"If you don't mind, I'd rather not. But you two go ahead. I'll tell you what's been happening."
DeVore ordered, then turned and looked at Lehmann.
"I'll have the same."
"Good." He looked back at Weis. "So. Tell me, Shih Weis, what has been happening?"
Weis leaned forward, lowering his voice. "There's been a problem."
"A problem?"
"Duchek. He's refused to pass the funds through the plantation accounts."
"I see. So what have you done?"
Weis smiled broadly, clearly pleased by his own ingenuity. "IVe rerouted them—through various Security ordnance accounts."
DeVore considered it a moment, -then smiled. "That's good. Much better, in fact. They'd never dream we'd use their own accounts."
Weis leaned back, nodding. "That's what I thought."
Because of the vast sums involved they had had to take great care in setting up the routes by which the money got to DeVore.
The finances of Chung Kuo were closely knit and any large movement was certain to be noted by the T'ang's ministry, the Hu Pu, responsible for monitoring all capital transfers and ensuring the T'ang received the fifty percent due him on the profit of each and every transaction.
It had been decided from the outset that it would be safest to be open about the movements. Any attempt to siphon away sums of this size would be noticed and investigated, but normal movements—if the T'ang received his cut from them—would not be commented upon. It had meant that the T'ang would actually receive almost seventy-five percent of everything they allocated, but this had been budgeted for.
Weis and his small team had worked directly with the sponsors to set things up. First they had had to break the transfers down into smaller, less noticeable sums, then disguise these as payments to smaller companies for work done. From there they were rerouted and broken down into yet smaller payments—this process being repeated anywhere between ten and fifteen times before they finally got to DeVore. Again, it was an expensive process, but necessary to protect the seven major sponsors from being traced. Palms had had to be greased all the way down the line, "squeeze" to be paid to greedy officials.
Funded directly it would have cost a quarter of the sum DeVore had asked for. But the risk of discovery would have been a hundred times greater.
"You've done an excellent job, Shih Weis," DeVore said, leaning back to let the cook set his plate down in front of him. "I have asked Shih Douglas if he could not show our appreciation in some small way."
He saw how much that pleased Weis, then looked down and picked up his chopsticks, digging into the heaped plate of braised bean-curd and vegetables.
DEVORE WATCHED Weis's craft lift and accelerate away, heading north, back to the safety of the City. The man's impatience both irritated and amused him. He was so typical of his kind. So unimaginative. All his talk about The New Hope, for instance—it was all so much bad air. But that was fortunate, perhaps. For if they'd guessed—if any of them had had the foresight to see where all this really led ...
He laughed, then turned to the youth. "Do you fancy a walk, Stefan? The cold is rather exhilarating, I find."
"I'd like that."
The answer surprised him. He had begun to believe there was nothing the young man liked.
They went down past the landing dome and out onto a broad lip of ice-covered rock which once, long ago, had been a road. From that vantage point they could see how the valley began to curve away to the west. Far below them the mountainside was forested, but up here there was only snow and ice. They were above the world.
Standing there in the crisp air, surrounded by the bare splendor of the mountains, he saw it clearly. The New Rope was much more than a new start. For the Seven it would be the beginning of the end. His colleagues—Weis, Moore, Duchek, even Berdichev—saw it mainly as a symbol, a flagship for their cause, but it was more than that. It was a practical thing. If it succeeded—if new worlds could be colonized by its means— then control would slip from the hands of the Seven.
They knew that. Li Shai Tung had known it three years ago when he had summoned the leaders of the House to him and, unexpectedly, granted the concession. But the old man had had no choice. Lehmann's murder had stirred the hornet's nest. It was the only thing the T'ang could have done to prevent war.
Even so, none of his fellow conspirators had grasped what it really meant. They had not fully envisaged the changes that would come about—the vast, rapid metamorphosis that would sweep through their tight-knit community of thirty-nine billion souls. Science, kept in check by the Edict for so long, would not so much blossom as explode. When mankind went out into the stars it would not be a scattering, as so many had called it, but a shattering. All real cohesion would be lost. The Seven knew this. But few others had understood as yet. They thought the future would be an extension of the past. It would not. It would be something new. Something utterly, disturbingly new.
The new age, if it came, would be an age of grotesque and gothic wonders. Of magical transformations. Mutation would be the norm.
If it came.
"What were you up to with Weis back there?"
DeVore turned and looked at the young man. He seemed perfectly suited to this environment. His eyes, the pallor of his flesh; neither seemed out of place here. He was like some creature of the wild—a pine marten or a snow fox. A predator.
DeVore smiled. "I've been told Weis is a weak man. A soft man. I wanted confirmation of that for myself."
"What had you heard?"
DeVore told him about the tape he had acquired. It showed Weis in bed with two young boys—well-known Han opera stars. That was his weakness; a weakness he indulged in quite often, if the reports were accurate.
"Can he be trusted, then?"
"We have no option. Weis is the only one with both the know-how and the contacts."
"I see."
DeVore turned and looked back at the view. He remembered standing here with Berdichev, almost a year before, when they had first drawn up their scheme; recalled how they had stood and watched the sunset together; how frightened Soren had been; how the sudden fall of dark had changed his mood entirely. But he had expected as much. After all, Berdichev was typical of the old Man.
Beneath it all they were still the same primitive creatures. Still forest dwellers, crouched on the tree line, watching the daylight bleed away on the plain below, fearful of the dark. Their moods, their very beings, were shaped by patterns older than the race. By the Earth's slow revolution about the sun. By the unglimpsed diurnal round—cycles of dark and light, heat and cold. They could not control how they were, how they felt.
In the new age it would be different. There would be a creature free of this. Unshackled. A creature of volition, un-shaped by its environment. A creature fit for space.
Let them have their romantic image of dispersion; of new, unblemished worlds. Of Edens. His dreams were different and rode upon their backs. His dream was of new men. Of better, finer creatures. Cleaner creatures.
He thought back to the tape of Weis; to the image of the financier standing there, naked, straddling the young boy, his movements urgent, his face tight with need. Such weakness, he thought. So pitiful to be a slave to need.
In his dream of the new age he saw all such weaknesses eradicated. His new Man would be purged of need. His blood would flow clean and pure like the icy streams of the far north.
"It's magnificent. So pure. So perfect."
He looked across at the youth, surprised, then laughed. Yes, they were all much the same—all the same, primitive Man, unchanged by long millennia of so-called civilization. AH, perhaps, but this one. "Yes," he said, after a moment, feeling himself drawn to the boy. "It is magnificent, isn't it?"