The Middle Kingdom (7 page)

Chen moved
through it all slowly, purposefully, trying not to let it overwhelm
him after the empty silence of the maintenance tunnels. His eyes
searched for Security patrols, conscious all the while of Jyan at his
side, matching him pace for pace. He allowed himself a brief, grim
smile. It would be all right. He was sure it would be all right.

They were mostly
Han here, but those
Hung Mao
about were almost
indistinguishable in dress or speech. These were Chung Kuo's poor.
Here, near the very bottom of the City, you could see the problem the
City faced—could touch and smell and hear it. Here it hit you
immediately, in the constant push and shove of the crowds that milled
about these corridors. Chung Kuo was overcrowded. Wherever,you turned
there were people; people talking and laughing, pushing and arguing,
bargaining and gambling, making love behind thin curtains or moving
about quietly in cramped and crowded rooms, watching endless
historical dramas while they tended to a clutch of bawling children.

Chen pushed on
dourly, swallowing the sudden bitterness he felt. To those who lived
a quieter, more ordered life in the levels high above, this would
probably have seemed like hell. But Chen knew otherwise. The people
of this level counted themselves lucky to be here, above the Net and
not below. There was law here and a kind of order, despite the
overcrowding. There was the guarantee of food and medical care. And
though there was the constant problem of idleness—of too many
hands and too few jobs—there was at least the chapce of getting
out, by luck or hard work; of climbing the levels to a better place
than this. Below the Net there was nothing. Only chaos.

Below this level
the City had been sealed. That seal was called the Net. Unlike a real
net, however, there were no holes in it. It was a perfect, supposedly
unbreachable barrier. The architects of City Earth had meant it as a
quarantine measure: as a means of preventing the spread of
infestation and disease. From the beginning, however, the Seven had
found another use for it.

They had been
wise, that first Council of the Seven. They had known what some men
were; had seen the darkness in their hearts and had realized that,
unless they acted, the lowest levels of the City would soon become
ungovernable. Their solution had been simple and effective. They had
decided to use the Net as a dumping ground for that small antisocial
element on whom the standard punishment of downgrading—of
demoting a citizen to a lower level—had proved consistently
unsuccessful. By that means they hoped to check the rot and keep the
levels pure.

To a degree it
had worked. As a dumping ground the Net had served the Seven well.
Below the Net there was no citizenship. Down there a man had no
rights but those he fought for or earned in the service of other,
more powerful men. There was no social welfare there, no health care,
no magistrates to judge the rights or wrongs of a man's behavior. Nor
was there any legitimate means of returning from the Net. Exile was
permanent, on pain of death. It was little wonder, then, that its
threat kept the citizens of Pan Chao Street in check.

Chen knew. It
was where they came from, he and Jyan. Where they had been bom. Down
there, below the Net.

And now they
were returning.

At the mouth of
one of the small alleyways that opened onto Pan Chao Street, a group
of young men had gathered in a circle, hunched forward, watching
excitedly as a die rolled. There was a sudden upward movement of
their heads; an abrupt, exaggerated movement of arms and hands and
shoulders accompanied by a shrill yell from a dozen mouths, a shout
of triumph and dismay, followed a moment later by the hurried
exchange of money and the making of new bets. Then the young men
hunched forward again, concentrating on the next roll.

As they passed
the entrance, Jyan turned and stared at the group. He hesitated,
then, catching their excitement, began to make'his way across to
them.

"Kao Jyan!"
Chen hissed, reaching out to restrain him. "There's no time! We
must get on!"

Jyan turned
back, a momentary confusion in his face. His movements seemed
strangely feverish and uncontrolled. His eyes had difficulty
focusing. Chen knew at once what was wrong. The drug he had taken to
tolerate the conditions outside the City was wearing off.

Too soon, Chen
thought, his mind working furiously. You must have taken it too
early. Before you were told to. And now the reaction's setting in.
Too soon. Too bloody soon!

"Come on,
Jyan," he said, leaning closer and talking ihto his face. "We've
got to get to the elevator!"

