Daylight on Iron Mountain (28 page)

Only what did it matter? His world was crumbling about him once again, and there was nothing he could do. Yang’s bravery – his defiance – was admirable, but the truth was they were going to be crushed. Like bugs beneath some giant’s thumb.

‘Yeah. Give me a beer. A Dragon Cloud’ll be fine.’

‘You here for a hearing?’ the barman asked, turning to take one of the distinctive plastic bottles from the shelf.

‘Is there any
other
reason to be here?’

‘You might work here.’

‘Only I don’t. I don’t work anywhere any more. I’ve retired.’

The barman turned back, handed him the uncapped beer. Jake took it, smiled, then sipped.

Some other time, back in the old world, he’d have started a conversation. They’d have talked about music and events and all kinds of things. Only Jake
couldn’t play that game any more. If he had a beer or two he’d get maudlin for the past, and then he’d say something he shouldn’t have. He’d done it before and got into trouble. So now he avoided it. Walked away, before they started opening doors that shouldn’t be opened.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You got a newscast?’

The barman reached beneath the counter and pulled out a slate, handing it across.

‘What do I owe you?’

Usually there was a deposit charge for borrowing a slate, but the barman shook his head.

‘No charge. I trust you.’

‘Thanks.’

Jake took the slate and his beer across to a table in the far corner. It was shadowed there and the screen on the wall above the table was dead. As he took his seat, Jake realized he was the only person in the room aside from the barman. Then again, it was early yet.

Thinking about his days at the Academy had made him recall all kinds of things. Things that he shouldn’t, perhaps, have brought up out of those walled-in depths.

Things like his grandfather’s death.

It was strange how, after the accident, he had gravitated towards his grandfather rather than his nan. Strange but understandable, for his nan had always been a much sterner person than his mother, and if he’d expected her to help him – maybe even to take his mother’s place – he’d have been much mistaken. But his grandfather, with his quiet and gentle manner, had somehow helped Jake to get through, if only by being there.

Only then, when he was fifteen, his grandmother had died. She had not been well for some time, but suddenly she went down with something – a virus, maybe, there were a lot of them about back then – and within a week she was dead.

He’d been at the Academy by then, and the news, when it reached him, had been a shock. A real shock, for she had always seemed made of much stronger stuff than those about her.

Jake had gone home for the funeral, given four days leave by Mr Cahill, the Headmaster. He had travelled back, fearing the emotional fallout, knowing just how much his grandfather had loved his gran. That lovely gentle man –
Jake knew how much he must be hurting. Only, arriving home, he had seen at once
just
how bad things were.

It had been awful.

A distant relative, a great-aunt – one of his gran’s sisters, Jane, whom he had only ever met once or twice – had been drafted in to make all the arrangements. As for his grandfather…

He had watched his granddad fall apart. Before his eyes. The old man had stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped showing any kind of interest in the world. At the graveside he had stood there, in his mourning suit, clay on his boots, held up by one of the funeral attendants. As he stared into the open grave, a look of such bewilderment, such agony on his face, Jake could hardly bear to look at him.

Jake had gone back to the Academy two days later. And when the news came through of his grandfather’s death, eight days after that, it was no shock, for he had known. Known, from that awful moment at the graveside, that the old man could not bear to live without her. The woman he loved.

How well he knew that feeling.

After that he had put his head down, working hard to fill the emotional void, striving through work to find some kind of meaning to it all.

All dead. Everyone he’d ever loved.

Jake sighed heavily, then looked down at the slate and clicked it on. The surface shimmered, then lit up.

Talking heads
, he thought, scrolling through to the channel he normally watched, then sitting back and taking a sip of his beer.

And stopped dead. He frowned, puzzled. It wasn’t anything they were saying. No, if anything the news seemed even blander than usual. But something was up. He could see it in their body language, could recognize – as Hinton had taught him, all those years ago – that they were hiding something. Something big. Some rumour, maybe, or…

Jake scratched at his chin. He really ought to shave. Just in case the Judge called them back. But it was a half-formed thought. He was staring at the slate now, trying to work out just what would have put them all on edge. For there was no doubt about it. Some big news item was brewing, but they couldn’t run with it. Not yet.

Only what in Christ’s name could
that
be?

Jake drained his glass. His instinct was to go home. To get to Mary’s side
just as quick as he could. Only that was being ridiculous, wasn’t it? It was not as if he knew anything. And he needed to be here, for when the case began again.

No. He’d wait. Sit in his room and keep an eye on things. And if they changed?

If they changed, he would go home. Let Advocate Yang deal with things himself.

There was one final surprise.

There, in his rented room – and who knew how they’d found him, but they had – a message was waiting for him. He sat there, the large brown envelope in his lap, staring at the logo in the top right corner.

GenSyn. It was from GenSyn. But not from Peter. He knew that, because he knew Peter’s handwriting, and this wasn’t his. And besides, Peter didn’t know where he was. He hadn’t told him, and he’d had Mary swear not to tell him.

It was twenty years since that whole business. Twenty years since Gustav Ebert had died, burned to toast in the datscape. Twenty years since he’d got his severance notice from them. So what was
this
?

There was only one way to find out.

Jake slipped his fingernail under the fold and drew it across, then took out the single sheet.

‘Christ!’

