Beneath the Tree of Heaven

“Chen? Is that you?”

Wang Ti came out of the kitchen in her dressing gown and, seeing Chen standing in the doorway, rushed across, embracing him. “Chen?” she said, kissing him, then moved back slightly to look at him.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said, smiling, returning her kiss. “Were you worried?” “I’d heard ...” She turned. The children were in the kitchen doorway behind her, looking on. She laughed. “Shoo . . . Leave us alone a moment. There’s plenty of time to greet your father.”

She turned back, hearing the door pull shut behind her.

“So, Kao Chen . . . what happened?”

“I gave General Rheinhardt the letter,” he said. “I’ve done it, Wang Ti.

I’ve quit the service.”

“And what did he say?”

Chen looked away, thoughtful a moment, then looked back. “He wished me good luck ...”

“Good luck?”

“. . . and a reduced pension!”

“Ah . . .” She laughed. “Never mind. We would find it hard to spend all that money where we’re going, neh?”

He smiled, then kissed her again, a passionate kiss this time, which she returned. “Shall we ... ?”

She shook her head, smiling gently at him. “Not now. Later. First see your children. Tell them what you’ve done. Then . . . well, maybe I’ll send them to see their aunt Marie, neh?”

He laughed and held her tighter. “I’d like that . . . oh, and Wang Ti . .

. ?”

“Yes, husband?”

“Have I told you lately that I love you?”

wang sat back heavily onto his throne, then beckoned for his Chancellor.

“Now, Hung, what did you wish to see me for?” Hung shook his head, unable to believe the T’ang could be so calm. He watched as Wang took a peach from the bowl, turned it to examine it for blemishes, and bit deep into the flesh—to the stone—the juice dribbling down his many chins.

“The attack, Chieh Hsia ... on Li Yuan’s estate at Tongjiang.”

“What of it?”

What of it? He found himself stammering again. “Y-you kn-know of it?” “Of course I kn-know of it, you idiot! Who do you think planned it and ordered it?” He bit again, speaking with his mouth half full of peach. “Well? How did it go? Did I get them all?”

“Chieh Hsia?”

“My cousins . . . did I kill them all?”

Hung stood there, his mouth open. “I”—he shook his head, trying to keep the conversation rational—“I don’t think so, Chieh Hsia. There’s been little firm news. The media have had a total news blackout the past four hours. But. . . well, I think some of them must have survived.” Wang eyed him curiously. “Why?”

He looked down. Now that he was asked, he didn’t know exactly why. Yet it wasn’t just a hunch. He had done his job too long not to know the signs. They were alive. Or some of them, at least. Unless it were just Tolonen, holding things together while they tried to salvage something from the ruins. But he didn’t think so. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more he was certain.

“I don’t know, Chieh Hsia,” he answered finally, making an effort to control himself. “It’s just my judgment.” “Your judgment. . .” Wang spat out the stone, then looked at Hung again.

“And your spies, Hung Mien-lo? Can’t they find out?”

“My spies are dead, Chieh Hsia.”

“Ah . . .” Wang smiled. “Then we must wait, neh?” “Wait, Chieh Hsia?” The thought of waiting any longer appalled him. He was about to tell Wang he should act, then remembered the last time he had uttered the words and let the thought skitter away from him. “If—if we could attend to matters in our own City, Chieh Hsia,” he began. “If they’re dead,” Wang said, speaking over him, “if they are actually dead, then I inherit all. Did you know that, Hung?” “Chieh Hsia?”

“It was bold, neh, Hung? Direct.”

Hung nodded, seeing it suddenly as Wang Sau-leyan saw it. “Audacity, that’s what it takes, little Hung. And Vision. And Will. Three qualities that my cousins did not possess.” And a cold, reptilian nature . . .

Hung hesitated, letting his breathing steady, his thoughts settle.

“And if they are alive, Chieh Hsia?”

Wang took another peach, examined it, threw it away, then took another. He looked back at Hung Mien-lo, smiling, for that brief moment, almost like a friend. “I gambled, Hung. And do you know what? I almost pulled it off. Maybe I have. Who knows?”

“But if they’re alive, Chieh Hsia?”

Wang smiled, then bit deeply again. He seemed almost to be enjoying himself. “Then we wait”—he chewed, swallowed—“wait to see whether my cousins have the will to fight or not.”

“And if they do?”

“Then we have nothing more to lose, neh, Hung?” He smiled, then, with a grunt, hauled himself up onto his feet. “But come, Hung Mien-lo. Let’s go out and speak to our people. Let’s reassure them. You and I.” He grinned, then put his arm about Hung Mien-lo’s shoulders. “You, my most trusted man, and I...”

emily slipped the coin into the lock and pushed the door open. Inside, the cubicle was tolerably clean. Better than some she’d seen, anyway. She closed the door and put her bags down on the slatted bench, then looked about her.

