‘Gods…’ he said, looking down at the dying woman, shaken by the ferocity of her attack. ‘How many more of them?’
It was five minutes to six and he was lost. Eight of his squad were dead now, two left behind in the corridors, badly wounded. They had killed more than twenty of the defending force. All of them women. Madwomen, like the one he had just killed. And still they came at them.
Why women? he kept asking himself. But deeper down he knew why. It gave his enemy a psychological edge. He didn’t feel good about killing women. Neither had his men felt good. He’d heard them muttering among themselves. And now they were dead. Or good as.
‘Do we go on?’ Auden, his sergeant, asked.
Ebert turned and looked back at the remnants of his squad. There were four of them left now, including himself. And not one of them had ever experienced anything like this before. He could see it in their eyes. They were tired and bewildered. The past hour had seemed an eternity, with no knowing where the next attack would come from.
The ground plans they had been working from had proved completely false. Whoever was in charge of this had secretly rebuilt the complex and turned it into a maze: a web of deadly cul-de-sacs and traps. Worse yet, they had flooded the corridors with ghost signals, making it impossible for them to keep in contact with the other attacking groups.
Ebert smiled grimly. ‘We go on. It can’t be far now.’
At the next junction they came under fire again and lost another man. But this time the expected counter-attack did not materialize. Perhaps we’re almost there, thought Ebert as he pressed against the wall, getting his breath. Maybe this is their last line of defence. He looked across the corridor and met Auden’s eyes. Yes, he thought, if we get out of this I’ll commend you. For you’ve saved me more than once this last hour.
‘Get ready,’ he mouthed. ‘I’ll go first. You cover.’
Auden nodded and lifted his gun to his chest, tensed, ready to go.
The crossway was just ahead of them. Beyond it, about ten paces down the corridor and to the right, was a doorway.
Ebert flung himself across the open space, firing to his left, his finger jammed down on the trigger of the automatic. Behind him Auden and Spitz opened up noisily. Landing awkwardly, he began to scrabble forward, making for the doorway.
He heard her before he saw her. Turning his head he caught a glimpse of her on the beam overhead, her body crouched, already falling. He brought his gun up sharply, but it was too late. Even as he loosed off the first wild shot, her booted feet crashed into his back heavily, smashing him down into the concrete floor.
The film had ended. Tolonen turned in his seat and looked at the boy.
‘There are two more, then we are done here.’
Li Yuan nodded but did not look back at him. He was sitting there rigidly, staring at the screen as if he would burn a hole in it. Tolonen studied him a moment longer, then looked away. This was hard for the boy, but it was what his father wanted. After all, Li Yuan would be T’ang one day and a T’ang needed to be hard.
Tolonen sat back in his chair again, then pressed the handset, activating the screen again.
On the evening of the wedding the walls of the Yu Hua Yuan had been lined with discreet security cameras. The logistics of tracking fifteen hundred individuals in such a small, dimly lit space had meant that they had had to use flat-image photography. Even so, because each individual had been in more than one camera’s range at any given moment, a kind of three-dimensional effect had been achieved. A computer programmed for full-head recognition of each of the individuals present had analysed each of the one hundred and eighty separate films and produced fifteen hundred new, ‘rounded’ films of seventeen minutes’ duration – timed to bracket the death of Han Ch’in by eight minutes either side. The new films eliminated all those moments when the heads of others intruded, enhancing the image whenever the mouth was seen to move, the lips to form words. What resulted was a series of individual ‘response portraits’ so vivid one would have thought the lens had been a mere arm’s length in front of each face.
They had already watched five of the seventeen minute films. Had seen the unfeigned surprise – the shock – on the faces of men whom they thought might have been involved.
‘Does that mean they’re innocent?’ Li Yuan had asked.
‘Not necessarily,’ Tolonen had answered. ‘The details might have been kept from them deliberately. But they’re the money men. I’m sure of it.’
This, the sixth of the films, showed one of Tolonen’s own men, a captain in the elite force; the officer responsible for the shao lin posted in the garden that evening.
