Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series Read online

  He groaned, then, grasping her by the buttocks, lifted her, backing her against the wall, thrusting up into her once, twice, a third time before he came explosively, feeling her shudder violently against him.

  For a while, then, they were silent, watching each other. Then Beth smiled again. ‘Welcome home, my love.’

  The pine surface of the kitchen table was freshly scrubbed, the knives newly sharpened. Ben looked about him, then, leaving the bundled rabbit on the wide stone step outside, busied himself. He spread an oilcloth on the table then laid the big cutting board on top of it. He laid the knives out beside the board and then, because it was growing dark, brought the lamp from beside the old ceramic butler sink, trimming the wick before he lit it.

  Meg stood in the garden doorway, her small figure silhouetted against the redness of the bay. She watched him roll back his sleeves, then fill a bowl with water and set it beside the knives.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked. ‘You know it’s diseased. Why not just burn it?’

  Ben barely glanced at her. He turned and went down the four steps that led into the long, dark, low-ceilinged dining room, returning a moment later with a book from the shelves. An old thing, leather-bound and cumbersome.

  ‘I’ve a hunch,’ he said, putting the heavy volume down on the other side of the board to the knives and the water.

  Meg stood beside him. It was a book of animal anatomy. One of their great-great-great-grandfather Amos’s books. Ben flicked through the pages until he came to the diagram he was looking for. ‘There,’ he said, the heavy, glossy pages staying in place as he turned away to bring the rabbit.

  She looked. Saw at once how like a machine it was. A thing of pumps and levers, valves and switches, controlled by chemicals and electric pulses. It was all there on the page, dissected for her. The whole of the mystery – there at a glance.

  Ben came back. He placed the dead rabbit carefully on the block then turned and looked at her. ‘You needn’t stay, Meg. Not if you don’t want to.’

  But she stayed, fascinated by what he was doing, knowing that this had meaning for him. Something had caught his attention. Something she had missed but he had seen. Now she waited as he probed and cut and then compared what had been exposed against the diagram spread across the double page.

  At last, satisfied, he went to the sink and washed his hands, then came back and threw a muslin cloth over the board and its bloodied contents.

  ‘Well?’

  He was about to answer her when there was the sound of footsteps in the dining room. Their mother’s. Then a second set.

  Meg pushed past him and jumped down the four steps in her haste.

  ‘Daddy!’

  Hal Shepherd gathered his daughter up, hugging her tight and kissing her, delighted to see her. Then he ducked under the lintel and climbed the steps up into the kitchen, Beth following.

  ‘Gods, Ben, what have you been up to?’

  Ben turned to face the table.

  ‘It’s a dead rabbit. We found it down by the Seal. It’s diseased. But that’s not all. It doesn’t come from here. It was brought in.’

  Hal put Meg down and went across. ‘Are you sure, Ben?’ But he knew that Ben was rarely if ever wrong.

  Ben pulled back the cloth. ‘Look. I made certain of it against Amos’s book. This one isn’t real. It’s a genetic redesign. Probably GenSyn. One of the guards must have made a substitution.’

  Hal studied the carcass a while, then nodded. ‘You’re right. And it won’t be the only one, I’m sure. I wonder who brought it in?’

  Ben saw the anger mixed with sadness on his father’s face. There were two gates to the Domain, each manned by an elite squad of a dozen men, hand-picked by the T’ang himself. Over the years they had become friends of the family and had been granted privileges – one of which was limited entry to the Domain. Now that would have to stop. The culprit would have to be caught and made to pay.

  Meg came up to him and tugged at his arm. ‘But why would they do it? There’s no great difference, is there?’

  Hal smiled sadly. ‘It’s a kind of foolishness, my love, that’s all. There are people in the City who would pay a vast sum of money to be able to boast they had real rabbit at one of their dinners.’

  Ben stared at the carcass fixedly. ‘How much is a vast sum?’

  Hal looked down at his son. ‘Fifty, maybe a hundred thousand yuan for each live animal. They would breed them, you see, then sell the doctored litters.’

  Ben considered. Such a sum would be as nothing to his father, he knew, but to others it was a fortune. He saw at once how such an opportunity might have tempted one of the guards. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘But there’s another, more immediate worry. If they’re all like this they could infect everything in the Domain. We’ll need to sweep the whole area. Catch everything and test it. Quarantine whatever’s sick.’

