Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series

2 Daylight on Iron Mountain

3 The Middle Kingdom

4 Ice and Fire

5 The Art of War

6 An Inch of Ashes

7 The Broken Wheel

8 The White Mountain

9 Monsters of the Deep

10 The Stone Within

11 Upon a Wheel of Fire

12 Beneath the Tree of Heaven

13 Song of the Bronze Statue

14 White Moon, Red Dragon

15 China on the Rhine

16 Days of Bitter Strength

17 The Father of Lies

18 Blood and Iron

19 King of Infinite Space

20 The Marriage of the Living Dark

Ice and Fire
was first published as
The Middle Kingdom
in Great Britain in 1989 by New English Library.

This revised and updated edition published in special edition hardback, trade paperback,
and E-book in Great Britain in 2012 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © David Wingrove, 1989, 2012

The moral right of David Wingrove to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of
1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed
in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 728 3
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 729 0
E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 799 2

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 35 – The Dead Rabbit

Chapter 36 – A Conversation in the Firelight

Chapter 37 – Augustus

PART NINE Summer 2201 – Ice and Fire

Chapter 38 – The Saddle

Chapter 39 – Casting a Spell Out of Ice

Chapter 40 – The Scent of Plum Blossom

Chapter 41 – The Darkening of the Light

Chapter 42 – Ice and Fire

EPILOGUE
Spring 2203 – Mosaics

A Bridge Over Nothingness

A Gift of Stones

In Times to Come…

Character listing

Glossary of Mandarin terms

Author’s note and acknowledgments

Credits

For all the past and present members of
Amon Düül II, but especially for John
Weinzierl, Chris Karrer and Henriette
Krotenschwanz – for the music!

INTRODUCTION

C
hung Kuo
. The words mean ‘Middle Kingdom’ and, since 221
BC
, when the First Emperor, Ch’in
Shih Huang-ti, unified the seven Warring States, it is what the ‘black-haired people’,
the Han, or Chinese, have called their great country. The Middle Kingdom – for them
it was
the whole world; a world bounded by great mountain chains to the north and west, by
the sea to east and south. Beyond was only desert and barbarism. So it was for two
thousand years and through
sixteen great dynasties. Chung Kuo
was
the Middle Kingdom, the very centre of the human world, and its Emperor the ‘Son
of Heaven’, the ‘One Man’. But in the
eighteenth century that world was invaded by the young and aggressive Western powers
with their superior weaponry and their unshakeable belief in Progress. It was, to
the surprise of the Han, an
unequal contest and China’s myth of supreme strength and self-sufficiency was shattered.
By the early twentieth century China –
Chung Kuo
– was the sick old man of the
East: ‘a carefully preserved mummy in a hermetically sealed coffin’, as Karl Marx
called it. But from the disastrous ravages of that century grew a giant of a nation,
capable of
competing with the West and with its own Eastern rivals, Japan and Korea, from a position
of incomparable strength. The twenty-first century, ‘the Pacific century’ as it was
known even
before it began, saw China become once more a world unto itself, but this time its
only boundary was space.

May 2012

PART 8 THE DOMAIN

SPRING 2201

Chapter 35

THE DEAD RABBIT

M
eg Shepherd, Hal Shepherd’s daughter, was standing in the tall grass of the Domain,
watching her brother. It was early evening and on
the far side of the water, dense shadow lay beneath the thick cluster of trees. At
this end the creek narrowed to a shallow, densely weeded spike of water. To her left,
in the triangle of wild,
uncultivated land between the meadow and the vast, overtowering whiteness of the Wall,
the ground grew soft and marshy, veined with streams and pocked with tiny pools.

Ben was crouched at the water’s edge, intensely still, staring at something in the
tall, thick rushes to his right. For a moment there was only the stillness and the
boy watching, the soft
soughing of the wind in the trees across the water and the faint, lulling call of
pigeons in the wood. Then, with an abrupt crash and spray and a strong beating of
wings, the bird broke from cover.
Ben’s head went up, following the bird’s steep ascent, his twelve-year-old eyes wide
with watching.

‘Look at it, Meg! Isn’t it a beauty?’

‘Yes,’ she answered softly, but all the while she was watching him, seeing how his
eyes cast a line to the climbing bird. Saw how he grasped every last detail of it
and held that
knowledge tight in his memory. His body was tensed, following the bird’s flight, and
his eyes burned. She shivered. It was astonishing to watch, that intensity of his.
The world seemed to
take form in his eyes: to grow bright and rich and real. As if, before he saw it,
it was but a pale shadow of itself; a mere blueprint, uncreated until he saw and re-imagined
it. So it was for her.
She could see nothing unless he had seen it first.

The bird was gone. He turned and looked at her.

‘Did you see it?’

‘Yes,’ she said, meaning something else. ‘It was beautiful.’

