The Middle Kingdom (59 page)

He smiled and
closed the journal, then stood and moved past her, leaving the big
leather-bound book on the desk.

Meg stood there
a moment, staring at the journal, wondering what it said, knowing Ben
would tell her when he wanted to. Then she picked it up and turned,
following Ben out.

Always
following, she realized. But the thought pleased her. She knew he
needed her to be there—a mirror for his words, his thoughts,
his dark, unworded ambitions. She, with her mere nine years of
experience, knew him better than anyone. Understood him as no one
else could understand him. No one living, anyway.

He was standing
there, at the window, looking down thoughtfully through the broad
crowns of the trees.

"What is
it?" she asked.

"I'm trying
to work out where the garden is."

She understood
at once. There had been a picture toward the back of the journal—a
portrait of a walled garden. She had thought it fanciful, maybe
allegorical, but Ben seemed to think it was an actuality—somewhere
here, near the house.

She stared at
the book-filled wall above the desk, then turned back, seeing how he
was looking past her at the same spot. He smiled and moved his eyes
to her face.

"Of course.
There was a door at the end of the bottom corridor."

She nodded.
"Let's go down."

The door was
unlocked. Beyond it lay the tiny garden, the lawn neatly trimmed,
delphinia and gladioli, irises and hemero-callis, in bloom in the
dark earth borders. And there, beneath the back wall, the headstone,
the white marble carved into the shape of an oak, its trunk
exaggeratedly thick, its crown a great cumulus.

"Yes,"
Ben said softly. "I knew he would be here."

He bent down
beside the stone and reached out to touch and trace the indented
lettering.

AUGUSTUS RAEDWALD SHEPHERD

Born December 7 2106 Deceased August
15 2122

Oder jener
stirbt und ists
.

Meg frowned.
"That date is wrong, surely, Ben?"

"No."
He shook his head, not looking at her. "He was fifteen when he
killed himself."

"Then . .
." But she still didn't understand. He was their
greatgrandfather, wasn't he? Only fifteen? Then, belatedly, she
realized what he had said: the whole of what he had said. "Killed
himself?"

There was a door
set into the wall behind the stone. A simple wooden door, painted
red, with a latch high up. Ben had stood up, facing it, andxwas
staring at it in his usual intent manner.

Doors, she
thought; always another door. And behind each door something new and
unexpected. Augustus, for instance. She had never dreamed he would be
so much like Ben. Like a twin.

"Shall we?"
Ben asked, looking at her. "Before we set off back? There's
time."

She looked down
at the headstone, a strange feeling of unease nagging at her. She was
tempted to say no, to tell him to leave it, but why not? Ben was
right. There was time. Plenty of time before they'd be missed-

"Okay,"
she said quietly. "But then we go straight back. All right?"

He smiled at her
and nodded, then went to the door, stretch-ing to reach the latch.

It was a
workroom. There were shelves along one wall on which were a number of
things: old-fashioned screwdrivers and hammers, saws and pliers; a
box of nails and an assortment of glues; locks and handles, brackets
and a tray of different keys. A spade and a pitchfork stood against
the wall beneath, beside a pair of boots, the mud on them dried,
flaky to the touch.

Meg looked
around her. At the far end, against the wall, was a strange upright
shape, covered by an old bedspread. Above it, hanging from an old
iron chain, hung a beveled mirror. As she watched, Ben went across
and threw the cloth back. It was a piano. An old upright piano. He
lifted the lid and stared at the keys awhile.

"I wonder
if it's—"

Some sense—not
precognition, or even the feeling of danger—made her speak out.
"No, Ben. Please. Don't touch it."

He played a
note. A chord. Or what should have been a chord. Each note was flat,
a harsh, cacophonic noise. The music of the house. Discordant.

She heard the
chain break with a purer note than any sounded by her brother; heard
the mirror slither then crash against the top of the piano; then
stepped forward, her hand raised to her mouth in horror, as the glass
shattered all about him.

"Ben!"

Her scream
echoed out onto the water beyond the house.