Li Yuan turned and looked up at Tolonen, surprised.
‘But that’s Captain Erikson.’
The General nodded. ‘Watch. Tell me what you think.’
Li Yuan turned back and for a time was silent, concentrating on the screen.
‘Well?’ prompted Tolonen.
‘His reactions seem odd. His eyes… It’s almost as if he’s steeled himself not to react.’
‘Or as if he was drugged, perhaps? Don’t you think his face shows symptoms similar to arfidis trance? He’s not been known to indulge before now, but who knows? Maybe he’s an addict.’
Li Yuan turned and looked up at the General again. Between the words and the tone in which they had been said lay a question mark.
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ he said after a moment. ‘You don’t think he would have risked public exposure of his habit.’
Tolonen was silent, watching the boy closely. Li Yuan looked away again, then started, understanding suddenly what the General had really been saying.
‘He knew! That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Erikson knew, but… but he didn’t dare show it. Is that right? You think he risked taking arfidis in public?’
‘I think so,’ said Tolonen quietly. He was pleased with Li Yuan. If one good thing had come out of this rotten business it was this: Li Yuan would be T’ang one day. A great T’ang. If he lived long enough.
‘Then that explains why no shao lin were close enough to act.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Erikson?’
‘He’s dead. He killed himself an hour after the assassination. At first I thought it was because he felt he had failed me. Now I know otherwise.’
Tolonen stared up at Erikson’s face, conscious of the misery behind the dull glaze of his eyes. He had suffered for his betrayal.
Li Yuan’s voice was strangely gentle. ‘What made him do it?’
‘We’re not certain, but we think he might have been involved in the assassination of Lwo Kang. He was on DeVore’s staff at the time, and is known to have been in contact with DeVore in a private capacity while the latter was in charge of Security on Mars.’
‘I see.’
The film ended. The next began. Lehmann’s face filled the screen.
Something was wrong. That much was clear at once. Lehmann seemed nervous, strangely agitated. He talked fluently but seemed distanced from what he was saying. He held his head stiffly, awkwardly and his eyes made small, erratic movements in their sockets.
‘He knows!’ whispered Li Yuan, horrified, unable to tear his eyes away from the image on the screen. ‘Kuan Yin, sweet Goddess of Mercy, he knows!’
There, framed between Lehmann’s head and the screen’s top edge, he could see his brother standing with his bride, laughing with her, talking, exchanging loving glances…
No, he thought. No-o-o! Sheer dread welled up in him, making his hands tremble, his stomach clench with anguish. Lehmann’s face was huge, almost choking the screen. Vast it was, its surface a deathly white, like the springtime moon, bleak and pitted, filling the sky. And beyond it stood his brother, Han, sweet Han, breathing, talking, laughing-alive! – yes, for that frozen, timeless moment still alive – and yet so small, so frail, so hideously vulnerable.
Lehmann turned and looked across to where Han was talking to the Generals. For a momen
t he simply stared, his hostility unmasked, then he half turned to his right, as if in response to something someone had said, and laughed. That laughter – so in contrast with the coldness in his eyes – was chilling to observe. Li Yuan shivered. There was no doubting it now. Lehmann had known what was about to happen.
Slowly, almost unobtrusively, Lehmann moved back into the circle of his acquaintances, until, as the newly-weds stopped before Pei Chao Yang, he was directly facing them. Now there was nothing but his face staring down from the massive screen; a face that had been reconstructed from a dozen separate angles. All that lay between the lens and his face had been erased, the intruding images of murder cleared from the computer’s memory.
‘No…’ Li Yuan moaned softly, the pressure in his chest almost suffocating him, the pain growing with every moment.
Slowly, so slowly the seconds passed, and then Lehmann’s whole face seemed to stiffen.
‘His eyes,’ said Tolonen softly, his voice filled with pain. ‘Look at his eyes…’
Li Yuan groaned. Lehmann’s features were shaped superficially into a mask of concern, but his eyes were laughing, the pupils wide, aroused. And there, in the dark centre of each eye, was the image of Pei Chao Yang, struggling with Han Ch’in. There – doubled, inverted in the swollen darkness.
