Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 24

"Yes, sir."

DeVore sat back again, contemplating what that meant. The boy had been wired. But somehow - somewhere - he had managed to get rid of the wire in his head. Or mask it And now he was missing, presumed defected. "Fve two of my best morphs in the morgue. Someone put them there. Maybe it was the boy."

"Maybe..."

But he could see that the adjutant was not going to make guesses of any kind.r "Okay," he said, relenting, not wanting to take things out on the man. It was the Commandant he should be angry with, not this messenger. "You can leave me now, Mark. I'll not need you 'til the morning." "Sir!" The adjutant bowed exaggeratedly low, his relief palpable, then backed from the room.

Alone again, DeVore stood, then went to the window, looking out across the moonlit central courtyard of the San Chang and pondering what this meant. It was a blow, admittedly, for he'd had plans for the boy, but if he could find out where he'd gone, then maybe it could be turned around. The wire wasn't the only implant, after all; there was the boy's conditioning. And that he couldn't have removed.

Tomorrow, he told himself. Ill deal with it tomorrow. Right now he would go and visit Shepherd. It was about time he found out what that mad b.a.s.t.a.r.d was doing in his rooms.

The moon was bright, casting sharp black shadows on the rocks as she made her way down towards the base camp. There was still no news of Michael and as she looked out across the valley, Emily wondered where he was at that moment. He had said he was onto something special. He'd sent a message six days back telling her he was going to investigate. But since then nothing. She stopped, her hand pressing down tightly on the rough, cold surface of an upjutting rock as she looked south. Be alive, she thought, willing it fervently, her fear for him naked beneath the all-seeing moon. And if he was dead?

Then she would endure that, as she endured all else. A bitter smile crossed her lips. Ah yes, she thought. I am good at enduring. As good as any Han peasant.

The base camp was just below her now. As she came round an outcrop, it lay below her and to her right, tucked between folds of the descending slope. Knowing that DeVore had called off his patrols, they had lit a camp-fire. Within the golden-red pool of its flickering light she could see dark figures moving slowly, almost lethargically in the crisp night air.

If I could only touch you now and hold you, then I would be alright. But that was the risk of loving. Once it had been easy to be a rebel. Once it had cost her nothing to be the firebrand that would burn whole cities down. Back then, alone and unattached, she had been driven solely by vengeance. Now it was much harder. Now, every day was fraught with anxiety. She waited, keeping herself perfectly still and silent, like a piece of the rock of which the mountain was composed, and after a while Tybor came up to her, like a huge shadow looming up out of the darkness.

"Emily," the morph said, his voice soft and warm, the bulk of him blocking out her view of the camp below. "You should have said you were coming." "I didn't know," she said.

It was the truth. She hadn't planned to come down, but, restless for news of Michael, she had had to do something, and talk of the boy - the newcomer - had intrigued her. She had decided she would like to see him for herself. "The boy?" Tybor asked, his saucer eyes shining in the moonlight, not a hand's length from her face.

Emily nodded.

He smiled. "Then I'll keep dose by. Out of sight Just in case." Emily reached out, holding his arm briefly, glad he was there. Then, as he slipped away, heading back down into the darkness, she turned once more, looking to the south and wondering where Michael was.

Closing the door quietly behind him, DeVore crossed the room. Ben was sitting beside the harness, hunched forward slightly, adjusting something with what looked like a small knife.

As DeVore bent forward to look, Ben turned his head, looking up at him, a half-smile on his features. "I wondered when I'd see you.""Did you?" "I thought to myself: I wonder how long he can contain his curiosity."

"And?"

"And here you are, bang on time."

DeVore shrugged. "So what is it?"

Ben moved back a little, allowing him a clearer view. "Something new."

DeVore studied the machine a while. "It doesn't look new." "Ah, but then looks aren't everything, are they? If we were to judge by simple appearances, then we'd still be back in the Dark Ages, wouldn't we?" DeVore laughed. "I thought that you said that we were still in the Dark Ages."

"I did."

"Then the appearance of the thing ...

"Is a paradox." Ben threw the screwdriver down, then turned, facing DeVore fully. "You wanted me to make something that would seduce people from their senses, right? That would, in effect, prise them from their grasp on the real world right?"

"Right"

"But why should anyone risk losing their mind for the sake of an entertainment?"

DeVore grinned. "I don't know. You tell me."

