David Wingrove - Chung Kuo 6 - White Moon,Red Dragon

CHUNG KUO

BY DAVID WINGROVE

BOOK 6:

WHITE MOON, RED DRAGON

A DELL TRADE PAPERBACK

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

For John Patrick Kaivmagh

brother in arms, dedicated

B52 pilot and all 'round fine fellow.

"Give 'em a dollar!"

A DELL TRADE PAPERBACK

Published by Dell Publishing

a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware

that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and

destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the

publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any

information storage and retrieval system, without the written

permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Wingrove, David.

White moon, red dragon / by David Wingrove. p. cm. —(Chung Kuo ; bk. 6)

ISBN 0-440-50731-6 I. Series: Wingrove, David. Chung Kuo ; bk. 6.

PR6073.I545C5 1990 vol. 6 823'.914—dc20 95-39571

CIP

Printed in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada

July 1996

10 98765432 BVG

CONTENTS

B O O K 6

White Moon, Red Dragon

PROLOGUE Winter 2215—Forgotten Words

PART 1 Spring 2216—Song of the Bronze Statue

Chapter 1: In Heaven's Sight

Chapter 2: Breathless Mouths

Chapter 3: Wives

Chapter 4: Secret Languages

Chapter 5: Caged Birds

Chapter 6: The White T'ang

Chapter 7: Where the Path Divides

Chapter 8: To the Edge

Chapter 9: Light and Dark

Chapter 10: The Flesh of Kings

Chapter 11: The Rider through the Autumn Wind

INTERLUDE Autumn 2217—The Night-Colored Pearl

PART 2 Spring 2218—The King under the City

Chapter 12: Clay

Chapter 13: Gods of Bone and Dust

Chapter 14: The King under the City

Chapter 15: The Dark Angel

Chapter 16: Death Ground

PART 3 Spring 2222 — Toward Evening

Chapter 17: Between Cities 393

Chapter 18: The Dreams of Morpheus 412

Chapter 19: Faces 436

Chapter 20: Puppet Dance 459

Chapter 21: At One Stride Comes the Dark 480

Chapter 22: Copies of Some Greater Thing 497

Chapter 23: A Spring Day at the Edge of the World 521

EPILOGUE Spring 2222 — Starlight and Nonbeing 543

Author's Note 549

Acknowledgments 553 Glossary of Mandarin Terms 555

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."

Tuan Ti Fo chuckled softly. "You see nothing? Then, surely, there is nothing."

"No. Something landed on the surface of the planet north of Kang Kua. I can sense it. It is there. Its very

absence reveals it, and yet it conceals itself."

The old man tugged at his beard thoughtfully. "And your camera probes?"

"Cannot penetrate it. It's as if there is a shell surrounding it. A shell of—it hesitated, a hesitation that in a

man might seem normal, yet in the great Machine revealed the existence of billions of rapid

calculations—"something unknown," it concluded, a strange hesitancy in its normally toneless voice.

Tuan Ti Fo stared at the console a moment, then nodded. His mood was suddenly more sober. "I see."

The Machine fell silent. It was thinking. For more than five million years Mankind had striven upward out

of the primal dark toward the light, and from that quest had come Itself, the ultimate flowering of mind:

one single, all-encompassing intelligence.

Intelligent, yet incomplete. Within its mind it pictured the great swirl of things known and unknown, like a

vast t'ai chi of light and dark, perfectly balanced. Within that half which was light was a tiny circle of

blackness—a pinpoint of occlusion, which it knew to be Tuan Ti Fo. And now, within the darkness of

those things unknown, lay a single point of light.

"If it's a craft," Tuan Ti Fo said, "then it must have come from somewhere."

"But there's no trace," the Machine began, then checked itself, realizing that, like the absence that

revealed something, there was a line of occlusion through its memory; an area of tampering—a no-trace

that paradoxically revealed the passage of the craft.

"It came in from the System's edge. From the tenth planet."

Yet even as it spoke, it questioned that.

"Something alien?" Tuan Ti Fo asked.

It considered the notion, surprised that for once it was dealing in uncertainties.

"No . . ."

"But you have a hunch?"

"A calculated guess."

"Then you had best send someone."

"Send someone?"

Tuan Tl Fo laughed, then stood, brushing down his silks. "Why, to look, of course." He turned, his figure

shimmering, slowly vanishing into the air, his words echoing after he had gone. "Send the boy. He'll see.

