Were it simply a matter of philosophy—of words—it might have been all right. But it was not. The population problem was real. It could not be simply wished away.
He looked down, staring at his hands—at the great iron ring on the first finger of his right hand. For men such as Kao Chen, a common phrase like "We are our masters' hands" had a far greater literal truth than he had ever imagined. And a far greater significance. For what was a man? Was he a choosing being, forging his own destiny, or was he simply a piece on the board, there to be played by another, greater than himself?
And maybe that was what had troubled him, more than the fate of the woman. That deeper question of choice.
He turned, looking back into his room, seeing Minister Heng's report there on the desk where he had left it.
It was a full report on the "police action" against the Big Circle Triad; a report that differed quite radically from the Ting Wei's official account. He sighed, the deep unease he had felt at reading the report returning. The Het riot squads had gone mad down there. More than two hundred thousand had been killed, includ-ing many women and children.
Yes, and that was another argument in favor of wiring. If only to prevent such massacres, "necessary" as this one might have been.
He turned back, standing there a moment, his eyes closed, feeling the cool night breeze on his face. Then, stirring himself, he went out onto the terrace once more.
The moon was high. He looked up at it, surprised, his perception of it suddenly reversed, such that it seemed to bum like a vast shining hole in the blackness of the sky. A big circle of death. He shivered violently and looked down, noting how its light silvered the gardens like a fall of dust.
Before today he had striven always to do the right thing, to be a good man—the benevolent ruler that Confucius bade him be—but now he saw it clearly. In this there was no right course of action, no pure solution, only degrees of wrongness.
And so he would make the hard choice. He would keep his word to Karr, of course. Kibwezi Station would be closed. As for the other thing, he had no choice. No real choice, anyway. The Wiring Project had to continue, and so it would, elsewhere, hidden from prying eyes. Until the job was done, the system perfected.
He sighed, turning his back on the darkness, returning inside. Yes. Because the time was fast coming when it would be needed.
broken glass littered the terrace outside the guardhouse, glistening like frosted leaves in the moonlight. Nearby, the first of the bodies lay like a discarded doll, its face a pulp, the ragged tunic of its uniform soaked with blood. Through the empty window a second body could be seen, slumped forward in a chair, its head twisted at an unusual angle, the unblemished face staring vacantly at a broken screen.
Behind it, on the far side of the room, a door led through. There, on a bed in the rest room, the last of the bodies lay, naked and broken, its eyes bulging from its face, its tongue poking obscenely from between its teeth.
At the end of the unlit corridor, in the still silence of the signal room, the morph stood at the transmitter, its neutered body naked in the half-light. To one side, a hand lay on the desk like a stranded crab, the fingers upturned.
The morph tensed, the severed wrist of its left hand pressed against the input socket, the delicate wires seeking their counterparts, making their connections to the board, then it relaxed, a soft amber light glowing on the eye-level panel in front of it. There was a moment's stillness and then a faint tremor ran through the creature. At the count of twelve it stopped, as abruptly as it had begun. The message had been sent.
It waited, the minutes passing slowly, its stillness unnatural, like the stillness of a machine, and then the answer came.
It shuddered, then broke connection, drawing its wrist back sharply from the panel, a strange sigh, like the soughing of the wind through trees, escaping its narrow lips.
Reaching across, it took the hand from where it lay and lined it up carefully against the wrist, letting the twelve strong plastic latches—six in the hand, six in the wrist—click into place. The hand twitched, the fingers trembling, then was still again.
It turned, looking out through the dark square of the window. Fifty ch'i away, at the edge of the concrete apron, was a wire fence. Beyond the fence was the forest. For a time it stood there, staring out into the darkness, then it turned, making its way through.
For the past few nights it had dreamed. Dreams of a black wind blowing from beyond; of a dark and silent pressure at the back of it. A dream that was like the rush of knowledge down its spine; that set its nerve ends tingling in a sudden ecstasy. And with the dream had come a vision—a bright, hard vision of a world beneath the surface of this world. Of a world ruled by the game. A game of dark and light. Of suns and moons. Of space and time itself. A game that tore the dark veil from reality, revealing the whiteness of the bone.
On the terrace it stopped again, considering. From Tao Yuan to Tashkent was six thousand li. If it traveled in the dark it could make eighty, maybe a hundred li a night for the first ten days or so. Later on, crossing the great desert, it could increase that, traveling in the heat of the day, when no patrols flew. With any luck it would be there in fifty days.
It smiled, recalling DeVore's instructions. In Tashkent it would be met and given new papers. From there it would fly west, first to Odessa, then on to Nantes. From Nantes it would take a ship—one of the big ships that serviced the great floating cities of the Midatlantic. There it would stay a while, biding its time, working for the big ImmVac company of North America, putting down roots inside that organization, until the call came.
For a moment longer it stood there, like a silvered god, tall, powerful, elegant in the moonlight, then it jumped down, crossing the circle of light quickly, making for the fence and the darkness beyond.
DEVORE LOOKED UP from the communications panel and stared out into the darkness of the Martian night. It was just after two, local time, and the lights of the distant city were low. Beyond them was a wall of darkness.
He stood, yawning, ready for sleep now that the message had come, then turned, looking across at the sleeping man.
Hans Ebert lay on the camp bed, fully clothed, his kit bag on the floor beside him. He had turned up four days earlier, scared, desperate for help, and had ended here, "rescued" by DeVore from the Governor's cells.
DeVore went across and stood there over the sleeping man, looking down at him. Ebert looked ill, haggard from exhaustion. He had lost a lot of weight and— from the smell of him—had had to rough it in ways he had never experienced before. His body had suffered, but his face was still familiar enough to be recognized anywhere in the system.
Well, maybe that was a problem, and maybe it wasn't. A familiar face might prove advantageous in the days to come. Especially when behind that face was a young prince, burning with ambition and eager for revenge. And that was why— despite the obvious dangers—he had taken Ebert in. Knowing that what was discarded now might prove extremely useful later on.
He bent down, drawing the blanket up over Ebert's chest, then turned away, looking outward, conscious once more of the guards patrolling the frosted perimeter, the great, blue-white circle of Chung Kuo high above them in the Martian sky.
CHEN crouched there on the mountainside, looking down the valley to where the dark, steep slopes ended in a flat-topped arrowhead of whiteness. It was like a vast wall, a dam two li in height, plugging the end of the valley, its surface a faintly opalescent pearl, lit from within. Ch'eng it was. City and wall.