The Middle Kingdom (15 page)

"The tape's
ready, General."

"Good,"
he said, not looking round; continuing to watch the figure far below.
"Let me hear it."

Lehmann's voice
filled the room, urgent and passionate.

"Were
suffocating, Howard! Can't they see that? Biting at the leash! Even
so, violence . . . Well, that's a different matter. It hurts everyone
and solves nothing. It only causes bad blood, and how can
that
help our cause? This—this act... all it does is set us back
a few more years. It makes things more difficult, more—"

The voice cut
out. After a moment the General sniffed, then nodded to himself. He
had heard the words a dozen, maybe two dozen times now, and each time
they had had the power to convince him of Lehmann's innocence.
Lehmann's anger, his callousness, while they spoke against him as a
man, were eloquent in his defense in this specific matter. It was not
how a guilty man behaved. In any case, he was right. How
would
this serve him? Li Shai Tung would merely appoint another
minister. Another like Lwo Kang.

Down below,
DeVore had reached the far end of the bridge. Two tiny figures broke
from the shadow of the left-hand tower to challenge him, then fell
back, seeing who it was. They melted back into the blackness and
DeVore marched on alone, out onto the apron of the spaceport.

The General
turned away. Perhaps DeVore was right. Perhaps Wyatt was their man.
Even so, a nagging sense of wrongness persisted, unfocused,
unresolved.

"I'm
tired," he said softly to himself, sitting himself behind his
desk again. "Yes, tiredness, that's all it is."

"Wait
outside, at the junction. You know what he looks like?"

The Han nodded.
"Like my brother."

"Good. Then
get going."

The Han did as
he was told, closing the door behind him, leaving DeVore alone in the
room. DeVore looked around, for the first time allowing himself to
relax. Not long now. Not long and it would all be done. This was the
last of it. He looked at the sealed bag on the floor by the bed and
smiled, then sat on the end of the bed next to the corpse's feet.

The
kwai,
Chen, had been hard to kill. Stubborn. He had fought so hard for
life that they had had to club him to death, as if strangling the man
hadn't been enough. His head was a bloodied pulp, his features almost
unrecognizable. The Han had enjoyed that. DeVore had had to drag him
off.

Like animals, he
thought, disgusted, promising himself he'd make the Han's death a
particularly painful one.

For a while he
sat there, head down, hands on knees, thinking things through. Then
he looked up, looked about himself again. It was such a mean, shabby
little place, and like all of this beneath the Net, it bred a type
that matched its circumstances. This Kao Jyan, for instance; he had
big dreams, but he was a little man. He didn't have the skill or
imagination to carry off his scheme. All he had was a brash
impudence; an inflated sense of self-importance. But then, what else
could be expected? Living here, a man had no perspective. No way of
judging what the truth of things really was.

He got up and
crossed the room. Inset into the wall was an old-fashioned games
machine. A ResTem Mark IV. He switched it on and set it up for
wei
chi;
an eighth-level game, the machine to start with black.

For a time he
immersed himself in the game, enjoying the challenge. Then, when it
was clear he had the advantage, he turned away.

The General was
sharper than he'd thought he'd be. Much sharper. That business with
the dead maintenance engineer. His discovery of Kao Jyan and the
kwai.
For a moment DeVore had thought their scheme undone. But
the game was far from played out. He'd let the General find his
missing pieces. One by one he'd give them to him. But not until he'd
done with them.

He glanced at
the machine again. It was a complex game, and he prided himself on a
certain mastery of it. Strange, though, how much it spoke of the
difference between East and West. At least, of the old West, hidden
beneath the levels of the Han City, the layers of Han culture and Han
history. The games of the West had been played on similar boards to
those of the East, but the West played between the lines, not on the
intersecting points. And the games of the West had been flexible,
each individual piece given breath, allowed to move, as though each
had an independent life. That was not so in
wei chi.
In
wei
chi
once a piece was placed it remained, unless it was surrounded
and its "breath" taken from it. It was a game of static
patterns; patterns built patiently over hours or days—sometimes
even months. A game where the point was not to eliminate but to
enclose.

