The Middle Kingdom
Page 23
Lo Ying hesitated, then nodded. ‘The big one… he was sitting across from us. I noticed him. Before it happened…’ He shuddered and looked down.
Chen turned slowly and glanced at the men as casually as he could, then looked back at Lo Ying, speaking as softly as he could. ‘Lo Ying? Have you your knife on you?’
Lo Ying nodded. As pan chang he was permitted to carry a knife for his duties.
‘Good. Pass it to me. Don’t let them see.’
Lo Ying did as he was told, then clutched at Chen’s shirt. ‘Who are they, Chen?’
Chen took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve seen them before. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence.’
But he knew it wasn’t. He knew it was all tied in somehow. It was no coincidence that Wyatt had been executed tonight. And now they had come for him. Tidying up. He wondered vaguely how they’d traced him.
‘Stay here. I’ll go down towards home. If they follow me, whistle.’
Lo Ying nodded once, then watched as Chen turned away from him and, seeming not to notice the two men waiting twenty paces off, made for his home corridor.
Chen had only gone three or four paces when the men pushed away from the wall and began to follow him. Lo Ying let them turn into the corridor, making sure they were following, then put his fingers to his lips and whistled.
Chen turned abruptly, facing the men.
‘What do you want?’
They were both big men, but the younger of them was a real brute, a giant of a man, more than a head taller than Chen and much broader at the shoulders. Like a machine made of flesh and muscle. The other was much older, his close-cropped hair a silver grey, but he still looked fit and dangerous. They were Hung Mao, both of them. But who were they working for? Berdichev? Or the T’ang?
‘Kao Chen,’ said the older of them, taking two paces nearer. ‘So we meet at last. We thought you were dead.’
Chen grunted. ‘Who are you?’
The old man smiled. ‘I should have realized at once. Karr here had to point it out to me. That stooge you used to play yourself. The man who died in Jyan’s. You should have marked him.’ He pointed to the thick ridge of scar tissue beneath Chen’s right ear. ‘Karr noticed it on the film.’
Chen laughed. ‘So. But what can you prove?’
‘We don’t have to prove anything, Chen.’ The old man laughed and seemed to relax. ‘You know, you’re a tricky bastard, aren’t you? Your brother, Jyan, underestimated you. He thought you dull-witted. But don’t go making the same mistake with me. Don’t underestimate me, Chen. I’m not some low-level punk. I am the T’ang’s General, and I command more kwai than you’d ever dream existed. You can die now, if you want. Or you can live. The choice is yours.’
A ripple of fear went through Chen. The T’ang’s General! But he had made his choice already, moments before, and the old man was only two paces off now. If he could keep him talking a moment longer.
‘You’re mistaken, General,’ he said, raising a hand to keep the General off. ‘Jyan was not my brother. We only shared the same surname. Anyway, I…’ He broke off, smiling, then let out a scream. ‘Lo Ying!’
The big man began to turn just as Lo Ying jumped up onto his back. At the same moment Chen lunged forward, the knife flashing out from his pocket. Grasping the old man’s arm he turned him and brought the knife up to his throat.
Karr threw his attacker off and felled him with a single punch, then turned back, angry at being tricked. He came forward two paces then stopped abruptly, seeing how things were.
‘You’re a fool, Chen,’ the General hissed, feeling Chen’s arm tighten about his chest, the knife’s point prick the skin beneath his chin. ‘Harm me and you’ll all be dead. Chen, Wang Ti and baby Jyan. As if you’d never been.’
Chen shuddered, but kept his grip on the old man. ‘Your life… It must be worth something.’
The General laughed coldly. ‘To my T’ang.’
‘Well, then?’
Tolonen swallowed painfully. ‘You know things. Know what Jyan knew. You can connect things for us. Incriminate others.’
‘Maybe.’
‘In return we’ll give you an amnesty. Legitimize your citizenship. Make sure you can’t be sent back to the Net.’
‘And that’s all? A measly amnesty. For what I know?’
The General was silent a moment, breathing shallowly, conscious of the knife pressed harder against his throat. ‘And what do you know, Kao Chen?’