'They would do so because, first and foremost, that experience was so wonderful, so ... desirable that they wanted to repeat it time after time - in fact, had an overwhelming urge to go back to it" "And secondly?"

"Secondly, because they hadn't a clue what was actually going on." "And what is actually going on?" Ben's smile was one of pleasure at his own ingenuity. "If s an imprint" "An imprint?"

"Yes. Each time the partic.i.p.ant goes back to the sh.e.l.l - to the experience - they receive not just the entertainment, but an imprint. False memories, if you like. Vague at first, but stronger as each layer of the imprint is added on." "So the programme is c.u.mulative, a ..." "... sticky web ... filled with insidious poisons." "Rather a mixed metaphor, wouldn't you say?" "Absolutely," Ben agreed, "but with good reason. If we showed them the spider in the web, who would enter it? What they don't know is that the poison is in the strands of the web. Simply experiencing this is enough." "And what kind of symptoms would someone who's hooked on this show?" Ben shrugged. "It depends what you're looking for. But generally you can make them believe anything you want them to believe - that they murdered their own mother, that they have a pathological hatred of someone they previously loved or revered, that... well, I'm sure you see the potential of the thing. Memory is a corrosive thing, particularly if if s been tampered with," "And the Americans won't suspect a thing?" Ben laughed. "They might But not until if s too late. Not until half their country's f.u.c.king mad!"

Emily sat there a long while, watching the boy. From where she was, in the shadows some thirty feet back from the fire, to the left of the boy and almost in line with him, she could see his face clearly, the features carved in blocks of gold and black. The boy's clean-shaven head had begun to grow a fine stubble, but it was a good head and she observed how he held it up proudly, his eyes - bright, intelligent eyes - taking in everything. Even so, he had not noticed her creeping up on him. She waited while the others about the fire drifted off, then spoke to him, her voice pitched so that it carried no further than where he sat "Boy?"

There was no movement. No sudden turn of the head. For an instant she thought he hadn't heard her, but then he answered, his voice pitched no louder than her own."Yes?"

"Who are you, boy? Who are you really?"

He leaned forward and took a branch from the fire, lifting it and studying the glowing cinders at the end of it Then he turned, looking in her direction. "Just a boy," he answered, moving the branch closer to his face and blowing on the tip, making it glow brighter.

"You served The Man, I hear."

"I was in his camps."

"One of his soldiers," she persisted.

He hesitated, then nodded.

"So why did you leave?"

Was that a smile? With his head tilted down it was hard to tell.

"I woke up. I saw, finally, what was going on."

"Ahhh." Did she believe that? "And what woke you?" "You did," he said, looking directly at her. "I saw how you helped those wounded boys. Two weeks back. I saw ..."

"You saw that?" Emily was surprised. "You mean ..."

"I could have killed you. I had you in my sights."

"But you didn't"

He nodded.

Emily was silent a moment, thinking about that Dead. She could have been dead two weeks ago. And then Michael would have been grieving her. And the boys. "What's your name, boy?"

"Daniel."

"And what do you want, Daniel?"

Again he looked at her. "I want to know the truth. I want to know whaf s really going on."

CHAPTER-10.

the well and the spire.

"We're here."

"Here?" Li Yuan yawned, then sat up, noting through the blindfold that it was still dark Hands reached up to him and took him down from the back of the cart. Then one of them removed the blindfold and stood back. As the cart trundled away, Li Yuan looked about him, trying to make out where he was. They seemed to be inside a ma.s.sive chamber, for the rocks surrounded them on every side without a break, rising to form the walls of a giant cavern, yet the roof of that cavern was the sky - a sky of velvet black, littered with jewel-like stars, most prominent of which was not a star at all, but the morning star, the planet Venus.

"fehtar," someone said quietly from just behind him. Then, "Welcome to Nineveh, Li Yuan. May you find happiness."

The words surprised him and he turned, looking to the man, but the figure was in shadow, his face obscured.

Li Yuan turned back, looking, taking it all in. Buildings huddled against the walls of the settlement, low buildings for the main part, except for one or two that were on the far side of the cavern, including a great, seven-storey zigurrat Like Bremen, he thought, surprised to see such a structure there in the midst of the desertOn a plinth before that building was a great statue. Of what, he could not make out at this distance. And in the centre of all, like a radio tower, was a ma.s.sive spire, the tip of which was surrounded by a tiny platform. There was a gap of some kind, which bisected the cavern, for he could see bridges crossing it, and just beyond that - close to the spire - there was a depression, but from this distance he could not make that out either. As he looked, figures came across one of the bridges, a dozen or more in all, heading towards him.

