Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series Read online

  David Wingrove is the Hugo Award-winning co-author (with Brian Aldiss) of Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. He is also the co-author of the first three MYST books – novelizations of one of the world’s bestselling computer games. He lives in north London with his wife and four daughters.

  1 Son of Heaven

  2 Daylight on Iron Mountain

  3 The Middle Kingdom

  4 Ice and Fire

  5 The Art of War

  6 An Inch of Ashes

  7 The Broken Wheel

  8 The White Mountain

  9 Monsters of the Deep

  10 The Stone Within

  11 Upon a Wheel of Fire

  12 Beneath the Tree of Heaven

  13 Song of the Bronze Statue

  14 White Moon, Red Dragon

  15 China on the Rhine

  16 Days of Bitter Strength

  17 The Father of Lies

  18 Blood and Iron

  19 King of Infinite Space

  20 The Marriage of the Living Dark

  Ice and Fire was first published as The Middle Kingdom in Great Britain in 1989 by New English Library.

  This revised and updated edition published in special edition hardback, trade paperback, and E-book in Great Britain in 2012 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © David Wingrove, 1989, 2012

  The moral right of David Wingrove to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 728 3

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 729 0

  E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 799 2

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  PART EIGHT Spring 2201 – The Domain

  Chapter 35 – The Dead Rabbit

  Chapter 36 – A Conversation in the Firelight

  Chapter 37 – Augustus

  PART NINE Summer 2201 – Ice and Fire

  Chapter 38 – The Saddle

  Chapter 39 – Casting a Spell Out of Ice

  Chapter 40 – The Scent of Plum Blossom

  Chapter 41 – The Darkening of the Light

  Chapter 42 – Ice and Fire

  EPILOGUE Spring 2203 – Mosaics

  A Bridge Over Nothingness

  A Gift of Stones

  In Times to Come…

  Character listing

  Glossary of Mandarin terms

  Author’s note and acknowledgments

  Credits

  For all the past and present members of

  Amon Düül II, but especially for John

  Weinzierl, Chris Karrer and Henriette

  Krotenschwanz – for the music!

  Is this the way the world ends?

  Under ice

  Under fire

  Has there been some mistaken design?

  Under ice

  Got to find the human voice

  Lord deliver us from Babel

  —‘Mr X Gets Tense’, Peter Hammill, 1979

  INTRODUCTION

  Chung Kuo. The words mean ‘Middle Kingdom’ and, since 221 BC, when the First Emperor, Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, unified the seven Warring States, it is what the ‘black-haired people’, the Han, or Chinese, have called their great country. The Middle Kingdom – for them it was the whole world; a world bounded by great mountain chains to the north and west, by the sea to east and south. Beyond was only desert and barbarism. So it was for two thousand years and through sixteen great dynasties. Chung Kuo was the Middle Kingdom, the very centre of the human world, and its Emperor the ‘Son of Heaven’, the ‘One Man’. But in the eighteenth century that world was invaded by the young and aggressive Western powers with their superior weaponry and their unshakeable belief in Progress. It was, to the surprise of the Han, an unequal contest and China’s myth of supreme strength and self-sufficiency was shattered. By the early twentieth century China – Chung Kuo – was the sick old man of the East: ‘a carefully preserved mummy in a hermetically sealed coffin’, as Karl Marx called it. But from the disastrous ravages of that century grew a giant of a nation, capable of competing with the West and with its own Eastern rivals, Japan and Korea, from a position of incomparable strength. The twenty-first century, ‘the Pacific century’ as it was known even before it began, saw China become once more a world unto itself, but this time its only boundary was space.

  David Wingrove

  May 2012

  PART 8 THE DOMAIN

  SPRING 2201

  With all its eyes the creature-world beholds the open. But our eyes, as though reversed, encircle it on every side, like traps set round its unobstructed path to freedom.

  What is outside, we know from the brute’s face alone; for while a child’s quite small we take it and turn it round and force it to look backwards at conformation, not that openness so deep within the brute’s face. Free from death.

  We alone see that; the free animal has its decease perpetually behind it and God in front, and when it moves, it moves within eternity, like running springs.

  We’ve never, no, not for a single day, pure space before us, such as that which flowers endlessly open into: always world, and never nowhere without no: that pure, unsuperintended element one breathes, endlessly knows, and never craves. A child sometimes gets quietly lost there, to be always jogged back again. Or someone dies and is it.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies: ‘Eighth Elegy’

  Chapter 35

  THE DEAD RABBIT

  Meg Shepherd, Hal Shepherd’s daughter, was standing in the tall grass of the Domain, watching her brother. It was early evening and on the far side of the water, dense shadow lay beneath the thick cluster of trees. At this end the creek narrowed to a shallow, densely weeded spike of water. To her left, in the triangle of wild, uncultivated land between the meadow and the vast, overtowering whiteness of the Wall, the ground grew soft and marshy, veined with streams and pocked with tiny pools.

