The cook bowed and handed Weis the single sheet menu. DeVore kept his amusement hidden, knowing what was on the paper. It was all very basic fare – soldier’s food – and he saw Weis’s face crinkle with momentary disgust. He handed the sheet back and turned to DeVore.
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not. But you two go ahead.’
DeVore ordered, then turned and looked at Lehmann.
‘I’ll have the same.’
‘Good.’ He looked back at Weis. ‘So. Tell me, Shih Weis, what has been happening?’
Weis leaned forward, lowering his voice. ‘There’s been a problem.’
‘A problem?’
‘Duchek. He’s refused to pass the funds through the plantation accounts.’
‘I see. So what have you done?’
Weis smiled broadly, clearly pleased by his own ingenuity. ‘I’ve re-routed them – through various Security ordnance accounts.’
DeVore considered it a moment, then smiled. ‘That’s good. Much better, in fact. They’d never dream we’d use their own accounts.’
Weis leaned back, nodding. ‘That’s what I thought.’
Because of the vast sums involved they had had to take great care in setting up the routes by which the money got to DeVore. The finances of Chung Kuo were closely knit and any large movement was certain to be noted by the T’ang’s Ministry, the Hu Pu, responsible for monitoring all capital transfers and ensuring the T’ang received the fifty per cent due him on the profit of each and every transaction.
It had been decided from the outset that it would be safest to be open about the movements. Any attempt to siphon away sums of this size would be noticed and investigated, but normal movements – if the T’ang received his cut from them – would not be commented upon. It had meant that the T’ang would actually receive almost seventy-five per cent of everything they allocated, but this had been budgeted for.
Weis and his small team had worked directly with the sponsors to set things up. First they had had to break the transfers down into smaller, less noticeable sums, then disguise these as payments to smaller companies for work done. From there they were re-routed and broken down into yet smaller payments – this process being repeated anything between ten and fifteen times before they finally got to DeVore. Again, it was an expensive process, but necessary to protect the seven major sponsors from being traced. Palms had had to be greased all the way down the line, ‘squeeze’ to be paid to greedy officials.
Funded directly it would have cost a quarter of the sum DeVore had asked for. But the risk of discovery would have been a hundred times greater.
‘You’ve done an excellent job, Shih Weis,’ DeVore said, leaning back to let the cook set his plate down in front of him. ‘I have asked Shih Douglas if he could not show our appreciation in some small way.’
He saw how much that pleased Weis, then looked down and picked up his chopsticks, tucking into the heaped plate of braised beancurd and vegetables.
DeVore watched Weis’s craft lift and accelerate away, heading north, back to the safety of the City. The man’s impatience both irritated and amused him. He was so typical of his kind. So unimaginative. All his talk about The New Hope, for instance – it was all so much hot air. But that was fortunate, perhaps. For if they’d guessed – if any of them had had the foresight to see where all this really led…
He laughed, then turned to the youth. ‘Do you fancy a walk, Stefan? The cold is rather exhilarating, I find.’
‘I’d like that.’
The answer surprised him. He had begun to believe there was nothing the young man liked.
They went down past the landing dome and out onto a broad lip of ice-covered rock which once, long ago, had been a road. From that vantage point they could see how the valley began to curve away to the west. Far below them the mountainside was forested, but up here there was only snow and ice. They were above the world.
Standing there in the crisp air, surrounded by the bare splendour of the mountains, he saw it clearly. The New Hope was much more than a new start. For the Seven it would be the beginning of the end. His colleagues – Weis, Moore, Duchek, even Berdichev – saw it mainly as a symbol, a flagship for their cause, but it was more than that. It was a practical thing. If it succeeded – if new worlds could be colonized by its means – then control would slip from the hands of the Seven.
They knew that. Li Shai Tung had known it three years ago when he had summoned the leaders of the House to him and, unexpectedly, granted the concession. But the old man had had no choice. Lehmann’s murder had stirred the hornet’s nest. It was the only thing the T’ang could have done to prevent war.
