Beneath the Tree of Heaven

CHAPTER FOUR

The Punishment of Heaven

The storm had abated shortly after nightfall. An hour back a second craft had come from out of the darkness to the north, a big security cruiser, its hold crammed with supplies for the settlement. Supplies and a single prisoner.

Ebert had stood on the rocks overlooking the entrance to the settlement, Echewa crouched beside him, watching as two guards dragged her from the interior of the craft. He had known it was a she only because Echewa had said it was. But that was all Echewa had known. All he’d wanted to know. “Why do you work for him?” Ebert had asked.

Echewa had turned and looked up at him, the tinted visor hiding his face. “We don’t work for him. But he did us a favor once, long ago. This is in settlement of that. A debt of honor.”

“But the supplies . . . ?”

Echewa had turned back, watching them unload. “The supplies are not what you think, Hans Ebert. They are paid for fully. It is as I said. A debt of honor. Once paid, we will no longer be beholden to your friend. We shall be free men again.”

Free men—those words returned to him now as he squatted, alone on the rocks, looking out across the desert to the north. It was like an ocean, a great, dark ocean, its edges scattered with the jagged teeth of rocks, thrusting up above the wavelike dunes. The sight of it reminded him of a time when, as a child, he had stood beside his father, back on Chung Kuo, watching the waves of the great Atlantic break against a rock-strewn beach. At the time it had terrified him and he had clung, screaming, to his father’s leg, while his father had roared with laughter and thrown a stone far out into the incoming tide. Free men . . . Yes, yet when had he ever been free? When—in all the twenty-nine years of his life—had he not been beholden to someone? His father. Li Yuan. DeVore. Each one had taken him and used him. And all the while he’d thought his life his own. But it had never been his own. Life had been a great tide, rushing in and overpowering him. All his life he had been too weak, too governed by his own desires, to stand against that tide and shape his own destiny. But finally he understood. Finally he could make that choice: to continue as he was, or to become a new man, free of the old patterns of his being.

For some men it was easier. Echewa, for instance. For him the choice had been made at birth, for he was osu, an outcast—a black man in a world that did not permit the existence of black men. When the Han had come to Mars, his father’s fathers had fled into the desert, knowing there was no place for them in the Cities of the Han. They had become Osu, the lost tribe of Mars, the dwellers in the quiet places. Mother Sky had become their god. That last he had not understood, for like the poet Kan Jiang, he found no call within himself for gods. No. If the world made any sense at all, it was not because some godlike being directed it, even a god as amorphous and all encompassing as Echewa’s, but because it had beauty and order and laws unrelated to men and their notion of gods. Men . . . Some days he felt that Mankind was merely a distraction from the real business of the universe, a petty sideshow.

It was like what was happening just now to Mars. What was that but a brief convulsion, a sickening in the body politic? Let the Cities burn, he thought. Let it all pass. It made no difference. Here, amid this bitter cold, was true reality. Here, unexpectedly, was a beauty that took his breath. He leaned back, looking up at the star-dusted darkness. Earlier, through Echewa’s glasses, he had focused on the distant horizon, watching as Phobos sped from west to east while, several degrees higher in the sky, tiny Deimos slowly drifted east. Beyond both, its sunlit face like a bright hole burning in the darkness of the sky, sat the planet of his birth, Chung Kuo.

Chung Kuo. That, too, would pass. And still the stars would blaze in the darkness.

He breathed shallowly, conscious suddenly of the hum of the heater in his pressure suit as it struggled to combat the cold. It was minus one hundred and eighteen degrees and falling. In two hours it would be dawn, the coldest time of day on Mars.

“Shih Ebert...”

He turned, looking up at the figure that had appeared, as if from the air, on the rocks behind him. It was Echewa.

“You must come in now. It is dangerous to be out here so long. Besides, you have come a long way. You must rest.” Ebert stood, feeling a tiredness, a stiffness in his limbs. “The night is beautiful, neh?” he said, turning slowly, taking in the vast panorama of the stars.