  Ben was crouched at the water’s edge, intensely still, staring at something in the tall, thick rushes to his right. For a moment there was only the stillness and the boy watching, the soft soughing of the wind in the trees across the water and the faint, lulling call of pigeons in the wood. Then, with an abrupt crash and spray and a strong beating of wings, the bird broke from cover. Ben’s head went up, following the bird’s steep ascent, his twelve-year-old eyes wide with watching.

  ‘Look at it, Meg! Isn’t it a beauty?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered softly, but all the while she was watching him, seeing how his eyes cast a line to the climbing bird. Saw how he grasped every last detail of it and held that knowledge tight in his memory. His body was tensed, following the bird’s flight, and his eyes burned. She shivered. It was astonishing to watch, that intensity of his
. The world seemed to take form in his eyes: to grow bright and rich and real. As if, before he saw it, it was but a pale shadow of itself; a mere blueprint, uncreated until he saw and re-imagined it. So it was for her. She could see nothing unless he had seen it first.

  The bird was gone. He turned and looked at her.

  ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, meaning something else. ‘It was beautiful.’

  He turned his head, looking away from her, towards the village. When he looked back his green eyes were dark, thoughtful.

  ‘Things are different this year, Meg. Don’t you feel it? Small things. Like the bird.’

  She shrugged then pushed her way through the grass, out into the open. Standing there beside him at the water’s edge, she looked down at his reflection, next to her own in the still, clear water.

  ‘Why do you think that is? Why should it change?’ He looked around him, his brow furrowing. ‘I mean, this place has always been the same. Always. Unchanged. Unchanging but for the seasons. But now…’ He looked at her. ‘What is it, Meg? What’s happening?’

  She looked up from his reflection and met his eyes.

  ‘Does it worry you?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘And I don’t know why. And I want to know why.’

  She smiled at him and reached out to touch his arm. It was so typical of him, wanting to understand what he thought and why he thought it. Never happy unless he was worrying at the problem of himself.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said reassuringly. ‘They’re only small things, Ben. They don’t mean anything. Really they don’t.’

  But she saw he wasn’t convinced. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Everything has meaning. It’s all signs, don’t you see? It all signifies. And the small things… that’s where it’s to be seen first. Like the bird. It was beautiful, yes, but it was also…’ He looked away and she said the word for him, anticipating him without quite knowing how, as she so often did.

  ‘Frightening.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She followed his gaze a moment, seeing how his eyes climbed the Wall to its summit far overhead, then looked back at him again. He was more than a head taller than her, dark-haired and straight-boned. She felt a small warmth of pride kindle in her. So elegant he was. So handsome. Did he know how much she loved him? He knew so much, but did he know that? Maybe. But if he did he gave no sign.

  ‘It was only a bird, Ben. Why should it frighten you?’

  He almost smiled. ‘It wasn’t the bird, Meg. At least, not the outer thing, the cage of bone and flesh, sinew and feather. It was what was within the bird – the force that gave it such power, such vitality.’ He looked down at his left hand, then turned it over, studying its back. ‘That’s where its beauty lies. Not in the outward show but in the shaping force. That… well, it’s mystery. Pure mystery. And that frightens me, Meg. The thought of all that dark, unharnessed power simply existing in the world. I look at it and I want to know where it comes from. I want to know why it’s there at all. Why it isn’t mere mechanics and complexity of detail. Why all that fiery excess?’

  ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’

  And now he did smile, pleased by her recognition; by her quoting back at him the poem he had read to her only two days past. How rare that was, him smiling. And only for her. Never for mother or father. Or for those others that came so rarely to this place.

  ‘I guess there’s that too,’ he said. ‘That same force brings us on, from bud to flower to… well, to something browned and withered. And thus to clay.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s all connected, isn’t it? It uses us and then discards us. As if we’re here only to flesh out its game – to give it form. Doesn’t that frighten you, Meg?’

  She shook her head. ‘Why should it? There’s plenty of time, Ben. A whole world of time before we have to think of that.’

  He studied her intently for a moment, then bowed his head slightly. ‘Perhaps.’

  He began to walk, treading a careful path through the marshy ground, following a rising vein of rock that jutted from the sodden turf, until he came beneath the shadow of the Wall.

  There, facing them not thirty paces away, was the Seal. Part of the Wall, it was the same dull pearl in colour, a great circle five times Ben’s height, its base less than an arm’s length above the surface of the ground, its outer edge a thick ridge of steel-tough plastic.

  For a moment he stood there, staring at it, oblivious of all else.