East and
West—they were the inverse of each other. Forever alien. Yet
one must ultimately triumph. For now it was the Han. But now was not
forever.

He turned from
the screen, smiling. "White wins, as ever."

It had always
interested him; ever since he had learned how much the Han had banned
or hidden. A whole separate culture. A long and complex history.
Buried, as if it had never been. The story of the old West. Dead.
Shrouded in white, the Han color of death.

DeVore stretched
and yawned. It was two days since he had last slept. He crossed the
room and looked at his reflection in the mirror beside the shower
unit. Not bad, he thought, but the drugs he had taken to keep himself
alert had only a limited effect. Pure tiredness would catch up with
him eventually. Still, they'd keep him on his feet long enough to see
this through.

He looked down.
His wrist console was flashing.

DeVore smiled at
his reflection. "At last," he said. Then, straightening his
tunic, hfe turned to face the door.

JYAN came
laughing into his room. "Chen. . ." he began, then stopped,
his eyes widening, the color draining from his cheeks. "What the
... ?"

He turned and
made to run, but the second man, following him in, blocked the
doorway, knife in hand.

He turned back
slowly, facing the stranger.

"Close the
door," DeVore said, looking past Jyan at the other. Then he
turned to face Jyan again. "Come in, Kao Jyan. Make yourself at
home."

Jyan swallowed
and backed away to the left, his eyes going to the figure sprawled
facedown on the bed, the cover over its head. It was Chen. He could
tell it from a dozen different signs—by the shape of the body,
the clothes, by the black, studded straps about his wrists.

For a moment he
said nothing, mesmerized by the sight of those two strong hands
resting there, lifeless and pale, palm upward on the dark red sheet.
Then he looked up again. The stranger was watching him; that same
cruel half-smile on his lips.

"What do
you want?" Jyan asked, his voice barely audible.

DeVore laughed,
then turned to face the games machine, tapping in his next move. Jyan
looked at the screen. The machine was set up for
wei chi,
the
nineteen-by-nineteen grid densely cluttered with the small black and
white stones. From the state of the game it looked as though the
stranger had been waiting for some time.

DeVore turned
back, giving Jyan a strangely intense look. Then he dropped his eyes
and moved closer. "It's a fascinating game, don't you think, Kao
Jyan? Black starts, and so the odds are in his favor—seven out
of ten, they say—yet I, like you, prefer to play against the
odds."

He stepped
closer. Jyan backed against the wall, looking away.

"You have
the envelope, Kao Jyan?"

Jyan turned his
head, meeting the other's eyes. Only a hand's width separated them
now. He could feel the other's breath upon his cheek. "The . . .
envelope?"

"The offer
we made you."

"Ah . . ."
Jyan fumbled in the inside pocket of his one-piece, then drew out the
crumpled envelope and handed it to him. The stranger didn't look at
it, merely pocketed it, then handed back another.

"Go on.
Open it. It's our new offer."

Jyan could see
the body on the bed, the man waiting at the door, knife in hand, and
wondered what it meant for him. Was he dead? He looked down at the
sealed letter in his hand. It was identical to the one Cho Hsiang had
given him.

His hands
shaking, he opened the envelope and took out the folded sheet. This
time there was nothing on it. The pure white sheet was empty.

DeVore smiled.
"You understand, Kao Jyan?"

Jyan looked from
one man to the other, trying to see a way out of this. "The tape
. . ." he began, his voice trembling now. "What about the
tape?"

The stranger
turned away, ignoring his comment, as if it had no significance. "I'm
sorry about your friend. It was unfortunate, but he was no part of
this. The deal was with you, Kao Jyan."

Jyan found he
was staring at the body again. The stranger saw where he was looking
and smiled. "Go on. Look at him, if you want. He'll not mind you
looking now." He went across to the bed and pulled the cover
back. "Here. . . ."

The stranger's
voice held a tone of command that made Jyan start forward, then
hesitate, a wave of nausea passing through him.

