The Middle Kingdom by David Wingrove Read Free Book Online Page B

mind the back of his junior minister as he hurried
from the dome. "Yes. It must have been Yang Lai!..."
    But the words
were barely uttered when the air turned to flame.
     
    THE PATROL CRAFT
was fifteen li out when its tail camera, set on automatic
search-and-scan, trained itself on the first brief flicker from the
dome. On a panel above the navigator's head a light began to flash.
At once the pilot banked the craft steeply, turning toward the trace.
    They were almost
facing the dome when the whole of the horizon seemed to shimmer and
catch fire.
    The pilot swore.
"What in Chang-e's name is that?"
    "The
mountains. . . ." said the navigator softly, staring in
amazement at the overhead screen. "Something's come down in the
mountains!"
    "No. . . ."
The pilot was staring forward through the windshield. "It was
much closer than that. Run the tape back."
    He had barely
said it when the sound of the explosion hit them, rocking the tiny
craft.
    "It's the
dome!" said the pilot in the stillness that followed. "It's
the fucking solarium!"
    "It can't
be."
    The pilot
laughed, shocked. "But it's not there! It's not fucking there!"
    The navigator
stared at him a moment, then looked back up at the screen. The image
was frozen at the point where the camera had locked onto the
irregular heat pattern.
    He leaned
forward and touched the display pad. Slowly, a frame at a time, the
image changed.
    "Gods! Look
at that!"
    Near the top of
the softly glowing whiteness of the dome two eyes burned redly.
Slowly they grew larger, darker, the crown of the dome softening,
collapsing, until the crumpled face of the solarium seemed to leer at
the camera, a vivid gash of redness linking two of the four holes
that were now visible. For a single frame it formed a death mask, the
translucent flesh of the dome brilliantly underlit. Then, in the
space of three frames, the whole thing blew apart.
    In the first it
was veined with tiny cracks—each fissure a searing,
eye-scorching filament of fire, etched vividly against the swollen,
golden flesh of the dome. As the tape moved on a frame, that golden
light intensified, filling the bloated hemisphere to its limit. Light
spilled like molten metal from the bloodied mouths that webbed the
dome, eating into the surrounding darkness like an incandescent acid.
Then, like a flowering wound, the whole thing opened up, the ragged
flaps of ice thrown outward violently, flaming like the petals of a
honey-gold and red chrysanthemum, its bright intensity flecked with
darkness.
    He reached
forward and pressed to hold the image. The screen burned, almost
unbearably bright. He turned and stared at his colleague, seeing at
once how the other's mouth was open, the inner flesh glistening
brightly in the intense, reflected light, while in the polished
darkness of his eyes two gold-red flowers blossomed.
    "Gods____That's
awful. . . terrible. . . ."
    The flat Han
face of the navigator turned and looked up at the screen. Yes, he
thought. Awful. Terrible. And yet quite beautiful. Like a
chrysanthemum, quite beautiful.
     
     
CHAPTER
TWO
     
     

The
Silkworm and the Mulberry Leaf
     
    AT
THE MOUTH of the narrow, low-ceilinged corridor they had been
following, Chen stopped and placed his hand against Jyaris chest,
looking out into the wide but crowded thoroughfare beyond. Pan Chao
Street teemed with life. Along both sides of the long, broad avenue
ran balconies, four of them, stacked like seed trays one atop
another, their low rails packed with people, the space between them
crisscrossed with a vast unruly web of lines from which enormous
quantities of washing hung, like giant, tattered veils, dripping
endlessly onto the crowds below.
    A hundred
smaller corridors led into Pan Chao Street, the regular pattern of
their dark, square mouths peppering the walls behind the balconies,
like the openings to a giant hive.
    Chen reached out
and touched the smooth surface of the hexagonal, graffiti-proof
plaque on the wall close by. LEVEL eleven, it