An Inch of Ashes (CHUNG KUO SERIES)

by David Wingrove

  At the next intersection he drew in against the left-hand wall, peering round the corner into the corridor to his left. It was as Liu Chang had said. There, a little way along, a dragon had been painted on the wall in green. But it was not just any dragon: this dragon had a man’s face; the thin, sallow face of a Hung Mao, the eyes intensely blue, the mouth thin-lipped and almost sneering.

  If Liu Chang was right, Herrick would be there now, working. Like many below the Net, he was a night bird, keeping hours that the great City overhead thought unsociable. Here there were no curfews, no periods of darkness. Here it was always twilight, the corridors lit or unlit according to whether or not the local gang bosses had made deals with those Above who controlled the basic facilities like lighting, sanitation and water.

  Such thoughts made him feel uneasy, working for the Seven, for it was they, his masters, who permitted the existence of this place. They who, through the accident of his birth here, had made him what he was – kwai, a hired knife, a killer. They had the wealth, the power, to change this place and make it habitable for those who wished it so, and yet they did nothing. Why? He took a deep breath, knowing the answer. Because without this at the bottom, nothing else worked. There had to be this place – this lawless pit – beneath it all. To keep those above in check. To curb their excesses. Or so they argued.

  He set the thoughts aside. This now was not for the Seven. This was for Axel. And for himself. Karr’s hunch had been right. If Ebert had been paying for Axel’s debauchery, the chances were that he was behind the death of the girl. There were ways, Karr had said, of making a man think he’d done something he hadn’t: ways of implanting false memories in the mind.

  And there were places where one could buy such technology. Places like Herrick’s.

  Chen smiled. He was almost certain now that Karr was right. Liu Chang had said as much, but he had to be sure. Had to have evidence to convince Axel that he was innocent of the girl’s murder.

  Quickly, silently, he moved round the corner and down the corridor, stopping outside the door beside the dragon. At once a camera above the door turned, focusing on him.

  There was a faint buzzing, then a voice – tinny and distorted – came from a speaker beside the camera.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Chen looked up at the camera and made the hand sign Liu Chang had taught him. This, he knew, was the crucial moment. If Liu Chang had lied to him, or had given him a signal that would tip Herrick off...

  There was a pause, then, ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘The pimp,’ he said. ‘Liu Chang.’

  Most of Herrick’s business was with the Above. Illicit stuff. There were a thousand uses for Herrick’s implants, but most would be used as they had on Haavikko – to leave a man vulnerable by making him believe he had done something he hadn’t. In these days of response-testing and truth drugs it was the perfect way of setting a man up. The perfect tool for blackmail. Chen looked down, masking his inner anger, wondering how many innocent men had died or lost all they had because of Herrick’s wizardry.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tong Chou,’ he said, using the pseudonym he had used in the Plantation that time; knowing that if they checked the records they would find an entry there under that name and a face to match his face. Apparently they did, for there was a long pause before the door hissed open.

  A small man – a Han – stood there in the hallway beyond the door. ‘Come in, Shih Tong. I’m sorry, but we have to be very careful who we deal with here. I am Ling Hen, Shih Herrick’s assistant.’ He smiled and gave a tiny bow. ‘Forgive me, but I must ask you to leave any weapons here, in the outer office.’

  ‘Of course,’ Chen said, taking the big handgun from inside his jacket and handing it across. ‘You want to search me?’

  Ling Hen hesitated a moment, then shook his head. ‘That will not be necessary. However, there is one other thing.’

  Chen understood. Again, Karr had prepared him for this. He took out the three ten thousand yuan ‘chips’ and offered them to the man.

  Ling smiled, but shook his head. ‘No, Shih Tong. You hold on to those for the moment. I just wanted to be sure you understood our house rules. Liu Chang’s briefed you fully, I see. We don’t deal in credit. Payment’s up front, but then delivery’s fast. We guarantee a tailored implant – to your specifications – within three days.’

  ‘Three days?’ Chen said. ‘I’d hoped...’

  Ling lowered his head slightly. ‘Well... Come. Let’s talk of such matters within. I’m sure we can come to some kind of accommodation, neh, Shih Tong?’

