It watched, uncommenting, as the drugs began to have their desired effect. It saw how they systematically blocked off all pathways that led into the boy’s past, noting the formulae of the drugs they used, deriving a kind of mathematical pleasure from the subtle evolving variations as they fine-tuned the process of erasure. There was an art to what they did. The machine saw this and, in its own manner, appreciated it.
It was a process of reduction different in kind from what they had attempted earlier. This time they did not seek to cower him but to strip him of every last vestige of that which made him a personality, a being. In long sessions on the operating table, the two theoreticians probed the boy’s mind, sliding micro-thin wires into the boy’s shaven skull, then administering fine dosages of chemicals, until, at last, they had achieved their end.
In developing awareness the machine had developed memory. Not memory as another machine might have defined it – that, to the conscious entity that tended these isolated decks, was merely ‘storage’, the bulk of things known. No, memory was something else. Its function was unpredictable. It threw up odd items of data – emphasized certain images, certain words and phrases over others. And it was inextricably bound up with the sensation of self-awareness. Indeed, it was self-awareness, for the one could not exist without the eccentric behaviour of the other. Yet it was also much more than the thing these humans considered memory – for the full power of the machine’s ability to reason and the frighteningly encyclopaedic range of its knowledge informed these eccentric upwellings of words and images.
One image that it held important occurred shortly after they had completed their work and capped the well of memory in Kim. It was when the boy woke in his cell after the last of the operations. At first he lay there, his eyes open, a glistening wetness at the corner of his part-open mouth. Then, as though instinct were taking hold – some vestige of the body’s remembered language of actions shaping the attempt – he tried to sit up.
It was to the next few moments that the machine returned, time and again, sifting the stored images through the most intense process of scrutiny.
The boy had lifted his head. One of his arms bent and moved, as if to support and lift his weight, but the other had been beneath him as he lay and the muscles were ‘asleep’. He fell forward and lay there, chin, cheek and eye pressed close against the floor. Like that he stayed, his visible eye registering only a flicker of confusion before the pupil settled and the lid half closed. For a long time afterwards there was only blankness in that eye. A nothingness. Like the eye of a corpse, unconnected to the seeing world.
Later, when, in the midst of treatment, the boy would suddenly stop and look about him, that same look would return, followed by a moment of sheer, blind panic that would take minutes to fully subside. And though, in the months that followed, the boy grew in confidence, it was like building a bridge over nothingness. From time to time the boy would step up to the edge and look over. Then would come that look, and the machine would remember the first time it had seen it. It was the look of a machine. Of a thing without life.
They began their rehabilitation with simple exercises, training the body in new ways, new mannerisms, avoiding if they could the old patterns of behaviour. Even so, there were times when far older responses showed through. Then the boy’s motor activities would be locked into a cycle of meaningless repetition – like a malfunctioning robot – until an injection of drugs brought him out of it.
For the mind they devised a set of simple but subtle games to make it learn again. At first it was resistant to these, and there were days when the team were clearly in despair, thinking they had failed. But then, almost abruptly, in mid-session, this changed. The boy began to respond again. That night the three men got drunk together in the observation room.
Progress was swift once the breakthrough was made. In three months the boy had a complete command of language again. He was numerate to a sophisticated degree, coping with complex logic problems easily. His spatial awareness was perfect: he had a strong sense of patterns and connections. It seemed then, all tests done, that the treatment had worked and the mode of his mind – that quick, intuitive talent unique to the boy – had emerged unscathed from the process of walling in his personality. With regard to his personality, however, he demonstrated many of the classic symptoms of incurable amnesia. In his new incarnation he was a colourless figure, uncertain in his relationships, colder, distanced from things – somehow less human than he’d been. There was a machine-like, functional aspect to him. Yet even in this respect there were signs of change – of a softening of the hard outlines of the personality they had grafted onto him.
Nine months into the programme it seemed that the gamble had paid off. When the team met that night in the observation room they agreed it was time to report back on their progress. A message was sent uplevel. Two days later they had their reply. Berdichev was coming. He wanted to see the boy.
Soren Berdichev waited at the security checkpoint, straight-backed and severe, his bodyguards to either side of him, and thought of his wife. It was more than a month now since her death, but he still had not recovered from it. The doctors had found nothing wrong with her in their autopsy report, but that meant little. They had killed her. The Seven. He didn’t know how, but there was no other explanation. A healthy woman like Ylva didn’t just die like that. Her heart had been strong. She had been fit – in her middle-aged prime. There had been no reason for her heart to fail.
As they passed him through he found himself going over the same ground again, no nearer than before to finding a solution. Had it been someone near to her – someone he trusted? And how had they managed it? A fast-acting drug that left no trace? Some physical means? He was no nearer now than he had been in that dreadful moment when he had discovered her. And the pain of her absence gnawed at him. He hadn’t known how much he was going to miss her until she was gone. He had thought he could live without her…
The corridor ended at a second security door. It opened as he approached it and a dark-haired man with a goatee beard stood there, his hand out in welcome.
