The Middle Kingdom

by David Wingrove

  ‘Why?’

  T’ai Cho was silent a moment. ‘Do you remember everything?’

  Kim shook his head, the hurt back in his eyes, stronger now than before. ‘No. Not everything. I was asleep, you see. For a long time I was asleep. And then I woke. The light woke me.’

  Chapter 34

  WUWEI

  Darkness lay on the water like oil. It was almost dawn, but day would be a month coming this far north. They lay there silently in the flat boats, half a li from the shore of the island, waiting for the signal in their heads. At ten minutes past five it came and they began to move in, their faces and hands blacked up, their wet suits blending with the darkness.

  Hans Ebert, commanding the raiding party, was first ashore. He crouched on the slick stone steps, waiting, listening for sounds above the steady slapping of the water on the rocks below.

  Nothing. All was well. A few seconds later the second signal sounded in his head and he moved on quickly, his body acting almost without thought, doing what it had rehearsed a hundred times in the last few days.

  He could sense his men moving in the darkness all about him; two hundred and sixty-four of them, elite-trained. The best in City Europe.

  At the top of the steps Ebert stopped. While his sergeant, Auden, set the charge on the solid metal door he looked back through the darkness at the mainland. Hammerfest lay six li to the east, like a vast slab of glacial ice, thrusting out into the cold northern sea. To north and south of it the great wall of the City’s edge ran into the distance like a jagged ribbon, its pale whiteness lit from within, tracing the shoreline of the ancient Finnmark of Norway. He shivered and turned back, conscious of the unseen presence of the old fortress walls towering above him in the moonless dark. It was a bugger of a place. Just the kind of site one would expect SimFic to build a special research unit in.

  Auden came back to him. Together they crouched behind the blast shield, lowering their infrared lenses over their eyes. The charges would be fired automatically by the third signal. They waited. Without warning the night was rent by a whole series of detonations, some near, some further off. They let the shield fall forward and, not waiting for the smoke to clear, charged through the gaping doorway, followed by a dozen other men. At fifteen other points about the island the same thing was happening. Even as he entered the empty corridor he could hear the first bursts of small-arms fire.

  The first intersection was exactly where it should have been. Ebert stood at the corner, looking to his left, his gun held against his shoulder, searching out targets in the darkness up ahead. He waited until his squad was formed up behind him, then counted them through, Auden first. Up ahead was the first of the guard posts, if the plans were accurate, and beyond that the first of the laboratories.

  Ebert touched the last man’s arm as he went through, then glanced back the way he’d come. For a moment he thought he saw movement and hesitated, but there was nothing in the infrared. He turned back quickly, then set off, running hard after his squad, hearing their boots echoing on the floor up ahead of him. But he had gone only ten or so strides when the floor seemed to give in front of him and he was tumbling forward down a slope.

  He spread his legs behind him to slow himself and tried to dig his gun into the glassy surface of the floor. He slowed marginally, slewing to the left, then, abruptly, thumped into the wall. For a moment he was disoriented, his body twisted about violently. He felt his gun clatter away from him, then he was sliding again, head first this time, the yells closer now, mixed with a harsh muttering. A moment later he thumped bruisingly into a pile of bodies.

  Ebert groaned, then looked up and saw Auden above him, the heated recognition patch at his neck identifying him.

  ‘Is anyone hurt?’ Ebert said softly, almost breathlessly, letting Auden help him to his feet.

  Auden leant close and whispered in his ear. ‘I think Leiter’s dead, sir. A broken neck. He was just behind me when it went. And there seem to be a few other minor injuries. But otherwise…’

  ‘Gods…’ Ebert looked about him. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. This isn’t on the plans.’

  To three sides of them the walls went up vertically for forty, maybe fifty ch’i. It felt like they were at the bottom of a big, square-bottomed well. Ebert stepped back and stared up into the darkness overhead, trying to make something out. ‘There,’ he said, after a moment, pointing upward. ‘If we can fire a rope up there we can get out.’

  ‘If they don’t pick us off first.’

  ‘Right.’ Ebert took a breath, then nodded. ‘You break up the surface about six or eight ch’i up the slope. Meanwhile, let’s keep the bastards’ heads down, eh?’

