Jade Dragon

by James Swallow

  CLICK…

  I don’t care what you think, Susan.

  But Bill, it’s just unnatural.

  Love is the most natural thing of all, damn you! And Flippy and I are going away to the sea together and you can’t stop us! I love her!

  *sob* Oh Bill, how could you–

  CLICK…

  Hey kids, it’s Pepe The Robomule!

  CLICK…

  I promise not to kill you—

  CLICK…

  In a statement released earlier today, British Prime Minister Peter Mandelson said that he was “fully confident of the support of the nation” and that he felt that challenges to his recent policy statements by the Liberal-MetaMarxist-Democrat leader Edward Izzard were nothing more than blatant electioneering. Izzard was unavailable for comment, but his second-in-command William Bailey said—

  CLICK…

  Stay tuned to The Arthaus Channel for our retrospective on the works of stud actor Billy Priapus, following a hypertext-enhanced screening of his masterpiece Shaven Ravers IV—

  CLICK…

  And coming in at number ten on the Billboard Chart, the new single from Bombs Not Burkas, “Jihad My Ride”—

  CLICK…

  Now, the fourth season finale of Firefly, only on Wave-Net, followed by back-to-back episodes of Sundowners. Next: on a very special CSI: Baghdad—

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  Sea of stones, sand waves. Harmony, come with me. Taste the blue—

  CLICK…

  This gorgeous photodiamante necklace and nose-piercing set, only twenty left now and numbers are dropping fast. If you look here you can see a lovely crystal colouration. Call now, the number is on the bottom of your screen, we accept all major creditchips, indenture warrants and PRC-certified viable transplant organs—

  CLICK.

  9. Days of Being Wild

  There were entire microcommunities living within the confines of Ocean Terminal. People crammed into the spun ferrocrete dorm blocks retrofitted to the upper decks, if they were rich enough, and beneath the waterline if they were the poorer folks. Parts of the terminal were turned over to maintaining the armoured corporate liners that rolled in from the South China Sea bristling with anti-pirate hardware, or the exclusive submersible party boats that sailed about the Golden Triangle on endless loops of debauchery. A liner was there today—the NeoGen Delphi, out of Osaka. Her decks were crammed with salarymen and their one-partner, one-child families, forbidden from disembarking but free to observe the city from their sealed viewing bubbles. While the NeoGen wageslaves looked down, the people who lived and worked in Ocean Terminal looked up. Almost everyone in the terminal was an employee of the Chinese State Corporation, never without the subtle red bracelet on their wrists bearing the happy face of the CSC’s Panda spokestoon Di-Di. The smiling bear beamed down from the walls of the dorms, above the school clutches and the clinics, inside the toilets and shared washrooms. The Panda provided; the terminal complex was a city-within-a-city, wrapped around the edge of Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon side, extending out into the bay like a giant growth of smooth white fungus. The Panda didn’t encourage people to quit life inside the terminal, once they’d been born into it—after all, why venture outside when the place you lived in had it all? It wasn’t uncommon for people to be born, to live and work and then perish without ever having crossed outside the boundaries of the massive mallplex. Ocean Terminal had grown so large that it had its own microclimate, its own emerging subculture. People living outside the ’plex in Kowloon called the residents “termites” and made fun of them on the late night comedy vids; the Panda’s people in turn watched the rest of Hong Kong go in and out of the thousands of stores and entertainment centres, and laughed amongst themselves as they took their money.

  There were a lot of stories about Ocean Terminal; that it would one day break off and become an island, or expand to smother the whole southerly tip of the New Territories; some said there were gangcults on the lower levels who traded in human cargo, and indeed the APRC would make vague but unspecific comments when the question of abductions came up; others said that the Panda salted the drinking water in there with chemicals that made you need less sleep, so you could work more. But the story that kept circulating on the screamsheets, the one that had recently risen to the surface and failed to fade away, was about Juno Qwan.

