The Middle Kingdom (60 page)

He let out a
long, shuddering breath. "Okay. . . . But tell me. How did
Augustus die? Why did he kill himself?"

"He
didn't."

"Then how
did he die?"

"He had
leukemia."

That, too, was a
lie, for there was no mention of ill health in the journal. But again
Hal believed it for the truth. His eyes held nothing back from Ben.

"And the
child? What happened to the child?"

Hal laughed.
"What child? What are you talking about, Ben?"

Ben looked down.
Then it was all a lie. Hal knew nothing. Nor would he learn anything
from the journal unless Meg gave him the key to it; for the cipher
was a special one, transforming itself constantly page by page as the
journal progressed.

"Nothing,"
he said finally, in answer to the query. "I was mistaken."

He lifted his
eyes and saw how concerned Hal was.

"I'm
sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to trouble anyone."

"No____"

Then, strangely,
Hal looked down and laughed. "You know, Ben, when I saw Peng
Yu-wei stuck there in the mud, all my anger drained from me." He
looked up and met Ben's eyes, his voice changing, becoming more
serious. "I understand why you did it, Ben. Believe me. And I
meant what I said the other night. You can be your own man. Live your
own life. It's up to you whether you serve or not. Neither I nor the
great T'ang himself will force you to be other than yourself."

Ben studied his
brother—the man he had always thought of as his father—and
saw suddenly that it did not matter what he was in reality, for Hal
Shepherd had become what he believed he was. Ben's father. A free
man, acting freely, choosing freely. For him the illusion was
complete. It had become the truth.

It was a
powerful lesson. One Ben could use. He nodded. "Then I choose to
be your son, if that's all right?"

Hal smiled and
reached out to take his hand. "That's fine. That's all I ever
wanted."

War
is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when
they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations,
states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the
emergence of private property and of classes.

—MAO
Tse-ung, Problems
of Strategy in
China's Revolutionary
War,
December
1936

It
is our historical duty to eradicate all opposition to change. To
cauterize the cancers that create division. The future cannot come
into being until the past is dead. Chung Kuo cannot live until the
world of petty nation states, of factions and religions, is dead and
buried beneath the ice. Let us have no pity then. Our choice is made.
Ice and fire. The fire to cauterize, the ice to cover over. Only by
such means will the world be freed from enmity.

—Tsao
CH'UN,
Address to his
Ministers,
May 2068

THE
OLD T'ang backed away, his hands raised before I him, his face rigid
with fear.

"Put down
the knife,
erh tzu!
For pity's sake!" A moment before
there had been laughter; now the tension in the room seemed
unendurable. Only the hiss and wheeze of Tsu Tiao's labored breathing
broke the awful silence.

In the narrow
space between the pillars Tsu Ma circled his father slowly, knife in
hand, his face set, determined. On all sides T'ang and courtier
alike—all Han, all Family—were crowded close, looking on,
their faces tense, unreadable. Only one, a boy of eight, false
whiskered and rouged up, his clothes identical to those of the old
T'ang, showed any fear. He stood there, wide eyed, one hand gripping
the arm of the taller boy beside him.

"Erh
tzu!"
the old man pleaded, falling to his knees.
My son!
He
bowed his head, humbling himself. "I beg you, Tsu Ma! Have mercy
on an old man!"

All eyes were on
Tsu Ma now. All saw the shudder that rippled through the big man like
a wave; the way his chin jutted forward and his face contorted in
agony as he' steeled himself to strike. Then it was done and the old
man slumped forward, the knife buried deep in his chest.

There was a sigh
like the soughing of the wind, then Tsu Ma was surrounded. Hands
clapped his back or held his hand or touched his shoulder briefly.
"Well done, Tsu Ma," each said before moving on, expecting
no answer; seeing how he stood there, his arms limp at his sides, his
broad chest heaving, his eyes locked on the fallen figure on the
floor beneath him.

Slowly the great
room emptied until only the six T'ang and the two young boys
remained.

Li Shai Tung
stood before him, staring into his face, a faint smile of sadness
mixed with satisfaction on his lips. He spoke softly, "Well
done, Tsu Ma. It's hard, I know. The hardest thing a man can do. ..."