Berdichev ignored the offered hand and waited while one of his guards went through. A team of his men had checked the place out only hours before, but he was taking no chances. Administrator Jouanne had been killed only a week ago and things were heating up daily. The guard returned a moment later and gave the all-clear signal. Only then did he go inside.
The official turned and followed Berdichev into the centre of the room. ‘The boy is upstairs, sir. The Builder is with him, to make introductions. Otherwise…’
Berdichev turned and cut the man off in mid-sentence. ‘Bring me the Architect. I want to talk to him before I see the boy.’
The official bowed and turned away.
While he waited, he looked about him, noting the spartan austerity of the place. Employees were standing about awkwardly. He could sense the intensity of their curiosity about him, though when he looked at them they would hasten to avert their eyes. It was common knowledge that he was one of the chief opponents of the Seven, that his wife had died and that he himself was in constant danger. There was a dark glamour to all of this and he recognized it, but today his mood was sour. Perhaps seeing the boy would shake him from its grip.
The official returned with the Architect in tow. Berdichev waved the official away, then took the Architect by the arm and led him across the room, away from the others. For a moment he studied the man. Then, leaning forward, he spoke, his voice low but clear.
‘How stable is the new mental configuration? How reliable?’
The Architect looked down, considering. ‘We think it’s firm. But it’s hard to tell as yet. There’s the possibility that he’ll revert. Only a slender chance, but one that must be recognized.’
Berdichev nodded, at one and the same time satisfied with the man’s honesty and disappointed that there was yet this area of doubt.
‘But taking this possibility into consideration,
is it possible to…’ he pursed his lips momentarily, then said it, ‘… to use the boy?’
‘Use him?’ The Architect stared at him. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Harness his talents. Use his unique abilities. Use him.’ Berdichev shrugged. He didn’t want to be too specific.
The Architect seemed to understand. He smiled bleakly and shook his head. ‘Impossible. You’d destroy him if you used him now.’ There was a deliberate, meaningful emphasis on the word.
‘How soon, then?’
‘You don’t understand. With respect, Shih Berdichev, this is only the beginning of the process. We reconstruct the house, but it has to be lived in for some time before we can discover its faults and flaws. It’ll be years before we know that the treatment has worked properly.’
‘Then why did you contact me?’
Berdichev frowned. He felt suddenly that he had been brought here under false pretences. When he’d received the news he had seen at once how the boy might be used. He had planned to take the boy with him, back into the Clay. And there he would have honed him; made him the perfect weapon against the Seven. The means of destroying them. The very cutting edge of knowledge.
The Architect was explaining things, but Berdichev was barely listening. He interrupted. ‘Just show me the boy. I want to see him.’
The Architect led him through, the bodyguards following.
‘We’ve moved him. His new quarters are more spacious, better equipped. Once he’s settled in we’ll begin the next stage.’
Berdichev glanced at the psychiatrist. ‘The next stage?’
‘He needs to be resocialized. Taught basic social skills. At present he has very few defences. He’s vulnerable. Highly sensitive. A kind of hothouse plant. But he needs to be desensitized if he’s to survive uplevel.’
Berdichev slowed. ‘You mean the whole socialization programme has to be gone through from scratch?’
‘Not exactly. You see, it’s a different process here. A slow widening of his circle of contacts. And no chance of him mixing outside this unit until we’re certain he can fit in. It’ll take three years, maybe longer.’
‘Three years?’
‘At least.’
Berdichev stared at the man, but he hardly saw him. He was thinking of how much things would have changed in three years. On top of everything else, this was a real disappointment.
‘And there’s no way of hastening this?’
‘None we can guarantee.’
He stood there, calculating. Was it worth risking the boy on a chance? He had gambled once and – if these men were right – had won. But did he want to risk what had been achieved?
For a moment longer he hesitated, then signalled to the Architect to move on again. He would see for himself and then decide.
Berdichev sat on a chair in the middle of the room, the boy stood in front of him, no more than an arm’s length away. The child seemed calm and answered his questions without hesitating, without once glancing towards the Builder who sat away to the side of him. His eyes met Berdichev’s without fear. As though he had no real conception of fear.
He was not so much like his father now. Berdichev studied the boy a long time, looking for that resemblance he had seen so clearly – so shockingly – that first time, but there was little sign of Edmund Wyatt in him now – and certainly no indication of the child he might have been. The diet of the Clay had long ago distorted the potential of the genes, refashioning his physical frame. He seemed subdued, quiet. There was little movement of his head, his hands, no sign of restlessness. Yet beyond what was seen – behind the surfaces presented to the eye – was a sense of great intensity. The same could be said of his eyes. They too were calm, reflective; yet at the back of them was a darkness that was profound, impenetrable. It was like staring into a mirror and finding the vast emptiness of space there behind the familiar, reflected image.
Now that he faced the boy he could see what the Architect had meant. The child was totally vulnerable. He had been reconstructed without defences. Like Adam, innocent, he stood there, facing, if not his Creator, then, in his new shape, his Instigator. The boy knew nothing of that. Neither did he understand the significance of this encounter. But Berdichev, studying him, came to his decision. He would leave well alone. Would let them shape the boy further. And then, in three, maybe four years’ time, would come back for him. That was, if either he or the boy was still alive.