Whatever it is."

"Nza?"

The voice came from the air. At its sound the boy turned sharply, his body crouched defensively, then he

saw the tiny, glittering probe hovering like a silver insect in the air above his head.

"What is it?" he asked, keeping the fear from his voice.

"Where is Ebert?"

The ten-year-old turned, pointing back into the shadows. The probe moved past him, drifting into the

darkness—a moment later it returned.

"Come," it said, hovering just above his head, no bigger than his fist, its surface smooth and rounded like

a tiny shaven skull. Nza shivered and then obeyed.

THE machine W A T C H E D the boy approach the nullity; saw hkn Put out his hand, then withdraw it

as if he'd been stung.

"Can you feel anything?" it asked, the sensation of curiosity almost overwhelming.

The boy nodded, then put out his hand, tracing what seemed like a smooth, curving slope in the air. But

still it could see nothing, sense nothing.

It watched the boy move slowly around, testing the air with his hands, defining more accurately the area

of nothingness the Machine's probes had sensed.

Nza turned, his eyes wide.

"What is it?" it asked. "Did you see anything?"

Nza shook his head. "Efulefu . . . Get Efulefu."

IT WAS LIGHT when Ebert got there. He crouched some fifty ch'i from the unseen presence, perfectly

at rest, watching the shadows shorten as the sun climbed the sky. The wind blew fitfully, and when it did

he noted the patterns the sand made around the nullity.

After two hours he stood and motioned to the boy. Nza went to him and stood there, looking up at him

as he mouthed something through the glass of his helmet. It was cold, bitterly cold, and already two of the

Machine's six probes had ceased functioning, but Ebert seemed unaware of it.

The cold. It would kill them all one day. Machine and men alike.

Nza stared a moment longer, then nodded and, with that curious loping run of his, scuttled across to the

nearest of the probes.

"What is it?" the Machine asked, but the boy shook his head and pointed to his mouth. It watched,

reading the boy's lips.

There's something there. He senses it. He thinks it watches us and listens. And something else.

It waited as the boy ordered his thoughts, recalling what Ebert had told him.

He says . . . when he closes his eyes ... he sees a face. An old, familiar face.

It knew, even before the boy's mouth stretched twice to form the word. So he was back. DeVore was

back on Mars.

DEVORE STOOD AT the view window, looking out across the windblown surface toward the

crouching figure, then turned to the monitor again. Ebert's face filled the screen, his eyes behind the

helmet's glass a deep reposeful blue.

So you survived, old friend. And now you consort with those ugly sons of the night. Well, stranger

things have been known.

He laughed softly, then clicked his fingers, summoning one of his guards.

"Find out how it's going. We've been here too long as it is. I want us gone by nightfall."

The soldier bowed low and backed away. DeVore turned back to the screen, pushing out his chin

reflexively. Hans Ebert had been but a child when he'd first met him. A spoiled and willful child. But now,

looking at him, studying him, he saw how much he had changed. It was there in his eyes, in the perfect

stillness of the man.

Impressive, he thought. But also dangerous. Hans Ebert was no friend of his — he understood that now.

At any other time he'd stop to kill this exiled prince, but right now it was more important to get back to

Chung Kuo as quickly — and as discreetly — as possible.

He cursed silently, angry that they had had to set down and determined that, once repairs were effected,

he'd kill that bastard Hooper himself. As an example to the others.

He crossed the room and tapped into the craft's log. Things were getting slack. Already they had lost two

days. As it was, even a week's delay wouldn't affect their cargo, but any longer . . .

He cleared the screen. That would be one advantage of getting back to Chung Kuo. For too long now

he'd had to rely on the services of second-raters. Once back he could dispense with them and hire some

better men.

DeVore smiled. He would enjoy that day. It would be a day of rewards. A day when all these

second-rate fellows would find themselves grinning.

Grinning bone-white before the wind.

There was a sound in the doorway. He turned, noting the guard there.

"Well?"

"Nine hours, Master Hooper says."

"Good." He waved the man away, then went to the window again. Ebert had not moved. He seemed

rooted there, part of the dust of Mars.

"I shall come back for you, Hans Ebert," he said quietly. "Once other wars are fought and won. And then

. . ." He laughed, then turned away, imagining the sight. And then I'll see you dance on a gibbet like the

commonest lowlife there ever was.

LATE IN THE DAY he felt it go. There was a change in the air, a lessening of the pressure, and then . . .

nothing.

