Daylight on Iron Mountain

by David Wingrove

  Tsao Ch’un turned, looking to Chao Ni Tsu.

  ‘Master Chao… When you met them, these Westerners… did you like them? Were you at ease among them? And I don’t mean our friend Amos here. His nature makes him an exception to the norm.’

  Chao Ni Tsu smiled. ‘The Hung Mao… they were okay. I always felt we could accommodate them in the world we planned. But as for the others…’

  ‘So what should I do? How ruthless ought I to be?’

  ‘As ruthless as you must,’ Amos said, interrupting. ‘Concede an inch and it will start unravelling. Deep down you know that, Tsao Ch’un. There is no other choice. You must crush all opposition, and not just in the Middle East.’

  ‘Maybe so, but what will stop the people from rebelling? For they will rebel, given time. History teaches us that much. And besides, I won’t live forever. What happens when I’m dead? Who will I find that is even one part as ruthless as I?’

  ‘Then you must create a system that works. That polices itself. You have some of the ingredients already, Tsao Ch’un, in the Seven and the Thousand Eyes. But you must take it further. If it’s stability you want, then you must crack down on change itself. Control is the key, and anything less than total control… Well, that way lies disaster.’

  ‘It is so, Tsao Ch’un,’ Chao Ni Tsu added, sitting forward. ‘It is not enough to conquer the world. We must control it. Only, if we are to do so, then we must lock all of the doors that lead back to the past. Bolt them up and brick them over.’

  Shepherd saw how Tsao Ch’un nodded at that. At his core, for all he’d done, the great man hated change. Hated the very instability he’d caused, as much as he hated drugs and their insidious effect. And insects. And the ‘disease’ as he called it of progress, which he believed was no progress at all, morally.

  ‘Flying out here,’ Amos said, ‘I saw such scenes of devastation. Such chaos and destruction. Oh, I know it will all come good. That one day, not so long from now, people will look back on these years and say “It had to be”. Only… some days, I have to admit, I fear for my soul.’

  Tsao Ch’un locked eyes with him. ‘Do you regret what we have done, Amos?’

  ‘No, old friend. How could I? It had to be done. But I would not be a man if I did not sometimes feel for those whose lives I’ve damaged.’

  ‘We have been responsible for much, neh?’ Tsao Ch’un said, not flinching at the admission. ‘But it is true what you say, dear friend. It had to be. For the world to go forward, it had to be unified. The only other option was racial suicide, “total annihilation”, as Einstein saw it. And who is to argue with such a great man?’

  ‘Not I,’ Chao said, and all three of them laughed.

  Tsao Ch’un looked down. ‘As I see it, our friends in the Middle East do not want the Western world, any more than we did. They are like us in that

  they do not like a world they can’t control. A world where the individual self has been elevated beyond the group, and where civic duty has shrivelled up and died. You’d have thought that it would have brought us together. Only… beyond those things, what do we have in common?’

  ‘Nothing…’

  Tsao Ch’un met Shepherd’s eyes and nodded. ‘They are a troublesome, problematic race of people, neh? Disorderly. Not at all like the Han. The Han know how to behave, how to fit in. Whereas they…’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘Do you remember the question I asked you years ago, Chao Ni Tsu, when we began this venture?’

  ‘I do, my Lord. How does one take the world without destroying it?’

  ‘Precisely. For we knew what was to come, you and I.’ He smiled. ‘Oh, and you too, Amos, though you chose in your own peculiar fashion to turn it all into a game. Collapse was inevitable. We saw that. Saw that as a species we might become extinct, bones in the ground, just another evolutionary dead end. Unless we acted. Unless we tore it all down and built it up again, stronger than before.’

  Tsao Ch’un paused. ‘If I doubted for a moment what we have done. If I…’

  He paused again, shaking his head. ‘No. Doubt is a luxury I cannot afford. I must be fearless, uncompromising. I would be failing my people were I not so. To be a helmsman… few men can fulfil that role. To carry such a weight upon one’s shoulders… I do not have to tell you, my friends… some days it can be intolerable…’

  He laughed; sudden, unexpected laughter. ‘They should fete me… they really should. Saviour of the human race, that’s what I am! Only I don’t delude myself. They’ll call me tyrant, megalomaniac, the world’s greatest sociopath. Only think. What if I had not done what I have done? What would the consequences have been? Dust, that’s what. It would all have turned to dust.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘So what is it to be?’

