The Middle Kingdom (47 page)

She shuddered
and looked down again, a fresh tear forming in the corner of her eye.
Li Yuan, watching her, felt his heart go out to her. She had loved
his brother deeply. Even as much as he had loved him. Perhaps that
was why he had come: to share with her both his grief and the awful
denial of that love. But now that he was here with her, he found it
impossible to say what he felt— impossible even to begin to
speak of it.

For a while she
was perfectly still, then she wiped the tear away impatiently and
stood up, coming down to him.

"Please
forgive me, brother-in-law. I should greet you properly."

Fei Yen embraced
him briefly, then moved away. At the opening to the balcony she
stopped and leaned against one of the pillars, staring out across the
pool toward the distant mountains.

Li Yuan followed
her and stood there, next to her, not knowing what to say or how to
act.

She turned and
looked at him. Though eight years separated them he was not far from
her height. Even so, she always made him feel a child beside her.
Only a child. All that he knew—all that he was—seemed
unimportant. Even he, the future Pang, was made to feel inferior in
her presence. Yes, even now, when her beauty was clouded, her eyes
filled with resentment and anger. He swallowed and looked away, but
still he felt her eyes upon him.

"So now
you
will be T'ang."

He looked back
at her, trying to gauge what she was thinking, for her words had been
colorless, a statement. But what did she feel? Bitterness? Jealousy?
Anger that no son of hers would one day be T'ang?

"Yes,"
he said simply. "One day."

Much earlier he
had stood there in his father's study, staring up at the giant image
of Europe that filled one wall—the same image that could be
seen from the viewing circle in the floating palace, 160,000
li
above Chung Kuo.

A swirl of
cloud, like a figure 3, had obscured much of the ocean to the far
left of the circle. Beneath the cloud the land was crudely shaped. To
the east vast plains of green stretched outward toward Asia. All the
rest was white; white with a central mass of gray-black and another,
smaller mass slightly to the east, making the whole thing look like
the skull of some fantastic giant beast with horns. The white was
City Europe; glacial, in the grip of a second age of ice.

From up there
the world seemed small; reduced to a diagram. All that he saw his
father owned and ruled. All things, all people there were his. And
yet his eldest son was dead, and he could do nothing. What sense did
it make?

He moved past
her, onto the balcony, then stood there at the stone balustrade,
looking down into the pale green water, watching the fish move in the
depths. But for once he felt no connection with them, no ease in
contemplating them.

"You've
taken it all very well," she said, coming up beside him. "YouVe
been a brave boy."

He looked up at
her sharply, bitterly; hurt by her- insensitivity; strangely stung by
her use of the word
bay.

"What do
you know?" he snapped, pushing away from her. "How dare you
presume that I feel less-than you? How dare you?"

He rounded on
her, almost in tears now, his grief, his un-assuaged anger, making
him want to break something; to snap and shatter something fragile.
To hurt someone as badly as he'd been hurt.

"I . . ."
She looked back at him, bewildered now, all bitter-

ness, all
jealousy, drained from her by his outburst. "Oh, Yuan. Little
Yuan. I didn't know. . . ." She came to him and held him tight
against her, stroking his hair, ignoring the pain where he gripped
her sides tightly, hurting the bruises there. "Oh, Yuan. My poor
little Yuan. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. How was I to know, my
little one? How was I to know?"

THE STAIRS led
up to a wide landing cluttered with crates. Three corridors led off.
Two were cul-de-sacs, the third led to another, much longer
stairwell. Auden went up again, his gun poked out in front of him,
the safety off, his trigger finger aching with the tension of
preparedness. Ebert was a numbing weight on his left shoulder.

Near the top of
the steps he slowed and looked about him, his eyes on the level of
the floor, his gun searching for targets. It was a vast open space,
like the floor of a warehouse, broken here and there by huge,
rectangular blockhouses. The ceiling was high overhead and
crisscrossed with tracks. Stacks of crates stood here and there and
electric trolleys were parked nearby. Otherwise the place seemed
empty.

