The Middle Kingdom (38 page)

The history of
Chung Kuo—it was a succession of dreams and disappointments;
vast cycles of grandeur followed by decadence. It was as if a great
wheel turned through time itself, ineluctable, raising men up, then
hurling them down, to be crushed, together with their dreams of peace
or further conquest. So it had been, for three thousand years and
more, but it was to end such excess that the City had been built. To
end the great wheel's brutal turn and bring about the dream of ten
thousand peaceful years.

But was the
great wheel turning once again, imperceptible beneath the ice? Or had
it already come full circle? Were they the new Ch'ing, destined in
their turn to fall?

"Yuan!"
Han stood there beside one of the tables, looking back at him. "Stop
daydreaming and come here! Look at this!"

Li Yuan looked
across, then, smiling, went over to him, a servant lighting his way.

Han Ch'in handed
him the model of the horse. "It's beautiful,

isn't it? All
the gifts from the more important guests have been put on display at
this end. The horse is from the Pei family."

Li Yuan turned
it in his hands, then handed it back. It was solid gold. "It's
very heavy, isn't it?"

Han laughed.
"Not as heavy as the silver phoenix .the House of
Representatives has sent as its gift. You should see it! It's
enormous! It took eight men to carry it in here!"

Li Yuan looked
around him, staring into the shadows on every side. The tables seemed
to stretch away forever, each piled with a small fortune of wedding
gifts. "There's no end to it, is there?"

Han shook his
head, a strange expression in his eyes. "No." He laughed
uneasily. "It's astonishing. There are more than eight million
items. Did you know that, Yuan? They've been cataloguing them for
weeks now. And still more are arriving all the time. The secretarial
department are working all hours just sending out letters to thank
people. In fact, it's got so bad they've had to take on an extra ten
thousand men in the department!"

Han was silent a
moment, looking out into the shadowed body of the hall, the
torchlight flickering in his dark hair. Then he turned, looking
directly at Yuan. "You know, I was thinking, tin..."

Li Yuan smiled
at the familiar term. "Young brother," it meant. Yet
between them it was like a special name. A term of love.

"You,
thinking?"

Han Ch'in
smiled, then looked away again, a more thoughtful expression on his
face than usual. "Look at it all. It fills this hall and five
others. Fills them to overflowing. And yet if I were to spend from
now until the end of my days simply looking at these things, picking
them up and touching them. . ." He shook his head, then looked
down. "It seems such a waste, somehow. I'd never get to look at
half of it, would I?"

He was silent a
moment, then put the horse back. "There are so many things
here."

Li Yuan studied
his brother a moment. So it affects you, too, this place. You look
about you and you think, how like the Ai Hsin
Chiao
Lo—the
Manchu-—-we are, and yet how different. But then you ask, in
what way different? And you worry, lest your excesses be like theirs.
He smiled, a faint shiver running down his spine. Oh, Han Ch'in, how
I love you for that part of you that worries. That part of you that
would be a good T'ang— that feels its responsibilities so
sharply. Don't change, dear elder brother. Don't ever forget the
worries that plague you, for they are you—are all that's truly
good in you.

Han Ch'in had
moved on. Now he was studying one of the big tapestries that were
hung against the side wall. Li Yuan came and stood beside him. For a
moment they were both silent, looking up through the uneven, wavering
lamplight at the brightly colored landscape, then Han knelt and put
his arm about Yuan's shoulders.

"You know,
Yuan, there are times when I wish I wasn't heir." His voice was
a whisper now. "Sometimes all I want is to give it all away and
be normal. Do you understand?"

Li Yuan nodded.
"I understand well enough. You are like all men, Han. You want
most that which you cannot have."

Han was quiet a
moment, then he shook his head. "No. You don't understand. I
want it because I want it. Not because I can't have it."

"And Fei
Yen? What about Fei Yen? Would you give her up? Would you give up
your horse? Your fine clothes? The palaces outside the City? You
would really give up all of that?"

Han stared
straight ahead, his face set. "Yes. Sometimes I think I would."