Inside the room
there was a moment of utter stillness. Then she was at his side,
sobbing breathlessly, muttering to him again and again. "What
have you done, Ben? What have you done?"

Shards of glass
littered his hair arid shoulders. His cheek was cut and a faint
dribble of blood ran toward the comer of his mouth. But Ben was
staring down at where his left hand had been only a moment before,
sounding the chord. It still lay there on the keys, the fingers
extended to form the shape. But the arm now ended in a bloodied
stump. Cut clean, the blood still pumping.

For a moment she
did nothing, horrified, her lips drawn back from her teeth, watching
how he turned the stump, observing it, his eyes filled with wonder at
the thing he had accidentally done. He was gritting his teeth against
the pain, keeping it at bay while he studied the stump, the severed
hand.

Then, coming to
herself again, she pressed the stud at her neck and sounded the
alarm.

MUCH LATER Meg
stood at the bottom of the slope, looking out across the water.

Night had
already fallen, but in one place its darkness was breached. Across
the bay flames leapt high from the burning house and she could hear
the crackling of burning vegetation, the sudden sharp retorts as wood
popped and split.

Smoke lay heavy
on the far side of the water, laced eerily with threads of light from
the blaze. She could see dark shapes moving against the brilliance;
saw one of the security craft rise up sharply, its twin beams cutting
the air in front of it.

"Meg? Meg!
Come inside!"

She turned and
looked back up the slope toward the cottage. Lights burned at several
of the windows, throwing faint spills of light across the
white-painted stonework. Her father stood there, a dark, familiar
figure, framed in the light of the doorway.

"I'm
coming, Daddy. Just a moment longer. Please."

He nodded,
somewhat reluctantly, then turned away. The door closed behind him.

Meg faced the
blaze again, looking out across the dark glass of the bay. She
thought she could see small shapes in the uprush of flame, like
insects burning, crackling furiously as their shells ignited in a
sudden flare of brilliance. Books, she thought; all those books. ...

Ben was
upstairs, in his bed. They had frozen the stump but they had not
saved the hand. He would need a new one now.

She could still
hear the chord he had sounded; still see his fingers spreading to
form the shape. She looked away from the blaze. Afterimages flickered
in the darkness. The eye moved on, but the image remained. For a
time.

She went
indoors. Went up and saw him where he lay, propped up with a mound of
pillows behind his back. He was awake, fully conscious. She sat at
his bedside and was silent for a time, letting him watch her.

"What's it
like?" he asked after a moment.

"Beautiful,"
she said. "The way the light's reflected in the dark water.
It's—"

"I know,"
he said, as if he had seen it too. "I can imagine it."

She looked away
a moment, noticing how the fire's light flickered in the windowpane;
how it cast a mottled, ever-changing pattern against the narrow
opening.

"I'm glad
you did what you did," he said, more softly than before. "I
would have stood there and watched myself bleed to death. I owe you
my life."

It was not
entirely true. He owed his life to their mother. If Beth had not come
back early, then what Meg had done would not have mattered.

"I only
wrapped it with the sheet," she said. But she saw how he was
looking at her, his eyes piercing her. She could see he was
embarrassed. Yet there was something else there too— something
that she had never seen in him before—and it touched her
deeply. She felt her lips pucker and her eyes grow moist.

"Hey,
little sis, don't cry."

He had never
called her that before; nor had he ever touched her as he touched her
now, his good right hand caressing both of hers where they lay atop
the bedclothes. She shuddered and looked down.

"I'm fine,"
he said, as if in answer to something she had said, his hand
squeezing both of hers. "Father says they can graft a new hand
onto the nerve ends. It'll work as good as new. Maybe better."

She found she
could not look up at him. If she did she would burst into tears, and
she didn't want him to see her weakness. He had been so strong, so
brave. The pain—it must have been awful.

"You know,
the worst thing was that I missed it."

"Missed
what?" she said, staring at his hand.

