Wingrove, David - Chung Kuo 02 (80 page)

"How
are
you, Catherine, my dear? It's quite a while since we saw
you
here, isn't it?"

He belched, then
turned, a sneering smile lighting his reddened face.

"And who's
this?" He feigned startled surprise. "My word, if it isn't
our friend, the genius!" He made a mocking bow of politeness,
but when he straightened up his face had hardened and his eyes were
cold with malice.

"I've been
wanting to have a few words with you,
friend.
"

There was an
ugliness in the emphatic way he said the last word. A hint of
violence.

She watched, her
irritation with Ben transformed into fear for him. She knew just how
dangerous Sergey could be when he was in this kind of mood.

Ben smiled and
turned to call the waiter over. Yes, she thought,
that's best. End
it now, before it gets out of hand.
But instead of asking the
waiter to remove Sergey, Ben ordered a fresh bottle of the house wine
and an extra glass. He turned back, facing his antagonist.

"You'll
have a drink with us, I hope?"

Sergey gave a
snort of surprise and annoyance. "I really can't believe you,
Shepherd. You're such a smooth shit, aren't you? You think you can
buy the world."

"Sergey—"
she began, but he banged his fist down hard, glaring at her.

"Shut up,
Catherine! You might learn a few things about smiling boy here."

She turned away,
shutting her eyes, wishing it would stop.

Sergey leaned
forward, his whole manner openly hostile now. "You're not from
here, are you, Shepherd?"

Ben was silent,
musing.

"You're
not, are you?"

Catherine opened
her eyes and looked across. There was a faint smile on Ben's lips, a
wistful little smile.

"I've been
doing a little digging," Sergey said, leaning across the table
toward Ben, his breath heavy with wine. "And guess what I found
out?" He laughed coldly. "Our friend here bought his way
into Oxford. Just like he buys up everything. They waived the rules
to let him in."

Catherine shook
her head. "I don't follow you. I—"

Sergey huffed,
disgust written large on his face. "He's a charlatan, that's
what he is. He shouldn't be here. He's like all the other parasites.
The only difference is that he's not a Han." He laughed
brutally, then turned and looked at her again, angry now. "Unlike
the rest of us, Shepherd here has no qualifications. He's never
passed an exam in his life. As for work—" The laugh was
broken, the sneer in the voice pointed. At nearby tables people had
broken off their own conversations to see what was going on. "He's
never attended a single tutorial. Never handed in a single essay. And
as for sitting the end of year exams, forget it. He goes home before
all that. He's above it, you see. Or at least, his money is."

There was a
flutter of laughter at that. But Sergey was not to be distracted by
it. He was in full flow now, one hand pointing at his target as he
spoke.

"Yes, he's
a strange one, this one. He's rich and he's obviously connected.
Right up to the top, so they say. But he's something of a mystery,
too. He's not from the City. And that's why he despises us."

She stared at
Sergey, not understanding. What did he mean?
Everyone
came
from the City. There was nowhere else to come from. Unless . . . She
thought of the handwritten letters—of the strangeness of so
many things connected with Ben—and for a moment felt
uncertainty wash over her. Then she remembered what he was doing:
recollected what she herself had experienced in the frame.

"You're
wrong, Sergey. You don't understand—"

Sergey pulled
himself up, went around the table, and stood there, leaning over
Shepherd. "No. I understand only too well. He's a fucking toad,
that's what he is. A piece of slime."

She watched the
two of them anxiously, terrified of what was going to happen. "He's
drunk," she said pleadingly. "He doesn't mean it, Ben. It's
the drink talking." But she was afraid for him. He didn't know
Sergey, didn't know how vicious his temper was.

Ben was looking
at her, ignoring the other man. He seemed calm, unaffected by the
words, by the physical presence of the other man above him.

"Let him
have his say, love. It's only words."

It was the first
time he had called her love, but she scarcely noticed it. All she
could see was that the very mildness of Ben's words acted to inflame
Sergey's anger.

"You're
wrong," he said icily. "It's more than words."

