Son of Heaven (53 page)

He looked across. Wang was watching him still, the vaguest suggestion of amusement in the corners of his mouth.

The castle was behind them now, ahead lay only countryside.

‘Cadre Wang…?’

‘Yes, General Jiang?’

‘Do not try my patience. Not today.’

Jake woke, startled into wakefulness. Then he realized. It was Peter. Peter had been shaking him.

‘Wha-ah?’ he drawled lazily. He had been having a dream. About his childhood. About the time before the accident.

He closed his eyes again. ‘’S’ too early…’

Peter shook him again. ‘Dad… you gotta get up. Didn’t you hear? We’ve got to go to the main hall. We’ve got to assemble there…’

Assemble. Now there was a word he hadn’t heard in years.

‘In a minute…’

He tried to pull the sheets up over him, but Peter pulled them off.

‘Come on… we’ll get in trouble if we’re late.’

Jake sat up, yawning. ‘Trouble?’

Then he saw it all. The long rows of beds. The identical-looking people with their shaven heads and ochre-coloured one-pieces.

He reached up, felt the stubble on his scalp.

No dream then. This is it.

He turned sharply, looking to see where Mary and the girls were.

They had arrived late last night. He remembered that now. Remembered the showers, the electric shavers, how all dignity had been stripped from them. Oh, and especially the guards, who’d
seemed to take a salacious delight in watching their public humiliation.

The four of them were there, only yards away.

‘Yes,’ Mary said, as if she read his mind. ‘I know what it looks like. But it’ll grow back.’

Cath, standing beside her mother, looked like she might cry at any moment, so too Meg, but Beth stood taller, looked stronger for it.

‘Like Ripley,’ he said, and saw her smile at that.

Peter too had been shaved. Only on him it looked almost natural.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve been called twice now!’

‘Called…? What, for breakfast?’

‘Here…’ Peter said, shoving a sheet of paper into his hand. ‘You’re supposed to have read it.’

Jake yawned again. ‘What’s this?
Wan Chi Kong Ch’ian
,
Wo Chiang Lai
…’

‘No, Dad… The other side…’

Jake turned the flimsy sheet of paper over. ‘Forget Past, Grasp Future… A lecture…’

‘And we’re obliged to attend. So come on…’

He let Peter drag him by the arm, Mary and the girls following behind.

Jake looked round, blew Mary a kiss. ‘You look stunning…’

‘And you look like a wrinkled prune…’ she said, and laughed.

The lecture hall was just ahead. Guards were hurrying people inside.

Jake slowed, then turned to them.

‘Listen… whatever happens, we have each other, yeah? And we’re going to get through this. We’re survivors. We always have been. And this new city of theirs…
we’re going to make a new home there. That’s the important thing, to make a new home. Somewhere safe. Somewhere we’re not going to be moved on from.’

Mary stepped across, taking his arm.

‘You heard your dad. Now come on… let’s see what’s in store for us.’

‘Ma Feng…’ Jiang said, talking into the radio connection. ‘What’s happening down there?’

They were hovering above the town. Below them they could see bitter hand-to-hand fighting as Jiang’s men tried to take it from Branagh’s men. Several buildings were on fire, and
there was sporadic gunfire.

There was a hiss and crackle, and then Ma Feng’s voice came through. ‘It’s no good, General Jiang… they’re fighting to the last. We’ve lost a dozen
men… maybe more…’

Jiang sat back. He had persevered for an hour now, and there’d been no sign of the locals giving an inch. There was only one thing for it.

‘Okay, Captain Ma… pull our men out.’

‘Sir!’

The hiss and crackle died.

Jiang took a long breath.

‘Are you sure that’s wise?’

Jiang turned, looking to Wang. ‘Are you still here?’

‘Where else would I be?’

Where else, indeed, but close enough to torment me.

Jiang sighed. It was no good. He would have to give it up.

There was a hiss and crackle. ‘Okay, sir… we’re out.’

Jiang could see his men down below, spilling out of the main gate, small groups of them giving covering fire.

All smart and efficient
, Jiang thought. Only sometimes it wasn’t enough. Especially against desperate men.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘withdraw as far as the landing craft.’

The craft were further down the Weymouth road, some half a kilometre distant.

Jiang returned his attention to the town. Now that they were not under fire, some of the townsfolk were taking pot shots at Jiang’s ship. He could hear the bullets pinging off the outer
hull.

Jiang took a long breath.

‘Okay… Pilot Wu… return their fire.’

He felt the whole ship shudder as the rockets were released, four great salvoes of them, whooshing down into those ancient streets, the shock wave lifting them even as Pilot Wu edged the craft
away from the roiling mushrooms of flame.

Jiang Lei screened his eyes. The city could not be stopped, nor delayed, and if these people did not want to be part of the new world, then they would die.

