Authors: Gwyneth Jones
‘I could add some new names.’
‘Add them.’
Ax began to list Sphere and Chinese luminaries, sufficiently unhappy about the global ban to be obvious; starting at the top. He spoke slowly, sticking to the names he was absolutely sure of. People under totalitarian rule say one thing and mean another, but the code’s transparent when you have the cipher. She raised a hand, before he ran out of the good stuff. He saw her recalibrating, finding her depth, not at all phased. A top predator challenged, completely fluid, completely open to her own best advantage—
‘So this is your game!’ cried Wang. ‘You expect Elder Sister to talk with the traitors who want to practice forbidden science!’
Elder Sister’s head snapped around, she silenced him with a phoenix stare of astonishment: from which Wang visibly recoiled.
Dried-up old Hu had the air of a man who was determined not to open his mouth at all. It was strange to think that he was probably around the same age as the woman clothed in youth, and crackling with energy, beside him.
‘I see you came equipped, Mr Pender, with the tools of your forbidden trade. I presume that means you have something to contribute to this discussion?’
‘Well, yeah, I do.’ Sage took the board from its case, and laid it on the table. ‘Hardly dyslexic at all, now,’ he remarked, with a friendly smile. ‘It’s clearing up nicely. But this isn’t going to be text-based. Where shall we start? I could show you the working record of a shoestring experiment we did last spring, when we sent someone, bi-location, to a low-orbit satellite. Dilip Krishnachandran,’ he added, deliberately, ‘was the guinea pig that time. A very brave guy, my friend DK. It was trifling of course, compared to what your taikonauts are up to in space, but we were pleased with it. That’s one way we could go… The other way is, we could look at a shorter trip, a place we found and the information I slurped up while I was there.’
It was quietly done. Insolent words, strangely at odds with the presence of the Triumvirate here, defenceless, simply asking for a hearing.
‘I presume you must be familiar with the mechanisms of b-loc? Maybe you have a version in development? Or were you just set up to capture anything that had the sig of forbidden tech, Hu?’
Please take this well, planet-destroyer. You’re what we have, art of the possible, we’ve worked with far worse people. Be the rightwise born world-conqueror Ax thinks you are, and be ready to deal—
‘Elder Sister, you once told me I shouldn’t make immersions, because I was meddling with the fabric of reality, and this was terribly dangerous. You’re right, mind/matter tech is terribly dangerous. It’s Galileo’s moons. It’s an extension of our human reach into realms that were mystic and unknowable an’ heaven only knows where it will lead us. But we seem to be on the same page
vis à vis
reaching into the unknown. Can we agree to that, and move on?’
Sage’s hands, with the long, square-tipped artist’s fingers, rested lightly on the closed board. The Generals kept quiet. Elder Sister looked to Ax, her expression hard to read. But Ax had nothing to add. Conquering the world is no account, a spectacle, a firework show. You just keep moving until your armies cover the board. If you want to
rule
the world, and make it anything approaching the Good State, that’s a different game, different rules. You know it. Your choice,
Shi Huangdi
.
Fiorinda thought of the courtesan. Did she really just randomly b-loc call him, to see what would happen, because of something Wang had let slip? And then what? What did the shade tell her? How was she caught? The way that kind of mystery is never solved until years later, when nobody cares. The way all these tumultuous events, in England, since the invasion, would blur into a paragraph. She looked at her own younger face up on the walls and had the eerie feeling that she must be hundreds of years old: a time traveller from an elder world.
‘Once,’ she said, ‘on the brink of modern China’s birth, a thinker called Lian Quichao asked,
how can the nation be strong?
When the people have knowledge, the nation is strong.
How can the people have knowledge?
When all the people under heaven read books and recognise characters, they will have knowledge. He spoke of written language. How strong will the World State be, when all the nations can read and write the code of reality?’
‘Well put,’ said Elder Sister. ‘A distant dream, but a good dream.’ She smiled, warm and clear. ‘I would like to see the low-earth orbit experiment, Sage. Soon; although not this afternoon. That sounds very interesting. As you are to become Sphere partners, your
shū
applications will be the property of the Sphere. And I will decide when and how the liberalisation occurs.’
