The Middle Kingdom (2 page)

China. Chung
Kuo, the Middle Kingdom. So it had been for more than three thousand
years, since the time of the Chou, long before the First Empire.

So it had been.
But now Chung Kuo was more. Not just a kingdom, but the earth itself.
A world.

In his winter
palace, in geostationary orbit 160,000
li
above the planet's
surface, Li Shai Tung, T'ang, Son of Heaven and Ruler of City Europe,
stood on the wide viewing circle, looking down past his feet at the
blue-white globe of Chung Kuo, thinking.

In the two
hundred and fifty-six years that had passed since Mao had stood on
that hill in Shensi Province, the world had changed greatly. Then, it
was claimed, the only thing to be seen from space that gave evidence
of Man's existence on the planet was the Great Wall of China. Untrue
as it was, it said something of the Han ability to plan great
projects—and not merely to plan them, but to carry them out.
Now, as the twenty-second century entered its final decade, the very
look of the world had changed. From space one saw the vast
Cities—each almost a continent in itself; great sheets of
glacial whiteness masking the old, forgotten shapes of nation states;
the world one vast, encircling city: City Earth.

Li Shai Tung
stroked his long white beard thoughtfully, then turned from the
portal, drawing his embroidered silk
pan.
about him. It was
warm in the viewing room, yet there was always the illusion of cold,
looking down through the darkness of space at the planet far below.

The City. It had
been playing on his mind much more of late. Before, he had been too
close to it—even up here. He had taken it for granted. Made
assumptions he should never have made. But now it was time to face
things: to see them in the long perspective.

Constructed more
than a century before, the City had been meant to last ten thousand
years. It was vast and spacious and its materials needed only
refurbishing, never replacing. It was a new world built on top of the
old; a giant stilt village perched over the dark, still lake of
antiquity.

Thirty
decks—three hundred levels—high, each of its hexagonal,
hivelike stacks two li to a side, there had seemed space enough to
hold any number of people. Let mankind multiply, the Planners had
said; there is room enough for all. So it had seemed, back then. Yet
in the century that followed, the population of Chung Kuo had grown
like never before.

Thirty-four
billion people at last count, Han and European— Hung
Mao
—combined. And more each year. So many more that in
fifty years the City would be full, the storage houses emptied. Put
simply, the City was an ever-widening mouth, an ever-larger stomach.
It was a thing that ate and shat and grew.

Li Shai Tung
sighed, then made his way up the broad, shallow steps and into his
private apartment. Dismissing the two attendants, he went across and
pulled the doors closed, then turned and looked back into the room.

It was no good.
He would have to bring the matter up in Council. The Seven would have
to discuss population controls, like it or no. Or else? Well, at best
he saw things stabilized: the City going on into the future; his sons
and grandsons bom to rule in peace. And at worst?

Uncharacteristically,
Li Shai Tung put his hands to his face. He had been having dreams.
Dreams in which he saw the Cities burning. Dreams in which old
friends were dead—brutally murdered in their beds, their
children's bodies torn and bloodied on the nursery floor.

In his dreams he
saw the darkness bubble up into the bright-lit levels. Saw the whole
vast edifice slide down into the mire of chaos. Saw it as clearly as
he saw his hands, now, before his face.

Yet it was more
than dreams. It was what would happen— unless they acted.

Li Shai Tung,
T'ang, ruler of City Europe, one of the Seven, shuddered. Then,
smoothing the front of his
pau,
he sat down at his desk to
compose his speech for Council. And as he wrote he was thinking.

We didn't simply
change the past, as others tried to do, we built over it, as if to
erase it for all time. We tried to do what Mao, in his time,
attempted with his Cultural Revolution. What the first Han Emperor,
Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, tried to do, two thousand four hundred years
ago, when he burned the books and built the Great Wall to keep the
northern barbarians from the Middle Kingdom. We have not learned from
history. We have preferred to ignore its counsel. But now history is
catching up with us. The years ahead will show how wise a course we
set. Or blame us for our folly.

He liked the
shape of his thoughts and set them down. Then, when he was finished,
he got up and went back down the steps to the viewing circle.
Darkness was slowly encroaching on City Europe, drawing a stark,
dividing line—
-a
terminator—across its hollowed
geometric shape, north to south.