DeVore looked up
from the body. "He was a hard man to kill, your friend. It took
both of us to deal with him. Chu Heng here had to hold him down while
I dressed him."

Jyan shuddered.
A cord had been looped about Chen's bull neck four or five times,
then tightened until it had bitten into the flesh, drawing blood. But
it was hard to judge whether that had been the cause of death or the
heavy blows he'd suffered to the back of the head; blows that had
broken his skull like a fragile piece of porcelain.

He swallowed
dryly then looked up, meeting the stranger's eyes. "Am I dead?"

DeVore laughed;
not cruelly, but as if the naivete of the remark had genuinely amused
him. "What do you think?"

"The tape .
. ." he said again.

"You don't
understand, do you, Kao Jyan?"

The Han in the
doorway laughed, but shut up abruptly when DeVore looked at him.

Jyan's voice was
almost a breath now. "Understand what?"

"The game.
Its rules. Its different levels. You see, you were out of your depth.
You had ambitions above your level. That's a dangerous thing for a
little man like you. You were greedy."

Jyan shivered.
It was what Chen had said.

"You've . .
. how should I say it... inconvenienced us."

"Forget the
whole thing. Please. I—"

DeVore shook his
head. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, looking at Jyan with
what seemed almost regret. "It's not possible."

"I'll say
nothing. I swear I'll say nothing."

"You give
your word, eh?" DeVore turned and picked up the bag on the floor
by the bed. "Here. This is what your word means."

DeVore threw the
bag at him. Jyan caught it and looked inside, then threw the bag
down, horrified. It was Cho Hsiang's head.

"You
understand, then? Its necessity. We have to sacrifice some pieces.
For the sake of the game."

"The game .
. . ?"

But there were
no more explanations. The Han's knife flashed and dug deep into his
back. Kao Jyan was dead before he hit the floor.

IN MU chua's
House of the Ninth Ecstasy it was the hour ofleisure and the girls
were sprawled out on the couches in the Room of the Green Lamps,
talking and laughing among themselves. Mu Chua's House was a good
house, a clean house, even though it was below the Net, and catered
only to those who came here from Above on business. Feng Chung,
biggest of the local Triad bosses and Mu Chua's onetime lover, gave
them his protection. His men guarded Mu Chua's doors and gave
assistance when a customer grew troublesome. It was a good
arrangement and Mu Chua had grown fat on it.

Mu—it
meant mother in the old tongue, though she was no one's mother and
had been sterilized at twelve—was in her fifties now; a strong,
small woman with a fiery temper who had a genuine love for her trade
and for the girls in her charge.
Here men forget their cares
was
her motto and she had it written over the door in English and
Mandarin, the pictograms sewn into every cushion, every curtain,
every bedspread in the place. Even so, there were strict rules in her
house. None of her girls could be hurt in any way. "If they want
that," she had said to Feng Chung once, her eyes blazing with
anger, "they can go down to the Clay. This is a good house. A
loving house. How can my girls be loving if they are scared? How can
they take the cares of men away unless they have no cares
themselves?"

Mu Chua was
still a most attractive woman and many who had come to sample younger
flesh had found themselves ending the night in mother's arms.
Thereafter there would be no other for them. They would return to her
alone, remembering not only the warmth and enthusiasm of her
embraces, but also those little tricks—special things she kept
a secret, even from her girls— that only she could do.

Just now she
stood in the arched doorway, looking in at her girls, pleased by what
she saw. She had chosen well. There were real beauties here—like
Crimson Lotus and Jade Melody—and girls of character, like
Spring Willow and the tiny, delicate-looking Sweet Honey, known to
all as "little Mimi," after the Mandarin for her adopted
name. But there was more than that to her girls; she had trained them
to be artisans, skilled at their craft of lovemaking. If such a thing
were possible here in the Net, they had breeding. They were not
common men
hu
—"the one standing in the door"—but
shen nu
—"god girls." To Mu Chua it was an
important distinction. Her girls might well be prostitutes, but they
were not mere smoke-flowers. Her house was a land of warmth and
softness, a model for all other houses, and she felt a great pride in
having made it so.