The Middle Kingdom (5 page)

While his
subordinates talked among themselves, Lwo Kang sat back,
contemplating what had happened earlier that day. It did not surprise
him that there were those who wanted to subvert the Edict's
guidelines. So it had ever been, for the full 114 years of the
Edict's existence. What disturbed him more was the growing arrogance
of those who felt they knew best—that they had the right to
challenge the present order of things.

These Hung Moo
had no sense of place. No sense of
li.
Of
propriety.

The problem was
one of race. Of culture. Though more than a century had passed since
the foundation of Chung Kuo and the triumph of Han culture, for those
of European stock—the Hung
Mao,
or "redheads"
as they were commonly known—the ways of the Han were still
unnatural; weye at best surface refinements grafted onto a cruder and
less stable temperament. Three thousand years of unbroken
civilization—that was the heritage of the Han. Against that
these large-nosed foreigners could claim what? Six centuries of chaos
and ill-discipline. Wars and further wars and, ultimately, collapse.
Collapse on a scale that made their previous wars seem like oases of
calm. No, they might seem like Han—might dress and talk and act
like Han—but beneath it all they remained barbarians. The New
Confucianism was rooted only shallowly in the infertile soil of their
natures. .At core they were still the same selfish, materialistic,
individualistic species they had ever been; motivated more by greed
than duty.

Was it so
surprising, then, that men like Lehmann and Berdichev failed to
understand the necessity of the Edict?

Change, they
wanted. Change, at any cost. And because the Edict of Technological
Control was the Seven's chief means of preventing the cancer of
change, it was the Edict they tried to undermine at every turn.

Lwo Kang leaned
back, staring up at the roof of the dome high overhead. The two great
arches of the solarium met in a huge circular tablet, halved by a
snakelike S into black and white. Yin and
yang,
he thought.
Balance. These Westerners have never understood it; not properly—not
in their bones. It still seems some kind of esoteric game to them,
not life itself, as it is to us. Change—the empty-headed
pursuit of the new—that was the real enemy of civilization.

He sighed, then
leaned to his right, listening, becoming at once the focus of their
talk.

They are good
men, he thought, looking along the line of faces. Han, every one of
them. Men I could trust my life with.

Servants passed
among them, mutes who carried trays of
ch'a
and sweetmeats.
GenSyn eunuchs, half-men in more senses than one. Yet even they were
preferable to the likes of Lehmann and Berdichev.

Yang Lai was
talking now, the tenor of his words strangely reflective of Lwo
Kang's thoughts.

"It's a
disease that's rife among the whole of this new generation. Things
have changed, I tell you. They are not like their fathers, solid and
dependable. No, they're ill-mannered brutes, every last one of them.
And they think they can buy change."

Lwo Kang
stretched his bull neck and nodded. "They lack respect," he
said.

There was a
murmur of agreement. Yang Lai bowed, then answered him. "That's
true, my lord. But then, they are not Han. They could never be c/i'un
tzu.
They have no values. And look at the way they dress!"

Lwo Kang smiled,
sitting back again. Though only in his late thirties he was already
slightly balding. He had inherited his father's looks—a
thickset body already going to fat at waist and upper chest—and,
like his father, he had never found the time for exercise. He smiled,
knowing how he looked to them. I am not a vain man, he thought; and
in truth I'd be a liar to myself if I were. Yet I have their respect.

No, it was not
by outward show that a man was to be judged, but by his innermost
qualities; qualities that lay behind his every action.

His father, Lwo
Chun-Yi, had been born a commoner; even so, he had proved himself
worthy and had been appointed minister to Li Shai Tung in the first
years of his reign. Because of that, Lwo Kang had been educated to
the highest level and had learned the rudiments of service in his
earliest years. Now he in his turn was the T'ang's minister. He
looked about him again, satisfied. No, there was not one here who did
not know him for their master.

"What these
Hung
Mao
need is a lesson," he said, leaning forward to
take a shrimp and snow pickle sweetmeat from the tray on the
footstool next to him. He gulped it down, savoring the sweet, spicy
hoisin
sauce on his tongue, and belched appreciatively. "A
lesson in manners."