  Hal nodded, realizing his son was right. ‘Damn it! Such stupidity! I’ll have the culprit’s hide!’ He laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘But you’re right, Ben, we’d best do something straight away. This can’t wait for morning.’

  He turned to Beth, anger turning to apology in his face. ‘This complicates things, I’m afraid. I meant to tell you earlier, my love. We have a guest coming, tomorrow evening. An important guest. He’ll be with us a few days. I can’t say any more than that. I was hoping we could hunt, but this business buggers things.’

  She frowned at him and made a silent gesture towards Meg.

  Shepherd glanced at his daughter then looked back at his wife and gave a slight bow. ‘I’m sorry. My language. I forget when I’ve been away. But this…’ He huffed angrily, exasperated, then turned to his son again. ‘Come, Ben, there’s much to be done.’

  It was calm on the river. Ben pulled easily at the oars, the boat moving swiftly through the water. Meg sat facing him, looking across at the eastern shore. Behind her, in the stern, sat Peng Yu-wei, tall, elderly and very upright, his staff held in front of him like an unflagged mast. It was ebb tide and the current was in their favour. Ben kept the boat midstream, enjoying the warmth of the midday sun on his bare shoulders, the feel of the mild sea breeze in his hair. He felt drowsy, for one rare moment almost lapsed out of consciousness, then Meg’s cry brought him back to himself.

  ‘Look!’

  Meg was pointing out towards the far shore. Ben shipped oars and turned to look. There, stretching from the foreshore to the Wall, was a solid line of soldiers. Slowly, methodically, they moved between the trees and over the rough-grassed, uneven ground, making sure nothing slipped between them. It was their third sweep of the Domain and their last. What was not caught this time would be gassed.

  Peng Yu-wei cleared his throat, his head held slightly forward in a gesture of respect to his two charges.

  ‘What is it, Teacher Peng?’ Ben asked coldly, turning to face him. Lessons had ended an hour back. This now was their time and Peng, though chaperone for this excursion, had no authority over the master and mistress outside his classroom.

  ‘Forgive me, young master, I wish only to make an observation.’

  Meg turned, careful not to make the boat tilt and sway, and looked up at Peng Yu-wei, then back at Ben. She knew how much Ben resented the imposition of a teacher. He liked to make his own discoveries and follow his own direction, but their father had insisted upon a more rigorous approach. What Ben did in his own time was up to him, but in the morning classes he was to do as Peng Yu-wei instructed; learn what Peng Yu-wei asked him to learn. With some reluctance Ben had agreed, but only on the understanding that outside the classroom the teacher was not to speak without his express permission.

  ‘You understand what Teacher Peng really is?’ he had said to Meg when they were alone one time. ‘He’s their means of keeping tabs on me. Of controlling what I know and what I learn. He’s bit and bridle, ball and chain, a rope to tether me like any other animal.’

  His bitterness had surprised her. ‘Surely not,’ she
had answered. ‘Father wouldn’t want that, would he?’

  Ben had not answered, only looked away, the bitterness in his face unchanged.

  Now some of that bitterness was back as he looked at Teacher Peng. ‘Make your observation then. But be brief.’

  Peng Yu-wei bowed, then turned his head, looking across at the soldiers who were now level with them. One frail, thin hand went up to pull at his wispy grey goatee, the other moved slightly on the staff, inclining it towards the distant line of men. ‘This whole business seems most cumbersome, would you not agree, Master Ben?’

  Ben’s eyes never left the teacher’s face. ‘Not cumbersome. Inefficient’s a better word.’

  Teacher Peng looked back at him and bowed slightly, corrected. ‘Which is why I felt it could be made much easier.’

  Meg saw the impatience in Ben’s face and looked down. No good would come of this.

  ‘You had best tell me how, Teacher Peng.’ The note of sarcasm in Ben’s voice was bordering on outright rudeness now. Even so, Peng Yu-wei seemed not to notice. He merely bowed and continued.

  ‘It occurs to me that, before returning the animals to the land again, a trace could be put inside each animal. Then, if this happened again, it would be a simple thing to account for each animal. Theft and disease would both be far easier to control.’