  Tsao Ch’un smiled. ‘It is done.’

  ‘Done?’

  ‘I gave the order an hour back. Before you came.’

  ‘Then why… ?’

  ‘I wanted to know you were still with me, my friend. Wanted… confirmation, I guess you’d call it.’

  ‘But the Middle East?’

  ‘Is ashes.’ He looked into the distance, as if he could see it, then glanced back at Shepherd. His voice was suddenly quiet.

  ‘They sent a team. Did you know that, Amos? Last night. Mossad it was. Six of their best men. Only what chance did they really have? Just getting through the screening process was impossible.’ He laughed. ‘Well, when did you last see a Chinese Jew?’

  They were silent a moment, then Shepherd spoke up again.

  ‘Have you considered my report?’

  Tsao Ch’un nodded. ‘I’ve looked at it. Why?’

  ‘I just thought… maybe it was time. Before they get any stronger.’

  Tsao Ch’un was emanating calm. ‘That, too, is done. I am to see the Seven next week, to discuss the matter with them. But Amos…’

  ‘Yes, brother?’

  ‘Let us not waste any more time pacifying the Americans. Let’s go for the jugular this time, neh? Let’s nail the bastards, and bugger the cost!’

  PART FOUR Black Hole Sun

  SUMMER 2067

  When the East Wind blows

  Frost ripens in the fields

  Cold penetrates the thinnest of summer silks

  More spider’s web than cloth.

  When the East Wind blows

  The sickle rusts

  Rain falls like an old man’s tears

  On hearing of an ancient lover’s death.

  When the East Wind blows

  A castle shimmers into dust

  Lives vanish with the dawn

  Like mist on water meadows.

  When the East Wind blows

  Memory burns in the ovens

  Flares bright before it blackens

  Each sweet recollection given up to ash

  When the East Wind blows.

  —Nai Liu, ‘Homage to Su Tung-p’o’, 2067

  Chapter 12

  AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DRAGON

  Two years had passed and Jiang Lei was returning home.

  It was only now, looking out across that endless, geometric whiteness, that he understood how staggeringly vast Tsao Ch’un’s city had become. Operating at the very edge of things – at the breaking crest of the great wave of resettlement – he had been too close to see it. But now that he did, he grasped how different in kind it was, how transformational the idea behind it. Compared to it, all of the cities of the past had been but mud and daub. For this was The City, and he was returning to meet its creator.

  As his craft banked to the left, Jiang saw before him the massive hexagonal gap in that otherwise unblemished surface. Down there, in the deep gloom, at the bottom of a massive well five li across and two li deep, was what remained of China’s past.

  The Forbidden City.

  For 800 years this had been the heart of China, of Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom. Tsao Ch’un had made it his capital, once he had wrested power from the Politburo, taking on the mantle of the emperors and
naming himself Son of Heaven in the ancient style.

  It was here, beneath the Dragon Throne, that Jiang Lei was to meet the great man at noon tomorrow.

  The craft descended slowly to the landing pad. From the way the banners tore at their moorings, Jiang Lei could see that a strong wind was blowing.

  Welcome back to Pei Ching, where the sky is full of yellow dust.

  They set down with a hiss and a shudder, the engines dying with a descending whine.

  On the flight, Jiang had been reading a collection of poetry from the Sung dynasty. It was not a period he knew well and the poems of Su Tung-p’o had, before now, passed him by. But after reading them he was intrigued, both by the poems and the man. Like Jiang Lei, Su Tung-p’o, under his birth name of Su Shih, had been a government official, a conservative by nature, upholding the Confucian ideals. Unlike Jiang, however, it seemed that Su Shih had spent time imprisoned and in exile for his beliefs – mainly for criticizing government policy in his poems.

