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, Daddy? There's no great difference, is there?"
Hal smiled sadly. "It's a kind of foolishness, my love, that's all.
You see, 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 straightaway. 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 toward Meg.
Shepherd glanced at his daughter, then looked back at his wife and gave a slight bow. "I'm sorry. Yes ... my language. I forget when IVe 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 stem, 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 favor. 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, Ben!"
Meg was pointing out toward 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 is their means of keeping tabs on me. Of controlling what I know and what I leam. 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?"
But he 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 gray goatee; the other moved slightly on the staff, inclining it toward 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. "No. Not cumbersome. Inemcient'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 irritation and impatience on Ben's face and looked down. She knew 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. Then 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 epicarithic 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.