Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series (32 page)

Satisfied, Chung Hu-Yan stepped back and signalled to the guards.

Two bells sounded, the first sweet and clear, the second deep and resonant. Slowly,
noiselessly, the great doors swung back.

Yuan stared down the aisle of the great hall and shivered. What was going on? Why
did his father not meet with him in his rooms, as he had always done? Why all this
sudden ritual?

Li Shai Tung sat on his throne atop the Presence Dais at the far end of the Hall.

‘Prostrate yourself, Li Yuan,’ Chung Hu-Yan whispered, and Yuan did as he was bid,
making the full
k’o t’ou
to his father for the first time since the day of the
reception – the day of the archery contest.

He stood slowly, the cold touch of the tiles lingering like a ghostly presence against
his brow. Then, with the briefest glance at Chung Hu-Yan, he moved forward, between
the pillars,
approaching his father.

Halfway down the aisle he noticed the stranger who stood to one side of the Presence
Dais at the bottom of the steps. A tall, thin Han with a shaven head, who wore the
sienna robes of a scholar,
but on whose chest was a patch of office.

He stopped at the foot of the steps and made his obeisance once again, then stood
and looked up at the T’ang.

‘You asked for me, father?’

His father was dressed in the formal robe he normally wore only for Ministerial audiences,
the bright yellow cloth edged in black and decorated with fierce golden dragons. The
high-tiered court
crown made him seem even taller than he was; more dignified, if that was possible.
When Li Yuan addressed him he gave the barest nod of recognition, his face, like Chung
Hu-Yan’s, curiously
stern, uncompromising. This was not how he usually greeted his son.

Li Shai Tung studied his son a moment, then leaned forward and pointed to the Han
who stood below the steps.

‘This is Ssu Lu Shan. He has something to tell you about the world. Go with him, Li
Yuan.’

Li Yuan turned to the man and gently inclined his head, showing his respect. At once
the scholar bowed low, acknowledging Li Yuan’s status as a prince. Li Yuan turned
back, facing his
father, waiting, expecting more, then understood the audience was at an end. He made
his
k’o t’ou
a third and final time, then backed away, puzzled and deeply troubled by the
strict formality of his father’s greeting, the oddness of his instruction.

Outside, Li Yuan turned and faced the stranger, studying him. He had the thin, pinched
face of a New Confucian official; a face made longer by the bareness of the scalp.
His eyes, however, were
hard and practical. They met Li Yuan’s examination unflinchingly.

‘Tell me, Ssu Lu Shan. What Ministry is it that you wear the patch of?’

Ssu Lu Shan bowed. ‘It is the Ministry, Prince Yuan.’ From another it might have seemed
cryptic, but Li Yuan understood at once that there was nothing elusive in the man’s
answer.

‘
The
Ministry?’

‘So it is known, Excellency.’

Li Yuan walked on, Ssu Lu Shan keeping up with him, several paces behind, as protocol
demanded.

At the doorway to his suite of rooms, Li Yuan stopped and turned to face the man again.

‘Do we need privacy for our meeting, Ssu Lu Shan?’

The man bowed. ‘It would be best, Excellency. What I have to say is for your ears
only. I would prefer it if the doors were locked and the windows closed while I am
talking.’

Li Yuan hesitated, feeling a vague unease. But this was what his father wanted; what
his father had ordered him to do. And if his father had ordered it, he must trust
this man and accommodate
him.

When the doors were locked and the windows closed, Ssu Lu Shan turned, facing him.
Li Yuan sat in a tall chair by the window overlooking the gardens while the scholar
– if that was what he
was – stood on the far side of the room, breathing deeply, calmly, preparing himself.

Dust motes floated slowly in the still warm air of the room as Ssu Lu Shan began,
his voice deep, authoritative, and clear as polished jade, telling the history of
Chung Kuo – the true
history – beginning with Pao Chan’s arrival on the shores of the Caspian Sea in
AD
97, and his subsequent withdrawal, leaving Europe to the Ta Ts’in, the
Roman Empire.

Hours passed and still Ssu Lu Shan spoke on, telling of a Europe Li Yuan had never
dreamed existed – a Europe racked by Dark Ages and damned by religious bigotry, enlightened
by the
Renaissance, then torn again by wars of theology, ideology and nationalism; a Europe
swept up, finally, by the false ideal of technological progress, born of the Industrial
Revolution; an ideal
fuelled by the concept of evolution and fanned by population pressures into the fire
of Change – Change at any price.