Echewa looked up, nodding. “The night is our mother. She comforts us. She tells us who we are.”

“And the day?” he asked, curious. “Is the day your father, Aluko Echewa?” Echewa shook his head. “I thought you understood, Hans Ebert. We have no father. Mother sky is all. We live, we die, beneath her. She sees all. Even the darkness deep within us.”

Ebert stood there a moment, considering, then shook himself. “There’s one thing I don’t understand, Aluko, and that’s why I’m here at all. The prisoner—she’s perfectly safe here. If she ran, where would she run to? So why am I needed?”

Echewa shrugged. “Perhaps it is your fate.” “My fate?” Ebert laughed. “What has fate to do with the schemes of our friend DeVore? No, there’s a reason for this, don’t you think? Some dirty work involved that he doesn’t want his own hands stained with.” He stared at the Osu, expecting an answer, but Echewa was silent. “Well, whatever. . . But I tell you this, Aluko Echewa: I am no friend to Howard DeVore. Unlike you I owe the man no debt of honor.” “And yet you serve him. I find that strange.”

“It was my nature.”

“Was?”

Ebert smiled. “Come. Let’s go inside, before the heater in my suit gives out.”

“And the prisoner? You want to see her yet?”

Ebert shook his head. “No. You were right, Aluko. I need rest.”

“And afterward?”

“Afterward?” Ebert sighed, then reached out, touching Echewa’s shoulder.

“Who knows? Maybe then I’ll find out why I’m here.”

devore sat at scHENCK’s desk, in Kang Kua City, staring at the blackness of the ViewScreen, a stack of reports at his elbow. It was an hour before dawn and the worst of it appeared to be over. The City was quiet now, after the latest spate of executions, and only the two great Western Cities of Tai Huo and Yang P’ing remained in turmoil. The damage was considerable—Feng Shou Hao was a shell, its dome cracked and blackened, its half a million citizens dead, and losses elsewhere were in the tens of thousands—even so, it could have been much worse. The pipelines were secure, the reservoirs untouched, and while the vast, ten-thousand-mou greenhouses of Tharsis had sustained some damage, it was nothing significant. They would be back working to full capacity in a matter of weeks. Tzu Li Keng Seng generating complex was up and running again, and the main communications channels between the Cities were open. All in all, things were none too bad. Mars had survived the night. From his own viewpoint the situation had improved dramatically these past few hours. During the night, it had seemed as if Mars was about to topple into full-scale civil war. Following on from their success in Hsiang Se the Martian Pxadical Alliance had taken Kang Feng City and slaughtered the garrison to a man. With the threat of further incursions DeVore had been faced with a stark and immediate choice—to fight them or make a deal. Conscious of the delicacy of the situation he had drafted a senior member of the old ruling Council, Daniel Henderson, a longtime advocate of reform, to conduct the negotiations, giving him a free hand. In an hour-long face-to-face session with Wang Tu in Hsiang Se, Henderson had put forward a package of wide-ranging and dramatic reforms. Hostilities would cease immediately. Hsiang Se and Kang Feng would remain in MRA hands until the package of reforms could be fleshed out and ratified by a new ruling Council: a Council upon which there would be significant MRA representation. In the meantime a statement would be issued publicly, on all channels, announcing the new proposals and calling for all citizens to work peaceably on behalf of the new constitution. Wang Tu had agreed. DeVore sat back, his hands steepled beneath his chin, thinking things through.

