The Middle Kingdom (57 page)

Ben smiled.
"We'll see." Then he pointed up the slope. "I think
they've almost finished. That's the third of the isolation skins."

Shepherd turned
and looked back up the slope. The cottage was fully encased now, its
cozy shape disguised by the huge white insulating layers. Only at the
front, where the door to the garden was, was its smooth, perfectly
geometric shape broken. There they had put the seal-unit; a big
cylinder containing the air pump and the emergency generator.

A dozen suited
men were fastening the edges of the insulator to the brace of the
frame. The brace was permanently embedded in the earth surrounding
the cottage; a crude, heavy piece of metal a foot wide and three
inches thick with a second, smaller "collar" fixed by
old-fashioned wing-screws to the base.

The whole
strange apparatus had been devised by Shepherd's
great-great-great-grandfather, Amos—the first of the Shepherds
to live here—as a precaution against nuclear fallout. But when
the Great Third War—"The War to End It All" as the
old man had written in his journal—had failed to materialize,
the whole cumbersome isolation-unit had been folded up and stored
away, only the metal brace remaining, for the amusement of each new
generation of Shepherd children.

"Gift
wrapped!" Shepherd joked, beginning to climb the slope.

Ben, following a
few paces behind, gave a small laugh, but it was unrelated to his
father's comment. He had had an insight. It had been Amos's son,
Robert, who had designed City Earth. His preliminary architectural
sketches hung in a long glass frame on the passage wall inside the
cottage.- But the idea had not originated with him. The seed of City
Earth lay here, now, before them—physically before them—as
they climbed the grassy slope. Here, in this outward symbol of his
great-great-greatgrandfather's paranoia was the genesis of all that
had followed.

Robert had
merely enlarged and refined his father's scheme until it embraced a
world.

He laughed
softly to himself, then looked across at his father, wondering if he
saw it, too, or whether the connection existed in his mind alone.

Nearer the
cottage the soldiers had set up an infestation grid, the dull mauve
light attracting anything small and winged from the surrounding
meadows. Ben stood and watched as a moth, its wings like the dull
gauze of an old and faded dress, its body thick and stubby like a
miniature cigar, fluttered toward the grid. For a moment it danced in
the blue-pink light, mesmerized by the brightness, its translucent
wings suffused with purple. Then its wingtip brushed against the
tilted surface. With a spark and a hiss the moth fell, senseless,
into the grid, where it flamed momentarily, its wings curling,
vanishing in an instant, its body cooking to a dark cinder.

Ben watched a
moment longer, conscious of his own fascination; his ears filled with
the brutal music of the grid—the crack and pop and sizzle of
the dying creatures; his eyes drawn to each brief, sudden
incandescence. And in his mind he formed a pattern of their vivid
afterimages against the dull mauve light.

"Come, Ben.
Come on in."

He turned. His
mother was standing in the doorway, beckoning to him. He smiled, then
sniffed the air. It was filled with the tart, sweet scent of ozone
and burnt insects.

"I was
watching," he said, as if it explained everything.

"I know."
She came across to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "It's
horrible, isn't it? But necessary, I suppose."

"Yes."

But he meant
something other by the word: something more than simple agreement. It
was both horrible and necessary, if only to prevent the spread of the
disease throughout the Domain; but it was just that—the
horrible necessity of death—that gave it its fascination. Is
all of life just that? he asked himself, looking away from the grid,
out across the dark, moonlit water of the bay. Is it all merely one
brief, erratic flight into the burning light? And then nothing?

Ben shivered,
not from fear or cold, but from some deeper, more complex response,
then turned and looked up at his mother, smiling. "Okay. Let's
go inside."

THE CAPTAIN of
the work party watched the woman and her son go in, then signaled to
his men to complete the sealing off of the cottage. It was nothing to
him, of course—orders were orders—yet it had occurred to
him several times that it would have been far simpler to evacuate the
Shepherds than go through with all this nonsense. He could not for
the life of him understand why they should wish to remain inside the
cottage while the Domain was dusted with poisons. Still, he had to
admit, it was a neat job. Old man Amos had known what he was up to.