  Chen returned the man’s bow, then followed him down the hallway to another door. A guard moved back, letting them pass, the door hissing open at their approach.

  It was all very sophisticated. Herrick had taken great pains to make sure he was protected. But that was to be expected down here. It was a cut-throat world. He would have had to make deals with numerous petty bosses to get where he was today, and still there was no guarantee against the greed of the Triads. It paid to be paranoid below the Net.

  They stepped through, into the cool semi-darkness of the inner sanctum. Here the only sound was the faint hum of the air-filters overhead. After the stench of the corridors, the clean, cool air was welcome. Chen took a deep breath, then looked about him at the banks of monitors that filled every wall of the huge, hexagonal room, impressed despite himself. The screens glowed with soft colours, displaying a thousand different images. He stared at those closest to him, trying to make some sense of the complex chains of symbols, then shrugged; it was an alien language, all this, yet he had a sense that these shapes – the spirals and branching trees, the clusters and irregular pyramids – had something to do with the complex chemistry of the human body.

  He looked across at the central desk. A tall, angular-looking man was hunched over one of the control panels, perfectly still, attentive, a bulky wraparound making his head seem grotesquely huge.

  Ling turned to him, his voice hushed. ‘Wait but a moment, Shih Tong. My master is just finishing something. Please, take a chair, he’ll be with you in a while.’

  Chen smiled, but made no move to sit, watching as Ling Hen went across to the figure at the control desk. If Karr was right, Herrick would have kept copies of all his jobs – as a precaution. But where? And where was the guardroom? Or had Herrick himself let them in?

  He looked down momentarily, considering things. There were too many variables for his liking, but he had committed himself now. He would have to be audacious.

  He looked up again and saw that Herrick had removed the wraparound and was staring across at him. In the light of the screens his face seemed gaunter, far more skeletal than in the dragon portrait on the wall outside.

  ‘Shih Tong...’ Herrick said, coming across, his voice strong and rich, surprising Chen. He had expected something thin and high and spiderish. Likewise his handshake. Chen looked down at the hand that had grasped his own so firmly. It was a long, clever hand, like a larger version of his dead companion, Jyan’s. He looked up and met Herrick’s eyes, smiling at the recollection.

  ‘What is it?’ Herrick asked, his hawk-like eyes amused.

  ‘Your hand,’ Chen said. ‘It reminded me of a friend’s hand.’

  Herrick gave the slightest shrug. ‘I see.’ He turned away, looking round him at the great nest of screens and machinery. ‘Well... you have a job for me, I understand. You know what I charge?’

  ‘Yes... A friend of mine came to you a few months back. It was a rather simple thing, I understand. I want something similar.’

  Herrick looked back at him, then looked down. ‘A simple thing?’ He laughed. ‘Nothing I do is simple, Shih Tong. That’s why I charge so much. What I do is an art form. Few others can do it. They haven’t the talent, or the technical ability. That’s why people come here. People like you, Shih Tong.’ He looked up again, meeting Chen’s eyes, his own hard and cold. ‘So don’t insult me, my friend.’<
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  ‘Forgive me,’ Chen said hastily, bowing his head. ‘I didn’t mean to infer... Well, it’s just that I’d heard...’

  ‘Heard what?’ Herrick was staring away again, as if bored.

  ‘That you were capable of marvels.’

  Herrick smiled. ‘That’s so, Shih Tong. But even your “simple things” are beyond most men.’ He sniffed, then nodded. ‘All right, then, tell me what it was this friend of yours had me do for him, and I’ll tell you whether I can do “something similar”.’

  Chen smiled inwardly. Yes, he had Herrick’s measure now. Knew his weak spot. Herrick was vain, over-proud of his abilities. Well, he could use that. Could play on it and make him talk.

  ‘As I understand it, my friend was having trouble with a soldier. A young lieutenant. He had been causing my friend a great deal of trouble, so, to shut him up, he had you make an implant of the man committing a murder. A young Hung Mao girl.’

  Herrick was nodding. ‘Yes... Of course. I remember it. In a brothel, wasn’t it? Yes, now I see the connection. Liu Chang. He made the introduction, didn’t he?’

