The Middle Kingdom (82 page)

He scrolled the
screen down, then laughed again. "And here's the spider!"

But then he
leaned closer and, adjusting the controls, magnified the image until
the spider's features filled the screen: the familiar, dark-eyed
features of a child.

T'ai Cho
frowned, then switched the machine off. He stood there a moment, deep
in thought, then nodded to himself. Yes. He would watch him. Watch
him very carefully indeed.

KIM FLOATED on
his back in the water, his eyes closed. He had been thinking of Chung
Kuo, and of the people he had met in the Above. What had any of them
in common? Birth, maybe. That and death, and perhaps a mild
'curiosity about the state between. He smiled. Yes, and that was it.
That was what astonished him most of all. Their lack of curiosity. He
had thought it would be different up here, in the Above. He had
believed that simple distance from the Clay would bring
enlightenment. But it was not so. There was a difference in them,
yes, but that difference was mainly veneer. Scratch away that surface
and they proved themselves every bit as dull, every bit as
incuriously wedded to their senses, as the most pitiful creature of
the Clay.

The smile had
faded from his lips. Kim shuddered, then turned his body slowly in
the water. The Clay. What was the Clay but a state of mind? An
attitude?

That was the
trouble with them all. They followed an idea only to a certain
stage—pursued its thread only so far into the labyrinth—and
then let it fall slack, as if satisfied there was no more to see, no
more left to discover. Take the Aristotle file, for instance. They
had been happy to see it only as a game he had devised to test his
intellect and stretch himself. They had not looked beyond that. That
single explanation was enough for them. But had they pushed it
further—had they dealt with it, even hypothetically, as real,
even for one moment—they would have seen at once where he had
got it from. Even now they might wake to it. But he thought not.
Their lack of curiosity would keep it from them.

It was strange,
in a way, because they had explained it to him in the first place;
had told him how intricately connected the finances and thus the
computer systems of Chung Kuo were. It was they who had explained
about "discrete systems" cut off from all the rest; islands
of tight-packed information, walled round with defenses. And it was
they who had told him that the Project's system was "discrete."

He had
discovered none of that himself. All he had discovered was that the
Project's files wese not alone within the walled island of their
computer system. There was another file inside the system—an
old, long-forgotten file that had been there a century or more,
dormant, undisturbed, until Kim had found it. And not just any file.
This was a library. No. More than that. It was a world. A world too
rich to have been invented, too consistent—even in its
errors—to have been anything less than real.

So why had the
Seven hidden it? What reason could they have had for burying the
past?

Freed from the
burden of his secret, he had spent the last two nights considering
just this. He had looked at it from every side, trying to see what
purpose they had had in mind. And finally he had understood. It was
to put an end to change. They had lied to end the Western dream of
progress. To bring about a timeless age where nothing changed. A
golden age.

But that left
him with the problem of himself, for what was he if not Change
personified? What if not a bacillus of that selfsame virus they had
striven so long and hard to eradicate?

Kim opened his
eyes and rolled over onto his front, then kicked out for the deeper
water.

He saw it
clearly now. What he was made him dangerous to them—made him a
threat to the Seven and their ways. Yet he was also valuable. He
knew, despite their efforts to hide it from him, what SimFic had paid
for his contract. But why had they paid so vast a sum? What did they
think to use him for?

Change. He was
almost certain of it. But how could he be sure?

Push deeper in,
he told himself. Be curious. Is SimFic just a faceless force? A
mechanism for making profits? Or does it have a personality?

And if so,
whose?

The name came
instantly. He had heard it often enough of late in the news. Soren
Berdichev.

Yes, but who is
he? A businessman. Yes. A Dispersionist. That too. But beyond that,
what? What kind of man is he? Where does he come from? What does he
want? And—most important of all—what does he want of me?

