An Inch of Ashes (CHUNG KUO SERIES)

by David Wingrove

  He shook his head slowly. ‘Where to start, eh? What to say first?’ He looked at her, his eyes grown sad. ‘Oh, she was like you, Jelka. So very much like you.’ He let out a long breath, then leaned forward, folding his big broad hands together on the tabletop. ‘Let me start with the first moment I ever saw her, there on the rocks at the harbour’s mouth...’

  She sat there, listening, her mouth open, her breathing shallow. The ch’a in her mug grew cold and still she listened, as if gazing through a door into the past.

  Through into another world. Into a time before her time. A place at once familiar and utterly alien. That pre-existent world a child can only ever imagine, never be part of. And yet how she ached to see the things he spoke of; how she longed to go back and see what he had seen.

  She could almost see it. Her mother, turning slowly in the firelight, dancing to a song that was in her head alone, up on her toes, her arms extended, dreaming... Or, later, her mother, heavily pregnant with herself, standing in the doorway of the kitchen where she now sat, smiling...

  She turned and looked but there was nothing; nothing but the empty doorway. She closed her eyes and listened, but again there was nothing; nothing but the storm outside. She could not see it – not as it really was. Even with her eyes closed she couldn’t see it.

  Ghosts. The past was filled with ghosts. Images from the dark side of vision.

  Hours passed. The storm died. And then a faint dawn light showed at the sea’s far edge, beyond the harbour and the hills. She watched it grow, feeling tired now, ready for sleep.

  Her uncle stood, gently touching her shoulder. ‘Bed, my child,’ he said softly. ‘Your father will be here tomorrow.’

  The deep-level telescope at Heilbronn was more than one hundred and fifty years old. The big satellite observatories at the edge of the Solar System had made it almost an irrelevancy, yet it was still popular with many astronomers, perhaps because the idea of going deep into the earth to see the stars held some curious, paradoxical appeal.

  ‘It feels strange,’ Kim said, turning to face Hammond as they rode the lift down into the earth. ‘Like going back.’

  Hammond nodded. ‘But not uncomfortable, I hope?’

  ‘No...’ Kim looked away thoughtfully, then smiled. ‘Just odd, that’s all. Like being lowered down a well.’

  The lift slowed then juddered to a halt. The safety doors hissed open and they stepped out, two suited guards greeting them.

  ‘In there,’ said one of the guards, pointing to their right. They went in. It was a decontamination room. Ten minutes later they emerged, their skin tingling, the special clothing clinging uncomfortably to them. An official greeted them and led them along a narrow, brightly lit corridor and into the complex of labs and viewing-rooms.

  There were four telescopes in Heilbronn’s shaft, but only one of them could be used at any one time, a vast roundabout, set into the rock, holding the four huge lenses. One of the research scientists – a young man in his early twenties – acted as their guide, showing them around, talking excitedly of the most recent discoveries. Few of them were made at Heilbronn now – the edge observatories were the pioneers of new research – but Heilbronn did good work nonetheless, checking and amassing detail, verifying what the edge observatories hadn’t time to process.

  Hammond listened politely, amused by the young man’s enthusiasm, but for Kim it was different: he shared that sense of excitement. For him the young man’s words were alive, vivid with burgeoning life. Listening, Kim found he wanted to know much more than he already did. Wanted to grasp it whole.

  Finally, their guide took them into one of the hemispherical viewing-rooms, settled them into chairs and demonstrated how they could use the enquiry facility.

  His explanation over, he bowed, leaving them to it.

  Kim looked to Hammond.

  ‘No, Kim. You’re the one Prince Yuan arranged this for.’

  Kim smiled and leaned forward, drawing the control panel into his lap, then dimmed the lights.

  It was like being out in the open, floating high above the world, the night sky all about them. But that was only the beginning. Computer graphics transformed the viewing-room into an armchair spaceship. From where they sat they could travel anywhere they liked among the stars: to distant galaxies far across the universe, or to nearer, better-charted stars, circling them, moving among their planetary systems. Here distance was of little consequence and the relativistic laws of physics held no sway. In an instant you had crossed the heavens. It was exhilarating to see the stars rush by at such incredible speeds, flickering in the corners of the eyes like agitated dust particles. For a while they rushed here and there, laughing, enjoying the giddy vistas of the room. Then they came back to Earth – to a night sky that ought to have been familiar to them, but wasn’t.