Ben turned and
looked up at him, undaunted. "When a fool tells you you're
wrong, you rejoice."

It was too much.
Sergey lunged at him with both hands, trying to get a grip on his
neck, but Ben pushed him away and stood, facing him. Sergey was
breathing heavily, furious now. He made a second grab at Ben and got
hold of his right arm, trying to twist it round behind his back and
force him down onto his knees.

Catherine was on
her feet, screaming. "No! Please, Sergey! Don't hurt him! Please
don't hurt him!"

Waiters were
running toward them, trying to force a way through the crowd and
break it up, but the press around the table was too great.

Using brute
strength Sergey forced Ben down, grunting with the effort. Then,
suddenly, Ben seemed to yield and roll forward, throwing his opponent
off balance. Sergey stumbled and fell against a chair. When he got
up, there was blood running from beneath his eye.

"You
bastard . . ."

With a bellow of
rage he threw himself at Ben again, but Ben's reflexes were much
quicker. As Sergey lunged past him, he moved aside and caught hold of
Sergey's right hand, turning the wrist.

The snap of
breaking bones was audible, Sergey shrieked and went down onto his
knees, cradling the useless hand.

For a moment Ben
stood over him, his legs planted firmly apart, his chest rising and
falling erratically; then he shuddered.

"I didn't
mean . . ."

But it was done.
The sculptor's hand was crushed and broken. Useless, it began to
swell. Sergey pushed at it tenderly with one finger of the other
hand, then moaned and slumped forward, unconscious.

Ben stepped
back, away, his eyes taking in everything. Then he turned and looked
at Catherine. She was standing there, her hands up to her mouth,
staring down at the injured man.

"Ben . . ."
she said softly, her voice barely in control. "Oh, Ben. What
have you done?"

* *
*

meg looked
around her as they walked down Main toward the transit. The air was
still, like the air inside a sealed box. It was the first thing she
had noticed. There was no movement in the air, no rustling of leaves,
none of the small, soft sounds that moving water makes, no hum of
insects. Instead, small boys walked between the flower boxes with
spray cans, pollinating the flowers, or watered the huge oaks that
rested in deep troughs set into the floor. From their branches hung
cages—huge, ornately gilded cages filled with bright-colored
birds. But nothing flew here. Nothing bent and danced in the open
wind.

"They like
it like this," Ben said, as if that explained it all. Then he
frowned and turned to look at her. "But it doesn't satisfy.
Nothing here satisfies. It's all surfaces. There's nothing deep here.
Nothing rooted."

It was Meg's
first full morning in the City, though morning here meant little more
than a change in the intensity of the overhead lighting. Outside,
beyond the City's walls, it was still dark. But here that fact of
nature did not matter. Throughout City Europe, time was uniform,
governed not by local variation but in accordance with the rising and
setting of the sun over the City's eastern edge.

Morning. It was
one more imperfect mimicry. Like the trees, the flowers, the birds,
the word lost its sharp precision here without a sun to make it real.

They went up
fifty levels to the College grounds. This was what they termed an
"open deck" and there was a sense of space and airiness.
Here there were no tight warrens of corridors, no ceiling almost
within reach wherever one went; even so, Meg felt stifled. It was not
like being in a house, where the door opened out onto the freshness
of a garden. Here the eyes met walls with every movement. She had
forgotten how awful it was. Like being in a cage. "How can you
stand it here?"

He looked about
him, then reached out, taking her hand. "I've missed you, you
know. It's been . . . difficult here."

"Difficult?"

They had stopped
in the central hexagonal space. On every side great tiers of
balconies sloped back gently toward the ceiling, their surfaces
transparent, reflecting and refracting light.

"You should
come home, Ben. All this," she looked about her, shaking her
head, "it's no good for you."

"Maybe,"
he said, looking away from her. "And yet I've got to try to
understand it. It may be awful, but this is what is, Meg. This is all
that remains of the world we made."