Jyan shivered
and seemed to focus on him at last. Then he nodded and did as Chen
said, moving on quickly through the crowd.

Where Pan Chao
Street spilled out into the broad concourse of Main, Chen stopped and
looked about him, keeping a grip on Jyan. The bell tower was close by
and to his left, the distribution elevator far to his right, barely
visible, almost two
U
in the distance.

Shit! he
thought. I was right. WeVe come out the wrong end! He glanced at
Jyan, angry now. He knew they had been in there too long. He had told
him they had come too far along the shaft, but Jyan would not have
it. "The next junction," Jyan had said when Chen had
stopped beside the hatch: "Not this one. The next." Chen
had known at the time that Jyan was wrong, but Jyan had been in
charge and so he had done as he'd said. But now he wished he had
overruled him. They had lost valuable time. Now they would have to
backtrack—out in the open where they could be seen. Where
Security could see them. And with Jyan going funny on him.

He leaned close
to Jyan and shouted into his ear. "Just stay beside me. Hold on
to my arm if necessary, but don't leave my side."

Jyan turned his
head and looked back at him, his expression vacant for a moment.
Then, as before, he seemed to come to and nodded. "Okay,"
he mouthed. "Let's go."

Main, the huge
central concourse of Eleven, was a Babel of light and sound, a broad,
bloated torrent of humanity that made Pan Chao Street seem a sluggish
backwater. Along its length people crowded about the stalls, thick as
blackfly on a stem, haggling for bargains, while high above them
massive view-screens hung in clusters from the ceiling, filling the
overhead. On the huge, five-level walls to either side of the
concourse a thousand flickering images formed and reformed in a
nightmare collage. Worst of all, however, was the noise. As they
stepped out into the crush the noise hit them like a wave, a huge
swell of sound, painful in its intensity, almost unbearable.

Chen gritted his
teeth, forcing his way through the thick press of people, holding on
tightly to Jyan's arm and almost thrusting him through the crowd in
front of him. He looked about him, for the first time really anxious,
and saw how the long'time natives of Eleven seemed to ignore the
clamor; seemed not to see the giant, dreamlike faces that flickered
into sudden existence and followed their every movement down the
Main. They knew it was all a clever trick; knew from childhood how
the screens responded to their presence. But to a stranger it was
different. Nowhere in the City was quite like Eleven. Here, in the
first level above the Net, life seemed in perpetual ferment; as if
the knowledge of what lay sealed off just below their feet made them
live their lives at a different level of intensity.

Jyan was turning
his head from side to side as he moved through the crush, grimacing
against the brute intensity of the noise, the awful flickering neon
brightness of the screens. Then, abruptly, he turned and faced Chen,
leaning into him, shouting into his face.

"I can't
stand it, Chen! I can't hear myself think!"

Jyan's face was
dreadful to see. His mouth had formed a jagged shape; his round and
frightened eyes held a neon glimpse of madness. It was clear he was
close to cracking up. Chen held his arms firmly, trying to reassure
him through his touch, then leaned close, shouting back his answer.
"Two minutes, Jyan, that's all! We're almost there!"

Jyan shuddered
and looked up, away from Chen, his eyes wide. From one of the larger
screens a huge face turned and focused on him. It was a classically
beautiful Oriental face, the eyes like almonds, the skin like satin,
the hair fine and straight and dark. Meeting Jyan's eyes she smiled
and, somewhere else, a computer matched the face she looked down into
against its computer memory of all the faces in that sector of the
City.

"You're a
stranger here," she said, after barely a pause, the wire-thin
stem of a speaker appendage snaking down to a point just above their
heads. "Are you just visiting us, or have you business here?"

Jyan had frozen.
Chen, too, had turned and was looking up at the screen. "Come
on," he said tensely. "It's dangerous here."

As the seconds
passed, and Jyan did not move, the computers spread their search,
looking to match the face and find a name. It was good sales
technique. This time, however, it came up with nothing. Fourteen near
likenesses, but nothing to match the retinal print of the man
standing beneath its screen. In a Security post five levels up a
warning message flashed up on a screen.

