The Middle Kingdom (3 page)

Lehmann laughed
softly, almost sadly, and reached out to touch his friend's arm. "I
know. ..."

Wyatt let his
head tilt back again. He was drunk. They were all drunk, or they
wouldn't be speaking like this. It was a kind of treason. The sort of
thing a man whispered, or kept to himself. Yet it had to be said.
Now. Tonight. Before they broke this intimacy and went their own
directions once again.

He leaned
forward, his right hand resting on the table, the fist clenched
tightly. "And sometimes I feel stifled. Boxed in. There's an
ache in me. Something unfulfilled. A
need.
And when I look up
at the stars I get angry. I think of the waste, the stupidity of it.
Trying to keep it all bottled up.
What
do they think we are?
Machines?" He laughed; a painful laugh, surprised by it all.
"Can't they
see
what they're doing to us? Do you think
they're blind to it?"

There was a
murmur, of sympathy and agreement.

"They can
see," said Berdichev matter-of-factly, stubbing out his cigar,
his glasses reflecting the distant image of the stars.

Wyatt looked at
him. "Maybe. But sometimes I wonder. You see, it seems to me
there's a whole dimension missing. From my life. From yours, Soren,
and yours, Pietn» From
everyone's
life. Perhaps the very
thing that makes us fully human." He leaned forward dangerously
on his chair. "There's no place for growth anymore—no more
white spaces on the map."

Lehmann answered
him dryly. "Quite the contrary, Edmund. There's nothing but
white."

There was
laughter; then, for a short time, silence. The ceiling of the great
dome moved imperceptibly, turning about the illusory axis of the
north star.

It had been a
good night. They had just returned from the Clay, the primitive,
unlit region beneath the City's floor. Eight days they had been
together in that ancient netherworld of rotting brick andsavage
half-men. Days that had marked each of them in his own way. Returning
they had felt good, but now their mood had changed. When Wyatt next
spoke there was real bitterness in his voice.

"They’re
killing us all. Slowly. Irreversibly. From the center out. Their
stasis is a kind of poison. It hollows the bones."

Lehmann shifted
uneasily in his chair. Wyatt turned, then saw and fell silent. The
Han waiter came out from the shadows close by them, holding a tray
out before him.

"More
ch'a,
sirs?"

Berdichev turned
sharply, his face dark with anger. "Have you been listening?"

"Sir?"
The Han's face froze into a rictus of politeness, but Wyatt,
watching, saw the fear in his eyes.

Berdichev
climbed to his feet and faced him, leaning over him threateningly,
almost a head taller than the Han.

"You heard
me clearly, old hundred names. You were listening to our
conversation, weren't you?"

The waiter
lowered his head, stung by the bitterness in Berdichev's voice. "No,
honored sir. I heard nothing." His face remained as before, but
now his hands trembled, making the bowls rattle on the tray.

Wyatt stood and
took his friend's arm gently. "Soren, please, ..."

Berdichev stood
there, a moment longer, scowling at the man, his resentment like
something palpable, flowing out across the space between them, then
h| turned away, glancing briefly at Wyatt.

Wyatt looked
across at the waiter and nodded. "Fill the bowls. Then leave us.
Put it all on my bill."

The Han bowed,
his eyes flashing gratitude at Wyatt, then quickly filled the bowls.

"Fucking
chinks!" Berdichev muttered, once the Han was out of earshot. He
leaned forward and picked up his bowl. "You have to watch what
you say these days, Edmund. Even small Han have big ears."

Wyatt watched
him a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know. They're not so bad."

Berdichev
laughed scornfully. "Devious little shit-eaters they are."
He stared out across the green, pulling his silk
pau
tighter
about his neck. "I'd rather hand all my companies over to my
bitterest rival than have a single one of them in a senior management
position."

Lehmann sighed
and reached out for his bowl. "I find them useful enough. In
their own way."

"As
servants, yes. . . ." Berdichev laughed sourly, then finished
his
ch'a
and set the bowl down heavily. He looked from one to
the other of them as he spoke. "You know what they call us
behind our backs? Big noses! The cheek of it! Big noses!"