‘Of course,’ said Ax.
The Generals relaxed, in a slow-taken breath. They must have been very scared. For a few days it must have looked as if the glorious unchecked rise of the whole great plan had hit a snag. Or, my God,
worse
, as if Elder Sister’s legend was about to get tarnished—
But it’s over, all smiles.
Fiorinda took a jewellery case from her bag.
‘You gave me some fine diamonds, Elder Sister. I have something here I would like to give to you. Our Crown Jewels are not personal property, nor State property. They belong to the reigning Sovereign, whoever that may be. We have decided this is ours to pass on, and that it ought to be yours.’
She offered the case. Elder Sister took it, opened it and set it down. A large unset white diamond lay in the velvet, a stellar brilliant, oval in shape; it had to be more than 100 carats. A very distinctive jewel.
‘This is the Koh-i-Noor.’
‘Yes,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Not quite a mountain. Some people say Queen Victoria shouldn’t have had it recut. But it’s not bad, is it?’
‘This was the property of the Queen of England,’ murmured Elder Sister. She looked at Fiorinda frankly. ‘You are too generous. This should be yours.’
‘The Moghuls used to say the Koh-i-Noor belongs by right to the ruler of the world.’ Fiorinda looked to Ax, and to Sage, they nodded. ‘We want that to be you.’
Elder Sister bowed a little, from the waist. ‘I am honoured. I am honoured by your trust, my three friends. I shall deserve it. I sincerely want to be the person Ax mentioned, ah, the other night.’
‘The baby clothes are
lovely
,’ said Fiorinda, discreetly accepting some kind of unspoken apology. ‘She’s still growing into some of them, which was truly thoughtful. I like “a girl is a boy, a woman is a man”. I
like
that: it unfolds.’
Elder Sister gazed for a moment longer on her new treasure, then she shut the case, and it was as if a light had gone out.
‘The meeting with the Utopian cadres will go ahead. England, and nominally Europe, will have partner status before next spring. This will entail the withdrawal of the 2
nd
AMID army, which I’m sure is high on your very bold, very Chinese agenda.’ She paused. ‘Now I will say something that goes no further than this room, and I will not elaborate. Until today we have been mortally afraid of each other, for no reason. From today, we share a sacred trust. Never again. Do you understand me?’
Never again.
On Ax’s second date with Elder Sister she took him into the garden that lay beyond the small doors in the Fu hall. Ax didn’t say anything, but she spotted that he didn’t like the marvellous scenery. She turned it off, leaving them with the real dimensions of a courtyard from old China: flowering shrubs in big pots, a rectangular pool bordered in dark green, shining stone. There were pretty fish in the pool, small grey and yellow koi; a little fat Buddha sat on a plinth in the middle.
She told him that the
di
had been the PLA’s downfall.
‘We had developed it long before the A-team experiments began, quite independently, from our own take on mind/matter. Deep in the heart of the semi-living particles there are transactions that pass the barrier between information space and normal space. The technology was secret because in China most people dislike the ideas you call “neurophysics”, they find them uncanny. It stayed secret because mystery had become a vital part of our aura. After the A-team event we were faced with a dilemma, but the right strategy seemed clear.’
‘Deny everything.’
‘Protect our superiority, and root out every threat. So we came to England as industrial spies, as well as conquerors. It was an error. We should have simply destroyed everything we found, then you would never have caught us out.’
The
way
they’d been caught out, the capture of DK’s virtual self, was not to be discussed. Can’t go there, loss of face territory; and that’s fine by me. He thought of the piled bodies he’d been shown in the Memorial Hall here at Reading, his reaction observed by the clinically attentive Lieutenant Chu. The destruction of Toby Starborn, and God knows how many others who had played forbidden music in her courts. They were one with the hecatombs of dead in the wake of her liberating progress: and the good tyrant felt no remorse. She has no reason to feel remorse, he reminded himself, because she is genuinely doing her best. He wondered how much she had known about what was going on in Cumbria. She’d certainly known about Sellafield, though not about the military option. Possibly she’d known about the forbidden tech up there; to an extent. And yet she’d held off, she’d given Ax a chance to talk them down—
She slaughters when she feels she must, for China. Accept that.