He walked across
and inspected the work thoroughly. Then, satisfied that the seal was
airtight, he pulled the lip mike up from under his chin. "Okay.
We're finished here. You can start the sweep."

Six miles away,
at the mouth of the estuary, the four big transporters, converted
specially for the task, lifted one by one from the pad and began to
form up in a line across the river. Then, at a signal, they began,
moving slowly down the estuary, a thin cloud—colorless, like
fine powdered snow—drifting down behind them.

IT
WAS JUST after ten in the morning, yet the sun already blazed down
from a vast, deep blue sky that seemed washed clean of all
impurities. Sunlight burnished the surface of the gray-green water,
making it seem dense and yet clear, like melted glass. The tide was
high but on the turn, lapping sluggishly against the rocks at the
river's edge.

In midstream Meg
let Ben take the oars from her, changing seats with him nimbly as the
boat drifted slowly about. Then she sat back, watching him as he
strove to right their course, his face a mask of patient
determination, the muscles of his bare, tanned arms tensing and
untensing. Ben clenched his teeth, then pulled hard on the right-hand
oar, turning the prow slowly toward the distant house, the dark,
slick-edged blade biting deep into the glaucous, muscular flow as he
hauled the boat about in a tight arc.

"Are you
sure it's all right?"

Ben grimaced,
concentrating, inwardly weighing the feel of the boat against the
strong pull of the current. "She'll never know," he
answered. "Who'll tell her?"

It wasn't a
threat. He knew he could trust her to say nothing to their mother.
Meg looked down briefly, smiling, pleased that he trusted her. Then
she sat there, quiet, content to watch him, to see the broad river
stretching away beyond him, the white-painted cottages of the village
dotted against the broad green flank of the hill, while at her back
the house grew slowly nearer.

Solitary, long
abandoned, it awaited them.

The foreshore
was overgrown. Weeds grew waist high in the spaces between the rocks.
Beyond, the land was level for thirty yards or so, then climbed,
slowly at first, then steeply. The house wasn't visible from where
they stood, in the cool beneath the branches, and even farther along,
where the path turned, following the contours of the shoreline, they
could see only a small part of it, jutting up, white between the
intense green of the surrounding trees.

The land was
strangely, unnaturally silent. Meg looked down through the trees.
Below them, to their right, was the cove, the dark mouth of the cave
almost totally submerged, the branches of the overhanging trees only
inches above the surface of the water. It made her feel odd. Not
quite herself.

"Come on,"
said Ben, looking back at her. "We've not long. Mother will be
back by two."

They went up. A
path had been cut from the rock. Rough-hewn steps led up steeply,
hugging an almost sheer cliff face. They had to force their way
through a tangle of bushes and branches. At the top they came out
into a kind of clearing. There was concrete underfoot, cracked but
reasonably clear of vegetation. It was a road. To their left it led
up into the trees. To their right it ended abruptly, only yards from
where they stood, at an ornate cast-iron gate set into a wall.

They went across
and stood there, before the gate, looking in.

The house lay
beyond the gate; a big, square, three-story building of white stone,
with a steeply pitched roof of gray slate. They could see patches of
it through the overrun front garden. Here, more noticeably than
elsewhere, nature had run amok. A stone fountain lay in two huge gray
pieces, split asunder by an ash that had taken seed long ago
in
the disused fissure at its center. Elsewhere the regular pattern
of a once elaborate garden could be vaguely sensed, underlying the
chaotic sprawl of new growth.

"Well?"
she said, looking up at him. "What now?"

The wall was too
high to climb. The gate seemed strong and solid, with four big hinges
set into the stone. A big thick-linked steel chain was wrapped
tightly about the lock, secured by a fist-sized padlock.

Ben smiled.
"Watch."