  She kept her private life private, and in interviews Juno would often give a coy smile and ask people to respect her wishes. That did nothing to deter the armies of stringers and newsnets eager to fill vid-time and fax pages with every iota of data they could unearth about the pop star. The rumour was that Juno was a former Panda Girl, a termite chick spotted by a talento hunter from RedWhiteBlue during a shopping expedition. The young Qwan, bussing tables at a Burger König and singing in that crystal clear voice, had been plucked from obscurity and thrust into the global spotlight.

  It made for great copy and it played big with the natives in Hong Kong, that whole “local girl does good” angle. The odd thing was, there were forty-three Burger König franchises within the mallplex, but none of the managers had ever admitted to having the pre-famous Juno on their waitstaff. Reporters who tried to track down the fast food joint she worked at got dissimilar answers, conflicting shots of different yellow and blue storefronts for their webcasts; and if you scratched the surface, dug a little deeper, it was hard to find anything about the girl before her explosive debut at the top of the charts. But then the termites were terrible that way, weren’t they? Not very talkative to outsiders, a bit slow. They trusted in the Panda, and like everyone else who cheered Juno’s limobus as it slid to a halt on Canton Road, they had short memories. They didn’t remember the other performers that had topped the charts two, three, four years ago. Lisle Yep; TriniTriniTrini; Cressida; the Lovely Angels. Musichips bearing the names of these idols didn’t even appear in the bargain bins anymore; they’d been crushed and used for landfill.

  Juno stepped out into a chattering swarm of camera drones and photographers, beaming her smile and casting out handfuls of kisses to the crowds. Heywood Ropé hovered at her side, the careful look on his face never changing, the distance from Juno’s shoulder never lengthening. Every gallery and balcony was packed, and below piezoplastic barriers corralled the fans that had been there since the night before, hands clasping the rails, on tiptoe, desperate for any breath of her. A CSC agent from the terminal manager’s office presented her with a bunch of flowers and a plush toy version of Di-Di. Juno gave it a coquettish hug and twirled it around in her arms. Her audience ate it up.

  No one thought of the others who had gone before her, who had played the same kinds of songs and offered the same kind of hopeful distraction to the same kind of people. They loved Juno today, and in that moment it seemed like they would love her forever.

  Fixx had a sour taste in his mouth, and his lip twisted. It wasn’t the mud-coloured slurry that Burger König called coffee. There was a taint on the air like rancid meat. He pushed the half-finished drink away from him across the cracked plastic table, suppressing a shiver even though the interior of Ocean Terminal was always a summery thirty-five degrees. For a moment, the ghost of the sensation he’d felt at the Hyperdome was about him, there and then gone. He glanced around at the laughing, clapping people. Their faces were the same as the fans in Newer Orleans, they shared the distant look in their eyes, desperate to capture some tiny fragment of Juno Qwan.

  On this level, the view of the singer was decent. She was talking into a handheld microphone and waving. The crowds called to her, and even the cocky cluster of go-gangers drifting near the open patio couldn’t help but crack smiles. Fixx shifted to get a better angle and adjusted the gain on his espex. He took a breath, one hand dipping into his pocket to finger the bones, collapsing his view of the world down to the space between him and her. Fixx let Juno’s aura find its way to him, gentle and slow. He forced away the ill scents in the air, concentrating on the woman.

  He’d had one of t
he waking dreams again. It came as he took the tunnel beneath the bay, the car dipping into the red-lit corridor, torrents of colour streaming over him. In there he’d seen webs come from nowhere, the reaching arms of things distant and older than space. They were gossamer, vanishing when he put his full attention to them; in among the ghosts he heard a woman screaming, tasted the bitter scent of things dark and alien.

  “Juno,” he rumbled. It kept coming back to her.

  She was singing, dancing through a rendition of “Capsule Lover” while overhead screens displayed directionless, watery vistas all blue and inviting. The waves became words: We Are Free, Break The Dark, Unstoppable. Fixx saw the aurora of Juno’s spirit, the faintest Kirlian glow about the woman. It was different.

  He worried the bones a little more. Wrong. That is wrong. Fixx looked her in the eye at the Hyperdome, in that second of connection he had known Juno Qwan. That was the gift the loas gave him, the Sight. He could see a man and find the colour of his soul, turn it one way to mark a quarry or another to know a man’s intention. It had never failed him.

