No, and no one, not even Mach, understood how deep that impulse ran in him; how strongly that urge to destroy tugged at him, sweeping him along, like a smooth white stone caught in the dark ocean's undertow. It was not power he wanted, but the opportunities that power brought: the chance to meddle and corrupt, to smash and overturn. To break . . . well, a whole world, if he so wished.
A whole world . . . No, not even Mach wanted that. Even he would stop short at some things.
The oxygen generators, for instance. Those huge pumping stations that reached down deep into the earth's mantle to tap the reservoirs of energy and convert the basic building blocks of life into the most precious thing of all—air. Mach knew of them, secret though they were. He knew that, since the destruction of the rain forests, life on Chung Kuo would have been insupportable without them—as intolerable as the icy wastes of Mars. But never—not even for a passing moment—would he have considered acting against them. Destroying them. It was unthinkable. No, what Mach wanted was an end to the old—to Seven and Cities and the stifling world of levels. And afterward? Well, to be blunt about it, Mach hadn't really thought it through. His vision of the new order was vague; a thin tissue of ideals, with no more substance than the words he breathed into the air. Necessarily so. For had he pictured what it would be like—what it would really be like—when the Cities fell, he would have quailed at the thought of the misery and devastation to come.
But he—Wang Sau-leyan, T'ang of Africa—had thought long and hard on the matter. Had pictured in his mind the long, straggling lines of skeletal figures stretching out across that bleak, unending wasteland. He had seen them, there in the clear, gray light of dawn, trudging from nowhere to nowhere, tongues black in their wizened heads, blank eyes staring straight ahead, while to every side, the dead were heaped in rotting piles, all trace of human warmth, of human connectedness, leached from their wasted forms. And at such moments his nostrils would twitch with distaste, as if sensing the overwhelming stench of putrefying flesh. And he would smile.
Yes. He saw it clearly. A dying world, its foul, unregenerated air filled with the darkness of corruption. And afterward, nothing. Nothing but rock and wind and salted oceans. Nothing for a million years.
He lowered his eyes, looking out across the dark surface of the river toward the ancient Valley of the Kings. Here death was close at hand. Was a dark companion, ever-present, more intimate than any lover. He could feel its breath upon his cheek, its hands caressing his softly rounded flesh, and shivered at the touch, not from fear but from a strange, inexplicable delight.
No. Not one of them knew him. Not one. Hung Mien-lo, Li Yuan, Jan Mach—each saw but the surface of him; the softly rounded mask of flesh. But beneath that—beneath the tissue of his physical self— was something hard and unyielding; something wholly inimical to life.
He turned, hearing the rush of wind, the beating of wings overhead, then laughed, delighted. Birds filled the air suddenly, returning to their nests on the far side of the river, their long, dark shapes swooping and circling high above the moonlit darkness of the Nile. And then, one by one, they plunged into the dark water, exploding in sudden circles of light.
Like messengers, he thought, and felt a strange unearthly thrill pass through him. Messengers.
it was a place of pools and paths and ancient stones, of pleasant bowers and gently flowing streams. Birds sang in the sunlit branches of time-twisted junipers while below, amid the lush green covering, cast-bronze statues of long-extinct animals—bright red pictograms cut into their flanks—lolled peacefully, as if shading themselves for the fierceness of the late afternoon sun. It was a scene of great tranquillity, of a long-cultivated harmony that was almost indolent in its nature. But today, the Garden of Reflective Quiescence gave Li Yuan no sense of inner peace as he walked along its paths. For once, his eyes skirted the surface of things, seeing nothing of the delicate balance of form and color and texture the garden's designers had striven so hard to create, focused only on the hard nugget of unrest deep within him.
Returning from T'ai Yueh Shan, he had ridden out, urging the horse on madly, as if to purge what he felt from his blood, but it had been no use. At the ruined temple he had turned, looking about him, seeing her image everywhere he looked.
And the child?
He stopped, realizing suddenly where he was. He had strayed from the path and was among the flower beds. Earth clung dark and heavy to his pale kid boots while his hand had closed upon a flower, crushing it, scattering the bloodred petals. He looked down, appalled, then backed away, turning, his hurried steps echoing off the flagstones as he ran back down the path toward the Southern Palace.
Li Yuan leapt the steps in threes, then ran across the grass toward the open doors of the Great Library. The ancient, Chu Shi-ch'e, looked up, startled, from behind his desk as Yuan burst into the room, and began to get to his feet.
"Sit down, Master Chu," Li Yuan said breathlessly, crossing the broad, high-ceilinged room. Behind, Chu, his assistant, twenty years his junior, looked on, wide-eyed, as the young T'ang dragged the ladder along the rail, then began to climb.
"Chieh Hsia . . ." protested Chu, coming around his desk. "Let the boy do that. . ."
"I am grateful for your concern, Master Chu, but it is a T'ang's prerogative to do exactly as he wishes."
"That may be so, Chieh Hsia," the old man answered, tugging at his long white beard, "but of what use is a servant who is not allowed to serve?"
Li Yuan turned on the ladder, looking across at the Pi-shu chien. Chu Shi-ch'e had been appointed Inspector of the Imperial Library by his grandfather Li Ch'ing, more than sixty years earlier, and in all that time he had never missed a day's service from ill health. Moreover, it was said that Chu Shi-ch'e's knowledge of the archives was encyclopedic. If his movements had grown slower with time, his mind had remained as nimble as ever. Li Yuan hesitated a moment longer, then relented, coming down, letting Chu's assistant—the "boy," a stoop-backed old fellow of a mere sixty-four years—climb in his place.
"What was it you wanted, Chieh Hsia?" Chu asked, coming alongside, his bent head a sign as much of age as of respect for his T'ang.
Li Yuan drew a long breath. "There is a tape I saw once, years ago. It was of my brother Han, when he was a child. A very young child. In the orchard with my mother, Lin Yua."
Chu stared at him a moment, his eyes narrowed, then turned away, firing two rapid phrases of Mandarin at his assistant. Almost at once the "boy" was clambering down the steps again, a long, narrow case with a golden cover in one hand.
The case was part of the official archives—the daily record of the Li Family, dating back more than two hundred years. Here, stacked floor to ceiling on these walls, were the complete holographic records of the Family, each case embossed with the great Ywe Lung, the Moon Dragon, symbol of the Seven.
Li Yuan watched as the assistant handed the case to Chu Shi-ch'e, then backed off, bowing deeply. Chu opened the case, checking the contents, then, clicking it shut, turned, offering it to Li Yuan.
"I think this is what you want, Chieh Hsia." Again the old man's eyes seemed to pierce him; to see through to the innermost depths of him. And maybe that was so, for of all the Family's retainers, no one knew half as much about his masters as Chu Shi-ch'e. The old man gave a wintry smile. "If you will forgive us, Chieh Hsia, we will leave you to view the tape."
"Thank you, Master Chu," Li Yuan said gratefully. "I will summon you when I am done."