Kim ducked his
head beneath the surface then came up again, shaking the water from
his hair, the tiredness washed suddenly from his mind. He felt a
familiar excitement in his blood and laughed. Yes, that was it! That
would be his new task. To find out all he could about the man.

And when he'd
found it out?

He drifted,
letting the thread fall slack. Best not anticipate so far. Best find
out what he could and then decide.

SOREN BERDICHEV
sat in the shadowed silence of his study, the two files laid out on
the desk in front of him. The
Wu
had just gone, though the
sweet, sickly scent of his perfume lingered in the air. The message
of the yarrow stalks was written on the slip of paper Berdichev had
screwed into a ball and thrown to the far side of the room. Yet he
could see it clearly even so.

The light has
sunk into the earth:

The image of
darkening of the light.

Thus does the
superior man live with the great mass:

He veils his
light, yet still he shines.

He banged the
desk angrily. This threw all of his deliberations out. He had decided
on his course of action and called upon the
Wu
merely to
confirm what he had planned. But the
Wu
had contradicted him.
And now he must decide again.

He could hear
the
Wu's
scratchy voice even now as the old man looked up from
the stalks; could remember how his watery eyes had widened; how his
wispy gray beard had stuck out stiffly from his chin.

"K'un,
the Earth, in the above,
Li,
the Fire, down below. It is
Ming I, the darkening of the light."

It had meant the
boy. He was certain of it. The fire from the earth.
He veils Jus
light,
yet still he shines.

"Is this a
warning?" he had asked, surprising the old man, for he had never
before interrupted him in all the years he had been casting the
I
Ching
for him.

"A warning,
Shih
Berdichev?" The
Wu
had laughed. "The
Book of Changes
does not warn. Yoif mistake its purpose. Yet
the hexagram portends harm . . . injury."

Berdichev had
nodded and fallen silent. But he had known it for what it was. A
warning. The signs were too strong to ignore. So now he must decide
again.

He laid his
glasses on the desk and picked up the newest of the files containing
the genotype reports he had had done.

He spread the
two charts on the desk before him, beside each other, then touched
the pad, underlighting the desk's surface.

There was no
doubt about it. Even without the expert's report on the matter, it
could be seen at once. The similarities were striking. He traced the
mirrored symbols on the spiraling trees of the two double helices and
nodded to himself.

"So you
are
Edmund Wyatt's son, Kim Ward. I wonder what Edmund would have
made of that?"

He laughed
sadly, realizing for the first time how much he missed his dead
friend's quiet strengths, then sat back, rubbing his eyes.

The genotyping
and the Aristotle file, they were each reason enough in themselves to
have Kim terminated. The first meant he was the son of the traitor,
Wyatt, the second breached the special Edict which concealed Chung
Kuo's true past. Both made Kim's life forfeit under the law, and that
made the boy a threat to him. And so, despite the cost—despite
the huge potential profit to be made from him—he had decided to
play safe and terminate the boy, at the same time erasing all trace
of those who had prepared the genotype report for him. But then the
Wu had come.

The sun in the
earth. Yes, it was the boy. There was no doubt about it. And, as he
had that first time he had used the services of the Wu, he felt the
reading could not be ignored. He had to act on it.

A small shiver
ran through him, remembering that first time, almost nine years ago
now. He had been skeptical and the Wu had angered him by laughing at
his doubt. But only moments later the Wu had shocked him into silence
with his reading.

The wind drives
over the water:

The image of
dispersion.

Thus the kings
of old sacrificed to the Lord And built temples.

It had been the
evening before his dinner with Edmund Wyatt and Pietr Lehmann—a
meeting at which he was to decide whether or not he should join their
new Dispersion faction. And there it was. The fifty-ninth
hexagram—/iuan. He remembered how he had listened, absorbed by
the Wu's explanation, convinced by his talk of high goals and the
coming of spring after the hardness of winter. It was too close to
what they had been talking of to be simple chance or coincidence.
Why, even the title of the ancient book seemed suddenly apt,
serendipitous—
The Book of Changes.
He had laughed and
bowed and paid the
Wu
handsomely before contacting Edmund at
once to tell him yes.