Slowly Tsu Ma's
eyes focused on him. He swallowed deeply and another great shudder
racked his body. Pain flickered like lightning across the broad,
strong features of his face, and then he spoke, his voice curiously
small, like a child's. "Yes . . . but it was so hard to do, Shai
Tung. It—it was just like him."

Li Shai Tung
shivered but kept himself perfectly still, his face empty of what he
was feeling. He ached to reach out and hold Tsu Ma close, to comfort
him, but knew it would be wrong. It was hard, as Tsu Ma now realized,
but it was also necessary.

Since the time
of Tsao Ch'un it had been so. To become T'ang the son must kill the
father. Must become his own man. Only then would he be free to offer
his father the respect he owed him.

"Will you
come through, Tsu Ma?"

Tsu Ma's eyes
had never left Li Shai Tung's face, yet they had not been seeing him.
Now they focused again. He gave the barest nod, then, with one last,
appalled look at the body on the floor, moved toward the dragon
doorway.

In the room
beyond, the real Tsu Tiao was laid out atop a great, tiered pedestal
on a huge bedspread with silken sheets of gold. Slowly and with great
dignity Tsu Ma climbed the steps until he stood there at his dead
father's side. The old man's fine gray hair had been brushed and
plaited, his cheeks delicately rouged, his beard brushed out
straight, his nails painted a brilliant pearl. He was dressed from
head to foot in white. A soft white muslin that, when Tsu Ma knelt
and gently brushed it with his fingertips, reminded him strangely of
springtime and the smell of young girls.

You're dead,
Tsu Ma thought, gazing tenderly into his father's face. You're
really dead,
aren't
you?
He bent forward and gently
brushed the cold lips with his own, then sat back on his heels,
shivering, toying with the ring that rested, heavy and unfamiliar,
like a saddle on the first finger of his right hand. And now it's
me.

He turned his
head, looking back at the six T'ang standing among the pillars,
watching him. You
know how I feel,
he thought, looking from
face to face.
Each one of you. You've been here before me, haven't
you?

For the first
time he understood why the Seven were so strong. They had this in
common: each knew what it was to kill their father: knew the reality
of it in their bones. Tsu Ma looked back at the body—the real
body, not the lifelike GenSyn copy he had "killed"—and
understood. He had been blind to it before, but now he saw it
clearly. It was not life that connected them so firmly, but death.
Death that gave them such a profound and lasting understanding of
each other.

He stood again
and turned, facing them, then went down among them. At the foot of
the steps they greeted him; each in his turn bowing before Tsu Ma;
each bending to kiss the ring of power he now wore; each embracing
him warmly before repeating the same eight words.

"Welcome,
Tsu Ma. Welcome, T'ang of West Asia."

When the brief
ceremony was over, Tsu Ma turned and went across to the two boys. Li
Yuan was much taller than when he had last seen him. He was entering
that awkward stage of early adolescence and had become a somewhat
ungainly-looking boy. Even so, it was hard to believe that his
birthday in two days time would be only his twelfth. There was
something almost unnatural in his manner that made Tsu Ma think of
childhood tales of changelings and magic spells and other such
nonsense. He seemed so old, so knowing. So unlike the child whose
body he wore. Tao Chu, in contrast, seemed younger than his eight
years and wore his heart embroidered like a peacock on his sleeve. He
stood there in his actor's costume, bearded, his brow heavily lined
with black makeup pencil, yet still his youth shone through, in his
eyes and in the quickness of his movements.

Tsu Ma reached
out and ruffled his hair, smiling for the first time since the
killing. "Did it frighten you, Tao Chii?"

The boy looked
down, abashed. "I thought..."

Tsu Ma knelt
down and held his shoulders, nodding, remembering how he had felt the
first time he had seen the ritual, not then knowing what was
happening, or why.

Tao Chu looked
up and met his eyes. "It seemed so real, Uncle Ma. For a moment
I thought it was Grandpa Tiao."

Tsu Ma smiled.
"You were not alone in that, Nephew Chu."