Taking a firm
hold of two of the upright bars, he shook the gate vigorously, then
gave it one last sharp forward thrust. With a crash it fell inward,
then swung sideways, twisting against the restraining chain.

Ben stepped over
it, then reached back for her. "The iron was rotten," he
said, pointing to the four places in the stone where the hinges had
snapped sheer off.

She nodded,
understanding at once what he was really saying to her.
Be careful
here. Judge nothing by its appearance.
He turned from her.

She followed,
more cautious now, making her way through the thick sprawl of
greenery toward the house.

A verandah ran
the length of the front of the house. At one end it had collapsed.
One of the four mock-Doric pillars had fallen and now lay, like the
broken leg of a stone giant, half buried in the window frame behind
where it had previously stood. The glass-framed roof of the verandah
was broken in several places where branches of nearby trees had
pushed against it, and the whole of the wooden frame—the
elaborately carved side pieces, the stanchions, rails, and
planking—was visibly rotten. Ben stood before the shallow
flight of steps that led up to the main entrance, his head tilted
back as he studied the frontage.

"It's not
what I expected," he said as she came alongside him. "It
seems a lot grander from the river. And bigger. A real fortress of a
place."

She took his
arm. "I don't know, Ben. I think it is rather grand. Or was,
anyway."

He turned his
head and looked at her. "Did you bring the lamp?"

She nodded and
patted her pocket.

"Good.
Though I doubt there'll be much to see. The house has been boarded up
more than eighty years now."

She was silent a
moment, thoughtful, and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Augustus. The mystery of this house had something to do with their
great-grandfather, Augustus.

"Well?"
she prompted after a moment. "Shall we go inside?"

"Yes. But
not this way. There's another door around the side. We'll get in
there, through the kitchens."

She stared at
him a moment, then understood. He had already studied plans of the
old house. Which meant he had planned this visit for some while. But
why this morning? Was it something to do with the soldiers' deaths?
Or was it something else? She knew they had had a visitor last night,
but no one had told her who it was or why they'd come. Whatever, Ben
had seemed disturbed first thing when she had gone to wake him. He
had been up already. She had found him sitting there, hunched up on
his bed, his arms wrapped about his knees, staring out through the
open window at the bay. That same mood was on him even now as he
stood there looking up at the house.

"What
exactly are we looking for?"

"Clues____"

She studied his
face a moment longer, but it gave nothing away. His answer was unlike
him. He was always so specific, so certain. But today he was
different. It was as if he was looking for something so ill defined,
so vaguely comprehended, that even he could not say what it was.

"Come on,
then," he said suddenly. "Let's see what ghosts we'll
find."

She laughed
quietly, that same feeling she had had staring down at the cove
through the trees—that sense of being not quite
herself—returning to her. It was not fear, for she was never
afraid when she was with Ben, but something else. Something to do
with this side of the water. With the wildness here. As if it
reflected something in herself. Some deeper, hidden thing.

"What do
you think we'll find?" she called out to him as she followed
him, pushing through the dense tangle of bushes and branches. "Have
you any idea at all?"

"None,"
he yelled back. "Maybe there's nothing at all. Maybe it's an
empty shell. But then why would they board it up? Why bother if it's
empty? Why not just leave it to rot?"

She caught up
with him. "From the look of it, it's rotted anyway."

Ben glanced at
her. "It'll be different inside."

A BROAD SHAFT of
daylight breached the darkness. She watched Ben fold the shutter into
its recess, then move along to release and fold back another, then
another, until all four were open. Now the room was filled with
light. A big room. Much bigger than she'd imagined it in the dark. A
long wooden work-surface filled most of the left-hand wall, its broad
top cleared. Above it, on the wall itself, were great tea-chest-sized
oak cupboards. At the far end four big ovens occupied the space, huge
pipes leading up from them into the ceiling overhead. Against the
right-hand wall, beneath the windows, was a row of old machines and,
beside the door, a big enamel sink.