He couldn’t help himself. It was from Alison. He saw that at once. Recognized the handwriting at the bottom of the page—

Whatever you want, love Alison.

He read it through, then read it through again. Legal aid. GenSyn were going to give him legal aid – whatever he needed to fight his case.

Jake laughed. ‘Unbelievable… fucking unbelievable.’

How in God’s name had she known? Who had told her? Had Mary mentioned something to Peter – mentioned it and not told him that she had?

That was most likely. Only what did it matter? Help. They were going to give him help!

He wondered if they knew just what that involved; how much time and money the Changs had invested in this case.

Maybe not. Only right now, any help was welcome.

There was a contact number at the top left of the page. He had only to phone it and let them know.

Jake stood. He would do it now. Right now, before another second passed.

He smiled. And afterwards he’d phone Mary. Let her know. That is, if she didn’t know already.

I
t was late, and in that huge, sparsely furnished chamber, surrounded by the dark, the First Dragon sat at his desk. Staring into the faint, wavering light of a single blood-red candle.

He was dressed simply, in the plainest of black robes. Not silk, nor satin, but a rough cloth, dyed to match the night. It was his only ostentation.

He was, as all previous First Dragons had been, a Han. Only there all similarities ended. For this Han was unconnected. He had risen not through alliance or patronage but by sheer ruthlessness, ability, and a reputation for absolute incorruptibility. He was also younger than any previous First Dragon; a good twenty years younger. In his fifties now, he had a gaunt, almost severe look. Hatchet-faced, some said, though quietly, and not in his presence. Others said he resembled, in his stretched and fleshless way, what he once had been before the Ministry had recruited him: an oven man.

And so he did, yet he had one final, distinguishing feature – a birth mark, on the left of his brow; a cluster of small dark shapes that, in a certain light (as now), resembled a distant star exploding in its death throes.

He had been sitting there for the best part of three hours thinking matters through. Considering, calculating, mapping out potentiality, as if he played
wei ch’i
in his head, assessing the impact of each stone he placed upon the board, each probable response.

To his right, discarded now, lay a pile of handwritten reports. They had been useful, to a point, but something in their hasty preparation had made
him question their value even as he read them. They lacked the sharpness of vision this situation merited. Nor did they take into account the uniqueness, the unprecedented character of events. For all their accuracy and intelligence, they did not, in even the smallest fashion, convey an understanding of what lay before them.

They were, and all credit to them, perfectly reasoned. Only reason would be the first thing to go in a scenario like this, and these papers had been compiled by men who had little experience of war. Not a single one of them understood just how much chance would play a part in the days ahead; how much would depend on who could improvise the best. On who could ‘wing it’, as the
Hung Mao
used say. Whereas he… he had ‘winged it’ these many years, playing it by ear, doing the unexpected, outflanking his opponents.

Which was why, right now, he needed to be alone. To hear no other voice but his own. To think things through while he still could, before all the disparate voices sullied the clarity of his thought.

Simplicity. That was the answer. Or part of it.

Maybe. Yet it did not help him come to a decision, and a decision must be made before this night was out.

His duty was quite clear. He was Tsao Ch’un’s man. Hadn’t he prostrated himself before the emperor and sworn the oath of loyalty?

He had. Only maybe those had been empty words. If so, then what was he? What
purpose
did he serve?

Custodian
, his thoughts answered him.
You are custodian of it all
.

Yes, there was no doubting that. He was the custodian of this world. In
his
hands lay the fate of all, for it was he who was responsible for policing their knowledge of the past, and without that…

Without it, it would fall. For Chung Kuo was not just the City, the plantations, the orbitals and all the rest of it that was visible to the eye. It was an idea, an idea that the Ministry – the Thousand Eyes – maintained and guarded on a daily basis and which he, as First Dragon, kept watch over.

He was the glue that held it all together. And, because that was so, it was his duty to ensure that proper thought was given to the problem. For they had come to a major cusp in history – a moment when they must choose a path and follow it to the death.

For all their sakes.

For some time now he had known that it would come to this, but now
that the hour was upon them, he realized that it was not anything like as simple as he’d thought. He needed to be certain that the decision he made was the right one, for if it were not then he and his great Ministry would vanish, as if they never had existed.

And that could not be allowed. That was why he must make the right decision and make it before this night was over. Tomorrow would be too late.

Only now, at this critical hour, he found himself thinking of his own small life, rather than the greater picture. Of his climb from nothing to the eminence he now commanded, rather than that abstract mesh of power and influence that had become his world.

He put his hand out, feeling the warmth of the candle’s flame.

Of the twelve dragons who shared his burden, not a single one of them knew him, nor understood him. They knew his history, of course. How could they not? For that was their business, after all, to know everything they could unearth about each other – but that was very different from understanding. To do that, they would have had to
be
him, to have suffered what he’d suffered, to have lost a world and been given only shadows in return.

For what was this world if not a place of shadows? A waiting room, beyond whose door was death. And that was his secret. That he was dead inside, and had been these past twenty years and more.

Even so, he might simply have remained what he had been – another empty, bitter man, obsessed with his loss, eaten away by it – had not chance intervened.

His eyes widened at the thought. Chance was everything. And when it came one grasped it and hung on, as to the proverbial tiger’s tail.

Chance, then, and loss. And no small loss at that, but the loss of everything that made a life worth living.