He looked to her. "Mashhad?"
"We have a meeting there," Li Yuan said, looking to his wife and raising a hand to softly intercede. "I shall need you there with me, Master Heng. For the negotiations."
He felt his stomach tighten. Negotiations? He had heard nothing, he looked to Cheng Nai shan and saw the cocky, self-confident look in his eyes and knew whose work this had been. Cheng had been trying to usurp him for months now, but this was the first time he had taken such direct and drastic measures to undermine him. Even so, Li Yuan still needed him. Hadn't he just said as much.
"Besides," Dragon Heart continued, ignoring her husband's signal, "I doubt that there'll be a ceremony. It would be ... well, inadvisable, let us say."
"Inadvisable, Mistress?"
"Yes," she said, a much harder edge slipping into her voice. "Harmless as such events might seem, it might prove ... a focus, don't you think, Master Heng?"
This time the look she gave him was unequivocal. She knew. Which meant she must have a spy, either in Karr's household or his own. He shuddered, briefly distracted by the thought of who it might be, but her raised voice brought him swiftly back to himself.
"You are dismissed, Master Heng." "Dismissed?" He stared at Cheng Nai shan, then at Li Yuan and understood. He was no longer trusted... not on matters of policy, anyway. That knowledge made him feel strange, lightheaded, and as he backed away, his body bent, his head bowed low, he almost stumbled.
The choice was straightforward. Either he set Jelka Ward up and had her arrested, or he was out. And out meant dead.
As the doors closed and he turned away, the strangeness of the choice that lay before him hit him fully. He had been here once before, of course, with Pei K'ung two years ago. But then the choice had been much simpler - had been between his Mistress or his Master. Now that had changed, for his Master now did his young wife's bidding. Or as good as. To betray her would be to betray him.
Heng Yu walked back slowly, deep in thought. These past few weeks he had thought it all settled. He had been sure that, when it came to it, he'd know just what to do and how to act, but now that the hour had come he was much less certain. He had gone through so much for Li Yuan; had done so much that was against his nature. Yet at what point did loyalty and duty — those great cornerstones of his existence -break down? How far was he supposed to go before something in him snapped?
And Jelka? Could he honestly give up Jelka to that woman? He shuddered at the thought. Even so, the question remained: could he abandon his Master at this late hour? Could he simply sit and watch while Cheng Nai shan and the generals picked the rotting carcass clean?
I don't know, he answered himself, hastening his pace, realising that he must warn Karr about the spy. The gods help me, I don't know!
Kim stood in the garden of Kalevala, the old greystone house behind him, the dome curving overhead, the great circle of Jupiter dominating the skyline. It felt strange to be there again - stranger still because, when he closed his eyes and sniffed the air, it was almost as if he were back on Chung Kuo on a quiet evening, the sea still, the air calm. But that illusion was only momentary. The moment you stepped outside the house, the moment you looked out of one of the windows, you were aware of where you were.
Space. Everywhere he looked he could see the vacuum. And this . . . this was his choice. To be out here, on the edge of things, rather than back there, close in to the sun, there where it was relatively safe and warm.
He walked out until he left the well-trimmed lawn and found himself beneath the trees, on rough, uneven ground. Barefoot he walked, a silent shadow among the shadowy branches.
Out here the silence of the place was eerie. There was no wind here, no rain, no movement of the tides. It was, he realised, like being back inside the City once again.
For the briefest moment he wondered if he'd been wrong. Wrong to spend so much time and effort shipping this out here. Wrong because it didn't fit.
Maybe. But he had done it now. There was no going back. Kalevala, Ganymede, that was his address henceforth.
Kim laughed, then moved quickly between the trees until he came out into the clearing. Here, strangely, nothing grew. A perfect circle of black was surrounded by seven tall pines. Here, years ago - almost thirty, if he recalled correctly what Jelka had said - a bolt of lightning had struck, turning the pines into blazing candles. In the morning Jelka had come and stood among their ashes, astonished by the power of the storm. Saplings had grown from the ruined stumps, yet in their midst the intense heat of the lightning strike had fused the ground. Nothing grew there, even now.
Kim squatted, brushing the thin layer of earth aside to feel the smooth, black surface underneath. And as he did, the words of the ancient tales, the Kalevala, filled his mind.
Thereupon smith Rmarinen Answered in the words that follow: But indeed tis not a wonder, If I am a skilful craftsman, For twos I who forged the heavens, And the arch of air who welded.'
He looked up through the trees at the magnificent sight of the gas giant, Jupiter filling half the sky in front of him, and shivered. Sometimes the words of that ancient saga seemed almost to relate to him personally. Some days he'd think of a phrase or two and briefly feel as if he too were caught up in something much larger than himself, something strange and mythical - like the great heroes of the tales; like Vainamoinen, or Lemminkainen, or more particularly, Ilmarinen. And yet what was he? Just a man. Clayborn. Malformed and lucky to be alive. He was no hero, that was for certain.
No. And yet, from his smallness bigger things might grow.
"Kim?"
The voice came from the air.
He turned his head, then stood, looking toward the house. "What is it, Wen Ch'ang?"
"You have a visitor, Kim. Young Chuang would like permission to come into the house."
' Kim laughed. "Of course. Send her in at once. I'll meet her there." Then, brushing his hand against his thigh, he started back through the trees.
"Well?" Kim asked, looking about him at Tolonen's study. "What do you think?"
Chuang Kuan Ts'ai looked back at Kim and grinned. "So many books."
Kim walked across and, reaching up, took an old, leather-bound volume from the shelf.
"Here," he said, turning and handing it to the nine-year-old. She studied the spine a moment then looked back at him. For a moment she seemed to be listening to something, her eyes glazing over, then she nodded.
Kim, watching, understood. The Machine inside her was downloading: dumping all it knew of Kalevala into her memory. Not that it knew much these days. In choosing a human host it had been forced to abandon its vast stores of knowledge, having to make do with those unused areas of the child's brain. Yet, in limiting itself, it had become greater than it had been, more human.
Chuang's eyes cleared and she looked at him again. "It must have been so much better back then, before the Cities. So much . . . clearer."
She turned, looking across at the carved stone fireplace, then went across and sat in the massive leather armchair by the window, her tiny frame dwarfed by it. For a time she simply sat there, staring thoughtfully at the book-lined walls, her legs kicking slowly above the ground. Turning to look at him, an impish smile formed on her lips.
He smiled back at her, glad that they'd adopted her. She was a good child, hard-working, loving, and no trouble at all. He'd never once had to raise his voice to her.
"I had a dream, Papa Kim."
"A dream?"
Her legs kicked slowly, languidly, as if they were dangling in a stream. "It was . . . strange."
Briefly Kim thought of the dreams Jelka had once had -those vivid, almost apocalyptic dreams of threat and rescue. Like the dreams of Potiphar's wife, he thought idly. Prophetic dreams.