No, he thought.
We haven't learned. We have been unwise. And now our own Long March
is fast approaching. The bright days of ease—of unopposed
rule—lie in our past. Ahead lies only darkness.

The old man
sighed again, then straightened, feeling the imaginary cold in his
bones. Chung Kuo. Would it survive the coming times? Would a son of
his look down, as he looked now, and see a world at peace? Or was
Change to come again, like a serpent, blighting all?

Li Shai Tung
turned, then stopped, listening. It came again. An urgent pounding on
the outer doors. He made his way through and stood before them.

"Who is
it?"

"
Chieh
Hsia!
Forgive me. It is I, Chung Hu-Yan."

Coming so hard
upon his thoughts, the tone of panic in his Chancellor's voice
alarmed him. He threw the doors open.

Chung Hu-Yan
stood there, his head bowed low, his mauve sleeping gown pulled
tightly about his tall, thin frame. His hair was unbraided and
uncombed. It was clear he had come straight from his bed, not
stopping to prepare himself.

"What is
it, Chung?"

Chung fell to
his knees. "It is Lin Yua,
Chieh Hsia.
It seems she has
begun. ..."

"Begun?"
Instinct made him control his voice, his face, his breathing, but,
inside, his heart hammered and his stomach dropped away. Lin Yua, his
first wife, was only six months into her pregnancy. How could she
have begun? He took a sharp breath, willing himself to be calm.

"Quick,
Chung. Take me to her at once."

The doctors
looked up from the bedside as he entered, then bowed low and backed
hastily away. But a glance at the fear in their eyes told him at once
more than he wanted to know.'

He looked beyond
them, to her bed. "Lin Yua!"

He ran across
the room to her, then stopped, his fear transformed into an icy
certainty.

"Gods . .
." he said softly, his voice breaking. "Kuan Yin preserve
us!"

She lay there,
her face pale as the harvest moon, her eyes closed, a blue tinge to
her lips and cheeks. The sheets were rucked up beneath her naked
legs, as if from some titanic struggle, their whiteness stained
almost black with her blood. Her arms lay limply at her sides.

He threw himself
down beside her, cradling her to him, sobbing uncontrollably, all
thought of sovereign dignity gone from him. She was still warm.
Horribly, deceptively warm. He turned her face and kissed it, time
and again, as if kissing would bring the life back to it, then began
to talk to her, his voice pleading with her.

"Lin Yua..
. Lin Yua.... My little peach. My darling little one. Where are you,
Lin Yua? The gods help us, where
are
you?"

He willed her
eyes to open. To smile and say that this was all a game—a test
to see how much he loved her. But it was no game. Her eyes stayed
closed, their lids impenetrably white; her mouth devoid of breath.
And then, at last, he knew.

Gently he laid
her head against the pillow, then, with his fingers, combed her hair
back lovingly from her brow. Shivering, he sat back from her, looking
up at his Chancellor, his voice hollow with disbelief.

"She's
dead, Hu-Yan. My little peach is dead."

"Chieh
Hsia
.. . ." The Chancellor's voice quivered with emotion.
For once he did not know what to do, what to say. She had been such a
strong woman. So filled with life. For her to die ... No. It was an
impossibility. He stared back at the T'ang, his own eyes filled with
tears, and mutely shook his head.

There was
movement behind him. Chung turned and looked. It was a nurse.. She
held a tiny bundle. Something still and silent. He stared at her,
appalled, and shook his head violently.

"No,
Excellency," the woman began, bowing her head re-, spectfully.
"You misunderstand. . . ."

Chung Hu-Yan
glanced fearfully at the Tang. Li Shai Tung had turned away; was
staring down at his dead wife once again. Knowing he must do
something, Chung turned and grabbed the woman's arm. Only then did he
see that the child was alive within the blankets.

"It lives?"
His whisper held a trace of disbelief.

"He
lives, Excellency. It's a boy."

Chung Hu-Yan
gave a short laugh of surprise. "Lin Yua gave birth to a boy?"

"Yes,
Excellency. Four catties he weighs. Big for one born so early."