"I don't
like it," Auden said quietly for Ebert's benefit. "All that
back there. And then nothing. We can't have got them all. And where
are our men?"

"What is
it?"

"Some kind
of loading floor. A huge big place. And there are blockhouses of some
kind. They look empty, but they might easily be defended."

Ebert swallowed
painfully. His head ached from being carried upside down and he was
beginning to feel sick. His voice was weak now. "Let's find
somewhere we can shelter. Somewhere you can set me down."

Auden hesitated.
"I'm not sure, sir. I think it's a trap."

Ebert's
weariness was momentarily tinged with irritation. "Maybe. But
weVe little choice, have we? We can't go back down. And we can't stay
here much longer."

Auden ignored
the sharpness in his captain's voice, scanning the apparent emptiness
of the loading floor once again. Noth-

ing. He was
almost certain there was nothing out there. And yet his instincts
told him otherwise. It was what he himself would have done. Hit hard,
then hit hard again and again and again. And then, when your enemy
expected the very worst, withdraw. Make them think they had won
through. Allow them to come at you without resistance. Draw them into
the heart of your defenses. And then . . .

Ebert's voice
rose, shattering the silence. "Gods, Sergeant, don't just stand
there, do something! I'm dying!"

Auden shuddered.
"All right," he said. "We'll find shelter. Somewhere
to put you down."

He breathed
deeply for a few seconds, then hauled himself up the last few steps,
expecting at any moment to be raked with heavy automatic fire or cut
in half by one of the big lasers, but there was nothing. He ran as
fast as he could, crouching, wheezing now, the weight of Ebert almost
too much for him.

He made the
space between two stacks of unmarked boxes and turned, looking back
at the stairwell. For a moment he could have sworn he saw a head,
back there where he had just come from. He took two shuddering
breaths, then put his gun down and gently eased Ebert from his
shoulder, setting him down on his side.

"We need to
get help for you, sir. You've lost a lot of blood."

Ebert had closed
his eyes. "Yes," he said painfully, his voice a whisper
now. "Go on. Be quick. I'll be all right."

Auden nodded and
reached behind him for his gun. His hand searched a moment, then
closed slowly, forming a fist. Instinct. He should have trusted to
instinct. Raising his hands he stood up and turned slowly, facing the
man with the gun who stood there only three paces away.

"That's
right, Sergeant. Keep your hands raised and don't make any sudden
movements. Now come out here, into the open."

The man backed
away as Auden came forward, keeping his gun leveled. He was a tall,
gaunt-looking Han with a long horselike face and a wide mouth. He
wore a pale green uniform with the SimFic double-helix insignia on
lapel and cap. His breast patch showed a bear snatching at a cloud of
tiny silken butterflies, signifying that he was a fifth-rank
officer—a captain. As Auden came out into the open other guards
came from behind the stacks to encircle him.

"Good,"
said the Captain. Then he signaled to some of his men. "Quick,
now! Get the other one to the infirmary. We don't want him to die,
now, do we?"

Auden's eyes
widened in surprise and he half turned, watching them go to Ebert and
lift him gently onto a stretcher. "What's happening here?"
he asked, looking back at the SimFic captain. "What are you
playing at?"

The Captain
watched his fellows carry Ebert away, then turned back to Auden and
lowered his gun. "I'm sorry, Sergeant, but we couldn't take
risks. I didn't want to lose any more men through a misunderstanding
between us." Unexpectedly, he smiled. "You're safe now. The
base has been liberated. The insurrection has been put down."

Auden laughed,
not believing what he was hearing. "Insurrection? What do you
mean?"

The Han's smile
became fixed. "Yes. Unknown to the company, the installation was
infiltrated and taken over by a terrorist organization. We only
learned of it this morning. We came as soon as we could."

"Quite a
coincidence," said Auden, sickened, realizing at once what had
happened. It was like he'd said to Ebert. They had been set up. The
whole thing had been a setup. A charade. And all to get SimFic off
the hook.

"Yes. But
fortunate, too, yes? If we had not come you would all be dead. As it
is, more than a dozen of your men have got out alive."