‘I watched him. Both times. Saw him go in there that first time. He and the Han. Then watched him come out two hours later, alone, after he’d killed Kao Jyan. Then, later, I saw him go back in again. I stood at the junction and saw him, with my own eyes. You were there too. Both of you. I recognize you now. Yes. He was one of yours. One of you bastards.’
The General shuddered. ‘Who, Chen? Who do you mean?’
Chen laughed coldly. ‘The Major. That’s who. Major DeVore.’
Chapter 31
THE LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
The first thing to see was darkness. Darkness coloured the Clay like a dye. It melted forms and re-cast them with a deadly animation. It lay within and without; was both alive and yet the deadest thing of all. It breathed, and yet it stifled.
For many it was all they knew. All they would ever know.
The settlement was on the crest of a low hill, a sprawl of ugly, jagged shapes, littering the steep slope. Old, crumbling ruins squatted amongst the debris, black against black, their very shapes eroded by the darkness. The walls of houses stood no taller than a man’s height, the brickwork soft, moist to the touch. There were no roofs, no ceilings, but none were needed here. No rain fell in the darkness of the Clay.
The darkness seemed intense and absolute. It was a cloth, smothering the vast, primaeval landscape. Yet there was light of a kind.
Above the shadowed plain the ceiling ran to all horizons, perched on huge columns of silver that glowed softly, faintly, like something living. Dim studs of light criss-crossed the artificial sky; neutered, ordered stars, following the tracks of broad conduits and cables, for the ceiling was a floor, and overhead was the vastness of the City; another world, sealed off from the foetid darkness underneath.
The Clay. It was a place inimical to life. And yet life thrived there in the dark; hideous, malformed shapes spawning in obscene profusion. The dark plain crawled with vulgar life.
Kim woke from a bad dream, a tight band of fear about his chest. Instinct made him freeze, then turn slowly, stealthily, towards the sound, lifting the oilcloth he lay under. He had the scent at once – the thing that had warned him on waking. Strangers… Strangers at the heart of the camp.
Something was wrong. Badly wrong.
He moved to the lip of the brickwork he had been lying behind and peered over the top. What he saw made him bristle with fear. Two of his tribe lay on the ground nearby, their skulls smashed open, the brains taken. Further away, three men – strangers, intruders – crouched over another body. They were carving flesh from arm and thigh and softly laughing as they ate. Kim’s mouth watered, but the fear he felt was far stronger.
One of the strangers turned and looked directly at the place where Kim was hiding. He lidded his eyes and kept perfectly still, knowing that unless he moved the man would not see him. So it proved. The man made a cursory inspection of the settlement then returned to his food, his face twitching furtively as he gnawed at the raw meat.
For a moment Kim was blank, a shell of unthinking bone. Then something woke in him, filling the emptiness. He turned away, moving with a painful slowness, his muscles aching with the strain of it as he climbed the rotten sill, each moment begging that it wouldn’t crumble beneath his weight and betray him. But it held. Then, slowly, very slowly, he eased himself down the cold, broad steps. Down into the cellar of Baxi’s house.
In the far corner of the cellar he stopped, lifting rocks, scrabbling silently with his fingers in the intense darkness, looking for
something. There! His fingers found the edge of the cloth and gently pulled the package up out of the soft dust. Kim shivered, knowing already what was inside. These were Baxi’s. His treasures. He was not meant to know of them. Baxi would have killed him had he known.
Kim tugged at the knot and freed it, then unwrapped the cloth, ignoring the fear he felt. Another Kim – another self – had taken over.
Straightening up, he knelt there, staring down sightlessly at the items hidden in the cloth, a feeling of strangeness rippling through him like a sickness. For a moment he closed his eyes against the sudden, unexpected giddiness, then felt it ebb from him and opened them again, feeling somehow different – somehow… changed.
Spreading the objects out with his fingers, he picked up each object in turn, feeling and smelling them, letting the newly woken part of him consider each thing before he set it down again.
