Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 55

"So now you know," Tuan said, speaking in his own tongue. "So finally you remember." He laughed, then gestured with one long, spindly arm towards his twin. "It is a pity you did not look after yourself better" DeVore was silent for a time, then tried to speak, but his voice, like the great sh.e.l.ls of his twinned abdomens, was cracked and brittle. What came out was a squeaky whine, like the sound two pieces of metal make when they are ground together. He tried again. "Why did you wake me?'

Tuan's smile was a yard long. "So that you would know. At the end."

"Know?'

"Why you had to die. Why there was room for only one of us in the universe." Tuan vanished. With a great shudder, DeVore returned to his human shape. But now that shape was creased and torn, the frail flesh barely held together where the great Edderimi-naru shape had burst from it.

DeVore stood, blood dripping from his hands and chin. He staggered forward, spilling the stones from the board, then went down onto his knees, a great groan ripped from deep inside him.

For a moment he stayed there, his head down, eyes closed. Then, slowly, he lifted his head again and his eyes popped open. Steel-blue eyes that now remembered everything.

"Of course ..."

Li Yuan stood on the slope above the meadow, watching as the last of the teams prepared to depart They had decided to concentrate on just three of the generators; those in Norway, Southern Spain and - closer to home - the central generator beneath Geneva, sending a force of five thousand men and heavy armaments to bolster the current defensive strength. DeVore could easily hit elsewhere. But the chances were that he'd hit one or other of those three, and when he did, they would attempt to keep him there - to pin him down - until they could bear such strength upon him that he would break. We are fortunate my ancestors considered everything, Li Yuan thought, recalling what he'd been shown - long ago, when he was but a boy - about the generators. Unlike their Martian equivalents, Chung Kuo's oxygen generators had been buried deep in the crust of the earth,where even a nuclear strike could not destroy them. Moreover, they vented over an area of several hundred square miles. To destroy one, you had to take the "tap" - the head of the great shaft - and then travel down almost a mile.

It was possible, of course, that DeVore had already mined them. Possible, but not likely. Not if what Li Yuan's spies had told him was true. No, if his information was correct, DeVore had thought he could defeat the floraforms. Until two days back.

And that was why he'd come. To stop DeVore. To keep Chung Kuo alive, even if humankind were not to benefit For the floraforms were life, if of a strange, trans.m.u.ted kind. And life - life of any kind - was preferable to the nullity DeVore wished for.

It was all a question of direction.

Li Yuan sighed, then began to make his way down towards his own cruiser, which waited, the ramp extended, the hatch open, not fifty metres away. All was arranged. Li Han Ch'in and Emily knew what to do. He was not needed now.

He had led them to this point, now it was up to them to carry out his strategy. It was time for him to make his peace with an old friend. To see him and talk with him one last time before he left.

Li Yuan smiled, then stepped up onto the ramp, making his way inside.

Yes, and maybe well have rabbit stew for supper.

Li Han Ch'in frowned, then scratched his head, amazed. "Master Tuan? What in the G.o.ds' names are you doing here?" "I was hoping to speak to your father, but it seems he has already gone."

"Gone?" Han Ch'in looked about him. "You must be mistaken, Master Tuan. He said nothing about going."

Tuan smiled benevolently. "I think you'll find he's gone to see Shepherd."

"Shepherd?" Han Ch'in shook his head. "But Shepherd's with DeVore."

"Again, I think you'll find . . ."

"... that I am mistaken." Han Ch'in huffed. "What are you doing here, Master Tuan?"

"I'm here to bring you a message."

"A message?"

"From Ward. You do remember Ward?"

"But isn't he ... well, out there somewhere."

"Yes. But he's coming back."

Han Ch'in laughed. "Then he'll be too late, I'd say, unless he's already in orbit." He paused, narrowing his eyes. "Is he?" Master Tuan shook his head. "Not at all. In fact, he's close on eleven light years from here right now. But he says to watch for him." "To watch ..." Han Ch'in roared with laughter. "Now I know you are teasing me, Master Tuan!"

A log fire crackled in the grate, throwing patterns of golden light across the shadowed room. The polished frame of the fireguard gleamed. Outside, beyond the open cas.e.m.e.nt window, the day was ending, the sky slowly fading from blue to black. Inside the two friends talked, reminiscing over a world that seemed as insubstantial as a dream.