  The sergeant gave a slight bow and turned to bark an order at one of his men. Meanwhile Ebert took two grenades from his belt. It was hard to make out just how far up the entrance to the corridor was. Thirty ch’i, perhaps. Maybe more. There was only the slightest change in the heat emission pattern – the vaguest hint of an outline. He hefted one of the grenades, released the pin, then leaned back and hurled it up into the darkness. If he missed…

  He heard it rattle on the surface overhead. Heard shouts of surprise and panic. Then the darkness was filled with sudden, brilliant light. As it faded he threw the second grenade, more confident this time, aiming it at the smouldering red mouth of the tunnel. Someone was screaming up there – an awful, unnatural, high-pitched scream that chilled his blood – then the second explosion shuddered the air and the screaming stopped abruptly.

  Ebert turned. Auden had chipped footholds into the slippery surface of the slope. Now he stood there, the big ascent gun at his hip, waiting for his Captain’s order.

  ‘Okay,’ Ebert said. ‘Try and fix it into the roof of the tunnel. As soon as it’s there I’ll start up. Once I’m at the top I want a man to follow me every ten seconds. Got that?’

  ‘Sir!’

  Auden looked up, judging the distance, then raised the heavy rifle to his shoulder and fired. The bolt flew up, trailing its thin, strong cord. They heard it thud into the ceiling of the tunnel, then two of the men were hauling on the slack of the cord, testing that the bolt was securely fixed overhead.

  One of them turned, facing Ebert, his head bowed. ‘Rope secure, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ He stepped forward and took the gun from the soldier’s shoulder. ‘Take Leiter’s gun, Spitz. Or mine if you can find it.’

  ‘Sir!’

  Ebert slipped the gun over his right shoulder, then took the rope firmly and began to climb, hauling himself up quickly, hands and feet working thoughtlessly. Three-quarters of the way up he slowed and shrugged the gun from his shoulder into his right hand, then began to climb again, pulling himself up one-handedly towards the lip.

  They would be waiting. The grenades had done some damage, but they wouldn’t have finished them off. There would be backups.

  He stopped just beneath the lip and looked back down, signalling to Auden that he should begin. At once he felt the rope tighten beneath him as it took the weight of the first of the soldiers. Turning back, Ebert freed the safety with his thumb, then poked the barrel over the edge and squeezed the trigger. Almost at once the air was filled with the noise of return fire. Three, maybe four of them, he estimated.

  Beneath him the rope swayed, then steadied again as the men below took the slack. Ebert took a long, shuddering breath, then heaved himself up, staring over the lip into the tunnel beyond.

  He ducked down quickly, just as they opened up again. But he knew where they were now. Knew what cover he had up there. Quickly, his fingers fumbling at the catch, he freed the smoke bomb from his belt, twisted the neck of it sharply, then hurled it into the tunnel above him. He heard the shout of warning and knew they thought it was another grenade. Taking another long breath, he pulled the mask up over his mouth and nose, then heaved himself up over the lip and threw himself flat on the floor, covering his eyes.

  There was a faint pop, then a brilliant gl
are of light. A moment later the tunnel was filled with billowing smoke.

  Ebert crawled forward quickly, taking cover behind two badly mutilated bodies that lay one atop the other against the left-hand wall. It was not a moment too soon. Bullets raked the tunnel wall only a hand’s width above his head. He waited a second, then, taking the first of his targets from memory, fired through the dense smoke.

  There was a short scream, then the firing started up again. But only two of them this time.

  He felt the bullets thump into the corpse he was leaning on and rolled aside quickly, moving to his right. There was a moment’s silence. Or almost silence. Behind him he heard sounds – strangely familiar sounds. A soft rustling that seemed somehow out of context here. He lifted his gun, about to open fire again, when he heard a faint click and the clatter of something small but heavy rolling towards him.

  A grenade.

  He scrabbled with his left hand, trying to intercept it and throw it back, but it was past him, rolling towards the lip.

  ‘Shit!’

  There was nothing for it now. He threw himself forward, his gun held chest-high, firing into the dense smoke up ahead. Then the explosion pushed him off his feet and he was lying amongst sandbags at the far end of the tunnel, stunned, his ears ringing.