The MRA were jubilant, of course. They had achieved all they had set out to gain, and more. But their joy would be short-lived, for the program of reforms Henderson had put to them was preposterous, unworkable. Moreover, the Seven would never agree to it, and despite what Schenck had thought, it still mattered what the Seven wanted. They were weak, certainly—far weaker than they had been twenty years before—but they were still strong enough to take action, especially when a failure to act might precipitate rebellion at home. Besides which, Mars—for all they had done these past few years—was still far too vulnerable to direct military assault. No. When it came down to it, he would have to crush the MRA or fight the Seven. And he was not yet ready to fight the Seven. For now, however, he would let things be. It would be some while— weeks, perhaps months—before the Seven could respond to what had happened here tonight. In the meantime he would work hard to allay their fears: to pacify Mars and make it seem compliant to their will. To that end he had had Rutherford send a message of reassurance to the Council back on Chung Kuo, pledging Mars’s continued loyalty to the Seven, and advising them just what steps were being taken behind the scenes to repair the situation. It was far from certain that the Seven would believe a word of it, yet if it gave them cause for thought and stayed their hand a single day it would be worth it.

He smiled. Yes. All in all, it could have been far worse. It could easily have set him back five, even ten years. As it was, Schenck’s precipitate action had proved to his benefit. Mars was his now, to do with as he wished. And five years from now . . .

DeVore stirred himself, beginning to work through the reports. The first of them confirmed what he had heard earlier. A number of the vats at HoloGen had been badly damaged in the firefight between his troops and Bates’s Federation. Several of the creatures had had to be destroyed. It was annoying, certainly, yet in the context of the bigger picture it seemed a small price to pay. Besides, the important work was being done elsewhere—at the plant in Sinai, half a li beneath the sands—and that had been unaffected by the troubles.

He screwed the paper up and threw it into the bin beside him, then reached for the next report. It was from Echewa, down at Hellespont. He took a deep breath, angered by the terse and haughty tone of the communication. Echewa thought too much of himself, that was clear. As soon as this matter with Ebert and the girl was done with, he would destroy Echewa and his people. It wouldn’t be difficult. He knew where their bases were. All it would take was a dozen heavily armed cruisers and the problem would be solved.

In the meantime there was another problem: the problem of what to do with the Marshal’s daughter. Before last night he would have staked a great deal against the Seven taking any kind of action to recover Jelka Tolonen, despite her father’s anguish. Once before they had been thrown into a war they did not want because of Tolonen’s hasty actions, and it had seemed unlikely that they would risk another such confrontation unless they really had to. Now, however, things had changed. Mars had rebelled. Feng Shou Hao was a shell. The situation was highly sensitive and the least little thing might force the Seven’s hand. If it was an excuse they wanted for a war, what better than the kidnap of the Marshal’s daughter? But did they really want a war? Wasn’t there a way to keep Tolonen’s daughter and placate the ruling Seven?

His instinct was to keep her; was to have Henderson and Rutherford bluff it out, feigning ignorance of what had happened down at Tien Men K’ou. The Seven might not believe them, yet for form’s sake—and to keep the peace—they might accept their story. And without the backing of the Seven, what could Tolonen do? He might rant and rave, but ultimately he was powerless. It would mean forgoing the pleasure of taunting Tolonen with his loss, but what was that when set against tonight’s gains? No. He would keep the girl and do as he’d planned before this evening’s events. Hans Ebert and the girl would marry, only quietly, privately. In fact he would have Echewa marry them before the day was out. And then he would keep the pair—would move them to a safe place and keep them—ready for the day when he could use them. For the day when Mars was strong enough, secure enough, to take on the Seven and win.

He leaned forward, about to dictate his reply to Echewa, when the screen

on the far side of the room came alive again. Against a background of

stars a Security officer stood before the camera, his bared head bowed

low.

“Major DeVore ...”

DeVore heard the tone of panic in the man’s voice and felt himself go cold. “What is it, Lieutenant Wade?”

“A report has just come in, sir. It seems we have three Security battle cruisers in our airspace. They entered orbit twenty minutes back.” Impossible, he thought, the Seven cannot have acted so fast. Yet even as he framed the thought, he knew what had happened. Tolonen must have sent the craft out weeks ago, to rendezvous with the Luqyang and ensure his daughter’s safety. It was just the kind of thing the old man would do. But why hadn’t he heard about it? Was his network back on Chung Kuo so poor now that something as glaring as this could have evaded their notice? He took a deep breath, then got up and went around the desk, taking up a position in front of the screen.

