For the first time in his life Ben felt something like envy, watching her face. Not a jealous, denying envy, but a strong desire to emulate.
"But why now?"
"Haven't you guessed?" She laughed and placed his right hand on the keyboard. "You're usually so quick."
"You're going to teach me."
"Both of you," she answered, getting up and coming behind him so that she could move his arms and manipulate his hands. "Meg asked me to. And she wouldn't learn unless you could, too."
He thought about it a moment, then nodded.
"What was that piece you were playing when I came in? It sounded as if you were learning it for the first time, yet at the same time knew it perfectly."
She leaned closer, her warmth pressed against his shoulder, her long dark hair brushing against his cheek. "It wasn't originally a piece for piano, that's why. It was scored for the string and woodwind sections of an orchestra. It's by Grieg. 'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.' " She placed her hands on either side of his own and repeated the phrase he had heard, then played a second, similar one.
"That's nice," he said. Its simplicity appealed to him.
"You came back early," she said. "What's up? Didn't you want to go into town?"
He turned, meeting her eyes. "Father called. The T'ang has asked him to stay on a few days."
There was a brief movement of disappointment in her face. It had been three months since she had seen Hal.
"A few more days," she said quietly. "Ah well, it'll soon pass." Then, smiling, she put her hand on his arm. "Perhaps we'll have a picnic. You, me, and Meg. Like old times. What do you think?"
Ben looked back at her, seeing her anew, the faintest smile playing on his lips and in his eyes. "It would be nice," he said. But already his thoughts were moving on, his mind toying with the possibilities of the keyboard. Pushing things further. "Yes," he added, getting up and going over to her. "Like old times."
THE next MORNING found Ben in the shadowed living room, crouched on his haunches, staring intently at the screen that filled half the facing wall. He was watching one of the special Security reports that had been prepared for his father some months before, after the T'ang of Africa's assassination. It was an interesting document, not least because it showed things that were thought too controversial, too inflammatory, for general screening.
The Seven had acted swiftly after Wang Hsien's death, arresting the last few remnants of opposition at First Level—thus preventing a further outbreak of the war between the factions in the Above—but even they had been surprised by the extent of the rioting lower down the City. There had been riots before, of course, but never on such a widespread scale or with such appalling consequences. Officials of the Seven, Deck Magistrates among them, had been beaten and killed. Security posts had been destroyed and Security troops forced to pull out of some stacks in fear of their lives. Slowly, very slowly, things had died down, the fires burning themselves out; and in some parts of the City—in East Asia and North America, particularly—Security had moved back within days to quell the last few pockets of resistance. Order had been restored. But for how long?
He knew it was a warning. A sign of things to come. But would the Seven heed it? Or would they continue to ignore the problems that beset those who lived in the lowest levels of the City, blaming the unrest on groups like the Ping Tiao?
Ben rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. To the respectable Mid-Level citizenry, the Ping Tiao were bogeymen, the very type and symbol of those destructive forces the War had unleashed; and MidText, the Mid-Level media channel, played heavily upon their fears. But the truth was otherwise.
The Ping Tiao had first come into the news eighteen months earlier, when three members of their faction had kidnapped and murdered a Mid-Level administrator. They had issued pamphlets claiming that the Administrator was a corrupt and brutal man who had abused his position and deserved his fate. It was the truth, but the authorities had countered at once, depicting the dead official as a well-respected family man who had been the victim of a group of madmen; madmen who wanted only one thing—to level the City and destroy Chung Kuo itself. As the weeks passed and further Ping Tiao "outrages" occurred, the media had launched a no-holds-barred campaign against the group, linking their name with any outbreak of violence or civil unrest. There was a degree of truth behind official claims, for the tactics of the Ping Tiao were certainly of the crudest kind, the seemingly random nature of their targets aiming at maximum disruption. However, the extent of Ping Tiao activities was greatly exaggerated, creating the impression that if only the Ping Tiao could be destroyed, the problems they represented would vanish with them.
The campaign had worked. Or at least, in the Mid-Levels it had worked. Farther down, however, in the cramped and crowded levels at the bottom of the City, the Ping Tiao were thought of differently. There they were seen as heroes, their cause as a powerful and genuine expression of long-standing grievances. Support for the terrorists grew and grew; and would have continued growing but for a tragic accident in a Mid-Level creche.
Confidential high-level sources later made it quite clear that the Ping Tiao had had nothing to do with what was termed "the Lyons Canton Massacre," but the media had a field day, attacking the Ping Tiao for what they called its "cowardly barbarism and inhumanity."
The effect was immediate. The tide of opinion turned against the Ping Tiao overnight, and a subsequent Security operation against the terrorists resulted in the capture and execution of over eight hundred members of the faction, most of them identified by previously sympathetic friends and neighbors.
For the Ping Tiao those few weeks had been disastrous. They had sunk into obscurity. Yet in the past few days they seemed to have put that behind them. Fish emblems—the symbol of the Ping Tiao—had been seen everywhere throughout the levels, painted on walls or drawn in blood on the faces of their victims.
But the authorities had hit back hard. MidText, for instance, had played heavily on old fears. The present troubles, they asserted, were mainly the result of a conspiracy between the Ping Tiao and a small faction in the Above who financed their atrocities.
Ben froze the tape momentarily, thinking back to what Li Shai Tung had said— on that evening five years earlier—about knowing his enemy. It was on this level, accepting at face value the self-deluding half-truths of the MidText images, that Li Shai Tung had been speaking. But these men—terrorists and Company men alike—were merely cyphers, the scum on the surface of the well. And the well was deep. Far deeper than the Seven dared imagine.
He let the tape run. At once the babble began again, the screen filling once more with images of riot and despoliation.
Vast crowds surged through the lower levels, destroying guard posts and barriers, wrecking storefronts and carrying off whatever they could lay their hands on. Unfortunate officials were beaten to death in front of the camera, or bound and doused in petrochemicals before being set on fire. Ben saw how the crowd pressed in tightly about one such victim, roaring their approval as a frail, gray-bearded magistrate was hacked to death. He noted the ugly brutality in every face, and nodded to himself. Then the image changed, switching to another crowd, this one more orderly. Hastily made banners were raised on every side, demanding increased food rations, a resumption of state aid to the jobless, and an end to travel restrictions. "Pien hua!" they chanted in their hundred thousands, "Pien hua!"
Change.'
There was a burning indignation in many of the faces; in others a fierce, unbridled need that had no outlet. Some waved long knives or clubs in the air and bared their teeth in ferocious animal smiles, a gleam of sheer delight in their eyes at having thrown off all restraints. For many this was their first taste of such freedom and they danced frenetically in time with the great chant, intoxicated by the madness that raged on every side.