by Andrew Lane
It attacked. The giant centipede lunged through the hole in the sack, heading straight for Gecko’s face, pincers snapping in fury.
Something spun in from one side, hitting the centipede in the side of the head. It whirled around in mid-air, trying to locate the source of the sudden attack.
The thing that had hit the centipede fell away to the ground. It was a green string sack, just like the one Gecko had used.
Natalie’s sack.
Gecko looked sideways to see Natalie standing in a gap between flowering bushes. She was breathing heavily, and her skin was glistening with sweat, but her face was full of concern for Gecko.
‘Run!’ she cried.
The giant centipede fixed on Natalie. It bunched itself up, and then it launched itself like a missile at the girl.
Gecko did the only thing he could. He grabbed its rear end and pulled it backwards.
The giant centipede’s pincers snapped shut just inches from Natalie’s face. She recoiled, horrified. The creature turned round, twisting muscularly in Gecko’s grip, and tried to fasten itself on to him instead. He whirled it round like an Olympic hammer thrower, letting the centipede’s weight propel its body away from him. It felt heavy, like a duffel bag full of wet clothes. He let go of it when its body reached the top of its low arc and watched it fly across the bushes . . .
And fall among the people doing t’ai chi that Gecko had seen earlier.
There were screams and curses, and volleys of rapid Chinese from the other side of the bushes.
Gecko grabbed Natalie’s hand and pulled her along, following the path of the giant centipede. The elderly Chinese were running in all directions. For a moment Gecko couldn’t see the creature, but then he caught sight of a flash of scarlet heading through the bushes. He gave chase, with Natalie running behind him.
His palms were burning from touching the creature, and he could see Natalie brushing her hands against her trousers as she ran.
This wasn’t going the way that it had been supposed to . . .
Something large stood in the doorway of the operating theatre where Calum was strapped down. Something large and metallic, covered in wires and cables. It had a head, made up of cameras and lights and other sensors. It also had six legs, four of which were on the ground while the front two were held up like those of a praying mantis. It had obviously used those limbs to push the doors in.
It was ARLENE.
Calum had never in his life been so glad to see something that had once tried to kill him.
The robot advanced into the room. One of the orderlies rushed towards it. ARLENE lashed out with a single leg and he went flying across the room, crashing into the wall. The other orderly backed away, hands up to protect himself.
The sensor head turned to look at Calum, and the raised front leg seemed to wave. Or maybe it was just a random electrical misfiring, like the one that had caused Calum’s leg to be broken in the first place.
Or maybe . . .
‘Tara?’ he said.
ARLENE’s head nodded.
‘You’re OK?’
Another nod.
‘And you’re at my apartment, controlling ARLENE?’
If the robot had been fitted with speakers, Calum suspected he would have heard a very feminine ‘Duh!’, but all ARLENE did was nod again.
‘I bet you regret having ARLENE shipped over here with me,’ Calum said to Dr Kircher. He seemed to be transfixed by the robot’s menacing presence.
Dave Pournell stepped forward, hands raised. ‘Now look,’ he said, ‘we can talk this through like reasonable people, surely? There’s no need for violence.’
‘I’m getting out of here,’ Calum said forcefully, ‘and you are going to let me.’
‘Really?’ Pournell made a big play of considering Calum’s words. ‘I can’t really see how. I mean, yes, you’ve got a big scary robot which you managed to take control of and get out of the warehouse we were storing it in – and, believe me, I’ll be asking some pointed questions about who exactly let that happen. But what are you going to do now? Correct me if I’m wrong, but the robot can’t pick you up and carry you – it’s got six legs, but no arms. You might be able to pull yourself up on to its back, but then what? You’re going to ride it out of here like a cowboy? Again, I think not. Where would you go? No, all things considered, I think you’re bluffing. Good card, I’ll grant you, but it’s still a bluff.’