"Go to them," his guide said. "They will prepare you for the ceremony." He wanted to ask what kind of ceremony, but the man had gone, slipping away silently into the shadows, leaving him there as the welcoming party approached. Li Yuan hesitated, then did as he was bid. Yet as he came close to them, he felt a tiny jolt of surprise. They were all women - young, beautiful women - wearing long, diaphanous gowns that both suggested and yet concealed their bodies. Surrounding him, they laughed and held his arms, brushing his back and shoulders gently, the sweet scent of them stirring something in him. "You must not be afraid," one of them said, whispering in his ear. "We will not harm you, Li Yuan."

The words were similar to those the woman had used earlier, when she had brought him the food, and he felt now the same surprise, the same strange flaring of hope. He had thought himself at best a hostage, at worst a dead man. To be suddenly in the company of such sweet and gentle creatures was both strange and unexpected.

His spirits rose, yet his darker self suspected some deception. He looked from side to side, seeing how they smiled at him, their eyes bright with laughter. And all the while their hands gently stroked him, comforting him, rea.s.suring him with their touch.

As they came to the bridge, he looked up at the spire, which towered above him now. A narrow ladder climbed the steepside of it, while beneath it, not twenty metres from its foot, was a ma.s.sive hole. A well. "What is this?" he asked, slowing, taking in the strange grandeur of the sight "Later," one of them said, squeezing his hand. "You must not rush things, Li Yuan. First you must be relaxed."

Relaxed? Li Yuan frowned, unable to take his eyes from the spire and the great well that sat beside it Somehow the juxtaposition of the two seemed significant, yet why or how he could not say.

He let them lead him on, the sweetness of their perfume filling his nostrils, the softness of their touch a strange, almost intoxicating delight, yet he felt a marked unease now, a tightness in his stomach that had not been there a moment earlier.

And all the while, above him, the evening star burned like a blind eye staring sightlessly from the centre of the darkness.

Old Man Egan closed the door, then turned, looking in at the bright-lit cell.

"Is this him?"

His men stood back, bowing low. "Yes, Master," one of them answered. All three of them wore masks and butchers' ap.r.o.ns over their nakedness, and, incongruously, boots so that they would not slip on the bloodied floor. Between them, hanging upside down from the ceiling of the cell, was their victim, a young man of barely twenty years of age. He had been burned and cut, but thus far they had not badly mutilated him. Nor, it seemed, had they started on his private parts.

Egan walked across and, crouching down, put out a hand, gripping the young man's chin hard and twisting it, forcing him to look into his eyes. "Well, you little c.u.n.t, what have you to say for yourself?" The young man tried to spit, but hanging upside down, he could not raise the phlegm. Blood dribbled slowly from the corner of his mouth and along his nose.Egan grinned, then spat fully in the man's face. "Is that what you mean?" There was laughter from the watching men.

Egan released his grip, let the man's head fall, then, straightening up, put a hand over the man's exposed b.a.l.l.s, letting his fingers rest there. Fear contracted them.

Egan grinned, seeing that He turned, putting a hand out "Give me the pliers." His man smiled as he handed across the heated pliers. An unpleasant, conspiratorial smile Egan winked at him, then turned, crouching again, to show the pliers to the prisoner -holding them in front of his face. "These are for your b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," he said. "Nothing personal, of course, but I'm going to pull them off, one by one, for what you tried to do to me. And then I'm going to put my hand up your a.r.s.e and pull out your innards, bit by bit. And what won't pull out, I'll cut out. But I'm going to make sure you're alive for all this. We've got drugs that can do that, you know. Chemicals that will keep your body functioning, even as it's being torn apart. So is there anything you'd like to say before I start? Any names you'd like to mention?" The man had blanched. But now, with a tiny shudder, he found his voice. "You c-can go to h.e.l.l."

"Oh, come now," Egan said, touching the pliers to the end of his nose so that the skin there blistered, "you can do better than that. h.e.l.l? I've been to h.e.l.l. I spent thirty years in h.e.l.l. But now I'm back, Fm going to give my enemies a taste of what it was like. You understand?" ttr ii Egan stood slowly, then, delicately lifting one of the man's b.a.l.l.s, he applied the pliers to it, crushing it even as he began to stretch it The young man's screams were awful. But Egan was grinning now. He eased off with the pliers then stood back, admiring his work.

