"Look at us, Master Nan, sitting here while the sun is shining outside! Let us deal with these tomorrow, neh?"
Nan Ho made to comment, then changed his mind. He could see that Li Yuan was determined not to work that day. Smiling, he bowed low. "As you wish, Chieh Hsia. But I must remind you that you have dinner at your cousin, Tsu Ma's, estate this evening. We must be there at nine. Wu Shih has confirmed that he will be attending."
"Good. . . Good!" The young T'ang clapped his hands. "Then come. Let us join my wives. It is a fine afternoon, neh?"
They went outside, Nan Ho sending a servant running to bring wine and tumblers. The women were beside the pool, laughing, sharing some secret joke. As the men came out, they turned, almost as one, their laughter fading, then stood, bowing their heads, the maids kneeling in their T'ang's presence.
"Where is my son?" Li Yuan asked, looking about him, surprised not to see the wet nurse there among the group by the pool.
"He is here, Chieh Hsia," a voice said from just behind him.
He turned, smiling, remembering suddenly what he had agreed with Nan Ho earlier. The girl handed the child to him, then knelt, the faintest color in her cheeks. She knew. He could tell she knew.
"Kuei Jen . . ." he said softly, transferring his attention to the child in his arms. "And how is my darling little boy?"
The child stared up at him, cooing softly, his dark eyes round with curiosity, his face the tiny image of his mother's. Li Yuan looked across, laughing, and saw how Mien Shan was watching him, her eyes moist with happiness, and for the briefest moment he thought of Wei Feng and what he had said to him on his sickbed. Life was good, if one let it be.
He turned, facing the sun. Then, as if compelled, he lifted the child, holding him up at arm's length, as if offering him up. And when he turned back, the child cradled against him once more, he saw how they looked at him, in awe, as at that moment when he had stepped down from the Temple of Heaven, wearing the dragon robes for the first time.
"My son," he said, looking about him, fiercely proud, seeing how his words affected them, even the seemingly imperturbable Nan Ho. "My son."
ON THE EAST COAST of North America it was dawn, and amid the low, flower-strewn screens of the Tea House of the Ninth Dragon it was busy. Maroon-cloaked waiters moved between the crowded tables, their faces impassive, the heavily laden trays they bore swept effortlessly above their patrons' heads. At the tables, wizen-faced graybeards sat there in their stiff-collared jackets, smoking and playing Chou or Siang Chi, ignoring the muted screens set high up on the pillars on every side. From two big speakers set either side of the long ch'a counter, the romantic strains of "Love at the Fair" drifted across the teahouse, competing with the babble of the old men. It was a timeless scene—a scene as old as history itself. For three thousand years old men had gathered thus, to smoke and talk and drink their bowls of ch'a.
Kim sat at a small table at the back of the tea house, up a level, on a narrow veranda overlooking the main floor, a white- and maroon-glazed chung of freshly brewed min hung—"Fukien Red"—in front of him, a small bowl of soyprawn crackers by his elbow.
He had first come here three months back, to kill an hour before a meeting, and had found himself still sitting there three hours later, his appointment forgotten, the tiny notepad he carried filled with jottings, his head bursting with new ideas. Now he came here most mornings at this hour, to sit and sip ch'a, and think.
Sometimes he would go down among the tables and sit there for an hour or two, listening to the homely wisdom of the old men, but mostly he would sit here, looking out across the busy floor, and let his mind freewheel. Today, however, was special, for earlier this morning—after a tiring all-night session—he had put the finishing touches to the first of the five new patents he had been working on: patents he had first conceived here at the Ninth Dragon.
He smiled, wondering what the old men would have made of it had he shared some of his ideas with them: whether they would have thought him sage or madman. Whichever, there was no doubting that they would have found them strange. His idea for a new kind of protein machine that could operate in space, for instance: that had been conceived here, at this table, while watching the old men blow their smoke rings in the air.
In one sense the problem had been a simple one. For the past two hundred years, most scientific engineering had been done at the microscopic level, using two basic "tools," NPMs and NPAs. The standard NPMs—natural protein machines—that companies like GenSyn used to engineer their products, while extremely versatile, were highly susceptible to heat variations, operating within a very limited temperature range. NPAs—nonprotein assemblers—made of harder, more predictable molecules, were stronger and more stable than the NPMs and were therefore used wherever possible in the manufacture of most technological hardware. However, when it came to the more sensitive areas of genetic engineering, most Companies still used NPMs.
In terms of cost it didn't matter which one used, under normal conditions, but these days an increasing amount of manufacturing was done in the great orbital factories, under sterile, zero-gravity conditions.
At present the potentially much cheaper conditions of manufacture that appertained in the orbital factories were applicable only to nonliving processes: for the production of basic "hardware." For all other processes—for food production, say, or biotechnology, where NPMs had to be used—the savings were partly offset by the need to maintain an atmosphere on board the factory ships and to keep that atmosphere at an unfluctuating and—relative to the surrounding cold of space— high temperature. Cut out that need and the savings would be the same as for those factories that used NPAs; that is, somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent of the total manufacturing cost.
It was a huge saving, and the development company that could patent a protein-based nanomachine that could operate in extreme cold and under vacuum conditions was certain to enjoy vast profits.
Kim drew the chung toward him and raised it to his mouth. Lifting the rounded lid he tilted it gently and took a sip of the sweet black ch'a.
It was a problem he had set himself a long time back—long before Li Yuan had given him the means to set up his own company—and for a while he had thought it insoluble. How could one make a living thing that operated in the absence of those very things that sustained it—heat and air? The two processes seemed and surely were inimical. Even so, he had persisted, and, sitting there, watching the smoke rings curl from those ancient mouths and climb the air, had glimpsed how it might be done. Now, three months on from that insight, he had finally worked it out—down to the smallest detail. He had only to write the process up and patent it.
He set the chungdown, smiling, the tiredness in his bones balanced against the sense of achievement he was feeling. Not only was his solution aesthetically pleasing, but it also kept well within the rigid guidelines of the Edict. The principles he'd utilized were old and well documented; it was merely the way he'd put them together that was new.
Smoke rings. He laughed, and took a deep swig of the ch'a. It was all so very simple, really . . .
"Shih Ward?"
Kim turned. The Head Waiter, Chiang Su-li, stood there, his head bowed, a few paces from the table.
"Yes, Master Chiang?"
Chiang bobbed his head, then handed across a message tab. "Forgive me, Shih Ward, but a messenger brought this a moment back. He said I was to place it directly into your hands."
"Thank you, Master Chiang." Kim fished in the pocket of his jacket for a five yuan coin, then held it out, offering it to Chiang.