  Chen felt himself go very still. So it wasn’t Liu Chang who had come here in that instance. He had merely made the introduction. Then why hadn’t he said?

  ‘So Captain Auden is a good friend of yours, Shih Tong?’ Herrick said, looking at him again.

  Auden...? Chen hesitated, then nodded. ‘Ten years now.’

  Herrick’s smile tightened into an expression of distaste. ‘How odd. I had the feeling he disliked Han. Still...’

  ‘Do you think I could see the earlier implant? He told me about it, but... well, I wanted to see whether it really was the kind of thing I wanted.’

  Herrick screwed up his face. ‘It’s very unusual, Shih Tong. I like to keep my customers’ affairs discrete, you understand? It would be most upsetting if Captain Auden were to hear I had shown you the implant I designed for him.’

  ‘Of course.’ Chen saw at once what he wanted and took one of the chips from his pocket. ‘Would this be guarantee enough of my silence, Shih Herrick?’

  Herrick took the chip, examining it a moment beneath a nearby desk light, then turned back to Chen, smiling. ‘I think that should do, Shih Tong. I’ll just find my copy of the implant.’

  Herrick returned to the central desk and was busy a moment at the keyboard, then he returned, a thin film of transparent card held delicately between the fingers of his left hand.

  ‘Is that it?’

  Herrick nodded. ‘This is just the analog copy. The visual element of it, anyway. The real thing is much more complex. An implant is far more than the simple visual component.’ He laughed coldly, then moved past Chen, slipping the card into a slot beneath one of the empty screens. ‘If it were simply that it would hardly be convincing, would it?’

  Chen shrugged, then turned in time to see the screen light up.

  ‘No,’ Herrick continued. ‘That’s the art of it, you see. To create the whole experience. To give the victim the feeling of having committed the act, whatever it is. The smell and taste and touch of it – the fear and the hatred and the sheer delight of doing something illicit.’

  He laughed again, turning to glance at Chen, an unhealthy gleam in his eyes. ‘That’s what fascinates me, really. What keeps me going. Not the money, but the challenge of tailoring the experience to the man. Take this Haavikko, for instance. From what I was given on him it was very easy to construct something from his guilt, his sense of self-degradation. It was easy to convince him of his worthlessness – to make him believe he was capable of such an act. That, too, is part of my art, you see – to make such abnormal behaviour seem a coherent part of the victim’s reality.’

  Chen shuddered. Herrick spoke as if he had no conception of what he was doing. To him it was merely a challenge – a focus for his twisted genius. He lacked all feeling for the men whose lives he destroyed. The misery and pain he caused were, for him, merely a measure of his success. It was evil. Truly evil. Chen wanted to reach out and choke him to death, but first he had to get hold of the copy and get out with it.

  An image began to form on the screen. The frozen image of a naked girl, sprawled on a bed, backing away, her face distorted with fear.

  ‘There’s one thing I don’t understand, Shih Herrick. My friend told me that Haavikko took a drink of some kind. A drug. But how was the implant put into his head? He’s only a junior officer, so he isn’t wired. How, then, was it done?’

  Herrick laughed. ‘You think in such crude terms, Shih Tong. The implant isn’t a physical thing – not in the sense that you mean. It’s not like the card. That’s only storage – a permanent record. No, the implant was the drug. A highly complex drug made up of a whole series of chemicals with different reaction times, designed to fire particular synapses in the brain itself – to create, if you like, a false landscape of experience. An animated landscape, complete with a predetermined sequence of events.’

  Chen shook his head. ‘I don’t see how.’

  Herrick looked away past him, his eyes staring off into some imaginary distance. ‘That’s because you don’t understand the function of the brain. It’s all chemicals and electrics, in essence. The whole of experience. It comes in at the nerve-ends and is translated into chemical and electrical reactions. I merely bypass those nerve-ends. What I create is a dream. But a dream more real, more vivid, than reality!’

  Chen stared at him, momentarily frightened by the power of the man, then looked back at the screen. He didn’t want to see the girl get killed. Instinctively, he reached across, ejecting the card, and slipped it into his pocket.

