Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series (2 page)

‘I’ve a hunch,’ he said, putting the heavy volume down on the other side of the board
to the knives and the water.

Meg stood beside him. It was a book of animal anatomy. One of their great-great-great-grandfather
Amos’s books. Ben flicked through the pages until he came to the diagram he was looking
for. ‘There,’ he said, the heavy, glossy pages staying in place as he turned away
to bring the rabbit.

She looked. Saw at once how like a machine it was. A thing of pumps and levers, valves
and switches, controlled by chemicals and electric pulses. It was all there on the
page, dissected for her.
The whole of the mystery – there at a glance.

Ben came back. He placed the dead rabbit carefully on the block then turned and looked
at her. ‘You needn’t stay, Meg. Not if you don’t want to.’

But she stayed, fascinated by what he was doing, knowing that this had meaning for
him. Something had caught his attention. Something she had missed but he had seen.
Now she waited as he probed
and cut and then compared what had been exposed against the diagram spread across
the double page.

At last, satisfied, he went to the sink and washed his hands, then came back and threw
a muslin cloth over the board and its bloodied contents.

‘Well?’

He was about to answer her when there was the sound of footsteps in the dining room.
Their mother’s. Then a second set.

Meg pushed past him and jumped down the four steps in her haste.

‘Daddy!’

Hal Shepherd gathered his daughter up, hugging her tight and kissing her, delighted
to see her. Then he ducked under the lintel and climbed the steps up into the kitchen,
Beth following.

‘Gods, Ben, what have you been up to?’

Ben turned to face the table.

‘It’s a dead rabbit. We found it down by the Seal. It’s diseased. But that’s not all.
It doesn’t come from here. It was brought in.’

Hal put Meg down and went across. ‘Are you sure, Ben?’ But he knew that Ben was rarely
if ever wrong.

Ben pulled back the cloth. ‘Look. I made certain of it against Amos’s book. This one
isn’t real. It’s a genetic redesign. Probably GenSyn. One of the guards must have
made a substitution.’

Hal studied the carcass a while, then nodded. ‘You’re right. And it won’t be the only
one, I’m sure. I wonder who brought it in?’

Ben saw the anger mixed with sadness on his father’s face. There were two gates to
the Domain, each manned by an elite squad of a dozen men, hand-picked by the T’ang
himself. Over
the years they had become friends of the family and had been granted privileges –
one of which was limited entry to the Domain. Now that would have to stop. The culprit
would have to be
caught and made to pay.

Meg came up to him and tugged at his arm. ‘But why would they do it? There’s no great
difference, is there?’

Hal smiled sadly. ‘It’s a kind of foolishness, my love, that’s all. There are people
in the City who would pay a vast sum of money to be able to boast they had real rabbit
at
one of their dinners.’

Ben stared at the carcass fixedly. ‘How much is a vast sum?’

Hal looked down at his son. ‘Fifty, maybe a hundred thousand yuan for each live animal.
They would breed them, you see, then sell the doctored litters.’

Ben considered. Such a sum would be as nothing to his father, he knew, but to others
it was a fortune. He saw at once how such an opportunity might have tempted one of
the guards. ‘I
see,’ he said. ‘But there’s another, more immediate worry. If they’re all like this
they could infect everything in the Domain. We’ll need to sweep the whole area.
Catch everything and test it. Quarantine whatever’s sick.’

Hal nodded, realizing his son was right. ‘Damn it! Such stupidity! I’ll have the culprit’s
hide!’ He laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘But you’re
right, Ben, we’d best do something straight away. This can’t wait for morning.’

He turned to Beth, anger turning to apology in his face. ‘This complicates things,
I’m afraid. I meant to tell you earlier, my love. We have a guest coming, tomorrow
evening. An
important guest. He’ll be with us a few days. I can’t say any more than that. I was
hoping we could hunt, but this business buggers things.’

She frowned at him and made a silent gesture towards Meg.

Shepherd glanced at his daughter then looked back at his wife and gave a slight bow.
‘I’m sorry. My language. I forget when I’ve been away. But this…’ He huffed
angrily, exasperated, then turned to his son again. ‘Come, Ben, there’s much to be
done.’

