"Tell me, Soren. If you could have one thing—just one single thing—what would it be?"
Berdichev stared across the darkened green a while, then turned and looked back at him, hi% eyes hidden behind the lenses of his glasses. "No more Han."
Lehmann laughed. "That's quite some wish, Soren."
Wyatt turned to him. "And you, Pietr? The truth this time. No flippancy."
Lehmann leaned back, staring up at the dome's vast curve above them. "That there," he said, lifting his arm slowly and pointing. "That false image of the sky above us. I'd like to make that real. Just that. To have an open sky above our heads. That and the sight of the stars. Not a grand illusion, manufactured for the few, but the reality of it—for everyone."
Berdichev looked up solemnly, nodding. "And you, Edmund? What's the one thing you'd have?"
Wyatt looked across at Berdichev, then at Lehmann. "What would I want?"
He lifted his untouched bowl and held it cupped between his hands. Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned it upside down, letting the contents spill out across the tabletop.
"Hey!" said Berdichev, moving backward sharply. Both he and Lehmann stared at Wyatt, astonished by the sudden hardness in his face, the uncharacteristic violence of the gesture.
"Change," Wyatt said defiantly. "That's what I want. Change. That above everything. Even life."
PART I SPRING 2196
A Spring Day at the Edge of the World
A spring day at the edge of the world. On the edge of the world once more the day slants. The oriole cries, as though it were its own tears Which damp even the topmost blossoms on the tree.
—LI SHANO-YIN, Exile, ninth century A. D.
CHAPTER. ONE
Fire and Ice
FLAMES DANCED in a glass. Beyond, in the glow of the naked fire, a man's face smiled tightly.
"Not long now," he said, coming closer to the fierce, wavering light. He had delicate Oriental features that were almost feminine; a small, well-shaped nose and wide, dark eyes that caught and held the fire's light. His jet-black hair was fastened in a pigtail, then coiled in a tight bun at the back of his head. He wore white, the color of mourning—a simple one-piece that fitted his small frame loosely.
A warm night wind blew across the mountainside, making the fire flare up. The coals at its center glowed intensely. Ash and embers whirled off. Then the wind died and the shadows settled.
"They've taken great pains, Kao Jyan."
The second man walked back from the darkness where he'd been standing and faced the other across the flames, his hands open, empty. He was a much bigger man, round shouldered and heavily muscled. His large, bony head was freshly shaven and his whites fitted him tightly. His name was Chen and he had the blunt, nondescript face of a thousand generations of Han peasants.
Jyan studied his partner momentarily. "They're powerful men," he said. "They've invested much in us. They expect much in return."
"I understand," Chen answered, looking down the moonlit valley toward the City. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. "What is it?" Jyan nan-owed his eyes. "See!" Chen pointed off to his right. "There! Up there where the mountains almost touch the clouds."
Jyan looked. Thin strands of wispy cloud lay across the moorfs full circle, silvered by its intense light. Beyond, the sky was a rich blue-black. "So?" »
Chen turned back to him, his eyes shining in the firelight. "It's beautiful, don't you think? How the moonlight has painted the mountaintops white."
Jyan shivered, then stared past the big man toward the distant peaks. "It's ice."
"What? Plastic, you mean?"
Jyan shook his head. "No. Not the stuff the City's made of.
Real ice. Frozen water. Like the ch'un tzu put in their drinks."
Chen turned and looked again, his;broad face wrinkling.
Then he looked away sharply, as if the very thought disturbed him.
As it should, thought Jyan, aware of his own discomfort. The drugs he'd been given made all of this seem familiar—gave him false memories of such things as cold and clouds and moonlight—yet, beneath the surface calm of his mind, his body was still afraid.
There was a faint movement against his cheek, a sudden ruffling of his hair. At his feet the fire flared up again, fanned by the sudden gust. Wind, thought Jyan, finding it strange even to think the word. He bent down and lifted a log from the pile, turning it in his hand and feeling its weight. Then he turned it on its end and stared at the curious whorl of its grain. Strange. Everything so strange out here, outside the City. So unpredictable. All of it so crudely thrown together. So unexpected, for all that it seemed familiar.
Chen came and stood by him. "How long now?" Jyan glanced at the dragon timer inset into the back of his wrist. "Four minutes."
He watched Chen turn and—for what seemed like the hundredth time—look back at the City, his eyes widening, trying to take it in.
The City. It filled the great northern plain of Europe. From where they stood, on the foothills of the Alps, it stretched away northward a thousand five hundred 1i to meet the chill waters of the Baltic, while to the west the great wall of its outer edge towered over the Atlantic for the full three-thousand-li length of its coastline, from Cape St. Vincent in the south to Kristiansund in the rugged north. To the south, beyond the huge mountain ranges of the Swiss Wilds, its march continued, ringing the Mediterranean like a giant bowl of porcelain. Only to the east had its growth been checked unnaturally, in a jagged line that ran from Danzig in the north to Odessa in the south. There the plantations began; a vast sea of greenness that swept into the heart of Asia.
"It's strange, isn't it? Being outside. It doesn't seem real."
Chen did not answer. Looking past him, Jyan saw how the dark, steep slopes of the valley framed a giant, flat-topped arrowhead of whiteness. It was like a vast wall—a dam two ii in height—plugging the end of the valley. Its surface was a faintly opalescent pearl, lit from within. Ch'eng, it was. City and wall. The same word in his mother tongue for both. Not that he knew more than a smattering of his mother tongue.
He turned his head and looked at Chen again. Brave Chen. Unimaginative Chen. His blunt face rounded like a plate, his bull neck solid as the rocks surrounding them. Looking at him, Jyan put aside his earlier misgivings. Chen was kwai, after all—a trained knife—and kwai were utterly reliable. Jyan smiled to himself. Yes, Chen was all right. A good man to have at your back.
"You're ready?" he asked.
Chen looked back at him, his eyes firm, determined. "I know what I have to do."
"Good."
Jyan looked down into his glass. Small tongues of flame curled like snakes in the darkness of the wine; cast evanescent traces on the solid curve of transparency. He threw the glass down into the fire, then stared into the flames themselves, aware for the first time how evasive they were; how, when you tried to hold their image clear in mind, it slipped away, leaving only the vaguest of impressions. Not real at all, for all its apparent clarity.
Perhaps that's how the gods see us, he thought; as mere traces, too brief for the eye to settle on.
There was a sharp crack as the glass split and shattered. Jyan shivered, then looked up, hearing the low drone of the approaching craft.
"They're here," said Chen, his face impassive.
Jyan looked across at the kwai^nd nodded. Then, buttoning their one-pieces at the neck, the two assassins made their way toward the ship.
"Your pass, sir?"
Pi Ch'ien, third secretary to Juni6r Minister Yang, glanced up at the camera, noting as he did the slow, smooth movement of the overhead trackers, the squat, hollowed tongues of their barrels jutting from the mouths of stylized dragons. Bowing low he took the card from his robe and inserted it into the security slot. Placing his face against the molded pad in the wall, he held his left eye open against the camera lens. Then he stepped back, looking about him.