  Meg, watching him, understood. It was a gateway. A closed door. And beyond it was the darkness of the Clay. Primal, unadulterated Clay. Beyond it the contiguous earth was sun-deprived and barren. Here Heaven, there Hell. And only a Wall, a Seal, between the two.

  She climbed up beside him on the ridge of rock. ‘What’s that?’ She pointed outward to their left. There was something there. Something small and pale and grey against the green. Something that hadn’t been there before.

  He looked, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Let’s see, eh?’

  At once he scrambled down. Meg hesitated, then followed. The ground was soft and spongy and in only a few paces her canvas shoes were soaked. Ben had gone ahead of her, his feet sinking, squelching as he ran. Then she saw him crouch down and examine something.

  She came up behind him and looked over his shoulder. It was a rabbit. A dead rabbit.

  ‘What killed it?’ she asked.

  He prised the carcass up from out of the wet, clinging turf and turned it over, examining it.

  ‘I don’t know. There’s no sign of external injury. But it’s not been here long.’ He looked up at her. ‘Here, Meg, give me your jumper.’

  She pulled her jumper off and handed it to him, then watched as he spread it out and laid the dead animal on it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Ben drew his hunting knife from its sheath, then cut the rabbit from chin to rump. For a moment he watched the blood well from the cut, staining the mottled grey fur, then laid the knife down and eased the flesh apart.

  Meg watched, fascinated and horrified, as he probed inside the animal, the blood dark on his fingers. Then he lifted something small and wet; a pale, tiny sac attached by tubes and tendons to the rest. It glistened in his fingers as he bent to study it. Then he looked up at her.

  ‘It’s as I thought. Look. The liver’s covered in dark blotches.’

  She shook her head, not understanding, watching him bundle the rabbit in her jumper, then lift it and sling it over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s diseased,’ he said, staring across at the Seal, then turned to look at her. ‘It’s part of the change in things. Don’t you see that now? There’s a sickness here in the Domain.’

  Hal Shepherd stood at the turn of the road, his hands resting lightly on the low stone wall, looking down at the row of cottages and the bay beyond. To his right the hill rose up above where he stood, then fell again to meet the next turn of the river. It was dotted with old stone-built houses and cottages. At its summit was a small church.

  It was almost three months since he had been home, but now, standing there, it seemed that he had never been away. This much at least remains unchanged, he thought; each hill, each tree, each house familiar to him from youth. I see it as my grandfather saw it, and his grandfather before him. In three hundred years only the trees had changed, growing older, dying, replaced by others of their own ancient seed. Like us, he thought. We too are trees.

  He walked on. The road dipped steeply here then curved back wickedly upon itself. Where he had been standing had been a turning point for cars once upon a time – when there were still cars in the world – but this had never been a place for modern things. Even back then, when the world was connected differently, it had been seven miles by road to the nearest town of any size, and that easier to get to by the river. Time had stood still here even then. During the Madness, when the old world had heaved itself apart, this place had been a point of stillness at the centre of
things. Now it was timeless.

  There were walls, no more than a pace or two either side of him. Whitewashed walls, in heavy shadow now, their low-silled windows dark; only one cottage in the row lit up. He smiled, seeing it ahead of him; imagining Beth there in the low-beamed living room, the fire lit and the curtains drawn; seeing her, as he had so often seen her, go to the back door and call the children in from the meadow.

  Home. It meant so many things, but only one to him. He would have withered inside long ago had there not been this to return to.

  He stood outside the low, broad door, listening, then put his hand out flat against the wood and gently pushed. There was no need for locks here. No need for fear. The door swung back slowly, silently, and he went in.

  Beth stood there in the doorway, framed by the soft light of the living room behind her and to her left. She smiled.

  ‘I knew you were coming. I dreamed of you last night.’

  He laughed and went to her, then held her tightly against him, kissing her tenderly. ‘Your dreams…’ He gazed into her eyes, loving the beauty, the measureless depth of them. ‘They never fail you, do they?’

  She smiled and kissed his nose. ‘Never.’

  He shivered and reached up to stroke her cheek then trace the contours of her lips with a fingertip. His whole body was alive with desire for her. ‘Where’s Ben and Meg?’

  Her body was pressed hard against his own, her hands at his neck. Her eyes were dark with longing. ‘They’re outside. Down by the creek. But they’ll not be back. Not just yet.’

  She kissed him again, a harder, longer kiss this time.

  He let his left hand rest gently on her waist a moment, then rucked up her skirt. Beneath it she was wearing nothing. He sought her mouth again, the kiss more urgent. His fingers traced the warm smoothness of her thighs and belly, then found the hot wetness at the core of her. She moaned and closed her eyes, her whole body trembling at his touch, then she reached down and freed him, grasping his swollen penis, her fingers softly tracing its length, once, then again, almost making him come, before drawing him up into her.