Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 30

Again he s.h.i.+vered, not from cold, as Kuei Jen had first thought but from something else. Mark's eyes were staring now, as if he could physically see something there in the air before him.

"I've never met anyone like her. She was so surprising... so funny, and ... so beautiful."

"She?"

Egan turned his head and looked directly at her. "Helen. Her name is Helen. She ..."

"She doesn't exist Mark. She's a fiction"

"No. She exists. Somewhere She has to. He couldn't possibly have invented her." Again Kuei Jen looked to his half-brother, his concern growing. Then, standing up, he turned and stepped down, removing the tape from the slot "What are you doing?" Egan asked, his eyes suspicious.

"I'm going to destroy it"

"No!" He stood, making a grab for it but Han Ch'in interceded, holding his arms. "Kuei Jen is right Mark. It must be destroyed. Look at the effect ifs had on you. And the others, too. Think, Mark. Think!"

But Egan was trembling as he watched Kuei Jen smash the tape against the side of the sh.e.l.l again and again. His eyes showed real pain."No," he moaned. "No-oh-oh!"

Kuei Jen threw the broken tape aside, then faced his husband once more, gesturing to Han Ch'in to release his arms. Egan staggered, then fell to his knees, holding his head in his hands.

"Aiya! You don't understand ..."

"Oh, I understand right enough," Kuei Jen said, looking over his husband's head at his half-brother. "Shepherd may have made this, but this has the mark of DeVore all over it If s a trap, Mark A silken web. And if s got most of Boston's elite strung up in it But if we act quickly we can do something." Egan glanced up, something like sanity returning to his eyes. 'Tell me what to do."

"Do? You must ban the tape, thaf s what you must do. And you must confiscate every copy you can find and burn them. And then you must find out where they've been coming in from and plug that gap."

"And then?"

"Then you have to try to forget what you've just experienced."

But that, Kuei Jen knew, was going to be the hardest part of all.

Chalker came smartly to attention in the doorway to the Throne Room, bowing his head low.

"Master."

"Ah, there you are, Colonel. How goes the search?" Chalker raised his head, his eyes taking in the extraordinary sight of Egan, sat upon his throne, thick ropes bound tight about his chest and arms. To the left of the throne, just below the steps, was a wire brazier, smoke curling up from the smouldering coals.

"Master?"

"Ifs okay, Colonel. This is for my own good."

Chalker looked to Li Kuei Jen, a query in his eyes, but Egan's wife stayed silent 'Tm sorry, I..."

'The tapes, Colonel. Have you found any more tapes?"

"Hundreds, Master. But..."

"Bring them," Egan commanded, gesturing towards the smoking brazier. "Place them there, beside the brazier."

Chalker hesitated, then turned and signalled to two of his men who stood outside in the long corridor.

"Quickly now!"

He turned back, standing aside as his men wheeled in a cart piled high with copies of Shepherd's tape.

"It was as you said," Chalker said, watching his men set the cart beside the brazier. "Nearly every Mansion had a copy."

Egan's eyes followed the cart, a strange light in them now. "Are they all... the same?"

"It seems so, Master. We've not checked them all, of course, but..."

"Then maybe I should ..."

"No!" Li Kuei Jen said, stepping across and standing between his husband and the cart "You have ordered these destroyed, remember?" "Yes," he said, a strange wheedling tone in his voice now. "But it wouldn't hurt to check, just in case."

Chalker watched the exchange, astonished. What in the G.o.ds' names was going on? "Burn them!" Li Kuei Jen said, turning to face the two men who stood to attention by the cart "Do it! Quickly now!"

"No..." Egan said, groaning, his body straining against his bonds as he watched the soldiers throw the first of the tapes into the fire. "Please, don't... Please ..."

Li Kuei Jen turned back. "We must, my love. For your own sake. And for the sake of City America."

Chalker took a step towards his king. "Master?"

But Egan was not even aware he was there. Egan was staring wide-eyed at the flames that now leaped from the burning pile of tapes, such pain and longing in his face - such loss - that Chalker shuddered to see it Egan was sleeping now, heavily-sedated. Stepping from his room, Kuei Jen looked to his half-brother and grimaced."Have you ever seen the like?" Han Ch'in frowned. "Once, back in Sichuan, when my stepfather, the Warlord, took me to one of his clubs. There were addicts there. I tell you, Kuei Jen, they were like beady-eyed, soulless machines. But that..." He shuddered. "What could have been on that tape to do that to him?" "I do not know, and I do not want to know." Han Ch'in fell silent, then. "Did he sign the Edict?"