He turned his head, looking away from her, towards the village. When he looked back
his green eyes were dark, thoughtful.

‘Things are different this year, Meg. Don’t you feel it? Small things. Like the bird.’

She shrugged then pushed her way through the grass, out into the open. Standing there
beside him at the water’s edge, she looked down at his reflection, next to her own
in the still, clear
water.

‘Why do you think that is? Why
should
it change?’ He looked around him, his brow furrowing. ‘I mean, this place has always
been the same. Always. Unchanged. Unchanging
but for the seasons. But now…’ He looked at her. ‘What is it, Meg? What’s happening?’

She looked up from his reflection and met his eyes.

‘Does it worry you?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘And I don’t know why. And I want
to know why.’

She smiled at him and reached out to touch his arm. It was so typical of him, wanting
to understand what he thought and why he thought it. Never happy unless he was worrying
at the problem of
himself.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said reassuringly. ‘They’re only small things, Ben. They don’t
mean anything. Really they don’t.’

But she saw he wasn’t convinced. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Everything has meaning. It’s all
signs, don’t you see? It all
signifies.
And the small things…
that’s where it’s to be seen first. Like the bird. It was beautiful, yes, but it was
also…’ He looked away and she said the word for him, anticipating him without quite
knowing how, as she so often did.

‘Frightening.’

‘Yes.’

She followed his gaze a moment, seeing how his eyes climbed the Wall to its summit
far overhead, then looked back at him again. He was more than a head taller than her,
dark-haired and
straight-boned. She felt a small warmth of pride kindle in her. So elegant he was.
So handsome. Did he know how much she loved him? He knew so much, but did he know
that? Maybe. But if he did he
gave no sign.

‘It was only a bird, Ben. Why should it frighten you?’

He almost smiled. ‘It wasn’t the bird, Meg. At least, not the outer thing, the cage
of bone and flesh, sinew and feather. It was what was within the bird – the force
that gave
it such power, such vitality.’ He looked down at his left hand, then turned it over,
studying its back. ‘That’s where its beauty lies. Not in the outward show but in the
shaping
force. That… well, it’s mystery. Pure mystery. And that frightens me, Meg. The thought
of all that dark, unharnessed power simply existing in the world. I look at it and
I want to know
where it comes from. I want to know why it’s there at all. Why it isn’t mere mechanics
and complexity of detail. Why all that fiery excess?’

‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’

And now he did smile, pleased by her recognition; by her quoting back at him the poem
he had read to her only two days past. How rare that was, him smiling. And only for
her. Never for mother or
father. Or for those others that came so rarely to this place.

‘I guess there’s that too,’ he said. ‘That same force brings us on, from bud to flower
to… well, to something browned and withered. And thus to clay.’ He
shrugged. ‘It’s all connected, isn’t it? It uses us and then discards us. As if we’re
here only to flesh out its game – to give it form. Doesn’t that frighten
you, Meg?’

She shook her head. ‘Why should it? There’s plenty of time, Ben. A whole world of
time before we have to think of that.’

He studied her intently for a moment, then bowed his head slightly. ‘Perhaps.’

He began to walk, treading a careful path through the marshy ground, following a rising
vein of rock that jutted from the sodden turf, until he came beneath the shadow of
the Wall.

There, facing them not thirty paces away, was the Seal. Part of the Wall, it was the
same dull pearl in colour, a great circle five times Ben’s height, its base less than
an arm’s
length above the surface of the ground, its outer edge a thick ridge of steel-tough
plastic.

For a moment he stood there, staring at it, oblivious of all else.

Meg, watching him, understood. It was a gateway. A closed door. And beyond it was
the darkness of the Clay. Primal, unadulterated Clay. Beyond it the contiguous earth
was sun-deprived and
barren. Here Heaven, there Hell. And only a Wall, a Seal, between the two.

She climbed up beside him on the ridge of rock. ‘What’s that?’ She pointed outward
to their left. There was something there. Something small and pale and grey against
the
green. Something that hadn’t been there before.

He looked, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Let’s see, eh?’

At once he scrambled down. Meg hesitated, then followed. The ground was soft and spongy
and in only a few paces her canvas shoes were soaked. Ben had gone ahead of her, his
feet sinking,
squelching as he ran. Then she saw him crouch down and examine something.

She came up behind him and looked over his shoulder. It was a rabbit. A dead rabbit.

‘What killed it?’ she asked.

He prised the carcass up from out of the wet, clinging turf and turned it over, examining
it.

‘I don’t know. There’s no sign of external injury. But it’s not been here long.’ He
looked up at her. ‘Here, Meg, give me your jumper.’

She pulled her jumper off and handed it to him, then watched as he spread it out and
laid the dead animal on it.

‘What are you doing?’