Calum’s mind raced. Pournell was right – he wasn’t in a position to ride away from Nemor Inc. on ARLENE the way that Natalie had done in Georgia. He was still stuck, except . . .
‘Tara,’ he said to ARLENE, ‘come over here and get ready to smash the scanner.’
‘No!’ Kircher screamed, jumping forward with outstretched arms. ‘It’s one of a kind. It took five years to develop and build. Do you know how much it cost?’
‘I don’t,’ Calum admitted, ‘but I know how much it will be worth in a few minutes if you don’t release me and arrange for me to be flown home right now!’ The last two words were shouted rather than said, but Calum forgave himself. It had been a stressful morning.
ARLENE stepped further into the room, its weight cracking the tiles on the floor as it walked. It came right up to the scanner and rested both front legs against it, very gently but very firmly. Dr Kircher whimpered.
‘Remember,’ Calum said, looking at Dave Pournell, ‘you can stop this any time you want. Just raise a hand.’
Pournell at least had the good grace to smile at the words being thrown back at him. He glanced at ARLENE thoughtfully. ‘You know, I suspect that the fuel cell on that thing will need recharging at some stage. We could all just wait here until it runs down, and see what happens then.’
‘Before ARLENE runs out of fuel, this scanner will be trashed,’ Calum responded, ‘along with any other expensive equipment we can find in this building. Just how much is the Almasti DNA worth to you, Dave? What kind of loss can your superiors afford before they fire you?’
‘It’s a Mexican stand-off, kid,’ Pournell said, but he was looking concerned now. ‘And given how close we are to the Mexico border, that’s very apt. Even if we agree to fly you home, you can’t get this robot on to the jet. The minute you’re away from the robot, you’ve lost your bargaining chips.’
‘Not if he gets on to my jet,’ a voice said from the smashed doorway. ‘He retains all his chips, and we get to take ARLENE home as well – disassembled and in nicely wrapped boxes.’
Calum looked over to the doorway. Gillian Livingstone was standing there, as immaculately dressed as ever. She smiled tightly at him, and nodded. ‘Calum, we need to have a long talk, I think, but not just yet. Let’s get you out of here first.’
‘Professor Livingstone, isn’t it? I’ve been told about you. I thought we were working to the same ends,’ Dave Pournell said, gazing in puzzlement at Calum’s legal guardian.
‘There are times when the ends do not justify the means,’ she replied. ‘If I had known just how far you were going to go, I never would have agreed to this.’
Agreed to what? Calum wondered. Yes, he and Gillian were going to have to have a long talk, but then they had a long flight ahead of them. He felt himself relax. He wasn’t exactly out of the woods yet, but he could see a clearing up ahead.
‘And while we’re waiting,’ he said, ‘could I get a Coke? I’m parched.’
Having lost track of the centipede underground, Rhino left the gleaming glass, metal and black-tile air-conditioned heaven of the Tsim Sha Tsui metro station, took the escalator up to the surface and emerged into the oppressive heat and humidity of Kowloon’s Nathan Road.
He was surrounded by square concrete buildings of various sizes, but it was the one directly ahead of him that was his target. Tungking Mansions. Seventeen storeys tall, consisting of five separate blocks all connected together, it was possibly the most famous – or infamous – location in Hong Kong since the bulldozing of the lawless Walled City collection of accommodation
towers. Somehow, over the course of the fifty-odd years since it had been built, it had developed, changed and mutated to the point where it was almost a city inside a city, a separate environment that had its own rules and laws, its own population and its own way of doing things.
The problem being that it was where Rhino’s giant centipede was located, according to the map display on his phone.
