Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series

by David Wingrove

  Kim nodded and set off, threading his way between the benches. Returning, he took another, different path through the machines, imagining himself a spider moving swiftly along the spokes of his web. He was halfway back when he realized he had made a mistake. Chan Shui lay directly ahead of him, but between them stood Janko, beside his machine, a cruel smile on his face.

  ‘Going somewhere, rat’s arse?’

  He stepped out, blocking Kim’s way.

  Kim slipped the phial into the top pocket of his scholar’s robe, then looked about him. One of the big collection trays had moved along the main gangway and now barred his way back, while to the left and right of him stacks of freshly-manufactured furniture filled the side gangways.

  He looked back at Janko, unafraid, concerned only not to break the phial. If he did there would be a fine of a day’s wages for both him and Chan Shui. For himself he didn’t mind. But for Chan Shui…

  ‘What do you want, Janko?’

  Janko turned, facing Chan Shui’s challenge. ‘It’s none of your business, Han! Stay out of this!’

  Chan Shui just laughed. ‘None of my business, eh? Is that so, you great bag of putrid rice? Why should you think that?’

  Surprisingly Janko ignored the insult. He turned his back on Chan Shui, then faced Kim again. His voice barked out. ‘Come here, you little rat’s arse. Come here and kneel!’

  Kim bent his knees slightly, tensing, preparing to run if necessary, but there was no need. Chan Shui had moved forward quickly, silently and had jumped up onto Janko’s back, sending him sprawling forward.

  Kim moved back sharply.

  Janko bellowed and made to get up, but Chan Shui pulled his arm up tightly behind his back and began to press down on it, threatening to break it.

  ‘Now just leave him alone, Janko. Because next time I will break your arm. And we’ll blame it on one of the machines.’

  He gave one last, pain-inducing little push against the arm, then let Janko go, getting up off him.

  Janko sat up, red-faced, muttering under his breath.

  Chan Shui held out his arm. ‘Come on, Kim. He won’t touch you, I promise.’

  But even as Kim made to pass Janko, Janko lashed out, trying to trip him, then scrambled to his feet quickly, facing Chan Shui.

  ‘Try it to my face, chink.’

  Chan Shui laughed. ‘Your verbal inventiveness astonishes me, Janko. Where did you learn your English, in the sing-song house where your mother worked?’

  Janko roared angrily and rushed at Chan Shui. But the young Han had stepped aside, and when Janko turned awkwardly, flailing out with one arm, Chan Shui caught the arm and twisted, using Janko’s weight to lift and throw him against the machine.

  Janko banged against the control panel, winding himself, then turned his head, frightened, as the machine reared up over him.

  The watching boys laughed, then fell silent. But Janko had heard the laughter. He looked down, wiping his bloodied mouth, then swore under his breath.

  At that moment the door at the far end of the Casting Shop slid open and Supervisor Nung came out. As he came down the gangway he seemed distracted, his eyes unfocused. Coming closer he paused, smiling at Kim as if remembering something. ‘Is everything okay, Chan Shui?’ he asked, seeming not to see Janko lain there against the machine.

  Chan Shui bowed his head, suppressing a smile. ‘Everything is fine, Supervisor Nung.’

  ‘Good.’ Nung moved on.

  Back at their machine Kim questioned him about the incident. ‘Is Nung okay? He seemed odd.’

  Chan Shui laughed briefly, then shook his head. ‘Now there’s a man who’ll be his own ruin.’ He looked at Kim. ‘Supervisor Nung has a habit. Do you understand me, Kim?’

  Kim shook his head.

  ‘He takes drugs. Harmless, mainly, but I think he’s getting deeper. These last few weeks… Anyway, hand me that phial.’

  Kim passed him the phial, then looked across, letting his eyes rest briefly on Janko’s back.

  ‘By the way, thanks for what you did, Shui. I appreciate it. But really, it wasn’t necessary. I’m quick. Quicker than you think. He’d never have caught me.’

