"I often ask myself, is there any way we might remove the House and dismantle the huge bureaucratic structure that has grown about it? But each time I ask myself I know beforehand what the answer is. No. At least, not now. Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago it might have been possible. But even then it might simply have preempted things. Brought us quicker to this point."
Hal Shepherd nodded. "I agree. But perhaps we should have faced it back then. We were stronger. Our grip on things was firmer. Now things have changed. Each year's delay sees them grow at our expense."
"You'd counsel war, then, Hal?"
"Of a kind."
The T'ang smiled, and Ben, watching, found himself comparing the man to his tutor, Peng Yu-wei. That epicanthic fold over the eye, which seemed so much a part of the android's "difference"—its machine nature—was here, on the natural man, quite attractive.
"And what kind is that?"
"The kind we're best at. A war of levels. Of openness and deception. The kind of war the Tyrant, Tsao Ch'un, taught us how to fight."
The T'ang looked down at his hands, his smile fading. "I don't know. I really don't, Hal. Sometimes I question what we've done."
"As any man must surely do."
Li Shai Tung looked up at him and shook his head. "No, Hal. For once I think you're wrong. Few men actually question their actions. Most are blind to their faults. Deaf to the criticisms of their fellow men." He laughed sourly. "You might say that Chung Kuo is filled with such men—blind, wicked, greedy creatures who see their blindness as strength, their wickedness as necessity, their greed as historical process."
"That's so. ..."
For a moment the two men fell silent, their faces solemn in the flickering light from the fire. Before either could speak again, the door at the far end of the room opened and Ben's mother entered, carrying a tray. She set it down on a footstool beside the open fire, then leaned across to take something from a bowl on the mantelpiece and sprinkle it on the burning logs.
At once the room was filled with the sweet, fresh smell of mint.
The T'ang gave a gentle laugh, delighted, and took a long, deep breath.
Ben watched his mother turn from the fire, drawing her long dark hair back from her face, smiling. "I've brought fresh ch'a," she said simply, then lifted the tray and brought it across to them.
As she set it down the T'ang stood and, reaching across, put his hand over hers, preventing her from lifting the kettle.
"Please. I would be honored if jou sat a while with us and shared the ch'a."
She hesitated then, smiling, did as he bid her; watching the strange sight of a T'ang pouring ch'a for a commoner.
"Here," he said, offering her the first bowl. "Ch'a from the dragon's well."
The T'ang's words were a harmless play on the name of the Long] ing ch'a, but for Ben they seemed to hold a special meaning. He looked at his mother, seeing how she smiled selfconsciously and lowered her head, for a moment the youthful look of her reminding him very much of Meg—of how Meg would be a year or two from now. Then he looked back at the Tang, standing there, pouring a second bowl for his father.
Ben frowned. The very presence of the T'ang in the room seemed suddenly quite strange. His silks, his plaited hair, his very foreignness, seemed out of place among the low oak beams and sturdy yeoman furniture. That contrast, that curious juxtaposition of man and room, brought home to Ben how strange this world of theirs truly was. A world tipped wildly from its natural balance.
The dragon's well. It made him think of fire and darkness, of untapped potency. Is that what's missing from our world? he asked himself. Have we done with fire and darkness?
"And you, Ben? Will you drink of the dragon's well?"
Li Shai Tung looked across at him, smiling; but behind the smile—beyond it, in some darker, less accessible place—lay a deep disquiet.
Flames danced in the glass of each eye, flickered wet and evanescent on the dark surface of his vision. But where was the fire on the far side of the glass? Where the depths that made of man a man? In word and gesture the T'ang was a great and powerful man—a T'ang, unmistakably a king among men—but he had lost contact with the very thing that had made—had shaped—his outer form. He had denied his inner self once too often and now the well was capped, the fire doused.
He stared at the T'ang, wondering if he knew what he had become; if the doubt that he professed was as thorough, as all inclusive, as it ought to be. Whether, when he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he saw beyond the glass into that other place behind the eyes. Ben shivered. No. It could not be so. For if it were, the man himself would crumble. Words would fail, gestures grow hesitant. No. This T'ang might doubt what they had done, but not what he was. That was innate—was bred into his bones. He would die before he doubted himself.
The smile remained, unchallenged, genuine; the offered bowl awaited him.
"Well, Ben?" his father asked, turning to him. "Will you take a bowl with us?"
LI SHAI TUNG leaned forward, offering the boy the cup, conscious that he had become the focus of the child's strange intensity; of the intimidating ferocity of his stare.
Hal was right. Ben was not like other children. There was something wild in his nature; some part of him that remained untamed, unsocialized. When he sat there at table it was as if he held himself in check. There was such stillness in him that when he moved it was as if something dead had come alive again. Yet he was more alive—more vividly alive—than anyone the T'ang had ever met.
As he handed Ben the bowl he almost expected to receive some kind of shock—a violent discharge of the child's unnatural energy—through the medium of the bowl. But there was nothing. Only his wild imagining.
The T'ang looked down, thoughtful. Ben Shepherd was a breed of one. He had none of those small refinements that fitted a man for the company of his fellows. He had no sense of give and take; no idea of the concessions one made for the sake of social comfort. His stare was uncompromising, almost proprietorial. As if all he saw was his.
Yes, Li Shai Tung thought, smiling inwardly. You should be a T'ang, Ben Shepherd, for you'll find it hard to pass muster as a simple man.
He lifted his bowl and sipped, thinking back to earlier that afternoon. They had been out walking in the garden when Hal had suggested he go with him and see Ben's room.
He had stood in the center of the tiny, cluttered upstairs room, looking at the paintings that covered the wall above the bed.
Some were lifelike studies of the Domain. Lifelike, at least, but for the dark, unfocused figures who stood in the shadows beneath the trees on the far side of the water. Others were more abstract, depicting strange distortions of the real. Twins figured largely in these latter compositions; one twin quite normal— strong and healthy—the other twisted out of shape, the eyes white and blank, the mouth open as if in pain. They were disturbing, unusually disturbing, yet their technical accomplishment could not be questioned.
"These are good, Hal. Very good indeed. The boy has talent."
Hal Shepherd gave a small smile, then came alongside him. "He'd be pleased to hear you say that. But if you think those are good, look at this."