Even so, as he watched the burning town, he felt a profound sense of failure. A sense that he was somehow tainted by the act. Brave men had died. And women and children too.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly, more to himself than anyone else. ‘Let’s be gone from here.’ But as he sat back, he saw how Wang was watching the screen, a look of sheer
delight lighting his face.

‘Kuan Yin! Look at those bastards burn!’

Jiang had them set down by the landing craft, going out to speak with his men. Dorchester was gone, and Branagh’s little army with it. It was now only a question of
processing the surrounding countryside. But first there was one last thing to do.

‘Captain Ma,’ he said, beckoning him across.

Ma Feng bowed low. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘Bring two of your best men. There’s something I want to look at.’

‘Yes, sir!’

He was back in a minute, the trusty Shen and Chang in tow. Seeing them, Jiang Lei smiled.

‘Okay… inside… we’ve work to do.’

As they spilled into the cabin, Wang looked disgruntled at having to share it with common soldiers.

‘General Jiang… is this necessary?’

Jiang barely glanced at him. ‘There’s something I’ve got to go and see… If you want to be dropped off…?’

Wang looked intrigued. Jiang knew what was going through his head. He was wondering what they could possibly have to go and do so urgently.

‘No, no… you can drop me afterwards.’

‘Okay… then everyone strap in tightly. Pilot Wu…’

‘Yes, General?’

‘Set a course north.’

He saw how Wang narrowed his eyes at that.

The craft lifted, slowly turning in the air, then headed north.

‘Captain Ma…?’

‘Yes, General?’

‘Remember what we were talking about, oh, a few weeks ago now…?’

Ma Feng began to shake his head, then stopped, surprise creeping onto his face. ’You mean…?’

‘I mean precisely that.’

‘But General…’ Only, seeing the certainty in Jiang Lei’s face, he bowed his head.

Ma Feng unbuckled his belt, then, looking to Shen and Chang, nodded towards Wang Yu-Lai.

‘Shen… Chang… give me a hand a moment. We need to show the good Cadre something…’

Wang looked about him, suspicion in his eyes. ‘What is this? What…?’

Shen punched him in the face, silencing him, then lifted the semiconscious Wang onto his shoulder with Chang’s help.

‘I want him conscious,’ Jiang said coldly. ‘I want him to know what’s happening to him.’

The three men nodded. Shen and Chang went through, carrying Wang, but Ma Feng lingered.

‘General…’

‘Yes, Ma Feng?’

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

Jiang nodded.

‘You know they will only send a replacement.’

‘I know.’

Ma Feng hesitated again, then, ‘You know he might be worse.’

‘Worse than Wang Yu-Lai? He might. But until one of them learns how to fly…’

Jiang Lei chuckled to himself.

Ma Feng’s eyes widened, then he too laughed, seeing the joke.

Wiping away a tear, Ma Feng straightened up then and made a deep bow to his general, his whole manner serious again. His eyes respectful.

‘Then it is done, my lord…’

Just south of Cerne Abbas, out on the Black Hill, two men were walking, following the course of the river to their left. To their right and above them, dominating the view
from the air, was the massive, one-hundred-and-eighty-feet-tall figure of the Cerne Abbas giant. The most ancient of fertility symbols, carved from the chalk, its whiteness contrasted with the
green of the hillside, its massive phallus thrusting ahead of it, as it had these past three thousand years and more.

It was a clear, bright day. Hearing the craft speeding towards them from the south, they dropped down behind some bushes, afraid of being seen out in the open.

There had been a number of craft in the air that past week, but this one wasn’t heading west. Nor was it a transporter. This was much smaller, much more elegant than the big troop ships.
More than that, it was heading straight towards them.

As it flew overhead, something dropped from the back of the craft. It was a man in bright red silks, his arms and legs flailing as he fell, a long, shrill shriek escaping him, cut short as he
impacted with the ground.

They hid, watching the craft slowly circle overhead, then turn and head south again. Only then, when it was gone, did they get up and, running across to where the man had fallen, stand beside
the obscenely flattened body, spread-eagled on the exposed chalk.

When they spoke, it was in the rich Dorset dialect of the locality.

‘’Ow fast d’you think ’e were goin’?’

‘Pretty fuckin’ fast!’

The two men laughed.

‘Well,’ the first said. ‘Best get packed, I guess. Get away from ’ere.’

‘Who d’you think ’e were then?’

‘Fuck knows. Don’t really care, meself. Serve ’em right if they all topped ’emselves. The more as falls from the sky the better, I say. But those ’oo dropped
’im… damn fine shots, eh? At least one o’ those buggers ’as a sense of humour.’

The other nodded. Thinking about it, it had the look of target practice. And they’d got a bullseye, no doubt about that… bang on the tip of the giant’s cock!

‘What a way to die, eh?’

The two turned away, chuckling now, slapping each other’s backs and laughing.

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