Tao Chu was his
dead brother's third and youngest son and Tsu Ma's favorite; a
lively, ever-smiling boy with the sweetest, most joyful laugh. At the
ritual earlier Tao Chu had impersonated Tsu Tiao, playing out scenes
from the old Tang's life before the watching court. The practice was
as old as the Middle Kingdom itself and formed one link in the great
chain of tradition, but it was more than mere ritual, it was a living
ceremony; an act of deep respect and celebration, almost a poem to
the honored dead. For the young actor, however, it was a confusing,
not to say unnerving experience, to find the dead man unexpectedly
there, in the seat of honor, watching the performance.

"Do you
understand why I had to kill the copy, Tao Chu?"

Tao Chu glanced
quickly at Li Yuan, then looked back steadily at his uncle. "Not
at first, Uncle Ma, but Li Yuan explained it to me. He said you had
to kill the guilt you felt at Grandpa Tiao's death. That you could
not be your own man until you had."

"Then you
understand how deeply I revere my father? How hard it was to harm
even a copy of him?"

Tao Chu nodded,
his eyes bright with understanding.

"Good."
He squeezed the boy's shoulders briefly, then stood. "But I must
thank you, Tao Chun. You did well today. You gave me back my father."

Tao Chu smiled,
greatly pleased by his uncle's praise; then, at a touch from Li Yuan,
he joined the older boy in a deep bow and backed away, leaving the
T'ang to their Council.

from THE
camera's vantage point, twenty
li
out from the spaceship, it
was hard to tell its scale. The huge sphere of its forward
compartments was visible only as a nothingness in the star-filled
field of space—a circle of darkness more intense than that
which surrounded it. Its tail, so fine and thin that it was like a
thread of silver, stretched out for ten times its circumference,
terminating in a smaller, silvered sphere little thicker than the
thread.

It was
beautiful. Li Shai Tung drew closer, operating the remote from a
distance of almost three hundred thousand
li,
adjusting the
camera image with the most delicate of touches, the slight delay in
response making him cautious. Five
li
out he slowed the remote
and increased the definition.

The darkness
took on form. The sphere was finely stippled, pocked here and there
with hatches or spiked with communication towers. Fine, almost
invisible lines covered the whole surface, as if the sphere were
netted by the frailest of spiders' webs.

Li Shai Tung let
the remote drift slowly toward the starship and sat back, one hand
smoothing through his long beard while he looked about him at the
faces of his fellow T'ang.

"Well?"

He glanced
across at the waiting technicians and dismissed them with a gesture.
They had done their work well in getting an undetected remote so
close to
The New Hope.
Too well, perhaps. He had not expected
it to be so beautiful.

"How big is
it?" asked Wu Shih, turning to him. "I can't help thinking
it must be huge to punch so big a hole in the star field."

Li Shai Tung
looked back at him, the understanding of thirty years passing between
them. "It's huge. Approximately two li in diameter."

"Approximately?"
It was Wei Feng, T'ang of East Asia, who picked up on the word.

"Yes. The
actual measurement is one kilometer. I understand that they have used
the old
Hung Mao
measurements throughout the craft."

Wei Feng grunted
his dissatisfaction, but Wang Hsien, T'ang of Africa, was not so
restrained. "But that's an outrage!" he roared. "An
insult! How dare they flout the Edict so openly?"

"I would
remind you, Wang Hsien," Li Shai Tung answered quietly, seeing
the unease on every face. "We agreed that the terms of the Edict
would not apply to the starship."

He looked back
at the ship. The fine web of lines was now distinct. In its center,
etched finer than the lines surrounding it, were two lines of
beadlike figures spiraling about each other, forming the double helix
of heredity, symbol of the Dispersionists.

Three years
ago—the day after Under Secretary Lehmann had been killed in
the House by Tolonen—he had summoned the leaders of the House
before him, and there, in the Purple Forbidden City where they had
murdered his son, had granted them concessions, among them permission
to build a generation starship. It had prevented war. But now the
ship was almost ready and though the uneasy peace remained intact,
soon it would be broken. The cusp lay just ahead. Thus far on the
road of concession he had carried the Seven. Thus far but no farther.