Wyatt looked to
Lehmann and both men laughed. He reached out and touched Berdichev's
nose playfully. "Well, it's true in your case, Soren, isn't it?"

Berdichev drew
his head back, then smiled, relenting. "Maybe." He sniffed
and laughed, then grew serious again. "Maybe so. But I'll be
damned if I'll have the little fuckers taking the piss out of me
while they're drawing from my pocket!"

"But isn't
that true of all men?" Wyatt insisted, feeling suddenly less
drunk. "I mean . . . it's not just the Han. Our race—the
Hung Moo—aren't most of us like that?"

"Speak for
yourself," said Lehmann, leaning back, his whole manner poised,
indifferent. "However, the Han rule this world of ours. And that
changes things. It makes even the most vulgar little Han think he's a
T'ang."

"Fucking
true!" said Berdichev, wiping at his mouth. "They're
arrogant bastards, one and all!"

Wyatt shrugged,
unconvinced, then looked from one of his friends to the other. They
were harder, stronger men than he. He recognized that. Yet there was
something flawed in each of them—some lack of sympathy that
marred their natures, fine as they were. He had noted it, down there
in the Clay: had seen how they took for granted what he had found
horrifying.

Imagination, he
thought. It has to do with imagination. With putting yourself in
someone else's place. Like the waiter, just then. Or like the woman I
met, down there, in the awful squalor of the Clay.

He shivered and
looked down at his untouched
ch'a.
He could still see her.
Could see the room where they had kept her. Mary, her name had been.
Mary.

The thought of
it chilled his blood. She was still there. There, in the room where
he had left her. And who knew which callous bastard would use her
next; would choose to beat her senseless, as she had been beaten so
often before.

He saw himself
again. Watched as he lifted her face to the light and traced the
bruise about her eye with his fingers. Gently, aware of how afraid
she was of him. He had slept with her finally, more out of pity than
from any sense of lust. Or was that fair? Wasn't curiosity part of
what he'd felt? So small she'd been, her arms so thin, her breasts
almost nonexistent. And yet pretty, strangely pretty, for all that.
Her eyes, particularly, had held some special quality — the
memory, perhaps, of something better than this she had fallen into.

He had been
wrong to leave her there. And yet, what choice had he had? That was
her place, this his. So it was fated in this world. And yet there
must be something he could do.

"What are
you thinking, Edmund?"

He looked up,
meeting Lehmann's eyes. "I was thinking about the woman."

"The
woman?" Berdichev glanced across at him, then laughed. "Which
one? There were hundreds of the scrawny things!"

"And boys.
..."

"We won't
forget the boys. ..."

He looked away,
unable to join their laughter; angry with himself for feeling as he
did. Then his anger took a sudden shape and he turned back, leaning
aciro4 the table toward them.

"Tell me,
Soren. If you could have one thing—just one single thing—what
would it be?"

Berdichev stared
across the darkened green a while, then turned and looked back at
him, his eyes hidden behind the lenses of his glasses. "No more
Han."

Lehmann laughed.
"That's quite some wish, Soren."

Wyatt turned to
him. "And you, Pietr? The truth this time. No flippancy."

Lehmann leaned
back, staring up at the dome's vast curve above them. "That
there," he said, lifting his arm slowly and pointing. "That
false image of the sky above us. I'd like to make that real. Just
that. To have an open sky above our heads. That and the sight of the
stars. Not a grand illusion, manufactured for the few, but the
reality of it—for everyone."

Berdichev looked
up solemnly, nodding. "And you, Edmund? What's the one thing
you'd have?"

Wyatt looked
across at Berdichev, then at Lehmann. "What would I want?"

He lifted his
untouched bowl and held it cupped between his hands. Then, slowly,
deliberately, he turned it upside down, letting the contents spill
out across the tabletop.

"Hey!"
said Berdichev, moving backward sharply. Both he and Lehmann stared
at Wyatt, astonished by the sudden hardness in his face, the
uncharacteristic violence of the gesture.

