The Year of Rice and Salt

But first, a revolution to finish. They slipped into one of the shops of the work unit and met with a group of unit supervisors, most of them old women. They were not inclined to be impressed by any boy advocating enormous change, but by this time Kung was famous, and they listened carefully to him, and asked a lot of detailed questions, and when he had finished they nodded and patted him on the shoulder and sent him back out onto the street, telling him he was a good boy and that he should get out of the city before he got himself arrested, and that they would back him when the time came. That was the way it was with Kung: everyone felt the fire in him, and responded in the human way. If he could win over the old women of the Long War in a single meeting, then nothing was impossible. Many a village and work unit was staffed entirely by these women, as were the Buddhist hospitals and colleges. Kung knew all about them by now, 'the gangs of widows and grandmothers', he called them; 'very frightening minds, they are beyond the world but know every tael of it, so they can be very hard, very unsenti mental. Good scientists frequent among them. Politicians of great cunning. It's best not to cross them.' And he never did, but learned from them, and honoured them; Kung knew where the power lay in any given situation. 'If the old women and the young men ever get together, it will be all over!'

Kung also travelled to Yingkou to meet with Zhu Isao himself, and discuss with the old philosopher the campaign for China. Under Zhu's aegis he flew to Yingzhou, and spoke with the Japanese and Chinese representatives of the Yingzhou League, meeting also Travancoris and others in Fangzhang, and when he returned, he came with promises of support from all the progressive governments of the New World.

Soon after that, one of the great Hodenosaunee fleets arrived in Yingkou, and unloaded huge quantities of food and weapons, and similar fleets appeared off all the port cities not under revolutionary control already, blockading them in effect if not in word, and the New China forces were able over the next couple of years to win victories in Shanghai, Canton, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and inland all over China. The final assault on Beijing became more of a triumphal entry than anything else; the soldiers of the old army disappeared into the vast city, or out to their last stronghold in Gansu, and Kung was with Zhu in the first trucks of a giant motorcade that entered the capital uncontested, indeed hugely celebrated, on the spring equinox marking the Year 36, through the Big Red Gate.

It was later in that week that they opened up the Forbidden City to the people, who had been in there only a few times before, after the disappearance of the last emperor, when for a few years of the war it had been a public park and army barracks. For the past forty years it had been closed again to the people, and now they streamed in to hear Zhu and his inner circle speak to China and the world. Bao was in the crowd accompanying them, and as they passed under the Gate of Great Harmony he saw Kung look around, as if surprised. Kung shook his head, an odd expression on his face; and it was still there when he went up to the podium to stand by Zhu and speak to the ecstatic masses filling the square.

Zhu was still speaking when the shots rang out. Zhu fell, Kung fell; all was chaos. Bao fought his way through the screaming crowd and got to the ring of people around the wounded on the temporary wooden stage, and most of those people were men and women he knew, trying to establish order and get medical assistance and a route out of the palace grounds to a hospital. One who recognized him let Bao through, and he rushed and stumbled to Kung's side. The assassin had used the big soft tipped bullets that had been developed during the war, and there was blood all over the wood of the stage, shocking in its copious gleaming redness. Zhu had been struck in the arm and leg; Kung in the chest. There was a big hole in his back and his face was grey. He was dying. Bao knelt beside him and took up his splayed right hand, calling out his name. Kung looked through him; Bao couldn't be sure he was seeing anything; 'Kung Jianguo!' Bao cried, the words torn out of him like no others had ever been.

'Bao Xinhua,' Kung mouthed. 'Go on.'

Those were his last words. He died before they even got him off the stage.

2. This Square Fathom

All that happened when Bao was young.

After Kung's assassination he wasn't much good for a time. He attended the funeral and never shed a tear; he thought he was beyond such things, that he was a realist, that the cause was what mattered and that the cause would go on. He was numb to his grief, he felt he didn't really care. That seemed odd to him, but there it was. It wasn't all that real, it couldn't be. He had got over it.