The Middle Kingdom (79 page)

He studied the
board again. The corner lost, almost certainly now, but his own
position was much stronger and there was a good possibility of making
territory on the top edge, in shang and
dm,
the west. Not only
that, but DeVore's next move was forced. He had to play on the top
edge, two in. To protect his line. He watched, then smiled inwardly
as DeVore set down the next white stone exactly where he had known he
would.

Behind him he
heard the door open quietly. "There," said DeVore,
indicating a space beside the play table. At once a second, smaller
table was set down and covered with a thin cloth. A moment later a
serving girl brought the kettle and two bowls, then knelt there, to
Chen's right, wiping out the bowls.

"Wei chi
is a fascinating game, don't you think, Tong Chou? Its rules are
simple—there are only seven things to know—and yet
mastery of the game is the work of a lifetime." Unexpectedly he
laughed. "Tell me, Tong Chou, do you know the history of the
game?"

Chen shook his
head. Someone had once told him it had been developed at the same
time as the computers, five hundred years ago, but the man who had
told him that had been a know-nothing; a shit-brains, as DeVore would
have called him. He had a sense that the game was much younger. A
recent thing.

DeVore smiled.
"How old do you think the game is, Tong Chou? A hundred years?
Five hundred?"

Again Chen shook
his head. "A hundred,
Shih
Bergson? Two hundred,
possibly?"

DeVore laughed
and then watched as the girl poured the
ch'a
and offered him
the first bowl. He lowered his head politely, refusing, and she
turned, offering the bowl to Chen. Chen also lowered his head
slightly, refusing, and the girl turned back to DeVore. This time
DeVore took the bowl in two hands and held it to his mouth to sip,
clearly pleased by Chen's manners.

"Would it
surprise you, Tong Chou, if I told you that the game we're playing is
more than four and a half thousand years old? That it was invented by
the Emperor Yao in approximately 2350 B.C.?"

Chen hesitated,
then laughed as if surprised, realizing that DeVore must be mocking
him. Chung Kuo was not that old, surely? He took the bowl the girl
was now offering him and, with a bow to DeVore, sipped noisily.

DeVore drained
his bowl and set it down on the tray the girl was holding, waiting
for the girl to fill it again before continuing.

"The story
is that the Emperor Yao invented
wei chi
to train the mind of
his son, Tan-Chu, and teach him to think like an emperor. The board,
you see, is a map of Chung Kuo itself, of the ancient Middle Kingdom
of the Han, bounded to the east by the ocean, to the north and west
by deserts and great mountain ranges, and to the south by jungles and
the sea. The board,

then, is the
land. The pieces men, or groups of men. At first the board, like the
land, is clear, unsettled, but then as the men arrive and begin to
grow in numbers, the board fills. Slowly but inexorably these groups
spread out across the land, occupying territory. But there is only so
much territory—only so many points on the board to be filled.
Conflict is inevitable. Where the groups meet there is war: a war
which the strongest and cleverest must win. And so it goes on, until
the board is filled and the last conflict resolved."

"And when
the board is filled and the pieces still come?"

DeVore looked at
him a moment, then looked away. "As I said, it's an ancient
game, Tong Chou. If the analogy no longer holds it is because we have
changed the rules. It would be different if we were to limit the
number of pieces allowed instead of piling them on until the board
breaks from the weight of stones. Better yet if the board were bigger
than it is, eh?"

Chen was silent,
watching DeVore drain his bowl a second time. I'm certain now, he
thought. It's you. I know it's you. But Karr wants to be sure. More
than that, he wants you alive. So that he can bring you before the
T'ang and watch you kneel and beg for mercy.

DeVore set his
bowl down on the tray again, but this time he let his hand rest
momentarily over the top of it, indicating he was finished. Then he
looked at Chen.