And so it had
begun, all those years ago. Nor could he ever think of it without
seeing in his mind the movement of the wind upon the water, the
budding of leaves upon the branches. So how could he argue with it
now—now that he had come to this new beginning?

He switched off
the underlighting, slipped the charts back into the folder, then
picked up his glasses and stood, folding them and placing them in the
pocket of his
pau.

The sun in the
earth. . . . Yes, he would leave the boy for now. But in the morning
he would contact his man in the Midlevels and have him bomb the
laboratory where they had prepared the genotypes.

SUPERVISOR NUNG
sat himself behind his desk and cleared a pile of documents onto the
floor before addressing Kim.

"Chan Shui
is not here today," he explained, giving Kim the briefest
glance. "His father has been ill and the boy is taking some time
off to look after him. In the circumstances I have asked Tung Lian to
look after you until Chan Shui is back with us."

The office was
far more untidy than Kim remembered it. Crates, paper, even clothes,
were heaped against one wall, while a pile of boxes had been left in
front of the bank of screens.

"Excuse me,
Supervisor Nung, but who is Tung Lian?"

Nung looked up
again distractedly, then nodded. "He'll be here any moment."
Then, realizing his tone had been a little too sharp, he smiled at
Kim before looking down again.

A moment later
there was a knock and a young Han entered. He was a slightly built,
slope-shouldered boy a good two or three years younger than Chan
Shui. Seeing Kim he looked down shyly, avoiding his eyes, then moved
closer to the desk.

"Ah, Tung
Lian. You know what to do."

Tung Lian gave a
jerky bow. Then, making a gesture for Kim to follow him, he turned
away.

Walking back
through the Casting Shop, Kim looked about him, feeling a slight
sense of unease, but there was no sign of Janko. Good. Perhaps he
would be lucky. But even if Janko did turn up, he'd be all right. He
would simply avoid the older boy: use guile and quickness to keep out
of his way.

The machine was
much the same as the one he had operated with Chan Shui, and seeing
that the boy did not wish to talk to him, Kim simply got on with
things.

He was sitting
in the refectory at the midmorning break when he heard a familiar
voice call out to him from the far side of the big room. It was
Janko.

He finished his
ctia
and set the bowl down, then calmly got up from the table.

Janko was
standing in the doorway to the Casting Shop, a group of younger boys
gathered about him. He was showing them something, but seeing Kim
approach, he wrapped it quickly in a cloth.

Kim had glimpsed
something small and white in Janko's hand. Now, as Janko faced him,
his pocked face split by an ugly smile, he realized what it had been.
A tooth. Janko had lost a tooth in his fight with Chan Shui
yesterday.

He smiled and
saw Janko's face darken.

"What are
you smiling at, rat's ass?"

He almost
laughed. He had heard the words in his head a moment before Janko had
uttered them. Predictable, Kim thought; that's what you are, Janko.
Even so, he remembered what Chan Shui had said about not pushing him
too far.

"I'm sorry,
Janko. I was just so pleased to see you."

That was not the
right thing, either, but it had come unbidden, as if in challenge,
from his darker self.

Janko sneered.
"We'll see how pleased you are. . . ." But as he moved
forward, Kim ducked under and round him and was through the doorway
before he could turn. "Come back here!" Janko bellowed, but
the bell was sounding and the boys were already filing out to get
back to their machines.

For the rest of
the morning Janko kept up a constant stream of foul-mouthed taunts
and insults, his voice carrying above the hum of the machines to
where Kim was at work. But Kim blocked it all out, looking inward,
setting himself the task of connecting two of the sections of his
star-web—something he had never attempted before. The problems
were of a new order of difficulty and absorbed him totally, but
finally he did it and, delighted, turned, smiling, to find himself
facing Janko again.