Read Online Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series by David Wingrove - Free Book Online Page A

father, both of you. But the problem’s
     deeper than that. It’s inside. Beneath the surface of the skin. It’s bred in the
     blood and bone of men, in the complex web of nerve and muscle and organic tissue.
     But you… Well, you persist in dealing with only what you see. You treat the blemished
     skin and let the inner
     man corrupt.’
    Shepherd was watching his son thoughtfully, aware of the gulf that had grown between
     them these last few years. It was as if Ben had outgrown them all. Had done with childish
     things. He
     shrugged. ‘Maybe. But that doesn’t solve the immediate problem. Those surfaces you
     dismiss so readily have hard edges. Collide with them and you’ll realize that at once.
     People
     get hurt, lives get blighted, and those aren’t superficial things.’
    ‘It wasn’t what I meant.’
    ‘No. Maybe not. And maybe you’re right. You’d make a lousy advisor, Ben. You’ve been
     made for other things than politics and intrigue.’
    He stood, wiping his hands against his trousers. ‘You know, there were many things
     I wanted to do, but I never had the time for them. Pictures I wanted to paint, books
     I wanted to write,
     music I wanted to compose. But in serving the T’ang I’ve had to sacrifice all those
     and much else besides. I’ve seen much less of you and Meg than I ought – and far,
     far too
     little of your mother. So…’ He shrugged. ‘If you don’t want that kind of life, I understand.
     I understand only too well. More than that, Ben, I think the world would lose
     something were you to neglect the gifts you have.’
    Ben smiled. ‘We’ll see.’ Then he pointed up the slope. ‘I think they’ve almost finished.
     That’s the third of the isolation skins.’
    Shepherd turned and looked back up the slope. The cottage was fully encased now, its
     cosy shape disguised by the huge, white insulating layers. Only at the front, where
     the door to the garden
     was, was its smooth, perfectly geometric shape broken. There they had put the seal-unit;
     a big cylinder containing the air-pump and the emergency generator.
    A dozen suited men were fastening the edges of the insulator to the brace of the frame.
     The brace was permanently embedded in the earth surrounding the cottage; a crude,
     heavy piece of metal a
     foot wide and three inches thick with a second, smaller ‘collar’ fixed by old-fashioned
     wing-screws to the base.
    The whole strange apparatus had been devised by Ben’s great-great-greatgrandfather,
     Amos – the first of the Shepherds to live here – as a precaution against nuclear fallout.
     But when the Great Third War – ‘The War To End It All’ as the old man had written
     in his journal – had failed to materialize, the whole cumbersome isolation unit had
     been
     folded up and stored away, only the metal brace remaining, for the amusement of each
     new generation of Shepherd children.
    ‘Gift-wrapped!’ Shepherd joked, beginning to climb the slope.
    Ben, following a few paces behind, gave a small laugh, but it was unrelated to his
     father’s comment. He had had an insight. It had been Amos who had designed City Earth.
     His preliminary
     architectural sketches hung in a long glass frame on the passage wall inside the cottage,
     alongside a framed cover of the best-selling PC game,
World Domination
, he’d created.
    Nearer the cottage the soldiers had set up an infestation grid, the dull mauve light
     attracting anything small and winged from the surrounding meadows. Ben stood and watched
     as a moth, its wings
     like the dull gauze of an old and faded dress, its body thick and stubby like a miniature
     cigar, fluttered towards the grid. For a moment it danced in the blue-pink light,
     mesmerized by the
     brightness, its translucent wings suffused with purple. Then its wing-tip brushed
     against the tilted surface. With a spark and a hiss the moth fell, senseless, into
     the grid, where it flamed
     momentarily, its wings curling, vanishing