  ‘There are losses, living as we do.’

  Hammond grunted his assent. ‘It makes me feel... insignificant. I mean, just look at it. It’s so big. There’s so much power there. So many worlds. And all so old. So unimaginably old.’ He laughed awkwardly, his hand falling back to the arm of the chair. ‘It makes me feel so small.’

  ‘Why? They’re only stars.’

  ‘Only stars!’ Hammond laughed, amused by the understatement. ‘How can you say that?’

  Kim turned in his chair, his face, his tiny figure indistinct in the darkness, only the curved, wet surfaces of his eyes lit by reflected starlight. ‘It’s only matter, reacting in predictable ways. Physical things, bound on all sides by things physical. But look at you, Joel Hammond. You’re a man. Homo sapiens. A beast that thinks, that has feelings.’

  ‘Four pails of water and a bag of salts.’

  Kim shook his head. ‘No. We’re more than mere chemicals. Even the meanest of us.’

  Hammond looked down. ‘I don’t know, Kim. I don’t really see it like that. I’ve never been able to see myself that way.’

  ‘But we have to. We’re more than earth, Joel. More than mere clay to be moulded.’

  There was a hint of bitterness in the last that made the man look up and meet the boy’s eyes.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the memory of something.’

  It was strange. They had not really spoken before now. Oh, there had been the poems – the transfer of matters scientific – but nothing personal. They were like two machines, passing information one to the other. But nothing real.

  Hammond hesitated, sensing the boy’s reluctance, then spoke, watching to see how his words were taken. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  Kim looked back at him. ‘This feels like home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Down deep. Under the earth.’

  ‘Ah... the Clay.’

  Kim smiled sadly. ‘You should have seen me, Joel. Eight years back. Such a tiny, skulking thing I was. And thin. So thin. Like something dead.’ He sighed, tilting his head back, remembering. ‘A bony little thing with wide, staring eyes. That’s how T’ai Cho first saw me.’

  He laughed; a tighter, smaller sound than before. More like surprise than laughter. ‘I wonder what it was he saw in me. Why he didn’t just gas me and dispose of me. I was just...’ he shrugged, and his eyes came up to meet the older man’s; dark eyes, filled with sudden, half-remembered pain ‘... just a growth. A clod of earth. A scrap of the darkness from beneath.’

  Hammond was breathing shallowly, intent on every word.

  ‘Twice I was lucky. If it wasn’t for T’ai Cho I’d be dead. He saved me. When I reverted he made a bargain for me. Because of what he saw in me. Five years I spent in Socialization. Doing penance. Being retrained, restructured. Taming me.’

  Hammond looked up, suddenly understanding. So that was why Kim’s life was forfeit. ‘What did you do?’

  Kim looked away. The question went unanswered. Then, after a while, he began to speak again. Slower this time. Hammond’s question had been too close, perhaps, for what Kim said next seemed less personal, as if he were
talking of a stranger, describing the days in Socialization, the humiliations and degradations, the death of friends who hadn’t made it. And other, darker things. How had he survived all that? How emerged as he was?

  Kim turned away, leaning across to activate the viewer. Slowly the hemisphere of stars revolved about them.

  ‘We were talking about stars, Joel. About vastness and significance.’ He stood, then walked to the edge, placing his hand against the upward curving wall. ‘They seem so isolated – tiny islands in the great ocean of space, separated by billions of li of nothingness. Bright points of heat in all that endless cold. But look at them again.’ He drew a line between two stars, and then another two. ‘See how they’re all connected. Each one linked to a billion billion others. A vast web of light, weaving the galaxy together.’

  He came across, standing close to Hammond, looking down at him. ‘That’s what’s significant, Joel. Not the vastness or the power of it all, but how it’s connected.’ He smiled and reached down to take Hammond’s hand, clasping it firmly. ‘Apart or a-part. There are always two ways of seeing it.’

