The White Mountain (16 page)

Li Yuan nodded.

‘Then why disinherit him?'

Li Yuan looked down, thinking back to the evening when he had made that awful decision, recollecting the turmoil of his feelings. He had expected the worst – had steeled himself to face the awful fact of her betrayal – but then, when he had found it was his child, unquestionably
his
, he had been surprised to find himself not relieved but appalled, for in his mind he had already parted from her. Had cast her from him, like a broken bowl. For a long time he had sat there in an agony of indecision, unable to see things clearly. But then the memory of Han Ch'in had come to him; of his dead brother, there beside him in the orchard, a sprig of white blossom in his jet-black hair – and he had known, with a fierce certainty, what he must do.

He looked back at Ben, tears in his eyes. ‘I wanted to protect him. Do you understand that, Ben? To keep him from harm. He was Han, you see. Han Ch'in reborn.' He shook his head. ‘I know that doesn't make sense, but it's how I felt. How I still feel, every time I think about the child.'

He turned away, trying for a moment to control – to wall in – the immensity of his suffering. Then turned back, his face open, exposed to the other man, all of his grief and hope and suffering there on the surface for Ben's eyes to read.

‘I couldn't save Han Ch'in. I was too young, too powerless. But my son…' He swallowed, then looked aside. ‘If one good thing can come from my relationship with Fei Yen, let it be this: that my son can grow up safe from harm.'

Ben looked down, then, patting the shell familiarly, he stood. ‘I see.' He walked back to the edge of the pool, then turned, facing Li Yuan again. ‘Even so, you must have sons, Li Yuan. You have taken wives for that very purpose. Can you save them all? Can you keep them all from harm?'

Li Yuan was staring back at him. ‘They will be sons…'

‘And Fei's son, Han? Is he
so
different?'

Li Yuan looked aside, a slight bitterness in his face. ‘Don't tease me, Ben. I thought you of all people would understand.'

Ben nodded. ‘Oh, I do. But I wanted to make sure that you did. That you weren't trying to fool yourself over your real motives. You say the boy reminds you of Han. That may be so, and I understand your reasons for wanting to keep him out of harm's way. But it's more than that, isn't it? You still love Fei Yen. And the child… the child is the one real thing that came of your love.'

Li Yuan looked back at him gratefully.

Ben sighed. ‘Oh, I understand clearly enough, Li Yuan. You wanted to
be
her, didn't you? To
become
her. And the child… that's the closest you'll ever come to it.'

Li Yuan shivered, acknowledging the truth. ‘Then I was right to act as I did?'

Ben turned, looking down, watching the dark shapes of the carp move slowly in the depths. ‘You remember the picture I drew for you, the day of your betrothal ceremony?'

Li Yuan swallowed. ‘I do. The picture of Lord Yi and the ten suns – the ten dark birds in the
fu sang
tree.'

‘Yes. I saw it then. Saw clearly what would come of it.'

‘To the bone.'

Ben looked back at the young T'ang, seeing he understood. ‘Yes. You remember. The mistake was made back there. You should never have married her. You should have left her as your dream, your ideal.' He shrugged. ‘The rest, I'm afraid, was inevitable. And unfortunate, for some mistakes can never be rectified.'

Li Yuan moved closer, his hand resting loosely on Ben's arm, his eyes boring into Ben's, pleading for something that Ben could not give him.

‘But what else
could
I have done?'

‘Nothing,' Ben said. ‘There was nothing else you could have done. But still it isn't right. You tried to shoot the moon, Li Yuan, like the great Lord Yi of legend. And what but sorrow could come of that?'

It was dawn in the Otzalen Alps and a cold wind blew down the valley from the north. Stefan Lehmann stood there on the open mountainside, his furs gathered tight about him, the hood pulled up over his head. He squinted into the shadows down below, trying to make out details, but it was hard to distinguish anything, so much had changed.

Where there had been snow-covered slopes and thick pine forest was now only barren rock – rock charred and fused to a glossy hardness in places. Down there where the entrance had been was now a crater almost a
li
across and half a
li
deep.

He went down, numbed by what he saw. Where the land folded and rose slightly he stopped, resting against a crag. All about him were the stumps of trees, charred and splintered by the explosions that had rent the mountain. He shuddered and found he could scarcely catch his breath.

All gone
…

A thin veil of snow began to fall, flecks on the darkness below where he stood. He made himself go on, clambering down the treacherous slope until he stood there at the crater's edge, looking down into the great circle of its ashen bowl.

Shadow filled the crater like a liquid. Snowflakes drifted into that darkness and seemed to blink out of existence, their glistening brightness extinguished. He watched them fall, strangely touched by their beauty. For a time his mind refused to acknowledge what had been done. It was easier to stand there, emptied of all thought, all enterprise, and let the cold and delicate beauty of the day seep into the bones, like ice into the rock. But he knew that the beauty of it was a mask, austere and terrible. Inhumanly so. For, even as he watched, the whiteness spread, thickening, concealing the dark and glassy surface.

