Lehmann looked back at the others. Kustow was talking, his deep voice providing a commentary on the proceedings. He was pointing up at Li Yuan, there at the center of the screen.
"Look at him! He's such an innocent. He hasn't the faintest idea of how things really stand."
"No," Lever agreed. "But that's true of all of them. They're cut off from the reality of what's happening in the Cities. There's real dissent down there, real bitterness, and the Seven simply don't know about it. They're like the Emperors of old: they don't like bad news, so their servants make sure the truth never gets through to them. That's bad enough, but as we all know, the system's corrupt to the core. From the pettiest official to the biggest Minister, there's not one of them you can't put a price to."
The camera closed in. Li Yuan's face, many times its natural size, filled the screen. His fine, dark hair was drawn back tightly from his forehead, secured at the nape of his neck in a tiny porcelain bowl of purest white. His skin was unmarked, unlined—the flesh of youth, untouched by time or the ravages of experience.
Even so, he knows, Lehmann thought, looking up into the young T'ang's eyes. He knows we murdered his father. Or at least suspects.
Irritated by their arrogance, he stood and walked across the room, filling Lever's glass from the wine kettle. "I think you underestimate our man," he said quietly. "Look at those eyes. How like his father's eyes they are. Don't misjudge him. He's no fool, this one." He turned, looking directly at DeVore. "You've said so yourself often enough, Howard."
"I agree," said DeVore, eyeing Lehmann sharply. "But there are things he lacks, things the Seven miss now that Li Shai Tung is dead. Experience, wisdom, an intuitive sense of when and how to act. Those things are gone from them now. And without them . . ." He laughed softly. "Well, without them the Seven are vulnerable."
On the screen the image changed, the camera panning back, the figures diminishing as the larger context was revealed. A gray stone wall, taller than a man, surrounded everything. Beyond it the mountains of the Ta Pa Shan formed faint shapes in the distance. The tomb was to the left, embedded in the earth, the great white tablet stretching out toward its open mouth. To the right was the long pool, still, intensely black, its surface like a mirror. Between stood the seven T'ang and their retainers, all of them dressed in white, the color of mourning.
"One bomb," said Kustow, nodding to himself. "Just one bomb and it would all be over, neh?" He turned in his seat, looking directly at DeVore. "How do you come by these pictures? I thought these ceremonies were private?"
"They are," DeVore said, taking a sip from his glass. He leaned forward, smiling, playing the perfect host, knowing how important it was for him to win these young men over. "The camera is a standard Security surveillance device. They're all over Tongjiang. I've merely tapped into the system."
All three of the Americans were watching DeVore closely now, ignoring what was happening on the screen.
"I thought those systems were discrete," Lever said.
"They are." DeVore set his drink down on the table at his side, then took a small device from his pocket and handed it to Lever. "This was something my friend Soren Berdichev developed at SimFic before they shut him down. It looks and functions like the backup battery packs they have on those Security cameras, but there's more to it than that. What it does is to send a tight beam of information up to a satellite. There the signal is scrambled into code and rerouted here, where it's decoded."
Lever studied the device, then handed it to Kustow. He turned, looking back at DeVore. "Astonishing. But how did you get it into place? I'm told those palaces are tighter than a young whore's ass when it comes to security."
DeVore laughed. "That's true. But whatever system you have, it always relies on men. Individual men. And men can be bought, or won, or simply threatened. It was relatively easy to get these installed."
Lehmann, watching, saw how that impressed the young men, but it was only half true. The device worked exactly as DeVore had said, but the truth was that he had access only to Tbngjiang, and that only because Hans Ebert had been daring enough to take the thing in, risking the possibility that an overzealous officer might search him, Tolonen's favorite or no. Elsewhere his attempts to plant the devices had failed.
They looked back at the screen. Li Yuan stood at the edge of the family tablet, the freshly inscribed name of his father cut into the whiteness there. Behind the young T'ang stood the rest of the Seven, and at their back the Generals. Bringing up the rear of this small but powerful gathering stood members of the Li Family— cousins, uncles, wives, concubines, and close relations, a hundred in all. The ranks were thin, the weakness of the Family exposed to view, and yet Li Yuan stood proudly, his eyes looking straight ahead, into the darkness of the tomb.
"All the trappings of power," said Kustow, shaking his head as if in disapproval. "Like the Pharaohs, they are. Obsessed with death."
Lehmann studied Kustow a moment, noting the strange mixture of awe and antagonism in his blunt, almost rectangular face. You admire this, he thought. Or envy it, rather. Because you, too, would like to create a dynasty and be buried in a cloth of gold.
For himself, he hated it all. He would have done with kings and dynasties.
They watched as the casket was carried to the mouth of the tomb. Saw the six strongest carry it down the steps into the candle-lit interior. And then the camera focused once more upon Li Yuan. "He's strong for one so young."
They were the first words Curval had spoken since he had come into the room. Again Lehmann looked, admiring the manner of the man, his singleness of being. In his face there was a hard, uncompromising certainty about things; in some strange way it reminded Lehmann of Berdichev, or of how Berdichev had become, after his wife's death.
On the screen Li Yuan bowed to the tablet, then turned, making his slow way to the tomb.
"He looks strong," DeVore said after a moment, "but there are things you don't know about him. That outward presence of his is a mask. Inside he's a writhing mass of unstable elements. Do you know that he killed all his wife's horses?"
All eyes were on DeVore, shocked by the news. To kill horses—it was unthinkable!
"Yes," DeVore continued. "In a fit of jealousy, so I understand. So you see, beneath that calm exterior lies a highly unstable child. Not unlike his headstrong brother. And a coward too."
Lever narrowed his eyes. "How so?"
"Fei Yen, his brother's wife, is heavily pregnant. Rumor has it that it is not his child. The woman has been sent home to her father in disgrace. And they say he knows whose bastard it is. Knows and does nothing."
"I see," Lever said. "But does that necessarily make the man a coward?" DeVore gave a short laugh. "If you were married you would understand it better, Michael. A man's wife, his child—-these things are more than the world to him. He would kill for them. Even a relatively passive man. But Li Yuan holds back, does nothing. That, surely, is cowardice?"
"Or a kind of wisdom?" Lever looked back up at the screen, watching the young T'ang step down into the darkness. "Forgive me, Shih DeVore, but I feel your friend here is right. It would not do to underestimate Li Yuan." "No?" DeVore shrugged.
"Even so," Lever said, smiling, "I take your point. The Seven have never been weaker than they are right now. And their average age has never been younger. Why, we're old men by comparison to most of them!" There was laughter at that.
DeVore studied the three Americans, pleased by Lever's unconscious echo of his thoughts. It was time.
He raised his hand. At the prearranged signal the screen went dark and a beam of light shone out from above, spotlighting the table and the map on the far side of the room.
"Ch'un tzu. . ." DeVore said, rising to his feet, one arm extended, indicating the table. "You've seen how things stand with the Seven. How things are now. Well, let us talk of how things might be."