  Jiang set the book down and looked across the narrow cabin. Steward Ho was sitting just across from him, staring out the window. Ho had begged to be brought along. He had been willing to pledge eternal loyalty if Jiang would but let him have a single glimpse of the ancient imperial city, and there it was, stretched out all about them, its steep tiled roofs and massive white marble stairways celebrating the grandeur and power of this most ancient of cultures.

  ‘Master…?’

  ‘Yes, Ho?’

  ‘Am I to accompany you to the rehearsals later on?’

  ‘It is certainly my intention.’

  Ho smiled.

  Much had changed since Jiang had last been here, among them this curious reversion to ancient imperial rituals. Which was why, before he was allowed to see Tsao Ch’un, he was to be tutored in court etiquette; taught how to behave and what to say in the great man’s presence.

  That troubled Jiang. Tsao Ch’un had not been like this in the old days.

  But word was that Tsao Ch’un had changed. Grown more brittle with the years. Responsibility could do that to a man, even one as great – and as unpredictable in his moods – as Tsao Ch’un.

  While Ho saw to his bags, Jiang Lei stepped out onto the landing pad.

  A small group of officials – clearly some kind of welcoming committee – waited by the entrance to the airlock, shivering in their thin silks.

  Jiang narrowed his eyes. This too was different. They could have stepped straight out of a historical drama, because no one had worn silks of this fashion for centuries. Not since the last emperor, P’u-i, had stood down.

  Raising his chin proudly, Jiang walked towards them, seeing how they fanned out and allowed him room to pass between them, their heads lowered respectfully.

  As indeed they should, Jiang thought. After all, am I not a general in Tsao Ch’un’s Eighteenth Banner Army?

  Only Jiang could not fool himself. He found this business loathsome. All this bowing and scraping. Oh, he would abase himself before Tsao Ch’un, but that was different. Whatever one thought of him, Tsao Ch’un was a great man. Was, without doubt, his Master.

  Inside, still damp from the fine, disinfecting mist, Jiang took his leave of the nameless men. He knew none of them, had been introduced to none of them. Whoever they were, they were simply there to greet each new visitor.

  Steward Ho appeared, minutes later, dripping wet and accompanied by a small, fussy man in a bright scarlet silk, the Chinese character San – three – embroidered in black on a pale cream background in a big square of silk in the middle of his chest.

  ‘Number Three’ bowed low to Jiang Lei, smiling an obsequious smile.

  ‘General Jiang… I am Ts’ao P’i. Our Master has asked me to show you to your quarters.’

  Ts’ao P’i… Jiang almost smiled at that. Ts’ao P’i, otherwise known as Emperor Wen of the Wei dynasty, had been a famous poet. Indeed, he was a better poet than a governor, if the ancient histories could be trusted.

  Jiang followed, walking alongside Ts’ao P’i. Ho trailed a little way behind, struggling to carry Jiang’s things, his head bowed so deeply that his chin almost touched his chest.

  After a while Jiang noticed it. He stopped. ‘Ho… walk straight. Lift your chin. Ts’ao P’i understands that he has your respect.’

  And with this, Jiang looked to Ts’ao P’i and gave him the barest nod of his head, as if to thank him for indulging his servant.

  But Ts’ao P’i’s expression had changed. ‘Forgive me, General,’ he began hesitantly, ‘but out of kindness I should warn you. The court has changed since you were last here, and such formalities as existed then have been greatly extended. It is… how should I put it… a matter of great sensitivity.’

  ‘Are we are talking of a man’s status, Ts’ao P’i? Of his face?’

  Ts’ao P’i nodded, his face stern now.

  ‘Precisely. Speaking for myself, it does not trouble me should your servant not show me his respect, but there are others who… well, let us say that to forget the outward signs of respect might be to tempt fate, even to win oneself enemies.’

  Jiang took this in, then bowed to the other man. ‘I thank you deeply for your advice, Ts’ao P’i.’

  He turned to Steward Ho, who had witnessed this exchange about himself with open-mouthed astonishment, and smiled. ‘I am afraid, Steward Ho, that you must be as you were.’

  ‘Master…’

  Ho’s chin went down again.

  Jiang Lei turned, looking back to his guide. ‘Lead on, Ts’ao P’i. And thank you. I’ll not forget your kindness.’

