The Art of War (26 page)

It was not a moment too soon. Tender Willow’s knife missed his shoulder by a fraction, tearing into the silken cushioning of the chair, gashing the wooden beading. Wang turned quickly, facing her, twice her weight and a full
ch’i
taller – but still the girl came on, her face filled with hatred and disgust.

As she thrust the knife at him a second time, he moved forward, knocking her arm away, then, grabbing her neck brutally, he smashed her head down into the arm of the chair, once, then a second time. She fell and lay still.

He stood there a moment, his breath hissing sharply from him, then turned and kicked out at Sweet Rain again, catching her in the stomach, so that she wheezed, her breath taken from her. His face was dark now, twisted with rage.

‘You foxes...’ he said quietly, his voice trembling. ‘You foul little bitches...’ He kicked again, catching the fallen maid fully on the side of the head, then turned back and spat on the other girl.

‘You’re dead. Both of you.’

He looked about him, noting the broken bowl and, beside it, a single white jade pin, then bent down and recovered the knife from the floor. He straightened up, then, with a slight shudder, walked to the door and threw it open, calling the guards.

PART ELEVEN

SHELLS

AUTUMN 2206

Between the retina and the higher centres of the cortex the innocence of vision is irretrievably lost – it has succumbed to the suggestion of a whole series of hidden persuaders.

—Arthur Koestler,
The Act Of Creation

That which we experience in dreams, if we experience it often, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as is anything we ‘really’ experience: we are by virtue of it richer or poorer.

—Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good And Evil

Chapter 47

THE INNOCENCE OF VISION

B
en came upon the cottage from the bay path, climbing the steep slope. At the lower gate he turned, looking back across the bay. New growth crowded the distant foreshore, masking where the fire had raged five years earlier. Only at the hill’s crest, where the old house had stood, did the new vegetation end. There the land was fused a glassy black.

The tall seventeen-year-old shook his head, then turned to face the cottage. Landscott was a long, low shape against the hill, its old stone walls freshly whitewashed, its roof thatched. A flower garden stretched up to it, its blooms a brilliant splash of colour beside the smooth greenness of the lawn. Behind and beside it other cottages dotted the hillside, untenanted yet perfectly maintained. Shells, they were. Part of the great illusion. His eyes passed over them quickly, used to the sight.

He looked down at his left hand where it rested on the gatepost, conscious of a deep, unsatisfied itch at the join between the wrist and the new hand. The kind of itch you couldn’t scratch, because it was inside, beneath the flesh. The join was no longer sore, the hand no longer an unaccustomed weight at the end of his arm, as it had been for the first year. Even so, something of his initial sense of awkwardness remained.

The scar had healed, leaving what looked like a machined ridge between what was his and what had been given. The hand itself looked natural enough, but that was only illusion. He had seen what lay beneath the fibrous dermal layer. It was much stronger than his right hand and, in subtle ways, much better – far quicker in its responses. He turned it, moving it like the machine it was rather than the hand it pretended to be, then smiled to himself. If he wished he could have it strengthened and augmented: could transform it into any kind of tool he needed.

He let it fall, then began to climb again, crossing the gradual slope of the upper garden. Halfway across the lawn he slowed then stopped, surprised, hearing music from inside the cottage. Piano music. He tilted his head, listening, wondering who it was. The phrase was faltering at first, the chords uncertain. Then, a moment later, the same chords were repeated, confidently this time, all sense of hesitation gone.

Curious, he crossed the lawn and went inside. The music was coming from the living-room. He went to the doorway and looked in. At the far side of the room his mother was sitting at a piano, her back to him, her hands resting lightly on the keys.

‘Mother?’ Ben frowned, not understanding. The repetition of the phrase had been assured, almost professional, and his mother did not play.

She turned, surprised to see him there, a slight colour at her cheeks. ‘I…’ Then she laughed and shook her head. ‘Yes, it was me. Come. I’ll show you.’

He went across and sat beside her on the long, bench-like piano seat. ‘This is new,’ he said, looking down at the piano. Then, matter-of-factly, he added, ‘Besides, you don’t play.’

‘No,’ she said, but began anyway: a long, introductory passage, more complex than the phrase she had been playing – a fast, passionate piece played with a confidence and skill the earlier attempt had lacked. He watched her hands moving over the keys, surprised and delighted.

‘That’s beautiful,’ he said when she had finished. ‘What was it?’

‘Chopin. From the Preludes.’ She laughed, then turned and glanced at him, her eyes bright with enjoyment.

‘I still don’t understand. That was excellent.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’ She leaned back, staring down at the keyboard. ‘I’m rather rusty. It’s a long while since I played.’

‘Why didn’t you play before now?’

‘Because it’s an obsession.’

She had said it without looking at him, as if it explained everything. He looked down at her hands again, saw how they formed shapes above the keys.

‘I had to think of you and Meg. I couldn’t do both, you understand. Couldn’t play and look after you. And I wanted to bring you up. I didn’t trust anyone else to do the job.’

‘So you gave up
this
?’

If anything, he understood it less. To have such a gift and not use it… it was not possible.

‘Oh, there were plenty of times when I felt like playing. I ached to do it. It was like coming off a drug. A strong, addictive drug. And in denying that part of me I genuinely felt less human. But there was no choice. I wanted to be a mother to you, not simply a presence flitting through your lives.’

He frowned, not following her. It made him realize how little he knew about her. She had always been too close, too familiar. He had never thought to ask her about herself, about her life before she had met his father.