  Chan Shui smiled, then looked up at him again, more thoughtful than before. ‘Maybe. But I’d rather be certain. Janko’s a bit of a head case. He doesn’t know quite when to stop. I’d rather he didn’t get near you. Okay?’

  Kim smiled and looked down. He felt a warmth like fire in his chest. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  Kim looked up from his desk console and nodded. ‘I’m a little tired, that’s all, T’ai Cho.’

  ‘Is the work too much for you?’

  Kim smiled. ‘No. I’ve had a few restless nights, that’s all.’

  ‘Ah.’ That was unusual. T’ai Cho studied the boy a moment. He was a handsome boy now that the feral emaciation of the Clay had gone from his face. A good diet had worked wonders, but it could not undo the damage of those earliest years. T’ai Cho smiled and looked back down at the screen in front of him. What might Kim have been with a proper diet as an infant? With the right food and proper encouragement? T’ai Cho shuddered to think.

  T’ai Cho looked up again. ‘We’ll leave it for now, neh, Kim? A tired brain is a forgetful brain.’ He winked. ‘Even in your case. Go and have a swim. Then get to bed early. We’ll take this up again tomorrow.’

  When Kim had gone, he sat there, thinking about the last week. Kim seemed to have settled remarkably well into the routine of the Casting Shop. Supervisor Nung was pleased with him, and Kim himself was uncomplaining. Yet something worried T’ai Cho. There was something happening in Kim – something deep down that perhaps even Kim himself hadn’t recognized as yet. And now this. This sleeplessness. Well, he would watch Kim more closely for the next few days and try to fathom what it was.

  He got up and went across to Kim’s desk, then activated the memory. At once the screen lit up.

  T’ai Cho laughed, surprised. Kim had been doodling. He had drawn a web in the centre of the screen. A fine, delicate web from which hung a single thread that dropped off the bottom of the screen.

  He scrolled the screen down, then laughed again. ‘And here’s the spider!’

  But then he leaned closer and, adjusting the controls, magnified the image until the spider’s features filled the screen: the familiar, dark-eyed features of a child.

  T’ai Cho frowned, then switched the machine off. He stood there a moment, deep in thought, then nodded to himself. Yes. He would watch him. Watch him very carefully indeed.

  DeVore sat up, startled into wakefulness. He had had the dream three times now. The same dream, almost identical in its detail.

  He looked about him at the room. Red dust lay in tiny drifts against the walls, blown in by the airlock. It was a cold, barren room. More cell than resting place.

  He blew out a long breath.

  In the dream he had been out there – out on the very edge of the void, enfolded in a darkness that no light could ever reach, no warmth ever touch; distant beyond all measure. He had sat there on that iced and barren rock, or rather... crouched, for there was something wrong about him. Not that he could get the tiniest glimpse of himself. Only... it felt like he’d been coated with lacquer, like a clay figure fresh from the kiln. It felt...

  DeVore shuddered. For once he had no words for it. Only that discomforting sense of otherness. Even now, awake again, he felt it still: that sense of being uncomfortable in his own skin. More than uncomfortable. As if this form of his were somehow alien.

  Yes. That was it. One form contained within the other, like Russian dolls. Some other creature, flexing and unflexing within him. Wearing him like a coat. Unnatural. And yet not unfamiliar.

  He queried that in his thoughts. As if he could forget a thing like that.

  Something dark and hard. Harder than diamonds. Darker than...

  No. There was nothing darker than what he’d glimpsed. Nothing colder or more isolate. It
went beyond mere seeing.

  A dream, he told himself. Only a dream. But part of him knew otherwise. Part of him trusted to these messages. Saw the truth in them. And awaited revelation, knowing it would come.

  Kim floated on his back in the water, his eyes closed. He had been thinking of Chung Kuo, and of the people he had met in the Above. What had any of them in common? Birth, maybe. That and death, and perhaps a mild curiosity about the state between. He smiled. And that was it. That was what astonished him most of all. Their lack of curiosity. He had thought it would be different up here, in the Above. He had believed that simple distance from the Clay would bring enlightenment. But it was not so. There was a difference in them, yes, but that difference was mainly veneer. Scratch away that surface and they proved themselves every bit as dull, every bit as incuriously wedded to their senses, as the most pitiful creature of the Clay.