And what had Chung Kuo done meanwhile but enclose itself behind great walls? Like
a bloated maggot it had fed upon itself until, when the West had come, it had found
the Han Empire weak,
corrupt, and ripe for conquest.

So they came to the Century of Change, to the Great Wars, to the long years of revolution
in Chung Kuo, and finally to the Pacific Century and the decline and fall of the American
Empire, ending
in the chaos of the Years of Blood.

This, the closest to the present, was the worst of it for Li Yuan, and as if he sensed
this, Ssu Lu Shan’s voice grew softer as he told of the tyrant, Tsao Ch’un and his
‘Crusade of Purity’; of the building of the City; of the Ministry and the burning
of the books, the burial of the past.

‘As you know, Prince Yuan, Tsao Ch’un wished to create an utopia that would last ten
thousand years – to bring into being the world beyond the peach-blossom river, as
we Han have
traditionally known it. But the price of its attainment was high.’

Ssu Lu Shan paused, his eyes momentarily dark with the pain of what he had witnessed
on ancient newsreels. Then, slowly, he began again.

‘In 2062 Japan, Chung Kuo’s chief rival in the East, was the first victim of Tsao
Ch’un’s barbaric methods when, without warning – after Japanese complaints about
Han incursions in Korea – the Han leader bombed Honshu, concentrating his nuclear
devices on the major population centres of Tokyo and Kyoto. Over the next eight years
three great Han armies
swept the smaller islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, destroying everything and killing
every Japanese they found, while the rest of Japan was blockaded by sea and air. Over
the following twelve years
they did the same with the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, turning the “islands of
the gods” into a wasteland.

‘While this was happening, the crumbling Western nation states were looking elsewhere,
obsessed with their own seemingly insuperable problems. Chung Kuo alone of all the
Earth’s
nations remained stable, and, as the years passed, grew quickly at the expense of
others.

‘The eradication of Japan taught Tsao Ch’un many lessons, yet only one other time
was he to use similar methods. In future he sought, in his famous phrase, “not to
destroy but
to exclude” – though his definition of “exclusion” often made it a synonym for destruction.
As he built his great City – the huge machines moving slowly outward from
Pei Ching, building the living sections – so he peopled it, choosing carefully who
was to live within its walls. His criteria, like his methods, were not merely crude
but idiosyncratic,
reflecting not merely his wish to make his great City free of all those human troubles
that had plagued previous social experiments, but also his deeply held hatred of the
black and aboriginal
races.’

Noting Li Yuan’s surprise, Ssu Lu Shan nodded soberly. ‘Yes, Prince Yuan, there were
once whole races of black men. Men no more different from ourselves than the
Hung Mao
.
Billions of them.’

He lowered his eyes, then continued. ‘As the City grew so his men went out, questioning,
searching among the
Hung Mao
for those who were free from physical disability, political
dissidence, religious bigotry and intellectual pride. And where he encountered organized
opposition he enlisted the aid of groups sympathetic to his aims. In Southern Africa
and North America, in
Europe and in the People’s Democracy Of Russia, huge popular movements grew up amongst
the
Hung Mao
supporting Tsao Ch’un and welcoming his stability after decades of bitter
suffering. Many of them were only too pleased to share in his crusade of intolerance
– his “Policy of Purity”. In the so-called “civilized” West, particularly, Tsao
Ch’un often found that his work had been done for him long before his officials arrived.

‘Only the Middle East proved problematic. There a great Jihad was launched against
the Han, Muslim and Jew casting off millennia of enmity to fight against a common
threat. Tsao
Ch’un answered them harshly, as he had answered Japan. The Middle East and large parts
of the Indian subcontinent were swiftly reduced to the wilderness they remain to this
day. But it was in
Africa that Tsao Ch’un’s policies were most nakedly displayed. There the native peoples
were moved on before the encroaching City, and, like cattle in a desert, they starved
or died
from exhaustion, driven on relentlessly by a brutal Han army.

‘Tsao Ch’un’s ideal was, he believed, a high one. He sought to eradicate the root
causes of human dissidence and fulfil all material needs. Yet in terms of human suffering,
his
pacification of the Earth was unprecedented. It was a grotesquely flawed ideal, and
more than four billion people died as a direct result of his policies.’