"Chung Kuo is ending, Ben."

Ben laughed; a soft, amused laughter. "It ended long ago, Yuan. What we've been witnessing are post-mortem effects."

"You think so?"

"Oh, I know so. I was fooled for a while. I thought..."

"What?"

"Oh, that history would go on forever. But I forgot how frail we are as a species. Silly really. I always prided myself on my sense of perspective." "You think if s futile, then, leaving here?"

"Not futile. Nothing's futile, except suicida But it will only delay things. I like the idea of the floraforms: of something better than us, bigger than us, inheriting the world. If s a better idea than DeVore's. Evolution, not devolution. It has to be applauded, don't you think?"Li Yuan shrugged. "I'm not so sure. I liked human beings. They were... troublesome, I guess, but their capacity for love was great" "You always were sentimental, Yuan. It was your weakness." "And you were always hard. That was your weakness. But you've changed. You've changed a great deal since we last met I was ... well, uncertain what I'd find." "I am less mad than I was."

Li Yuan laughed, then sipped from the gla.s.s he held. For a moment he stared into the bright red liquid, watching the flames dance within it Then he sighed. "There is so much that I would have done differently, if I could."

"You did as you were fated to do."

He looked up, meeting Ben's eyes. "No. I used to believe that, but it was an excuse. I could have chosen differently, but I didn't I governed Chung Kuo badly. I let emotion rather than reason govern my actions." "Well... I won't argue with that Fei Yen, for instance."

"An obsession ..."

"Yes. But understandable. It must have been wonderful making love to her ..."

"Ben!"

Ben looked across. Meg was standing in the doorway, the baby asleep on her shoulder.

"Well, if s true," he said, grinning at her. "Not that I'm envious in the least I have been the most fortunate of men in that regard."

"And selfish," Meg said, mollified somewhat by his comment

"Oh, that I don't deny. Yet I do question whether we could have acted other than we did. My obsession with death, for instance. What was that but an expression of my deep mistrust of existence? I was an experiment, d.a.m.n it! A clone! Why should I not think myself unreal?"

"Do you really think it was that, Ben?" Li Yuan asked, a strange compa.s.sion in his tone.

"Part of it," Ben answered. "And there the floraforms have the advantage over us, I feel. They can control the DNA they have inherited from us." "You think we've been controlled then?"

Ben laughed. "Of course we have. Machines, that's all we were. Machines of flesh. Mere sensory keyboards." He looked into the flames of the fire. "When you think how many generations there have been. Six million years, and what was the result? An orgy of self-destruction."

He looked up again, meeting Li Yuan's eyes. "I'd say that whoever made us played wet chi. Not only that, but he was a lover of the long game. But he got bored. The experiment turned sour and he abandoned it" "You believe that?"

Ben grinned. "Not entirely. But it's one explanation."

Li Yuan frowned. "You've not entirely changed, then?"

"Not entirely. I didn't grow dumb when I grew kind."

"No ..." Li Yuan paused, then drained his gla.s.s. "I really ought to go."

"Whaf s happening?" Ben asked. "I mean ... out there."

"A war. Another war."

"The last?"

Li Yuan smiled. "I think so."

"And when if s over?"

"We either leave or we don't" He paused, then. "You can come, Ben. In fact, I came deliberately to invite you."

Ben smiled. "I'm grateful It was ... well, nice of you, I guess. But..." "We'd love to come," Meg said, coming across and standing beside Li Yuan, looking down at him, even as she rocked the sleeping child. "Your offer is most graciously accepted."

"Meg..."

She turned. "No, Ben. We have the child to think of. And Li Yuan's right There is no future here. This world - this human world - is ending. If s time we left Time we sought a new home."

Ben stared at her a while, then shrugged. "Then so be it"Li Yuan laughed and clapped his hands. "But thaf s tremendous news! We could leave at once. We could be there in two hours."

But Meg was staring now at Ben, her dark eyes mirroring his own. "Tomorrow," she said, soothing the child's head with her hand. "We'll leave here on the morrow."

