"David Wingrove - Chung Kuo 1 - The Middle Kingdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wingrove David)

CHUNG KUO
by DAVID WINGROVE
BOOK 1:

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
PROLOGUE WINTER 2I90
Yin/Yang
Who built the ten-storeyed tower of jade? Who foresaw it all in the beginning, when the first
signs appeared?

тАФT'lEN wen (Heavenly Questions) by Ch'u Yuan, from the ch'u tz'u (Songs of the South),
second century B.C.




Yin
IN THE DAYS before the world began, the first Ko Ming Emperor, Mao Tse-tung, stood on the hillside
at Wuch'ichen in Shensi Province and looked back at the way he had come. The Long March, that epic
journey of twenty-five thousand li over eighteen mountain ranges and through twelve provincesтАФeach
larger than a European stateтАФ was over, and seeing the immensity of China stretched out before him,
Mao raised his arms and addressed those few of his companions who had survived the year-long trek.

"Since P'an Ku divided heaven from earth, and the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors reigned, has
there ever been in history a long march like ours?" he said. "In ten years all China'will be ours. We have
come this farтАФis there anything we cannot do?"

China. Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom. So it had been for more than three thousand years, since the
time of the Chou, long before the First Empire.

So it had been. But now Chung Kuo was more. Not just a kingdom, but the earth itself. A world.

In his winter palace, in geostationary orbit 160,000 li above the planet's surface, Li Shai Tung, T'ang,
Son of Heaven and Ruler of City Europe, stood on the wide viewing circle, looking down past his feet at
the blue-white globe of Chung Kuo, thinking.

In the two hundred and fifty-six years that had passed since Mao had stood on that hill in Shensi
Province, the world had changed greatly. Then, it was claimed, the only thing to be seen from space that
gave evidence of Man's existence on the planet was the Great Wall of China. Untrue as it was, it said
something of the Han ability to plan great projectsтАФand not merely to plan them, but to carry them out.
Now, as the twenty-second century entered its final decade, the very look of the world had changed.
From space one saw the vast CitiesтАФeach almost a continent in itself; great sheets of glacial whiteness
masking the old, forgotten shapes of nation states; the world one vast, encircling city: City Earth.

Li Shai Tung stroked his long white beard thoughtfully, then turned from the portal, drawing his
embroidered silk pan. about him. It was warm in the viewing room, yet there was always the illusion of
cold, looking down through the darkness of space at the planet far below.

The City. It had been playing on his mind much more of late. Before, he had been too close to itтАФeven
up here. He had taken it for granted. Made assumptions he should never have made. But now it was time