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

to face things: to see them in the long perspective.

Constructed more than a century before, the City had been meant to last ten thousand years. It was vast
and spacious and its materials needed only refurbishing, never replacing. It was a new world built on top
of the old; a giant stilt village perched over the dark, still lake of antiquity.

Thirty decksтАФthree hundred levelsтАФhigh, each of its hexagonal, hivelike stacks two li to a side, there
had seemed space enough to hold any number of people. Let mankind multiply, the Planners had said;
there is room enough for all. So it had seemed, back then. Yet in the century that followed, the
population of Chung Kuo had grown like never before.

Thirty-four billion people at last count, Han and EuropeanтАФ Hung MaoтАФcombined. And more each
year. So many more that in fifty years the City would be full, the storage houses emptied. Put simply, the
City was an ever-widening mouth, an ever-larger stomach. It was a thing that ate and shat and grew.

Li Shai Tung sighed, then made his way up the broad, shallow steps and into his private apartment.
Dismissing the two attendants, he went across and pulled the doors closed, then turned and looked back
into the room.

It was no good. He would have to bring the matter up in Council. The Seven would have to discuss
population controls, like it or no. Or else? Well, at best he saw things stabilized: the City going on into the
future; his sons and grandsons bom to rule in peace. And at worst?

Uncharacteristically, Li Shai Tung put his hands to his face. He had been having dreams. Dreams in which
he saw the Cities burning. Dreams in which old friends were deadтАФbrutally murdered in their beds, their
children's bodies torn and bloodied on the nursery floor.

In his dreams he saw the darkness bubble up into the bright-lit levels. Saw the whole vast edifice slide
down into the mire of chaos. Saw it as clearly as he saw his hands, now, before his face.

Yet it was more than dreams. It was what would happenтАФ unless they acted.

Li Shai Tung, T'ang, ruler of City Europe, one of the Seven, shuddered. Then, smoothing the front of his
pau, he sat down at his desk to compose his speech for Council. And as he wrote he was thinking.

We didn't simply change the past, as others tried to do, we built over it, as if to erase it for all time. We
tried to do what Mao, in his time, attempted with his Cultural Revolution. What the first Han Emperor,
Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, tried to do, two thousand four hundred years ago, when he burned the books and
built the Great Wall to keep the northern barbarians from the Middle Kingdom. We have not learned
from history. We have preferred to ignore its counsel. But now history is catching up with us. The years
ahead will show how wise a course we set. Or blame us for our folly.

He liked the shape of his thoughts and set them down. Then, when he was finished, he got up and went
back down the steps to the viewing circle. Darkness was slowly encroaching on City Europe, drawing a
stark, dividing lineтАФ-a terminatorтАФacross its hollowed geometric shape, north to south.
No, he thought. We haven't learned. We have been unwise. And now our own Long March is fast
approaching. The bright days of easeтАФof unopposed ruleтАФlie in our past. Ahead lies only darkness.

The old man sighed again, then straightened, feeling the imaginary cold in his bones. Chung Kuo. Would
it survive the coming times? Would a son of his look down, as he looked now, and see a world at peace?