At his back the mountains thrust high into the thin, cold air. He looked up into the greyness of the sky, then turned, looking across at the nearest peaks. The early daylight threw them into sharp relief against the sky. Huge, jagged shapes they were, like the broken, time-bared jawbone of a giant. Beneath, the rest lay in shadow, in vast depths of blue shading into impenetrable darkness. Cloud drifted in between, casting whole slopes of white into sudden shade, obscuring the crisp, paleocrystic forms. He watched, conscious of the utter silence of that desolate place, his warm breath pluming in the frigid air. Then, abruptly, he turned away, beginning to climb the slope.

The rawness of the place appalled some part of him that wanted warmth and safety, yet the greater part of him – that part he termed his ‘true self' – recognized itself in all of this. It was not a place for living, yet living things survived here, honed to the simplest of responses by the savagery of the climate; made lithe and fierce and cunning by necessity. So he, then. Rather this than the deadness of the City – that sterile womb from which nothing new came forth.

He reached the crest and paused, looking back. The past with all its complex schemes was gone. It lay behind him now. From here on he would do it his way; would become a kind of ghost, a messenger from the outside, flitting between the levels, singular and deadly.

A bleak smile came to his albinic eyes, touched the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. He felt no grief for what had happened, only new determination. This had not changed things so much as clarified them. He knew now what to do; how to harness all the hatred that he felt for them. Hatred enough to fill the whole of Chung Kuo with death.

The cloud moved slowly south. Suddenly he was in sunlight again. He turned to his right, looking up towards the summit. There, at the top of the world, an eagle circled the naked point of rock, its great wings extended fully. The sight was unexpected yet significant; another sign for him to read. He watched it for some time then moved on, descending into the valley, heading north again towards his scantily provisioned cave. It would be hard, but in the spring he would emerge again, leaner and hungrier than before but also purer, cleaner. Like a new-forged sword, cast in the fire and tempered in the ice.

He laughed – a cold, humourless sound – then gritted his teeth and began to make his way down, watching his footing, careful not to fall.

I
t was dusk on Mars. On the Plain of Elysium it was minus seventy-six degrees and falling. Great swathes of shadow lay to the north, beneath the slopes of Chaos, stretching slowly, inexorably towards the great dome of Kang Kua City. Earth lay on the horizon, a circle of pure whiteness, back-lit by the sun. The evening star, they called it here. Chung Kuo. The place from which they had come, centuries before.

DeVore stood at the window of the tower, looking out across the great dome of Kang Kua towards the northern desert and the setting sun. The messenger had come an hour back, bringing news from Earth. He smiled. And so it had ended, his group surrounded, his pieces taken from the board. Even so, he was pleased with the way his play had gone. It was not often that one gained so much for so small a sacrifice.

He turned, looking back into the room. The morph sat at the table, its tautly muscled skin glistening in the dull red light. It was hunched forward, its hands placed either side of the board, as if considering its next play. So patient it was; filled with an inhuman watchfulness, with an inexhaustible capacity for waiting.

He went across and sat, facing the faceless creature. This was the latest of his creations; the closest yet to the human. Closest and yet furthest, for few could match it intellectually or physically.

He took a white stone from the bowl and leaned forward, placing it in
shang
, the south, cutting the line of black stones that extended from the corner.

‘Your move,' he said, sitting back.

Each stone he placed activated a circuit beneath the board, registering in the creature's mind. Even so, the illusion that the morph had actually seen him place the stone was strong. Its shoulders tensed as it leaned closer, seeming to study the board, then it nodded and looked up, as if meeting his eyes.

Again it was only the copy – the counterfeit – of a gesture, for the smooth curve of its head was unmarked; like unmoulded clay, or a shell waiting to be formed.

So too its personality.

He looked away, a faint smile on his lips. Even in those few moments it had grown much darker. The lights of the great dome, barely evident before, now glowed warmly, filling the cold and barren darkness.

‘Did you toast my death, Li Yuan?' he asked the darkness softly. ‘Did you think it finally done between us?'

But it wasn't done. It was far from being done.

He thought back, remembering the day when he had sent the ‘copy' out, two weeks after the assassination squad. It had never known; never for a moment considered itself anything but real. DeVore, it had called itself, fancying that that was what it had always been. And so, in a sense, it had. Was it not his genetic material, after all, that had gone into the being's making? Were they not his thoughts, his attitudes that had gone to shape its mind? Well, then, perhaps, in a very real sense, it
was
himself. An imperfect copy, perhaps, but good enough to fool all those it had had to face; even, when it turned to face the mirror, itself.

He watched the morph lay its stone, shadowing his own one line out while at the same time protecting the connection between its groups. He smiled, pleased. It was the move he himself would have made.

Shadowing… it was an important part of the game. As important, perhaps, as any of the final skirmishes. One had to sketch out one's territory well in advance, while at the same time plotting to break up one's opponent's future schemes: the one need balanced finely against the other.

DeVore leaned across and took a stone from the bowl, holding it a moment between his fingers, finding its cool, polished weight strangely satisfying, then set it down in
p'ing
, the east, beginning a new play.