A tarnished mirror, bigger than his hand, cracked from top to bottom. A narrow tube that contained a strange sweet-smelling liquid. Another tube, but this of wood, long as his lower arm, small holes punctuating its length. One end was open, hollow, the other tapered, split.
There was a small globe of glass, heavy and cold in his palm. Beside that was a glove, too large for his hand, its fingers heavily padded at the back, as if each joint had swollen up.
Two strings of polished beads lay tangled in a heap. Kim’s clever fingers untangled them and laid them out flat on the threadbare cloth.
There were other things, but those he set aside. His other self already saw. Saw as if the thing had already happened and he had been outside himself, looking on. The thought made him feel strange again; made his head swim, his body feel light, almost feverish. Then, once more, it passed.
Quickly, as if he had done all this before, he laid the things out around him, then placed the cloth over his head. Unsighted, he worked as if he saw himself from above, letting some other part of him manipulate his hands, his body, moving quickly, surely, until the thing was done. Then, ready, he turned towards the doorway and, by touch and scent, made his way out into the open.
He heard a gasp and then a shout, high-pitched and nervous. Three voices babbled and then fell silent. That silence was his signal. Lifting the globe high, he squeezed the button on the side of the tube.
Some gift, unguessed until that moment, made him see himself as they saw him. He seemed split, one self standing there before them, the cloth shrouding his face and neck, the cracked mirror tied in a loop before his face, the other stood beyond the men, looking back past them at the awesome, hideous figure who had appeared so suddenly, flames leaping from one hand, fire glinting in the centre of the other, giant fist, flickering in the hollow where his face should have been, while from the neck of the figure a long tongue of wood hung stiffly down.
The figure hopped and sang – a strange, high-pitched wail that seemed to come in broken, anguished breaths. And all the while the fire flickered in the centre of the empty face.
As one, the strangers screamed and ran.
Kim let the pipe fall from his lips. His finger released the button on the tube. It was done. He had seen them off. But from the darkness of the slopes came an intense, ape-like chattering. Others had seen the sudden, astonishing brightness.
He set down the glass sphere, unfastened the mirror and laid it down, then sat there on the broken ground, wondering at himself. It had worked. He had seen it in his head, and then… He laughed softly, strangely. And then he’d done it!
And it had worked.
He tore the cloth from his head and bared his sharp teeth in a feral grin of triumph. Tilting his head back, he let out a howl; a double whoop of delight at his own cleverness. Then, so suddenly that the sound still echoed from the ceiling high above, he shuddered, gripped by a paralysing fear, a black, still coldness flooding his limbs.
It was not triumph, merely reprieve. He was still here, trapped, smothered by the darkness. He coughed, then felt the warm corruption of the dark fill his lungs, like a liquid, choking him. He stood up, gulping at the foetid air as if for something sweeter, cleaner. But there was nothing – only this.
He whimpered, then, glancing furtively about him, began to wrap the treasures as he’d found them. Only when they were safely stored did he stop, his jaw aching from fear, his muscles trembling violently. Then, like some mad thing, he rushed about the settlement on all fours, growling furiously, partly to keep up his faded courage, partly to keep away the prowlers on the hillside below.
It was then that he found the knife. It had fallen on its edge, the handle jutting up at an angle where one of the strangers had dropped it. The handle was cold and smooth and did not give to Kim’s sharp teeth when he tested it. Not wood, or flint, but something far better than those. Something made. He drew it slowly from the tiny crevice in which it had lodged and marvelled at its length, its perfect shape. It was as long as his arm and its blade was so sharp it made his testicles contract in fear. A wartha, it was. From Above.
When they came back he was squatting on the sill of Baxi’s house, the long, two-edged blade laid carefully across his knees, the handle clenched firmly in his left hand.
Baxi looked about him, his body tensed, alarm twitching in his face. The stockade was down, the women gone. A few of the bodies lay where they had fallen. Some – those on the edges of the settlement – had been carried off. Behind Baxi his two lieutenants, Rotfoot and Ebor, made low, grunting noises of fear. He turned and silenced them, then faced Kim again.