]YAN CLUNG to
the outside of the dome like a small, dark insect. Three of the hoops
were set. It remained only to place and arm the last charge.

Where he rested,
one hand attaching him to the dome's taut skin, the slope was
relatively gentle. He could look out over the capped summit of the
dome and see the distant, moon-washed peaks. It was a beautiful
night. Cfear, like glass. Above him the stars shone like polished
jewels against the blackness. So many stars. So vast the blackness.

He looked down.
Concentrate, he told himself. YpuVe no time for stargazing. Even so,
he took a final glimpse. Then, working quickly, he placed and
fastened the hoop, taping it at four points. That done, he rugged
gently but firmly at the joint.

Where he pulled
at it, the hoop came apart, a thin thread joining tail to mouth. Like
a snake's wire-thin tongue, he thought. Fully extended, the thread
was as long as his little finger. Already it was being coiled back-,
into the body of the hoop. Eventually the ends would join up again
and the hoop would send out a trigger signal. When all four were
primed, they would form a single, destructive harmonic. And then ...

Slowly,
carefully, he backed away, edging back down the steepening wall of
the dome. Like all else in the City its skin was made of the
superplastic, ice. Normal charges would scarcely have dented the
steel-tough, fire-resistant skin, but these would eat right through
it before they detonated.

He was balanced
at the point where the dome wall fell sharply away when he stopped,
hearing a noise beneath him. He turned his head slowly, scarcely
daring to breathe. Who in the gods' names . . . ?

The figure was
directly underneath, staring up at him. As Jyan turned his face a
brilliant beam of light shone directly into his eyes.

"You! What
are you doing up there?"

Jyan looked
away, momentarily blinded, then looked back in time to see Chen
coming up behind the man.

The man turned
quickly, sensing something behind him. As Chen struck out with his
knife, the man raised the big torch he was carrying and deflected the
blow.

Chen's knife
went clattering across the roof.

For a moment the
two faced each other warily, then Chen moved, circling the newcomer.
He feinted, making the other back off, then dropped to his knees,
searching for his knife in the shadows at the base of the dome.

The man looked
at his torch, considering whether to use it as a weapon and go for
Chen. Then he turned and ran off to the right, where a faint patch of
light revealed a second maintenance hatch.

"Pien
kua!"
swore Jyan under his breath. Loosening the claws, he
dropped the last five meters and rolled. Crouched there, he looked
about him.

He saw Chen at
once, to his right, running after the stranger. But the man was
already at the hatch and climbing down.

"Shit!"
he said desperately, trying to ease the claws from his hands as
quickly as he could. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" If the bastard got
to an alarm they would both be done for.

He looked up in
time to see Chen disappear down the hatch.

"Hurry,
Chen!" he murmured anxiously, folding the claws and tucking them
away in his pocket. He turned, looking back up the dome's steep
slope, then glanced down at the dragon timer in his wrist. Six
minutes. That was all that remained.

And if Chen
failed?

He swallowed
dryly, then began to run toward the second shaft, his heart pounding
in his chest. "Shit!" he kept saying. "Shit! Shit!"

He was only
twenty
ch'i
from it when a figure lifted from the hatch and
turned to face him.

"
Ai-ya!
"
He pulled up sharply, gasping with fear, but it was Chen. The
kwai
looked up, the broad shape of his face and chest lit from
beneath, his breath pluming up into the chill air.

"Where is
he?" hissed Jyan anxiously, hurrying forward again. "Oh,
gods! You didn't let him get away, did you?"

Chen reached
down and pulled the man up by the hair. "He's dead," he
said tonelessly, letting the corpse fall back. "There was no
other way. He was trying to open a Security panel when I came on him.
Now we'll have to find somewhere to hide him."

Jyan shuddered,
filled with relief. "Thank the gods." He turned and glanced
back at the dome. "Let's go, then. Before it blows."

"Yes,"
said Chen, a faintly ironic smile lighting his big, blunt face. "The
rest should be easy. Like the bamboo before the blade."