‘No-o-o!’ Li Yuan was on his feet, his fists clenched tightly, his face a rictus of pain and longing. ‘Han!… Sweet Han!’
When Ebert came to, the woman was lying beside him, dead, most of her head shot away. His sergeant, Auden, was kneeling over him, firing the big automatic into the rafters overhead.
He lifted his head, then let it fall again, a sharp pain accompanying the momentary wave of blackness. There was a soft wetness at the back of his head where the pain was most intense. He touched it gingerly, then closed his eyes again. It could be worse, he thought. I could be dead.
Auden let off another burst into the overhead, then looked down at him. ‘Are you all right, sir?’
Ebert coughed, then gave a forced smile. ‘I’m fine. What’s happening?’
Auden motioned overhead with his gun, his eyes returning to the web-like structure of beams and rafters that reached up into the darkness.
‘There was some movement up there, but there’s nothing much going on now.’
Ebert tried to focus, but found he couldn’t. Again he closed his eyes, his head pounding, the pain engulfing him. Auden was still talking.
‘It’s like a rat’s nest up there. But it’s odd, sir. If I was them I’d drop gas canisters or grenades. I’d have set up a network of automatic weapons.’
‘Perhaps they have,’ said Ebert weakly. ‘Perhaps there’s no one left to operate them.’
Auden looked down at him again, concerned. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, sir?’
Ebert opened his eyes. ‘My head. I’ve done something to my head.’
Auden set his gun down and lifted Ebert’s head carefully with one hand and probed gently with the other.
Ebert winced. ‘Gods…’
Auden knelt back, shocked by the extent of the damage. He thought for a moment, then took a small aerosol from his tunic pocket and sprayed the back of Ebert’s head. Ebert gritted his teeth against the cold, fierce, burning pain of the spray but made no sound. Auden let the spray fall and took an emergency bandage, a hand-sized padded square, from another pocket and applied it to the wound. Then he laid Ebert down again, turning him on his side and loosening the collar of his tunic. ‘It’s not too bad, sir. The cut’s not deep. She was dead before she could do any real damage.’
Ebert looked up into Auden’s face. ‘I suppose I should thank you.’
Auden had picked up his gun and was staring up into the overhead again. He glanced down quickly and shook his head. ‘No need, sir. It was my duty. Anyway, we’d none of us survive long if we didn’t help each other out.’
Ebert smiled, strangely warmed by the simplicity of Auden’s statement. The pain was subsiding now, the darkness in his head receding. Looking past Auden, he found he could see much more clearly. ‘Where’s Spitz?’
‘Dead, sir. We were attacked from behind as we crossed the intersection.’
‘So there’s only the two of us now.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Auden scanned the overhead one last time, looked back and front, then slipped his gun onto his shoulder. ‘I’ll have to carry you, sir. There’s a stairwell at the end of this corridor. If we’re lucky we’ll find some of our own up top. I’ve heard voices up above. Male voices. I think they’re some of ours.’
Putting his hands under Ebert’s armpits, he pulled the wounded man up into a sitting position, then knelt and, putting all his strength into it, heaved his captain up onto his shoulder. For a moment he crouched there, getting his balance, then reached out with his right hand and picked up his gun.
Li Yuan found her in the eastern palace at Sichuan, seated amidst her maids. It was a big, spacious room, opening on one side to a balcony, from which steps led down to a wide, green pool. Outside the day was bright, but in the room it was shadowed. Light, reflected from the pool, washed the ornate ceiling with ever-changing patterns of silver and black, while beneath all lay in darkness.
Fei Yen wore the ts’ui and the shang, the coarse hemp cloth unhemmed, as was demanded by the first mourning grade of chan ts’ui. Three years of mourning lay before her now – twenty-seven months in reality. All about her her maids wore simple white, and in a white, rounded bowl beside the high-backed chair in which she sat was a dying spray of flowers, their crimson and golden glory faded.