  Peng Yu-wei looked up at his twelve-year-old charge expectantly, but Ben was silent.

  ‘Well, master?’ he asked after a moment. ‘What do you think of my idea?’

  Ben looked away. He lifted the oars and began to pull at them again, digging heavily into the water to his right, bringing the boat back onto a straight course. He looked back at the teacher.

  ‘It’s a hideous idea, Peng Yu-wei. An unimaginative, small-minded idea. Just another way of keeping tabs on things. I can see it now. You would make a great electronic wall chart of the Domain, eh? And have each animal as a blip on it.’

  The stretched olive skin of Peng Yu-wei’s face was relaxed, his dark eyes, with their marked epicanthic fold, impassive. ‘That would be a refinement, I agree, but…’

  Ben let the oars fall and leaned forward in the boat. Peng Yu-wei reflexively moved back. Meg watched, horrified, as Ben scrabbled past her, the boat swaying violently, and tore at the teacher’s pau , exposing his chest.

  ‘Please, young master. You know that is not allowed.’

  Peng Yu-wei still held his staff, but with his other hand he now sought to draw the two ends of the torn silk together. For a moment, however, the white circle of the control panel set into his upper chest was clearly visible.

  For a second or two Ben knelt there in front of him threateningly, his whole body tensed as if to act.

  ‘You’ll be quiet, understand? And you’ll say nothing of this. Nothing! Or I’ll switch you off and drop you over the side. Understand me, Teacher Peng?’

  For a moment the android was perfectly still, then it gave the slightest nod.

  ‘Good,’ said Ben, moving back and taking up the oars again. ‘Then we’ll proceed.’

  As Ben turned the boat into the tiny, box-like harbour the two sailors looked up from where they sat on the steps mending their nets and smiled. They were both old men, in their late sixties, with broad, healthy, salt-tanned faces. Ben hailed them, then concentrated on manoeuvring between the moored fishing boats. There was a strong breeze now from the mouth of the river and the metallic sound of the lines flapping against the masts filled the air, contesting with the cry of gulls overhead. Ben turned the boat’s prow with practised ease and let the craft glide between a big, high-sided fisher-boat and the harbour wall, using one of the oars to push away, first one side, then the other. Meg, at the stern, held the rope in her hand, ready to jump ashore and tie up.

  Secured, Ben jumped ashore, then looked back into the boat. Peng Yu-wei had stood up, ready to disembark.

  ‘You’ll stay,’ Ben said commandingly.

  For a moment Peng Yu-wei hesitated, his duty to chaperone the children conflicting with the explicit command of the young master. Water slopped noisily between the side of the boat and the steps. Only paces away the two old sailors had stopped their mending, watching.

  Slowly, with great dignity, the teacher sat, planting his staff before him. ‘I’ll do as you say, young master,’ he said, looking up at the young boy on the quayside, ‘but I must tell your father about this.’

  Ben turned away, taking Meg’s hand. ‘Do what you must, tin man,’ he muttered under his breath.

  The quayside was cluttered with coils of rope, lobster pots, netting and piles of empty wooden crates – old, frail-looking things that awaited loads offish that never came. The harbour was filled with fishing boats, but no one ever fished. The town beyond was full of busy-seeming people, but no one lived there. It was all false: all part of the great illusion Ben’s great-great-grandfather, Augustus, had created here.

  Once this had been a thriving town, prospering on fishing and tourism and the naval college. Now it was dead. A shell of its former self, peopled by replicants.

  Meg looked about her, delighted, as she always was by this. Couples strolled in the afternoon sunshine, the ladies in crinolines, the men in stiff three-piece suits. Pretty little girls with curled blonde hair tied with pink ribbons ran here and there, while boys in sailor suits crouched, playing five-stones.

  ‘It’s so real here!’ Meg said enthusiastically. ‘So alive!’

  Ben looked down at her and smiled. ‘Isn’t it?’ He had seen pictures of the City. It seemed such an ugly, hideous place by comparison. A place of walls and cells and corridors – a vast, unending prison of a place. He turned his face to the breeze and drew in great lungfuls of the fresh salt air, then looked back at Meg. ‘What shall we do?’