  ‘Light!’ someone was saying. ‘Get a fucking light here!’

  Auden. It was Auden’s voice.

  ‘Here!’ he said weakly and tried to roll over, but there was something heavy across the back of his legs. Then, more strongly. ‘I’m here, sergeant!’

  Auden came across quickly and reached down, pulling the body from him. ‘Thank the gods, sir! I was worried we’d lost you.’ He leaned forward and hauled Ebert to his feet, supporting him.

  Ebert laughed, then slowly sat back down, his legs suddenly weak. ‘Me too.’ He looked up again as one of the soldiers brought an arc lamp across to them.

  ‘Shit!’ he said, looking about him. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You must have blacked out, sir. But not before you did some damage here.’ Ebert shuddered, then half turned, putting his hand up to his neck. There were two bodies sprawled nearby, face down beside the sandbags. He looked up at Auden again.

  ‘What are our losses?’

  ‘Six men, sir. Including Leiter. And Grant has a bad head wound. We may have to leave him here for now.’

  ‘Six men? Fuck it!’ He swallowed, then sat forward. ‘Do we know how the other squads are doing?’

  Auden looked down. ‘That’s another problem, sir. We’ve lost contact. All the channels are full of static.’

  Ebert laughed sourly. ‘Static? What the fuck’s going on?’

  Auden shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know, sir. But it’s odd. There’s an intersection up ahead that isn’t on the map. And when you went up…’ Auden hesitated, then went on. ‘Well, it seems they must have had a sluice or something at the bottom of the slope. One moment I was standing there, helping get the men on the rope, the next I was knee-deep in icy water.’

  Ebert looked down. So that was the strange sound he had heard. He shivered, then looked back up at Auden. ‘I wondered. You know that? As I was climbing the rope I was asking myself why they hadn’t finished us off at once. Just a couple of grenades. That’s all it would have taken. But that explains it, doesn’t it? They meant to drown us. But why? What difference would it make?’

  Auden smiled grimly back at him. ‘I don’t know, sir, but if you’re feeling all right we’d best press on. I don’t like this quiet. I have the feeling they’re watching us all the while, getting ready to hit us again.’

  Ebert smiled and reached out to touch his sergeant’s shoulder briefly. ‘Okay. Then let’s get moving, eh?’

  Auden hesitated a moment longer. ‘One last thing, sir. Something you ought to know.’

  Ebert saw how Auden’s eyes went to one of the corpses and felt himself go cold inside. ‘Don’t tell me. They’re like the copies at the wedding. Is that it?’

  Auden shook his head, then went across and turned over one of the corpses, tugging off its helmet.

  ‘Gods!’ Ebert got up slowly and went across, then crouched above the body and, taking his knife from his belt, slit the jacket open, exposing the naked chest beneath.

  He looked up at Auden and saw his own surprised bemusement mirrored back at him. ‘The gods preserve us!’ He looked back down at the soft curves of the corpse’s breasts, the soft, brown, blinded eyes of the nipples, and shuddered. ‘Are they all like this?’

  Auden nodded. ‘All the ones I’ve looked at so far.’

  Ebert pulled the jacket back across the dead woman’s breasts then stood up, his voice raised angrily. ‘What does it all mean? I mean, what in hell’s name does it all mean?’

  Auden shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir. But I know one thing. Someone told them we were coming. Someone set us up.’

  General Tolonen dismissed the two guards, locked the door, then turned to face the young prince, his head bowed.

  ‘I am sorry I had to bring you here, young master, but I couldn’t chance letting our enemies know of this, however small the risk.’

  Li Yuan stood there stiffly, his chin raised slightly, a bitter anger in his red-rimmed eyes. He was barely half the General’s height and yet his air of command, even in grief, left no doubt as to who was master, who servant there. The prince was wearing the cheng fu, the rough, unhemmed sackcloth of traditional mourning clothes, his feet clad in simple, undecorated sandals, his hands and neck bare of all jewellery. It was all so brutally austere – so raw a display of grief – it made Tolonen’s heart ache to see him so.