"Come on,
Jyan!" Chen said urgently, tugging Jyan away; ignoring the
curious looks of passersby, pulling him along roughly now.

At the end of
Main, only a quarter Ji away, the doors to one of the huge delivery
elevators were opening. Chen increased his pace, glancing from side
to side. As the doors slid slowly back, a number of Ministry of
Distribution workers—chi ch'i—stepped out, their dark,
uniformed figures dwarfed by the huge doors.

Nearer the
elevator the crowd thinned and the going grew easier. Chen slowed,
then stopped and drew Jyan around to face him. The doors were almost
fully open now. Already a number of the low-slung electric carts were
spilling out into the Main, unloading the code-marked crates.

"You know
what to do?" Chen asked, his hands gripping the collar of Jyan's
jacket tightly. "You remember what we rehearsed?"

Jyan nodded, his
eyes suddenly much clearer. "I'm all right," he shouted.
"It was only—"

Chen put his
hand to Jyan's mouth. "No time!" he yelled back. "Let's
just do it!"

There were about
thirty chi ch'i working the elevator. All of them were wearing
wraparounds—the bulky headpieces blink-ering them from all
distractions. Their close-shaven heads and the heavy, black full-face
masks gave them a somber, distinctly mechanical appearance; an
impression which their routine, repetitive movements enhanced. Chen
walked toward them casually, aware of Jyan moving away from him,
circling toward the elevator from the other side.

There were two
pan
chang,
or supervisors. One of them stood only a few paces
from where Chen had stopped, his back to the overhead screens, his
headphones making him deaf to the surrounding noise. From time to
time he would bark an order into his lip mike and one of the chi ch'i
would pause momentarily, listening, then respond with a brief nod.

Chen nodded to
himself, satisfied. To all intents and purposes the chi ch'i could be
discounted. Their awareness was limited to the color-coded crates
they were shifting from the elevator: crates that stood out in
simple, schematic shapes of red and green and blue against the
intense blackness in their heads.

He looked
across. Jyan was in position now, directly behind the second pan
chang. At a signal from Chen they would act.

Chen had made
Jyan practice this endlessly; ripping the mike away quickly with his
left hand, then chopping down against the victim's windpipe with his
right. Now he would discover if Jyan had learned his lesson.

Chen brought his
hand down sharply, then moved forward, grabbing his man. Savagely he
ripped the mike from the pan chang’s lips and brought the heel
of his right hand down hard against the man's throat. He felt the man
go limp and let him fall, then looked across.

Jyan was still
struggling with his man. He had ripped away the lip mike, but had
failed to finish things. Now he was holding the pan chang awkwardly,
his right arm locked around the middle of his head, his left hand
formed into a fist as he flailed frantically at the man's chest. But
the pan chang was far from finished. With a shout he twisted out and
pushed Jyan away, then turned to face him, one hand reaching up to
pull his headphones off.

Chen started
forward, then saw something flash in Jyan's hand. A moment later the
pan chang staggered backward, clutching his chest. At the same time
some of the chi ch'i straightened up and looked about blindly, as if
suddenly aware that something was going on.

Chen ran for the
elevator. At the doorway he turned and looked back.

Jyan was
kneeling over the pan chang, one foot pressing down into the dead
man's shoulder as he tried to pull the long-handled knife from his
chest.

"Jyan!"
Chen screamed, his voice almost lost in the background noise. "Leave
it!"

Jyan looked up
sharply. Then, as if coming to himself again, he stood up and began
to run toward the elevator, skirting the unseeing chi ch'i and their
carts. He had made only eight or nine paces when the first shot rang
out.

Instinctively
Chen ducked. When he looked up again he couldn't see Jyan. He took a
step forward, then stopped, backing up. There, a half Ji down the
Main, were three Security guards. They were approaching in a widely
spaced line across the corridor, moving people out of their way
brusquely, almost brutally, as they walked toward the elevator. Chen
cursed beneath his breath and slammed his hand hard against the
elevator's control panel.