Dragon Dance Read online

  “Welcome, Comrade. We are looking forward to your latest report with the greatest anticipation.”

  Those were the words of the old man’s son, now established as one of the leading figures among the anti-Western group. Sometimes Peng Yuan would read speeches the man had given and recognize some of his own ideas. That always gave him a deep thrill of pride.

  Peng Yuan flipped open the laptop computer he had brought and booted the program. Three amoebalike blobs appeared on the screen, twisting and pulsing and shimmering with different colors. The smaller one was attached to the largest by a thin umbilical cord, which contracted and stretched as the two amoebas danced closer to each other and then drew away again.

  “Once again I am honored to have the opportunity of discussing my humble research work. For those members who were not present last time, let me summarize how the system works. These strange creatures you see on the screen are topological simulations of political entities responding to a random barrage of internal and external stimuli. You may call the large one the United States, the small one Japan, and the medium-sized one China. Now, according to the principles of turbulence theory ...”

  It was his usual introduction, dry and theoretical, but the listeners were paying close attention. They had confidence in him, as they should. Over the years his work had proved its value time and again. His conclusions had become more specific, his predictions more detailed and accurate. Thanks to the new resources at his disposal, he had massively increased the power of his model. Hundreds of variables were fed in every week, tens of thousands of matrices generated, and millions of probabilities sifted and sorted. This was the cutting edge of metabolic strategic analysis. Rand Corporation, the Moscow Institute, the new Clausewitz Center in Berlin—none of them had even come close to matching his achievements.

  Peng Yuan spoke for twenty minutes, summarizing the key developments since the last meeting, and using the shapes on the screen to show how the stresses within the international political system were rising to a climax.

  “We are now approaching the flux point,” he concluded. “That is the point of maximum instability, when minor events can trigger sudden reconfigurations.”

  [43] He turned and tapped in an instruction. The smaller blob flashed blue and purple, and suddenly the umbilical cord snapped and shriveled away to nothing. The larger blob grew another cord which snaked toward the medium blob and attached itself to its belly. At the same time the medium blob grew a pincerlike limb which began to tear away pieces of the smaller blob, which shivered as if in pain, then its color drained away and its movements grew weaker. The medium blob carried on expanding until it overtook the largest in size. It was now almost three times as big as the smallest blob, which was white and completely immobile.

  The old man’s small round face creased into a smile. “This is the shape of the future. Japan withers and dies, while China grows and grows until it becomes the center of the world system.”

  Peng Yuan nodded. “It is one possible future. As I said, the coming year has the maximum potential for dynamic change. But if the current system manages to survive this period, it will become unshakable.”

  “What would happen then?” asked one of the new members of the committee, a fat-bellied Cantonese who was considered the leader of the post-pragmatist ideologists.

  Peng Yuan hesitated.

  “Show him,” croaked the old man.

  Peng Yuan bowed. His fingers tapped at the keyboard, and the screen reverted to its former state.

  “This is a much simplified version,” he explained. “The full process takes many hours.”

  He tapped in another command, and the blobs started to move. The smallest and the largest blobs danced closer together, until the umbilical cord linking their two bellies fattened out into a bridge. At that they twitched and rippled with color and started growing rapidly. The medium blob circled warily, grew a claw, and tried to tear pieces off the other two. Its movements became more agitated as each attack was foiled, until finally it shook like jelly, turned purple, blue, and green in rapid succession, then exploded into dozens of tiny blobs, each of which grew claws and started attacking each other.

  This was not the first time Peng Yuan had showed that sequence. The effect was always the same—heavy silence, interrupted only by the rasp of the old man’s breath.

  The first to speak was the cold-eyed man from Shanghai. Peng Yuan tensed at the sound of his voice. They had been invited into the old man’s circle at the same time, and Peng Yuan clearly remembered that afternoon ten years ago when they had sat staring at each other across the shiny black table. Since then their rivalry had burgeoned, ripened, and soured.

  [44] “What about alternative scenarios? Surely there must be a way for the system to return to stability.”

  “Yes, there is,” admitted Peng Yuan, setting up the program again. This time the three blobs kept their distance from each other. Occasionally two of them would link with umbilical cords, but they soon drifted apart again until the cord snapped. More often, two of them would make alliances and tear chunks out of the third with their pincers. These alliances didn’t last long, however, and when the sequence ended all three blobs were roughly the same size and color as at the beginning.

  “That’s interesting,” said the man from Shanghai. “What’s the probability of such an outcome?”

  Peng Yuan smiled. “Very low. In a dynamic system you get stability only if a number of random events lock together to form a feedback circuit. That’s about as probable as a man bumping into three of his mistresses in Tienanmen Square on the same afternoon.”

  The man from Shanghai registered not the trace of a smile. “And what about the other two scenarios?”

  “They both have rather high probabilities.”

  “Are you unable to calculate which is higher?”