Ben drew his hunting knife from its sheath, then cut the rabbit from chin to rump.
For a moment he watched the blood well from the cut, staining the mottled grey fur,
then laid the knife down
and eased the flesh apart.

Meg watched, fascinated and horrified, as he probed inside the animal, the blood dark
on his fingers. Then he lifted something small and wet; a pale, tiny sac attached
by tubes and tendons to
the rest. It glistened in his fingers as he bent to study it. Then he looked up at
her.

‘It’s as I thought. Look. The liver’s covered in dark blotches.’

She shook her head, not understanding, watching him bundle the rabbit in her jumper,
then lift it and sling it over his shoulder.

‘It’s diseased,’ he said, staring across at the Seal, then turned to look at her.
‘It’s part of the change in things. Don’t you see that now? There’s a
sickness here in the Domain.’

Hal Shepherd stood at the turn of the road, his hands resting lightly on the low stone
wall, looking down at the row of cottages and the bay beyond. To his right the hill
rose
up above where he stood, then fell again to meet the next turn of the river. It was
dotted with old stone-built houses and cottages. At its summit was a small church.

It was almost three months since he had been home, but now, standing there, it seemed
that he had never been away. This much at least remains unchanged, he thought; each
hill, each tree, each
house familiar to him from youth.
I see it as my grandfather saw it, and his grandfather before him.
In three hundred years only the trees had changed, growing older, dying, replaced
by
others of their own ancient seed.
Like us
, he thought.
We too are trees
.

He walked on. The road dipped steeply here then curved back wickedly upon itself.
Where he had been standing had been a turning point for cars once upon a time – when
there were still cars
in the world – but this had never been a place for modern things. Even back then,
when the world was connected differently, it had been seven miles by road to the nearest
town of any size,
and that easier to get to by the river. Time had stood still here even then. During
the Madness, when the old world had heaved itself apart, this place had been a point
of stillness at the centre
of things. Now it was timeless.

There were walls, no more than a pace or two either side of him. Whitewashed walls,
in heavy shadow now, their low-silled windows dark; only one cottage in the row lit
up. He smiled, seeing it
ahead of him; imagining Beth there in the low-beamed living room, the fire lit and
the curtains drawn; seeing her, as he had so often seen her, go to the back door and
call the children in from the
meadow.

Home. It meant so many things, but only one to him. He would have withered inside
long ago had there not been this to return to.

He stood outside the low, broad door, listening, then put his hand out flat against
the wood and gently pushed. There was no need for locks here. No need for fear. The
door swung back slowly,
silently, and he went in.

Beth stood there in the doorway, framed by the soft light of the living room behind
her and to her left. She smiled.

‘I knew you were coming. I dreamed of you last night.’

He laughed and went to her, then held her tightly against him, kissing her tenderly.
‘Your dreams…’ He gazed into her eyes, loving the beauty, the measureless depth of
them.
‘They never fail you, do they?’

She smiled and kissed his nose. ‘Never.’

He shivered and reached up to stroke her cheek then trace the contours of her lips
with a fingertip. His whole body was alive with desire for her. ‘Where’s Ben and Meg?’

Her body was pressed hard against his own, her hands at his neck. Her eyes were dark
with longing. ‘They’re outside. Down by the creek. But they’ll not be back. Not just
yet.’

She kissed him again, a harder, longer kiss this time.

He let his left hand rest gently on her waist a moment, then rucked up her skirt.
Beneath it she was wearing nothing. He sought her mouth again, the kiss more urgent.
His fingers traced the warm
smoothness of her thighs and belly, then found the hot wetness at the core of her.
She moaned and closed her eyes, her whole body trembling at his touch, then she reached
down and freed him,
grasping his swollen penis, her fingers softly tracing its length, once, then again,
almost making him come, before drawing him up into her.

He groaned, then, grasping her by the buttocks, lifted her, backing her against the
wall, thrusting up into her once, twice, a third time before he came explosively,
feeling her shudder
violently against him.

For a while, then, they were silent, watching each other. Then Beth smiled again.
‘Welcome home, my love.’

The pine surface of the kitchen table was freshly scrubbed, the knives newly sharpened.
Ben looked about him, then, leaving the bundled rabbit on the wide stone step outside,
busied himself. He spread an oilcloth on the table then laid the big cutting board
on top of it. He laid the knives out beside the board and then, because it was growing
dark, brought the lamp from
beside the old ceramic butler sink, trimming the wick before he lit it.

Meg stood in the garden doorway, her small figure silhouetted against the redness
of the bay. She watched him roll back his sleeves, then fill a bowl with water and
set it beside the knives.

‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked. ‘You know it’s diseased. Why not just burn it?’

Ben barely glanced at her. He turned and went down the four steps that led into the
long, dark, low-ceilinged dining room, returning a moment later with a book from the
shelves. An old thing,
leather-bound and cumbersome.