Li Yuan turned,
looking into his brother's face. "And sometimes I think you're
mad, elder brother. The world's too complex. It would not be so
simple for you. Anyway, no man ever gets what he truly wants."

Han turned his
head and looked at him closely. "And what do you want, ti ti?"

Li Yuan looked
down, a slight color in his cheeks. "We ought to be going.
Father will be looking for us."

Han Ch'in stood,
then watched Li Yuan move back between the tables toward the great
doorway, the servant following with his lantern. No, he thought, you
don't understand me at all, little brother. For once you don't see
the drift of my words.

The thought had
grown in him this last year. At first it had been a fancy—something
to amuse himself with. But now,

today, it seemed
quite clear to him. He would refuse it. Would stand down. Would kneel
before his younger brother.

Why not? he
thought. Why does it
have
to be me?

Li Yuan, then.
Han smiled and nodded to himself. Yes. So it would be. Li Yuan would
be T'ang, not Li Han Ch'in. And he would be a great T'ang. Perhaps
the greatest of all. And he, Li Han Ch'in, would be proud of him.

Yes. So it would
be. So he would insist it was.

MARIA KRENEK
bowed abjectly, conscious that her husband, Josef, had already moved
on. "I am deeply sorry, Madam Yu. My husband is not himself
today. I am certain he meant nothing by it."

Madam Yu raised
her fan stiffly, her face dark with fury, dismissing the smaller
woman. She turned to the two men at her side.

"How dare
he stare through me like that, as if he didn't know me! I'll see that
haughty bastard barred from decent company! That'll take him down a
few levels! Now his brother is representative for Mars he thinks he
can snub who he likes. Well! We'll see, eh?"

Maria backed
away, appalled by what she had heard. Madam Yu was not a woman to
make an enemy of. She had entry to the Minor Families. Her gatherings
were an essential part of life in the Above—and she herself the
means by which one man came to meet another to their mutual benefit.
She had destroyed bigger men than Josef Krenek, and now she would
destroy him.

"Josef!"
she said, softly but urgently, catching up with her husband and
taking his arm. "What were you thinking? Go back and kneel
before her. For all our sakes, please, go and kneel to her. Say
you're sorry. Please, Josef!"

He looked down
at her hand on his arm, then across to his brother and his wife.
Then, astonishingly, he threw her arm off.

"Go home,
Maria. Now! This moment!"

Her mouth gaped.
Then, blushing deeply, humiliated beyond anything she had ever known
before, Maria turned and ran.

NOCENZi's VOICE
sounded urgently in the General's head. "Knut! I've got
something!"

The General was
standing beside the back entrance to one of the secure rooms. They
had just unsealed it and brought out the thing that had tried to get
through their screen. Like the others it was disturbingly
human—better than the Ebert copy. Different. Far more complex.
As if the Ebert copy had been an attempt to throw them off the trail.

"What is
it, Vittorio?"

"I've
checked the incomings at Nanking against the guest list. And guess
what?"

"They're
coming in from Mars."

"That's
right."

"All of
them?"

They had caught
eight of the copies so far. Eight! It frightened him to think what
might have happened if they had not discovered the fake Ebert. But
unlike the "Ebert" these were armed. They were walking
arsenals, their weaponry concealed inside their flesh. Just two of
them could have caused havoc if they had got through. But eight. . .
.

Nocenzi
hesitated, getting confirmation, then, "Every one of them so
far."

Tolonen knelt
over the dead thing, then drew his knife and cut the silks open,
revealing its torso. This one was a young woman of seventeen, the
daughter of a leading businessman from the Brache settlement. He was
waiting inside the Forbidden City, unaware that his daughter had been
murdered months ago and replaced by this thing. Tolonen shuddered,
trying not to let his emotions cloud his thinking. This was a bad
day. A very bad day. But it could have been far worse.

He hesitated,
then cut into one of the breasts. Blood welled and ran down the
smooth flank of the thing. Tolonen steeled himself and cut again,
pulling the flesh apart to reveal the hard, protective case beneath.
Yes, it was like the other ones. They all had this protective casing
over their essential organs and beneath the facial flesh. As if
whoever had made them had designed them to withstand heavy fire: to
last long enough to do maximum damage.

