The Middle Kingdom (46 page)

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 counterattack 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 defense. He looked
across the corridor and met Auden's eyes. Yes, he thought, if we get
out of this I'll commend you. 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 already 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. Tblonen 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 programed for full-head recognition of each of the
individuals present had analyzed 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
shoo tin
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, eh?"

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
shoo Un
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."

Tblonen stared
up at Erikson's face, conscious of the misery behind the dull surface
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. Leh-mann 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
moment 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 newlyweds 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 center 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 weblike 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. IVe 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
put his gun down. "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 amid 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'td
and the
shang,
the coarse hemp cloth unhemmed, as
was demanded by the first mourning grade of
chan
ts'ut. Three
years of mourning lay before her now—twenty-seven months in
reality. AH 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. . . ."