The Middle Kingdom (71 page)

"Good."
T'ai Cho took the papers from the inner pocket of his er-satin jacket
and handed them to the Supervisor. "You must understand from the
outset that while Kim is not to be treated differently from any other
boy, he is also not to be treated badly. The boy's safety is of
paramount importance. As you will see, Director Andersen has written
a note under his own hand to this effect."

He saw how
mention of the Director made Nung dip his head, and thought once more
how fortunate he was to work in the Center, where there were no such
men. Yet it was the way of the Above, and Kim would have
to
learn
it quickly. Here status counted more than mere intelligence.

The qualms he
had had in Andersen's office returned momentarily. Kim was too young
to begin this. Too vulnerable. Then he shrugged inwardly, knowing it
was out of his hands.
Mei fa
tsit, he thought. It's fate. At
least there was no Matyas here. Kim would be safe, if nothing else.

When T'ai Cho
had gone, the Supervisor led Kim halfway down the room to one of the
smallest and squattest of the machines and left him in the care of a
pleasant-looking young Han named Chan Shui.

Kim watched the
partition door slam shut, then turned to Chan Shui, his eyebrows
forming a question.

Chan Shui
laughed softly. "That's Nung's way, Kim. You'll learn it quickly
enough. He does as little as he can. As long as we meet our
production schedules he's happy. He spends most of his day in his
room, watching the screens. Not that I blame him, really. It must be
dreadful to know you've reached your level."

"His
level?"

Chan Shui's eyes
widened with surprise. Then he laughed again. "I'm sorry, Kim. I
forgot. You're from the Clay, aren't you?"

Kim nodded,
suddenly wary.

Chan Shui saw
this and quickly reassured him. "Don't get me wrong, Kim. What
you were—where you came from—that doesn't worry me like
it does some of them around here." He looked about him
pointedly, and Kim realized that their conversation was being
listened to by the boys at the nearby machines. "No. It's what
you are that really counts. And what you could be. At least, that's
what my father always says. And he should know. He's climbed the
levels."

Kim shivered.
Fathers. . . . Then he gave a little smile and reached out to touch
one of the long, thin arms of the machine.

"Careful!"
Chan Shui warned. "Always make sure the machine's switched off
before you touch it. They've cutouts built into their circuits, but
they're not absolutely safe. You can get a nasty bum from them."

"How does
it work?"

Chan Shui
studied Kim a moment. "How old are you, Kim?"

Kim looked back
at him. "Nine. So they say."

Chan Shui looked
down. He himself was eighteen, the youn-

gest of the
other boys was sixteen. Kim looked five, maybe six at most. But that
was how they were. He had seen one or two of them before, passing
through. But this was the first time he had been allocated one to
"nursemaid."

The dull, hollow
tones of the work bell filled the Shop. At once the boys stopped
talking and made their way to their machines. There was a low hum as
a nearby machine was switched on, then a growing murmur as others
added to the background noise.

"It's
rather pleasant," said Kim, turning back to Chan Shui. "I
thought it would be noisier than this."

The young Han
shook his head, then leaned forward and switched their own machine
on. "They say they can make these things perfectly silent, but
they found that it increased the number of accidents people had with
them. If it hums a little you can't forget it's on, can you?"

Kim smiled,
pleased by the practical logic of that. "There's a lesson in
that, don't you think? Not to make things too perfect."

Chan Shui
shrugged, then began his explanation.

The controls
were simple and Kim mastered them at once. Then Chan Shui took a
slender vial from the rack beside the control panel.

"What's
that?"

Chan Shui
hesitated, then handed it to him.

"Be careful
with it. It's ice. Or at least, the constituents of ice. It slots in
there." He pointed to a tiny hole low down on the control panel.
"That's what these things do. They spin webs of ice."

Kim laughed,
delighted by the image. Then he looked down at the transparent vial,
studying it, turning it in his fingers. Inside was a clear liquid
with a faint blue coloring. He handed it back, then watched closely
as Chan Shui took what he called a "template"—a thin
card stamped with a recognition code in English and Mandarin—and
slotted it into the panel. The template was the basic computer
program that gave the machine its instructions.