  The smile faded from his lips. Kim turned his body slowly in the water.

  The Clay. What was the Clay but a state of mind? An attitude?

  That was the trouble. They followed an idea only to a certain stage – pursued its thread only so far – and then let it fall slack, as if satisfied there was no more to see, no more left to discover. Take the Aristotle File. They had been happy to see it only as a game he had devised to test his intellect and stretch himself. They had not looked beyond that. That single explanation was enough for them. But had they pushed it further – had they dealt with it, even hypothetically, as real, even for one moment – they would have seen at once where he had got it from. Even now they might wake to it. But he thought not.

  It was strange, because they had explained it to him in the first place; had told him how intricately connected the finances and thus the computer systems of Chung Kuo were. It was they who had explained about ‘discrete systems’ cut off from all the rest; islands of tight-packed information, walled round with defences. And it was they who had told him that the Project’s system was ‘discrete’.

  He had discovered none of that himself. All he had discovered was that the Project’s files were not alone within the walled island of their computer system. There was another file buried inside the system – an old, long-forgotten file that had been there a century or more, dormant, undisturbed, until Kim had found it. And not just any file. This was a library. More than that. It was a world. A world too rich to have been invented, too consistent – even in its errors – to have been anything less than real.

  So why had the Seven hidden it? What reason could they have had for burying the past?

  Freed from the burden of his secret he had spent the last two nights considering just this. He’d looked at it from every side, trying to see what purpose they’d had in mind. And finally he’d understood. It was to put an end to change. They had lied to end the Western dream of progress. To bring about a timeless age where nothing changed. A golden age.

  But that left him with the problem of himself, for what was he if not Change personified? What if not a bacillus of that selfsame virus they had striven so long and hard to eradicate?

  Kim opened his eyes and rolled over onto his front, then kicked out for the deeper water.

  He saw it clearly now. What he was made him dangerous to them – made him a threat to the Seven and their ways. Yet he was also valuable. He knew, despite their efforts to hide it from him, what SimFic had paid for his contract. But why had they paid so vast a sum? What did they think to use him for?

  Change. He was almost certain of it. But how could he be sure?

  Push in deeper, he told himself. Be curious. Is SimFic just a faceless force? A mechanism for making profits? Or does it have a personality?

  And if so, whose?

  The name came instantly. He had heard it often enough of late in the news. Soren Berdichev.

  Yes, but who is he? A businessman. Yes. A Dispersionist. That too. But beyond that, what? What kind of man is he? Where does he come from? What does he want? And – most important of all – what does he want of me?

  Kim ducked his head beneath the surface then came up again, shaking the water from his hair, the tiredness washed suddenly from his mind. He felt a familiar excitement in his blood and laughed. Yes, that was it! That would be his new task. To find out all he could about the man.

  And when he’d found it out?

  He drifted, letting the thread fall slack. Best not anticipate so far. Best find out what he could and then decide.

  Soren Berdichev sat in the shadowed silence of his study, the two files laid out on the desk in front of him. The Wu had just gone, though the sweet, sickly scent of his perfume lingered in the air. The message of the yarrow stalks was written on the slip of paper Berdichev had screwed into a ball and thrown to the far side of the room. Yet he could see it clearly even so.

  The light has sunk into the earth:

  The image of darkening of the light.

  Thus does the superior man live with the great mass:

  He veils his light, yet still shines.

  He banged the desk angrily. This threw all of his deliberations out. He had decided on his course of action and called upon the Wu merely to confirm what he had planned. But the Wu had contradicted him. And now he must decide again.

  He could hear the Wu’s scratchy voice even now as the old man looked up from the stalks; could remember how his watery eyes had widened; how his wispy grey beard had stuck out stiffly from his chin.

  ‘K’un, the Earth, in the above, Li, the Fire, down below. It is Ming I, the darkening of the light.’

  It had meant the boy. He was certain of it. The fire from the earth. He veils his light, yet still he shines.