  Peng Yuan noted the provocation. It was important to remain calm: the man from Shanghai was a master at laying traps for the unsuspecting. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps I should explain my methodology again. You see, this has nothing to do with the old style of probability analysis. What I have created are complex strategic systems which respond organically to random stimuli.”

  “Can’t you give a simple answer?” sneered the other man. “We haven’t come here to listen to a lecture.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Peng Yuan testily. “I haven’t finished the explanation yet. You can’t understand the conclusions until you understand the methods. That’s what I always tell my dullest students.”

  The man from Shanghai shot a sideways glance at the old man’s son, who pursed his lips and gave a slight nod before looking away. It was inevitable, he thought. Peng Yuan had been useful to them, more useful than he would ever know, but his role was over now. The flux point was indeed approaching. And there was nothing random about the stimuli that would be applied.

  The problem with Peng Yuan was that he had changed so much. Ten years ago he had been an obscure researcher, flattered to have his work taken seriously, and careful to follow every instruction he was given. He had been scared, which meant that he could be trusted. Now Peng Yuan was no longer scared. He was spending too much money, drinking too much, and talking too much. According to the girls they had arranged for him, he had started to [45] boast about his connections in high places, even mentioning the old man by name. The man from Shanghai had warned them many times about Peng Yuan, and he had been right. The situation had become intolerable.

  FIVE

  When Martine arrived at the office, Charlie was sprawled in his chair, feet up on the desk, watching the sumo highlights on the big flat-screen TV. They were showing the main bout of the evening, and the grand champion crashed to the ground just as Martine walked in.

  “I love these fat guys,” grinned Charlie. “Especially when their bellies smack together. What a great noise that is!”

  The grin was unconvincing. Charlie rarely had a pleasant word for Martine these days. The atmosphere be
tween them had been frosty since she’d confronted him with stealing one of her stories and getting most of the details wrong.

  “WHAP!” he said, thumping fist into palm. “Do you think I could grow my belly big enough to make that noise?”

  “You’d have to be a lot stricter about your diet,” said Martine, pulling up a chair opposite.

  “Stricter! You don’t need to be strict to get fat, for God’s sake.”

  “Yes, you do. Sumo wrestlers only have two meals a day, and it’s always the same stuff. No fancy restaurants, no fine wine—just rice, fish, and vegetables, twice a day, every day.”

  “You know absolutely everything, don’t you! Next you’ll be telling me you dated one of those guys.”

  He was still grinning, but the edge of hostility was unmistakable.

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  Charlie acknowledged the joke with a little snort. Except that it wasn’t a joke. The man Martine was referring to had retired from sumo with a smashed knee at the age of twenty-one and had then spent ten years studying to be a lawyer.

  “So has anything important been going on?” asked Martine casually. [47] There was no point in being too direct, Charlie would get to the point when he was ready.

  “Not really. The peace talks are stalled, the trade talks are stalled, ethnic cleansing in Malaysia continues unabated, an earthquake has flattened some place nobody can pronounce. Oh—and another story that particularly caught my eye. The new government in Algeria is banning women from learning to read and write. I was thinking they might be onto something there ...”

  “Ha, ha,” muttered Martine, refusing to rise to a jibe that was crass even by Charlie’s standards.

  Charlie’s chair was leaning so far back that he was at serious risk of toppling over. His hands were locked behind the back of his head, and his eyes were closed. They had been working together for almost a year now, and it had been a difficult relationship from the start. Charlie was the son of a wealthy stockbroker and a Yale graduate. The way Martine saw it, he had gone into financial journalism because it was a little off the mainstream, but not so far that you couldn’t take holidays in Maui or have a live-in maid to take care of your kids. By the age of thirty-two he was a star reporter on Wall Street and author of a well-reviewed book on insider trading. Then he was given the Tokyo bureau, and suddenly he was like a fish out of water, unable to speak the language and without the contacts. Instead he took on the role of an old-style bureau chief, hanging out at cocktail parties, entertaining useless flacks from the ministries, and, worst of all, sticking his nose into Martine’s stories.

  “The usual stuff, huh?”

  “That’s right,” said Charlie, his smile gone.

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing important. I’ve just lost my job, that’s all.”

  His voice weakened to a croak, as if the words had got stuck somewhere below his tonsils.

  “Lost your job? What are you talking about?”

  “Two hours ago I got a call from the deputy editor. He said the paper needs a different approach here, something in tune with the group’s new strategic direction.”

  Martine reached across the table and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “Not as sorry as I am! For God’s sake—what am I going to tell my wife and kids?”

  “Tell them the truth. It can’t be helped, can it?”

  “It can’t be helped” was a phrase that usually drew a snort of amused contempt from Makoto, together with the comment that she had been in Japan [48] too long. Martine was rather surprised with herself for using it. But some things really couldn’t be helped, and this was surely one of them. The paper had changed out of all recognition since being acquired by InfoCorp last year. The rationale behind the deal had been made clear from the start—the “cross-platform synergies” that would come from slotting a famous newspaper into an information and entertainment empire that spanned the world. InfoCorp had drafted in new management, and within weeks the entire editorial team had gone. The next step would be to target areas of high cost and low productivity—such as Charlie, with his huge expat apartment, club memberships, and two kids in private school. That stuff about strategic direction was just a euphemism for squeezing costs.

