it was hard to believe that his birthday in two days’ time would be only his twelfth. There was something almost unnatural in his manner that made Tsu Ma think of childhood tales of changelings and magic spells and other such nonsense. He seemed so old, so knowing. So unlike the child whose body he wore. Tsu Tao Chu, in contrast, seemed younger than his eight years and wore his heart embroidered like a peacock on his sleeve. He stood there in his actor’s costume, bearded, his brow heavily lined with black make-up pencil, yet still his youth shone through, in his eyes and in the quickness of his movements.

  Tsu Ma reached out and ruffled his hair, smiling for the first time since the killing. ‘Did it frighten you, Tao Chu?’

  The boy looked down, abashed. ‘I thought…’

  Tsu Ma knelt down and held his shoulders, nodding, remembering how he had felt the first time he had seen the ritual, not then knowing what was happening, or why.

  Tao Chu looked up and met his eyes. ‘It seemed so real, Uncle Ma. For a moment I thought it was Grandpa Tiao.’

  Tsu Ma smiled. ‘You were not alone in that, Nephew Chu.’

  Tao Chu was his dead brother’s third and youngest son and Tsu Ma’s favourite; a lively, ever-smiling boy with the sweetest, most joyful laugh. At the ritual earlier Tao Chu had impersonated Tsu Tiao, playing out scenes from the old T’ang’s life before the watching Court. The practice was as old as the Middle Kingdom itself and formed one link in the great chain of tradition, but it was more than mere ritual, it was a living ceremony, an act of deep respect and celebration, almost a poem to the honoured dead. For the young actor, however, it was a confusing, not to say unnerving experience, to find the dead man unexpectedly there, in the seat of honour, watching the performance.

  ‘Do you understand why I had to kill the copy, Tao Chu?’

  Tao Chu glanced quickly at Li Yuan, then looked back steadily at his uncle. ‘Not at first, Uncle Ma, but Yuan explained it to me. He said you had to kill the guilt you felt at Grandpa Tiao’s death. That you could not be your own man until you had.’

  ‘Then you understand how deeply I revere my father? How hard it was to harm even a copy of him?’

  Tao Chu nodded, his eyes bright with understanding.

  ‘Good.’ He squeezed the boy’s shoulders briefly, then stood. ‘But I must thank you, Tsu Tao Chu. You did well today. You gave me back my father.’

  Tao Chu smiled, greatly pleased by his uncle’s praise, then, at a touch from Li Yuan, he joined the older boy in a deep bow and backed away, leaving the T’ang to their Council.

  From the camera’s vantage point, twenty li out from the spaceship, it was hard to tell its scale. The huge sphere of its forward compartments was visible only as a nothingness in the star-filled field of space – a circle of darkness more intense than that which surrounded it. Its tail, so fine and thin that it was like a thread of silver, stretched out for ten times its circumference, terminating in a smaller, silvered sphere little thicker than the thread.

  It was beautiful. Li Shai Tung drew closer, operating the remote from a distance of almost three hundred thousand li, adjusting the camera image with the most delicate of touches, the slight delay in response making him cautious. Five li out he slowed the remote and increased the definition.

  The darkness took on form. The sphere was finely stippled, pocked here and there with hatches or spiked with communication towers. Fine, almost invisible lines covered the whole surface, as if the sphere were netted by the frailest of spiders’ webs.

  Li Shai Tung let the remote drift slowly towards the starship and sat back, one hand smoothing through his long beard while he looked about him at the faces of his fellow T’ang.

  ‘Well?’

  He glanced across at the waiting technicians and dismissed them with a gesture. They had done their work well in getting an undetected remote so close to The New Hope. Too well, perhaps. He had not expected it to be so beautiful.

  ‘How big is it?’ asked Wu Shih, turning to him. ‘I can’t help thinking it must be huge to punch so big a hole in the star field.’

  Li Shai Tung looked back at him, the understanding of thirty years passing between them. ‘It’s huge. Approximately two li in diameter.’

  ‘Approximately?’ It was Wei Feng, T’ang of East Asia, who picked up on the word.

  ‘Yes. The actual measurement is one kilometre. I understand that they have used the old Hung Mao measurements throughout the craft.’

  Wei Feng grunted his dissatisfaction, but Wang Hsien, T’ang of Africa, was not so restrained. ‘But that’s an outrage!’ he roared. ‘An insult! How dare they flout the Edict so openly?’

  ‘I would remind you, Wang Hsien,’ Li Shai Tung answered quietly, seeing the unease on every face. ‘We agreed that the terms of the Edict would not apply to the starship.’

  He looked back at the ship. The fine web of lines was now distinct. In its centre, etched finer than the lines surrounding it, were two lines of beadlike figures spiralling about each other, forming the double helix of heredity, symbol of the Dispersionists.

  Three years ago – the day after Under Secretary Lehmann had been killed in the House by Tolonen – he had summoned the leaders of the House before him, and there, in the Purple Forbidden City where they had murdered his son, had granted them concessions, amongst them permission to build a generation starship. It had prevented war. But now the ship was almost ready and though the uneasy peace remained intact, soon it would be broken. The cusp lay just ahead. Thus far on the road of concession he had carried the Seve
n. Thus far but no further.

  He stared at the starship a moment longer. It was beautiful, but both House and Seven knew what The New Hope really was. No one was fooled by the mask of rhetoric. The Dispersionists talked of it being an answer – ‘the only guarantee of a future for our children’ – but in practical terms it did nothing to solve the problem of over-population that was supposedly its raison d’être. Fully laden, it could carry no more than five thousand settlers. In any case, the ship, fast as it was, would take a thousand years to reach the nearest star. No, The New Hope was not an answer, it was a symbol, a political counter – the thin end of the great wedge of Change. It heralded not a new age of dispersal but a return to the bad old days of technological free-for-all – a return to that madness that had once before almost destroyed Chung Kuo.

  He cleared the image and sat there, conscious that they were waiting for him to say what was on his mind. He looked from face to face, aware that the past three years had brought great changes in his thinking. What had once seemed certain was no longer so. His belief in peace at all costs – in a policy of concession and containment – had eroded in the years since Han Ch’in’s death. He had aged, and not only his face. Some days there was an air of lethargy about him, of having done with things. Yes, he thought, looking down at his own long hands, the tiger’s teeth are soft now, his eyes grown dull. And they know this. Our enemies know it and seek advantage from it. But what might we do that we have not already done? How can we stem the tidal flow of change?

  Tsu Ma broke into his thoughts. ‘Forgive me, Li Shai Tung. But what of Tolonen?’

  Li Shai Tung looked up, surprised, meeting the new T’ang’s eyes.

  ‘Tolonen? I don’t understand you, Tsu Ma. You think I should accede to the House’s demands?’ He looked away, a bitter anger in his eyes. ‘You would have me give them that satisfaction too?’