"I didn't
see it," he said, and there was genuine surprise in his voice.
"I wasn't quick enough. I heard the chain break and I looked up,
but I missed the accident. It was done before I looked down again. My
hand was no longer part of me. When I looked it was already separate,
there on the keyboard.

He laughed. A
queer little sound.

Meg looked at
him. He was staring at the stub of his left arm. It was neatly
capped, like the end of an old cane. Silvered and neutral. Reduced to
a thing.

"I didn't
see it," he insisted. "The glass. The cut. And I felt . . .
only a sudden absence. Not pain, but. . ."

She could see
that he was searching for the right words, the very thing that would
describe what he had felt, what experienced at that moment. But it
evaded him. He shrugged and gave up.

"I love
you, Ben."

"I know,"
he said, and seemed to look at her as if to gauge how love looked in
a person's eyes. As if to place it in his memory.

AFTER MEG had
gone he lay there, thinking things through.

He had said
nothing to her of what was in the journal. For once he felt no urge
to share his knowledge with her. It would harm her, he knew, as it
had harmed him: not on the surface, as the mirror had, but deeper,
where his true self lived. In the darkness inside himself.

He felt angered
that he had not been told; that Hal had not trusted him enough to
tell him. More than that, he felt insulted that they had hidden it
from him. Oh, he could see why it was important for Meg not to know;
she responded to things in a different way from him. But to hide it
from him? He clenched his fists, feeling the ghostly movement in the
hand he had lost. Didn't they know? Didn't they understand him, even
now? How could he make sense of it all unless he could first solve
the riddle of himself?

It was all
there, in the journal. Some of it explicit, the rest hidden teasingly
away—ciphers within ciphers—as if for his eyes alone.

He had heard
Augustus's voice, speaking clearly in his head, as if direct across
the years. "I am a failed experiment," he had said. "Old
Amos botched me when he made me from his seed. He got more than he
bargained for."

It was true.
They were all an experiment. All the Shepherd males. Not sons and
fathers and grandfathers, but brothers every one—all the fruit
of old Amos's seed.

Ben laughed
bitterly. It explained so much. For Augustus
was
his twin. Ben
knew it for a certainty. He had proof.

There, in the
back of the journal, were the breeding charts— a dozen complex
genetic patterns, each drawn in the tiniest of hands, one to a double
page; each named and dated, Ben's own among them. A whole line of
Shepherds, each one the perfect advisor for his T'ang.

Augustus had
known somehow. Had worked it out. He had realized what he was meant
for. What task he had been bred for.

But Augustus had
been a rebel. He had defied his father; refusing to be trained as the
servant of a T'ang. Worse, he had sired a child by his own sister, in
breach of the careful plans Amos had laid. His mirror had become his
mate. Furious, his "father," Robert, had made him a
prisoner in the house, forbidding him the run of the Domain until he
changed his ways, but Augustus had remained defiant. He had preferred
death to compromise.

Or so it seemed.
There was no entry for that day. No explanation for his death.

Ben heard
footsteps on the stairs. He tensed, then made himself relax. He had
been expecting this visit; had been rehearsing what he would say.

Hal Shepherd
stood in the doorway, looking in. "Ben? Can I come in?"

Ben stared back
at him, unable to keep the anger from his face. "Hello, elder
brother."

Hal seemed
surprised. Then he understood. He had confiscated the journal, but he
could not confiscate what was in Ben's head. It did not matter that
Ben could not physically see the pages of the journal: in his mind he
could turn them anyway and read the tall columns of ciphers.

"It isn't
like that," he began, but Ben interrupted him, a sharp edge to
his voice.

"Don't lie
to me. I've had enough of lies. Tell me who I am."

"YouVe my
son."

Ben sat forward,
but this time Hal got in first. "No, Ben. You're wrong. It ended
with Augustus. He was the last. You're
my
son, Ben. Mine and
your mother's."

Ben made to
speak, then fell silent, watching the man. Then he looked down. Hal
was not lying. Not intentionally. He spoke as he believed. But he was
wrong. Ben had seen the charts, the names, the dates of birth. Amos's
jjreat experiment was still going on.