"It's gone," Ebert said, getting up, his limbs stiff from inactivity and cold.

"1 know," Tuan Ti Fo said, appearing beside him. "I felt its passage in the air."

"Where has it gone?"

"Inward. Back to Chung Kuo."

Ebert nodded. "We must call a gathering. Tonight."

"It is done."

"Ah." Ebert smiled. "And my intentions? You know those too?" Tuan Ti Fo's laughter was light,

infectious. "You mistake me, Tsou Tsai Hei. The woman, Hama, spoke to me."

He stared at the old sage, surprised. "You speak with her?"

"Sometimes."

"Is there anything you do not know, Master Tuan?"

Tuan's eyes, normally so calm, so clear, for once looked away, troubled. "Many things. But only one that

bothers me. I do not know what that man wants."

"DeVore, you mean?"

Tuan Ti Fo nodded. "This world—this reality—it is like a game to him. He plays his stone and then

awaits an answer. Why, the King of Hell is but an apprentice beside him. He has made malice into an art.

Some days I think the man is old. Older than the frame of flesh he wears."

"Older than you, Master Tuan?"

Tuan laughed. "Don't mock my gray beard, Worthless One. Time will find you too."

"Of course. But tell me, Master Tuan, what do you mean?" "Only this. That I come to think the true

nature of the man has been masked from us. DeVore . . . what is he? Is he a mortal man? An orphan,

raised to high office in the T'ang's Security forces? Or was that, too, merely a guise? A mask of flesh put

on to fool mere human eyes? Copies . . . Think of it, Hans. Why does the man love copies so? He

duplicates himself and sends his copies out to do his bidding. Now, is that self-love or some far deeper

game?" . ••., ..... -;.-.,-.•.-,..

Hans considered a moment, then shrugged. "Why did the Machine not destroy his craft while it was

here?"

"Destroy it? How? How can one destroy what is not there?"

He laughed. "Something was there. I sensed it. With my eyes closed I could see it."

"Maybe. But what I said still goes. It was not there. It was . . . folded in somehow: a negative twist of

nothingness. The Machine has a theory about it. It thinks the craft exists within a probability space quite

near to our own, the atoms of which have been . . . vibrated, like a plucked string."

"There but not there."

"Like your dream."

Hans stared at the old man, startled. "I told Hama nothing of the dream."

"I was there but not there."

"And you?" Ebert asked, passing his hand slowly through the old man's chest as his silk-cloaked figure

shimmered into nothingness again. "Are you here, or are you 'folded in'?"

THEY GATHERED AT the long day's end, as the last light of the sun bled from the horizon and the red

became black. Hans Ebert, once heir to the great GenSyn Corporation of Chung Kuo, traitor to his

T'ang and patricide, known also as Efulefu, "the Worthless One" and Tsou Tsai Hei, "The Walker in the

Darkness," climbed up onto the table rock and turned to face the thousands who had come.

He looked about him, noting who was there. Just below him were the ndichie, the elders of the Osu,

their white curls hidden within the tall domes of their helmets. Beyond them, standing in loose family

groups, were members of all the northern tribes, sons and daughters of Mother Sky. To his right, forming

a tight knot beside the escarpment, were two or three hundred of the new settlers. They looked on

suspiciously, clearly ill at ease, disturbed to see so many of the tribes gathered there. Hans wondered

what arguments Old Tuan had used to bring them out so late and so far from their settlement.

He raised a hand, then spoke, his voice carrying from his lip mike to the helmets of everyone there.

"Brothers, sisters, friends, respected elders, I thank you all for coming. You have been patient, very

patient, with me. Twice Mars has circled the sun and still I brought no answer. But finally 1 see what

must be done."

"Speak, Efulefu," one of the ndichie called, speaking for them all.

"Tell us what you see."

"I see a time when the supply ships no longer come. When Chung Kuo no longer looks to Mars with

caring eyes." "What of it?" someone called.

"We do not need their food, their medicines," another, deeper voice shouted from farther back. "Let the

ships stop. It makes no difference!" "That's right!" another yelled. "We want nothing from them!" "No?"

Ebert shrugged. "When a father forgets his son . . . when he casts him off, is that nothing? When a mother

casts her unwanted child into a stream, to sink or swim, is that nothing? When a great thread is cut, is

that nothing?"

David Wingrove - Chung Kuo 6 - White Moon, Red Dragon

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