  They were in a Secure Room at the heart of the Bremen fortress. A room no more than twenty ch’i square, cut off on all six sides from the surrounding structure, a series of supporting struts holding it in place. It was reached by way of a short corridor with two airlocks, each emptied to total vacuum after use. Most found it an uncomfortable, uneasy place to be. Once inside, however, absolute secrecy could be guaranteed. No cameras looked into the room and no communications links went out from there. In view of recent developments, Tolonen welcomed its perfect isolation. Too much had happened for him to take unnecessary risks.

  ‘Have you spoken to him yet?’ Li Yuan asked, anger burning in his eyes. ‘Did the bastard lie through his teeth?’

  The young boy’s anger was something to be seen. Tolonen had never dreamed he had it in him. He had always seemed so cold and passionless. Moreover, there was an acid bitterness to the words that struck a chord in Tolonen. Li Yuan had taken his brother’s death badly. Only vengeance would satisfy him. In that they were alike.

  Tolonen removed his uniform cap and bowed to him. ‘You must be patient, young master. These things take time. I want solid evidence before I confront our friend Berdichev.’

  The eight-year-old turned away sharply, the abruptness of the gesture revealing his inner turmoil. Then he turned back, his eyes flaring. ‘I want them dead, General Tolonen. Every last one of them. And I want their families eradicated. To the third generation.’

  Tolonen bowed his head again. I would, he thought, were that my T’ang’s command. But Li Shai Tung has said nothing yet. Nothing of what he feels, or wants, or of what was said in Council yesterday. What have the Seven decided? How are they to answer this impertinence?

  Yes, little master, I would gladly do as you say. But my hands are tied.

  ‘We know much more now,’ he said, taking Li Yuan’s shoulder and steering him across the room to where two chairs had been placed before a screen. He sat, facing Li Yuan, conscious not only of the boy’s grief and anger but also of his great dignity. ‘We know how it was done.’

  He saw how Li Yuan tensed.

  ‘Yes,’ Tolonen said. ‘The key to it all was simulated vision.’ He saw that it meant nothing to Li Yuan and pressed on. ‘We discovered it in our raid on the SimFic installation at Punto Natales. They had been conducting illegal experiments with it there for
more than eight years, apparently. It seems that the soft-wire they found in Chao Yang’s head was part of one of their systems.’

  Li Yuan shook his head. ‘I don’t understand you, General. SimFic have been conducting illegal experiments? Is that it? They’ve been wilfully flouting the terms of the Edict?’

  Tolonen nodded but raised a hand to fend off Li Yuan’s query. This was complex ground and he did not want to get into a discussion about how all Companies conducted such experiments, then lobbied to get their supposedly ‘theoretical’ products accepted by the Ministry.

  ‘Setting that aside a moment,’ he said, ‘what is of primary importance here is the fact that Pei Chao Yang was not to blame for your brother’s murder. It seems he had brain surgery for a blood clot almost five years ago – an operation that his father, Pei Ro-hen, kept from the public record. Chao had a hunting accident, it seems. He fell badly from his horse. But the operation was a success and he had had no further trouble. That is, until the day of the wedding. Now we know why.’

  ‘You mean, they implanted something in his head? Something to control him?’

  ‘Not to control him, exactly. But something that would make him see precisely what they wanted him to see. Something that superimposed a different set of images. Even a different set of smells, it seems. Something that made him see Han Ch’in differently…’

  ‘And we know who carried out this… operation?’

  Tolonen looked back at the boy. ‘Yes. But they’re dead. They’ve been dead for several years, in fact. Whoever arranged this was very thorough. Very thorough indeed.’

  ‘But SimFic are to blame? Berdichev’s to blame?’

  He saw the ferocity on Li Yuan’s face and nodded. ‘I believe so. But maybe not enough to make a conclusive case in law. It all depends on what we find at Hammerfest.’

  She came at him like a madwoman, screeching, a big, sharp-edged hunting knife in her left hand, a notched bayonet in her right.

  Ebert ducked under the vicious swinging blow and thrust his blade between her breasts, using both hands, the force of the thrust carrying her backwards, almost lifting her off her feet.