  ‘Is this a warning?’ he had asked, surprising the old man, for he had never before interrupted him in all the years the elder had been casting the I Ching for him.

  ‘A warning, Shih Berdichev?’ The Wu had laughed. ‘The Book Of Changes does not warn. You mistake its purpose. Yet the hexagram portends harm…injury.’

  Berdichev had nodded and fallen silent. But he had known it for what it was. A warning. The signs were too strong to ignore. So now he must decide again.

  He laid his glasses on the desk and picked up the newest of the files containing the genotype reports he had had done.

  He spread the two charts on the desk before him, beside each other, then touched the pad, underlighting the desk’s surface.

  There was no doubt about it. Even without the expert’s report on the matter, it could be seen at once. The similarities were striking. He traced the mirrored symbols on the spiralling trees of the two double helices and nodded to himself.

  ‘So you are Edmund Wyatt’s son, Kim Ward. I wonder what Edmund would have made of that?’

  He laughed sadly, realizing for the first time how much he missed his dead friend’s quiet strengths, then sat back, rubbing his eyes.

  The genotyping and the Aristotle File, they were each reason enough in themselves to have Kim terminated. The first meant he was the son of the traitor, Wyatt, the second breached the special Edict that concealed Chung Kuo’s true past. Both made Kim’s life forfeit under the law, and that made the boy a threat to him. And so, despite the cost – despite the huge potential profit to be made from him – he had decided to play safe and terminate the boy, at the same time erasing all trace of those who had prepared the genotype report for him. But then the Wu had come.

  The sun in the earth. Yes, it was the boy. There was no doubt about it. And, as he had that first time he had used the services of the Wu, he felt the reading could not be ignored. He had to act on it.

  A small shiver ran through him, remembering that first time, almost nine years ago now. He had been sceptical and the Wu had angered him by laughing at his doubt. But only moments later the Wu had shocked him into silence with his reading.

  The wind drives over the water:

  The image of dispersion.

  Thus the kings of old sacrificed to the Lord

  And built temples.

  I
t had been the evening before his dinner with Edmund Wyatt and Pietr Lehmann – a meeting at which he was to decide whether or not he should join their new Dispersion faction. And there it was. The fifty-ninth hexagram – Huan. He remembered how he had listened, absorbed by the Wu’s explanation, convinced by his talk of high goals and the coming of spring after the hardness of winter. It was too close to what they had been talking of to be simple chance or coincidence. Why, even the title of the ancient book seemed suddenly apt, serendipitous – The Book Of Changes. He had laughed and bowed and paid the Wu handsomely before contacting Edmund at once to tell him yes.

  And so it had begun, all those years ago. Neither could he ever think of it without seeing in his mind the movement of the wind upon the water, the budding of leaves upon the branches. So how could he argue with it now – now that he had come to this new beginning?

  He switched off the underlighting, slipped the charts back into the folder, then picked up his glasses and stood, folding them and placing them in the pocket of his pau.

  The sun in the earth… Yes, he would leave the boy for now. But in the morning he would contact his man in the Mid Levels and have him bomb the laboratory where they had prepared the genotypes.

  Supervisor Nung sat himself behind his desk and cleared a pile of documents onto the floor before addressing Kim.

  ‘Chan Shui is not here today,’ he explained, giving Kim the briefest glance. ‘His father has been ill and the boy is taking some time off to look after him. In the circumstances I have asked Tung Lian to look after you until Chan Shui is back with us.’

  The office was far more untidy than Kim remembered it. Crates, paper, even clothes, were heaped against one wall, while a pile of boxes had been left in front of the bank of screens.

  ‘Excuse me, Supervisor Nung, but who is Tung Lian?’

  Nung looked up again distractedly, then nodded. ‘He’ll be here any moment.’ Then, realizing his tone had been a little too sharp, he smiled at Kim before looking down again.

  A moment later there was a knock and a young Han entered. He was a slightly built, slope-shouldered boy a good two or three years younger than Chan Shui. Seeing Kim, he looked down shyly, avoiding his eyes, then moved closer to the desk.