  But the woman, the starlet down there wore a different aura from the morose girl he had faced in the stadium. Fixx frowned. It wasn’t like she was an impostor or someone disguised—no, he would have seen through that. Even a twin would have been visible to him. The colours of her were the same, but just wrong. Altered. Different. The experience was so new to him he couldn’t frame it in his mind. He knew with sudden conviction that he had never laid eyes on the girl on stage before.

  “Who are you?” The words slipped from his mouth. Fixx shifted, for one instant his attention elsewhere, and bumped into one of the go-gangers, a skinny kid with a wired look and a wifebeater top.

  The punk made a face and cocked his head. “Watch it, gwailo.”

  There were three others, two who were obviously brothers. They exchanged loaded looks and the bigger one sneered. “Never saw a ‘white ghost’ as dark as him.”

  “Break the dark,” mumbled the shorter one, tracing his fingers down to a bulge in his jacket pocket.

  Fixx was back in the moment now. There was ample room on the terrace of the burger bar for trouble to unfold, if things went that way. He watched the first punk carefully; he would be the one to start it.

  “You like Juno, huh?” said the skinny kid. “You like looking at our girl?” He stepped closer, looking Fixx up and down.

  The sanctioned operative stayed very still. In the past, he’d seen what happened when a man made the mistake of underestimating packrats like these. In Mexico City, Fixx saw a rival gutted by a horde of Little Zulus, a fellow twice his weight taken apart by children under the age of ten. What kids lacked in experience they tended to make up for with speed and enthusiasm.

  The last of the four finally spoke. “You know what I think? I reckon this guy doesn’t like Juno at all.”

  Fixx, with slow and careful movements, stood up and smoothed the front of his coat. There was a flicker of concern on the face of the younger brother as he came up to his full height, but the other three were stone-faced. This was not going to end well. Nonetheless, Fixx felt compelled to try. “I’m a big fan,” he said. “She’s a dream come true.”

  Big Brother made a flicky gesture that failed to get a reaction from him. “Gau’s right. This hwoon dahn, I bet he’s A4.” He approached. “Am I right, hwoon dahn? You here to mess with the gig like you did over there?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the ocean.

  Fixx showed teeth. “I know what those words mean.”

  “Yeah?” snarled the skinny one, getting into the swing of things, pointing his finger. “Do you know what these ones mean too? Fuck off ni—”

  He moved. The troublemaker was suddenly on his knees and smothering a scream, his index finger pointing the wrong way where Fixx had snapped it like a twig. “Now, boys,” he said. “Let’s not say anythin’ we might regret. ”

  The brothers came at him, the one called Gau blinking in surprise. From out of nowhere they materialised wicked balisong knives and cut high and low. For go-gangers, they were quick.

  Fixx had the SunKings on him, but it was a safe bet that Ocean Terminal’s security would go wild at the sound of a gunshot. The mere fact that these boys had been able to freely enter with edged weapons told the op that the Panda probably turned a blind eye to the odd stabbing, as long as the shoppers weren’t deterred. Similarly, the flexsword would be too showy, would draw too much attention. He decided to remain barehanded. It would be good practice.

  The big brother’s knife was one of those ostentatious toys with the faux-tribal laser etching on it, a blade with candy-colour anodization. Fixx caught his wrist and held it there for a moment while he used a sharp side kick to hobble the younger brother. Gau was pulling a spike-chain from his belt as Fixx turned the big brother’s hands the wrong way. He lost the knife and the op heard it clatter away across the table.

  Skinny was getting to his feet, his face all puffy and crimson. Below them, Juno had gone into a powerful rendition of “Shade Me”, the crowd clapping along with the beat. “Unstoppable!” said the kid. “Break… Break the dark!”

  Fixx drew the big brother in and crossed over his free hand; his elbow collided with the punk’s face and broke his nose with a solid crack. A fan of blood issued out of his nostrils and dribbled down his chin. Fixx reversed his grip and hit him again, this time with the back of his hand. He pulled the blow—but only a little—and sent the big brother down.