  But before the other man looked away, Jiang saw in his eyes; the calculation there behind the smile. He wondered what deeper game Ts’ao P’i was playing and who, out of all his possible friends and enemies, he reported back to.

  Court intrigues, he thought, walking on swiftly, half distracted by the beauty of the ancient architecture through which he walked. It makes such exile as I’ve suffered seem almost welcome.

  At last the officials had departed.

  Jiang sprawled out in the chair and summoned his steward.

  ‘Ho! A cup of wine! Quick now!’

  He let out a deep, heartfelt groan of anguish. Was this what it had all come down to? This ghastly pretence, this hellish puppet show?

  Jiang Lei shook his head exaggeratedly. He would do it all. Of course he would. What choice had he? But just what was the point?

  When they had said in his orders that he would be tutored in court rituals, he had thought it a small matter of which etiquettes to follow. But this…

  How to stand, what to say, who to look at and bow to, who not to look at, when to speak, when not to speak, which way to face, how often to bow, when to prostrate oneself…

  Thinking about it, Jiang Lei laughed. It was like joining a theatrical troupe. And maybe that was not so poor an analogy. Maybe he would write a poem, ostensibly about such a troupe, whereas in fact…

  ‘Master?’ Ho stood there, head bowed, holding out a silver bowl filled to the brim with Jiang’s favourite red sorghum wine.

  Jiang stood and, taking the cup from Ho, took a long sip from it. Setting it down, he looked to Ho with a mischievous grin on his face, turned and gave a bow. Then a deeper bow. Then put his hand to his mouth, as if he’d spoken when he ought not to have.

  Ho, terrified, feeling his Master must have lost his mind, grimaced and pointed to the camera.

  ‘But Master…’

  The reminder sobered Jiang.

  ‘Forgive me, Ho,’ he said, ‘only… those men. Those monkeys in silk… aiya!’

  He sat again and reached for his wine, drained it at a go, then held the empty cup out to be refilled.

  ‘Master…?’

  Jiang shook the cup. ‘Quick, Ho! More wine!’

  But Ho shook his head. ‘No, Master. You cannot…’

  Jiang sat round, staring at his steward as if he’d now lost his mind. ‘Cannot?’

  ‘No, Master. You have
visitors. They have been waiting this past hour…’

  Jiang Lei stood, surprised. Visitors?

  ‘Very aristocratic-looking gentlemen,’ Ho went on. ‘Real ch’un tzu.’

  Jiang frowned. Aristocratic? He didn’t know anyone aristocratic.Not these days.

  ‘You wish me to show them in, Master?’

  ‘Have you no names for these… these ch’un tzu?’

  Ho looked puzzled at that. ‘Names, Master? They seemed to know you very well, so I thought… One has too little hair, the other…’

  ‘… too much.’ Jiang Lei laughed. Now he knew whom Ho was talking about. ‘Send them in, Steward Ho. And bring more wine. I have not seen my good friends these past fifteen years and more!’

  Ho grinned then did as he was bid. Less than a minute later, two men stepped into the room. One was small and completely bald, the other tall, with a great lion’s mane of hair that ended halfway down his back. Both were Han, and both looked decidedly aristocratic with their colourful silks and long fingernails.

  Jiang rushed towards them, delighted to see them after all this time.

  ‘Pan Tsung-yen! Hsü Jung! How wonderful to see you!’

  Jiang embraced one and then the other. By the look of them, they were every bit as glad to see him.

  He bade them sit, then had Steward Ho serve wine. Only then did he ask what he was burning to know.

  ‘How is Ching Su? I thought, perhaps…’

  ‘Ching Su is dead, Jiang Lei,’ Hsü Jung said in a low, mournful voice. ‘He died ten years ago. He was exiled…’

  ‘Was he?’ Jiang said, but he was still suffering from the shock of that awful news. Once the four of them had been inseparable. They had sat their exams together and, afterwards, joined Tsao Ch’un’s ‘Brigade’ together. They had shown their poetry to one another, drunk wine on endless moonlit evenings, and sung – tunelessly in Pan Tsung-yen’s case, drunkenly in theirs – a thousand romantic songs.