‘My own mother and father were never there, you see.’ Her hands formed a major chord, then two quick minors. It sounded familiar, yet, like the Chopin, he couldn’t place it.

‘I was determined not to do to you what they did to me. I remember how isolated I felt. How unloved.’ She smiled, reaching across to take his right hand – his human hand – and squeeze it.

‘I see.’

It awed him to think she had done that for them. He ran the piece she had played through his memory, seeing where she placed emphasis, where she slowed. He could almost feel the music. Almost.

‘How does it
feel
to be able to do that?’

She drew in a long breath, looking through him, suddenly distant, her eyes and mouth lit with the vaguest of smiles, then shook her head. ‘No. I can’t say. There aren’t the words for it. Raised up, I guess. Changed.
Different
somehow. But I can’t say what, exactly.’

For the first time in his life Ben felt something like envy, watching her face. Not a jealous, denying envy, but a strong desire to emulate.

‘But why now?’

‘Haven’t you guessed?’ She laughed and placed his right hand on the keyboard. ‘You’re usually so quick.’

‘You’re going to teach me.’

‘Both of you,’ she answered, getting up and coming behind him so that she could move his arms and manipulate his hands. ‘Meg asked me to. And she wouldn’t learn unless you could too.’

He thought about it a moment, then nodded.

‘What was that piece you were playing when I came in? It sounded as if you were learning it for the first time, yet at the same time knew it perfectly.’

She leaned closer, her warmth pressed against his shoulder, her long, dark hair brushing against his cheek. ‘It wasn’t originally a piece for piano, that’s why. It was scored for the string and woodwind sections of an orchestra. It’s by Grieg. “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen”.’ She placed her hands either side of his own and repeated the phrase he had heard, then played a second, similar one.

‘That’s nice,’ he said. Its simplicity appealed to him.

‘You came back early,’ she said. ‘What’s up? Didn’t you want to go into town?’

He turned, meeting her eyes. ‘Father called. The T’ang has asked him to stay on a few days.’

There was a brief movement of disappointment in her face. It had been three months since she had seen Hal.

‘A few more days,’ she said quietly. ‘Ah, well, it’ll soon pass.’ Then, smiling, she put her hand on his arm. ‘Perhaps we’ll have a picnic. You, me and Meg. Like old times. What do you think?’

Ben looked back at her, seeing her anew, the faintest smile playing on his lips and in his eyes. ‘It would be nice,’ he said. But already his thoughts were moving on, his mind toying with the possibilities of the keyboard. Pushing things further. ‘Yes,’ he said, getting up and going over to her. ‘Like old times.’

The next morning found Ben in the shadowed living-room, crouched on his haunches, staring intently at the screen that filled half the facing wall. He was watching one of the special Security reports that had been prepared for his father some months before, after the T’ang of Africa’s assassination. It was an interesting document, not least because it showed things that were thought too controversial – too inflammatory – for general screening.

The Seven had acted swiftly after Wang Hsien’s death, arresting the last few remnants of opposition at First Level – thus preventing a further outbreak of the War between the factions in the Above – but even they had been surprised by the extent of the rioting lower down the City. There had been riots before, of course, but never on such a widespread scale, nor with such appalling consequences. Officials of the Seven, Deck Magistrates amongst them, had been beaten and killed. Security posts had been destroyed and Security troops forced to pull out of some stacks in fear of their lives. Slowly, very slowly, things had settled, the fires burning themselves out, and in some parts of the City – in East Asia and North America, particularly – Security had moved back within days to quell the last few pockets of resistance. Order had been restored. But for how long?

He knew it was a warning. A sign of things to come. But would the Seven heed it? Or would they continue to ignore the problems that beset those who lived in the lowest levels of the City, blaming the unrest on groups like the
Ping Tiao
?

Ben rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. To the respectable Mid-Level citizenry, the
Ping Tiao
were bogeymen – the very type and symbol of those destructive forces the War had unleashed – and MidText, their media channel, played heavily upon their fears. But the truth was otherwise.

The
Ping Tiao
had first come into the news eighteen months back, when three members of their faction had kidnapped and murdered a Mid-Level Administrator. They had issued pamphlets claiming that the Administrator was a corrupt and brutal man who had abused his position and deserved his fate. It was the truth, but the authorities had countered at once, depicting the dead official as a well-respected family man who had been the victim of a group of madmen. Madmen who wanted only one thing – to level the City and destroy Chung Kuo itself.

As the weeks passed and further
Ping Tiao
‘outrages’ occurred, the media had launched a no-holds-barred campaign against the group, linking their name with any outbreak of violence or civil unrest. There was a degree of truth behind official claims, for the tactics of the
Ping Tiao
were certainly of the crudest kind, the seemingly random nature of their targets aiming at maximum disruption. However, the extent of
Ping Tiao
activities was greatly exaggerated, creating the impression that if only the
Ping Tiao
could be destroyed, the problems they represented would vanish with them.

The campaign had worked. Or at least in the Mid-Levels it had worked. Further down, however, in the cramped and crowded levels at the bottom of the City, the
Ping Tiao
were thought of differently. There they were seen as heroes, their cause as a powerful and genuine expression of long-standing grievances. Support for the terrorists grew and grew. And would have continued growing but for a tragic accident in a Mid-Level creche.

Confidential high-level sources later made it quite clear that the
Ping Tiao
had had nothing to do with what was termed ‘The Lyon’s Canton Massacre’, but the media had a field day, attacking the
Ping Tiao
for what they called its ‘cowardly barbarism and inhumanity’.