Even so, none of his fellow conspirators had grasped what it really meant. They had not fully envisaged the changes that would come about – the vast, rapid metamorphosis that would sweep through their tight-knit community of thirty-nine billion souls. Science, kept in check by the Edict for so long, would not so much blossom as explode. When Mankind went out into the stars it would not, as so many had called it, be a scattering, but a shattering. All real cohesion would be lost. The Seven knew this. But few others had understood as yet. They thought the future would be an extension of the past. It would not. It would be something new. Something utterly, disturbingly new.
The new age, if it came, would be an age of grotesque and gothic wonders. Of magical transformations. Mutation would be the norm.
If it came.
‘What were you up to with Weis back there?’
DeVore turned and looked at the young man. He seemed perfectly suited to this environment. His eyes, the pallor of his flesh; neither seemed out of place here. He was like some creature of the wild – a pine marten or a snow fox. A predator.
DeVore smiled. ‘I’ve been told Weis is a weak man. A soft man. I wanted confirmation of that.’
‘What had you heard?’
DeVore told him about the tape he had acquired. It showed Weis in bed with two young boys – well-known Han opera stars. That was his weakness; a weakness he indulged in quite often, if the reports were accurate.
‘Can he be trusted?’
‘We have no option. Weis is the only one with both the know-how and the contacts.’
‘I see.’
DeVore turned and looked back at the view. He remembered standing here with Berdichev, almost a year before, when they had first drawn up their scheme; recalled how they had stood and watched the sunset together; how frightened Soren had been; how the sudden fall of dark had changed his mood entirely. But he had expected as much. After all, Berdichev was typical of the old Man.
Beneath it all they were still the same primitive creatures. Still forest dwellers, crouched on the treeline, watching the daylight bleed away on the plain below, fearful of the dark. Their moods, their very beings, were shaped by patterns older than the race. By the Earth’s slow rotation about the sun. By the unglimpsed diurnal round – cycles of dark and light, heat and cold. They could not control how they were, how they felt.
In the new age it would be different. There would be a creature free of this. Unshackled. A creature of volition, unshaped by its environment. A creature fit for space.
Let them have their romantic image of dispersion; of new, unblemished worlds. Of Edens. His dreams were different and rode upon their backs. His dream was of new men. Of better, finer creatures. Cleaner creatures.
He thought back to the tape of Weis; to the image of the financier standing there, naked, straddling the young boy, his movements urgent, his face tight with need. Such weakness, he thought. So pitiful to be a slave to need.
In his dream of the new age he saw all such weaknesses eradicated. His new Man would be purged of need. His blood would flow clean and pure like the icy streams of the far north.
‘It’s magnificent. So pure.’
He looked across at the youth, surprised, then laughed. Yes, they were all much the same – all the same, primitive Man, unchanged by long millennia of so-called civilization.
All, perhaps, but this one. ‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment, feeling himself drawn to the boy. ‘It is magnificent, isn’t it?’
The gateway was an arch of darkness, leading out into a vast and dimly lit hall. For a moment Tolonen thought he had come out into the Clay itself. Broad steps led down onto bare earth. The ceiling was high above him. But it was too bright, however dim, too clean, however bare, to be the Clay. And there, less than half a li from where he stood, was the ancient stadium, its high, curved walls in partial shadow, the great curved arches of its mighty windows black as a moonless night.
The Colosseum. Heart of the old Ta Ts’in empire.
He went down and crossed the space, choosing one of the tall archways at random, knowing they all led inward to the centre.
Feeling exposed. Feeling like a man walking in death’s shadow.
He went inside, conscious of the sheer weight of stone above him as he stepped beneath the arch. The arch dwarfed him; was five times or more his height. Three great layers of arches, one above another, capped by a vast, uneven wall of ancient stone.
He had a sense of time, of power as old as time itself. This millennia-old edifice, monument to power and death and empire, awed him slightly, and he understood why the T’ang had chosen it for their meeting place.