She began to
shake her head, to remind him of home, but checked herself. It was
not the time to tell him why she'd come. Besides, talking of home
would only infuriate him. And perhaps he was right. Perhaps he did
have to try to understand it. So that he could return, satisfied,
knowing there was nothing else—nothing missing from his world.

"You seem
depressed, Ben. Is it just the place? Or is it something else?"

He turned, half
smiling. "No. You're right. It's not just the place." He
made a small despairing gesture, then looked up at one of the great
tiers of balconies.

Through the
glasslike walls one could see people—dozens, hundreds,
thousands of people. People, everywhere you looked. One was never
alone here. Even in his rooms he felt the press of them against the
walls.

He looked back
at her, his face suddenly naked, open to her. "I get lonely
here, Meg. More lonely than I thought it possible to feel."

She stared at
him, then lowered her eyes, disturbed by the sudden insight into what
he had been feeling. She would never have guessed.

As they walked
on he began to tell her about the fight. When he had finished she
turned to face him, horrified.

"But they
can't blame you for that, Ben. He provoked you. You were only
defending yourself, surely?"

He smiled
tightly. "Yes. And the authorities have accepted that. Several
witnesses came forward to defend me against his accusation. But that
only makes it worse, somehow."

"But why?
If it happened as you say it did."

He looked away,
staring across the open space. "I offered to pay full costs. For
a new synthetic, if necessary. But he refused. It seems he plans to
wear his broken hand like a badge."

He looked back
at her, his eyes filled with pain and hurt and anger. And something
else.

"You
shouldn't blame yourself, Ben. It was his fault, not yours."

He hesitated,
then shook his head. "So it seems. So I made it seem. But the
truth is, I enjoyed it, Meg. I enjoyed pushing him. To the limit and
then . . ." He made a small pushing movement with one hand. "I
enjoyed
it. Do you understand that, Meg?"

She watched her
brother, not understanding. It was a side of him she had never seen,
and for all his words she couldn't quite believe it.

"It's
guilt, Ben. You're feeling guilty for something that wasn't your
fault."

He laughed and
looked away. "Guilt? No, it wasn't guilt. I snapped his hand
like a rotten twig. Knowing I could do it. Don't you understand? I
could see how drunk he was, how easily he could be handled."

He turned his
head, bringing it closer to hers, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"I could
have winded him. Could have held him off until the waiters came to
break things up. But I didn't. I
wanted
to hurt him. Wanted to
see what it was like. I engineered it, Meg. Do you understand? I set
it up."

She shuddered,
then shook her head, staring at him intently now. "No." But
his eyes were fierce, assertive. What if he
had!

"So what
did you learn? What
was
it like?"

He looked down
at her hand where his own enclosed it. "If I close my eyes I can
see it all. Can feel what it was like. How easily I led him. His
weight and speed. How much pressure it took, bone against bone, to
break it.

And that
knowledge is . . ." He shrugged, then looked up at her again,
his hand exerting the gentlest of pressure on hers. "I don't
know. It's power, I guess."

"And you
enjoyed that?"

She was watching
him closely now, forcing her revulsion down, trying to help him, to
understand him.

"Perhaps
you're right," he said, ignoring her question. "Perhaps I
ought to go home."

"And yet
something keeps you."

He nodded, his
eyes still focused on her hand. "That's right. I'm missing
something. I know I am. Something I can't see."

"But
there's nothing here, Ben. Just look about you. Nothing."

He looked away,
shrugging, seeming to agree with her, but he was thinking of the
Lu
Nan Jen,
the Oven Man, and about Catherine. He had been wrong
about those things—surprised by them. So maybe there was more,
much more than he'd imagined.

He turned,
looking back at her. 'Anyway, you'd better go. Your appointment's in
an hour."

She looked back
at him, her disappointment clear. "I thought you were coming
with me."

He had told
Catherine he would meet her at eleven, had promised he would show her
more of the old paintings; but seeing the look on Meg's face, he knew
he could not let her go alone.

"All
right," he said, smiling, "I'll come to the clinic with
you. But then I've things to do. Important things."