  She looked past the strolling holidaymakers at the gaily painted shops along the front, then looked up at the hillside and, beyond it, the Wall, towering over all.

  ‘I don’t know…’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Let’s just go where we want, Ben. Look wherever we fancy looking, eh?’

  ‘Okay. Then we’ll start over there, at the Chandler’s.’

  For the next few hours they went among the high-street shops, first searching through the shelves of Joseph Toms, Toys and Fancy Goods, for novelties, then looking among the tiny cupboards of Charles Weaver, Apothecary, sampling the sweet-tasting, harmless powders on their fingers and mixing the brightly coloured liquids in beakers. But Ben soon tired of such games and merely watched as Meg went from shop to shop, unchallenged by the android shopkeepers. In Nash’s Coffee House they had their lunch, the food real but somehow unsatisfying, as if reconstituted.

  ‘There’s a whole world here, Meg. Preserved. Frozen in time. Sometimes I look at it and think it’s such a waste. It should be used somehow.’

  Meg sipped at her iced drink then looked up at him. ‘You think we should let others come here into the Domain?’

  He hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No. Not that. But…’

  Meg watched him curiously. It was unusual to see Ben so indecisive.

  ‘You’ve an idea,’ she said.

  ‘No. Not an idea. Not as such.’

  Again that uncertainty, that same slight shrugging of his shoulders. She watched him look away, his eyes tracing the row of signs above the shop fronts: David Wishart, Tobacconist; Arthur Redmayne, Couturier; Thomas Lipton, Vintner; Jack Delcroix, Dentist & Bleeder; Stagg & Mantle, Ironmongers; Verry’s Restaurant; Jackson & Graham, Cabinet Makers; The Lambe Brothers, Linen-Drapers; and there, on the corner, facing Goode’s Hostelry, Pugh’s Mourning House.

  Seeing Pugh’s brought back a past visit. It had been months ago and Ben had insisted on going into Pugh’s, though they had always avoided the shop before. She had watched him go amongst the caskets, then lift one of the lids, peering inside. The corpse looked realistic enough, but Ben had turned to her and laughed. ‘Dead long before it was dead.’ Somehow that had made him talk about things here. Why they were as they were, and wh
at kind of man her great-great-grandfather had been to create a place like this. He had not skimped on anything. One looked in drawers or behind doors and there, as in real life, one found small, inconsequential things. Buttons and pins and photographs. A hatstand with an old, well-worn top hat on one peg, a scarf on another, as if left there only an hour past. Since then she had searched and searched, her curiosity unflagging, trying to catch him out – to find some small part of this world he had made that wasn’t finished. To find some blank, uncreated part behind the superficial details.

  Would she have thought to do this without Ben? Would she have searched so ardently to find that patch of dull revealing blankness? No. In truth she would never have known. But he had shown her how this, the most real place she knew, was in other ways quite hollow. Was all a marvellous sham. A gaudy, imaginative fake.

  ‘If this is fake, then why is it so marvellous?’ she had asked, and he had shaken his head in wonder at her question.

  ‘Why? Because it’s god-like! Look at it, Meg! It’s so presumptuous! Such consummate mimicry! Such shameless artifice!’

  Now, watching him, she knew he had a scheme. Some way of using this.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Let’s move on. I’d like to try on some of Lloyd’s hats.’

  Ben smiled at her. ‘Okay. Then we’ll start back.’

  They were upstairs in Edgar Lloyd, Hatters, when Ben heard voices down below. Meg was busy trying on hats at the far side of the room, the android assistant standing beside her at the mirror, a stack of round, candy-striped boxes in her arms.

  Ben went to the window and looked down. There were soldiers in the passageway below. Real soldiers. And not just any soldiers. He knew the men at once.

  Meg turned to him, a wide-brimmed creation of pale cream lace balanced precariously on top of her dark curls. ‘What do you think, Ben? Do you…?’

  He hushed her urgently.

  ‘What is it?’ she mouthed.

  ‘Soldiers,’ he mouthed back.

  She set the hat down and came across to him.

  ‘Keep down out of sight,’ he whispered. ‘They’re our guards, and they shouldn’t be here. They’re supposed to be confined to barracks.’