It was calm on the river. Ben pulled easily at the oars, the boat moving swiftly through
the water. Meg sat facing him, looking across at the eastern shore. Behind her, in
the
stern, sat Peng Yu-wei, tall, elderly and very upright, his staff held in front of
him like an unflagged mast. It was ebb tide and the current was in their favour. Ben
kept the boat midstream,
enjoying the warmth of the midday sun on his bare shoulders, the feel of the mild
sea breeze in his hair. He felt drowsy, for one rare moment almost lapsed out of consciousness,
then Meg’s
cry brought him back to himself.

‘Look!’

Meg was pointing out towards the far shore. Ben shipped oars and turned to look. There,
stretching from the foreshore to the Wall, was a solid line of soldiers. Slowly, methodically,
they moved
between the trees and over the rough-grassed, uneven ground, making sure nothing slipped
between them. It was their third sweep of the Domain and their last. What was not
caught this time would be
gassed.

Peng Yu-wei cleared his throat, his head held slightly forward in a gesture of respect
to his two charges.

‘What is it, Teacher Peng?’ Ben asked coldly, turning to face him. Lessons had ended
an hour back. This now was their time and Peng, though chaperone for this excursion,
had no
authority over the master and mistress outside his classroom.

‘Forgive me, young master, I wish only to make an observation.’

Meg turned, careful not to make the boat tilt and sway, and looked up at Peng Yu-wei,
then back at Ben. She knew how much Ben resented the imposition of a teacher. He liked
to make his own
discoveries and follow his own direction, but their father had insisted upon a more
rigorous approach. What Ben did in his own time was up to him, but in the morning
classes he was to do as Peng
Yu-wei instructed; learn what Peng Yu-wei asked him to learn. With some reluctance
Ben had agreed, but only on the understanding that outside the classroom the teacher
was not to speak without his
express permission.

‘You understand what Teacher Peng really is?’ he had said to Meg when they were alone
one time. ‘He’s their means of keeping tabs on me. Of controlling what I know and
what I learn. He’s bit and bridle, ball and chain, a rope to tether me like any other
animal.’

His bitterness had surprised her. ‘Surely not,’ she had answered. ‘Father wouldn’t
want that, would he?’

Ben had not answered, only looked away, the bitterness in his face unchanged.

Now some of that bitterness was back as he looked at Teacher Peng. ‘Make your observation
then. But be brief.’

Peng Yu-wei bowed, then turned his head, looking across at the soldiers who were now
level with them. One frail, thin hand went up to pull at his wispy grey goatee, the
other moved slightly on
the staff, inclining it towards the distant line of men. ‘This whole business seems
most cumbersome, would you not agree, Master Ben?’

Ben’s eyes never left the teacher’s face. ‘Not cumbersome. Inefficient’s a better
word.’

Teacher Peng looked back at him and bowed slightly, corrected. ‘Which is why I felt
it could be made much easier.’

Meg saw the impatience in Ben’s face and looked down. No good would come of this.

‘You had best tell me
how
, Teacher Peng.’ The note of sarcasm in Ben’s voice was bordering on outright rudeness
now. Even so, Peng Yu-wei seemed not to notice. He merely
bowed and continued.

‘It occurs to me that, before returning the animals to the land again, a trace could
be put inside each animal. Then, if this happened again, it would be a simple thing
to account for each
animal. Theft and disease would both be far easier to control.’

Peng Yu-wei looked up at his twelve-year-old charge expectantly, but Ben was silent.

‘Well, master?’ he asked after a moment. ‘What do you think of my idea?’

Ben looked away. He lifted the oars and began to pull at them again, digging heavily
into the water to his right, bringing the boat back onto a straight course. He looked
back at the
teacher.

‘It’s a hideous idea, Peng Yu-wei. An unimaginative, small-minded idea. Just another
way of keeping tabs on things. I can see it now. You would make a great electronic
wall chart of
the Domain, eh? And have each animal as a blip on it.’

The stretched olive skin of Peng Yu-wei’s face was relaxed, his dark eyes, with their
marked epicanthic fold, impassive. ‘That would be a refinement, I agree, but…’

Ben let the oars fall and leaned forward in the boat. Peng Yu-wei reflexively moved
back. Meg watched, horrified, as Ben scrabbled past her, the boat swaying violently,
and tore at the
teacher’s
pau
, exposing his chest.

‘Please, young master. You know that is not allowed.’

