T'ai Cho typed in the three words, then leaned back. The answer appeared on the screen at once.
"SUBCODE?"
He took a guess. ALEXANDER, he typed, then sat back with a laugh as the computer accepted the code word.
There was a brief pause, then the title page came up on the screen.
THE ARISTOTLE FILE Being the True History of Western Science T'ai Cho frowned. What was this? Then he understood. It was a game. An outlet for Kim's inventiveness. Something Kim had made up. Yes, he understood at once. He had read somewhere how certain young geniuses invented worlds and peopled them, as an exercise for their intellects. And this was Kim's. He smiled broadly and pressed to move the file on.
Four hours later, at three bells, he got up from his seat and went to relieve himself. He had set the machine to print and had sat there, reading the copy as it emerged from the machine. There were more than two hundred pages of copy in the tray by now and the file was not yet exhausted.
T'ai Cho went through to the kitchen, the faint buzz of the printer momentarily silenced, and put on a kettle of ch'a, then went back out and stood there by the terminal, watching the paper spill out slowly.
It was astonishing. Kim had invented a whole history; a fabulously rich, incredibly inventive history. So rich that at times it seemed almost real. All that about the Catholic church suppressing knowledge and the great Renaissance—was that the word?—that split Europe into two camps. Oh, it was wild fantasy, of course, but there was a ring of truth—of universality— behind it that gave it great authority.
T'ai Cho laughed. "So that's what you've been up to in your spare time, Kim Ward," he said softly, then laughed again. Yes, it made sense now. Kim had been busy reshaping the world in his own image—had made the past the mirror of his own logical, intensely curious self.
But it had not been like that. Pan Chao had conquered Ta Ts'in. Rome had fallen. And not as Kim had portrayed it, to Alaric and the Goths in the fifth century, but to the Han in the first. There had been no break in order, no decline into darkness. No Dark Ages and no Christianity—oh, and what a lovely idea that was: organized religion! The thought of it...
He bent down and took the last few sheets from the stack. Kim's tale had reached the twentieth century now. A century of war and large-scale atrocity. A century in which scientific "progress" had become a headlong flight. He glanced down the highlighted names on the page—Rontgen, Planck, Curie, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Baird, Schrodinger—recognizing none of them. Each had its own subfile, like the BRAHE. And each, he knew, would prove consistent with the larger picture.
"Remarkable!" he said softly, reading a passage about the development of radio and television. In Kim's version they had appeared only in the twentieth century—a good five centuries after the Han had really invented them. It was through such touches—by arresting some developments and accelerating others—that Kim made his story live. In his version of events, Han science had stagnated by the fourth century A.D. and Chung Kuo had grown insular, until, in the nineteenth century, the Europeans—and what a strange ring that phrase had; not Hung Moo, but "Europeans"—had kicked the rotten door of China in.
Ah, and that too. Not Chung Kuo. Kim called it China. As if it had been named after the First Emperor's people, the Ch'in. Ridiculous! And yet, somehow, strangely convincing too.
T'ai Cho sat back, rubbing his eyes, the sweet scent of the brewing ch'a slowly filling the room. Yes, much of it was ridiculous. A total fantasy—like the strange idea of Latin, the language of the Ta Ts'in, persisting fifteen hundred years after the fall of their empire. For a moment he thought of that old, dead language persisting through the centuries by means of that great paradox, the Church—at one and the same time the great defender and destroyer of knowledge—and knew such a world as the one Kim had dreamed up was a pure impossibility. A twisted dream of things.
While the printer hummed and buzzed, T'ai Cho examined his feelings. There was much to admire in Kim's fable. It spoke of a strong, inventive mind, able to grasp and use broad concepts. But beyond that there was something problematic about what Kim had done—something which troubled T'ai Cho greatly.
What disturbed him most was Kim's reinterpretation of the Ch'ing or, as Kim called it, the Manchu period. There, in his notion of a vigorous, progressive West and a decadent, static East was the seed of all else. That was his starting point: the focus from which all else radiated out, like some insidious disease, transforming whatever it touched. Kim had not simply changed history, he had inverted it. Turned black into white, white into black. It was clever, yes, but it was also somehow diabolical.
T'ai Cho shook his head and stood up, pained by his thoughts. On the surface the whole thing seemed the product of Kim's brighter side; a great edifice of shining intellect; a work of considerable erudition and remarkable imaginative powers. Yet in truth it was the expression of Kim's darker self; a curiously distorted image; envious, almost malicious.
Is this how he sees us? T'ai Cho wondered. Is this how the Han appear to him?
It pained him deeply, for he was Han; the product of the world Kim so obviously despised. The world he would replace with his own dark fantasy.
T'ai Cho shuddered and stood up, then went out and switched off the ch'a. No more, he thought, hearing the printer pause, then beep three times—signal that it had finished print' ing. No, he would show this to Director Andersen. See what the Hung Moo in charge made of it. And then what?
Then I'll ask him, T'ai Cho thought, switching off the light. Yes. I'll ask Kim why.
THE NEXT MORNING he stood before the Director in his office, the file in a folder under his arm.
"Well, T'ai Cho? What did you find out from him?"
T'ai Cho hesitated. He knew Andersen meant the matter of the fight between Kim and Matyas, yet for a moment he was tempted to ignore that and simply hand him the folder.
"It was as I said. Kim denies there was a fight. He says Matyas was not to blame."
Andersen made a noise of disbelief, then, placing both hands firmly on the desk, leaned forward, an unexpected smile lighting his features.
"Never mind. I've solved the problem anyway. I've got RadTek to take Matyas a month early. We've had to provide insurance cover for the first month—while he's underage—but it's worth ,it if it keeps him from killing Kim, eh?"
T'ai Cho looked down. He should have guessed Andersen would be ahead of him. But for once he could take him by surprise.
"Good. But there's something else, Director."
Andersen eased himself back slowly. "Something else?"
T'ai Cho bowed and held out the folder. "Something I stumbled upon."
Andersen took the folder and opened it, taking out the stack of paper. "Cumbersome," he said, his face crinkling in an expression of distaste. He was the kind of administrator who hated paperwork. Head-Slot spoken summaries were more his thing. But in this instance there was no alternative: a summary of the Aristotle file could not possibly have conveyed its richness, let alone its scope.