Rhino looked up at the complex in dismay. It was smaller and squatter than most of the buildings around it, studded with the blocks of ancient air-conditioning units. Mostly a dull, rain-swept grey in colour, it stuck out in a way the other buildings didn’t. Not only did it have character – so much character that you could sense it spilling from the thousands of balconies, running down the stained walls and dripping on the ground – but Rhino knew, from his research on the way over, and from his previous time in Hong Kong, that the place was home to some four thousand people. Many of those were locals, large Chinese families crowded into one-room apartments. Some were workers in the small shops, restaurants and guesthouses that were located in and among the apartments. The rest were international travellers taking advantage of the legendary cheapest accommodation in Hong Kong. Walking along a corridor deep inside in Tungking Mansions, far away from natural sunlight, one was liable to pass restaurants, guest houses, apartments, electronics shops, clothes shops and food shops, all mixed together and all within a hundred metres. And this was where his giant centipede was located.
He found himself hoping that Natalie and Gecko were having better luck with their creature.
The map was a two-dimensional display, he realized. It showed where on the ground the signal was coming from. The problem was that the building was not a two-dimensional object. Yes, the map would tell him where, looking downward from space, the signal was coming from, but it might actually be on any of the seventeen floors, or the roof. And while he was trying to discover which level it was on, people might be dying in there.
Shaking his head, he walked off Nathan Road, through an entranceway beneath a large cracked marble sign saying Tungking Mansions and into the building. The first two levels were large open spaces, like car parks, shadowy and dripping with condensation, lit only by streetlights. People moved slowly – old women pushing shopping trolleys, young kids in gangs shoving each other around, girls in slinky silk dresses who watched him from lowered eyes as he passed, old men with leathery, emaciated faces and wispy white beards walking with sticks. He moved past them, trying not to be noticed, but he was European and reasonably well dressed, and so he stood out like a badger at a vicarage tea party.
The place stank of a thick mixture of curry houses, urine, rotting pak choi leaves and animal waste. Rhino tried to breathe through his mouth as he moved, but quickly found that even if he couldn’t smell the place any more he could taste it. He found a stairwell, dripping with moisture, the origins of which he didn’t like to think about, and he climbed up, past the first floor, to the terrace from which the five main blocks actually started.
As he left the stairwell and tried to walk out on to the terrace – a flat expanse of concrete open to the sun, peppered with sunken areas of soil in which scrubby plants grew, and from which the five towers erupted like great concrete cliffs – a group of young men pushed past him and surrounded him. He felt hands expertly running across his pockets and trying to get inside his jacket. He had to stop this, and quickly. Grabbing one particularly invasive hand, he twisted it hard, ducking underneath and taking the arm behind its owner’s back so that the kid had to suddenly bend forward, cursing and grunting with the pain. There was silence and an abrupt cessation of the movement that had surrounded him. Seven sets of eyes were directly on him. He could sense hands moving to belts and pockets, ready to pull out knives.
‘No harm, no foul,’ he said quietly but with force. ‘I’m here on business, and I’m going to leave as quickly as possible, with everything I came in with.’
No sound, no movement – just the watchful eyes.
‘There are eight of you,’ he went on calmly, ‘and that’s probably enough to take me down, if you want to, but I promise you that I can kill two of you and cripple another two before you manage it. The question you have to ask yourselves is: is the chance that you get killed or crippled worth it, compared to the chance that you get to search me for the money I may or may not have?’
He looked around, meeting all the eyes of the youths who were watching him. He didn’t see any acceptance of his points, but he didn’t see any argument either. Blank, watchful faces all round. He just had to hope that he’d been promoted in their minds from victim to potential threat.
He released the man he was holding. The man staggered forward. He turned as if to lunge at Rhino, but one of his friends caught him and pulled him back. And then the group of eight was moving on into the stairwell, chatting and shoving as if nothing had happened.
That had been close. Too close. Despite the heat, Rhino felt a sudden chill run through him.
Checking his mobile again, he noticed that that the flashing symbol was moving. He zoomed in, trying to track it. The symbol was moving through Block D – on some unknown level – and it was travelling quickly between apartments – probably through ceiling or floor spaces or ventilation gaps.