‘The
di
formula, and its relatives (yeah, he thought. Those expensive airships for instance?) will remain secret. They are part of our superiority. The western evolutionary lines, bi-location, and immersion code, will be vetted carefully and encouraged under close control. Would you really have tried to cause a global scandal? Shown us up for hypocrites?’
‘We didn’t believe it would come to that.’
She grinned, charmingly. ‘Oh no. You are our friends, you only wanted to show us that our security
could be
compromised, and that our secrets
could be
discovered. Ax, you keep forgetting that I know about you. You and that insolent “gentle giant” hacked the Internet Commissioners’ data quarantine. We know you did that, because you came to Asia, Hiroshima wasn’t it? Just to see if it could be done.’
‘We shouldn’t have. It was an arrogant, pointless trick. I have a mania for gambling. Oh, and my vanity is disgusting.’
She lay with her cheek pillowed on one slim, outstretched arm, watching him. ‘Deep in his heart, Ax Preston is convinced that he is the world’s model of rectitude. He can fail, he can make terrible mistakes, he
never
descends to moral error. It’s your great strength. It makes you, in your way, invincible. But as a result you don’t forgive people easily, and you take your own falls too hard.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Something I feel about you.’
A harvest moon had risen, full-bellied and yellow. It eased above the coping stones of the courtyard wall and Ax felt himself slipping backwards, falling off the curved flank of the world. Facing the wrong way… He understood, this time, that it was conflicted feelings causing the disquiet, not the
feng shui
of Reading Arena. A little touch of transient psychosis. He would lie here and make love with the woman who had ordered the Reading Massacre; who had arguably kept his friend (not Dilip, but something of Dilip) alive in the moment of burning to death; for months. And she had touched his heart. He looked into Li Xifeng’s eyes and saw someone who had ordered the massacres, who had condemned the prisoners, and was trying to stay human. He saw himself. An utterly different scale? Fuck that. She’s made ruthless choices, well
so have we
. What about when the invasion happened, and Ax Preston decided, in cold blood, to let the Chinese do his dirty work? Say I was helpless: I was not. I chose a certain course of action—
The confliction was getting to him. If she asked again, he would have to say no. But he knew that Elder Sister had divined this. There would be no third invitation, this was the last time. Talk, say whatever comes into your head.
‘Fiorinda can give me hell,’ he said, speaking to
jiejie
, the Daoist Nun, as to a true friend. ‘But I’m sure of her. She gives me hell the moment I step out of line, but she’s part of me. I’ll
never
be sure of Sage. I don’t know how to deal with how much I love him, I’m a bastard to him sometimes… Like when he insisted his dad had to know we were lovers. I didn’t get it. I said, if Joss wants to think we’re very good friends who share a girl, strictly no funny business, what’s the problem, it’s no big deal. This being Joss Pender, the software baron, you see—’
‘One of your most useful supporters.’
‘Yeah,’ Ax sighed, hard. ‘And a conservative type.
It’s no big deal
. God. Aeons ago now, in our catalogue of disasters, but I can hear myself saying it.’
‘There you go again. That doesn’t sound like a very shocking crime. Tell me, was it real? The time at Warren Fen, when A—’ She still had trouble giving Sage his name. ‘When Sage played “Apache” with you two. Norman says he was miming, but I couldn’t believe you three would
do
that.’
‘Hahaha.’
‘You were faking! You
wankers
!’ Elder Sister pounced on the English word with glee. ‘Ha! Now I know your secret and I shall destroy your legend!’ She fell on him, they tussled, it swiftly became very sexual. Ax reached for the six-pack he had tucked under a convenient cushion. He was old-fashioned about play-away sex, full jacket, accept no substitutes, no matter what. He’d used condoms last time.
Elder Sister’s slim hand came down over his.
‘No.’
‘Oh… Well, okay.’
He let it go and buried the implication: something he would not think about.
In the morning Lieutenant Chu drove him to Reading Station. He got out of the car. ‘Keep me on the path to lasting glory,’ said the spruce young girl-soldier.
‘You make too much of me,’ said Ax. ‘I’m not who you think I am.’
She looked up at him, wide-open. ‘You have become my superstition.’