Open wide the door of heaven! On a black cloud I ride in splendor, Bidding the whirlwind drive before me, Causing the rainstorm to lay the dust.
—Ta Ssu Ming, "The Greater Master of Fate," from the Chiu Ko, the "Nine Songs" by Ch'u Yuan, second century B.C.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
—William Butler Yeats, from Byzantium, A.D. 1930
PROLOGUE WINTER 2215
Forgotten Words
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
CHUANO tzu, Writings, xxvi, II, sixth century b.c.
EBERT STOOD on the lip of the crater, looking across the ruined city toward the distant sun. It was early morning and a rime of frost covered the iron-red rocks, making them glisten. Below him, in the deep shadow, he could discern the twisted shapes of the struts that had once curved half a li into the air, supporting the dome of the greatest of Mars' nineteen cities.
He crouched, placing a gloved hand on a nearby rock, conscious of the sound of his own breathing inside the helmet. Behind him, five paces back, the woman and the boy waited silently.
It was here that the dream had ended, gone in a single night, burned up in a violent conflagration that had taken the lives of more than twenty million people. Dust they were. Dead, like the planet that had never been their home, only a prison, a resting place between two darknesses.
He shivered, understanding. The chain had been broken here, the links scattered. That was the message the great Kan Jiang had offered in his poems. Mars was not the future, Mars was a dead end, a cosmic cul-de-sac. If they tried for a million years Man would never make a home of this place. No, they had to go back, back to Earth—to Chung Kuo. Only then could they move on. Only then might there be a future.
And the Osu? Did they have a future?
He turned, looking back. The woman was watching him, her face behind the thick glass of the helmet like carved ebony. Beside her, resting in the crook of her arm, the boy looked into the distance, dreaming as usual, his eyes far off.
Ebert smiled. It was a year ago that he had first met her, in one of the northern settlements. In his desire to become a sage he had renounced the flesh, holding that darker part of himself in abeyance, yet, when she had come to him that night, his body had remembered. She had been with him ever since.
It was as Tuan Ti Fo had said—desire took many forms, and sometimes renunciation itself could be a kind of desire. Best then to be at peace with oneself; to have and not to want. He stood, putting out a hand to her.
"Come."
Then, turning back toward the setting sun, he began to make his way down into the darkness.
HE WOKE IN DARKNESS, the nightmare still close—so close, it seemed he might reach out and touch it.
Yes, he could sense it, there behind the night's dark skin, the pulse of it still warm, still real. For a moment longer it was there, and then he felt it slip from him, leaving him gasping on the cold, bare floor of the tent, emptied by the vision.
The woman lay beside him sleeping, her breathing soft, almost inaudible. From outside the muffled sound of the air vent's hiss was like the noise the wind makes in the southern deserts during the season of storms. Here, at the bottom of the crater, one of the old air-generators was still partly operational, spewing pure oxygen from a single vent.
He went out, sealing the tent flap after him. It was an hour until dawn and the darkness was intense. From where he stood the sky was a ragged circle framed by the black of the crater walls, seven stars, shaped like a scythe, blazing in the center.
He climbed, following the path through the twisted ruins from memory. On the lip he paused, turning to look back across the crater's mouth. The blackness beneath him was perfect. To the east, on the horizon, was the tiny blue-white circle of Chung Kuo.
He shivered, remembering the nightmare. He had had it before, many times, but this time it had seemed real.
He looked down at his right hand, flexing the fingers in the glove, surprised to find it whole. Two of them—his father's men—had held him while another splayed his fingers on the slab. He had struggled, but it was no use. There'd been a flash of silver, then he felt the thick-edged blade slice through the sinewy joint of the knuckle—his nerves singing pain, his hot blood pumping into the air. He had heard his own high scream and scuttled like a ghost from out his flesh. There, usually, it ended—there, thankfully, he had always woken—but this time it went on. He had felt his spirit turn, away from the tormented shrieks, following a servant who, bloody bowl in hand, made his way through flickering corridors of stone toward a bright-lit chamber.
There, at the operating bench, stood his father, cold mouthed, dead these eight years, his work apron tied neatly about his massive chest. His dead eyes watched as the servant brought the bowl. He took it, spilling its bloodied contents onto the scrubbed white surface.
The old man's mouth had opened like a cave, words tumbling forth like windblown autumn leaves, dust-brown and crumbling.
"The design was wrong. I must begin again. I must make my son anew."
There had been laughter, a cold, ironic laughter. He had turned to see his mother looking on, her ice-blue eyes dismissive.
"Zombies," she said, reaching past her dead husband to lift the severed finger from the bowl. "That's all you've ever made. Dead flesh. It's all dead flesh."
She let the finger fall, a chilling indifference in her face, then turned and left the room.
No warmth in her, he thought. The woman had no warmth. . . .
Setting the bowl aside, his father had taken the finger, stretching and molding it until the figure of a man lay on the bench before him.
Hans had stepped forward, looking down into the unformed face, willing it not to happen, but the dream was ineluctable. Slowly the features formed, like mountain ranges rising from the primal earth, until the mirror image of his face stared back at him . . . and sneered.
He jerked his head back, gasping.
"Efulefu . . ."
He swallowed back his fear, then answered the voice that had come up from the darkness. "What is it, Hama?"
Her figure threaded its way up through the shadows just below. "Are you all right, husband? I thought I heard you groan."
"It is nothing, Hama, only tiredness."
She came to him, reaching out to take his hands. "The boy is sleeping still."
"Good." He smiled, enjoying the sight of her face in the starlight, the dream defeated by the reality of her. "I was thinking, Hama. We must call a gathering."
"A gathering? Of the ndichie?"
He shook his head. "No, Hama. Of everyone. Of Elders, Tribes, and Settlers." He gazed past her at the distant earth, noting how small, how fragile, it seemed in all that emptiness. "It is time we decided what to do. Time we chose a path for all to follow."
THE MACHINE BLINKED, then looked again. One moment there had been nothing, and the next . . .
"Tuan Ti Fo? Do you see what I see?"
The air before the Machine shimmered and took form. Tuan Ti Fo sat cross-legged before the open console, bowing his gray-haired head in greeting. "What is it that you see?"
"I see"—the Machine strained, staring into the intense darkness, using all its powers to try to penetrate that single spot where it was blind—"I see ... nothing."