The Marriage of the Living Dark

“Are you tired, Chay Shal”

He turned. For a moment he had forgotten Zelic. Tired? Was he tired? Maybe. But not in any sense the young Captain would understand. No. His was a weariness of the spirit. To continue after his useful time, like an old man playing chequers in the sun, that was his fate now. All he had seen, all he had done meant nothing now. For these young men it had no value, no ... significance. “No, Captain Zelic. I am fine.”

The platform slowed then stopped. This was as far as it descended. Going to the rail Li Yuan leaned over, looking down. The levels went on, down into the earth itself, while beneath them, at the very foot of this great edifice, were the workers’ quarters. Workers ... He smiled at the euphemism. They were slaves, every last one of them, enemies of the state, taken in war, the flicker of the electronic collars about their necks a constant reminder of their status. “Does it never worry you, Captain?”

“Worry me, Chay Sha?”

“The impermanence of things?”

Zelic laughed. “You think all this impermanent, Chay Ska?”

“Of course. The wheel turns ...”

He stopped, looking past young Zelic. On the far side of the platform a door had opened and two men had stepped out One wore the simple blue one-piece of a high official, the other the uniform of a Major in Egan’s Southern army. “Forgive us for interrupting you, Li Yuan,” the official began, coming over to him, “but I’m given to understand that you’d like to visit one of the frontier posts.”

Li Yuan glanced at Zelic, but Zelic merely shrugged. He turned back, facing the official. “If it would not be too inconvenient.””Not at all,” the man continued urbanely. “Whatever you wish to see. After all, we have no secrets here.” No secrets, eh? But Li Yuan kept what he was thinking from his face. “That is most kind,” he answered. “And Captain Zelic here?” The official did not even glance at Zelic. “It would be best if the Captain stayed here. Major Lanier will provide full security throughout your tour of the front” “But Chay Sha,” Zelic protested. “I have orders ...” “If s okay,” Li Yuan said. “I am sure I will be perfectly safe in Major Lanier’s care” The Major straightened slightly at the mention, bowing his head the tiniest amount, more in acknowledgement of what Li Yuan had said than from any notion of respect A weakness, Li Yuan thought, remembering his own men, back in those days when ten million men had served him, doing his will, dying to his command. Respect is the cement of a society. Without it, the arch falls, things fall apart. Those final words reminded him suddenly of Shepherd and of the gift Ben had given him that time - the book of proscribed poems by the man Yeats. So strange they’d been. So passionate. A violation almost And yet true. True, in a way his own kind’s poetry was not.

Barbarians, yes, yet even barbarians can sing ... As with all of the things Shepherd had given him across the years, it had been a lesson. An “eye-opener” as Shepherd had called it And indeed it had opened his eyes, to a side of these Hung Mao he had never really guessed at, for all their proximity. Reading Yeats’ poems he had finally understood what motivated them; what soothed and angered them; what fuelled their strange, irrational moods. They were not like Han. No, yet there was common ground. “You will need to wear a suit,” Lanier said, stepping forward, almost but not quite touching Li Yuan’s arm.

He met the man’s eyes directly, adopting a sudden tone of command in both his manner and his voice. “Is that really necessary, Major?” The Major blinked, surprised, automatically reacting to the signals of tone and gesture. This time he bowed his head fully.

“I... am afraid so, Master Li. I cannot guarantee your safety unless you wear a body-suit, and if I cannot guarantee your safety...” “Of course,” Li Yuan said, dismissing the matter. Yet the moment had been interesting. It was still there in him, that instinct to control and command. The plague had not devoured it, no, nor had time or lack of opportunity diminished it. When a man had been born and bred to rule - when one belonged to the seventh generation of a powerful ruling dynasty - one could take away the world and still that man would think himself an Emperor. Yes, he thought. I shall have to set that down. He looked down, smiling, amused by the thought How often now he found himself contemplating his own thoughts and actions, as if at a distance from them; almost as though he were a clerk, following himself around, noting down each tiny utterance and gesture So a man becomes, when there is nothing else to fill his time. As if a man were but a well, waiting to be filled. He glanced up. Zelic was still waiting, his eyes uncertain, his whole manner anxious. Surprised, Li Yuan almost asked him what the matter was, but that would have been a mistake - a clear breach of etiquette. “You may leave me now, Captain Zelic,” he said softly. “I shall be all right Major Lanier has given his word.”