There was a washstand and a half-length mirror. A jug of steaming water stood on the stand beside an empty plastic bowl. On the wall was the usual graffiti, and a few new things she hadn’t seen before. She studied them a moment, knowing that this was sometimes the way to get a handle on things down here. li min sucks read one, and just below it don’t you wish! along with the usual freight of pornographic outpourings. But what interested her most was the outline of a black hand—a symbol repeated five, no, six times about the walls. Inside were slogans: burn down the walls!, life is cheap, flesh plentiful!, FIVE FINGERS TO THE SEVEN!, and DESTROY WHAT YOU OPPOSE!. She knew of the Black Hand—they had been active in North America—but she had thought them a local phenomenon. If they were over here . . . Kicking her shoes off she got to work. Tipping out the small holdall she rummaged through the secondhand clothes she’d bought, selected some which would make her look fairly anonymous, and put them to one side. Then, with a glance at her old self in the mirror, she began to strip off her expensive, First Level clothes, stuffing them into the empty holdall. Naked, she went to the mirror and, pouring hot water from the jug into the bowl, began to wash off her makeup.

Finished, she looked at herself again. Still me, she thought. But not for long. She went to her travel bag and felt in the inside pocket, removing the electric shaver and a small plastic packet. She put the packet on the side of the washstand, beside the jug, then faced the mirror again. When she was done she turned her head, studying its smooth shape. It was elegant, almost statuesque. If you could see me now, Michael Lever, she mused, a slight regret still nagging at her. If you only knew what I have planned. But he wouldn’t know. He’d never know. She looked down, sniffing deeply, then continued with her work. The packet was slippery in her hands. She put it down and wiped her hands on one of the secondhand tunics she’d discarded. Then, turning back, she began again. Taking the lenses from the sterile packet, she set them on the side, then, one at a time, slipped them in carefully under her eyelids. There, she thought, feeling them slide snugly into place over her pupils.

That’s better.

Her eyes, which had been brown, were now green. She smiled. What’s more, examined by a retinal scanner, they would identify her not as Mary Lever but as Rachel DeValerian.

She went to the bag and took out the long black wig and the special adhesive, then returned to the mirror.

“How many times have you done this in the past?” she asked herself softly.

“How many times?”

A dozen, fifteen maybe, she answered herself in the quiet of her skull, feeling the old excitement wash through her like a drug and realizing just how much she had missed it.

The wig transformed her. Quickly she dressed, then stood there, squinting at herself. She turned, looking at herself side on. The hair wasn’t quite right. She’d need to cut it. Otherwise . . . She smiled. “Good-bye, Mary Lever,” she whispered, facing the black hand on the wall. And hello, Rachel DeValerian.

nan ho came to him when Ben had gone, standing there patiently in the darkness beside the pool, a slender figure in the moonlight. His voice was solemn, ominous in the stillness of the walled enclosure. “Well, Chieh Hsia? Have you decided?”

Li Yuan nodded. “Call Marshal Tolonen, and get Tsu Ma and General Rheinhardt patched in to my study. I shall come there in a moment.” Nan Ho hesitated, staring at the figure of the young T’ang. Then, with a bow, he backed away.

Li Yuan sighed, looking about him one last time. In the moonlight the pool was like a mirror, and the tablet. . .

He walked out onto the white face of the tablet, looking down at the names beneath his booted feet. Father and brother, grandfather and great-grandfather, back eleven generations. Kneeling, he traced his own name on the whiteness with his finger, then looked up, feeling a mixture of emotions. Was this what made him different from the rest?—this perversity of his, this strange sense of being haunted by the days to come? Was he the only one to have felt like this? Or was this morbidity of his a product of the times? He shivered, partly from cold, partly from the intensity of what he was feeling at that moment. One day a man would come and, kneeling upon his cushioned pad, would cut the name of Li Yuan into the stone, coaxing it from the marble with a loving care. And what would he be thinking, that man? Would he be thinking of the death of kings? Or would he, more likely, be thinking of his belly—or of that serving girl he fancied? He smiled, the thought strangely comforting. Then, pulling himself to his feet, he started across the grass toward the open gate, knowing what he must do.

wang sau-leyan stood out on the balcony looking in, watching her move about the room. Outside it was cool and dark, the half-moon high and to the west.

“Come in, my love,” she called, smiling and turning back the silken sheets. “Come in now.”

“A moment...” he called back to her, savoring the brief perfection of the evening. Soon it would all be gone. Dust on the wind. All things. All memory and vision.

He breathed in, catching the faintest scent of her on the cool night air. One moment, he thought. One single moment of perfection, and then— he smiled—nothing.

He went inside, her perfume like a barrier through which he passed, into a bedchamber of red and golden silks, of fine lace veils and diaphanous curtains.

“Here, my love,” she said from among the heaped pillows, her naked flesh a perfect white against the blood-red silk. “Here ...” He moved toward her.

There was a thudding, an insistent thudding on the outer doors.

He half turned toward the sound.

It came again, more urgently.

“My love ...”

He put a hand up to her. “A while . . . I’ll not be long.”

He walked across and stood before the bolted doors. “Who is it?”

“It is I, Chieh Hsial Your Chancellor, Hung Mien-lo!” Of course... He reached out, pulled back the heavy, dragon-headed bolt, then stood back as the doors swung slowly inward. There were guards and several Ministers, and there, at their head, the Chancellor, his face ashen.

“Well, man, what is it?”

He saw their eyes. Wide, fearful eyes, like the eyes of frightened children.

“Well?”

“We are at war, Chieh Hsia! Li Yuan has declared war on us!”