Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 31

And behind it all the figure of a young man laughing. A young man with old and bitter eyes.

Li Yuan straightened, the vision still with him, then put up a hand to s.h.i.+eld his eyes against the sun's glare.

They were coming. He could hear the drone of their engines across the sands.He turned, looking back. Nineveh was far behind him now, yet he could still make out the dark outline of its caldera against the desert sky. Nineveh. Where he had lost and found himself again. He closed his eyes, remembering. He had been a broken bowl, a half-man in a world of half-men, but now he was complete.

What I should always have been.

He turned back, squinting into the sunlight as the s.h.i.+ps came on towards him.

Three cruisers, flying in low formation.

Smiling, he raised his arms in greeting.

"What the ...?"

"Slow down!" Zelic barked, leaning over the pilot "Thaf s him!" The cruiser shuddered as it decelerated, the flanking cruisers out-running them a moment, then beginning to decelerate themselves. "G.o.ds," Lanier said, coming alongside. "It is. What the f.u.c.k is he doing out here?"

Zelic shrugged, then, remembering their guest, looked at Lanier. "You want to tell him, or shall P" Lanier shrugged. "You know these c.h.i.n.ks better than me." Zelic raised an eyebrow, then turned away, making his way back through the cabin to where Li Han Ch'in was sleeping.

Or had been, for even as he went to knock, the door swung open and Han Ch'in stepped out.

"Are we landing?" he asked.

"Yes," Zelic said, smiling, liking Li Yuan's son immensely. "We've found your father."

"Found...?" Han Ch'in whooped, then gripped Zelic's arm. "Is he all right'" "I... don't know. We've only just spotted him. But he was on his feet" Han Ch'in grinned, then. "Well, come on, Captain! Let us go and greet my father!"

Li Yuan stood with his arms at his sides, waiting as the s.h.i.+ps landed all around him, sand whipping up into the air in great swirls from their engines. One by one, the drone of the engines faded.

In that sudden silence, the thunk of the hatch locks being sprung was like the sound of an arrow hitting a target He smiled, looking back down the years to a moment when his elder brother Han Ch'in, had squinted down the arrow and let fly. It had been a spring day full of sunlight, down by the stream at Tongjiang, and he had sat beside the beautiful Fei Yen looking on as she wagered with his brother. And now his son, his brother's namesake and that woman's progeny, stepped out from the hatch to greet him.

"Han Ch'in," he said, stepping towards him, his arms out "Father!"

Han Ch'in ran to him and almost picked him up, he was squeezing him so hard.

"Father! We thought you were lost!"

"I was," he said, "but now I'm found."

Han Ch'in stood back a little, holding his upper arms. "Where have you been?"

Li Yuan laughed. "If I could but tell you."

"Father?"

"Never mind. I'm here now. Is Zelic ...?"

"In the cruiser," Han Ch'in said, smiling again, pleased -dearly pleased - to see him. Again he hugged him, and again Li Yuan found himself thinking of his brother and how like him this Han Ch'in was.

Lost, but found ...

He smiled, acknowledging what Tuan Ti Fo had said. And my mother, too, he said silently. She is here, within me.

Yes, Li Yuan. She has always been there. You had only to wake to her presence.

"Han Ch'in," he said, returning to the moment, "how fares my other son?"

"Kuei Jen is well, father, or was when I left him. But young Egan is not well. The truth is, our armies were crushed in the Californian campaign, and then there was a sh.e.l.l..."

'Then we are needed, neh?"

Han Ch'in blinked, then bowed his head, responding to something in his father's tone; something that had not been there a moment before. Suddenly it was not simply his father who stood before him, but a Tang, a Son of Heaven. "Come, Prince Han," he said, smiling and laying his hand upon his son's shoulder. "To Boston. Before night falls."

They flew direct to Baltimore, then changed cruisers, flying in one of Egan's own, north across Chesapeake Bay and along the Delaware valley, heading for Boston.

It was there, seated at the window, looking down across the burned-out wastelands between Baltimore and Philadelphia, that Li Yuan had the vision again.

Han Ch'in leaned across. "Father? Are you all right?"

"Boston ..." Li Yuan said, recognising it this time.

"What? What about Boston?"

Li Yuan looked to his son, concerned. "Contact Kuei Jen and Egan. Tell them to get out of there at once."

"But they can't They're meeting Old Man Egan in two hours."

"Old Man Egan? You meanjosiah? But..."

"They gave him a new body."

"Yes..." He nodded. "I see that now. The young man with the ancient eyes. I wondered why."

"Father?"

"Do as I say, Han. Tell Kuei Jen that ifs a double-cross. Old Man Egan won't be there. The only reason he's arranged the meeting is to make sure his grandson is."

Han Ch'in looked troubled. "How do you know this?" "I saw it In a vision. With these." He pointed to his golden eyes. "Has no one ever told you, Han? We see things, all the time. Small things mainly. Things that witt come to pa.s.s. That's what the plague did to us. What it gave us." Han Ch'in looked shocked. Even so, he bowed his head and, turning, hurried through to the c.o.c.kpit Two minutes later he was back. "Kuei Jen wants to speak to you, father. He says... well, he asks if you are all right?"