The man's screams were regular now. "A-oh, a-oh, a-oh..." "So you're a singer are you?" Egan looked about him once again and winked. His men were looking at him now with new respect Most bosses didn't like to get their hands dirty in this way. But he wasn't like most bosses. Under their ap.r.o.ns, they all sported fierce erections. Egan looked down. He too was hard.

f.u.c.king hard, he thought, then turned back, raising the pliers once again.

"One down, one to ..."

The explosion knocked him from his feet When he got up it was to find his chest and upper arms spattered with blood... and other things. He looked across and gaped.

"s.h.i.t!"

The prisoner's head had gone. Blown off like a ripe melon. Blood now gouted from his neck and his arms hung limp.

One of his own men was down, clutching his stomach. Clearly he had taken the full force of the blast.

"Master?"

Egan put a hand up, stopping the other two from touching him, from helping him to his feet "If s okay," he said, Tm not hurt" He pulled himself to his feet, brushing the bits of brain and bloodied tissue from his ap.r.o.n, then shook his head and pointed to the injured man. "See to him. Make sure he gets to a surgeon quickly. Then come back and clear this up."

They did as they were told, leaving him alone in the cell with the headless body. Egan stared at it a while, then, in a fit of anger, he stepped closer and kicked it hard in the chest The body swung back and forth, blood dribbling still from the neck, pooling on the tiles below.

"Egan, thaf s the f.u.c.king name you were supposed to say! Mark-f.u.c.king-Egan!"

Then, turning away, he left it d.a.m.n the boy! d.a.m.n him for ever existing.

They stripped Li Yuan and bathed him, then rubbed him down with aromatic oils, their touch so pleasurable that he felt hewould burst unless he had one of them. But that, so they said, was not allowed.

Finally, when they were done with him, the eldest of them -the one who called herself Ishtar - came and knelt before him, offering him a bowl. It seemed at first a perfectly ordinary ceramic bowl, dark blue in colour and round, like a cut section of a fruit, but as he handled it he felt a strange tingling go through his hands and arms and, looking inside, he felt a sense of vertigo, for it seemed as if he looked right through the bowl into the depths of the universe itself.

The inner surface of the bowl was studded with what looked like a ring of tiny metallic pegs, between which a silk-fine web of force seemed to dance, giving off the faintest glow. Beneath it, almost touching it, and yet it seemed a thousand ti away, a second, equally insubstantial layer could be glimpsed, shimmering wetly in the half light He sniffed at it, then looked up at Ishtar. "But this is ..." She laughed. "Water, yes." Her dark eyes smiled at him. Still she offered the bowl. "You must drink, Li Yuan. It is important. Only then will you be ready." "But..."

"No buts. The time for hesitation is past A new life beckons you, Li Yuan. But you must first cross over. This will help you." "Help me?"

"Yes. It will help you lose your old self. And afterwards..." He stared at it a moment longer, uncertain. There was no scent to it at all, but could he be sure? What if it was a poison?

Ishtar waited, as patient as the rocks, holding out the flickering bowl. Again she smiled. "If we had wanted to kill you, Li Yuan, we would have killed you days ago. This uriH help. But only if you surrender to it" It was true. And to be honest, he had nothing to lose, only his old self, and what good was that? Tuan Ti Fo was right His old self had been responsible for the death of millions, yes, and had lost an empire in the process! He took the bowl and, holding it to his lips, drained it at a go, then handed it back At once he felt the change. It was as if, suddenly, every part of him was doubled. And yet there was no physical change, no sense that he was drugged. The liquid had had no taste, no warmth to it, and yet he felt completely different, two bodies in the s.p.a.ce of one, each coexistent with the other, their atoms shared.

"Good," Ishtar said, setting the bowl aside. "Now come. The ceremony can begin." She stood, facing him, then, to his surprise, slipped off her gown, so that she stood there, naked before him.

Li Yuan stared, awe-struck. She was magnificent. Perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, Han or Hung Mao.

"Throw off your gown, Li Yuan," she said as he stood. "For we must come to the pit naked as we were born."

He did as she asked, letting his cloak fall from him. She reached out, taking his left hand in her right, the simple touch of her making him shudder violently.