Ice and Fire: Chung Kuo Series Read Free Page A

meaning for
     him. Something had caught his attention. Something she had missed but he had seen.
     Now she waited as he probed
     and cut and then compared what had been exposed against the diagram spread across
     the double page.
    At last, satisfied, he went to the sink and washed his hands, then came back and threw
     a muslin cloth over the board and its bloodied contents.
    ‘Well?’
    He was about to answer her when there was the sound of footsteps in the dining room.
     Their mother’s. Then a second set.
    Meg pushed past him and jumped down the four steps in her haste.
    ‘Daddy!’
    Hal Shepherd gathered his daughter up, hugging her tight and kissing her, delighted
     to see her. Then he ducked under the lintel and climbed the steps up into the kitchen,
     Beth following.
    ‘Gods, Ben, what have you been up to?’
    Ben turned to face the table.
    ‘It’s a dead rabbit. We found it down by the Seal. It’s diseased. But that’s not all.
     It doesn’t come from here. It was brought in.’
    Hal put Meg down and went across. ‘Are you sure, Ben?’ But he knew that Ben was rarely
     if ever wrong.
    Ben pulled back the cloth. ‘Look. I made certain of it against Amos’s book. This one
     isn’t real. It’s a genetic redesign. Probably GenSyn. One of the guards must have
     made a substitution.’
    Hal studied the carcass a while, then nodded. ‘You’re right. And it won’t be the only
     one, I’m sure. I wonder who brought it in?’
    Ben saw the anger mixed with sadness on his father’s face. There were two gates to
     the Domain, each manned by an elite squad of a dozen men, hand-picked by the T’ang
     himself. Over
     the years they had become friends of the family and had been granted privileges –
     one of which was limited entry to the Domain. Now that would have to stop. The culprit
     would have to be
     caught and made to pay.
    Meg came up to him and tugged at his arm. ‘But why would they do it? There’s no great
     difference, is there?’
    Hal smiled sadly. ‘It’s a kind of foolishness, my love, that’s all. There are people
     in the City who would pay a vast sum of money to be able to boast they had real rabbit
     at
     one of their dinners.’
    Ben stared at the carcass fixedly. ‘How much is a vast sum?’
    Hal looked down at his son. ‘Fifty, maybe a hundred thousand yuan for each live animal.
     They would breed them, you see, then sell the doctored litters.’
    Ben considered. Such a sum would be as nothing to his father, he knew, but to others
     it was a fortune. He saw at once how such an opportunity might have tempted one of
     the guards. ‘I
     see,’ he said. ‘But there’s another, more immediate worry. If they’re all like this
     they could infect everything in the Domain. We’ll need to sweep the whole area.
     Catch everything and test it. Quarantine whatever’s sick.’
    Hal nodded, realizing his son was right. ‘Damn it! Such stupidity! I’ll have the culprit’s
     hide!’ He laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘But you’re
     right, Ben, we’d best do something straight away. This can’t wait for morning.’
    He turned to Beth, anger turning to apology in his face. ‘This complicates things,
     I’m afraid. I meant to tell you earlier, my love. We have a guest coming, tomorrow
     evening. An
     important guest. He’ll be with us a few days. I can’t say any more than that. I was
     hoping we could hunt, but this business buggers things.’
    She frowned at him and made a silent gesture towards Meg.
    Shepherd glanced at his daughter then looked back at his wife and gave a slight bow.
     ‘I’m sorry. My language. I forget when I’ve been away. But this…’ He huffed
     angrily, exasperated, then turned to his son again. ‘Come, Ben, there’s much to be
     done.’
    It was calm on the river. Ben pulled easily at the oars, the boat moving swiftly through
     the water. Meg sat facing him, looking across at the eastern shore. Behind her, in
     the
     stern, sat Peng Yu-wei,