  Herrick started forward. ‘What the fuck...?’

  Chen grabbed Herrick by the neck, then drew the knife from his boot and held it against his throat.

  ‘I’ve heard enough, Shih Herrick. More than enough, if you must know. But now I’ve got what I came for, so I’ll be going.’

  Herrick swallowed uncomfortably. ‘You won’t get out of here. I’ve a dozen guards...’

  Chen pulled the knife towards him sharply, scoring the flesh beneath Herrick’s chin. Herrick cried out and began to struggle, but Chen tightened his grip.

  ‘You’d better do as I say, Shih Herrick, and get me out of here. Or you’re dead. And not pretend dead. Really dead. One more shit comment from you and I’ll implant this knife in the back of your throat.’

  Herrick’s eyes searched the room, then looked back at Chen. ‘All right. But you’ll have to let me give instructions to my men.’

  Chen laughed. ‘Just tell them to open the doors and get out of the way.’ He raised his voice, looking up at one of the security cameras. ‘You hear me, Shih Ling? If you want to see your boss again, do as I say. Any tricks and he’s dead, and where will you be then? Runner to some gang boss, dead in a year.’

  He waited a moment, searching the walls for signs of some technological trickery. Then there was a hiss and a door on the far side of the room slid open.

  He pressed harder with the knife. ‘Tell them I want to go out the way I came in, Shih Herrick. Tell them quickly, or you’re dead.’

  Herrick swallowed, then made a tiny movement of his head. ‘Do as he says.’

  They moved out slowly into the corridor, Chen looking about him, prepared at any moment to thrust the knife deep into Herrick’s throat.

  ‘Who are you working for?’

  ‘Why should I be working for anyone?’

  ‘Then I don’t understand...’

  No, thought Chen. You wouldn’t, would you?

  They came to the second door. It hissed open. Beyond it stood four guards, their knives drawn.

  ‘No further,’ said Ling, coming from behind them.

  Chen met Ling’s eyes, tightening his grip on Herrick’s throat. ‘Didn’t you hear me, Ling? You want your master to die?’

  Ling smiled. ‘You won’t kill him, Tong. You can’t. Because you can’t get out without him.’

  Chen answered Ling’s smile w
ith his own, then pulled Herrick closer to him, his knife hand tensed.

  ‘This is for my friend, Axel. And for all those others whose lives you have destroyed.’

  He heard the cry and looked back, seeing how the blood had drained from Ling’s face, then let the body fall from him.

  ‘Now,’ he said, crouching, holding the knife out before him. ‘Come, Shih Ling. Let’s see what you can do against a kwai.’

  Chapter 52

  ISLANDS

  Jelka leaned out over the side of the boat, straining against the safety harness as she watched the rise and fall of the waves through which they ploughed, the old thirty-footer rolling, shuddering beneath her, the wind tugging at her hair, taking her breath, the salt spray bitingly cold against her face.

  The water was a turmoil of glassy green threaded with white strands of spume. She let her hand trail in the chill water then put her fingers to her mouth, the flesh strangely cold and hard, her lips almost numb. She sucked at them, the salt taste strong in her mouth, envigorating. A savage, ancient taste.

  She turned, looking back at the mainland. Tall fingers of ash-grey rock thrust up from the water, like the sunken bones of giants. Beyond them lay the City, its high, smooth, cliff-like walls dazzling in the morning light – a ribbon of whiteness stretching from north to south. She turned back, conscious suddenly of the swaying of the boat, the creak and groan of the wood, the high-pitched howl of the wind contesting with the noise of the engine – a dull, repetitive churring that sounded in her bones – and the constant slap and spray of water against the boat’s side.

  She looked up. The open sky was vast. Great fists of cloud sailed overhead, their whiteness laced with sunlight and shadow, while up ahead the sea stretched away, endless it seemed, its rutted surface shimmering with light.

  Sea birds followed in their wake, wheeling and calling, like souls in torment. She laughed, the first laughter she had enjoyed in weeks, and squinted forward, looking out across the sun-dazzled water, trying to make out the island.