"What do we
do, then?" Kim asked, his expression as much as to say, Is
that
aR there is to it?
It was clear he had expected to control the
grid manually.

Chan Shui
smiled. "We watch. And we make sure nothing goes wrong."

"And does
it?"

"Not
often."

Kim frowned, not
understanding. There were something like a hundred boys tending the
machines in the Casting Shop, when a dozen, maybe less, would have
sufficed. It made no sense.

"Is all of
the Above so wasteful?"

Chan Shui
glanced at him. "Wasteful? What do you mean?"

Kim stared at
him a moment longer, then saw he didn't understand. This, too, was
how things were. Then he looked around and saw that many of the boys
working on the smaller machines wore headwraps, while those on the
central grids chatted, only a casual eye on their machines.

"Don't you
get bored?"

Chan Shui
shrugged. "It's a job. I don't plan to be here forever."

Kim watched as
the machine began to move, the arms to extend, forming a cradle in
the air. Then, with a sudden hiss of air, it began.

It was
beautiful. One moment there was nothing in the space between the
arms, the next something shimmered into existence. He shivered, then
clapped his hands together in delight.

"Clever,
eh?" said Chan Shui, smiling at him, then lifting the
wide-bodied chair from the grid with one hand. Its perfectly
transparent shape glimmered wetly in the overhead light. "Here,"
he said, handing it to Kim.

Like most of the
furniture in the Above, it weighed nothing. Or almost nothing. Yet it
felt solid, unbreakable.

Kim handed the
chair back, then looked at the spiderish machine with new respect.
Jets of air from the segmented arms had directed the fine, liquid
threads of ice as they shot out from the base of the machine, but the
air had only defined the shape.

He looked at
Chan Shui, surprised that he didn't understand—that he had so
readily accepted their explanation for why the machines hummed. They
did not hum to stop their operators forgetting they were switched on;
the vibration of the machine had a function. It set up standing
waves—like the tone of a bell or a plucked string, but perfect,
unadulterated. The uncongealed ice rode those waves, forming a skin,
like the surface of a soap bubble, but a million times stronger
because it was formed of thousands of tiny corrugations—the
meniscae formed by those standing waves.

Kim saw the
beauty of it at once. Saw how East and West had come together here.
The Han had known about standing waves since the fifth century B.C.:
had understood and utilized the laws of resonance. He had seen an
example of one of their "spouting bowls" which, when its
handles were rubbed, had formed a perfect standing wave—a
shimmering, perfect hollow cone of water that rose a full half
ch'i
above the bowl's bronze rim. The machine, however—its
cybernetics, its programing, even its basic engineering—were
products of Western science. The Han had abandoned those paths
millennia before the West had found and followed them.

Kim looked
around; watching as forms shimmered into life in the air on every
side. Tables, cupboards, benches, and chairs. It was like magic. Boys
moved between the machines, gathering up the objects and stacking
them on the slow-moving collection trays which moved along the
gangways, hung on cables from the overhead tracks. At the far end,
beyond the door where Kim had entered, was the paint shop. There the
furniture was finished— the permapaint bonded to the ice—before
it was packed for dispatch.

At ten they took
a break. The refectory was off to their right, with a cloakroom
leading off from it. There were toilets there and showers. Chan Shui
showed Kim around, then took him back to one of the tables and
brought him ch'a and a soypork roll.

"I see
they’ve sent us a dwarf this time!"

There was a loud
guffaw of laughter. Kim turned, surprised, and found himself looking
up into the face of a beefy, thickset youth with cropped brown hair
and a flat nose. A Hung Moo, his pale, unhealthy skin heavily pitted.
He stared down at Kim belligerently, the mean stupidity of his
expression balanced by the malevolence in his eyes.

Chan Shui,
beside Kim, leaned forward nonchalantly, unimpressed by the
newcomer's demeanor.

"Get lost,
Janko. Go and play your addle-brained games on someone else and leave
us alone."

Janko sniffed
disdainfully. He turned to the group of boys who had gathered behind
him and smiled, then turned back, looking at Kim again, ignoring Chan
Shui.

"What's
your name, rat's ass?"

