An Inch of Ashes (Chung Kuo)(29)

‘Okay. I'm coming. Just a little longer...'

He nodded and started down. For a moment longer she stood there, looking about her, imagining herself mistress of all she saw. Then, with a sigh, she followed Erkki down towards the lights of the house.


Director Spatz sat back in his chair, pointing directly at the screen.

‘Well, Ellis? What in the gods' names is that?'

‘We're not sure as yet, Director, but we're working on it. At first we thought it might be some kind of star chart, considering the boy's interest in astronomy, but we've run it through the computer for a possible match and there's nothing.'

For a moment both men were silent, staring at the screen. There were forty-six points in all, most of them linked by straight lines to three or four other lines. They formed a tight cat's cradle on the screen, elliptical in structure, like the upper half of a skull.

Spatz huffed loudly. ‘You're absolutely certain it has nothing to do with what we're working on?'

‘Absolutely. Apart from the fact that we've barely begun work on the actual positioning of the wires, those points simply don't correspond to the areas of the brain we'd be looking to use. In my opinion it's only coincidence that it has that shape.'

‘Hmm.' Spatz leaned forward and blanked the screen, then turned, looking up at his assistant. ‘I know what you think, Ellis, but you're wrong. He's up to something. I'm sure of it. So keep looking. I don't want your team to relax until you've found out what he's doing.'

Ellis bowed. Once outside the room he drew a long breath, then shook his head. The Director's obsession with the boy was bordering upon the insane. He was convinced that the boy had been introduced for one of two reasons  –  either to spy upon him or to ensure that the Project failed. Either way he felt threatened. But the truth was far simpler.

He had been studying the boy for ten days now and was convinced that he was genuine. He had watched Kim working on several of his own projects and had seen how he applied himself to problems. There was no faking that; no way of counterfeiting that quickness of mind. But Spatz would not hear of it. Second-rate himself, he would not have it that a mere boy  –  and a Clayborn boy at that  –  could be his intellectual superior.

But Spatz wasn't to have it all his own way. Ellis had seen the directive that had come down only moments before he had gone in to see the Director. And there was nothing Spatz could do about it.

He laughed, then walked on. No, not even Project Director Spatz would have the nerve to countermand Prince Yuan's direct command.


Kim was lying on his back in the pool, his eyes closed. It was late and the pool was empty, but from the gym nearby came the harsh hiss and grunt of the men working out on the exercise machines.

For a time he simply floated there, relaxing, then, rolling over, he kicked out for the side, glancing up at the cameras overhead.

Did they watch him even here? He smiled and ducked his face under, then lifted it, throwing the water out from him in a spray. Almost certainly. Even when he was pissing they'd have a camera on him. Spatz was like that. But he wasn't atypical. There wernotem">e his e many like Spatz. The City bred them in their hundred thousands.

He pulled himself up and sat there on the side, moving his legs lazily in the water. He had always been watched  –  it was almost the condition of his existence  –  but he had never come to like it. At best he used it, as he did now, as a goad, challenging himself to defeat its constrictions.

In that the reports on him were accurate. In this one respect the Clay had shaped him  –  for he was cunning. And not just cunning, but inventive in his cunning, as if the very directness of his mind  –  that aspect of him which could grasp the essence of a thing at once and use it  –  needed this other ‘twisted' part to permit its function. He smiled and looked down, wondering, as ever, what they made of his smiles  –  what they thought when they saw him smile so, or so.

He looked up; looked directly into camera. What do you see, Shih Spatz? Does the image you have of me bear any relationship to the being that I truly am?

No, he answered, looking away. No relationship at all. But, then, Spatz had no idea what Chung Kuo would be like if the Project succeeded. All that concerned him was his own position on the social ladder, whether he rose or fell. All else was irrelevant.

Kim stretched his neck, then yawned. He had slept little these past few nights, trying to see through the mesh of details to the heart of the problem.

What would Chung Kuo be like if everyone were wired?

He had run various scenarios through his head. For instance, the Seven might limit the use of wiring to known criminals and political dissidents. Or, at the other extreme, they might wire everyone, even their wives and cousins. Not only that, but there was the nature of the wiring to consider. Was it to be a simple tracing mechanism, or would it be more complex? Would they be content to use it as a method of policing Chung Kuo's vast population, or would they seek to change behaviour by its use?

This last caused him much concern, for the wire held a far greater potential for manipulation than Li Yuan probably envisaged. When one began to tinker with the human mind there was no limit to the subtle changes one might make. It was possible  –  even quite simple  –  to create attractions and aversions, to mould a thousand million personalities to a single mental template and make the species docile, timid, uncreative. But was that worse than what was happening anyway? It could be argued that Chung Kuo  –  the great utopian City of Tsao Ch'un  –  had been created for that very purpose: to geld Mankind and keep the curious beast within his bars. In such a light this latest step  –  this plan to ‘wire' each individual  –  was merely a perfection of that scheme. Restraint alone had failed. The bars were not enough. Now they must put the bars  –  the walls  –  within, or see the whole vast edifice come crashing down.

It was an unsettling thought.

Against this he set three things: his ‘duty' to Li Yuan; his certainty that, with him or without, this thing would be; and, last, the simple challenge of the thing.

He had tried to convince himself that he owed nothing to any man, but the truth was otherwise. His fate had always been in the hands of others. And wasn't that so for all men? Wasn't even the most basic thing  –  a man's existence  –  dependent upon a consensus amongst those he lived with: on the agreement to let him be? Hadn't he learned that much in the Clay? No man was truly free. No man had any rights but those granted him by his fellows. In Li Yuan's favour, the Prince at least had recognized his worth and given him this chance. Surely that deserved repayment of some kind?

Asain musd fny to the second matter, he was certain now that only total catastrophe could prevent Li Yuan's scheme from becoming a reality. Indeed, catastrophe now seemed the sole alternative to the Wiring Project. The fuse had been lit long ago, in the Seven's refusal to confront the problem of massive population increases. Their reluctance to tackle that fundamental  –  a decision shaped by their veneration of the family and of the right of every man to have sons  –  had hamstrung any attempt to balance the slow increase in resources against the overwhelming increase in demand and to make of Chung Kuo the utopia it was meant to be. But that was nothing new; it was an age-old problem  –  a problem that the emperors of Chung Kuo had been forced to face for more than two thousand years. Famine and plague and revolution were the price of such imbalance, and such would come again  –  unless the tide were turned, the great generative force harnessed. But that would not happen without an evolutionary change in the species. In the meantime, this  –  this artificial means  –  would have to do. The Seven had no option. They would have to wire or go under.

And the challenge? That, too, he saw in moral terms. As he conceived it now, the scheme presented mainly technical problems  –  problems that required not the kind of inventiveness he was good at but the perfecting of existing systems. In many ways it was a matter of pure organizational complexity: of breaking down the Wiring Project into its constituent parts and then rebuilding it. The end, however, was not unachievable. Far from it. Most of the technology required already existed. He could have said as much to Prince Yuan at their first meeting, but the challenge  –  the real challenge  –  lay in directing the research: in determining not the quality of the eventual wire, but its kind.

And there, perhaps, he overstepped the brief Li Yuan had given him, for he had not been asked to consider what the wire should be capable of; he had been asked only to determine whether the scheme would work. Again he was to be simply the tool  –  the vehicle  –  for another's needs; the instrument by which their dreams might become realities. As ever, he was supposed to have no say in the matter. Yet he would have his say.

Kim stilled the movement of his legs in the water and looked up.

‘Joel!'

Hammond stood there on the far side of the pool. ‘Kim... I thought I'd find you here.'