  Gau threw the spike-chain at him, a glittering arc of mercury cutting air. It made a low whoop as it crossed the space before him. Fixx dropped and spun, ducking under the reach of the weapon, and stepped closer. Gau reversed the move, whipping the chain around his neck and swapping ends. Clever.

  The skinny kid was using his off-hand to finger a lanyard around his neck; he wasn’t a threat for the moment. The younger brother was turning, trying to keep on Fixx’s periphery while Gau used the chain to lash him. He was limping where he’d been kicked and it made him slow. Fixx saw him telegraph a move, the lunge coming in his shoulders before he did it. The op swept his hand across the table, catching the cup of disgusting coffee. He tossed it and a steaming streak of fluid spattered on the punk’s face and chest.

  The chain thrummed at his head and Fixx shifted. All at once he felt his amusement with this little diversion fade. He snatched the end of Gau s weapon out of the air, ignoring the bite of pain from the cobra-tooth head, and yanked it. Gau didn’t let go quickly enough and was reeled off his feet. Fixx met him with a hammer blow punch that broke ribs and set him on the deck, choking.

  Wiping searing hot coffee from his face, the remaining brother was distracted from the dark shape that came at him, coat flaring open in black raptor wings. Fixx used a throat grab to choke a lungful from the kid and then dropped him into a vacant chair. He took the boy’s knife—another gaudy weapon that looked like it came out of an arcade gatchapon game—and snapped it in two.

  Skinny had recovered a little and stood blinking owlishly, waving a spade-shaped push dagger. “Ghost you,” he spat, pain making his voice rise. “I’m unstoppable…”

  From the corner of his eye, Fixx caught sight of one of the glowing billboards, the trains of gossamer words fading in and out. He paused, turning his Sight on the punk; not the full strength of it, mind, just a little inch’s worth. The go-ganger was heavy with pollution, an oily blue swirling down deep in the wells of his irises. He’d seen the same on people in Newer Orleans, and sometimes, in the daydreams. He could sense it there running through his veins, the indigo taint of Z3N. The boy wilted under the hard-eyed gaze, the dagger drooping.

  Fixx mulled over the idea of putting him down; but then in the distance he spotted the floating blobs of CSC security mobiles coming up for a look-see. He left the punk behind and melted into the crowds.

  On the giant datascreens Juno came to the end of her set and the adulation from her audience echoed around the mallplex atrium like captured th
under.

  Mr Tze had a private elevator set into the corner of the Yuk Lung Tower that faced the city proper and the span of the bay. Through thick armoured glass he could view Hong Kong as he ascended or descended the gleaming flanks of the corporate skyscraper. He liked to take a place just an inch from the bowed window; there, it seemed as if he were some powerful ghost-lord coming down from heaven, the city rising up to meet him in supplication. Such a conceit amused him, it brought the semblance of a smile to the hard lines of his warrior face.

  Tze allowed no one to speak during the elevator journeys. He made it a point of law that there be silence for the short duration, keeping the moment as an oasis of tranquillity wherein he could marshal his thoughts. The Masks, as inventive as ever, would communicate with one another via sign language if the matter required it. Behind him now, Deer Child and Blue Snake, one of the female guardians, discussed the CEO’s security protocols with efficient twists of finger and arm motions. There were many things that clamoured for his attention, matters pressing as diverse as the effects of an arctic earthquake on YLHI’s seabed oilrigs to the issue of a local triad leader who was not showing the proper level of deference. But he found it hard to dwell on such trivia, not when the Great Pattern was coming together.

  If he concentrated hard enough on it, Tze could find a small knot of boyish anticipation hiding the depths of his soul, past his careful, most serious persona. After so long spent in service to the core goal of the Cabal, at last he would see it come to its fruition. The idea was as breathtaking now as it had been when he first understood the scope of it, when the members had taken that first meeting in the ruins of a small town in the Gobi Desert. In that place, as they walked about inside hazmat suits turning over glassy fulgurites fused from sand, finding the bodies of couples merged into dead amalgams of flesh, Tze had been touched by truth. The knowing had set him free.