Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series (22 page)

He shivered, thinking of Jelka, then turned to see that Nocenzi was already there,
standing on the sand by the corner of the house, his cap under his arm.

‘Knut…’

The two men embraced warmly and stood there a moment simply looking at each other.
Then Tolonen looked down.

‘I know why you’ve come.’

Nocenzi laughed strangely. ‘You’ve read my orders, then, General?’

Tolonen met his eyes again, then shook his head. ‘Just
Shih
Tolonen. You’re General now, Vittorio.’

Nocenzi studied him awhile, then smiled. ‘Let’s sit, neh? Jelka said she’d bring fresh
ch’a
.’

They sat, not facing each other but looking outward at the sea.

Nocenzi noted the book that lay face down on the table. ‘What are you reading?’

Tolonen handed him the old, leather-bound volume and watched him smile. It was Sun
Tzu’s
Chan Shu
, his ‘Art of War’, dating from the third century
BC
. The Clavell
translation.

‘They say the Ch’in warriors were mad. They ran into battle without armour.’

Tolonen laughed. ‘Yes, Vittorio, but there were a million of them. Nor had they ever
tasted defeat.’

There was a moment’s tense silence, then Tolonen turned to face his old friend. ‘Tell
me straight, Vittorio. Is it as I fear? Am I to pay for what I did?’

Nocenzi looked back at him. ‘Lehmann deserved what you did to him. There are many
who believe that.’

‘Yes,’ Tolonen insisted. ‘But am I to pay?’

Tolonen’s successor gazed back at the man he had served under for almost a quarter
of a century and smiled. ‘You said you knew why I had come, Knut. But you were wrong.
I
haven’t come for your head. I’ve come because the T’ang has asked to see you.’

Li Yuan cried out and woke in the semi-darkness, his heart beating wildly, the feeling
of the dark horse beneath him still vivid, the scent of plum blossom filling his
nostrils.

He shivered and sat up, aware of the warm stickiness of his loins. Sweat beaded his
brow and chest. The satin sheets were soaked about him. He moaned softly and put his
head in his hands. Fei
Yen… He had been riding with Fei Yen. Faster and faster they had ridden, down, down
the long slope until, with a jolt and a powerful stretching motion he could feel in
his bones even now,
his horse had launched itself at the fence.

He threw the sheets back and, in the half-light, looked down at himself. His penis
was still large, engorged with blood, but it was flaccid now. With a little shudder
he reached down and touched
the wetness. The musty smell of his own semen was strong, mixed with the lingering
scent of plum blossom. He sniffed deeply, confused, then remembered. The silk she
had given him lay on the bedside
table, its perfume pervading the air.

He looked across at the broad ivory face of the bedside clock. It was just after four.
He stood, about to go through and shower, when there were noises outside the door,
then a muted
knocking.

Li Yuan threw the cover back, then took a robe from the side and drew it on.

‘Come!’

Nan Ho stood in the doorway, head bowed, a lantern in one hand.

‘Are you all right, Prince Yuan?’

Nan Ho was his body servant; his head man, in charge of the eight juniors in his household-within-a-household.

‘It was…’ He shuddered. ‘It was only a dream, Nan Ho. I’m fine.’

He glanced round at the bed, then, slightly embarrassed by the request, added, ‘Would
you bring clean sheets, Nan Ho. I…’

He turned away sharply, realizing he was holding Fei Yen’s silk.

Nan Ho looked to him then to the bed and bowed. ‘I’ll be but a moment, Prince Yuan.’
Then he hesitated. ‘Is there…?’ He moved his head slightly to one side,
as if finding difficulty with what he was about to say. ‘Is there anything I can arrange
for you, Prince Yuan?’

Li Yuan swallowed, then shook his head. ‘I don’t understand you, Nan Ho? What might
you arrange at this hour?’

Nan Ho came into the room and closed the door behind him. Then, in a softer voice,
he said, ‘Perhaps the Prince would like Pearl Heart to come and see to him?’

Pearl Heart was one of the maids. A young girl of fifteen years.

‘Why should I want Pearl Heart… ?’ he began, then saw what Nan Ho meant and looked
away.

‘Well, Highness?’

He held back the anger he felt, keeping his voice calm; the voice of a prince, a future
T’ang.