"Change,"
Wyatt said defiantly. "That's what I want. Change. That above
everything. Even life."

A
spring day at the edge of the world. On the edge of the world
once more the day slants. The oriole cries, as though it were its own
tears Which damp even the topmost blossoms on the tree.

—LI
SHANO-YIN,
Exile, ninth
century A. D
.

FLAMES
DANCED in a glass. Beyond, in the glow of the naked fire, a man's
face smiled tightly.

"Not long
now," he said, coming closer to the fierce, wavering light. He
had delicate Oriental features that were almost feminine; a small,
well-shaped nose and wide, dark eyes that caught and held the fire's
light. His jet-black hair was fastened in a pigtail, then coiled in a
tight bun at the back of his head. He wore white, the color of
mourning—a simple one-piece that fitted his small frame
loosely.

A warm night
wind blew across the mountainside, making the fire flare up. The
coals at its center glowed intensely. Ash and embers whirled off.
Then the wind died and the shadows settled.

"They've
taken great pains, Kao Jyan."

The second man
walked back from the darkness where he'd been standing and faced the
other across the flames, his hands open, empty. He was a much bigger
man, round shouldered and heavily muscled. His large, bony head was
freshly shaven and his whites fitted him tightly. His name was Chen
and he had the blunt, nondescript face of a thousand generations of
Han peasants.

Jyan studied his
partner momentarily. "They're powerful men," he said.
"They've invested much in us. They expect much in return."

"I
understand," Chen answered, looking down the moonlit valley
toward the City. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. "What is it?"
Jyan nan-owed his eyes. "See!" Chen pointed off to his
right. "There! Up there where the mountains almost touch the
clouds."

Jyan looked.
Thin strands of wispy cloud lay across the moorfs full circle,
silvered by its intense light. Beyond, the sky was a rich blue-black.
"So?"

Chen turned back
to him, his eyes shining in the firelight. "It's beautiful,
don't you think? How the moonlight has painted the mountaintops
white."

Jyan shivered,
then stared past the big man toward the distant peaks. "It's
ice."

"What?
Plastic, you mean?"

Jyan shook his
head. "No. Not the stuff the City's made of. Real ice. Frozen
water. Like the
ch'un tzu
put in their drinks."

Chen turned and
looked again, his
broad face wrinkling.

Then he looked
away sharply, as if the very thought disturbed him.

As it should,
thought Jyan, aware of his own discomfort. The drugs he'd been given
made all of this seem familiar—gave him false memories of such
things as cold and clouds and moonlight—yet, beneath the
surface calm of his mind, his body was still afraid.

There was a
faint movement against his cheek, a sudden ruffling of his hair. At
his feet
the
fire flared up again, fanned by the sudden gust.
Wind, thought Jyan, finding it strange even to think the word. He
bent down and lifted a log from the pile, turning it in his hand and
feeling its weight. Then he turned it on its end and stared at the
curious whorl of its grain. Strange. Everything so strange out here,
outside the City. So unpredictable. All of it so crudely thrown
together. So unexpected, for all that it seemed familiar.

Chen came and
stood by him. "How long now?" Jyan glanced at the dragon
timer inset into the back of his wrist. "Four minutes."

He watched Chen
turn and—for what seemed like the hundredth time—look
back at the City, his eyes widening, trying to take it in.

The City. It
filled the great northern plain of Europe. From where they stood, on
the foothills of the Alps, it stretched away northward a thousand
five hundred
li
to meet the chill waters of the Baltic, while
to the west the great wall of its outer edge towered over the
Atlantic for the full three-thousand-li length of its coastline, from
Cape St. Vincent in the south to Kristiansund in the rugged north. To
the south, beyond the huge mountain ranges of the Swiss Wilds, its
march continued, ringing the Mediterranean like a giant bowl of
porcelain. Only to the east had its growth been checked unnaturally,
in a jagged line that ran from Danzig in the north to Odessa in the
south. There the plantations began; a vast sea of greenness that
swept into the heart of Asia.

"It's
strange, isn't it? Being outside. It doesn't seem real."