With a reluctant nod, Zelic turned and left Li Yuan watched him go, wondering why he’d seemed so anxious. Then, steeling himself to make the best of things, he turned back, facing Lanier and the official.

“Well, Major, it seems I am in your hands. Lead on. I’m rather looking forward

to seeing what you keep out there”

The room was arctic blue and chill, a huge, vault-like space, the walls of reflecting glass, the space between unfurnished. Overhead a sloping ceiling of smooth black ice, two hundred ch’i to a side, was supported by two lines of slender pillars.Into this room now stepped two white-coated technicians, their faces masked, their shaven heads reflecting back the cool blue light. They paused, conscious of the entity embedded in the perspex at the far end of the room, then slowly, hesitantly, began to walk toward it As they did, a disembodied voice filled the great hall with a low bass resonance, like the voice of emptiness itself.

“Is it ready yet?”

A dozen paces from the far end of the room, they stopped and bowed, the taller of them answering.

‘It is ready, Master.”

There was a pause, then an echoing reply. “Good. That is... good” The wall facing them was dark. Now it began to glow, a dim cold light growing in its depths, like a firefly trapped in a block of ice. As the glow grew, a tiny figure was revealed, more an emaciated mummy than a man. One side of its skull was larger than the other, the mottled skin stretched tight across the bone. One eye was fixed and focused, staring mad, the other rolled slowly in its orb. The arms were thin and tiny, like a child’s, but the hands were big, the fingers brown and elongated, the knuckles swollen like dice. It had a belly like a young baby’s and long stringy legs that dangled uselessly.

At the end of them the feet were black and rotted, one of them almost a stump.

This was Josiah Egan, grandfather of the reigning king. Slowly the two men set to work, freeing the great block of perspex from its position in the wall. That done, one of them turned and gestured to the camera overhead. At once six others entered the room at the far end - big, heavily-muscled men in black one-pieces - bringing with them a large flotation tray. As the technicians stepped back, the newcomers lifted the heavy block up onto the thick-based tray, then slowly manoeuvred it across the floor. “I died ...” the voice said, sending its low, bass echoes throughout the room.

“Six times I died.” And now they would bring it back to life again. Two hours and it would be done. Two hours and twenty years of intensive work would be concluded. The technicians looked to each other and smiled.

“Would you like anything, Oaeh Hsid?”

Li Yuan turned from the painting he had been studying and smiled. “No thank you, Chang. I am fine. You see to your Mistress, neh?” “Chteh Hsia.”

With a low bow, Chang backed away, returning to Fei Yen who sat in the corner of that massive anteroom, both of Li Yuan’s maids attending to her. Behind her, through a great silk curtain of red, white and blue, he could glimpse servants laying the tables and making their final preparations for the banquet. My Court, he thought, looking about the room at the nine people gathered there. Once he had maintained a great household of five thousand servants, now he was reduced to this: a steward, a cook, a barber, a seamstress, two maids, a serving-boy and a bootmaker who doubled as his taster. Not that he really missed such luxury, for with it had come a stultifying sense of confinement, of being a prisoner to ritual and obligation, yet it was hard to come to terms with such a reduction in social status, especially when one had to deal with such hsiao jen as these Americans, who judged a man not by his innate qualities but by how many “coats” he could stand beside his dining table. He turned back, looking at the massive painting once again, taking in its brutality, its heavy-handed symbolism, reminded, as he did, of his visit to the frontier post that afternoon, and experiencing again that same tiny frisson of shock he’d felt earlier.