‘So you’ve come…’
Tolonen stopped on the edge of the inner arch, squinting into the darkness at the centre, trying to make out the shape of his master.
‘Heavy-handed monsters, weren’t they?’
Li Shai Tung stepped out from the next archway. At a signal from him the lights were raised and the central amphitheatre was suddenly revealed. It was huge, monstrous, barbaric. It spoke of a crude brutality.
Tolonen was silent, waiting. And while he waited, he thought about the pain and death this place had been built to hold. So much raw aggression had been moulded into darkness here. So much warm blood spilled for entertainment.
‘You understand, then?’ said the T’ang, turning to face him for the first time. There were tears in his eyes.
He found he could barely answer him. ‘What is it, Chieh Hsia? What do you want from me?’
Li Shai Tung drew a deep breath, then raised a hand, indicating the building all about them. ‘They would have me believe you are like this place. As unthinkingly callous. As brutal. Did you know that?’
He wanted to ask, Who? Who would have you believe this?, but he merely nodded, listening.
‘However… I know you too well, Knut. You’re a caring man. A loving man.’
Tolonen shivered, moved by his T’ang’s words.
The T’ang moved closer; stood face to face with his ex-General, their breaths mingling. ‘What you did was wrong. Very wrong.’ Then, surprisingly, he leaned forward and kissed Tolonen’s cheek, holding him a moment, his voice lowered to a whisper. ‘But thank you, Knut. Thank you, dearest friend. You acted like a brother to my grief
Tolonen stood there, surprised, looking into his master’s face, then bowed his head, all the old warmth welling up inside him. It had been so long, so hard being exiled.
He went down onto his knees at Li Shai Tung’s feet, his head bowed in submission. ‘Tell me what you want, Chieh Hsia. Let me serve you again.’
‘Get up, old friend. Get up.’
‘Not until you say I am forgiven.’
There was a moment’s silence, then Li Shai Tung placed his hands on Tolonen’s shoulders. ‘I cannot reinstate you. You must realize that. As for forgiveness, there is nothing to forgive. You acted as I felt. I would need to forgive myself first.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Your exile is at an end, Knut. You can come home. Now get up.’
Tolonen stayed on his knees.
‘Get up, you foolish man. Get up. You think I’d let my ablest friend rot in inactivity?’ He was laughing now; a soft, almost childlike laughter. ‘Yes, you foolish old man. I have a job for you.’
It was a hot night. Nan Ho had left the door to the garden open. A gentle breeze stirred the curtains, bringing the scents of night flowers and the sound of an owl in the orchard. Li Yuan woke and stretched, then grew very still.
‘Who is it?’ he said, his voice very small.
There was a touch of warmth against his back and a soft, muted giggle, then he felt her pressed against him – undoubtedly her – and heard her voice in his ear.
‘Hush, little one. Hush. It’s only me, Pearl Heart. I’ll not bite you.’
He turned and, in the moon’s light, saw her naked there beside him in his bed.
‘What are you doing here, Pearl Heart?’ he asked, but his eyes were drawn to the firmness of her breasts, the soft, elegant slope of her shoulders. Her dark eyes seemed to glisten in the moonlight and she lay there, unashamed, enjoying the way he looked at her.
She reached out and took his hand and pressed it gently to her breast, letting him feel the hardness of the nipple, then moved it down, across the silken smoothness of her stomach until it rested between her legs.
He shivered, then looked to her eyes again. ‘I shouldn’t…’
She smiled and shook her head, her eyes filled with amusement. ‘No, perhaps you shouldn’t, after all? Shall I go away?’
She made to move but his hand held her where she was, pressing down against the soft down of her sex. ‘No… I…’
Again she laughed, a soft, delicious laughter that increased his desire, then she sat up and pushed him down, pulling back the sheet from him.
‘What have we here? Ah, now here’s the root of all your problems.’
She lifted his stiff penis gently between her fingers, making him catch his breath, then bent her head and kissed it. A small, wet kiss.
