Tolonen bowed his head, then turned his right hand palm upward and quickly tapped out the command on the grid of tiny flesh-colored blisters at his wrist. That done, he settled back, letting the young Prince speak.
Li Yuan watched the Marshal while he talked, barely referring to the folder in his lap, unless it was to take some diagram from it and hand it to Tolonen. He watched attentively, noting every frown, every look of puzzlement, every last betraying blink or twitch in the old man's face, anxious to gauge the depth of his feelings.
Tolonen had not smiled throughout the lengthy exposition. He sat there, grim-faced, his left hand gripping the arm of his chair. But when Yuan finished, he looked down, giving a great heave of a sigh.
"Can I speak now, Yuan?" Tolonen said, his eyes pained, his whole face grave.
"Of course. As I said, you must speak to me as if I were my father. Openly. As you feel."
Prepared as he was, Li Yuan nonetheless felt a sudden tightening in his stomach. He respected Marshal Tolonen greatly, had grown up in the shadow of the old man. But in this, he knew, they were of a different mind.
Tolonen stared at him a moment, nodding, his lips pressed tightly together, his earnest gray eyes looking out from a face carved like granite. Then, with a deep sniff that indicated he had considered things long enough, he began.
"You ask me to speak openly. Yet I feel I cannot do that without offending you, Li Yuan. This is, I take it, your idea?"
Li Yuan could sense the great weight of the Marshal's authority bearing down on him, but steeled himself, forcing himself to confront it.
"It is."
"I see. And yet you command me—speaking with your father's voice—to answer you. Openly. Bluntly." He sighed. "Very well then. I'll tell you what I feel. I find this scheme of yours repugnant."
Li Yuan shivered, but kept his face impassive. "And I, Marshal Tolonen. And I. This is not something I want to do."
"Then why?"
"Because there is no other way. None that would not result in greater violence, greater bloodshed than that which we are already witnessing."
Tolonen looked down. Again he sniffed deeply. Then he looked up again, shaking his head. "No. Even were the worst to come, this is no path for us. To put things in men's heads. To wire them up and treat them like machines. Achh . . ." He leaned forward, his expression suddenly, unexpectedly, passionate. "I know what I am, Li Yuan. I know what I have had to do in the service of my T'ang. And sometimes I have difficulty sleeping. But this . . . this is different in kind. This will rob men of their freedom."
"Or the illusion of freedom?"
Tolonen waved the words aside impatiently. "It's no illusion, Prince Yuan. The freedom to choose—bad or good—that's real. And the Mandate of Heaven— those moral criteria by which a T'ang is adjudged a good or bad ruler—that too is real. Take them away and we have nothing. Nothing worth keeping, anyway."
Li Yuan sat forward. "I don't agree. If a man is bad, surely it is no bad thing to have a wire in his head—to be able to limit the effects of his badness? And if a man is good—"
Tolonen interrupted him. "You, I, your father—we are good men. We act because we must—for the good of all. Yet when we have left this earth, what then? How can we guarantee that those who rule Chung Kuo after us will be good? How can we guarantee their motives? So you see, I'd answer you thus, my Prince. It does not matter if the man with the wire in his head is good or bad. What matters is the moral standing of the man who holds the wires in his hands like ten thousand million strings. Will he make the puppets dance? Or will he leave them be?"
Li Yuan sat back slowly, shaking his head. "You talk of dictatorships, Marshal Tolonen. Yet we are Seven."
Tolonen turned his head aside, a strange bitterness in his eyes. "I talk of things to be—whether they come in ten years or ten thousand." He looked back at Li Yuan, his gray/eyes filled with sadness. "Whatever you or I might wish, history tells us this—nothing is eternal. Things change."
"You once thought differently. I have heard you speaking so myself, Knut. Was it not you yourself who said we should build a great dam against the floodwaters of Change."
Tolonen nodded, suddenly wistful, his lips formed into a sad smile. "Yes . . . but this!"
He sat there afterward, when the Prince had gone, staring down at his hands. He would do it. Of course he would. Hadn't his T'ang asked him to take this on? Even so, he felt heavy of heart. Had the dream died, then? The great vision of a world at peace—a world where a man could find his level and raise his family without need or care. And was this the first sign of the nightmare to come? Of the great, engulfing darkness?
He kept thinking of Jelka, and of the grandchildren he would someday have. What kind of a world would it be for them? Could he bear to see them wired, made vulnerable to the least whim of their lords and masters? He gritted his teeth, pained by the thought. Had it changed so much that even he—the cornerstone— began to doubt their course?
"Knut?"
He raised his head, then got to his feet hurriedly. He had been so caught up in his thoughts he had not heard the T'ang enter.
"Chieh Hsia!" He bowed his head exaggeratedly.
Li Shai Tung sat where his son had been sitting only moments before, silent, studying his Marshal. Then, with a vague nod of his head as if satisfied with what he had seen, he leaned toward Tolonen.
"I heard all that passed between you and my son."
"Yes, Chieh Hsia."
"And I am grateful for your openness."
Tolonen met his eyes unflinchingly. "It was only my duty, Li Shai Tung."
"Yes. But there was a reason for letting Yuan talk to you first. You see, while my son is, in his way, quite wise, he is also young. Too young, perhaps, to understand the essence of things—the place of Li and Ch'i in this great world of ours, the fine balance that exists between the shaping force and the passive substance."
Tolonen frowned, lowering his head slightly. "I'm afraid I don't follow you, Chieh Hsia."
The T'ang smiled. "Well, Knut, I'll put it simply, and bind you to keep this secret from my son. I have authorized his scheme, but that is not to say it will ever come about. You understand me?"
"Not fully, my Lord. You mean you are only humoring Li Yuan?"
Li Shai Tung hesitated. "In a way, yes, I suppose you could say I am. But this idea is deep-rooted in Yuan. I have seen it grow from the seed, until now it dominates his thinking. He believes he can shape the world to his conception, that this scheme of his will answer all the questions."
"And you think he's wrong?"
"Yes."
"Then why encourage him? Why authorize this madness?"
"Because Yuan will be T'ang one day. If I oppose him now in this, he will only return to it after my death. And that would be disastrous. It would bring him into conflict not only with his fellow T'ang but with the great mass of the Above. Best then to let him purge it from his blood while he is Prince, neh? To discover for himself that he is wrong."
"Maybe . . ." Tolonen took a deep breath. "But if you'll forgive me, Chieh Hsia, it still seems something of a gamble. What if this 'cure' merely serves to encourage him further? Isn't that possible?"
"Yes. Which is why I summoned you, Knut. Why I wanted you to oversee the project. To act as brake to my son's ambitions and keep the thing within bounds. . . and to kill it if you must."
Tolonen was staring at his T'ang, realization coming slowly to his face. Then he laughed. "I see, Chieh Hsia ... I understand!"
Li Shai Tung smiled back at him. "Good. Then when Tsu Ma returns from riding, I'll tell him you have taken the job, yes?"
Tolonen bowed his head, all heaviness suddenly lifted from his heart. "I would be honored, Chieh Hsia. Deeply honored."