"In the head, you mean?"

Han Ch'in made an apologetic shrug. Li Yuan got up and went through to the c.o.c.kpit Kuei Jen's face was on the tiny screen.

"Father? Oh, how good it is to see you. How are you?"

"Clearly not well in the head, according to you."

"I didn't mean ..."

"No, but I did. You have to get out of there, Kuei Jen. And everyone who's dear to you. Josiah means to bomb Boston out of existence. I've seen it It witt happen."

"Then we must stop him."

"No. You can't. But you can save yourselves. So get out of there. Now!" Kuei Jen hesitated, staring at Li Yuan, then gave a nod. "All right. We'll evacuate the court. But what if you're wrong?"

"Meet me in Providence two hours from now and we'll see who was wrong."

They carried Egan from his bed to the waiting cruiser, his hands and ankles bound, a gag about his mouth, as if they were kidnapping him. Chalker arrived late, a look of real distress on his face But there was no time for that. Getting him aboard the last of the five cruisers, Kuei Jen gave the signal to go.

The cabin was packed. Baby Yuan slept in his nurse's lap. Beside him, young May Ji stared wide-eyed into s.p.a.ce. She had been woken from her bed to be brought here. Squeezed in beside her was her elder brother, Samuel, his sullen face showing his displeasure at events.

All those he loved and cared for were here in the cruiser. All, that was, but his father and half-brother.

As the engines roared into life and the cruiser lifted from the pad, Kuei Jen turned, looking out through the cabin window, watching as the great fortress diminished below him, its distinctive towers merging into the ma.s.sive high-rise sprawl of City Boston. The sun was low. Soon it would be night And if her father was right...

"Impossible," he said softly, speaking to himself.

"What?" Chalker said.

Kuei Jen looked to him, noting the strangeness in his eyes.

"I said, 'impossible'."

"Yes, but what's impossible?"

"My father reckons Old Man Egan's about to nuke Boston." Chalker laughed. But then his face grew long again. "Oh, G.o.d," he said, letting his head drop, his left hand coming up to grip his brow. "Colonel? Are you all right?"

Chalker looked across, then shook his head. He looked as if he was suffering from a very bad migraine. "I experienced it" "The bomb?"

"No. The sh.e.l.l. Shepherd's thing. I... I got hold of a copy and experienced it I wish to G.o.d now I hadn't."

Kuei Jen stared at him. Oh s.h.i.+t, she thought, it's infected Chalker, too. I can see it now.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I... I destroyed it afterwards. That was the hardest part It was ... well, like murdering the woman you love. It was ... horrible. But a part of me knew it was only a tape. A tiny part Heaven help someone of a more ... pa.s.sionate nature."

"Like my husband?"

Chalker met his eyes and nodded.

Kuei Jen looked down at the timer in his wrist, then looked up again, concerned. "How far out are we?" she yelled, looking past the crowded cabin towards the open c.o.c.kpit door.

"Four and a half k and accelerating."

"s.h.i.+t!"

"What is it'" Chalker said quietly.

'The meeting with Old Man Egan was set for sunset That" s four minutes from now.

If there is a bomb ..."

"We'll be okay. We'll be ten k out by the time it blows up. Tell the pilot to climb. If we can get above the concussion zone." He stared at Chalker, then, with a nod, stood up and went out to talk to the pilot A moment later he was back.

"I'm afraid," he said. 'Tve never been afraid before, but I am now. If my father's right..."

Even as he spoke, the whole cabin lit up as if someone had shone a dazzling light through every window.

"Aiya..."

Kuei Jen made to turn and look, but Chalker stopped her. "No!" he yelled, taking charge. "Close your eyes everyone and don't look! If 11 burn your eyes out! Just sit still and strap yourselves in."

Kuei Jen looked to her frightened children, seeing that both May and Samuel had their eyes squeezed tightly shut, then sat, letting Chalker strap her in. The light had faded, but he could still see its after-image. And then the wind hit them, lifting the craft, juddering it roughly for a long, long while.

Boston's gone, she thought, picturing in her mind the smouldering waste the bomb would have left The mad old f.u.c.ker's nuked it!

Kuei Jen shook his head, unable to believe it And then it hit him. His father had seen it He'd had a vision. Not only that, but he'd told them it was going to happen. Now what in the G.o.ds' names did that mean? "He saw it," he said, shaking his head slowly as the craft returned to normal.

"He really did see it, after all"

But Chalker was not listening. Chalker was staring at his hands and rubbing them one against the other, as if to wipe the blood away.

Li Yuan was waiting for them in Providence, on the roof of the Imperial Barracks. As Kuei Jen's cruiser landed alongside the row of other craft, he walked across to meet them, standing there beneath the glare of the arc lamps as the hatch opened.

"Well?" he asked sombrely, embracing his son. "Did I not tell you?" Kuei Jen stood back "Are all the golden-eyed like you? Do they all have ... visions" He shrugged. "I cannot say. Yet I sense it must be so." 'If s strange," Kuei Jen said, looking at him with something akin to wonder. "I can't help wondering what it means."

"And I. But we shall know. Soon."

"You had another vision?"

Li Yuan smiled. "No. A friend told me."

"A friend?"