"Yes."

'Then maybe there's a chance."

"You think so? You think the threat of death will stop someone who's already experienced the tape? You saw what it did to him after only a single viewing. Why, he almost tore himself out of his bonds trying to save those tapes!"

"I saw," Han Ch'in said, his eyes troubled.

"And if I know DeVore, Boston won't be the only City to have been seeded with those things. We can only pray that Chalker and his men will root them out..." "Before the damage is done?" Han Ch'in shook his head. "If you ask me, the damage has already been done. While we slept" Kuei Jen slumped into a chair. "I should not have let him sample it" "You could not have known."

"No. But I ought to have suspected it We have tasters taste our food to make sure it is not poisoned."

Han Ch'in crouched, facing his half-brother. "Do not blame yourself, Kuei Jen. You were not to know. And when you did, you acted swiftly and decisively. No more could have been asked of you."

But Han Ch'in could see that Kuei Jen was unconvinced.

"So what now?" Han Ch'in asked quietly, when the silence had dragged on. Li Kuei Jen looked up and sighed. "I don't know. But let us hope they find our father, neh, and soon. Let us pray to Heaven that he, at least, is safe."

WAKING.

Locking the door behind him, Chalker quickly crossed the room, setting the tape down on the edge of the machine.

It had not been hard to trace the company who had delivered the tapes. EC - Elite Couriers - had their offices in the Hartford Enclave, near Bradley s.p.a.ceport. But on arriving at their offices, he knew at once that he'd come too late. The fire crew said it was an accident - an electrical short - but he knew better. All the delivery records had been destroyed, and the computer back-ups. As he'd picked over the smouldering debris he had felt more and more certain of it This had been a professional job. A covering of tracks. Now he'd never know who'd smuggled the tapes in, or how.

But he had found this one final copy, among the half-burned bits and pieces in one of the bins. A return, perhaps, or a misdirect. Its plain, brown-paper cover had been ripped and charred and the address label was missing, but the tape itself was untouched. He'd felt a slight twinge of guilt as he'd slipped it into his tunic pocket, but he told himself it was for the good of all. At least, he hoped it was.

It was almost four hours now since he had witnessed those extraordinary scenes in the Throne Room; four hours in which he'd brooded on the matter, his initial feeling of frustration at not being trusted by his Masters growing until it had become a full-blown anger. He had thought he'd done enough to earn that trust; to have made himself much more than a mere "fixer" - more than the man who tidied up their messes after them - but it seemed not No, they had not even given him the courtesy of an explanation; he had simply been told to collect up the tapes and burn them, like a common servant. But he wasn't a common servant Nor would he allow himself to be treated as such.

Not by the likes of Egan and his half-man wife, anyway! I need to know, he told himself, as he shrugged off his uniform and climbed into the sh.e.l.l. It is my duty to know.

And when he knew?Then he could effectively combat this, whatever it was. It was the first rule of combat, after all: know thine enemy. As the lid hissed into place, Chalker lay still, letting the wires attach themselves to his flesh. Closing his eyes, he surrendered to the embrace of the machine.

I need to know.

That evening they bathed Li Yuan and anointed him, then led him to the tower and bid him climb. There, at the very top of that great spire, the deep-shadowed bowl of Nineveh below him, he sat cross-legged upon the platform and waited for the dark, the faintly glowing bowl beside him, the great ocean of the night surrounding him.

And as the sun set, he remembered what Tuan Ti Fo had said: There is a duality to everything, Li Yuan. You have known it all your life, for it is there in the teachings of the Too, but you have never really felt it. Until now. Now you will understand, and see. And when you have seen, you will never stop seeing.

It was true. He had known of that duality all his life; had read of it and paid lip service to it Li and Ch'i it was - the outward form and the inner energy. As the great sage, Chu Hsi had said, three thousand years before, "Throughout the universe there is no ch'i without It, nor ti without ch'i." Yet he had never included himself in that great universal equation, as if somehow, merely by existing, he was outside of it all, his self-awareness something special, something different and apart from the rest. But all things were a part. Yes, even a man's consciousness was divided, split between the darkness of sensuality and the searing light of intellect This too was old knowledge. Yet each individual man forgot Time and again he needed to be reminded - to be immersed both in himself and in what was outside himself. To look in both directions and be made to face both ways. For vision was not a singular thing. One needed both one's eyes to see.

WAKING.