Auden shivered,
thinking of all the good men he'd fought beside. Dead now. Dead, and
simply to save some bastard's butt higher up the levels. "And
the terrorists?"

"All dead.
They barricaded themselves into the laboratories. We had to gas them,
I'm afraid."

"Convenient,
eh?" He glared at the Han, bitter now.

The Captain
frowned. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand you, Sergeant. This
whole business ... it was unfortunate, but it could not be helped,
eh? I lost more than thirty of my own men in the fighting."

Auden stared
back at him. Yes, he thought, loathing the slick-tongued Han who
stood before him; you lost thirty "men"—but not to
terrorists, that's for certain!

THERE WAS the
sound of raised voices in the corridor outside and the light on his
desk intercom began to flash urgently. Soren Berdichev, head of
SimFic, looked up past the five men who were seated around the desk
with him and straightened his small, round-rimmed glasses, clearing
the computer-generated figures that were displayed in duplicate on
their inner surfaces.

"What in
heaven's name . . . ?"

It was just
after eight in the morning and they were two hours into their weekly
strategy conference.

The man closest
to him on his left stood, then turned and bowed to him. "Excuse
me, sir. Shall I find out what the trouble is?"

Berdichev put
his hand over the cancel on the intercom and looked up at his Senior
Executive. He spoke coldly, sternly. "Thank you, Paul. Please
do. If it's a member of staff you will dismiss them immediately. I'll
not tolerate such behavior in these offices."

Moore bowed
again and turned to do as he was bid. But he had got barely halfway
across the room when the door crashed open.

Tolonen stood
there in the doorway, tall and gray haired, his eyes burning with
anger, his whole manner menacing. He was wearing full combat uniform,
the helmet loose about his neck, a light automatic in the holster at
his waist, as if he had come straight from action. Behind him several
members of Berdichev's staff stood with their heads bowed, shamed
that they had not been able to prevent the intrusion.

Berdichev got up
slowly, his own outrage tightly, deliberately controlled. "General
Tolonen . . . I. hope you have good reason for bursting in on me like
this?"

Tolonen ignored
the comment. He looked about the room, then came in, striding past
Moore without a glance, making straight for Berdichev. Shoving
between two of the seated men, he leaned across and brought his fist
down hard on the table.

"You know
perfectly well why I'm here, you wall lizard!"

Berdichev sat
back composedly and put his hands together. "Your manners leave
much to be desired, General. If you had had the common courtesy to
talk to my secretary I would have seen you this afternoon. But now .
. . well, you can be certain that I'll be reporting your behavior to
the House committee on Security matters. These are private offices,
General, and even you cannot enter without permission."

Angrily Tblonen
straightened up and took the warrant from his tunic pocket, then
flung it down on the desk in front of Berdichev. "Now explain
yourself! Or I'll come around and choke the bloody truth from you!"

Berdichev picked
up the small cardlike warrant and studied it a moment, then threw it
back across the table at Tblonen. "So you have a right to be
here. But legality doesn't excuse your poor manners, General. My
complaint still stands. Your behavior has been atrocious. You have
insulted me and openly threatened me before witnesses. I—"

Tblonen cut him
short. He leaned across the table and roared at him. "Hsin
fa
ts'ai!
What do you know of manners, you
hsiao
Jen'"

For the first
time Berdichev bristled. The insults had stung him; but inwardly he
felt a small satisfaction. His tactic had the General rattled. The
fact that he had slipped into Mandarin revealed just how emotionally
off balance Tolonen was.

He leaned
forward, undaunted, and met the General's eyes. "Now that you're
here, you'd best tell me what you want of me. I'm a busy man, social
upstart or not,
tittle man
or not. I have an empire to run ...
if you'll excuse the phrase."

Tolonen glared
at him a moment longer, then straightened up again. "Dismiss
these men. I need to talk to you alone."

Berdichev looked
to the nearest of his men and gave a slight nod. Slowly, reluctantly,
they began to leave. His Senior Executive, Moore, stood his ground,
however, staring concernedly at his superior. Only as he was about to
turn and leave, did Berdichev look back at him.