"You know,
Tong Chou, sometimes I think these two—ch'a and
wei
chi
—along with silk, are the high points of Han culture."
Again he laughed, but this time it was a cold, mocking laughter.
"Just think of it, Tong Chou!
Ch'a
and
wei chi
and
silk! All three of them some four and a half thousand years old! And
since then? Nothing! Nothing but walls!"

Nothing but
walls. Chen finished his
ch'a
and set it down on the tray the
girl held out for him. Then he placed his stone and, for the next
half hour, said nothing, concentrating on the game.

At first the
game went well for him. He lost few captives and made few trivial
errors. The honors seemed remarkably even, and filled with confidence
in his own performance, he began to query what Karr had told him
about DeVore being a master of
weichi.
But then things
changed. Four times he thought he had DeVore's stones trapped.
Trapped with no possibility of escape.

Each time he
seemed within two stones of capturing a group; first in ping, the
east, at the bottom left-hand corner of the board, then in tsu, the
north. But each time he was forced to watch, open mouthed, as DeVore
changed everything with a single unexpected move. And then he would
find himself backtracking furiously; no longer surrounding but
surrounded, struggling desperately to save the group which, only a
few moves before, had seemed invincible—had seemed a mere two
moves from conquest.

Slowly he
watched his positions crumble on all sides of the board until, with a
small shrug of resignation, he threw the black stone he was holding
back into the tray.

"There
seems no point."

DeVore looked up
at him for the first time in a long while. "Really? You concede,
Tong Chou?"

Chen bowed his
head.

"Then
you'll not mind if I play black from this position?"

Chen laughed,
surprised. The position was lost. By forty, maybe fifty pieces.
Irredeemably lost. Again he shrugged. "If that's your wish,
Shih
Bergson."

"And what's
your wish, Tong Chou? I understand you want to be field supervisor."

Chen bowed his
head. "That's so, Shih Bergson.

"The job
pays well. Twice what you earn now, Tong Chou."

Yes, thought
Chen; so why does no one else apply? Because it is an unpopular job,
being field supervisor under you, that's why. And so you wonder why I
want it.

"That's
exactly why I want the job,
Shih
Bergson. I want to get on. To
clear my debts in the Above and climb the levels once again."

DeVore sat back,
watching him closely a moment, then he leaned forward, took a black
stone from the tray, and set it down with a sharp click.

"All right.
I'll consider the matter.-But first there's something you can do for
me, Tong Chou. Two nights back the storehouse in the western meadows
was broken into and three cases of strawberries, packed ready for
delivery to one of my clients in First Level, were taken. You'll
understand how inconvenienced I was." He sniffed and looked at
Chen directly. "There's a thief on the plantation, Tong Chou. I
want to find out who it is and deal with him. Do you understand me?"

Chen hesitated a
moment, taken by surprise by this unexpected demand. Then, realizing
he had no choice if he was to get close enough to DeVore to get Karr
his proof, he dropped his head.

"As you
say,
Shih
Bergson. And when IVe dealt with him?" DeVore
laughed. "Then we'll play again, Tong Chou, and talk about your
future."

WHEN THE PEASANT
had gone, DeVore went across to the screens and pulled the curtain
back, then switched on the screen that connected him with Berdichev
in the House.

"How are
things?" he asked as Berdichev's face appeared.

Berdichev
laughed excitedly. "It's early yet, but I think weVe done it.
Farr's people have come over and the New Legist faction are swaying a
little. Barrow calculates that we need only twenty more votes and
weVe thrown the Seven's veto out."

DeVore nodded.
"That's good. And afterward?"

Berdichev
smiled. "You've heard something, then? Well, that's my surprise.
Wait and see. That's all I'll say."

DeVore broke
contact. He pulled the curtain to and walked over to the board. The
peasant hadn't been a bad player, considering. Not really all that
stimulating, .yet amusing enough, particularly in the second phase of
the game. He would have to give him nine stones next time. He studied
the situation a moment. Black had won, by a single stone.

As for Berdichev
and his "surprise". . .

