The long illness had wasted the old man. He was a thing of bone beneath the frail white gown he wore. His right arm and shoulder had atrophied, as if death had taken that part of him earlier than the rest. His lidded eyes rested low in the pits of their sockets, and his thin-lipped mouth was a mere pale gash in the emaciated wasteland of his face. The hair on the left side of his face had not grown back, and the scars of the operations showed blue against the ivory of his skull. When Li Yuan entered the room his eyes were drawn to the stark ugliness of Wei Feng's head in death. He shuddered involuntarily, then turned to greet the eldest son, Chan Yin, with a silent bow.
Li Yuan stood at the bedside a long time, looking down at his old friend, recalling through misted eyes how this kind and lovely man had once twirled him around in the air, his eyes alight with the joy of what he was doing, and how he, Li Yuan, had squealed with delight at it. He glanced down at the narrow bones of the hands, the wasted muscles of the arms, and grimaced. Had it been so long ago? No . . . He shook his head slowly. Fifteen years. It was barely an indrawn breath in the long history of their race.
He turned away, leaving the tears on his cheeks, stepping back as if in a dream, then reached out to embrace each of the dead man's sons; holding Chan Yin longer than the others, feeling the faint trembling of the man against him.
Chan Yin stood back, a sad smile on his face. "Thank you, Yuan."
"He was a good man," Yuan answered, matching his smile. "I shall miss both his advice and his friendship. He was a second father to me."
The forty-year-old nodded slightly, for a moment seeming younger than the nineteen-year-old Li Yuan. Before this moment, power had reversed the traditional status of age between them, but now they were both T'ang, both equals. Even so, Chan Yin deferred. Li Yuan noted this and frowned, not understanding. There was no sign in his cousin that he had inherited. Only a puzzling humility and deference toward himself.
"What is it, Chan Yin?"
Chan Yin met his eyes. Beyond him his younger brothers looked on. "My father entrusted me to give you this, Yuan."
From the white folds of his mourning cloak the new T'ang took a letter. It was white silk, sealed with bloodred wax, the traditional instrument of the Seven. Li Yuan took it and stared at it, then, reluctantly, he prized the seal open with his fingernail.
Chan Yin reached out a hand to stop him. "Not here, Yuan. Later. When you are alone. And then we shall meet. Just you and I." He paused, and raised his voice as if to let it carry to his brothers. "But remember, Li Yuan. I am my father's son. His death changes nothing."
Li Yuan hesitated, then bowed his assent, his fingers pressing the hardened wax back into place. Then, with a brief, questioning glance, he turned and left the death chamber.
CHAPTER FOUR
Waves Against the Sand
IT WAS LOW TIDE. In the deep shadow at the foot of the City's wall, a flat-bottomed patrol boat made its way between the tiny, grass-covered islands that dotted this side of the river, the tight beam of its searchlight sweeping slowly from side to side across the glistening shallows. Just here, at the great Loire's mouth, the river was broad, almost three li wide. Downstream lay the Bay of Biscay and the gray-green waters of the North Atlantic. In the bright, mid-morning sunlight, one of the big mid-ocean vessels was making its way in the deep water channel toward the port of Nantes. On the far bank, beyond the perimeter fence and its regularly spaced gun turrets, could be seen the needle towers and blast pits of the spaceport, the pure white of the City's walls forming a glacial backdrop far to the south. As the patrol boat slowed and turned, making its way round the low hump of a mudbank, the water seemed to shimmer. Almost imperceptibly the vibration took form in the air, a low bass growl that grew and grew in strength. A moment later the sky on the far side of the river was riven by a long, bright streak of red.
On the roof of the City, two li above the river's surface, a group of officers watched the rocket climb the sky to the southwest. To their backs, close by, five craft were parked about an open service hatch: a big, black-painted cruiser, three squat Security gunships, and a slender four-man craft with the Ywe Lung and the personal insignia of the T'ang of Europe on its stubby wings. Uniformed guards of the T'ang's elite squad stood by the ramps of each craft, heavy semiautomatics clutched to their chests, looking about them conscientiously.
For a moment the small group of officers was still, their necks craned back, following the arc of the rocket, then, as the echoing boom of the engines faded from the sky, they turned back, resuming their talk.
Marshal Tolonen stood at the center of the group, his aide close by, clutching a small documents case. Facing Tolonen stood Li Yuan's new General, the fifty-two-year-old Helmut Rheinhardt. He and most of his senior staff had come out to Nantes to see the old man off.
"I admire your thoroughness, Knut," Rheinhardt said, picking up on what they had been saying, "but forgive me if I say that I feel you're taking on much more than you need. For myself I'd have let other, younger eyes do the spadework and saved myself for the fine sifting. From what you've said, there's plenty enough of that, neh?"
Tolonen laughed. "Maybe so. But it's a principle IVe stuck to all my life. Not to trust what I'm told, but to look for myself. I've an instinct for these things, Helmut. For that small betraying detail that another wouldn't spot. From here things look fine with GenSyn's North American operation, but IVe a hunch that they'll look a great deal different from close up."
"You think something's amiss, then, Knut?"
Tolonen leaned closer. "I'm damn sure of it! I've been working through the official records these past three months and things simply don't add up. Oh, superficially things look all right. The numbers balance and so forth, but. . ." He sniffed, then shook his head. "Look, Klaus Ebert was a conscientious, honest man. He kept a tight rein on GenSyn while he was in control. But things were different at the end..."
"Hans, you mean?" -,
Tolonen looked away, a shadow falling over his granite features. "It looks like it, I'm afraid. Most of the North American operation and its subsidiary companies were handed over to Hans for the eighteen months before Klaus Ebert's death. And it's in that period that almost all of the anomalies occur."
"Anomalies?" It was Li Yuan's Chancellor, Nan Ho, who made the query. He was returning to the group after briefly visiting his craft to take an urgent message. Rheinhardt and his officers bowed and moved back slightly, letting Nan Ho reenter their circle.
Tolonen hesitated, then nodded. "Accounting irregularities. Forged shipment details. Missing documents. That kind of thing."
It was a bland, almost evasive answer, but from the way Tolonen met Nan Ho's eyes as he said it, the Chancellor knew that it was more serious than that. Something else was missing. Something that, perhaps, couldn't be mentioned, not even in company like this.
"Besides," Tolonen went on, changing the subject, "it will be good to see old friends again. My work has kept me in my study this past year. And that's not healthy, neh? A man needs to get out in the world. To do things and see things."
Rheinhardt laughed. "It sounds like you've been missing the service, Knut! Maybe I should find you something to do once all this GenSyn business is finished with. Or maybe you would like your old job back?"
There was laughter at that; a hearty, wholesome laughter that rolled out across the roof of the City. Hearing it, Jelka Tolonen looked up from where she was sitting on the steps of the nearest gunship and frowned. How familiar such manly laughter was, and yet, suddenly, how strange, how alien it sounded. She stood, looking out past her father's men, toward the distant horizon.