Chung Hu-Yan
stared at the tiny child, then turned and looked back at the T'ang.
Li Shai Tung had not noted the woman's entrance. Chung licked his
lips, considering things, then decided.

"Go,"
he told the nurse. "And make sure the child is safe. Your life
is forfeit if he dies. Understand me, woman?"

The woman
swallowed fearfully, then bowed her head low. "I understand,
Excellency. I'll take good care of him."

Chung turned
back, then wentiand stood beside the T'ang.

"Chieh
Hsia?"
he said, kneeling, bowing his head.

Li Shai Tung
looked up, his eyes bleak, unfocused, his face almost unrecognizable
in its grief.

"
Chieh
Hsia,
I—"

Abruptly the
Tang stood and pushed roughly past his Chancellor, ignoring him,
confronting instead the group of five doctors who were still waiting
on the far side of the room.

"Why was I
not summoned earlier?"

The most senior
of them stepped forward, bowing. "It was felt,
Chieh Hsia—"

"Fefe?"
The T'ang's bark of anger took the old man by surprise. Pain and
anger had transformed Li Shai Tung. His face glowered. Then he leaned
forward and took the man forcibly by the shoulder, throwing him
backward.

He stood over
him threateningly.
"How
did she die?"

The old man
glanced up fearfully from where he lay, then scrambled to his knees
again, lowering his head abjectly. "It was her age,
Chieh
Hsia
," he gasped. "Forty-two is late to have a child.
And then there are the conditions here. They make it dangerous even
for a normal labor. Back on Chung Kuo—"

"You
incompetent butchers! You murderers! You . . ."

Li Shai Tung's
voice failed. He turned and looked back helplessly at his dead wife,
his hands trembling, his lips parted in surprise. For a moment longer
he stood there, lost in his pain; then, with a shudder, he turned
back, his face suddenly set, controlled.

"Take them
away from here, Chung Hu-Yan," he said coldly,

his eyes filled
with loathing. "Take them away and have them killed."

"
Chieh
Hsia
?" The Chancellor stared at him, astonished. Grief had
transformed his master.

The T'ang's
voice rose in a roar. "You heard me, Master Chung! Take them
away!"

The man at his
feet began to plead. "
Chieh Hsia
. Surely we might be
permitted—"

He glared at the
old man, silencing him, then looked up again. Across from him the
others, graybeards all, had fallen to their knees in supplication.
Now, unexpectedly, Chung Hu-Yan joined them.

"
Chieh
Hsia
, I beg you to listen. If you have these men killed, the
lives of all their kin will be forfeit too. Let them choose an
honorable death. Blame them for Lin Yua's death, yes, but let their
families live."

Li Shai Tung
gave a visible shudder. His voice was soft now, laced with pain. "But
they killed my wife, Chung. They let Lin Yuadie."

Chung touched
his head to the floor. "I know,
Chieh Hsia
. And for that
they will be only too glad to die. But spare their families, I beg
you,
Chieh Hsia
. You owe them that much. After all, they saved
your son."

"My son?"
The T'ang looked up, surprised.

"Yes,
Chieh
Hsia
. You have a son. A second son. A strong, healthy child."

Li Shai Tung
stood there, frowning fiercely, trying hard to take in this latest,
unexpected piece of news. Then, very slowly, his face changed yet
again, the pain pushing through his mask of control until it cracked
and fell away and he stood there, sobbing bitterly, his teeth
clenched in anguish, tears running down his face.

"Go,"
he said finally in a small voice, turning away from them in a gesture
of dismissal. "Order it as you will, Chung. But go. I must be
alone with her now."

Yang

IT
WAS DARK where they sat, at the edge of the terrace overlooking the
park. Behind them the other tables were empty now. Inside, at the
back of the restaurant, a single lamp shone dimly. Nearby four
waiters stood in shadow against the wall, silent, in attendance. It
was early morning. From the far side of the green came the sounds of
youthful laughter; unforced, spontaneous. Above them the night sky
seemed filled with stars; a million sharp-etched points of brilliance
against the velvet blackness.

"It's
beautiful," said Wyatt, looking down, then turning back to face
the others. "You know, sometimes just the sight of it makes me
want to cry. Don't you ever feel that?"