  ‘A web,’ said Hammond, frowning, then shook his head and laughed, squeezing the hand that held his own. ‘A bloody web. You’re mad, you know that, Kim Ward? Mad!’

  ‘Not mad, Joel. Touched, perhaps, but not mad.’

  It was her last day on the island. She had slept late and had woken hungry. Now she walked the wooded slopes beside the house, Erkki shadowing her. It was a cool, fresh day. The storm had washed the air clean and the sky, glimpsed through the tall, black bars of pine, was a perfect, unblemished blue.

  At the edge of the clearing she turned and looked back at the young guard. He was walking along distractedly, looking down at the ground, his gun hung loosely about his left shoulder.

  ‘Did you hear it?’

  He looked up, smiling. ‘Hear what?’

  ‘The storm...’

  He shrugged. ‘I must have slept through it.’

  She studied him a moment, then turned back. In front of her the fire had burned a great circle amidst the stand of trees. Charred branches lay all about her. No more than a pace from where she stood, the ground was black. She looked up. The trees on all sides of the blackened circle had been seared by the heat of the blaze, their branches withered. She looked down, then stepped forward, into the circle.

  The dark layer of incinerated wood cracked and powdered beneath her tread. She took a second step, feeling the darkness give slightly beneath her weight, then stopped, looking about her. If she closed her eyes she could still see it, the flames leaping up into the darkness, their brightness searing the night sky, steaming, hissing where they met the violent downpour.

  Now there was only ash. Ash and the fire-blackened stumps of seven trees, forming a staggered H in the centre of the circle. She went across to the nearest and touched it with the toe of her boot. It crumbled and fell away, leaving nothing.

  She turned full circle, looking about her, then shivered, awed by the stillness, the desolation of the place. She had seen the violent flash and roar of the gods’ touch; now she stood in its imprint, reminded of her smallness by the destructive power of the storm. And yet for the briefest moment last night she had seemed part of it, her thinking self lost, consumed by the elemental anger raging all about her.

  She crouched and reached out, putting her fingers to the dark, soft-crumbling surface, then lifted one to her mouth, tasting the darkness. It was sour, unappetizing. Wiping her fingers against her knee, she stood and moved further in, until she stood at the very centre of the circle.

  ‘Kuan Yin! What happened here?’

  She turned and looked back at Erkki. He stood at the circle’s edge, his eyes wide with wonder.

  ‘It was the lightning,’ she said, but saw at once that he didn’t understand. Of course, she thought; you slept through it, didn’t you? In that you’re like my father – like all of them – you carry the City within you, wherever you are.

  She turned back, looking down. This evening, after supper, her father was coming to take her back. She sighed. It would be nice to see him again, and yet the thought of returning to the City was suddenly anathema. She looked about her, desperate to see it all one last time, to hold it fast in memory, in case...

  She shuddered, then finished the thought. In case she never came again.

  The nightmares no longer haunted her, the three gaunt men no longer came to the edge of the lake, their mocking eyes staring across at her. Even so, the threat remained. She was the Marshal’s daughter, and while he remained important to the T’ang so her life would be in danger.

  She understood it now: saw it vividly, as if her mind had been washed as clear as the sky. They had not been after her father. They had been after her. For her death would have left her father drained, emotionally incapacitated, a dead man filling the uniform of the Marshal.

  She saw it clearly now. Saw how her death would have brought about her father’s fall. And if the keystone fell, how could the arch itself hold up?

  She knew her father’s weaknesses; knew that he had four of the five qualities Sun Tzu had considered dangerous in the character of a general: his courage too often bordered on recklessness; he was impulsive and quick-tempered and would, if provoked, charge in without considering the difficulties; his sense of honour was delicate and left him open to false accusations; and, lastly, he was deeply compassionate. Against these she set his strengths, chief of which was the loyalty he engendered in those who served under him. As Sun Tzu had said in the tenth book of the Art Of War, ‘Because such a general regards his men as infants they will march with him into the deepest valleys. He treats them as his own beloved sons and they will die with him.’

