Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (27 page)

He didn't hear
the door open. Nor did he hear the second set of footsteps pad almost
silently across the tiles toward him. But a movement in the girl in
front of him—the slightest tensing of her left hand where it
rested on his knee—made him open his eyes suddenly and look up,
his gaze going to the mirror.

Tender Willow
was almost upon him, the knife already raised in her right hand. At
once he kicked out with his right leg, pushing Sweet Rain away from
him, and lurched forward, out of the seat.

It was not a
moment too soon. Tender Willow's knife missed his shoulder by a
fraction, tearing into the silken cushioning of the chair, gashing
the wooden beading. Wang turned quickly, facing her, twice her weight
and a full ch'i taller; but still the girl came on, her face filled
with hatred and disgust.

As she thrust
the knife at him a second time, he moved forward, knocking her arm
away, then, grabbing her neck brutally, he smashed her head down into
the arm of the chair, once, then a second time. She fell and lay
still.

He stood there a
moment, his breath hissing sharply from him, then turned and kicked
out at Sweet Rain again, catching her in the stomach so that she
wheezed, her breath taken from her. His face was dark now, twisted
with rage.

"You foxes
. . ." he said quietly, his voice trembling. "You foul
little bitches. . ."

He kicked again,
catching the fallen girl fully on the side of the head, then turned
back and spat on the other girl.

* "You're
dead. Both of you."

He looked about
him, noting the broken bowl and, beside it, a single white jade pin,
then bent down and recovered the knife from the floor. He
straightened up, then, with a slight shudder, walked to the door and
threw it open, calling the guards.

Between
the retina and the higher centers of the cortex the innocence of
vision is irretrievably lost—it has succumbed to the suggestion
of a whole series of hidden persuaders.

—arthur
koestler,
The Act of Creation

That
which we experience in dreams, if we experience it often, is in the
end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as is
anything we "really" experience: we are by virtue of it
richer or poorer.

—friedrich
nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil

BEN
CAME UPON the cottage from the bay path, climbing the steep slope. At
the lower gate he turned, looking back across the bay. New growth
crowded the distant foreshore, masking where the fire had raged five
years earlier. Only at the hill's crest, where the old house had
stood, did the new vegetation end. There the land was fused a glassy
black.

The tall
seventeen-year-old shook his head, then turned to face the cottage.
Landscott was a long low shape against the hill, its old stone walls
freshly whitewashed, its roof thatched. A flower garden stretched up
to it, its blooms a brilliant splash of color beside the smooth
greenness of the lawn. Behind and beside it other cottages dotted the
hillside, untenanted yet perfectly maintained. Shells, they were.
Part of the great illusion. His eyes passed over them quickly, used
to the sight.

He looked down
at his left hand where it rested on the gatepost, conscious of a
deep, unsatisfied itch at the join between the wrist and the new
hand. The kind of itch you couldn't scratch, because it was inside,
beneath the flesh. The join was no longer sore, the hand no longer an
unaccustomed weight at the end of his arm, as it had been for the
first year. Even so, something of his initial sense of awkwardness
remained.

The scar had
healed, leaving what looked like a machined ridge between what was
his and what had been given. The hand itself looked natural enough,
but that was only illusion. He had seen what lay beneath the fibrous
dermal layer. It was much stronger than his right hand and in subtle
ways, much better—far quicker in its responses. He turned it,
moving it like the machine it was rather than the hand it pretended
to be, then smiled to himself. If he wished, he could have it
strengthened and augmented, could transform it into any kind of tool
he needed.

He let it fall,
then began to climb again, crossing the gradual slope of the upper
garden. Halfway across the lawn he slowed, then stopped, surprised,
hearing music from inside the cottage. Piano music. He tilted his
head, listening, wondering who it was. The phrase was faltering at
first, the chords uncertain. Then, a moment later, the same chords
were repeated, confidently this time, all sense of hesitation gone.

Curious, he
crossed the lawn and went inside. The music was coming from the
living room. He went to the doorway and looked in. At the far side of
the room his mother was sitting at a piano, her back to him, her
hands resting lightly on the keys.

"Mother?"
Ben frowned, not understanding. The repetition of the phrase had been
assured, almost professional, and his mother did not play.

She turned,
surprised to see him there, a slight color at her cheeks. "I. .
." then she laughed and shook her head. "Yes, it was me.
Come. I'll show you."

He went across
and sat beside her on the long benchlike piano seat. "This is
new," he said, looking down at the piano. Then,
matter-of-factly, he added, "Besides, you don't play."

"No,"
she said, but began anyway—a long introductory passage, more
complex than the phrase she had been playing; a fast passionate piece
played with a confidence and skill the earlier attempt had lacked. He
watched her hands moving over the keys, surprised and delighted.

"That's
beautiful," he said when she had finished. "What was it?"

"Chopin.
From the Preludes." She laughed, then turned and glanced at him,
her eyes bright with enjoyment.

"I still
don't understand. That was excellent."

"Oh, I
wouldn't say that." She leaned back, staring down at the
keyboard. "I'm rather rusty. It's a long while since I played."

"Why didn't
you play before now?"

"Because
it's an obsession."

She had said it
without looking at him, as if it explained everything. He looked down
at her hands again, saw how they formed shapes above the keys.

"I had to
think of you and Meg. I couldn't do both, you understand. Couldn't
play and look after you. And I wanted to bring you up. I didn't trust
anyone else to do the job."

"So you
gave up this?"

If anything, he
understood it less. To have such a gift and not use it. It was not
possible.

"Oh, there
were plenty of times when I felt like playing. I ached to do it. It
was like coming off a drug. A strong, addictive drug. And in denying
that part of me I genuinely felt less human. But there was no choice.
I wanted to be a mother to you, not simply a presence flitting
through your lives."