‘Just bring clean sheets, Nan Ho. I’ll tell you when I need anything else.’

Nan Ho bowed deeply and turned to do as he was bid. Only when he was gone did Li Yuan
look down at the wet silk in his hand and realize he had wiped himself with it.

Chen stood there in the queue, naked, waiting his turn. The sign over the doorway
read D
ECONTAMINATION
. The English letters were black. Beneath them, in
big red pictograms was the equivalent Mandarin. Chen looked about him, noting that
it was one of the rare few signs here that had an English translation. The Lodz Clearing
Station handled more than
three hundred thousand people a day, and almost all of them were Han. It was strange
that. Unexpected.

Beyond the doorway were showers and disinfectant baths: primitive but effective solutions
to the problem of decontaminating millions of workers every week. He shuffled along,
ignoring his
nakedness and the nakedness of those on every side, resisting the temptation to scratch
at the skin patch beneath his left ear.

A
Hung Mao
guard pushed him through the doorway brutally and, like those in front of him, Chen
bowed his head and walked on slowly through the stinging coldness of the showers,
then down
the steps into the bath, holding his breath as he ducked underwater.

Then he was outside, in daylight, goose-pimples on his flesh. A guard thrust clothes
into his arms – a loincloth, a drab brown overall and a coolie hat – and then he was
queueing
again.

‘Tong Chou?’

He answered to his alias and pushed through to the front to collect his ID card and
his pack, checking briefly to make sure they had not confiscated the viewing-tube.
Then he found a space and,
holding the card between his teeth, the pack between his feet, got quickly dressed.

He followed the flow of people through, one of thousands, identically dressed. At
the end of a long walled roadway the crowd spilled out into a wide arena. This was
the embarkation area. Once
more the signs were all in
Kuo-yu
, or Mandarin. Chen turned and looked back, seeing, for the first time, the wall of
the City towering over them, stretching away whitely into the distance to
either side. Then he looked down, searching for the pictogram he had learned –
Hsia
, the crab. Seeing it, he made his way across and up the ramp, stopping at the barrier
to show his
ID.

The train was packed. He squeezed in, smiling apologetically as he made his way through,
then turned, waiting.

He had not long to wait. The train was crowded and extremely stuffy, the smell of
disinfected bodies overpowering, but it was fast. Within the hour he was at
Hsia
Plantation, stumbling
from the carriage, part of the crowd that made its way slowly down the ramp and out
into the open.

There was a faint, unpleasant scent to the air, like something stale or overcooked.
Chen looked up, then looked down again quickly, his eyes unused to the brightness.
The sun blazed down
overhead; a huge, burning circle of light – bigger, much brighter than he remembered
it. Ahead of him the land stretched away forever – flat and wide and green. Greener,
much greener,
than he’d ever imagined.

He smiled. Wang Ti would have liked to have seen this. She had always said she would
love to live outside, beneath the sun and the stars, her feet planted firmly on the
black earth. As their
forefathers had once lived.

For a moment Chen’s smile broadened, thinking of her and Jyan and the child to come,
then his face cleared as he put all thought of her behind. He was Tong Chou now and
had no family. Tong
Chou, demoted from the levels. Tong Chou. Until this was over.

The crowd slowed. Another queue formed. Chen waited, patient, knowing that patience
alone would carry him through the coming days. When he came to the barrier a guard
babbled at him in
Kuo-yu
. He shook his head. ‘I’m new,’ he said. ‘I only speak English. You know,
Ying Kuo
.’

The guard laughed and turned to say something to one of his fellows, again in Mandarin.
The other guard laughed and looked Chen up and down, then said something that made
the first guard laugh
crudely. They were both
Hung Mao
.

He handed the guard his permit, then waited while the man scrutinized it thoroughly
and, with a show of self-importance, used his comset to double-check. He seemed almost
disappointed to find
nothing wrong with it.

‘Take care,
Han
,’ the guard said, thrusting his card back at him.

He moved on, keeping his head down, following the flow.

‘
Chiao shen me ming tsu?
’

Chen looked up, expecting another guard, but the young man who had addressed him wore
the drab brown of a field worker. Moreover, he was
Hung Mao
. The first
Hung Mao
he had seen
here who was not a guard.

He looked the youth up and down, then answered him. ‘I’m sorry. My Mandarin is very
poor.’

