“Tsou Tsai Hei?” The old Han laughed. “Forgive me, my young friend, but I thought you knew your Mandarin. Is it so hard to grasp?” Tsou Tsai Hei. The walker in the darkness. “No,” Ebert answered, then hesitated, uncertain. He understood the words, but their meaning?
Master Tuan lifted a hand. “No matter. As Hsu Yu said, name is only the guest of reality. It is what lies behind the name that matters, neh? I mean, where is the darkness? Where is it to be found? In the hearts of men? In the pupil of the eye? In shadows and the sunless depths of night? We say of a man that his heart is dark, and yet without the darkness, where is the light? Without evil, where the good? You have understanding, Tsou Tsai Hei. You have been there. All your young life you have been a man of action. Now, as your middle years begin, you must adopt a different course. You must embrace wuwei, inaction. You must seek the te, the true virtue, that the Way provides.”
He leaned forward slightly. “You are strong. Strong enough, I note, to kill a man with your bare hands. And yet what is true strength? Is it manifested in the exercise of power over others? Is that true strength? Or is true strength the exercise of some inner restraint? Is it a working against desire? This you must learn, Tsou Tsai Hei. This and much more.” “And the Osu? What is their role in this?” The Old Han laughed. “Am I to tell you everything? No, Tsou Tsai Hei, that is for you to learn. Study them. Be as they. The truth will follow. You are to stay here, to finish the work that time has begun in you. To wait here, among these hidden works of darkness. Until the call comes.” “The call?”
The old man smiled. “Be patient. Work hard. The Way is difficult, wherever one is. Yet here you might find yourself. And that is the first step, neh? No more masks, Hans Ebert. No more masks.” The old Han looked down, then lifted the case, offering it to Ebert. “It will take a while, but you will learn patience. This will help you in that task.”
“What is it?”
“Words. Images. A friend when you need a friend. An eye where you need an eye.”
Ebert leaned in, wanting to query what he meant, but the old man raised his hand once more.
“I am afraid our conversation is over. You must go now. Look, your people are awaiting you.”
Ebert turned. The air lock was open. In the opening stood two of the Osu, Echewa and the old man who had begun the song. He turned back, meaning to say one final thing, but Master Tuan was gone. He whirled about, expecting some trick, but there was no sign of the old man within the dome, and there was no way out, unless a man could walk through walls. That thought made him turn and look back at Echewa, recalling what he had said that time, about walking through solid rock. “Was that real, Aluko?”
Echewa pointed to the case. “He gave you that?”
Ebert nodded.
“Then it was real.”
Ebert looked up, conscious suddenly of the vastness of the sky above him. Dark it was, and endless. Dark beyond the possibility of any human eye penetrating it. And yet what was that darkness? In what way were he and it related? Ebert shuddered. Thus far he had lived his life in the glare of artificial light, with walls on all sides, a floor below, and a ceiling overhead. Now he must learn to live differently— to live outside, beneath that vast and overwhelming darkness.
Ebert paused, feeling a stillness settle deep within as he recalled Echewa’s words.
The night is our mother She comforts us. She tells us who we are. Mother sky is all We live, we die, beneath her. She sees all. Even the darkness deep within us.
So it was. So it would be from henceforth. Yes. It was time to refashion himself, to be the walker in the darkness. No more masks, he thought, echoing the old Han’s words. Then, with a small bow to the space where Master Tuan had sat, he turned and went across. It was time to be.
PART 2 I SPRING 2212
Upon a Wheel of Fire
The Master said, “Cunning words, an ingratiating face, and utter servility, these things Tso-ch’iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find them shameful. To be friendly towards someone while concealing one’s hostility, this Tso-ch’iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find it shameful.”
confucius, The Analects, Book V, 25
You do me wrong to take me out o’ th’ grave; Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.
william shakespeare, King Lear, act IV, scene vii
CHAPTER SIX
The Thousand Eyes
PALE LIGHT LAY LIKE A GLAZE On the lacquered surface of the mask, making its darkness shine. The smoothly rounded dome was high, majestic almost, the features severe, magisterial. Through narrow slits of purest black the liquid glint of eyes—dark-pupiled and intense—could be seen. Eyes which watched coldly as, at the far end of the huge, obsidian-topped table, the old man bowed low and, glancing fearfully about him, backed away, the chains that bound his hands clinking in the silence. At a signal the guards escorting him dragged him about and led him from the chamber, their booted footsteps echoing back across the tiled hall. A door slammed shut. In the silence that followed, six men, masked and cloaked, the dignity of their bearing revealing their high status, turned slightly in their seats about the table, looking toward the First Dragon, who sat, unnaturally still, his gloved hands interlinked. It was a chill, dark chamber, overlooked on three sides by a high balcony. There, and in the shadows beyond the seated men, others stood in attendance, waiting upon what the First Dragon would decide. They had met to discuss the grave situation facing them and to decide upon which course to follow. Two days back the Council of Seven had cut the funding to the Ministry and decided to curtail its activities. Taken alone that was a serious matter, but in the context of all else that was happening, it was a severe blow. Moreover, what the old man had just told them made it imperative that they take action. But what? What measures could they take and yet remain bonded in loyalty to their Lords and Masters, the Seven?
The mask leaned closer, as if about to utter some secret—some whispered, conspiratorial thing—but the voice that issued from the mask emerged strong and clear: the voice of utter certainty. “As for the main matter, our course is clear. We must speak with our Masters and convince them that the path they have chosen is inadvisable. That to follow it would lead only to disaster. Second, we must spell out our alternative strategy—a strategy designed to deal with the Seven Ills of our modern age.”
The Seven Ills . . . There were nods from all pans of the Great Hall. Once there had been the single “Great Illness” of false history—an illness their Ministry had been set up to eradicate—but in the last decade all manner of ancient sicknesses had risen from the depths. Religious resurgence, terrorist insurrection, and Triad infiltration of the levels—these were the Three Natural Ills and resulted from the great sin of neglected responsibility. Beside them—and of equal threat to the status quo—were the increasing power of the House at Weimar, the changes to the Edict, the declining power of the Seven, and, last but not least, the corrupting effect of the Aristotle File. These were the Four Political Ills and resulted directly from the policy of the current Seven. Standing between these Ills and the masses of Chung Kuo was the Ministry—the “Thousand Eyes”—of which the First Dragon was the Head, the very embodiment.