‘There,’ she said gently, looking up the length of his body into his eyes. ‘I can see what you need, my little one. Why didn’t you tell Pearl Heart before now?’ She smiled and her eyes returned to his penis.
For a moment he closed his eyes, a ripple of pure pleasure passing through him as she stroked and kissed him. Then, when he could bear it no longer, he pulled her up against him, then turned her over, onto her back, letting her hand help him as he struggled to find the mouth of her sex with the blind eye of his penis.
Then, with a sudden sense of her flesh parting before his urgent pressure, he was inside her and she was pushing back up against him, her face suddenly different, her movements no longer quite so gentle, her legs wrapped about his back. He thrust and thrust and then cried out, his body stiffening, a great hot wave of blackness robbing him momentarily of thought.
He slept for a while and when he woke she was there still, not a dream as he had begun to imagine but real and warm, her body beautiful, naked in the moonlight beside him, her dark eyes watching him. The thought – the reality of her – made his penis stir again and she laughed and stroked his cheek, his neck, his shoulder, her fingers moving down his body until they were curled about the root of him again.
‘Pearl Heart?’ he said, looking up from where her fingers played with him, into her face.
‘Hush,’ she said, her smile like balm. ‘Lie still and close your eyes, my little one. Pearl Heart will ease the darkness in you.’
He smiled and closed his eyes, letting the whole of him be drawn like a thread of fine silk into the contact of her fingers with his flesh. He gave a little shudder as her body brushed against his own, moving down him, then groaned as he felt her tiny, rosebud lips close wetly about the end of his penis.
‘Pearl Heart,’ he said softly, almost inaudibly. And then the darkness claimed him once again.
Chen leaned on his hoe, then looked up into the sky and wiped his brow with the cloth Pavel had given him.
‘This is harder than I thought it would be,’ he said, laughing.
The young man smiled back at him. ‘Would you like some water, Tong Chou?’
He hesitated, then gave a small bow. ‘That would be good. I’ve a thirst on me such as I’ve never had.’
‘It’s hot,’ Pavel said kindly. ‘You’re no
t used to it yet, that’s all. You’ll get the hang of it.’
Chen rubbed his back then laughed again. ‘Gods! Let’s hope so. I’ve a feeling I’m not so much breaking the earth as the earth’s breaking me.’
He watched Pavel go, then got down to it again, turning the dark, hard earth, one of a long line of workers stretching out across the huge, two-li-wide field. Then, only moments later, he looked up, hearing raised voices from the direction Pavel had gone. He turned and saw the youth had been stopped by the guards – the same two men who had stopped them on the path the day before.
‘What is it?’ he asked the woman next to him, then realized she didn’t speak English, only Mandarin. But the woman seemed to understand. She made a drinking gesture with one cupped hand, then shook her head.
‘But I thought…’
Then he remembered something Pavel had said earlier. They were only allowed three cups of water a day – at the allotted breaks. Curse him, the stupid boy! Chen thought, dropping his hoe and starting across the field towards the noise, but two of the field workers ran after him and held his arms until he returned to the line.
‘Fa!’ one of them kept saying. ‘Fa!’ Then, in atrocious English, he translated the word. ‘Pah-nis-men.’
Chen went cold. ‘I’ve got to stop it.’
One of the older men – a peasant in his late forties or fifties, his face deeply tanned and creased – stepped forward. ‘You cannot stop it,’ he said in a clipped but clear English. ‘Watch. They will summon some of us. They will make us form a circle. Then the punishment will begin.’ He sighed resignedly. ‘It is their way.’
On the far side of the field the shouting had stopped now and he could see Pavel, his arm held tightly by one of the men, his head bowed under the coolie hat.
‘Shit!’ he said under his breath. But the old man was right. He could not afford to get involved; neither, probably, would his involvement change anything. He was a field worker here, not kwai, and his job was to get at DeVore. He could not risk that, even to prevent this injustice.
The bigger of the two guards – the one Pavel had identified as Teng – strode out towards them. He stopped and, hands on his hips, ordered a number of them over to the water wagon.
Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series Page 20