"Well?" Ben asked, resting both hands on the side of the shell.
"It's powerful," Li Yuan said, meeting Ben's eyes - something resembling clarity returning to his own. "Like . . . well, like sorcery."
Ben laughed. "And Fei Yen?"
"Was different," Li Yuan said, frowning. "More . . ."
"Welcoming?"
"Yes." Li Yuan swallowed, pained, then looked down. "If s how it should have been. How. . ." He fell silent, then shook his head. "Destroy it," he said. "I. . ."
Ben studied him a moment, then leaned across and pressed ERASE.
Li Yuan stared at him, surprised. He had just wiped the best part of four months' work.
Ben smiled. "I have it here," he said, tapping his forehead. "So if you don't want it. . ."
Li Yuan shook his head, then, letting Ben take his arm to help him, hauled himself up out of the shell. Taking a silk wrap from the side, he drew it about him then turned to face Ben again.
"Do you recall the first time we met? At the betrothal ceremony?"
"The sketch?" Ben nodded then walked across and, taking a sketchpad from the table at the side, came back and rested it against the edge of the shell. Taking a charcoal stick from his shirt pocket, he began to draw, each stroke, each blurring motion of the thumb, mimicking to perfection what he had done on that day thirty years before.
"Uncanny," Li Yuan said finally, clearly awed by this exhibition of Ben's eidetic memory. "I have the original still, on the wall in my study."
"Then here's its twin." And, smiling, Ben handed it to him. "Do you remember what was said?"
Li Yuan nodded. "I remember thinking that you were some kind of magician. You seemed to conjure the image from the air, as if you merely traced over what was already there."
"And so I did." Ben laughed, then grew serious again. "You could call it my curse, I guess - to be forever giving form to what already exists up here." Again he tapped his forehead.
Li Yuan watched him, understanding coming slowly to his eyes. "Yes, and you were right, too, that day."
"About the Lord Yi?"
Li Yuan smiled. The picture Ben had drawn for him that day - the same picture that he even now looked at - was of the great archei, Shen Yi, and his battle with the ten birds in the/w sang tree. In the legend, the ten birds represented the ten suns which threatened Mankind with their intense heat. The Lord Yi, by shooting nine of them from the Heavens, had saved Mankind. But the Lord Yi was also an usurper who stole many men's wives. Not only that, but his own wife, Chang-E had stolen the herb of immortality and had fled to the Moon where, for her sins, she had been turned into a toad whose dark shadow could be seen against the full moon's milky whiteness.
It took no Wu - no wise diviner - to make the parallel between himself and the Lord Yi, nor between Fei Yen and Chang-E. Any tavern philosopher might do the same over a bulb of sour beer.
"You knew my marriage to Fei Yen would fail, didn't you?"
Ben shrugged. "I knew."
"I should never have married her."
"You had no choice. You were obsessed."
"Yes . . ." Li Yuan nodded again, then laughed. "Yes, if s strange, isn't it? How little choice we have in such matters. If s as if we're . . . well, programmed somehow. The merest scent of her, the way she'd turn her head . . ."
He stopped. Ben was watching him, capturing him, like a camera that missed nothing; that saw both what was external and what was deep within.
"I've changed."
"I can see," Ben said, smiling, offering - for once - no criticism.
Li Yuan looked down, for that one brief moment uncertain, then looked back again. Ben was still watching him, those dark green eyes no less intent than when he'd first looked into them thirty years before.
"You know what I want, then?"
Ben nodded.
"And the rest of them?"
"Will do exactly as you say. Even Pei K'ung." Ben's smile reappeared momentarily. "Every shadow needs something between it and the sun."
Li Yuan frowned. "You think there'll be trouble with Pei K'ung?"
Ben leaned forward and plucked the unsigned edict from Yuan's pocket and unfurled it.
"Pei K'ung is trouble. But she can be harnessed."
Li Yuan stared at Ben expectantly, making no attempt to take the document back. "Do you think she knows what we're up to?"
Ben, studying the document, shook his head. He flicked through it quickly, then, with a faint moue of amusement, handed it back.
"Games," he said. "Distractions."
"Maybe," Li Yuan answered, "but they'll serve their purpose, don't you think?"
"They'll serve the Oven Man, certainly. But purpose . . ." Ben shrugged, then went to the window, looking out across the gardens. "What do you think our purpose is, Yuan?"
Li Yuan shrugged. "To have children. To . . ."
Ben turned, suddenly impatient. "No. That's not what I mean. What's our purpose. Our chemical, physical, spiritual purpose? To put it as succinctly as possible - why the fuck are we here? What Great Test are we a part of? And whose?"
Li Yuan was quiet a moment. Ben's outburst had taken him aback. "I didn't think you believed in gods."
"Gods, no. Divine Chemists, yes." His smile now was impish. "This universe of ours was devised by someone with a Chemist's mind, a Chemist's obsessive care for detail. The human side . . . well, Chemists aren't interested in all that, are they? That's why that side of things is such a mess."
Ben laughed. "That's why you're still hung up on your dead brother's wife after all these years. Why I'm still fucking my sister!"
Li Yuan made a small noise of surprise, then,, despite himself, began to giggle.
"Perverse, isn't it?" he said, after a moment.
"No more than the usual run of things," Ben answered, coming across to him and holding his arm briefly. "Did you know my son's a mute?"
Li Yuan nodded, embarrassed by the conversation's turn.
'"God's Judgment' Meg calls it. As if God - if he existed -could be bothered with such pettiness."
"And you?" Li Yuan asked. "What do you think?"
"Me? I think Tom's happy. I think . . . well, as far as the greater world's concerned, I think it's a blessing that one of us Shepherds can't speak!"
Tom shaded his eyes with his hand, staring down the street, trying to make out what was happening up ahead. He knew where he was now. The river was straight ahead, just there where the taller buildings began, and the barge - if it was still where it had been moored the night before - was no more than ten minutes away by foot. But something was going on. At the end of the street they had set up security barriers. Armed soldiers in full riot gear were stopping people from going through.
He wondered what it was. A gang killing? A political assassination? Anything, it seemed, was possible here. Now that he had seen it with his own eyes he understood his father's fascination with it - understood why Ben spent so much time away from home.
And the girl? He sighed. The girl was like a dream. Amidst all this - all of the bustle and strangeness of the great Han city - she seemed ... well, impossible.
He patted his jacket pocket. His ID was still there. Yes, and the tiny present she had given him. He smiled, remembering, then began to walk toward the barrier.
The tape ended. Slowly the lights came up again. Tung Po-jen shivered, aware of the warm stickiness at his groin. Chao Ta-nien was sitting forward in his seat, half in trance, his chin resting on one hand, then he sat up and turned to look back at Tung.
"Was that real?"
Tung nodded. "From the Imperial library itself."
Chao raised an eyebrow. "From Tongjiang? I thought the palace was burned down."
Tung shrugged. He knew nothing of such matters. "Here," he said, handing Chao the cover, then watching as the Red Pole studied the embossed imperial symbol, his fingertips tracing the great wheel of dragons.