  Charlie took a deep breath and blew out his cheeks. “So you finally got what you wanted, Martine. I’m out of your hair for good.”

  “That’s not what I wanted,” said Martine.

  “Come on—you’ve been working against me right from the start. I don’t blame you, of course. In your position I’d have done the same.”

  Martine frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  He smiled a bitter little smile that she hadn’t seen before. “You’ve been doing your damnedest to make me look bad. You monopolized the good stories, and kept me away from all the good sources. God knows what you’ve been saying to the editorial guys behind my back.”

  “I’ve said nothing.”

  “Oh yeah? What about that e-mail you sent trashing my story about the banking crisis?”

  “You’ve been monitoring my e-mails?” said Martine, astonished.

  “Damn right! I was wondering why my stories kept getting spiked. So I took a little peek in your computer and it was like a Zen moment of instant enlightenment.”

  “Listen, they just asked me for some numbers. I had no idea it had anything to do with your story until afterward.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. Whatever.”

  Martine gaped at him in amazement. The sympathy she had been feeling for him had evaporated completely. Why couldn’t he take it like a man? Didn’t he have any sense of dignity? And why couldn’t he get his numbers right in the first place? Angry thoughts crowded her mind, but she dismissed them. It really wasn’t worth the effort.

  “Charlie, I need to be somewhere else. Why don’t you go home and talk to your wife?”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  It was no good. He was determined not to be appeased. Martine gave a little shrug and turned for the door. On the TV they were showing a slow-motion [49] replay of the sumo grand champion rolling over the edge of the ring, arms and feet in the air, as helpless as a giant baby.

  Three-quarters of an hour later Martine was sitting in Makoto’s apartment, sipping a glass of plum wine and staring at the dummy exam paper on the table. Ichiro was sitting beside her, his sharp features tight with concentration. The sliding door eased open, and Makoto stuck his head into the room. He was on his way back from the bath, wet hair flopping over his forehead, his face flushed and shining from the scalding hot water.

  “Not finished yet?” he growled. “You’re heading for failure, I think—bottom marks!

  If you didn’t know him, it would have been frightening. Makoto rarely smiled when he was joking. There was just a hint of a crinkle at the edge of his eyes.

  “Be a bit more patient, Dad,” said Ichiro, without even looking up. “This stuff is crazy, even Martine says so.”

  It was hard to believe he was only fifteen. That lazy, calm way of speaking was the exact copy of his father’s. He had the same quizzical way of looking at you too, with head tilted and eyes twinkling. In a few years’ time he was going to be irresistible.

  Makoto turned to Martine. “Crazy? Didn’t you say history was your favorite subject?”

  “Second favorite,” corrected Martine. “My favorite was Latin. And anyway, this exam has got nothing to do with understanding history.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning it’s nothing more than a perverse quiz, totally pointless. You could answer ten thousand of these questions and still know nothing worth knowing.”

  Makoto shook his head in mock outrage. “Ah, you foreigners criticize the Japanese educational system, which has enabled our GNP to become so dramatically huge. What insolence!”

  “I’m serious,” said Martine. “Too much of this stuff could damage your mental health.”
r />   “And too little of this stuff could damage the boy’s future! Study isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be hard and horrible.”

  Even Martine couldn’t tell whether he was joking now. There was a slight crinkle around his eyes, but she knew that Makoto had a low opinion of “fun.” This was a man who had taught himself French in order to read Camus in the [50] original, who had never played pachinko in his life, and who spent a month meditating at a remote Zen temple once every five years.

  “But neither is it supposed to be a gigantic bore.”

  “Oh yes it is! A gigantic bore—that’s exactly what we need for programming dull-brained workers and arrogant bureaucrats. Without them, the country would be in an even worse state.”

  This time he did smile, leaning further into the room, one hand on the door frame. His light summer kimono was open almost to his waist, and his smooth chest was blood red in the glow of the lamp. Martine suddenly imagined his body pressing against hers, the heat of his skin, the hardness of his muscles. She shifted in her seat, trying to concentrate on the exam sheet.

  “What about this one?” said Ichiro, rapping the paper with a long slim finger. Martine took another sip of plum wine, aware that both of them were watching her closely. The question was bafflingly pointless, requiring the death of five European kings to be set in chronological order. A long series of teasing challenges to common sense—that’s what the education system was like in this country. But that’s what the system of writing was like with its thousands of characters, most of which had multiple meanings and multiple pronunciations. It was what the political system was like, the financial system, the legal system, the system of etiquette. It was what life was like. You could never master it, but rather had to keep negotiating, keep improvising. You needed to be able to read things upside down, back to front, and inside out. You needed to know how to play the game, and how not to play the game. That, Martine supposed, was what Makoto wanted for his son.