THE MAID had
gone. Pi Ch'ien sat alone in the room, his
ch'a
long finished,
contemplating the fifteen-hundred-year-old painting of Hsiao Wen Ti
that hung on the wall above the door. It was Yen Li-pen's famous
painting from the Portraits of the
Emperors, with the Han
emperor attended by his ministers.

Every schoolboy
knew the storywrf Wen Ti, first of the great emperors. It was he who,
more than twenty-three centuries before, had created the concept of
Chung Kuo; who, through his thorough adoption of the Confucian
virtues, had made of his vast but ragtag land of warring nations a
single state, governed by stern but just principles. Wen Ti it was
who had first brought commoners into his government. He who had
changed the harsh laws and customs of his predecessors so that no one
in the Middle Kingdom would starve or suffer cruel injustice. Famine
relief, pensions, and the abolition of punishment by mutilation—all
these were Wen Ti's doing. He had lowered taxes and done away with
the vast expense of Imperial display. He had sought the just
criticism of his ministers and acted to better the lot of the Han.
Under his rule Chung Kuo had thrived and its population grown.

Eighteen hundred
years later the Manchu emperor K'ang Hsi had established his great
empire on Wen Ti's principles, and, later still, when the Seven had
thrown off the yoke of the tyrant Tsao Ch'un, they too had adopted
the principles of Wen Ti's reign, making him the First Ancestor of
Chung Kuo. Now Wen Ti's painting hung everywhere in the City, in a
thousand shapes and forms. This, however, was a particularly fine
painting—a perfect reproduction of Yen Li-pen's original.

Pi Ch'ien got up
and went over to the painting, remembering the time when his father
had stood there with him beneath another copy of the portrait and
told him the story of the finding of the hand scroll.

For centuries
the
Portraits of the Emperors
roll had been housed in a museum
in the ancient town of Boston, along with much more that had rightly
belonged to the Han. When the American Empire had finally collapsed
much had been lost. Most of the old Han treasures had been destroyed
out of spite, but some had been hidden away. Years had passed. Then,
in the years when the Han were building their City over the old land
of America, skilled teams had been sent across that continent to
search for the old treasures. Little was found of real value until,
in an old, crumbling building on the shoreline of what had once been
called California, they had found a simple cardboard box containing
the scroll. The hand scroll was remarkably preserved considering its
ill use, but even so, four of the original thirteen portraits had
been lost. Fortunately, the painting of Hsiao Wen Ti was one of those
which had emerged unscathed.

He turned away
and went back to his seat. For a second or two longer he contemplated
the painting, delighted by the profound simplicity of its brushwork,
then leaned across and picked up the handbell. He was about to lift
the tiny wooden hammer to ring for more
ch'a
when the door
swung open and Yang Lai came hurriedly into the room.

Pi Ch'ien
scrambled to his feet and bowed low.

"Well, Pi
Ch'ien?" Yang Lai barked impatiently. "What is it?"

His expression
showed he was far from pleased by his Third Secretary's intrusion.

Pi Ch'ien
remained bowed, the card held out before him. "I have an urgent
message for you, Excellency. I was told to bring it here at once."

"Give it
here!" Yang Lai said irritably.

Pi Ch'ien edged
forward and handed the card across. Yang Lai stared at it a moment,
then turned away. With upturned eyes Pi Ch'ien watched him tap his
personal code into the instruct box and place his thumb against the
release.

There was a
moment's silence from Yang Lai, then he gasped. When he turned to
face Pi Ch'ien again, his face was ashen. For a moment his mouth
worked silently; then, without another word, he turned and left the
room, his silk cloak flapping as he ran.

Pi Ch'ien lifted
his head, astonished. For a moment he stood there, rooted to the
spot. Then he rushed across the room and poked his head out into the
corridor.

The corridor was
empty. There was no sign of Yang Lai.

He
looked
back into the room. There, on the floor, was the message card. He
went across and picked it up, then turned it in his hand, studying
it. Without Yang Lai's thumb on the release pad the surface of the
card was blank; even so, it might prove interesting to keep.