He frowned, not
following her. It made him realize how little he knew about her.

She had always
been too close, too familiar. He had never thought to ask her about
herself, about her life before she had met his father.

"My own
mother and father were never there, you see." Her hands formed a
major chord, then two quick minors. It sounded familiar; yet, like
the Chopin, he couldn't place it.

"I was
determined not to do to you what they did to me. I remember how
isolated I felt. How unloved." She smiled, reaching across to
take his right hand—his human hand—and squeeze it.

"I see."

It awed him to
think she had done that for them. He ran the piece she had played
through his memory, seeing where she placed emphasis, where she
slowed. He could almost feel the music. Almost.

"How does
it feel
to be able to do that?"

She drew in a
long breath, looking through him, suddenly distant, her eyes and
mouth lit with the vaguest of smiles; then she shook her head. "No.
I can't say. There aren't the words for it. Raised up, I guess.
Changed.
Different
somehow. But I can't say what, exactly."

For the first
time in his life Ben felt something like envy, watching her face. Not
a jealous, denying envy, but a strong desire to emulate.

"But why
now?"

"Haven't
you guessed?" She laughed and placed his right hand on the
keyboard. "You're usually so quick."

"You're
going to teach me."

"Both of
you," she answered, getting up and coming behind him so that she
could move his arms and manipulate his hands. "Meg asked me to.
And she wouldn't learn unless you could, too."

He thought about
it a moment, then nodded.

"What was
that piece you were playing when I came in? It sounded as if you were
learning it for the first time, yet at the same time knew it
perfectly."

She leaned
closer, her warmth pressed against his shoulder, her long dark hair
brushing against his cheek. "It wasn't originally a piece for
piano, that's why. It was scored for the string and woodwind sections
of an orchestra. It's by Grieg. 'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.' "
She placed her hands on either side of his own and repeated the
phrase he had heard, then played a second, similar one.

"That's
nice," he said. Its simplicity appealed to him.

"You came
back early," she said. "What's up? Didn't you want to go
into town?"

He turned,
meeting her eyes. "Father called. The T'ang has asked him to
stay on a few days."

There was a
brief movement of disappointment in her face. It had been three
months since she had seen Hal.

"A few more
days," she said quietly. "Ah well, it'll soon pass."
Then, smiling, she put her hand on his
arm.
"Perhaps
we'll have a picnic. You, me, and Meg. Like old times. What do you
think?"

Ben looked back
at her, seeing her anew, the faintest smile playing on his lips and
in his eyes. "It would be nice," he said. But already his
thoughts were moving on, his mind toying with the possibilities of
the keyboard. Pushing things further. "Yes," he added,
getting up and going over to her. "Like old times."

* *
*

THE next MORNING
found Ben in the shadowed living room, crouched on his haunches,
staring intently at the screen that filled half the facing wall. He
was watching one of the special Security reports that had been
prepared for his father some months before, after the T'ang of
Africa's assassination. It was an interesting document, not least
because it showed things that were thought too controversial, too
inflammatory, for general screening.

The Seven had
acted swiftly after Wang Hsien's death, arresting the last few
remnants of opposition at First Level—thus preventing a further
outbreak of the war between the factions in the Above—but even
they had been surprised by the extent of the rioting lower down the
City. There had been riots before, of course, but never on such a
widespread scale or with such appalling consequences. Officials of
the Seven, Deck Magistrates among them, had been beaten and killed.
Security posts had been destroyed and Security troops forced to pull
out of some stacks in fear of their lives. Slowly, very slowly,
things had died down, the fires burning themselves out; and in some
parts of the City—in East Asia and North America,
particularly—Security had moved back within days to quell the
last few pockets of resistance. Order had been restored. But for how
long?

He knew it was a
warning. A sign of things to come. But would the Seven heed it? Or
would they continue to ignore the problems that beset those who lived
in the lowest levels of the City, blaming the unrest on groups like
the
Ping Tiao
?

Ben rubbed at
his chin thoughtfully. To the respectable Mid-Level citizenry, the
Ping Tiao
were bogeymen, the very type and symbol of those
destructive forces the War had unleashed; and MidText, the Mid-Level
media channel, played heavily upon their fears. But the truth was
otherwise.

The
Ping Tiao
had first come into the news eighteen months earlier, when three
members of their faction had kidnapped and murdered a Mid-Level
administrator. They had issued pamphlets claiming that the
Administrator was a corrupt and brutal man who had abused his
position and deserved his fate. It was the truth, but the authorities
had countered at once, depicting the dead official as a
well-respected family man who had been the victim of a group of
madmen; madmen who wanted only one thing—to level the City and
destroy Chung Kuo itself. As the weeks passed and further
Ping
Tiao
"outrages" occurred, the media had launched a
no-holds-barred campaign against the group, linking their name with
any outbreak of violence or civil unrest. There was a degree of truth
behind official claims, for the tactics of the
Ping Tiao
were
certainly of the crudest kind, the seemingly random nature of their
targets aiming at maximum disruption. However, the extent of
Ping
Tiao
activities was greatly exaggerated, creating the impression
that if only the
Ping Tiao
could be destroyed, the problems
they represented would vanish with them.

The campaign had
worked. Or at least, in the Mid-Levels it had worked. Farther down,
however, in the cramped and crowded levels at the bottom of the City,
the
Ping Tiao
were thought of differently. There they were
seen as heroes, their cause as a powerful and genuine expression of
long-standing grievances. Support for the terrorists grew and grew;
and would have continued growing but for a tragic accident in a
Mid-Level creche.