But was the great wheel turning once again, imperceptible beneath the ice? Or had it already come full circle? Were they the new Ch'ing, destined in their turn to fall?
"Yuan!" Han stood there beside one of the tables, looking back at him. "Stop daydreaming and come here! Look at this!"
Li Yuan looked across, then, smiling, went over to him, a servant lighting his way.
Han Ch'in handed him the model of the horse. "It's beautiful,
isn't it? All the gifts from the more important guests have been put on display at this end. The horse is from the Pei family."
Li Yuan turned it in his hands, then handed it back. It was solid gold. "It's very heavy, isn't it?"
Han laughed. "Not as heavy as the silver phoenix .the House of Representatives has sent as its gift. You should see it! It's enormous! It took eight men to carry it in here!"
Li Yuan looked around him, staring into the shadows on every side. The tables seemed to stretch away forever, each piled with a small fortune of wedding gifts. "There's no end to it, is there?"
Han shook his head, a strange expression in his eyes. "No." He laughed uneasily. "It's astonishing. There are more than eight million items. Did you know that, Yuan? They've been cataloguing them for weeks now. And still more are arriving all the time. The secretarial department are working all hours just sending out letters to thank people. In fact, it's got so bad they've had to take on an extra ten thousand men in the department!"
Han was silent a moment, looking out into the shadowed body of the hall, the torchlight flickering in his dark hair. Then he turned, looking directly at Yuan. "You know, I was thinking, tin..."
Li Yuan smiled at the familiar term. "Young brother," it meant. Yet between them it was like a special name. A term of love.
"You, thinking?"
Han Ch'in smiled, then looked away again, a more thoughtful expression on his face than usual. "Look at it all. It fills this hall and five others. Fills them to overflowing. And yet if I were to spend from now until the end of my days simply looking at these things, picking them up and touching them. . ." He shook his head, then looked down. "It seems such a waste, somehow. I'd never get to look at half of it, would I?"
He was silent a moment, then put the horse back. "There are so many things here."
Li Yuan studied his brother a moment. So it affects you, too, this place. You look about you and you think, how like the Ai Hsin Chiao Lo—the Manchu-—-we are, and yet how different. But then you ask, in what way different? And you worry, lest your excesses be like theirs. He smiled, a faint shiver running down his spine. Oh, Han Ch'in, how I love you for that part of you that worries. That part of you that would be a good T'ang— that feels its responsibilities so sharply. Don't change, dear elder brother. Don't ever forget the worries that plague you, for they are you—are all that's truly good in you.
Han Ch'in had moved on. Now he was studying one of the big tapestries that were hung against the side wall. Li Yuan came and stood beside him. For a moment they were both silent, looking up through the uneven, wavering lamplight at the brightly colored landscape, then Han knelt and put his arm about Yuan's shoulders.
"You know, Yuan, there are times when I wish I wasn't heir." His voice was a whisper now. "Sometimes all I want is to give it all away and be normal. Do you understand?"
Li Yuan nodded. "I understand well enough. You are like all men, Han. You want most that which you cannot have."
Han was quiet a moment, then he shook his head. "No. You don't understand. I want it because I want it. Not because I can't have it."
"And Fei Yen? What about Fei Yen? Would you give her up? Would you give up your horse? Your fine clothes? The palaces outside the City? You would really give up all of that?"
Han stared straight ahead, his face set. "Yes. Sometimes I think I would."
Li Yuan turned, looking into his brother's face. "And sometimes I think you're mad, elder brother. The world's too complex. It would not be so simple for you. Anyway, no man ever gets what he truly wants."
Han turned his head and looked at him closely. "And what do you want, ti ti?"
Li Yuan looked down, a slight color in his cheeks. "We ought to be going. Father will be looking for us."
Han Ch'in stood, then watched Li Yuan move back between the tables toward the great doorway, the servant following with his lantern. No, he thought, you don't understand me at all, little brother. For once you don't see the drift of my words.
The thought had grown in him this last year. At first it had been a fancy—something to amuse himself with. But now,
today, it seemed quite clear to him. He would refuse it. Would stand down. Would kneel before his younger brother.
Why not? he thought. Why does it have to be me?
Li Yuan, then. Han smiled and nodded to himself. Yes. So it would be. Li Yuan would be T'ang, not Li Han Ch'in. And he would be a great T'ang. Perhaps the greatest of all. And he, Li Han Ch'in, would be proud of him.
Yes. So it would be. So he would insist it was.
MARIA KRENEK bowed abjectly, conscious that her husband, Josef, had already moved on. "I am deeply sorry, Madam Yu. My husband is not himself today. I am certain he meant nothing by it."
Madam Yu raised her fan stiffly, her face dark with fury, dismissing the smaller woman. She turned to the two men at her side.
"How dare he stare through me like that, as if he didn't know me! I'll see that haughty bastard barred from decent company! That'll take him down a few levels! Now his brother is representative for Mars he thinks he can snub who he likes. Well! We'll see, eh?"
Maria backed away, appalled by what she had heard. Madam Yu was not a woman to make an enemy of. She had entry to the Minor Families. Her gatherings were an essential part of life in the Above—and she herself the means by which one man came to meet another to their mutual benefit. She had destroyed bigger men than Josef Krenek, and now she would destroy him.
"Josef!" she said, softly but urgently, catching up with her husband and taking his arm. "What were you thinking? Go back and kneel before her. For all our sakes, please, go and kneel to her. Say you're sorry. Please, Josef!"
He looked down at her hand on his arm, then across to his brother and his wife. Then, astonishingly, he threw her arm off.
"Go home, Maria. Now! This moment!"
Her mouth gaped. Then, blushing deeply, humiliated beyond anything she had ever known before, Maria turned and ran.
NOCENZi's VOICE sounded urgently in the General's head. "Knut! I've got something!"
The General was standing beside the back entrance to one of the secure rooms. They had just unsealed it and brought out the thing that had tried to get through their screen. Like the others it was disturbingly human—better than the Ebert copy. Different. Far more complex. As if the Ebert copy had been an attempt to throw them off the trail.
"What is it, Vittorio?"
"I've checked the incomings at Nanking against the guest list. And guess what?"
"They're coming in from Mars."
"That's right."
"All of them?"
They had caught eight of the copies so far. Eight! It frightened him to think what might have happened if they had not discovered the fake Ebert. But unlike the "Ebert" these were armed. They were walking arsenals, their weaponry concealed inside their flesh. Just two of them could have caused havoc if they had got through. But eight. . . .
Nocenzi hesitated, getting confirmation, then, "Every one of them so far."