Ssu Lu Shan met the young Prince’s eyes again, a strange resignation in his own. ‘Tsao
Ch’un killed the old world. He buried it deep beneath his glacial City. But eventually
his brutality and tyranny proved too much even for those who had helped him carry
out his scheme. In 2087 his Council of Seven Ministers rose up against him, using
North European mercenaries, and
overthrew him, setting up a new government. They divided the world – Chung Kuo – amongst
themselves, each calling himself T’ang. The rest you know. The rest, since then, is
true.’

In the silence that followed, Li Yuan sat there perfectly still, staring blankly at
the air in front of him. He could see the stern faces of his father and his father’s
Chancellor, and
understood them now. They had known this moment lay before him. Had known how he would
feel.

He shuddered and looked down at his hands where they clasped each other in his lap
– so far away from him, they seemed. A million
li
from the dark, thinking centre of himself. Yes.
But what did he feel?

A nothingness. A kind of numbness at the core of him. Almost an absence of feeling.
He felt hollow, his limbs brittle like the finest porcelain. He turned his head, facing
Ssu Lu Shan again, and
even the simple movement of his neck muscles seemed suddenly false,
unreal
. He shivered and focused on the waiting man.

‘Did my brother know of this?’

Ssu Lu Shan shook his head. It was as if he had done with words.

‘I see.’ He looked down. ‘Then why has my father chosen to tell me now? Why should
I, at my age, know what Han Ch’in at his did not?’

When Ssu Lu Shan did not answer him, Li Yuan looked up again. He frowned. It was as
if the Han were in some kind of trance.

‘Ssu Lu Shan?’

The man’s eyes focused on him, but still he said nothing.

‘Have you done?’

Ssu Lu Shan’s sad smile was extraordinary: as if all he was, all he knew, were gathered
up into that small, ironic smile. ‘Almost,’ he answered softly. ‘There’s one
last thing.’

Li Yuan raised a hand, commanding him to be silent. ‘A question first. My father sent
you, I know. But how do I know that what you’ve told me today is true? What proof
have
you?’

Ssu Lu Shan looked down a moment and Li Yuan’s eyes followed their movement, then
widened as he saw the knife he had drawn from the secret fold in his scholar’s
pau
.

‘Ssu Lu Shan!’ he cried out, jumping up, suddenly alert to the danger he was in, alone
in a locked room with an armed stranger.

But Ssu Lu Shan paid him no attention. He lowered himself onto his knees and laid
the knife on the floor in front of him. While Li Yuan watched he untied the fastenings
of his robe and pulled it
up over his head, then bundled it together between his legs. Except for a loincloth
he was naked now.

Li Yuan swallowed. ‘What is this?’ he asked softly.

Ssu Lu Shan looked up at him. ‘You ask what proof I have. This now is my proof.’ His
eyes were smiling strangely, as if with relief at the shedding of a great and heavy
burden carried too
long. ‘This, today, was the purpose of my life. Now I have fulfilled my purpose, and
the laws of Chung Kuo deem my life forfeit for the secrets I have uttered in this
room. So it is. So it
must be. For they are great, grave secrets.’

Li Yuan shivered. ‘I understand, Ssu Lu Shan. But surely there is another way?’

Ssu Lu Shan did not answer him. Instead he looked down, taking a long breath that
seemed to restore his inner calm. Then, picking up the knife again, he readied himself,
breathing deeply,
slowly, the whole of him concentrated on the point of the knife where it rested, perfectly
still, only a hand’s length from his stomach.

Li Yuan wanted to cry out; to step forward and stop Ssu Lu Shan, but he knew this
too was part of it. Part of the lesson. To engrave it in his memory.
For they are great, grave secrets
.
He shivered violently. Yes, he understood. Even this.

‘May your spirit soul rise up to Heaven,’ he said, blessing Ssu Lu Shan. He knelt
and bowed deeply to him, honouring him for what he was about to do.

‘Thank you, Prince Yuan,’ Ssu Lu Shan said softly, almost in a whisper, pride at the
honour the young prince did him making his smile widen momentarily. Then, with a sharp
intake of
breath, he thrust the knife deep into his flesh.