As darkness fell, so he lifted the bowl and drank deeply, feeling the drug that was not a drug course down his throat the scentless, tasteless liquid changing him, doubling him, placing him both within and outside of himself, contiguous, each atom aligned and fused, a two-in-one.

Letting the bowl fall from his hands he sat back, resting his head against the top of the spire, and stared up into the star-filled void. He hadn't long to wait There was a p.r.i.c.kling sensation in his spine and at the base of his neck That p.r.i.c.kling grew, until his whole body felt numbed and swollen, and then he felt a strange rus.h.i.+ng sensation and the stars seemed to leap down at him and spear him - a thousand million points of light piercing him, so that where, a moment before, there had been nothing but the endless darkness of the void, suddenly there was nothing but light - piercing, s.h.i.+ning light Burning him. Filling him. And as he encompa.s.sed it all within the fragile bowl of his skull, so his mouth opened and laughter spilled from his lips. The joyous laughter of understanding.

So there you are, Li Yuan.

The body lay on the bed where the servants had laid it, the skin so pale it seemed like wax. Looking across at it from the doorway, Levitch could not help wondering what his Master had been feeling in those last few moments before he'd died, for he had never seen a smiling corpse before - never seen such joy on the face of a dead man. And that erection!

Chalker's men had come an hour back to confiscate the tape, but it had been too late to save Harding.

Six times he'd visited the sh.e.l.l. Six times! And each time more feverishly, as if he could not live unless he were back there, inside that awful, suffocating box.

It had killed him. Levitch was as sure of that as he could be. Harding had been a fit old b.a.s.t.a.r.d and had no history of heart trouble, so the seizure was totally unexpected.

Unless that too had been part of the programme. The idea hadn't occurred to him immediately. He'd been too shocked to find his Master dead in the sh.e.l.l with that grin on his face. But the more he thought about it, the more it troubled him.

He had seen Harding use the sh.e.l.l before. The old boy had at least two dozen tapes, Shepherd's The Familiar among them, but he had never acted the way he had last night Like someone driven. Someone who had totally lost control Levitch shook his head then turned away, heading back to his room. The surgeon's report was on his desk, along with the death certificate. "Natural causes," it read.

Natural causes, my a.r.s.e.

Sitting down behind the desk, Levitch pushed the surgeon's papers aside, then reached across to take the house journal from the tray. He knew already what he would write for this evening's entry: "Master found dead." There was no need for any further details. No, nor time to write them, really. The old man's death had created an administrative headache that would eat up his every waking hour. Even so, he felt he ought to mention his suspicions to someone. Chalker, perhaps.

Opening the big, leather-bound book, Levitch reached across, took the pen from the inkstand and began to write, even as the dawn's light began to filter through the blinds.

Tuan Ti Fo was waiting for Li Yuan when he came down, standing in the sunlight at the spire's base, his white hair glistening. Greeting Li Yuan, he smiled and handed him a peach.

Li Yuan stared at the dew-beaded fruit a moment, astonished by how different it appeared, how differently he saw it, then looked back at the old man, realising at that moment that he was standing with one of the Immortals. The sage's smile was filled with gentle amus.e.m.e.nt "You see now."

"I see," Li Yuan answered. And it was true Before now he had seen only the shadow form of the old man, but now Tuan WAKING.

no longer lacked substance. He was there before Li Yuan, rooted to this reality like a tree.

And yet there was still a part of him that was elsewhere, "Why is that?" he asked.

"Soon," the old man answered, his eyes letting Li Yuan know that he would have his answer. "The time is almost upon us."

He understood. Something was happening. Something... so vast, so all-encompa.s.sing, that it would transform everything, just as he had been transformed.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing but what you yourself want You have experienced both the loss of self and the mirroring of the self within the cosmos. These two are integral and yet apart, both inside and outside of the great unthinking One." Li Yuan was quiet a moment, then he nodded. "I think I understand. You want me to go back?"

Tuan Ti Fo nodded. "There will come a time when what you now know will be of use to you. Until that time, keep safe, Li Yuan. And remember what you learned here. We are dual creatures, possessed of two directions within ourselves. Those directions should not be at war with each other. That was never our Creator's purpose. They are there to be expressed and enjoyed - yes, and celebrated!" Li Yuan stared at the old man a moment, then, smiling his thanks, he turned and began to walk away.

It was time to go back. Back to the human world.

There was a great flash, and buildings falling, and bodies burning like matches, gone in an instant in the great wind.

And the air like molten gla.s.s.