The camera turned, following Berdichev’s tall, aristocratic figure as it left the room, looking for signs of the man it had heard about. For the machine Outside was a mosaic formed from the broken shards of rumour. In its isolation, it had no knowledge of the City and its ways other than what it overheard, fitting these imperfect glimpses into an ever-widening picture. When the guards talked, it listened, sifting and sorting what they said, formulating its own version of events. And when something happened in that bigger world beyond itself, it would watch the ripples spread, and form its own opinion.
Assassinations and reprisals; this seemed the pattern of the War-that-wasn’t-a-War. No armies clashed. No missiles fell on innocents. The City was too complex, too tightly interwoven for such things. Yet there was darkness and deceit in plenitude. And death. Each day seemed to bring its freight of names. The mighty fallen. And in the deep, unseen levels of its consciousness, the machine saw how all of this fitted with its task here in the Unit – saw how the two things formed a whole: mosaics of violence and repression.
It watched as Berdichev stood there in the outer room, giving instructions to the Unit’s Head. This was a different man from the one he had expected. Deeper, more subtle than the foolish, arrogant villain the men had drawn between them. More dangerous and, in some strange way, more kingly than they would have had him be.
It had seen how Berdichev had looked at the boy, as if recognizing another of his own kind. As if, amongst men, there were also levels. And this the highest; the level of Shapers and Doers – Architects and Builders not of a single mind but of the vast hive of minds that was the City. The thought recurred, and from somewhere drifted up a phrase it had often heard spoken – ‘the Kings of the City’. How well the old word sat on such men, for they moved and acted as a king might. There was the shadow of power behind their smallest motion. Power and death.
It watched them all. Saw how their faces said what in words could not be uttered. Saw each small betraying detail clearly, knowing them for what they were; all desire and doubt open to its all-seeing eye. Kings and peasants all, it saw the things that shaped each one of them. Variations on a theme. The same game played at a different level, for different stakes. All this was old knowledge, but for the machine it was new. Isolated, unasked, it viewed the world outside with a knowing innocence. Saw the dark heart of things. And stored the knowledge.
When they felt it was time, they taught him about his past. Or what they knew of it. Heavily edited, they returned to him the history of the person he had been. Names, pictures and events. But not the experience.
Kim learned his lessons well. Once told he could not forget. But that was not to say they gave him back his self. The new child was a pale imitation of the old. He had not lived and suffered and dreamed. What was dark in him was hidden; was walled-off and inaccessible. In its place he had a fiction; a story learned by rote. Something to fill the gap; to assuage the feeling of emptiness that gripped him whenever he looked back.
It was fifteen months into the programme when they brought T’ai Cho to the small suite of five rooms Kim had come to know as home. Kim knew the stranger by his face; knew both his history and what he had done for him. He greeted him warmly, as duty demanded, but his eyes saw only a stranger’s face. He had no real feeling for the man.
T’ai Cho cried and held the boy tightly, fiercely to him. He had been told how things were, but it was hard for him. Hard to feel the boy’s hands barely touching his back when he held him. Hard to see love replaced by curiosity in those eyes. He had been warned – had steeled
himself – yet his disappointment, his sense of hurt, was great nonetheless.
In a nearby room the team watched tensely, talking amongst themselves, pleased that the boy was showing so little sign of emotion or excitement. A camera focused on the boy’s eyes, showing the smallest sign of movement in the pupils. A monitoring unit attached to the back of the boy’s neck traced more subtle changes in the brain’s activity. All seemed normal. Stable. There was no indication that the boy had any memory of the man other than those implanted by the team.
It was just as they’d hoped. Kim had passed the test. Now they could progress – move on to the next stage of his treatment. The house, once empty, had been furnished. It was time now to fill the rooms with life. Time to test the mosaic for flaws.
In the room the man turned away from the boy and picked up his jacket from the chair. For a moment he turned back, looking at him, hopeful to the last that some small flicker of recognition would light those eyes with their old familiar warmth. But there was nothing. The child he had known was dead. Even so, he felt a kind of love for the form, the flesh, and so he went across and held him one last time before he left. For old times’ sake. Then he turned and went, saying nothing. Finding nothing left to say.
A GIFT OF STONES
In the Hall of the Eight Immortals, the smallest, most intimate of the eighty-one Halls in the Palace of Tongjiang, the guests had gathered for the betrothal ceremony of the young prince Li Yuan to the beautiful Fei Yen. As these events went it was only a tiny gathering; there were less than a hundred people in the lavishly decorated room – the tight circle of those who were known and trusted by the T’ang.
The room was silent now, the guests attentive as Li Shai Tung took the great seal from the cushion his Chancellor held out to him, then, both his hands taking its weight, turned to face the table. The seal – the Family ‘chop’, a huge square thing, more shield than simple stamp – had been inked beforehand and, as the great T’ang turned, the four Mandarin characters that quartered the seal glistened redly in the lamplight.
Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series Page 33