  She nodded to herself. Yes, and weaknesses sometimes were strengths and strengths weaknesses. Take Hans Ebert, for instance. A fine, brave soldier he might be, handsome too and well mannered, yet her father’s eyes saw a different man from the one she had seen that day in the Ebert Mansion. To her father he was the son he had never had and was thus born to be his daughter’s life companion. But that was to forget her own existence – to leave out her own feelings on the matter.

  She turned, chilled by the thought, then looked across at the young guard. ‘Come, Erkki. Let’s get back. I ought to pack.’

  She looked about her as she walked, seeing it all as if it had already passed. Yet she would never wholly lose it now. She had found herself here – had discovered in this harsh and forbidding landscape the reflection of her inner self, her true self, and once awakened to it she was sure she would never feel the same. The scent of pine and earth, the salt tang of the sea; these things were part of her now, inseparable, like the voices of the island. Before she had been but a shadow of her self, entranced by the dream that was the City, unaware of her inner emptiness. But now she was awake; herself – fully herself.

  The Mess orderly set the glasses down on the table between the two men, then, with a smart bow, left the room.

  ‘Kan pei!’ said Tolonen, lifting his glass to his future son-in-law.

  ‘Kan pei!’ Ebert answered, raising his glass. Then, looking about him, he smiled. ‘This is nice, sir. Very nice.’

  ‘Yes...’ Tolonen laughed. ‘A Marshal’s privileges. But one day you’ll be Marshal, Hans, and this room will be yours.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Ebert answered, setting his glass down. ‘But not for many years, I hope.’

  Tolonen smiled. He liked young Ebert hugely, and it was reassuring to know that Jelka would be in such good hands when she was married. Just now, however, there was work to be done – other matters to preoccupy them.

  ‘I’ve come from the T’ang,’ he said, sitting back. ‘I had to deliver the interim report on the Executive killings.’ He paused and sniffed, his features re-forming themselves into a frown. ‘Li Shai Tung wasn’t pleased, Hans. He felt we ought to have got somewhere by now, and perhaps he’s right. But the very fact that we’ve drawn so many blanks convinces me
that DeVore’s behind this somehow.’

  ‘Do you think so, sir?’ Ebert looked away, as if considering the matter, then looked back, meeting Tolonen’s eyes. ‘But surely we’d have found something to connect him. It would be rather too clever of him, don’t you think, not to have left some trace somewhere? So many people were involved, after all.’

  ‘Hmm...’ Tolonen sipped at his drink – a fruit cordial – then set his glass down again. ‘Maybe. But there’s another matter, Hans. Something I didn’t know about until the T’ang told me of it today. It seems that more was taken in the raid on Helmstadt than the garrison expenses. Jewellery for the main part, but also several special items. They were in the safe the Ping Tiao took. Three items of T’ang pottery. Items worth the gods know how much on the collectors’ market.’

  Tolonen reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out three thick squares of black ice. They were ‘flats’, hologramic stills.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing them across.

  Ebert held them up, looking at them a moment, then placed one on the table beside his drink and pressed the indented strip that ran along one edge. At once a hologram formed in the air above the ‘flat’.

  He studied each in turn, then handed them back to the Marshal. ‘They’re beautiful. And as you say, they’d fetch astronomical prices, even on the black market.’ He hesitated, looking down. ‘I realize it’s awkward but... might I ask what they were doing in the safe at Helmstadt?’

  Tolonen tucked the flats away and picked up his glass again. ‘I have the T’ang’s permission to discuss this with you, Hans. But remember, this is mouth-to-ear stuff.’

  Ebert nodded.

  ‘Good. Well, it seems Li Shai Tung was planning an experiment. The statuettes were to be sold to finance that experiment.’

  ‘An experiment?’

  ‘Yes. There have been talks – highly secretive talks, you understand – between the T’ang’s private staff and several of the Net’s biggest Triad bosses.’

  Ebert sat back, surprised. ‘I see. But what for?’