DeVore laughed
and began to clear the board. As if you could keep such a thing
hidden. The albino was the last surprise Soren Berdichev would spring
on him. Even so, he admired Soren for having the insight—and
the guts—to do what he had done. When the Seven learned of the
investigations—and when they saw the end results . . .

He looked across
at the curtained bank of screens. Yes, all hell would break loose
when the Seven found out what Soren Berdichev had been up to. And
what was so delightful was that it was all legal. All perfectly
constitutional. There was nothing they could do about it.

But they would
do something. He was certain of that. So it was up to him to
anticipate it. To find out what they planned and get in first.

And there was no
one better at that game than he. No one in the whole of Chung Kuo.

"Why, look,
Soren! Look at Lo Yu-Hsiang!" Clarac laughed and spilled wine
down his sleeve, but he was oblivious of it, watching the scenes on
the big screens overhead.

Berdichev looked
where Clarac was pointing and gave a laugh of delight. The camera was
in close-up on the Senior Representative's face.

"Gods! He
looks as if he's about to have a coronary!"

As the camera
panned slowly round the tiers, it could be seen that the look of
sheer outrage on Lo Yu-Hsiang's face was mirrored throughout that
section of the House. Normally calm patricians bellowed and raged,
their eyes bulging with anger.

Douglas came up
behind Berdichev and slapped him on the back. "And there's
nothing they can do about it! Well done, Soren! Marvelous! I thought
I'd never see the day."

There was more
jubilant laughter from the men gathered in the gallery room, then
Douglas called for order and had the servants bring more glasses so
they could drink a toast.

"To Soren
Berdichev! And
The New Hope
!"

Two dozen voices
echoed the toast, then drank, their eyes filled with admiration for
the man at the center of their circle.

Soren Berdichev
inclined his head, then, with a smile, turned back to the viewing
window and gazed down on the scene below.

The scenes in
the House had been unprecedented. In all the years of its existence
nothing like this had happened. Not even the murder of Pietr Lehmann
had rocked the House so violently. The defeat of the Seven's veto
motion—a motion designed to confine
The New Hope
to the
Solar System—had been unusual enough, but what had followed had
been quite astonishing.

Wild
celebrations had greeted the result of the vote. The anti-veto
faction had won by a majority of one hundred and eighteen. In the
calm that had followed, Under Secretary Barrow had gone quietly to
the rostrum and begun speaking.

At first most of
the members heard very little of Barrow's speech. They were still
busy discussing the implications of the vote. But one by one they
fell silent as the full importance of what Barrow was saying began to
sweep around the tiers.

Barrow was
proposing a special motion, to be passed by a two-thirds majority of
the House. A motion for the indictment of certain members of the
House. He was outlining the details of investigations that had been
made by a secretly convened subcommittee of the House—investigations
into corruption, unauthorized practices, and the payment of illegal
fees.

By the time he
paused and looked up from the paper he was reading from, there was
complete silence in the House.

Barrow turned,
facing a certain section of the tiers, then began to read out a list
of names. He was only partway into that long list when the noise from
the Han benches drowned his voice.

Every name on
his list was a
tai
—a "pocket" representative,
their positions, their "loyalty," bought and paid for by
the Seven. This, even more than the House's rejection of the starship
veto, was a direct challenge upon the authority of the Seven. It was
tantamount to a declaration of the House's independence from their
T'ang.

Barrow waited
while the Secretary of the House called the tiers to order, then,
ignoring the list for a moment, began an impassioned speech about the
purity of the House and how it had been compromised by the Seven.

The outcry from
the
tai
benches was swamped by enthusiastic cheers from all
sides of the House. The growing power of the
tai
had been a
longstanding bone of contention, even among the Han Representatives,
and Barrow's indignation reflected their own feelings. It had been
different in the old days: then a
tai
had been a man to be
respected, but these brash young men were no more than empty
mouthpieces for the Seven.

When it came to
the vote the margin was as narrow as it could possibly be. Three
votes settled it. The eighty-six
tai
named on Barrow's list
were to be indicted.