The young man had a long face and round, watery blue eyes. His hair was dark but wispy
and his mouth was crooked, as if he had suffered a stroke. But he was far too young,
too fit, to be
suffering from heart troubles. The crooked mouth smiled and the eyes gave Chen the
same scrutiny Chen had given him.

‘I’m Pavel,’ the youth said, inclining his head the slightest degree. ‘I was asking
what they called you.’

‘Tong Chou,’ Chen answered, then realized how easily it had come to his lips.

Pavel took one of his hands and turned it over, examining it. ‘I thought so,’ he said.
‘You’re new to this.’

Chen smiled. There were things that could not be faked, like calluses on the palms.
‘I’m a refugee from the levels,’ he said. ‘When my father died I got into debt over
his funeral. Then I got in with a shark. You know how it is.’

Pavel looked at him a moment, his watery blue eyes trying to figure him; then his
crooked mouth smiled again. ‘Come on, Tong Chou. You’ll need someone to show you the
ropes.
There’s a spare bed in our hut. You can kip down there.’

Pavel set off at once, moving away from the slow moving column of new recruits. Only
as he turned did Chen notice something else about him. His back was hunched, the spine
bent unnaturally. What
Chen had taken for a bow of politeness was the young man’s natural gait. Chen followed
him quickly, catching up with him. As they walked along the dirt path Pavel began
to talk, explaining
how things worked on the plantation.

‘How did you know I was new?’

Pavel glanced sideways at him. ‘The way you walk. The way you’re wearing those clothes.
The way you squint against the sun. Oh, a hundred little signs. What were you up above?
You’ve strong hands. They’re not an office-worker’s hands.’

‘But not a peasant’s either?’

Pavel laughed, throwing his head back to do so. Chen, watching him, decided he liked
the youth. He looked a dull-wit, but he was sharp. Very sharp.

‘And where are you from, Pavel?’

Pavel sniffed, then looked away across the vast plain. ‘Me? I was born here.’

‘Here?’

Pavel smiled crookedly and nodded. ‘Here. In these fields.’

Ahead of them was a break in the green. A long black line that cut right across their
path. The dirt track led out onto a wooden bridge. Halfway across the bridge Chen
stopped, looking down.

Pavel came back to him and looked where he was looking, as if expecting to see something
unusual in the water. ‘What is it?’

Chen laughed. ‘It’s nothing.’ But he had realized that he had never seen water flow
like this before. Taps and baths and pools, that was all he had ever seen. It had
made him
feel strange. Somehow incomplete.

Pavel looked at him, then laughed. ‘What did you say you were?’

They went on. The field they had crossed had been empty, but beyond the bridge it
was different. Long lines of workers – five hundred, maybe a thousand to each line
– were stretched
out across the vast green, hunched forward, huge wicker baskets on their backs, their
coolie hats making them seem a thousand copies of the same machine. Yet each was a
man or woman – a
person, like himself.

Where the path met another at a crossroads, a group of men were lounging by an electric
cart. They were dressed differently, in smart black trousers and kingfisher blue jackets.
They wore black,
broad-rimmed hats with silk tassels hanging from the back and most of them had guns
– Deng rifles, Chen noted – strapped to their shoulders. As Chen and Pavel approached,
they seemed to
stir expectantly.

Pavel touched Chen’s arm, his voice a whisper. ‘Keep your head down and keep walking.
Don’t stop unless they specifically order you to.’

Chen did as Pavel said. Even so, two of the men detached themselves from the group
and came across onto the path, blocking their way. They were big, brutal-looking.
Han, both of them.

‘Who’s this, Pavel?’ one of them asked.

The youth kept his head lowered. ‘This is Tong Chou,
Shih
Teng. I am taking him to register.’

Teng laughed caustically and looked at his fellow. ‘You’re quite a bit out of your
way then, Pavel. Registration is back there, where you’ve just come from. Or have
they moved
it since I was last there?’

There was laughter from the men by the cart.

Chen glanced at the youth and saw how he swallowed nervously. But he wasn’t finished
yet. ‘Forgive me,
Shih
Teng. That would be so normally. But Tong Chou is a replacement. He
has been drafted to fill the place left by Field Supervisor Sung’s unfortunate death.
I was told to take him direct to Acting Supervisor Ming. Ming is to fill out a special
registration
form.’