Chan Shui
touched Kim's arm. "Ignore him, Kim. He'll only trouble you if
you let him." He looked up at the other boy.
"Se h nei
jen,
eh, Janko?"
Stern in
appearance, weak inside.
It was a traditional Han rebuttal to a bully.

Kim looked down,
trying not to smile. But Janko leaned forward threateningly. "None
of your chink shit, Chan. You think you're fucking clever, don't you?
Well, you'll get yours one day, I promise."

Chan Shui
laughed and pointed to the camera over the counter. "Best be
careful, Janko. Uncle Nung might be watching. And you'd be in deep
shit then, wouldn't you?"

Janko glared at
him, infuriated, then looked down at Kim. "Fucking little rat's
ass!"

There was a
ripple of laughter from behind him, then Janko was gone.

Kim watched the
youth slope away, then turned back to Chan Shui. "Is he always
like that?"

"Most of
the time." Chan Shui sipped his ch'a, thoughtful a moment, then
he looked across at Kim again and smiled. "But don't let it get
to you. I'll see he doesn't worry you."

BERDICHEV SAT
back in Director Andersen's chair and surveyed the room. "Things
are well, I hope?"

"Very well,
Excellency," Andersen answered with a bow, knowing that
Berdichev was referring to the boy, and that he had no interest
whatsoever in his own well-being.

"Good. Can
I see the boy?"

Andersen kept
his head lowered. "I am afraid not,
Shih
Berdichev. Not
at the moment, anyway. He began socialization this morning. However,
he will be back by one bell, if you'd care to wait."

Berdichev was
silent a moment, clearly put out by this development. "Don't you
feel that might be slightly premature, Director?" He looked
across and met Andersen's eyes challengingly.

Andersen
swallowed. He had decided to say nothing of the incident with the boy
Matyas. It would only worry Berdichev unduly. "Kim is a special
case, as you know. He requires different handling. Normally we
wouldn't dream of sending a boy out so young, but we felt there would
be too much of an imbalance were we to let his intellectual
development outstrip his social development too greatly."

He waited
tensely. After a while Berdichev nodded. "I see. And youVe taken
special precautions to see he'll be properly looked after?"

Andersen bowed.
"I have seen to matters personally,
Shih
Berdichev. Kim
is in the hands of one of my most trusted men,

Supervisor Nung.
He has my personal instructions to take good care of the boy."

"Good. Now
tell me, is there anything I should know?" Andersen stared back
at Berdichev, wondering for a moment if it was possible he might know
something. Then he relaxed.

"There is
one thing, Excellency. Something you might find very interesting."

Berdichev lifted
his chin slightly. "Something to do with the boy, I hope."

Andersen nodded
hastily. "Yes. Of course. It's something he produced in his free
time. A file. Or rather, a whole series of files."

Berdichev's
slight movement forward revealed his interest.

"What kind
of file?"

Andersen smiled
and turned. On cue his secretary appeared and handed him the folder.
He had added the subfiles since T'ai Cho had brought the matter to
his attention, and the stack of paper was now almost twice the size
it had been. He turned back to Berdichev, then crossed the room and
deposited the folder on the desk in front of him before withdrawing
with a bow.

"The
Aristotle file," Berdichev read aloud, lifting the first few
sheets from the stack. "Being the true history of western
science." He laughed. "Says who?"

Andersen echoed
his laughter. "It is amusing, I agree. But fascinating too. His
ability to fuse ideas and extrapolate. The sheer breadth of his
vision—"

Berdichev
silenced him with a curt gesture of his hand, then turned the page,
reading. After a moment he looked up. "Would you bring me some
ch'a,
Director?"

Andersen was
about to turn and instruct his secretary, when Berdichev interrupted
him. "I'd prefer it if you did it yourself, Director. It would
give me a few moments to digest this material."

Andersen bowed
deeply. "Whatever you say, Excellency."

Berdichev waited
until the man had gone, then sat back, removing his glasses and
wiping them on the old-fashioned cotton handkerchief he kept for that
purpose in the pocket of his satin jacket. Then he picked up the
sheet he had been reading and looked at it again. There was no doubt
about it. This was it. The real thing. What he had been unearthing
fragments of for the last fifteen or twenty years. Here it
was—complete!