She looked up at him through eyes made dark from days of weeping, and summoned him closer. She seemed far older than he remembered her. Old and bone-tired. Yet it was only four days since the death of Han Ch’in.
He bowed low, then straightened, waiting for her to speak.
Fei Yen turned slowly and whispered something. At once her maids got up and began to leave, bowing to Li Yuan as they passed. Then he was alone with her.
‘Why have you come?’
He was silent a moment, daunted by her; by the unexpected hostility in her voice.
‘I… I came to see how you were. To see if you were recovering.’
Fei Yen snorted and looked away, her face bitter. Then, relenting, she looked back at him.
‘Forgive me, Li Yuan. I’m mending. The doctors say I suffered no real physical harm. Nothing’s broken…’
She shuddered and looked down again, a fresh tear forming in the corner of her eye. Li Yuan, watching her, felt his heart go out to her. She had loved his brother deeply. Even as much as he had loved him. Perhaps that was why he had come: to share with her both his grief and the awful denial of that love. But now that he was here with her, he found it impossible to say what he felt – impossible even to begin to speak of it.
For a while she was perfectly still, then she wiped the tear away impatiently and stood up, coming down to him.
‘Please forgive me, brother-in-law. I should greet you properly.’
Fei Yen embraced him briefly, then moved away. At the opening to the balcony she stopped and leaned against one of the pillars, staring out across the pool towards the distant mountains.
Li Yuan followed her and stood there, next to her, not knowing what to say or how to act.
She turned and looked at him. Though eight years separated them he was not far from her height. Even so, she always made him feel like a child beside her. Only a child. All that he knew – all that he was – seemed unimportant. Even he, the future T’ang, was made to feel inferior in her presence. Yes, even now, when her beauty was clouded, her eyes filled with resentment and anger. He swallowed and looked away, but still he felt her eyes upon him.
‘So now you will be T’ang.’
He looked back at her, trying to gauge what she was thinking, for her words had been colourless, a statement. But what did she feel? Bitterness? Jealousy? Anger that no son of hers would one day be T’ang?
‘Yes,�
� he said simply. ‘One day.’
Much earlier he had stood there in his father’s study, staring up at the giant image of Europe that filled one wall – the same image that could be seen from the viewing circle in the floating palace, 160,000 li above Chung Kuo.
A swirl of cloud, like a figure 3, had obscured much of the ocean to the far left of the circle. Beneath the cloud the land was crudely shaped. To the east vast plains of green stretched outward towards Asia. All the rest was white; white with a central mass of grey-black and another, smaller mass slightly to the east, making the whole thing look like the skull of some fantastic giant beast with horns. The white was City Europe; glacial, in the grip of a second age of ice.
From up there the world seemed small, reduced to a diagram. All that he saw his father owned and ruled. All things, all people there were his. And yet his eldest son was dead, and he could do nothing. What sense did it make?
He moved past her, onto the balcony, then stood there at the stone balustrade, looking down into the pale green water, watching the fish move in the depths. But for once he felt no connection with them, no ease in contemplating them.
‘You’ve taken it all very well,’ she said, coming up beside him. ‘You’ve been a brave boy.’
He looked up at her sharply, bitterly; hurt by her insensitivity, strangely stung by her use of the word ‘boy’.
‘What do you know?’ he snapped, pushing away from her. ‘How dare you presume that I feel less than you?’
He rounded on her, almost in tears now, his grief, his unassuaged anger making him want to break something; to snap and shatter something fragile. To hurt someone as badly as he’d been hurt.
She looked back at him, bewildered now, all bitterness, all jealousy drained from her by his outburst. ‘Oh, Yuan. Little Yuan. I didn’t know…’ She came to him and held him tight against her, stroking his hair, ignoring the pain where he gripped her sides tightly, hurting the bruises there. ‘Oh, Yuan. My poor little Yuan. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. How was I to know, my little one? How was I to know?’
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