Then it seemed to pass through the block wall and out into empty space, and Rhino suddenly knew, with a rush of euphoria, where it was. The only places that there was a continuous stretch of ground over which the centipede could travel were the first two levels – the common spaces beneath the blocks. It was somewhere near him, and downward!
He looked around reflexively. He had to check each of the two lowest levels and locate the thing before it moved up into one of the blocks. If it did that, his chances of catching it would plummet to almost zero.
He was at Block A, and he needed to get to Block D. The quickest route was to go through blocks B and C. He ran for the nearest entrance and raced down a corridor that was redolent with curry fumes and filled with backpackers. He ran past shops selling dresses, handbags and high-end electronics, most of them probably counterfeit. He came out the other side of the block, bursting from shade into light, and raced across the terrace to the next block. The corridor that ran across it was much the same as the previous one, and for a second he thought he was trapped in a recurring dream. Out the other side and into another wide corridor, identical to the previous two. He found a stairwell and rapidly clattered down the steps to Level 2.
A market had been set up in the open common level – rows and rows of stalls beneath tarpaulins selling, strangely, only one thing – jade. Every stall was covered with either jade jewellery in gold or silver settings, jade carved into small figures of people or dragons, or polished but unset and uncarved lumps of the green stone. The stalls were lit by fluorescent lights, and the thousands of pieces of semiprecious stone glittered like a galaxy of stars. Tourists who had been lured into the market by the promise of cheap jewellery bartered with the stall owners.
Rhino pushed his way through the crowd. He was about to check his map again, but a commotion at the far side of the market caught his attention. Someone was screaming. It might be just an attempted pickpocketing, like the one he’d narrowly avoided, but it might be something else. It might be the giant centipede. He quickly shoved people out of the way, heading like an arrow towards the source of the disturbance.
A fist caught him beneath the ribcage, and he folded up on the damp, dirty ground, agony blazing through his body.
On the other side of the bushes was a stretch of grass, which gave on to a set of wide white stone steps. Gecko noticed that every second step had a long wooden pole stuck in a hole in the stone. At the stop of each pole was a triangular yellow silk banner. Some of the banners had sinuous blue dragons embroidered on them, while others had red Chinese calligraphy in vertical columns.
The stone steps led up to the top of the hill, and to a typically Chinese gate: four square red pillars with inset Chinese calli
graphy, topped with a complicated double-beamed roof. Through the gate was a Chinese temple: many single-storey wooden rooms in a variety of sizes, apparently all open to the air and connected to each other, all under tiled roofs that curved upward at the end.
The scarlet pillars on the gate confused Gecko for a second, but then he saw the scarlet of the giant centipede’s exoskeleton rippling its way up the steps towards the temple, seeming to spend as much time weaving left and right as it did going straight ahead. Tourists on the steps screamed and jumped out of the way. Maybe the noise and the movement were confusing the centipede, because it didn’t attack anyone but just headed for the relative safety of the dark temple.
Gecko and Natalie ran up the steps, following the creature. Gecko’s breath burned in his chest; despite his years of free-running, the heat and humidity were getting to him. His legs felt like those noodles he’d glimpsed being stretched earlier.
The two of them burst into the temple. It was a spacious building: made of red and gold-painted wood and hung with long silk banners. Light came in from all sides, giving it an airy feel, but its ceiling was wreathed in smoke and covered in soot. Stone and metal statues of various Chinese figures, all life-sized or larger, were set into niches in its walls. Bowls containing smouldering bunches of incense, chrysanthemum flowers and fruit were set all over the floor space. Worshippers who had been sitting or kneeling in front of the statues, some throwing wooden sticks on the flagstones and some apparently burning money as an offering, looked around in confusion at the sudden noise. Priests in long yellow robes and flat black hats who had been chanting from scrolls or banging small drums dropped whatever they were holding and ran in from all sides to see what was desecrating their temple.
The giant centipede headed for one of the pillars that held up the ornate ceiling. Reaching it, the creature scrambled up the column, vanishing into the smoke that hung there.