Peng Yu-wei still held his staff, but with his other hand he now sought to draw the
two ends of the torn silk together. For a moment, however, the white circle of the
control panel set into his
upper chest was clearly visible.

For a second or two Ben knelt there in front of him threateningly, his whole body
tensed as if to act.

‘You’ll be quiet, understand? And you’ll say nothing of this. Nothing! Or I’ll switch
you off and drop you over the side. Understand me, Teacher Peng?’

For a moment the android was perfectly still, then it gave the slightest nod.

‘Good,’ said Ben, moving back and taking up the oars again. ‘Then we’ll proceed.’

As Ben turned the boat into the tiny, box-like harbour the two sailors looked up from
where they sat on the steps mending their nets and smiled. They were both old men,
in
their late sixties, with broad, healthy, salt-tanned faces. Ben hailed them, then
concentrated on manoeuvring between the moored fishing boats. There was a strong breeze
now from the mouth of the
river and the metallic sound of the lines flapping against the masts filled the air,
contesting with the cry of gulls overhead. Ben turned the boat’s prow with practised
ease and let the
craft glide between a big, high-sided fisher-boat and the harbour wall, using one
of the oars to push away, first one side, then the other. Meg, at the stern, held
the rope in her hand, ready to
jump ashore and tie up.

Secured, Ben jumped ashore, then looked back into the boat. Peng Yu-wei had stood
up, ready to disembark.

‘You’ll stay,’ Ben said commandingly.

For a moment Peng Yu-wei hesitated, his duty to chaperone the children conflicting
with the explicit command of the young master. Water slopped noisily between the side
of the boat and the
steps. Only paces away the two old sailors had stopped their mending, watching.

Slowly, with great dignity, the teacher sat, planting his staff before him. ‘I’ll
do as you say, young master,’ he said, looking up at the young boy on the quayside,
‘but
I must tell your father about this.’

Ben turned away, taking Meg’s hand. ‘Do what you must, tin man,’ he muttered under
his breath.

The quayside was cluttered with coils of rope, lobster pots, netting and piles of
empty wooden crates – old, frail-looking things that awaited loads offish that never
came. The harbour was
filled with fishing boats, but no one ever fished. The town beyond was full of busy-seeming
people, but no one lived there. It was all false: all part of the great illusion Ben’s
great-great-grandfather, Augustus, had created here.

Once this had been a thriving town, prospering on fishing and tourism and the naval
college. Now it was dead. A shell of its former self, peopled by replicants.

Meg looked about her, delighted, as she always was by this. Couples strolled in the
afternoon sunshine, the ladies in crinolines, the men in stiff three-piece suits.
Pretty little girls with
curled blonde hair tied with pink ribbons ran here and there, while boys in sailor
suits crouched, playing five-stones.

‘It’s so
real
here!’ Meg said enthusiastically. ‘So alive!’

Ben looked down at her and smiled. ‘Isn’t it?’ He had seen pictures of the City. It
seemed such an ugly, hideous place by comparison. A place of walls and cells and corridors
– a vast, unending prison of a place. He turned his face to the breeze and drew in
great lungfuls of the fresh salt air, then looked back at Meg. ‘What shall we do?’

She looked past the strolling holidaymakers at the gaily painted shops along the front,
then looked up at the hillside and, beyond it, the Wall, towering over all.

‘I don’t know…’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Let’s just go where we want, Ben. Look wherever
we fancy looking, eh?’

‘Okay. Then we’ll start over there, at the Chandler’s.’

For the next few hours they went among the high-street shops, first searching through
the shelves of Joseph Toms, Toys and Fancy Goods, for novelties, then looking among
the tiny cupboards of
Charles Weaver, Apothecary, sampling the sweet-tasting, harmless powders on their
fingers and mixing the brightly coloured liquids in beakers. But Ben soon tired of
such games and merely watched as
Meg went from shop to shop, unchallenged by the android shopkeepers. In Nash’s Coffee
House they had their lunch, the food real but somehow unsatisfying, as if reconstituted.

‘There’s a whole world here, Meg. Preserved. Frozen in time. Sometimes I look at it
and think it’s such a waste. It should be used somehow.’

Meg sipped at her iced drink then looked up at him. ‘You think we should let others
come here into the Domain?’