‘Pandra vyth gwres?’ What is this?
Baxi glared at Kim, then saw the knife. His eyes widened, filled with fear and a greedy desire to own the weapon. There was a fierce, almost sexual urgency in his broad, squat face as he hopped from foot to foot, making small noises, as if in pain.
Kim knew he would kill to have the knife.
‘Lagasek!’ Baxi barked angrily, edging closer. ‘Pandra vyth gwres?’ His hands made small grasping movements.
Lagasek. It was the name they had given him. Starer.
Kim stood then raised the knife high over his head. There was a gasp from the other members of the hunting party as they saw the weapon, then an excited chattering. Kim saw Baxi crouch, his muscles tensing, as if he suspected treachery.
Slowly, careful not to alarm Baxi, Kim lowered the blade and placed it on the ground between them. Then he crouched, making himself smaller than he was, and made a gesture with his hands, the palms open, denoting a gift.
Baxi stared at him a moment longer, the hairs bristling on his arms and at the back of his neck. Then he too crouched, a broad, toothless grin settling on his face. The Chief was pleased. He reached out, taking Kim’s gift gingerly by the handle, respecting the obvious sharpness of the blade.
Baxi lifted the weapon and held it high above his head. He glanced briefly at Kim, smiling broadly, generous now, then turned, looking back at his hunters, thrusting the knife time and again into the air, tilting his head back with each thrust and baying at the ceiling high above.
All about him in the almost-dark the hunters bayed and yelled. And from the hillsides and the valley below other groups took up the unearthly sound and echoed it back.
Kim squatted at Ebor’s side in the inner circle of the hunters, chewing a long, pale-fleshed lugworm and listening to the grunts, the moist, slopping sounds the men made as they ate, realizing he had never really noticed them before. He glanced about him, his eyes moving swiftly from face to face around the circle, looking for some outward sign of the change that had come to him, but there was nothing. Rotfoot had lost his woman in the raid, but now he sat there, on the low stone wall, contentedly chewing part of her thighbone, stripping it bare with his sharply pointed teeth. Others too were gnawing at the meat that Baxi had provided. A small heap of it lay there in the centre of the circle, hacked into manageable pieces. Hands and feet were recognizable in the pile, but little else. The sharp knife had worked its magic of disguise. Besides, meat was meat, whatever the source.
He followed Baxi through, aware that the circle of heads turned to follow him. Afraid, he clutched the severed hand to himself, finding a strange comfort in its touch. His fingers sought its rough, bony knuckles, recognized the chipped, spoonlike nails. It was Rotfoot’s woman’s hand.
At the entrance to Baxi’s house they stopped. The Chief turned, facing the boy, and pointed down to a small parcel of cloth that lay on the ground beside the sill.
Kim froze in fear, thinking he’d been discovered. He closed his eyes, petrified, expecting the knife’s sharp blow. Where would it strike? In his back? His side? Against his neck? He made a small sound of fear, then opened his eyes again and looked up at Baxi.
Baxi was looking strangely at him. Then he shrugged and pointed at the parcel again. Kim swallowed and set down the hand, then picked up the cloth bundle and, at Baxi’s encouragement, began to unwrap it.
He saw what it was at once and looked up, surprised, only to find Baxi smiling down at him. ‘Ro,’ said the Chief. ‘Ro.’ A gift.
The tarnished mirror was just as he remembered it, the crack running down the silvered glass from top to bottom. There was no need to feign surprise or delight. He grinned up at Baxi, giving a silent whoop of joy, almost forgetting that they thought him dumb. Baxi too seemed pleased. He reached out to touch Kim, caressing his upper arms and nodding his head vigorously. ‘Ro,’ he said again, then laughed manically. And from the watching circle came an answering roar of savage laughter.
Kim stared down at the mirror in his hand and saw his face reflected in the darkness. How strange and alien that face. Not like his hands. He knew his hands. But his face… He shivered, then smiled, taken by the strangeness of his reflected features. Lagasek, he thought, seeing how the stranger smiled back at him. Such eyes you have. Such big, wide staring eyes.