“Okay. Send them a signal, greeting them, reassuring them that all is in hand down here. Then get their Commander on line. Have him put through here, direct. I’ll get Rutherford in to speak to him. But don’t— don’t for a single instant—say anything about the fate of Tolonen’s daughter, understand me? If they ask, tell them that things have been chaotic down here and that you have no information.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now get to it. The next few hours are vital to our cause.”

from where it rested, high up on the wall above her bed, the insect witnessed everything. It saw the hard stone bed on which the prisoner lay, the crude iron chains which secured her to the wall. In the light of a single, flickering flame it saw her lift her head and look across, her blue eyes moist, her muscles tensed against what was to come. For a moment there was no sound, simply the movement of a steel door on a well-oiled hinge, a perturbation of the flame. She stared into shadow, her eyes narrowed, trying to make out who or what it was. For a moment her face was set, determined to show no fear, then, with a small, startled movement, her eyes flew open.

“You...”

It flickered across the darkness, then settled, looking down. Ebert stood in the doorway, his left hand gripping the thick edge of the door as if to steady himself. He seemed shocked, pained almost, by what he saw. There was a strange, uncertain movement in his face, and then he moved inside, closing the door quietly behind him. “Jelka ...” he said softly, turning to face her again.

“I should have known,” she said quietly, a strange coldness in her voice. “When I saw that bastard DeVore at the spaceport, I should have guessed that you’d be somewhere close at hand, like some nasty little piece of putrefaction.”

He shuddered. “Jelka, I didn’t—“

“You didn’t what? Didn’t have my aunt and uncle killed? Didn’t kill your own father? And what about that child? How could you have done that? Your own child? What kind of animal are you?”

Ebert hung his head, silent.

She lifted her hands angrily as if reaching for him, the chains pulling taut against the rings in the wall behind her. “You know what? If I were free right now—if I had a knife in my hand and the chance to use it—I’d stick it deep in your guts and twist it hard for what you’ve done. I’d slit your throat and watch you bleed to death, you know that?”

“I know.”

She laughed, scorning him, as if it were he who was chained. “I wish I could say you got what you deserved, but it’s not true, is it? I mean, you’re still here ... the stink of you is still here.” She shook her head, suddenly pained, remembering what had happened. “Do you realize what you did? All the suffering you caused?”

“I realize.”

“Do you?” She stared at him a moment, such disgust, such utter loathing, in her eyes that he bowed his head once more. “So what now, Hans Ebert? What further excesses, what filth and degradation, have you got planned for me? Or am I wrong, is it my soul you’re after now?” He jerked his head up, surprised. For a moment his mouth faltered, and then he spoke again, his voice quiet, hesitant. “You have it wrong. I never killed them. Not one of them. Fest, yes. But the others . . .” She stared at him, contemptuous, destroying him silently, forcing him to lower his eyes again as his voice faltered and fell still. “Enough,” she said, easing back onto her bunk, the chains falling slack. “Do what you have to. But don’t think you’ll ever touch me. Not the real me. That you can’t touch.”

“No,” he said quietly. “No . . .”

There was silence, an uneasy stillness, and then the door swung open behind Ebert. Echewa came in slowly, looking across at the young woman. He frowned, sensing the tension in the cell, then turned to Ebert. “You know her?”

“Yes. We were engaged, back on Chung Kuo. It was my father’s idea. He wanted to link our families. To consolidate the friendship he had with her father. I wanted it, too, I guess. But I did her a great wrong. 1 can’t blame her if she hates me.”

Echewa’s eyes widened. “Then I’m sorry for you both, Hans Ebert. I’ve heard from our friend DeVore. He’s sent new instructions. He wants you two married, and he wants it today.”