Ben woke to hear voices out in the garden. He went to the window and, drawing back the curtain, looked out Li Yuan's cruiser was still there - an extraordinary sight in that rough uncut field of gra.s.s, its emblematic golden dragon embossed upon the old flag of the American Empire. The hatch was open and Ben could see Li Yuan himself standing just within the shadows, talking. For a moment he stood listening, then, with a word or two of Han, he turned and came back down the ramp, gathering up his long silks with one hand as he hastened back to the house.

Ben threw on a wrap then went down to the kitchen. Meg was standing at the hob, making breakfast. Li Yuan sat nearby, cradling a cup of steaming apple ch'a.

As Ben stepped into the room, Li Yuan looked up. "Ben..." Noting his despondency, Ben went across and sat, facing Li Yuan across the scrubbed pine table. "What is it?"

'If s DeVore. He's. .h.i.t two of the generators. One in Northern Poland and another in Lapland."

"Destroyed?"

"Totally."

Ben nodded thoughtfully, then. "Do we know what kind of effect this is having?"

'There have been violent storms. With each generator he knocks out, the strain on the others grows. Air flows out to fill the gaps." Li Yuan shuddered. "It is as if he is poking holes in the planet's lungs." "Hmm. Then maybe you should adopt a more aggressive policy. Don't wait for him to come to you. Go to him."

Li Yuan smiled bleakly. "And if in the meantime he takes out yet more generators?"

"Then that is a risk you must take, Li Yuan. He must be stopped, and stopped quickly."

Li Yuan sighed heavily. "I wonder if if s worth the death of any more of my people. I wonder if we shouldn't just go and let DeVore fight it out with the floraforms."

"And leave him here, triumphant? You want that?"

"No, but..."

"Then fight, Li Yuan. This one last time. Make sure he doesn't have a base to extend from. If DeVore survives here, you will be safe nowhere. Not even if you cross the galaxy."

Li Yuan thought a moment, then nodded. "All right But you will come with me, neh? And be my advisor, like old times?"

Ben looked to Meg, who had turned to watch them. She smiled and gave a tiny nod. "Okay," Ben said and, smiling, reached across to take Li Yuan's hands in his own. "Like old times."

The cruisers drifted in, like bees on a summer's day, their lazy drone filling the valley long before their shadows fell upon the outpost Bombs fell, hanging in the air like rows of chimes before they exploded with a flash and huff, a rapid succession of detonations, earth and trees thrown up amidst the roil of smoke and flame And then the hidden guns opened up. Rockets streaked across the burning valley, homing rapidly upon their targets. More detonations. Craft exploding in mid-air or tumbling, flaming to the valley floor. And then a kind of silence, with only the roar and crackle of flame.

Dense smoke drifted across the valley. The burning pyres of ruined craft littered the Edenic scene.

And then cheers. Cheers from the hidden gunners. Elation from the defenders of the generator. They had won. They had beaten off the attacking force. They wandered out from beneath their camouflage nets, clapping each others' backs as they looked out over the burning ruins that dotted the length of the valley. Not a singlecraft had escaped. They'd nailed the lot Broad grins gave way to whoops of excitement.

And then a faint rumble. A rush of wind. From the far end of the valley something dark and sleek whizzed past them like a bullet Heads turned, mouths open in shock. And then the mountainside lifted, as if a dark wall of earth and rock had emerged from deep beneath the surface. The shock wave rippled through the earth to where they stood, knocking them from their feet, throwing their guns - their feeble rocket-launchers -fifty metres into the air.

And then it fell on them.

For a minute, two minutes there was silence. And then there came the faint yet distinctive drone of cruisers.

Only this time there would be no opposition.

DeVore stepped down and looked about him at the burning valley. "Perfect," he said, the word m.u.f.fled by the breathing mask he wore. Already the weather was changing, great cyclones sweeping across the central plains of Europe as the air slowly gave out. One by one he was picking them off. And all Li Yuan's attempts to second-guess him were futile. When it came to the endgame there was no better player. Besides, he remembered now. He knew now just why he had to win this game.

Ward. Ward was the stone that turned it all

Yes, and he must be drawn back here. Must be enticed to come. For sentimental reasons if no other.

And he would come.

As they brought the great excavator across, he stretched and yawned, feeling the st.i.tches pull in the wounds where his surgeons had sewed him up. He did not need this form much longer now, but for a while longer it would serve him. Until he had Ward in his web. And then he'd show himself, even as the sticky strands wrapped about his adversary.