"Listen,
Vittorio. I want you to get files on all the Mars
col-

onists we
haven't checked yet and get an elite squad to pick them out before
they get to the gates. I want one of them alive, understand?"

Alive. . . . His
flesh crawled. Functional, I mean. These things were never alive. Not
in any real way.

He got up,
signaling to the technicians to take the thing away.

"And,
Vittorio. Warn your men these things are dangerous. Perhaps the most
dangerous thing they've ever had to face."

AS SOON AS he
stepped out into the space between the Cities, Josef Krenek knew
something was wrong. Guests were queuing to pass through what seemed
like checkpoints. Checkpoints which shouldn't have been there. Beside
him Henryk and Irina were unaware that anything was amiss. But then
they wouldn't be: their programing was far simpler than his own.

He looked about
him, trying to gauge the situation. Three-man elite squads were
moving slowly down the lines of people, checking IDs. Farther off,
above what seemed like some kind of rat run, they had set up guard
towers.

They know we're
here, he thought at once. Those gates are screens.

Casually he drew
Henryk and Irina back, away from the queue, as if they had left
something in the reception hall. Then, in an urgent whisper, he told
them what he thought was happening.

"What shall
we do?" Henryk's cold, clear eyes searched Josef's for an
answer. "WeVe no instructions for this."

Josef answered
him immediately. "I want you to go out there, Henryk. I want you
to go up to one of those squads and ask them why you have to stand in
line. I want you to find out what they're looking for. Okay?"

"What if
they're looking for me? What if they try to arrest me?"

Josef smiled
coldly. "Then you'll bring them over here."

He watched
Henryk walk out and greet them and saw at once how the soldiers
reacted. He heard their shouted questions, then saw Henryk turn and
point back to where he stood beside Irina.

Ah, well, the
part of him that was DeVore thought, it could have worked. Could have
worked beautifully. Imagine it! The twelve of them climbing the
marble steps, death at their fingertips, the Families falling like
leaves before them!

He smiled and
turned to Irina. "Do nothing until I say. I'm going to try to
get through all of that." He indicated the rat run of screens
and corridors and guard towers. "But not directly. With any luck
they'll take me through. If not. . ."

Henryk came up
and stood before them, one of the elite Security guards holding his
arm loosely. Other squads were hurrying from elsewhere, heading
toward them.

"What seems
to be the problem, Captain?" Josef said, facing the officer
calmly.

"For you,
sir, nothing. But I'm afraid your brother and his wife must accompany
me. I've orders to detain all Mars colonists."

Josef hid his
surprise. Why not me? he wondered. Then he understood. They've seen
the Mars connection. But I wasn't brought in that way. I was here
already. The first to come. The linchpin of the scheme.

"Oh, dear,"
he said, looking at Henryk, concerned. "Still, I'm sure it's all
a misunderstanding, eldest brother. We had best do as these men say,
yes? Until we can sort things out."

The Captain
shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir, but my orders are to take Mars
colonists only."

"But
surely, Captain"—for a moment he was Josef Krenek at his
most unctuous; as if persuading a client to buy a new product
range—"you must allow me to accompany my elder brother and
his wife. There are laws about unjust detention and the right of
representation. Or have they been repealed?"

The Captain
hesitated, listening to orders in his head, then gave a curt nod.
"I'm told you can come along,
Shih
Krenek. But please,
don't interfere. This is an important matter. I'm certain we can
settle it quite quickly."

Krenek smiled
and followed them silently. Yes, I'm certain we can. But not here.
Not yet.

THE GENERAL
looked through the one-way glass at the men and women crowded into
the small room.

"Well?"
he asked. "Is that the last of the colonists?"

Nocenzi nodded.
"Every last one. Sixty-two in all."

Tolonen stroked
his chin thoughtfully, then turned and looked directly at his Major.
"Can we set up a gate here? I want to trace any remaining
copy-humans. But I don't want them terminated. Understand?"